The Chronicles of Major Peabody

by Galen Winter

  “I was right,” he continued. “The Rarie didn’t upset local ecological patterns. However, the opposite was true. The northern Arizona environment had a powerful effect on my Rarie. It began to grow at an alarming rate. It doubled its size every week. At the end of two months, it was 500 times its original size. Three weeks later, when it was 4000 times the size of a tennis ball, something had to be done.

  “At three in the morning of a moonless night and with some difficulty, I loaded the Rarie onto my neighbor’s snowmobile trailer. Under cover of darkness and undiscovered by local law enforcement personnel, I drove out of town. The sun was rising when I arrived at the south rim of the Grand Canyon. I disconnected the trailer and pushed it to the edge of the rock walls that dropped straight down to the Colorado River, far, far below.

  “I untied the bird and quickly lifted the tongue of the trailer. The Rarie began to slip over the back edge. It tried to hang on but couldn’t. I was sincerely attached to that bird. A tear appeared in my eye when the bird’s grip on the tilted trailer began to loosen. Then, falling into the abyss, it cried out: “It’s a long way to tip a Rarie.”

  Educating Bruce Golightly

  “My name is Bruce Golightly. I belong to various organizations dedicated to supporting World Peace, protecting the environment, preserving the culture of stone-age savage cannibals living in the Amazon jungles and fighting injustice whenever any of those organizations tells me it occurs. I am particularly proud to be President of the Philadelphia Area Society To Protect Our Deer, Our Wooded Lands, The Whales And Our Environment Generally.

  “Last month, one of our members, a lovely lady named Stephanie, brought an escort to one of the Society’s meetings. She presented him to me. He was an attorney. I don’t remember his name. Three days later, I happened to find the man dining with someone at Bookbinders. Stephanie’s friend invited me to join them and introduced his companion, Major Nathaniel Peabody, a retired army officer.

  “I didn’t think I could ever become friendly with an army person. Some of them, I am told, swear. I know they shoot rifles and sometimes drop bombs on poor foreign people, but Major Peabody proved to be an exception. By the end of the evening, I was calling him ‘Nathaniel’. He didn’t seem to mind when I refused to call him ‘Major’. I consider all army and navy officers’ titles to be particularly objectionable. By using them we condone violence.

  “It was inspiring to find a man who, despite his ugly, anti-social military background, was, in fact, a true environmentalist. During our conversation, I discovered Nathaniel loved animals - dogs in particular. He told me he spends hours and hours giving them exercise in the woods and fields. The lawyer reacted to Nathaniel’s admission by snorting.

  “I must tell you, my opinion of Stephanie’s attorney friend plummeted as my opinion of Nathaniel soared. With thinly disguised raised eyebrows and occasional not quite muffled laughter, the lawyer seemed to denigrate all of Nathaniel’s statements displaying his sincere interest in protecting our feathered and furry friends.

  “Nathaniel confided that he and some of his associates were engaged in a humanitarian project to collect Ruffed Grouse, Hungarian Partridge and those beautiful Chinese Pheasants. They intend to take the birds to a taxidermist and have the more perfect specimens mounted. Those mounts will be presented to orphanage school in order to give those unfortunate children a glimpse of wild life. The attorney actually spit out a mouthful of food, when Nathaniel explained his praiseworthy project. Imagine!

  “Nathaniel whispered into the man’s ear. I’m sure he politely asked him to behave. Soon thereafter, the lawyer smiled and excused himself, leaving me alone with Nathaniel. When he found I had spent all of my life in urban surroundings, Nathaniel was amazed. He showed equal surprise when I admitted that very few of the members of the Society To Protect Our Deer, Our Wooded Lands, The Whales And Our Environment Generally had never been in the woods.

  “You can imagine my delight when Nathaniel invited me to join him and two others for a week-end in an Upper Michigan study group retreat. Of course, I quickly accepted the kind offer. Nathaniel had left his wallet in his apartment and after I insisted in covering the bill, we parted - newly made friends.

  “On Friday we flew to Michigan and rented an automobile. You may not believe this, but sometimes we drove for a mile or even more through unbroken forest lands without seeing a single house or telephone pole. It was scary. As we left the graveled road and turned onto a two rutted trail, some of the trees were less than six feet from me. I was delighted to see so many of them. I wanted to stop the vehicle, get out and hug them, but it was getting late and the sun was going down.

  “We arrived at a rude cabin long after dinner time. Nathaniel introduced me to his two friends. When I asked them if they were going to help collect the Bonasa Umbellus Umbellus, they looked first at me and then at Nathaniel in a most peculiar way. One of them said something in what I took to be the Chippewa language. He said: ‘Wotinell zeetawkin bowt.’ I don’t know what it means.

  “At this point Nathaniel noticed the evening meal’s dishes had not been washed. He took me to the sink, brought hot water from an old-fashioned kettle that had been sitting on the top of a wood burning kitchen stove and assigned the task to me. Then he engaged his friends in quiet conversation. I suppose he was telling them I was a kindred environmentalist spirit. In any event, after the dishes were washed, dried and stacked, the somewhat chilly reception I had received was replaced by warm inquiries into my well-being and careful attention to my comfort.

  “One of the men brought out a glass gallon container of what appeared to be dark reddish cider vinegar, but they were playing a joke. It wasn’t vinegar at all. Nathaniel told me the man had carefully poured three liters of quality chateau bottled French Burgundy into the glass jug. I didn’t catch the name of the chateau. I believe they referred to it a ‘Day Go Red’. It was tasty. In accordance with local custom, the after dinner cocktail hour lasted for three hours.

  “One of the men took a chunk of wood from the box beside the pot bellied stove. ‘This is beech,’ he told me. ‘Notice the smoothness and color of the bark. Then he showed me the butt end of the wood. ‘You can tell if the season was a dry or a wet one by looking at the thickness of any year’s growth,’ he informed me.

  “I was greatly impressed by his intimate knowledge of the environment. I listened attentively while all three talked about such strange trees as hemlock and tamarack and yellow birch - ones you’d never see in our yards in the Philadelphia suburbs.

  “One of Nathaniel’s friends went outside and returned with a huge, heavy thing - a piece of iron, flat on one end and sharpened on the other. It was affixed to a long wooden handle. When I asked what it was, Nathaniel told me it was called a ‘splitting maul’. I learned it is used to break larger chunks of wood into pieces that would fit into the wood stoves. I was fascinated. I thanked Nathaniel when he promised to show me how to use it.

  “By this time I had taken quite a few glasses of the Day Go Red. Nathaniel’s friends had insisted my glass be re-filled whenever it became half empty. I went to the sleeping room and took off my shoes. I was exhausted by the fresh air and excitement. I laid down on the bottom bunk and almost immediately fell into a deep sleep that lasted until the morning.

  “After I washed, dried and stacked the breakfast dishes, true to his word, Nathaniel took me outside to a very large pile of blocks of wood. He set one piece on its end and told me to aim about one-third of the way between the edge of the chunk and its center. He said I should use the same sort of swing golfers use when they slice their ball into the rough and then bang the heads of their drivers into the ground. Nathaniel said splitting wood would improve my golf game. One of the men quoted Kaiser Wilhelm II - ‘Split your own wood and it will warm you twice.’ Sage advice, indeed.

  “Nathaniel and his friend embarked on their Ruffed Grouse collection expedition, leaving me with the splitting maul and the pile of wood. If I say so, myself, I
became quite adept at splitting wood. By late afternoon when my friends returned to the cabin, I had split the entire pile. That evening after I finished the dinner dishes, we enjoyed some more of the Chateau Day Go. It must be some kind of sedative. I again slept through the night, almost fully dressed.

  “The next morning, one of Nathaniel’s friends taught me how to make wood piles. While the three men went into the forests in search of specimens of the Bonasa Umbellus Umbellus, I was allowed to pile all of the wood I had split during the previous day.

  “On Monday morning, we returned to Philadelphia and Nathaniel and I parted company. What an instructional week-end it had been. I am indeed lucky to have Nathaniel and his two ecologically sensitive associates as mentors and friends. At our next annual meeting, I intend to nominate all three to share the Society’s Annual Gentleman or Gentlewoman, As The Case May Be, Guardian of the Environment Award.”

  Oh, the Humanity of It All

  Major Peabody lit a cigar, blew a smoke ring, smiled and tried to convince me he had a consuming interest in the welfare of youngsters. His interest was such, he informed me, that he had already invited two of his friends to join him and volunteer for a humanitarian endeavor aimed at insuring adequate supplies of milk for the tiny tots. When I registered mild disbelief, he came forward with a more complete explanation.

  In Iowa, pheasants were destroying local corn crops. Corn, the Major informed me, formed a part of the diet of cows which, he further informed me, produced milk. “When I discovered that cow’s milk was the same stuff small children drink,” he told me, “my better nature came to the fore. What could be more altruistic than eliminating the nasty pheasants that destroy the corn crops used to feed the cows that produced the milk that nourished the tiny babes?

  “I immediately looked for men who shared my altruistic sentiments and, of course, I thought of you. My plan,” the Major told me, “is to get such a group together, travel to Iowa and do our very best to reduce the population of the marauding, ravenous pheasants. It will be our purpose to save the corn crop thereby providing adequate sustenance to the local dairy herds and, thus, protect little children from the terrible effects of a milk shortage.”

  Translated into plain English, the Major wanted me to go to Iowa with him. His hidden agenda was quite obvious to me. I knew he wanted to engineer some kind of bet which I could never win and/or draw me into a poker game. This time I would escape his trap. I was in the middle of drafting a very intricate Estate Plan for James Larson, one of Philadelphia’s most successful and clever Personal Injury attorneys. I was quite pleased when the man complimented me after he reviewed a rough draft of the Trust, but I do wish he hadn’t used the phrase “tax evasion”.

  I had a good excuse to decline the Major’s invitation. That trust document and the allied incorporation, the drafting of deeds and the arranging of stock transfers all required a good deal of time and attention. In addition, I had no inclination to go to Iowa and had no interest in contributing to the Major’s financial well-being.

  On more than one occasion Mr. Larson had mentioned his avid interest in shotgunning. I suggested the Major invite him in my stead. And so it came to pass.

  * * * * *

  The hunters arrived at their destination in the late afternoon. They ate, enjoyed a libation and had time for a friendly poker game. The following morning, the sun had risen and the hunters, still in their motel room, were dressing and preparing for their imminent humanitarian campaign. At that moment, however, Peabody’s thoughts were directed at neither the hunt nor the welfare of the children.

  His attentions were directed toward one of his companions. Major Peabody carefully considered the civil damage trial attorney, James Larson. When the poker game began on the previous night, Peabody recalled how Larson had asked: “I can never remember - does a straight beat a flush or does a flush beat a straight?”

  At the time, Peabody thanked the Poker Gods for delivering the attorney into his hands. The fellow’s subsequent performance at the card table, however, was not something calculated to fill Peabody’s gizzard with unbounded joy. Larson carefully conned the Major into investing far too much in second best hands. The Major and his friends had been injured by the man’s display of poker expertise.

  Major Peabody scolded himself. “I should have known better,” he complained. “How could I have failed to recognize him as a con artist? This man is a successful Personal Injury lawyer. He has been schooled in guile, trickery and deception. He has been trained to convince juries of make-believe injuries. He has made a business of misleading knowledgeable judges. As far as I know, he has been able to avoid being charged with perpetrating crimes against humanity, but the man is nothing more than a devious knave. I admire him so very much.”

  After breakfasting in the restaurant adjacent to the motel, the Major engineered an opportunity to speak privately with the attorney. He complimented him on the subtle ways he mislead them at the poker table and the cunning mechanisms he employed to convince losers that their hands deserved one and sometimes two additional pointless bets. Then the Major got down to brass tacks.

  “With a little more training and experience,” Peabody informed him, “my hunting companions might become mediocre marksmen. Correct me if I am wrong, Larson, but I suspect you are a damned good shot?” It was a question, not a statement. The lawyer looked at Peabody and cautiously nodded. He suspected the Major was trying to entrap him.

  “I will admit,” the Major continued, “that I have the reputation of being able to hit what I shoot at.” He paused for a bit before adding, “I believe it might be profitable for us to join forces.”

  The attorney could recognize a kindred spirit when he saw one. The scheme was hatched on the spot. On the first day, Larson agreed to fire with a complete disregard for the range of his shotgun. He further agreed to miss on nearly every occasion. Peabody agreed to have an “off day”, but not shoot so badly as to raise suspicions on the part of his usual hunting compadres.

  When the first day of the hunt had ended, the attorney had not a single pheasant in his game pouch. Peabody had tried to shoot poorly but, nevertheless, had killed three birds. Later in the evening, when the single malt Scotch and the cigars had been distributed, the Major made his move. Peabody suggested a contest. It would begin on the next morning. He and Larson would spot each of the others a one bird advantage and, at the end of the remaining three days of the hunt, the team with the most birds would split the pot.

  Before Peabody could propose the size of the wager, both of his friends declined to participate. They were gun shy. They knew the Major well enough to avoid betting with him. Sad experiences taught them he had a way of winning nearly every bet he made. Peabody’s expression telegraphed his disappoint-ment. It clearly proclaimed, “Well, I tried.”

  The Personal Injury lawyer was conditioned to turning disaster into triumph and he seized the opportunity. He told the Major’s friends that he expected they would want to recover their poker loses. Abandoning the Major’s team effort proposal, he suggested that he and the other hunters create two pools. Each of them would put $500 into one of the two pots. Since he would be involved in both of the pots, he would contribute a thousand dollars, putting 500 into each of the two pots. Peabody wouldn’t be involved in the bets. He’d have to sit this one out.

  “If I can only win one of the pots, I’ll break even,” Larson said in an effort to strengthen the appearance of his inability to master the shooting of a bird in flight. Peabody’s friends took the bet.

  Later, Peabody again had a private conference with the lawyer. “I was afraid they might react that way,” the Major told him. “I was afraid they’d turn down my proposition, but, they accepted yours. I’ll put up 500 dollars to cover my end of the bet.”

  Then Larson disappointed Peabody by refusing to take his money or recognize his value in setting up the scheme. “Sorry, Major. You’re out of the picture,” he told him. “I made the deal with them. I put up the tho
usand dollars. I’m the one doing the shooting and I’ll reap all of the rewards.”

  On the following day, a startling metamorphosis took place. Larson was heard to exclaim such things as: “Good heavens! What a lucky shot,” and “I never expected to hit it,” and “Is that my bird? Didn’t either of you shoot?” Unexpectedly, the same metamorphosis affected the other two hunters. They were heard to say: “Great Scott. I was falling down went I pulled the trigger,” and “I shot at the first one and the second one dropped.”

  At noon, the men were having a field lunch of sandwiches and coffee. Each of Peabody’s friends was well ahead of the lawyer. The Personal Injury attorney arose from his camp stool and stretched. He looked at his fellow hunters. Both were trying, unsuccessfully, to look innocent.

  “This charade has gone far enough,” he announced. He pulled out his wallet and shuffled through the wad of bills stuffed into it. He handed $250 to each of the other hunters and then gave $500 to the Major, saying, “I presume each of your friends was going to split the pot with you.” The Major nodded and the other hunters smiled.

  “It’s my own fault,” Larson said. “I should have suspected something. I believe you and these two thieves have been hunting together for some time?” It was a question and the Major nodded an affirmative. “Your snare was well hidden and your confederates were very convincing,” the attorney admitted. “It was a well engineered deception.”

  He was silent for a moment while he considered how he had been conned. Then he looked at the Major and asked: “Did you, by chance, ever practice personal injury law?”

  Quack, Quack, Quack

  Major Nathaniel Peabody is not a cold weather person. About the time of the Winter solstice, I see the beginnings of a decidedly negative change in his attitude. It displays itself first in late December with a “bah humbugging” of the yuletide season. In January, it intensifies. Complaints of the gray skies, soot covered snow and slush punctuate his conversations. In February, the Major shows signs of melancholic depression. He begins to stray from reality in early March. His eyes film over and he begins to speak, wistfully, of dogs and shotguns.