Uncle Junior Quotes

Uncle Mort glanced at Pandora, then back at the Juniors. "Okay, kids. Brace yourselves. And try not to yell too much." Elysia's hand tensed on Lex's arm. "I hate it when he says that," she whispered. Uncle Mort gave them a sympathetic smile. "Remember that old chestnut about the wickedest Grim of all time?" He pounded on the roof. Grotton's head popped down through the ceiling, a snaky grin stretching from ear to ear. The screams were so loud, Dora nearly drove into a tree

The world of literature came knock-knock-knocking on James Baldwin’s door early: Reading and rereading Uncle Tom’s Cabin before he was ten. Discovering the novels of Charles Dickens at around the same time. The Schomburg Library on 135th Street, which he seemed to haunt when not baby-sitting his siblings. Frederick Douglass Junior High School, where he would study with Countee Cullen (“ To make a poet black, and bid him sing!”), by then the author of two volumes of poetry. Surely, for Baldwin, already the idea of being a writer, for a black man, was a tangible, possible thing.

That’s the one,” said Aunt Bea. “He used to chew licorice and spit on the grass to make the principal think he was chewing tobacco like a professional baseball player, which was what he wanted to be.” “Where’s this cute licorice-chewing uncle coming from, and how did he get so rich?” asked Ramona’s father, beginning to be interested. “Playing baseball?” “He’s coming from—” Ramona frowned. “I can’t remember the name, but it sounds like a fairy tale and has camels.” Narnia? Never-never-land? No, those names weren’t right. “Saudi Arabia,” said Beezus, who also went to the Kemps’ after school. Being in junior high school, she could take her time getting there. “Yes, that’s it!” Ramona wished she had remembered first. “Howie says he’s bringing the whole family presents.” She imagined bags of gold like those in The Arabian Nights, which Beezus had read to her. Of course, nobody carried around bags of gold today, but she enjoyed imagining them. “What’s Howie’s uncle doing in Saudi Arabia?” asked Mr. Quimby. “Besides spitting licorice in the sand?

There’s Tom,” Becky says. He’s been tromping around the city half the day, but I don’t see a speck of mud on him. Though he dresses plain, it always seems he rolls out of bed in the morning with his hair and clothes as neat and ordered as his arguments. We walk over to join him, and he acknowledges us with a slight, perfectly controlled nod. He’s one of the college men, three confirmed bachelors who left Illinois College to join our wagon train west. Compared to the other two, Tom Bigler is a bit of a closed book—one of those big books with tiny print you use as a doorstop or for smashing bugs. And he’s been closing up tighter and tighter since we blew up Uncle Hiram’s gold mine, when Tom negotiated with James Henry Hardwick to get us out of that mess. “How goes the hunt for an office?” I ask. “Not good,” Tom says. “I found one place—only one place—and it’s a cellar halfway up the side of one those mountains.” Being from Illinois, which I gather is flat as a griddle, Tom still thinks anything taller than a tree is a mountain. “Maybe eight foot square, no windows and a dirt floor, and they want a thousand dollars a month for it.” “Is it the cost or the lack of windows that bothers you?” He pauses. Sighs. “Believe it or not, that’s a reasonable price. Everything else I’ve found is worse—five thousand a month for the basement of the Ward Hotel, ten thousand a month for a whole house. The land here is more valuable than anything on it, even gold. I’ve never seen so many people trying to cram themselves into such a small area.” “So it’s the lack of windows.” He gives me a side-eyed glance. “I came to California to make a fortune, but it appears a fortune is required just to get started. I may have to take up employment with an existing firm, like this one.” Peering at us more closely, he says, “I thought you were going to acquire the Joyner house? I mean, I’m glad to see you, but it seems things have gone poorly?” “They’ve gone terribly,” Becky says. “They haven’t gone at all,” I add. “They’ll only release it to Mr. Joyner,” Becky says. Tom’s eyebrows rise slightly. “I did mention that this could be a problem, remember?” “Only a slight one,” I say with more hope than conviction. “Without Mr. Joyner’s signature,” Becky explains, “they’ll sell my wedding cottage at auction. Our options are to buy back what’s ours, which I don’t want to do, or sue to recover it, which is why I’ve come to find you.” If I didn’t know Tom so well, I might miss the slight frown turning his lips. He says, “There’s no legal standing to sue. Andrew Junior is of insufficient age, and both his and Mr. Joyner’s closest male relative would be the family patriarch back in Tennessee. You see, it’s a matter of cov—” “Coverture!” says Becky fiercely. “I know. So what can I do?” “There’s always robbery.” I’m glad I’m not drinking anything, because I’m pretty sure I’d spit it over everyone in range. “Tom!” Becky says. “Are you seriously suggesting—?” “I’m merely outlining your full range of options. You don’t want to buy it back. You have no legal standing to sue for it. That leaves stealing it or letting it go.” This is the Tom we’ve started to see recently. A little angry, maybe a little dangerous. I haven’t made up my mind if I like the change or not. “I’m not letting it go,” Becky says. “Just because a bunch of men pass laws so other men who look just like them can legally steal? Doesn’t mean they should get away with it.” We’ve been noticed; some of the men in the office are eyeing us curiously. “How would you go about stealing it back, Tom?” I ask in a low voice, partly to needle him and partly to find out what he really thinks. He glances around, brows knitting. “I suppose I would get a bunch of men who look like me to pass some laws in my favor and then take it back through legal means.” I laugh in spite of myself. “You’re no help at all,” Becky says.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about Ben, the Jedi Knight, who had served so briefly as Luke’s mentor in the ways of the Force. I still miss him, Luke thought. I wish I’d gotten to know him better on Tatooine, even though Uncle Owen would have tried to stop me. I could have learned so much.…

THE HAPPY SPRUCE INN, it said. Cartoon trees with googly eyes and idiotically smiling faces grinned down at the Stiff as it pulled into the driveway of a large, boxy building with all the charm of a haunted mental institution. “What a lovely setting,” Driggs said. “For murder.” “Okay, Lex,” Uncle Mort said as Pandora put the car into park some distance away from the front door. “You’re going in. Now—” “Wait, I’m going in? Why not you?” “Because I’m deriving far too much enjoyment from the Stiff’s leaky fumes. Now just go in, tell the person at the front desk your Uncle Mort sent you, and find the rest of the Juniors. It shouldn’t be hard. You seem to have a knack for attracting large groups of angry people.” She cringed. “You think they’ll be angry?” “No time like the present to find out. Now go.” “By myself? What about—” She looked at her other choices. Pandora was picking her teeth in the rearview mirror. Grotton was Grotton. And Driggs’s hand was still stuck. “Sorry,” he said to her, giving his wrist another futile tug. “The old arm-in-the-seat dilemma.” Lex haughtily unbuckled her seat belt and got out of the car. “You are the worst band of fugitives ever,” she said, slamming the door.

Well, go in,” said Pandora. “It’s open to the public.” “So, for once, we won’t have to destroy private property,” Uncle Mort said, opening the door. “Look how far we’ve come, gang—” A shriveled, bony fist punched him in the face. Since there wasn’t much force behind the blow, however, it just sort of shoved him off balance for a second. Uncle Mort rubbed his cheek, as if he’d been stung by a mosquito. “Ow.” “Don’t you dare come in here!” a little man in a bow tie and suspenders yelled. He stared out at them from behind a pair of humongous old-man glasses, his wispy white hairs quivering as he shouted. When the Juniors came in anyway, he got even angrier. “Don’t you dare take another step!” They took another step. “Don’t you dare—” “Turlington!” Pandora blared, holding up a balled fist of her own. “You shut that pie hole of yours or I’ll stuff it with a hearty slice of knuckle cobbler!” “Knuckle cobbler?” Lex whispered to Driggs. “Good name for a band,” he replied. The man almost fainted. “Pan—Pandora?” “Damn straight!” She puffed out her chest and trapped him up against the wall. “Now, you’re going to let these friends of mine bunk here for the evening, and you’re going to be real nice and real pleasant about it, and above all, you’re not even going to think of ratting us out. Got it?” “Yes, yes,” he said, shaking. “Whatever you need. I think I might even have some pillows and blankets left over from the last overnight camp, in the closet behind the—” Pandora karate-chopped the side of his head. The Juniors watched as he went down like a sack. “What’d you do that for?” Uncle Mort asked once the poor man stopped twitching. “He would have ratted,” Pandora said with confidence. “Old Turly was my partner for a brief stint back in our younger days. Thick as thieves, we were. But he’s a squirrelly bastard, I know that much.” “So are you,” Uncle Mort pointed out. “That’s why we were such good friends!” Uncle Mort stared at her for a moment more, then rubbed his eyes. “Okay. Fine. Make yourselves at home, kids. Just step right on over the unconscious senior citizen.

Once they were all checked in, LeRoy ushered them back out to the plaza. He clapped twice. “Work begins now!” Unsure, the Juniors clutched their strange glass scythes and stared at one another, then at Uncle Mort. “You heard the man!” he shouted in an uncharacteristically jubilant voice. “Go reap some souls—you know you want to! Group hug!” He gathered them up into a tight, almost crushing embrace. “Not a word out loud about this until I say so,” he hissed. “Or I will Damn you myself.” He let them go and waved. “Have fun, champs!

They landed in a field with a light dusting of snow. “Middle of nowhere?” Elysia said, looking around. “Interesting choice.” “No waaaay!” Thrilled, Ferbus broke from the group and started running toward a series of objects on the horizon. Driggs snickered. “This should be fun.” As they got closer to Ferbus’s shouts of glee, the forms that had made no sense at a distance began to take shape into something that made even less sense: stacks of old automobiles, seemingly dropped from space but arranged in an undeniable pattern. “Carhenge!” Ferbus jubilantly danced through the pillars, taking it all in. “Man, you hear about it, you dream about the day you might get to see it, but it’s even better than I imagined!” Elysia blinked. “What is Carhenge?” “Don’t you get it?” said Ferbus, the grin still on his face. “It’s like Stonehenge.” He pointed. “But with cars.” The Juniors stared at him. Bang coughed. “Well,” said Uncle Mort after a moment, “as riveting as”—he consulted his atlas—“rural Nebraska is, it’s probably best that we keep moving.” Ferbus’s face fell. “But the gift shop.” Uncle Mort rubbed his temples. “Tell you what, next time we’re being chased by a murderous criminal, I’ll try to schedule in a little more time for sightseeing.” He formed the Juniors back into a circle. “Let’s not assign a designated driver this time. We’ll scythe, and whoever thinks of something first, somewhere farther east—that’s where we’ll go. Ready?” *** This time around they were greeted by the stoic faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, all wearing caps of snow. “Ooh, Mount Rushmore,” Ferbus said bitterly. “Because dead presidents are so much more fascinating than the subtle, delicate art of automotive sculpture.” “East!” Uncle Mort said, exasperated. “Not north!

disparity between Louie and Woody is most pronounced. In Woody Allen comedies, the Woody protagonist or surrogate takes it upon himself to tutor the young women in his wayward orbit and furnish their cultural education, telling them which books to read (in Annie Hall’s bookstore scene, Allen’s Alvy wants Annie to occupy her mind with Death and Western Thought and The Denial of Death—“You know, instead of that cat book”), which classic films to imbibe at the revival houses back when Manhattan still had a rich cluster of them. In Crimes and Misdemeanors, it’s a 14-year-old female niece who dresses like a junior-miss version of Annie Hall whom Woody’s Clifford squires to afternoon showings at the finer flea pits, advising her to play deaf for the remaining years of her formal schooling. “Don’t listen to what your teachers tell ya, you know. Don’t pay attention. Just, just see what they look like, and that’s how you’ll know what life is really gonna be like.” A more dubious nugget of avuncular wisdom would be hard to imagine, and it isn’t just the Woody stand-in who does the uncle-daddy-mentor-knows-best bit for the benefit of receptive minds in ripe containers. In Hannah and Her Sisters, Max von Sydow’s dour painter-philosophe Frederick is the Old World “mansplainer” of all time, holding court in a SoHo loft which he shares with his lover, Lee, played by Barbara Hershey, whose sweaters abound with abundance. When Lee groans with enough-already exasperation when Frederick begins droning on about an Auschwitz documentary—“You missed a very dull TV show on Auschwitz.

More than once, Luke had heard his uncle say, “If the heat doesn’t kill you on Tatooine, everything else will.

Junior is the best fighter out of all my siblings,” Gilly said. “He’s won the Dragon Port Invitational Arms Competition for three years running.” He gave a serrated grin, “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me.” “He also has a habit of getting drunk and taking a shit in the garden,” she continued blithely. For a split second, I was afraid Cresis was going to have a stroke. Garlin dryly chuckled. Junior just laughed. “You do something twice --” “Three times,” Gilly countered. “I heard about Uncle Marth’s birthday party.

Obi-Wan Kenobi…” he said. “Obi-Wan? Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time…a long time.” “I think my uncle knows him,” Luke said. “He said he was dead.…” “Oh, he’s not dead,” Ben said, smiling as he glanced at the sky. “Not yet.” “You know him?” “Well, of course I know him. He’s me! I haven’t gone by the name Obi-Wan since, oh, before you were born.