Uggy Reaches Out

Nodded in my recliner and presently I found myself in the attic ambling along an oak-shaded street, a sandstone wall surrounding a magnificent mansion on my right.  I had just passed the portal that guarded the drive to the house when I noted a pair of wing-tips dangling beside me.  I looked up, and

“Hugh!  Fancy meeting you here.”

“Do fancy that,” he said.  “And you can call me Uggy, everyone does.”

“What on earth are you doing, sitting there alone on a stone wall?”

“What? Indeed.  I have a bone to pick with someone, and I think you are that someone.  Several years ago, some writer, to mention no names, created me, fleshed me out rather nicely then set me aside whilst he went merrily on his way.”

“Sorry about that.  I did intend to pick you up and carry you along in some later adventures, but the situation never arose.  Don’t feel slighted, though.  You are not the only character I’ve abandoned here or there.  For instance, there was Marcus a while back.  I left him wheeling his Ford into a motel in some godforsaken Texas outpost.”

“I know that.  We characters should form some sort of union, working conditions being what they are.  Even better!  We should have a Character Convention!  Hire an arena and advertise Care Con far and wide.  All out-of-work characters could present ourselves to the assembled authors, make ourselves available to someone who might appreciate us.”

“I suppose you could fill a hall, all right.  Think of the characters that have been stranded somewhere along the line!  Why, even the protagonist in America’s greatest novel "lit out for the territory.".  There surely would be a market for Huckleberry Finn!”

“Now wait.  You are getting carried away.  That little.  well, he had his day.  Adventures galore, known by all.  Let him coast into his old age.*  It’s guys, gals, too, I suppose, like me who need an opportunity to have at least one interesting adventure.  Say, maybe you could pick me up here and work me into a swell tale?”  With that, Uggy hopped down from the wall and swatted the seat of his britches to remove the dust.  “Let’s get going, Doc!”

“Who do you think you are anyway, Bugs Bunny?”

*In 1983, Greg Matthews published The Further Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Character In Search of Story

Hi, I'm Uggy. Uggy Krup. Just to clarify from the outset, I am not related to those Krups. In fact, I would be hard pressed to show you any kind of genealogy beyond Mom and Pop. I'm thirty-seven years old, stand six foot, three and weigh 15 stone. I am not a handsome man, but I have reached an accommodation with myself. Dad once quoted a quatrain to me which went like this. "As a beauty, I am no star. There are many more handsome by far. But my face, I don't mind it, for I am behind it. It's the folks out in front get the jar."

The first thing most people question is my name. I was baptized Hugh Arlo Krup. When I started school in Koln, I was taught to write my name, "Hugh A. Krup." Donnie Danvers, seated next to me observed my paper and said, "What kind of name is Hug?" "Hugh, I said. It's Hugh."
"Yah," Lisl chimed in, "it's Hug, but I think Ugh! fits you perfectly." So I became Uggy on the spot and have been known by that moniker by friend, stranger, and foe since that fateful day.

It is not that I am unemployed, just, one might say, underemployed. I will take interesting assignments on short-term bases, but I have no desire to commit to long-term or serious engagements for which responsibility might devolve in any sort of unpleasant manner. I have lots of time on my hands. Pop parlayed a half-dozen years of hard work, some much-too-clever investments and unbelievable luck into a fortune which could modestly be described as substantial. Upon the departure of our dear parents from this vale of tears in a horrendous accident, the details of which I will spare you, my sister and I split the proceeds of the estate, per the conditions of the wills, then we split from each other. We had tolerated one another's existence for thirty years, she being two years younger but light years more responsible, more capable, blah, blah blah. In a word, the good child. She matriculated and ultimately graduated well (Mills), married well, and has the perfect life.

Yet you must not leap to the unwarranted conclusion that I am a wastrel or spendthrift. Mom may have raised a quasi-responsible would-be playboy, but she did not raise a stupid one. I recognized early on that if I was to live the lifestyle of my choosing, I would need to husband my resources with the intent that they should provide me a comfortable and pleasant life, no matter how long it might be. Thus, I created a trust for myself in which I am the sole beneficiary, and it is controlled and managed by a staid and responsible investment bank. I draw an annual income which provides for me quite nicely, being at the upper reaches of seven figures, American. I live well, but I suspect that no one knows just how well I could live were I of a mind to do so.

One might wonder about my relationship with the fairer sex. Yes, I have an eye for the ladies, and though I am currently single, and likely to remain so, I was once married, and happily. Jean and I met during our senior year at Cumberland. The relationship was indeed one "made in heaven." We dated for two years, became engaged. She was for three years my fiancee. Then one month after my twenty-sixth birthday, and on hers, we were married in Chelsea. Again, with no detail I will say that I obtained a junior position in a respectable law firm. Jean followed her profession in education and was an assistant superintendent in a large school district in the Midwestern state where we were residing at the time. Everything boded well for a wonderful life. Seven years after the wedding and nine months after the diagnosis, Jean died. I hate euphemisms, but in this case I may hate the blunt statement of fact even more. But I will not talk of her "passing" or discuss how much "better off" she is now.

© 2009 David W. Lacy

• What might we do with this guy? Can you picture a direction for his life?
  
  

  [Happy Birthday, son Curt]