An Embarrassment of Riches by James Howard Kunstler Read Free Book Online

specimen jars rolled back and forth across the cabin floor as the hull rocked in the current. As the best ideas often do, one now flared in my imagination like a rocket in the dark night above a storm-tossed sea.
    â€œUncle … Uncle!” I interrupted him, growing more excited by the second. “I have a plan!”
    I woke with a start. Sunlight blazed down the hatch like the yellow-hot tip of a torturer’s brand. I remembered at once where I was, and our predicament. Uncle’s eyes were bloodshot with sleeplessness. At our feet snored the contemptible scoundrel Bilbo and his odious accomplices.
    â€œPssst, Sammy,” Uncle whispered and presented his back to me. “Try if thee can gnaw through these bindings.”
    No sooner had I leaned forward than our oppressor-in-chief stirred, issuing first a belch, then a fart, each in its own way so noxiously fetid that they called to mind the everlasting miasmas of hell. It also had the effect of rousing from his stupor the dwarf, Neddy. The harelip, Bessie, lay upon her back against a mealsack, her unique mouth parts issuing a not unmusical whistle with every exhalation.
    â€œDon’t forget the plan!” I reminded Uncle of the scheme I had proposed before dawn. “From now on I shall address you as ‘brother.’ You shall answer only to ‘brother.’”
    The villainous trio verged upon awakening.
    â€œSshhh. He rises….”
    Bilbo’s left eyelid rolled up like a shade jerked open in the window of a ruined, vermin-infested house. The white of that organ was jaundiced and reticulated with angry red veins. The pupil within the mud-colored iris dilated and contracted as though it were utterly unable to adjust to the light. Bilbo lifted his massive, grizzled head. A terrible groan rumbled out of his powdery, cracked lips and resounded in the cramped cabin. Moments later he was crawling up the steps of the companionway out onto the deck, and we could hear a vertiable Niagara as he urinated over the gunwale. He returned soon after, staggered back into the cabin and poured himself a specimen jar of the Monongahela. This he consumed, tremblingly, with the reverence of a long-sick sufferer for a potent curative. He settled briefly upon his haunches while the medicine took effect, then looked up at us, smiled dreamily, and heaved a great sigh of relief.
    â€œGentlemen,” he growled. “I am my gay old self again.” And so saying, he fetched the dwarf a powerful slap on the hindquarters. “Up Neddy! Up my boy! A glorious new day beckons. There is work to be done, guests to entertain. Up, I say!”
    The dwarf sat up and rubbed his eyes.
    â€œThat’s a good lad,” Bilbo trilled and shook the harelip’s leg. “Wake to the lark’s song, my darling daughter,” he roused her musically.
    â€œDaughter…?” muttered I.
    â€œAin’t she a prize, though?” Bilbo declared, not facetiously but with the true, blind admiration of a parent for its offspring. “She shall make some lucky fellow very happy, my Bess will. Don’t be misled, young fellow. Though our manner of living has, perforce, fallen upon the impecunious, we were not always so, will not always be. The day will come when I shall see my Bessie dressed in Paris silks. Later I shall have her recite for us.”
    â€œShe recites?” said I in disbelief.
    â€œMost winningly, I assure you, sir. But we fall a’prattling, my hearties. Up, up, I say,” Bilbo enjoined us, unsheathing his dagger and cutting, at last, our painful bonds. “For we must get the boat ’round the back of the island ’fore someone else chances along—”
    â€œThou abominable bandit,” Uncle spat.
    â€œMust we have these maledictions?”
    â€œThou consummate, worthless scum!”
    At this, Bilbo rapped Uncle smartly upon the crown with a heavy ring of Spanish silver.
    â€œOoooooch!” cried