Hexed

Chapter 6

Washing a filthy Irish wolfhound is entirely unlike washing a Chihuahua. It takes three or four buckets of water just to get the wolfhound thoroughly wet, for example, while one bucket will most likely drown the Chihuahua.

I have discovered over the years that if I wish to remain fairly dry through the process, I must distract Oberon from the tickling of bubbles and soap with a really good story, or else he will shake himself mightily and spray water and foam on every wall of my bathroom. Bath time is therefore story time in my house, and Oberon enjoys getting cleaned up as a result.

What I enjoy is Oberon’s obsession with the story until the next one gets told. He’d been vicariously living out the life of Genghis Khan for the past three weeks, constantly badgering me to muster the hordes on the Mongolian steppe and start a land war in Asia. Now I planned to take him in a completely different direction.

“When we were messing with Mr. Semerdjian’s head earlier,” I said as I began to soak him, “you asked me who the Merry Pranksters were. Well, the Merry Pranksters were a group of people who joined Ken Kesey on the magic bus in 1964 for his trip to New York from California.”

“Its primary talent was scaring the hell out of social conservatives. It was an old school bus painted in Day-Glo colors—really bright fluorescents—and given the name of Furthur.”

“No, just a gifted writer. But I suppose his magic bus started the cultural revolution of the sixties, so that’s pretty powerful magic. The Pranksters would give away acid for free to whoever wanted it in an effort to shake people out of their dreary lives of conformity. Acid was legal then.”

“It’s the street name for LSD.”