Major, however, was understandably depressed. He grumbled. He left the table. He had a Scotch and water. He punctuated his sips with crotchety comment. Then he retired to his bunk. He was in such a foul mood he didn’t even smile when, at the stroke of midnight, I delivered his monthly remittance. He merely snorted, took the envelope from my hand and crammed it beneath his pillow.
The next morning, Mr. Olsen prepared breakfast. A ten pound bag of yellow onions lay on the kitchen counter beside him. He was dicing one of them. “Lefty,” he ordered, “get me some potatoes for the raw fries and find a green pepper, too.”
Lefty heaved a large Styrofoam ice chest onto the table. The top half of the chest held the perishable food. Lefty found a pepper and tossed it to Mr. Olsen. “I suppose we need all this ice for libations,” he said, “but it sure makes this thing hard to lift.” He took the chest from the table and returned it to the floor. Then he picked up the twenty pound bag of potatoes. “These potatoes are heavy,” he complained, hoisting them onto the counter. “Are you trying to give me a hernia?” he asked
Doc Carmichael sat on the edge of a lower bunk and laced his Chippewa’s. He was listening to them. “Relax Lefty,” he said. “You have nothing to worry about. If you had to carry my game bag, by the end of the day the strain might rupture you, but you don’t shoot that well. Your game bag is never that heavy. You won’t ever run the risk of a hernia.”
Major Peabody had already finished dressing. From the look on his face, I was sure he was still upset by his reverses at the poker table. His tone of voice confirmed my suspicion. “That’s the trouble with you youngsters,” he muttered. “You don’t keep yourselves in shape. When I was your age I could easily lift my own weight.”
“When you were my age,” Lefty answered, “I wasn’t even born. That’s the trouble with you old timers. Your mind plays tricks on you. Memory loss, you know. Lift your own weight? Hah! It won’t be long before you’ll have trouble lifting a Scotch and water.”
Peabody reacted immediately. It was clear that he was still upset by his bad luck at cards. Lefty’s taunt added insult to that injury. Obviously, the Major was also annoyed when Lefty called him an “old timer”. Peabody would never admit that he had lost any of his prowess or was not in the prime of his life.
“Don’t be snotty, Lefty,” he said. “I’m in better shape than you are.”
“Don’t get snotty, Lefty,” he said. “I’m in better shape than you are.”
I recognized what was going on. My area of legal expertise includes estate planning. I draft a lot of Testamentary Trusts for old people. When the aging process accelerates and the wheels begin to come off – especially with men who have led active lives – any suggestion of impairment of their physical abilities is often strenuously denied, even when the effects of age are obvious to everyone.
I didn’t want to see Peabody agitated by any further insensitive remarks from Lefty. I knew the Major would consider them to be a challenge. They might provoke him into saying something he would later regret. I thought it was time to change the subject. “Well, well, well,” I said as I slid down from one of the top bunks. “Looks like bacon, eggs and raw fries for breakfast. That ought to fill us up. Are you ready to shoot some birds, Major?”
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