Jerry Bumpus
THE OUTDOORSMAN
Because Bogsedge was rather oozy even on the brightest
days, Mrs. Clarinda Sheehan had a table and chairs brought out onto
the terrace; there she remained, fidgeting and looking down the lawn to
the brush creek and the heath beyond.
As the clock chimed four, Mrs. Sheehan heard the canine grunting
and loud panting that always preceded her neighbor on the lane,
Ursula Dolmon. Around the corner she came in her dogcart pulled by
two tawny beasts straining for all they were worth. Short of the terrace
steps the dogs collapsed, their tongues lolling, their eyes rolling back
in their heads.
At that moment the French doors opened and Tina Buell, Mrs.
Sheehan's niece, appeared. "Wonderful!" the young lady trilled and
ran down the steps to assist Ursula Dolmon who was tilting the dogcart
in her struggle to climb out.
Though Tina Buell was a neat little beauty with a perfect oval
face, large and lucid eyes, and lips as purely shaped as the dreams of
innocence, she lacquered her face to an otherworldly gleam, glued
black sprigs to her eyes so when she blinked it appeared chorus lines of
spiders were kicking up, and with a metallic unction she greased her
lips to the obdurate sheen of aluminum. Tina's hair, today a golden
green called Singapore Fudge, was knotted into a "beehive," and she
wore a pink, dollish dress identical to one a movie starlet wore once–
and alas forever in the pulpy catacombs of one of Tina's movie mags,
as said starlet goes forth to dubious doings with her escorts, a sixty–
year-old latex magnate and a celebrated young rake-hell with the flared
nostrils and bulging eyes of a stallion. Tina wore green hose which
with the fulsome glint of the South American anaconda succeeded in
transforming the slender delicacy of her calves and thighs to a rippling
muscularity.
Tina ran down the steps-breathtaking feat in itself, considering
her shoes, plastic "platforms" seven inches high clamped to Tina's feet
