The Wooden Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

matched that deliciousness. Cloves now, the warm healthy smell of puppies. Pine, rain on pine trees.

    The car was parked there looking friendly and cooperative. Hadn't the mechanic come yet? If so, why wasn't Magda using it now? The smell of new leather, a new book, lilacs, grilling meat. I kept a tool kit in the trunk. I
    hadn't tried to start the car yet, but since I was standing right there, why not get out the tool kit just in case?

    What registered first--what I saw or smelled? I opened the trunk. The intensity of the odor Page 17

    multiplied by ten. And lying in there was the body of
    Old Vertue. Again. Under his red collar were the feather from the Schiavo house and the bone I had found in the hole I dug for him.

    *Ape of My Heart*

    George Dalemwood is the strangest person I know and one of my best friends.
    He is not strange in a "lives in a treehouse, wears chipmunkskin underwear and a red crash helmet" way. He's just odd. I certainly would not like to live inside his head, but I love hearing what comes out of it so long as I am at a safe distance. And for all his eccentricities, the great paradox is what
    George does for a living--he writes instructions for how to make things work.
    How do you get that complicated new camera going after it's out of the box?
    Read the instructions, George Dalemwood wrote. They are invariably clear, confident, and precise. Boot a computer program and get nothing but crashes?
    Read George and you'll be rocking in no time.

    Most important, as a friend, he was unjudgmental and carried no preconceived notions about anything. Because I could not deal with what had just happened, I got into the car without another thought and drove to his house, dead dog passenger and all. Yes, the car started immediately, but I was too dazed to give that any thought. I just wanted to talk to George.

    His place is a few blocks from ours. Nothing special about it--one floor, four rooms, a porch that should have been fixed twenty years ago. When I
    arrived his young dachshund, Chuck, was sitting on a porch step licking its balls. I stepped over it and rang the bell. No answer. Damn! Now what? Then I remembered the engine in my car was supposed to be dead. The dead dog that was supposed to be buried was in the trunk of the car that was supposed to have a dead battery.
    Damn!

    I looked up at the sky hoping for divine guidance, or something, and saw George sitting on his roof staring at me.

    "What are you doing up there? Didn't you see me ring your bell?"

    "Yes."

    "Well get down here, man, I need help!"

    In a toneless voice he said, "I would prefer not to." Which, in spite of everything going on, made me smile. Because George had been rereading
    _Bartleby _over and over for the last two months and said he would continue until he understood it. Before _Bartleby _he had been reading and trying to figure out _Mount Analogue _and before that, all of the Doctor Doolittle books. Every fookin' one of them.

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    George hoped when he died if he went to heaven, it would be Puddleby on the Marsh--Doolittle's hometown. He was serious.

    "Would you like a Mars bar?"

    George ate three things and only those three: boiled beef, Mars bars, and Greek mountain tea.

    "No. Listen, I'm begging you as a friend, please come down and listen to me."

    "I can hear fine from up here, Frannie."

    "What are you doin' up there anyway?"

    "Deciding the best way to describe erecting a satellite dish."

    "So you have to sit up there to see?"

    "Something like that."

    "Jesus! All right, if you're going to be that way about it--" I went back to the car, started it, and reversed onto his perfectly kept front lawn until I
    was as close to the house as possible. I opened the trunk and pointed accusingly at the carcass.
    George slid on his ass down the roof a ways so he could see better.

    He was unimpressed. "Got a dead dog in there. So?"

    Hands on hips, afternoon sun directly in my eyes, I described what had happened with Old