L'EDgendary

by dobanochi

A few years since we last saw any of them, the Peach Creek Boys and the Merry Men run into one another at just the right time, working together to undermine an oppressive city government as well as their burgeoning insecurities. An action-comedy-drama character study about friendship, leadership, self-esteem, and the divide between who we're born as and who we choose to be.

9. Ed's Sunday

9. "Ed's Sunday"

BOOM!

"Are you still asleep down there!?" Mr. Browne hollered into the basement before the sound of the blast had even finished subsiding.

"Yeah, I am a-rising and a-shining, Dad!" Ed answered from his room, for the noise had successfully awoken him.

"What the hell was that noise!?" Mrs. Browne screamed from some other part of the house.

"I woke up our son!" Hilary screamed back.

Ed rolled himself out of his bed and thumped onto the floor.

"What was that noise, Hill!?"

"I woke… him up," Mr. Browne answered, trying to make his annoyance clear.

Ed tried standing from the floor, but stood too fast, and in his light-headed dizziness, he collapsed right back onto his bed, which gave way with a loud creak.

"Dad probably threw an M-80 down the stairs again," Sarah said from somewhere near her mom.

"Hilary, are you trying to burn our fucking house down!?" Mrs. Browne cried.

Ed realized he was actually quite comfortable in the position he landed in, and didn't bother moving a muscle. Besides, he was still tired from his odd hours and his movie binge yesterday, and staying awake after one's REM cycle is interrupted is a tough task for anyone.

"I've never burned our house down before; why would it happen today?" Mr. Browne answered; after getting farther away, his voice seemed to be getting closer again. "Matilda, does it ever cross your mind that maybe I'll take your grievances more seriously if you were better at picking your fucking battles!?"

The sound of heavy ursine footsteps making their way down the basement stairs didn't disturb Ed's feeling of comfiness.

"Oh, fuck off, Hilary!" Mat scoffed. "This is really the house I wanted to come home to!"

"Ed!" Mr. Browne barked from the doorway to Ed's room. "I thought you said you were awake! Did you fucking lie to me?"

"No, Dad, I'm awake!" Ed answered, unfazed by the aggression of his father.

"Then get out of bed!" Hilary ordered. "It's one-thirty! Look alive! You'll never get ahead in life if you sleep your life away!"

Ed gathered all his strength to lunge himself up from his bed, and leaped out of the mattress from its end. But he carried so much inertia with him that we went tumbling straight into the opposite wall, bounced right off of it, and stumbled backward, ultimately being tripped by and landing in his mattress once again.

"Jesus Christ, Ed, what are you doing with yourself?" Hill grumbled as he looked at his son, whom he couldn't tell whether he was just dazed or if he was falling asleep again. "Do I need to break out the smelling salts?"

But Hilary didn't feel like going all the way back upstairs again. He grasped his son by the hand and forcefully pulled him up out of the bed. Ed almost fell straight over again, but Hill grabbed him by the shoulders and held on until he balanced out.

"Ed is now upright, and right up! Right, Dad?" Ed beamed.

Hilary was about to say something, but something inspired him to first correct his posture as much as possible first. He swore that Ed got taller again, and this time the younger Browne might have finally eclipsed the elder. Before he realized that his son was starting to catch him, Hill hadn't felt much insecurity about his height in a long time - being a seven-ish-foot male grizzly was like being a five-and-a-half-foot wolf or a three-foot red fox: not down in the height range of social embarrassment, but certainly on the low end of the spectrum of normalcy; but he was mostly able to forget about this thanks to his decision to move his family into a home designed for medium-sized mammals, with eight-foot ceilings and doorways that were still cheaper to have widened than it would have cost to move into a physically larger home, so for much of the past decade he felt like he sat undisputed at the top of the food chain as long as his sample size was restricted to Rethink Avenue and the neighboring blocks. Then his son ruined that when he went ahead and won the genetic lottery - perhaps not in inherent intellect, but certainly in all the physical categories that the ursine community valued amongst themselves. His wife simply chalked this up to Ed getting all the good genes from her own father's Kodiak ancestry. Hilary would have cursed his thing for large women if he believed her explanation. But he wasn't so sure he believed it. The kid's fur being a much darker shade of golden-brown - that is to say, there was no visible gold in it - certainly didn't help his skepticism.

But Hilary straightened his posture and forced himself not to think about his assorted insecurities, much to the relief of this narrator, who would very much like to go a few pages without mentioning a character having plot-relevant height anxiety lest you, dear reader, start to get the impression that that's all this story is about. But if Hilary Browne had read the preceding sentence, the only value he would have gotten out of it was a sense of dissatisfaction that his idiot son didn't have such self-awareness as this narrator.

"Ed, what are we going to do with you?" Mr. Browne grumbled, more to himself than to his addressee.

"Ooh! Ooh! I know, I know! You're going to-"

"That's not a question for you to answer, Ed," Mr. Browne told his son, paternal disappointment leaking into his voice.

Ed simply looked surprised and a bit saddened. He really was hoping he could convince his parents that this could be the year they finally take him to Area 51.

"Oh, don't give me that look!" Hilary growled. But he decided if he was going to get anywhere with his son, he was going to at least have to fake being amiable. He took a deep breath and straightened his posture one more time for (literal) good measure. "Now, Ed, there's two things I want you to remember that're happening in the upcoming week. For one thing, Father's Day is next Sunday, and-"

"FATHER'S DAY!" Ed yelped and came in and gave Mr. Browne an unexpected hug. He then proceeded to start jumping up and down while taking his dad along for the ride. "I'm going to make you the very best present that any son has ever given any dad on any Father's Day in any-!"

"Why is the house shaking!?" Mrs. Browne yelled from upstairs.

"Ed!" Mr. Browne barked and squirmed out of Ed's grasp, killing the son's momentum until he finally came to a stop. "Ed, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you did the same thing last year and you completely forgot about it when the day actually came around."

Ed looked hurt again. "I'm sorry, Dad! I'm going to get you two super-duper amazing-!"

"I don't care what you get me or how many. I'm not concerned about getting stuff from you. I'm concerned about you not remembering to fulfill your responsibilities in life. If you can't remember a little thing like Father's Day, what can you remember?"

Ed stared and thought about that one for a second, while Hilary started rehearsing how he was going to respond to the impending genuine answer to a rhetorical question.

Finally, it clicked in Ed's brain. "I can remember the monster movie marathon!"

"Uh… that you can, Ed. But all I want for Father's Day - really - is for you to be an adult."

"I can't grow up that fast, Dad."

Like hell you can't, you fucking elephantine little pituitary case… "Well, you will before you know it." And that frightened Hilary in more ways than one. "Oh! I almost forgot the other thing! Your mother is going to call to make you an appointment for a… sort of doctor. But not a-"

"Doctor! But I just went to the doctor, Dad! And he told me I was too old for a lollipop this time!"

"Ed, I didn't finish my thought. This is a different kind of doctor."

"Will he give me a sucker!?"

"...Maybe. I don't know. This is a doctor for your head. For your mind."

"Mind doctor? Is he going to hypnotize me and turn me into his zombie slave?"

"I really doubt it. This is more to try to figure out… how you tick."

"...Do you think I'm stupid, Dad?"

Yes. "No."

"Then why do I have to go?"

"Because maybe they can help understand what's running through your head in ways that your mother and Sarah and I aren't smart enough to understand."

"Ooh! Are we all going to the mind-doctor together!?"

"Probably just you and your mother. It's probably going to be during a weekday when I'm at work."

"Oh. Well I'll miss you there, Dad."

Hilary didn't think too highly of Ed, but he'd never deny that the kid never withheld affection for the people he cared about. Even if Ed wasn't good at showing his affection in a way that the other person would appreciate.

"And I'm sorry I won't be able to be there with you, son. Now get on upstairs and have breakfast. Or lunch. Or whatever - it's almost two o'clock. You're burning daylight." I don't know what the hell you were going to accomplish today, kid, but you're running out of time to do it.

"Aye-aye, Captain!" Ed saluted and then took off running up the stairs, still in his half-dressed slumberous attire. Hilary watched him go all the way up the stairs, just in case the dumb son of a bitch tumbled right back down; Hill was very deliberate in mentally referring to the kid as a son of a bitch.

Ed grabbed a box of Chunky Puffs out of the pantry and a gallon of soy milk out of the fridge. There was no need for a bowl or a glass or a spoon; it would only be more dirty dishes. He made his way into the living room, and his father followed in soon after. The television appeared to be a live news broadcast from Nottingham City Hall, but all to be seen was an empty stage with a vacant podium; nothing substantial seemed to be happening yet.

"What's on TV!?" Ed inquired, asking more about what else was on instead of what was presently on the screen.

"Well, it was the Orioles game," Hilary explained as he got settled in his armchair, "but apparently it's getting preempted for some local news update." Mr. Browne reached over for the TV Guide and flipped through to find the day's listings. "So I guess if the Nationals need to build a fanbase from scratch, the least we can do is give them the time of day," he said as he very slowly and carefully pressed the buttons of the remote with the tips of his claws - his ursine fingers were far too big for the buttons.

The channel flipped from 11 to 23, which showed the empty podium at city hall from a slightly different angle than Channel 11 did.

"What the hell happened that every channel's having a live news… thing?" Hilary wondered.

"Maybe it can explain why traffic was so bad and there were police cars and emergency vehicles everywhere," Mrs. Browne said as she walked in, having just come downstairs after getting changed out of her Sunday best and into something more Sunday-afternoon-y. She glanced at the TV and saw that it was literally just a shot of the podium with no graphics on the screen and nobody saying anything. "Wait, what are they doing?"

"I was hoping you'd know-"

"-and we do apologize again for the inconvenience," the female narrator said on the TV. "Mayor Norman's press conference was scheduled to start eight minutes ago at 1:45; we're just waiting on him now."

"Of course you're waiting on him! Thank God we don't live in the city under him… Speaking of God, how was church?" Hilary asked his wife half-heartedly.

"Well, traffic was bad," Matilda reiterated, "and the priest went on a tangent for forever again about the importance of almsgiving and charity. And it's like: we get it, Father, but… A) We agree, but it's not like most of us are in any position to just throw money away; B) You say this every time that it's your turn to do the sermon, and it's getting old; and C) Hey, Father, maybe somebody with a gut like yours isn't in any place to talk about greed. You fat asshole."

Ed, for his part, was completely disinterested in the conversation, as well as whatever was transpiring on TV, and was happy to just go to town on a box of cereal and swig some milk to wash it down.

"Fat asshole? Is he one of us? Or is he a pig or something?"

"No, he's that badger; I've told you about him before. The one with the weird bald spot? He's the one who used to be homeless before he found the priesthood. I guess then he'd have a personal stake in preaching about charity."

Hilary and Ed were not familiar with this character, as only Matilda and Sarah still went to church on Sundays, and even then it was more for traditional and cultural reasons than any spiritual sense of fulfillment. Mr. Browne didn't go because he didn't see the urgency in going. Ed wasn't invited - his antics as a younger child had gotten him kicked out the parish up in Lemon Brook, which Mrs. Browne thought was disproportionate punishment, inspiring her to instead take her and her daughter to a different parish on the other side of Sherwood Forest in the city. The idea had been floated to let Ed start going again when he calmed down (calmer than he used to be, at least), but the Brownes agreed that he probably wouldn't 'get it' - not that the adults thought it was particularly imperative that he did.

"I don't remember you ever telling me about this guy," Hilary answered as his eyes remained fixed on the screen.

"I mean," Matilda continued, "I guess he does also touch on things like sticking together as a community in rough times - it's clear he doesn't like the Mayor very much, but who does? - and he talks about what God would want you to do when there only seems to be wrong options - like he talks about how he used to need to rob people to survive-"

"Jesus Christ," mumbled Hilary with a wince.

"I know, and he talks about how he felt bad doing that, but it was either rob or starve to death - ironic, with the way he looks; maybe his metabolism is even worse than ours - but he's said if he allowed himself to die so easily then that would basically be suicide, which is a sin, and then he really couldn't serve God, so he says he always tried to rob people who seemed like rich assholes since they would hurt from it the least, and then the moral of the story is that when we're in a position like that we should view it through the lens of What Would Jesus Do, but not the God-Jesus but the Mortal Jesus, stuff like that."

"Is this guy a communist or something?"

"Well, he's a Catholic priest, so if anything, I was afraid he was a Republican like all the others… Then again, he doesn't go on tirades about abortion being bad like the others do. But he really doesn't go on tirades about anything but charity and community and tough decisions and then charity again. He kind of mixes it up, I guess, because he's really the only one of the four of 'em to talk about their personal lives, but… what does he expect us to do?"

"There's the cocksucker!" Hilary exclaimed. On the screen, Mayor John Norman was finally making his way to the podium, his gait very still and formal, probably to keep the top hat in its precarious perch on his head. Really, everything about the guy looked antiquated, from his suit and jacket quite literally sourced from Merrie Olde England, to the cane that he carried but wasn't actually using, to the look on his face which clearly conveyed to everybody that he was brought up to believe that stoic is the only way for a man to be. In front of him, a sea of reporters' cameras illuminated their flashes, and behind him, his double-amputee weasel assistant took a spot on the back of the stage, flanked by two enormous bodyguards, a rhino and an elephant.

"I feel so bad saying this, but it always weirds me out to look at his assistant," Matilda confessed to anybody who would listen.

"Hey, the 1890s called," Hilary jeered at the screen, "they think you look like an enormous asshole!"

Chew, swallow, slurp, gulp, continued Ed.

And so the show began.

"Good afternoon, my citizens," the Englishman began.

"Fuck you," Hilary muttered, and the TV station's microphones picked up a few members of the press conference muttering similar sentiments.

"It has been brought to my attention that there has been an incident in the Sherwood Forest Nature Preserve involving high-ranking members of both the Nottingham County and Nottingham City Police Departments, as well as a young citizen of the Town of Peach Creek."

"Wait, what happened!?" Hilary exclaimed.

"Why didn't the priest mention this today?" wondered Matilda. "Do they have TV or a computer in the priests' house?"

Ed perked up a bit when he heard his hometown being name-dropped, but otherwise continued unabated with his gorging.

"I am unhappy to confirm that, while in search of other suspects, County Sheriff Thomas Elkins and Sheriff's Deputy Matthew Goldthwaite very early this morning came across a fourteen-year-old boy who was trespassing in the forest after its posted closing time at dusk," Mayor Norman droned, "whereupon the Sheriff and Sheriff's Deputy used excessive force to suppress him."

"Fourteen? Ed, is this a kid you might know that he's talking about?" Hilary asked. But Ed didn't hear him over the sound of his own feasting.

"Wait…" Matilda said, seeming to be putting some pieces together. "It wasn't…?" She made her way over to the window that looked out toward the cul-de-sac.

"That boy is currently in Bethlehem General Hospital, where he is listed in serious but stable condition," the mayor continued, almost seeming annoyed that he had to make such a mundane announcement.

"That's why all those cars are over there!?" Matilda shrieked as she peered out onto the neighborhood.

"What cars?" asked Hilary. "Over where?"

"Now, I must also confirm that the two highest-ranking members of my police force were present for the incident as well," said the lion, his voice weaving in and out of a grumble. Maybe what was actually bothering him was how painfully still he had to keep his neck so as not to jostle the hat; he was only turning his head on its y-axis, and it seemed like his snout was getting in the way of seeing his notes since he either wouldn't or couldn't tilt his face down.

"There's a bunch of cars in front of the hyenas' house!" said Matilda. "I thought they were just having a family get-together or something!"

"Wait. No fuckin' way," Hilary said as he got up to make his own way to the window.

"In the scant few hours since the incident has transpired," said the mayor, "I have already been asked of my public, why did Chief Eddward Woodland and Deputy George Nutzinger do nothing to stop the overreaction? And these criticisms are not invalid." Mayor Norman visibly seemed to try really hard to believe that he meant that last sentence. Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Browne - who, like most suburbanites, didn't pay too much attention to the who's-who of big-city politics - did not have any familiar associations with the surnames 'Woodland' and 'Nutzinger'; incidentally, they also didn't know the maiden name of the wife and mother of the lupine family that lived at the corner by Harris Street, since it was none of their business and they never asked.

"I-I mean," Matilda stammered, "maybe they are having a family get-togeth-"

"There's cars out in front of Mercedes' house, too," Hilary interrupted. "Doesn't the hyena kid fuck around with her daughter?"

Ed had a quick spark of thought about his parents' conversation: they were frustrated together rather than with one another. Ed had the thought linger on his brain for a bit more before it faded away, but it was more of a still image than anything fluid that this narrator could verbalize; Ed did not have an internal monologue. He went back to his ravenous consumption.

"But I have spoken to the Chief and his deputy," the man on TV assured, "and not only have they convinced me that they had done all that they could do, but they have gifted me - gifted all of us, really - something invaluable to our mutual pursuit of justice."

"I-I want to call them and ask if everything's alright," said Matilda, "but if something's going on, I can't pry!" She walked away from the window, appearing as though she was on the verge of tears, while Hilary continued observing the neighborhood, not having much to say. "I know! I'll ask Sarah to call the bobcat girl!" Matilda walked hurriedly towards the hallway. "That-that's not too rude, is it?" She didn't stop to wait for an answer and disappeared upstairs.

Hill just made his way back to his seat while the mayor kept talking.

"Chief Woodland and Deputy Nutzinger told me of their belief that it would have been futile, if not outright dangerous, to try to restrain Sheriff Elkins and Sheriff's Deputy Goldthwaite," Prince John continued; he seemed to be lightening up, as if he was happy to enlighten his citizens with some wisdom they would be grateful to receive. Chief Woodland and Deputy Nutzinger postulated a theory that the Sheriff and Sheriff's Deputy would have been impervious to any physical resistance due to a state of heightened adrenaline, and that there would be no opportunity to stop their assault until the so-called 'rush' had passed." Some murmurs in the crowd suggested that they saw where this was going and didn't like it. "Far be it from me to blindly accept some pop axiom without evidence, I made several calls to some experts whom I consider friends. These were medical, psychiatric and psychological professionals. I must report that, while the Chief and Deputy were not flawless in their recitation of the inner workings of an angry man's body, their hypothesis that it would be a fool's errand to try to stop the attack on the boy was indeed more grounded in reality than in myth or fiction."

"Well, he's convinced himself that he's good at convincing other people of things," Hilary quipped to himself. "Prince John, you fucking maniac." The crowd was similarly unimpressed.

"That is not to say that my men did nothing! Indeed, they had made do with what resources they had had at their disposal. Chief Woodland…" - the mayor seemed to trail off as he went fishing in his pocket, but quickly extracted a small block of silver metal - "...had had the mind to record the exchange with a mobile phone which, among other things, has the capabilities of a camera." The mayor held up the phone - he still barely moved his head - and the crowd had no idea how to react. Some booed, some murmured in confusion, but most seemed to be silenced by disbelief that this was being heralded as a positive revelation.

For his part, Hilary just said, "What?" Ed was almost done eating.

"The video they recorded has provided indisputable evidence that Sheriff Elkins and Sheriff's Deputy Goldthwaite have acted severely out of line, and at the expense of one of the very same citizens whom they had been sworn to protect. The video itself has already been viewed by officials from city, county, and state police departments, and will be transferred off this phone's storage system and onto a computer as soon as this press conference has concluded, at which point it will be shared with those departments as well as local media, who may do with it as they wish. Though if I may quickly remark, in the interest of full and complete disclosure, if they should choose to release the video to public viewing, you may note the presence of another young person, a 14-year-old girl, also of Peach Creek. Rest assured, however, that, although surely unsettled, this girl was unharmed in the incident, and was taken into police custody only for questioning; she has since been released to her mother."

"Uh… honey?" Hilary called toward the stairway. But Matilda had already returned, looking like she'd just witnessed a plane crash.

"I heard that," she answered. "Sarah's on the phone with her right now. She just got home from downtown."

"Jesus Christ, Elkins, what did you do?" Hilary asked the television set.

Despite his face being a bit hard to see on TV because of the graininess of the screen and the faraway vantage point of the news-camera, viewers such as Hilary Browne could tell that Mayor John Norman was now looking rather pleased with himself. After a rather somber start, he was starting to act as though he had to contain himself from beaming; one could even say it looked like he was smiling ever so slightly. It was almost as though he was getting to the part he was happy to announce.

"For my part," the Prince Mayor continued, now having even more trouble hiding his self-congratulatory smirk, "I have spoken with County Commissioner Doty Roe, who has also seen the video and shares my abhorrence for the situation that has transpired. Commissioner Roe and I have discussed what is to be done with the state of the county police department with the disgraced state of its two highest-ranking officials and the rampant corruption that has been made evident at all levels of the county police force."

"Oh, like you're one to talk!" Hilary remarked. Matilda wasn't in the mood to talk anymore. Ed was focused on extracting a Chunky Puff niblet that was stuck in a fold in the lining.

"Therefore Commissioner Roe and I have decided to merge the Nottingham City and County Police Departments. As a reward for their quick and correct thinking, my appointed Chief Woodland and Deputy Nutzinger will be fulfilling the roles of Sheriff and Sheriff's Deputy of Nottingham County until the elections next November."

Mr. and Mrs. Browne shared their non-verbal mouth-sounds of disbelief with much of the crowd of journalists, who at this point could no longer contain their biases. At this point, people across the Nottingham Metropolitan Statistical Area were cursing their ignorance of local politics.

"I… didn't know that was allowed," remarked Matilda.

"If he jacks up the taxes to pay for his expanded police force, I swear to God we're moving out of this godforsaken state," vowed Hilary. "I'd sooner pay sales taxes than I would pay him."

His big announcement now out in the open, the lion entered the denouement of his speech: "I would like to thank the people of our local law enforcement who helped us begin to remedy this mess, as well as you, my citizens of both the City of Nottingham as well as the surrounding suburbs, and especially to Nottingham County Commissioner Doty Roe, whom has agreed to let me work much more closely with her in the future to help ensure that the needs and desires of the municipal and county governments are more closely aligned."

"Define 'closely,' jackass," Hilary spat. "Are you two fucking or what?"

"Honestly, I had always guessed that Prince John didn't exactly prefer the company of women," Matilda joked.

Hilary didn't laugh because he didn't realize she was joking and he agreed unironically. "Yeah, I've wondered if that thumb of his is the only think he's been sucking on."

"I trust that this goes without saying," Mayor Norman finished, "but I have personally seen to it that Sheriff Thomas Elkins and Sheriff's Deputy Matthew Goldthwaite have been relieved of duty, and I will be seeing to it that they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for their transgression of violating the trust of the people of Nottingham City and County. If there are any more relevant details which I believe my public should know, I will not hesitate to share them. I thank you for your time, my citizens, and I wish you a good remainder of your Sunday."

The mayor collected his notes and stepped away from the podium, and the television feed cut to a live reporter at city hall addressing the camera herself.

"That was Mayor John Norman addressing an incident that occurred last night in the Sherwood Forest Nature Preserve near the Northwest Suburbs-"

"All gone!" Ed proclaimed as he jumped up from the couch and ran back to the kitchen with the empty cereal box and milk jug. His parents watched him scamper off, with melancholy looks on their faces now that they had to remember their son existed.

"Ed, remember to rinse out that milk jug, or the entire house is gonna reek again!" Matilda warned.

"Just like his room always does," Hilary said as he rolled his eyes. When the two of them looked back at the TV, the baseball game was back on, and the Nationals were beating the visiting Mariners 2-0 in the top of the fourth, but neither of the Brownes were in quite the mood for sports. "Fuck that, I ain't paying his taxes."

"Hilary, let the record show that I wanted to move to move to Zootopia when we got married!"

"Oh, yeah, right, because I could really afford those tax rates."

"Um, hello?" Matilda said as she gestured toward the television, which was no longer displaying the likeness of John Norman, but both understood to pretend it did for her point of the argument.

"What, like anybody could have reasonably predicted this? Whereas anybody could predict that some bullshit planned paradise city would have tax rates up the ass to pay for that impossibly fucking all-accommodating infrastructure?"

"Well, at least there, you'd get the feeling that your money's actually going toward something and not just being stolen from you, and not lining some fat-cat's pockets," Matilda said. "...Or should I say 'malnourished-cat'?"

"Hey, you wanna find out how it really is over there? Go give the foxes a ring," said Hilary. "Last I heard, Toni and Terry's other son's living in Zootopia these days. Ask them about his tax rates and how he feels about how his money's being spent."

"Oh, that kid was a sneak and a swindler!" Matilda scoffed. "He was more of a delinquent than that hyena kid! I'd bet he doesn't even pay his taxes!"

"Hm. It kills me to say this, but you're probably right about that one," Hilary admitted. "But I'd bet he's still more successful than our son'll ever be."

Matilda still had that look on her face. "It kills me to say this, but you're probably right about that one."

-IllI-

It was approaching eighty degrees that day, but Ed was still wearing his favorite green jacket over his favorite red-and-white striped shirt. If anything, his jacket was so baggy that it sort of ventilated him and kept him from overheating. It was just another piece of evidence in the hypothetical argument that where others saw Ed as an idiot for doing something odd, such as wearing heavy outerwear in the heat of summer, he was actually a genius in a most indescribable way.

When Mrs. Browne peered out the window and remarked that there were cars piled in front of Kevin's and Nazz's houses, it wasn't inaccurate, it just wasn't painting a complete picture. Those two homes did indeed have clogged driveways, but all the rest of the curb space on Rethink Avenue seemed to be similarly occupied. Decade-old sedans were concentrated around the Lafferty residence, and youthful SUVs and coupes driven by well-to-do cousins congregated near the home of Nazz and her mother. But Ed didn't think about this very much. He didn't think about anything unless he needed to. Whether this was further evidence of Ed's inborn density or a subtle sign of a wise efficiency of mental energy was another round of the aforementioned debate.

Ed decided to check Eddy's house first. Ed always checked Eddy's house first. It was closer, and on the way to Double D's house anyway. It was easier this way.

Ed waltzed up to the foxes' doorway and rang the doorbell.

Ding-dong.

Two seconds later, he rang the bell again.

Ding-dong.

Precisely the same interval later, he rang the bell again.

Ding-dong.

Ed may as well have had a metronome in his head for the perfect rhythm he was keeping. Indeed, Ed loved the musical quality of doorbells. He loved how every doorbell had its own unique sound and pitch and consonance, and the adored phenomenon of hearing a doorbell's chime oozing through a closed front door as the sound bounced around the walls of a house, with every home's unique floorplan modifying its resonance in a way that gave its doorbell an added layer of uniqueness. To Ed, every individual doorbell was a musical instrument that could be found nowhere else on planet Earth, and yet an instrument that anybody could play.

After the seventeenth press of the doorbell button, Ed started to hear the door's deadbolt and lock being disengaged. Ed was on his nineteenth ring when the door opened.

Terry already had his head craned all the way up when he opened the door. He wasn't home during the day very often, but he had been around the house often enough to know that when the doorbell was being rung in immaculately-timed two-second intervals, it could only have been his son's grizzly/Kodiak friend come a-calling.

"Hey, Ed," Terry greeted boredly. He wasn't trying to be unfriendly, but he wasn't trying very hard to be friendly, either. He typically worked at the dealership both days on the weekend, but his manager more or less forced him to take this particular Sunday off in exchange for working next Sunday on Father's Day. Terry still hadn't made up his mind whether his manager was giving him a day of rest out of the genuine kindness of his heart or if he was trying to cut in on Terry's opportunities to make serious commission money on upcoming-holiday sales of five-year-old Corvettes with sticky gear-shifts and four-year-old Vipers with secret transmission issues and six-year-old convertible Mustangs with soft-tops that wouldn't stay on correctly if you drove over forty-two miles per hour to mothers trying to surprise the fathers of their children and young professionals trying desperately to gain the approval of their quinqua- and sexagenarian dads and fortysomething guys who won't stop offhandedly mentioning that they're buying themselves their own Father's Day present because they don't trust their wife/girlfriend/mistress/boyfriend/child/grandchild/great-grandchild/whatever-you-call-the-benefactor-of-a-sugar-daddy to buy for them when in reality they have no such people in their lives.

Terry was also none too pleased that his day of rest was being tarnished by the sounds of his obnoxious hyena neighbors and their entire extended family loudly losing their composure over the state of their son, and Terry just wished he could knock on the door and tell them that as much as his own son was no angel, their son was an asshole to his son and his idiot friends he didn't feel sorry for the kid and while maybe he didn't deserve to get his ass beat by the Nottingham County Police Department, he definitely deserved to get his ass beat by somebody, and that Mat and Hill and Sammie and Vince would probably back him and Toni up on that. But Terry couldn't do that; he knew that, as he had successfully instilled in his older son, it was important to maintain good connections with people, even people you hate - hell, especially people you hate - because you never know when you're going to need to ask them for a favor you can't, or won't, pay back. There was a reason why, in some circles, he was nicknamed 'Classy Terry'.

To be fair, however, the Laffertys had mellowed out considerably since they first got back from the hospital around lunchtime, which Terry theorized they only left because a doctor or a nurse or somebody had to politely tell them, 'Hey, sorry you're kid's in a coma, but it's a fire hazard to have this many people in one room.' Either that or they were asked to leave because their hyenic sobbing came across sounding more like cackling laughter that simply wasn't appropriate for the ICU.

"Hi, Mr. Eddy's Dad!" Ding-dong. "Can Eddy come out to play?" Ding-dong. Now that the door had been opened, the bell's pitch and resonance had changed again and came together to make another combination of sounds that could not be quite replicated anywhere else in the known universe. Ed would truly never get tired of this.

"He's hanging out in his room-" Ding-dong. "-with Double-D right now." Ding-dong. "You can come in, if you'd like." Ding-dong. Terry really would have found Ed's sense of rhythm impressive if he wasn't preoccupied with finding it annoying. Terry would have wondered if the kid had inherited some sort of genetic musicality, but he didn't know Hilary or Matilda to be such virtuosos themselves. Heck, maybe if Ed and the sock-headed wolf-kid with the knack for the pedal steel guitar could work something out, maybe they'd have something decent going for them; Terry only wished his own younger son was so talented.

"Thanks, Mr. Eddy's dad!" Ding-dong.

"Of course," answered Terry as he stepped aside to make way for Ed.

Ding-dong… ding-dong… ding-dong… ding-dong…

"Ed?" Ding-dong.

"Yes, Mr. Eddy's Dad?" Ding-dong.

"Just, uh…" Ding-dong. "Watch your head on the way in-" Ding-dong. "-will ya?"

"Oh!" Ed said as the trance was broken. He rushed into the doorway and immediately thunked his head on the top of the standard six-foot-eight-inch door-frame, consequently shaking the entire house in the process. "Ouch!" Ed said, but it was more akin to an exclamation of seeing something interesting than one of being in pain.

"You alright there, big guy?" Terry asked, crossing his arms and taking in the spectacle he was observing. This was not the first time this had happened, so Terry wasn't worried about the structural integrity of his door-frame; if it was going to break, it would have already done so by now.

"Is everything alright?" Came a timid adolescent boy's voice coming from within the house. "I heard a loud thumping sound, Mister- oh, hi, Ed."

"Double-D!" Ed cried in euphoria as he ran in the house - thunking his head on the crossbar again, snapping his head back, but he kept going as though nothing had happened to justify stopping - and came to give Double-D the customary suffocating bear-hug. "But where's Eddy!?"

"I… can take you to him," Double-D choked out as he struggled for air. "He's in... his quarters."

"Eddy got a quarter!" Ed bellowed, and he ran off to Eddy's room carrying Double-D along the way.

"Have fun, kiddos," Terry quipped to nobody but himself. He closed the door and went right back to vegging out on the couch, just in time to see the Orioles give up a two-run homer to the Reds' stud hounddog hitter, Ken Gruffey, Jr., in the bottom of the fifth to break the 4-4 tie in Cincinnati.

The pitch was delivered courtesy of the Orioles' erratic and overweight Aruban pitcher Sidney Pronghorn. Well, they said he was too good to cut after his DUI, Terry thought; I wonder if moments like these make management have second thoughts. The Reds were now winning 6-4, and this and the interruption for the news update were just two more things that further tarnished Terry's day off.

Ed entered Eddy's room to find that Eddy was laying perfectly still on his bed, his long tail and his little legs dangling off the edge and what could only be called a petrified smile on his face. He looked like he had just seen the face of a loving God as his soul was extracted from his body, at which point his corporeal being had turned to stone.

"Hi, Eddy!" Ed saluted, but Eddy didn't avert his beaming eyes from the ceiling.

"Uh- hey, Ed," Eddy answered quietly, not wanting to break his state of bliss.

"E-Ed…" Double-D coughed as he squirmed his way out of Ed's grasp, "May I ask for your assistance in reasoning with Eddy?"

"The reason for what?" Ed asked.

"I've been pacing back and forth in a fractional circle around Eddy's bed while trying every combination of words and tones to convey to Eddy that it is unconscionable, repugnant, and downright disturbing that he should be so outwardly gleeful - no! that he should be either inwardly or outwardly gleeful - about what happened to Kevin!"

Double-D had succeeded in making Ed look worried, but it wasn't the kind of worried he was hoping to get out of him. "What happened to Kevin, Double-D?"

Eddy just snickered. "I told ya he wouldn't know about it. Ya owe me a quarter, Double-D!" Only now did Eddy turn his head toward the boys.

"Oh, I owe you nothing of the sort!" retorted Edd.

"But what happened to Kevin, guys?" Ed repeated.

Double-D simply wasn't prepared for this. "Uh, well… last night, Kevin-"

"Kevin got beat up by some older kids!" Eddy cut in.

"Uh… sure," Double-D conceded, only agreeing to go along with this because it seemed easier to lie to Ed than to explain to him the messy concept of good cops and really, really bad cops.

"And now he's in the hospital because his head is broken!" Eddy said, once more focused on the ceiling.

"Y-yes, wh-what Eddy said," Double-D mumbled; he reasoned with himself that Eddy's last statement wasn't really even a lie.

"Oh no!" Ed gasped.

"B-bu-but it's alright, Ed! Um… the doctors are going to make him aaallllll better soon enough-"

"And then maybe he'll know to stay in his fucking place and stop impeding our greatness!" Eddy exclaimed. "Or at least my greatness. That's the other thing I wanted to see you two about, Monobrow: are you done?"

"Eddy!" Double-D didn't think Eddy's shift in tone and topic was appropriate nor tactful.

"Done with what, Eddy? Ed already did his homework, thank you very much!" Ed answered, vexed that Eddy had inadvertently reminded him of school.

"Done with-" Eddy began, but Double-D felt the need to be pedantic as always.

"We have no homework, Ed; it's summer break."

Ed gasped, but all the breath he inhaled came right back out soon enough: "SUMMER!"

The other two braced as the house shook. Eddy's mellow disappeared on the spot and Double-D lamented his pedantry.

"That's right, guys, it's summer!" Ed beamed. "I want to go fishing, and jump in a sprinkler, and chase an ice cream truck, and build a rocket ship to the moon, and fight a plague of zombies, and-"

"Hey, boys?" Terry called from the living room. "You don't have to go play outside, and you don't have to keep quiet, but you gotta do one or the other."

"Uh… sorry, Dad!" Eddy replied, his joyousness now completely evaporated.

"Just be glad your mom ain't home," answered Terry, "or she'd plunk you in the skull with her bottle of migraine pills."

Eddy sat up on the bed and the trio just regarded each other in an awkward silence for a moment. Then Ed said something that was either stupid or profound:

"I wanna have an adventure, guys!"

"Wouldn't we all, Ed?" asked Double-D. "But surely Eddy will want us to work on restructuring his scam to sell fake-"

"No, no, don't you worry your little head off, wolf-boy," Eddy said. "I've had my enjoyment for the day. The plaaan for the fake IDs can take a vacation day. 'Sides, I'd hate to bore you with a plaaan you're not fully committed to. Now, how's-about you boys plaaan your little adventure?"

"Eddy, please don't be so vindictive!" said Double-D. "I never suggested that all of our money-making schemes have been-"

"Double-D, let's not fight in front of poor little Ed!" Eddy mocked.

"What's wrong guys?" Ed asked, and then as he was wont to do, he grabbed Eddy and Double-D and forced them into another one of his trademark hugs, which made the fox and the wolf feel exactly as uncomfortable as you'd come to expect. "Ed doesn't like it when Edd and Eddy are fighting!"

"Uh, we ain't fighting, big guy," Eddy choked out, and then set his eyes on Double-D: "Now look whatcha did," he grumbled.

Double-D tried to scoff, but couldn't expand his lungs enough to get the required breath support.

"Are you suuure?" Ed asked as he drew his two buddies closer to one another. "Ed just wants us all to be friends!"

"We're friends, Ed!" Double-D pleaded, then glanced at Eddy as he added, "...For one reason or another."

"Now how's-about you lettin' us down and we go have that summer adventure, eh, Ed?" asked Eddy.

"SUMMER!" Ed hollered again as he dropped Eddy and Double-D.

"Goddammit, Eddy!" Terry yelled from the front room once again; he didn't bother wasting energy putting on his charming façade when addressing his son.

"So: any ideas, boys?" Eddy asked as he picked himself up off the floor.

"Well… I do have an idea for something we ought to do," Double-D proposed hesitantly, "but it might not be the most adventurous exploit in the world. Though, who knows what adventure may come of it?"

-IllI-

Eddy's fear of confronting the likely fugitives in the junkyard was greatly outweighed by his desire to shove it in Double-D's face that he was right and Sockhead was wrong; Eddy found fewer greater pleasures in life than glorious vindication.

Unbeknownst to him, Double-D was already emotionally preparing himself for conceding victory. He still wasn't entirely convinced that the well-spoken Englishman and his crass cohort were wanted criminals and masters of deception, but he was much, much more open to the idea after his conversation with Eddy the previous night. Eddy had done a bang-up job of articulating the fishiness of the strangers' circumstances, but despite his sworn devotion to empiricism, Double-D just couldn't shake his gut feelings; he was trying hard to force himself to be spiritually okay with the fact that a strong attachment to one's own visceral feelings - even when inherently illogical - came with the territory of sapient thought. At this point, he was telling himself that this act of checking up on Misters Hood and Little was not just an act of neighborly kindness, but also one of testing to confirm or refute a hypothesis, though at this point he was so confused that virtually any outcome would surprise him.

Ed was also there. He was happy to be with his friends. He would have preferred a little more action in his adventure, and he would rather not have encountered his mean future self again, but he was happy to be with his friends. Ed liked being Ed.

"I'll laugh my ass off if they somehow hotwired the thing and got it started again, and drove off with it," Eddy attempted to quip, but it just came out clunky. "Or could the bear-dude even fit in that thing? What was his name? 'Uncle Tom'?"

"'Little John,' Eddy; though you really should be referring to adults by their surnames," said Double-D. "You're getting his nickname mixed up with the titular character of the antebellum novel from which we had to read excerpts in Social Studies class."

"Well thanks for correcting me, Encyclopedia Brown."

"What have I done that's reminiscent of a preadolescent detective, Eddy?"

"Double-D, what the hell are you talking about?"

"...oh, never mind."

"Is 'Encyclopedia Browne' what I name my daughter before me and Eddy change our names in the future, Double-D?" asked the only one of the three who would ever ask a question like that.

The other two found this question more confusing than usual, but after a few seconds, they remembered the previous day's case of mistaken identity.

"Now, Ed," said Double-D, "I confess that I cannot prove this, but I don't think that Misters Little and Hood are actually you and Eddy from the future."

"Hm… are you sure, Double-D? Because they looked just like Eddy and me!"

"Uh… well, as an impartial arbiter, I can concede that you and Mr. Little did share a vague resemblance, but I can't say that I'd ever describe Mr. Hood and Eddy of being similar in appearance, lest I sound like one of those blind bigots who thinks all members of a species other than my own look the same."

"But I thought he looked just like Eddy!"

"I must disagree, Ed; for starters, Mr. Hood was -"

"Ya better pick your words wisely, Double-D," Eddy said, only now reentering the conversation to warn Edd that he would not hesitate to lay malice upon his face if the wolf dared use the four-letter t-word, the three-letter b-word, either of the five-letter s-words, or the six-letter l-word, or any permutation thereof, in a way that was flattering to Robin and/or unflattering to Eddy.

"Uh, yes, uh… well, Mr. Hood was certainly more 'red' red, rather than orange."

"And white instead of tan," Eddy said, wanting to fill in the blanks as quickly as possible to get this moment over with. "And you two may not have noticed this, but the guy didn't have any highlights on his tail or gloves on his hands and feet. My people pick up on those things."

"Did he now? Interesting! I hadn't noticed that, Eddy; I'll have to keep my eyes peeled in the future, now won't I?"

"And- uh, nevermind," Eddy sputtered as he decided not to bring up the thing with Robin's eyes looking weird from certain angles, for fear that saying that would make it seem like he was really obsessively checking this stranger out (which wouldn't have been untrue). Not to mention, the thought had crossed his mind that he was being too hard about the eyes thing - the stranger's bulbous-y British-y eyes might still have been preferable to, for example, the googly cartoonishly large eyes that his brother had. So with the eye thing off the table, would Eddy have traded bodies with the stranger? Well, if he could swap bodies with anybody, he'd rather be a tiger or something commanding like that, or maybe even would have taken the not-the-largest-but-still-safely-larger-than-average ursine frame of Little John, and no matter who he swapped with, he would have wanted to do so with someone his own age or younger so as not to inherit a bunch of extra mileage that he'd never get to use. But if he had to stick to his own species, he didn't think he could come up with any reason to believe that the heroically tall and impossibly dashing gentleman fox was anything shy of a perfect vulpine specimen. Eddy was once again so wrapped up in jealousy that he was temporarily functionally deaf, not even noticing when Ed asked:

"...Or is 'Encyclopedia' the name of my son, Double-D?" Ed certainly would have enjoyed bearing witness to a Freaky Friday-type thing with Robin and Eddy, as it would have quenched his thirst for adventure; but fear not, dear reader - this story isn't going to get that bizarre.

They turned the corner around a mound of refuse, and there it was. The van was still there, its rear doors staring them in the face, perched right next to the mountain, unmolested by any rude guests, its pearlescent paint shining in the sun. All was calm, and all seemed right. And yet none of the three of them wanted to make the first step forward.

"Are they asleep, or are they gone?" asked Eddy.

"I'm… not certain, Eddy," said Double-D. "Shall we investigate?"

Realizing that the other two weren't going to, Edd forced himself to be the first to walk up to the van's rear doors. The curtains were still drawn shut, and there was no noise coming from anywhere, inside or otherwise, that would indicate intelligent life was about.

"Uh…" Double-D murmured to the universe and raised a paw to the door, then held it there for a moment. He elected not to try to open the doors, and instead chose to rap his hand ever so gently on the window.

Tp, tp, tp.

Perhaps he knocked a little too softly, as Ed and Eddy, who were standing something like eight feet away, could see his wrist's action but couldn't hear a sound.

"Did you just pretend to knock?" Eddy asked quietly. He and Ed hadn't taken a single step closer since Double-D initiated an attempt at contact.

"I didn't pretend, Eddy," Edd retorted, speaking a bit louder than Eddy. "I just don't want to wake them up if they're asleep!"

"Then go around to the side and peek in the window, Double-Dickhead!"

Double-D was getting a tad bit irritated by Eddy's recent string of making good points. But he remained undeterred, and went around to the side door.

"Oh!" Double-D couldn't help but say at full volume, "That was nice of them!"

"What?" Eddy asked, now having the motivation to work his way around to join Double-D. "Did they do something?"

"It appears they've taped a sheet of plastic over the broken window; I have my concerns that the sheet in question began life as a waste receptacle, but I can appreciate the kind gesture!"

"I think they would've heard us talking by now," Eddy said, and jumped up on something bulky and metal to climb his way up onto the hood of the van. He gazed into the vehicle through the windshield: "Yeah, nobody's home. Ed, open the trunk."

Ed grabbed both doors' handles and opened them at once. "Open says-a-me!"

Eddy went back to the rear while Double-D opened the side door to investigate the front seat. He found a few trace amounts of glass crystals, but not nearly as many as there would have logically been if their guests hadn't done a pretty decent job of cleaning up. There was no waste or anything else unwelcome in the bench seat or on the ground below it, and upon opening the glove compartment, everything seemed to be in order. The first-aid kit was still in there and was as intact as it had been after its last usage; there was nothing missing that should have been there, and much to Edd's relief, there was nothing in there that should not have been there. Not that Double-D had any specific idea of what he was worried would be in that glove compartment, just some vague idea that it may be hiding some sort of contraband that would confirm their status as criminals, such as stolen goods or money or perhaps even a gun.

At the rear, Eddy found all his accessories for his scam - pardon me, plan - were still present. They were in different spots and positions than they had been, but they were there.

"They moved my stuff, but they didn't take my stuff," Eddy said. "I guess I'm alright with that."

"Oh, they probably just had to make space for sleeping," Double-D said as he made his way over to the back. "Besides, you wouldn't want to breathe in a bunch of toxic fumes while you're trying to sleep, now would you, Eddy?"

"Hey, I said I was fine with it, didn't I? What kind of asshole do you take me for?"

Double-D found the one and only piece of genuine trash left behind: a pair of coils of bandages with an archipelago of small blood stains upon each of them. He didn't know how to feel about the fact that the intelligent fox had done something as ignorant as littering, but he wasn't entirely sure that that's what the intended action was.

"Well, this is the last sign of them," said Double-D. "It certainly seems that they've likely moved on."

"Yeah, to go walk on foot to some other junkyard fifty bajillion miles away," said Eddy.

"I do have to wonder, though, if they're simply out for the day and if they plan to come back to this place of refuge. They may be attending to business relating to the fire."

"You still believe that?"

Double-D assessed the scene and took a deep breath before carefully choosing his words. "I believe that, whomever they were, they treated us kindly and treated our property - though we have more or less acquired it via squatter's rights, but I digress - with respect. I believe that they were good, courteous guests to us, and whatever affairs they may engage in during the rest of their lives is, at this juncture, none of our business."

Eddy just shrugged. "Suit yourself."

"What if those band-aids were from a mummy that came and took them back to his crypt to devour them!?" asked Ed.

"Ed, 'Band-Aid' is a brand name, and they refer to an entirely different thing. These are bandages," Double-D said to Ed, hoping to confuse the bear into forgetting his own question, and then turned to address Eddy: "Shall we try again tomorrow?"

"What, is that how badly you want to see these guys? We came to see if they were still here. They aren't; case closed. Did you want to give Rob a handjob while telling him to talk British to you?"

"Eddy, I'm in no mood for your crass vulgarity. I'll go myself if I have to."

"Fine. Me and Ed won't be here when they rape and murder you."

"I'll come with you. Double-D!" said Ed. "I want to tell Mr. John to say hi to Encyclopedia for me!"

Double-D gave Eddy an I win, you lose, now shut the fuck up look.

"Alright, smart one," said Eddy, "gimme your opinion: we've gotta keep the generators and the ironing stuff somewhere until I can get my hands on some more laminates and plastics and shit. We could hide this stuff in any of our places… but it might look fishy if our parents find it. And I don't think even Ed's stupid enough to agree to have gas fumes coming out of his closet. So you think this stuff is safe here?; should we take it home?; or do you have a better idea for where we can stash it all?"

Double-D still had no idea what to make of the strangers. Were they secret bandits, or were they just an unlucky pair of actors who responded to a bad situation in an unorthodox way? Double-D tried to tell himself that because they were nice to them, it didn't matter, but he knew that if the boys had been harboring wanted criminals, it would have mattered. He also considered the possibilities that it didn't matter that it did matter, or that it did matter that it did not matter. His own gray matter was doing its best to keep itself straight. This had not been a good few days for him, psychologically speaking.

"You tell me, Eddy: are you certain that Mr. Hood and Mr. Little aren't coming back?"

"I can say that it'd be pretty fucking stupid of them if they did." And as much as the strangers had filled him with an envious rage, Eddy couldn't reasonably claim that they were stupid. At least not yet; he needed more information before he could deduce that.

"Then I'd propose that we take the ironing accessories and extension cables - the less-suspicious of our implements - back to one of our homes, and keep the generators here in the van. Anybody seeking gasoline to salvage surely wouldn't look inside the cabin of the vehicle for fuel. The generators ought to be safe here," Double-D said. "Especially if we check on them at least once a day." He acknowledged to himself that there was risk in encountering these strangers again, but he liked the way that they liked him. Therefore he pretended that there was only a negligible chance that any scavengers would open the van and say fuck it, why not? and make off with the fully-filled generators anyway; in this, he could set up the chance that they'd all run into the strangers again. And Double-D was glad that he had been the one to make that choice; Robin and Little John had tabbed him as the boys' leader, and he intended not to make them incorrect in their assumptions.

Ed didn't very much care who led as long as they let him follow along.

-IllI-

It wasn't much adventure, but it was something to tide the boys over until something more exciting happened to them. After leaving the junkyard with the iron, ironing board, and extension cables, they stashed them in the mess of Ed's room, then went over to Double-D's house to while away the afternoon watching television reruns. Ed did notice that Double-D seemed tense and Eddy seemed bored more than anything, but they were together, and they weren't fighting, and that's all that mattered.

All in all, it was a good Sunday for Ed. He got to spend time with his friends, and none of them were tormented by Kevin, who was conspicuously absent from the cul-de-sac for reasons that Ed still didn't fully comprehend, but he didn't want to ruin the mood by digging into it. He also wasn't tormented by Sarah or her bro-ho Jimmy, both of whom seemed to be in no mood to antagonize them today, and he was not tempted by Nazz, who was also strangely absent from public scenes as far as Ed could tell. The sunlight had been abundant, the sunset was pretty, and the moon looked pretty darned nifty as it approached half-full. The Nationals beat the Mariners, and while the Orioles lost to the Reds, they lost in a manner that was more fun to watch than the manner in which the Nationals won, and Ed, who did not particularly care about sports, still found this to be a good thing, as he attributed it to why his father was so much more reserved today than usual. Perhaps the best part of that Sunday, however, was that Ed was allowed to enjoy every last second of it until it went away, and with no school in the morning, he had no apprehensions about watching monster movies well past midnight, at which point Ed's Monday got off to a great start.