I know how melodramatic that sounds, but in this case, it's true. The call came on my night off. Ma was out with her girlfriends, playing Bingo at the Reservation, all of them smoking up a storm and no doubt laughing every time the caller pulled B-12 out of the hopper and said, All right, ladies, it's time to take your vitamins. Me, I was watching a Clint Eastwood movie on TNT and wishing I was anywhere else on Planet Earth. Saskatchewan, even. The phone rings, and I think, oh good, it's Pug, gotta be, and so when I pick it up I say in my smoothest voice, You have reached the Church of Any Eventuality, Harkerville branch, Reverend Dink speaking. Hello, Mr. Earnshaw, a voice says back. It was one I'd never heard before, but it didn't seem the least put-out or puzzled by my bullshit. I was mortified enough for both of us, though. Have you ever noticed that when you do something like that on the phone try to be cool right from the pickup it's never the person you expected on the other end?
