CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE SMITH FAMILY REUNION
--

[ We apologize, once again, for the continuing delays in the serialization
of the Chronicles of Hieronymous Smith. This has been caused by an ongoing
labour dispute at the offices of Hieronymous Smith Publications Inc., when
the tea lady went on strike over wages and the unsafe nature of the
Hieronymous Smith Publications Inc. Teapot, which has not been cleaned out
since 1927.

The management claims that not cleaning out the Hieronymous Smith
Publications Inc. Teapot was a cost-saving measure, as it is now possible
to make tea in the aforementioned teapot without actually putting any bags
in. The tea lady, on the other hand, feels that the inferior cleanliness
of the Hieronymous Smith Publications Inc. Teapot was ultimately
interfering with her art - namely, clumping down the aisles of H. S.
Publications Inc. in sensible orthopedic footwear yelling "MUFFINS!
SCONES! TEACAKES! LUVVELY TEA!" at the top of her lungs."

Despite the best efforts of trained mediators, strike action was taken and
picketing ensured. When our lead author attempted to cross the line in
order to retrieve his Blicksenderfer Typewriter, a family heirloom, the
tea lady threw a stale biscotti at his forehead with unerring accuracy.
(It was fortitude like this that let our great nation survive the Blitz
when Hitler bombed London - that is, if you're British.) Our lead author's
skull was fractured in two places, and he has yet to emerge from his coma.

Our prayers are with him at this time. In the meantime, however, we are
sure that he would wish the serialization of the Chronicles of Hieronymous
Smith to continue, so we have oursourced the production of these works to
our secondary studios in Seoul, Korea.

We now continue our serialization of the Chronicles of Hieronymous Smith
with the long-awaited Chapter Fourteen, so that your grandchildren may now
enjoy the same classic stories that you grew up with during your
childhood.

Thank you,

-- The Management. ]

The two weeks passed. Hieronymous couldn't stop them.

Mrs. Maple watched him train - with weights on his arms, weights on his
legs, and at one point with weights attached to his head. She wished that
she could do more to help, but with her arm still recovering from the last
time that she'd tried to teach the boy anything, she knew that she was no
good.

Truth be told, she was getting old.

They were all getting old.

As she watched Hieronymous working on the punching bag - first punching
it, then kicking it, then biting it and finally smashing it with his
forehead - she resolved to find somebody who could give him the training
he needed. She still knew a few things - the Five Fists of the Chinese
Laundromat, the Bishoujo Sensei Power Transformation Sequence, the Eight
Drunken Immortals set - and she would pass them onto him in time, when he
was ready.

Except for the Bishoujo Sensei Power Transformation Sequence, of course.
You needed breasts for that one.

In the mean time, she'd have to find somebody... and soon.

The others all watched Hieronymous prepare for the challenges that he
would soon have to face. The Psychic Apostle watched him, inasmuch as a
blind, deaf, mute man could watch anything, and drooled. There was still
no sign of Hieronymous's psychic powers manifesting themselves; nor, for
that matter, was there any sign of the Psychic Apostle manifesting any
psychic powers this century. Louis did all he could; he wished that there
was some way that he could encourage Hieronymous to relax, but Wilf had
hidden all of his rolling papers and his Rabbit was still broken, so he
couldn't drive into town to get more.

Mortimus J. Finkelstein watched Hieronymous train, and wondered who the
hell he was. Dash it all, the boy looked familiar. But why? And where was
he again? And where did he get these neat exploding shoes from?

Wilf watched from the sidelines, and kept his thoughts to himself.

---

One morning Hieronymous woke up, yawned, stretched, and suddenly realized
that it was time to get ready for the Smith Family reunion. He hurried out
of bed, hopped in the Hydro-Thereaputic Training Device, and managed to
stay in the machine for a minute and a half before being catapulted out of
the bathroom window and into the begonias.

When he staggered his way back into the kitchen, shaking the dirt off of
his trousers, he found Wilf standing there with the usual fry-up... and a
boiled egg.

"Mornin, lad," exclaimed the old man. "I made you some breakfast."

Hieronymous sat down at the table and inspected the boiled egg gingerly.
"What's this?" he asked.

"It's a boiled egg, innit?" replied Wilf. "Finkelstein made it for you."
Hearing his name, the superspy swallowed a handful of little blue pills
and sauntered in from the living room, carrying a large pot of coffee.

"Boiled eggs build up stamina!" exclaimed Finkelstein. "Important thing,
stamina! Especially when dealing with... matters of young ladies, you
know.. what's it called..."

"Sex?" asked Wilf.

"That's the stuff!" exclaimed Finkelstein. "Yes, sex. Sex, sex... sex,
sex, sex. Urm... what was I talking about?"

"Stamina?" supplied Hieronymous hopefully.

"Exactly! Why, who knows what beautiful ladies you may meet at your family
reunion!"

"Err," said Hieronymous. He said "Err" a lot these days; it came with the
territory. "Wouldn't that be incest?"

"Incest is only wrong if it's with people who you're related to," replied
Wilf. "Now eat your breakfast and let's go."

"You're coming with me?"

"Sure, lad!" exclaimed Wilf happily. "Why, I haven't been to a Smith
family reunion in years. Besides which, there's somebody that I need to
see."

--

Meanwhile, at the house of Bernard Petroff, things were afoot. It was
eight o'clock in the morning, and a sleepy Bernard Petroff, noble scion of
the aforementioned House of Petroff, slowly stumbled out of bed, grabbed
his bamboo sushi rolling mat, and headed for the showers. The Showers of
the House of Petroff had three water temperatures: cold, very cold, and
scalding. Bernard eschewed the Showers of the House of Petroff for the
even more purifying Bucket of the House of Petroff. Stripping off his
pyjamas, he dumped a bucket of very cold water over his head and beat
himself five hundred times with his rolled-up sushi mat, as was his
custom.

Outside of the Bathroom of the House of Petroff, his sister, Moonshine
Serenity Petroff, pounded impatiently on the door. "Stop beating yourself
and let somebody else use the showers!" she yelled. Bernard tried to
figure out how to retort that No, he most certainly wasn't doing anything
of the sort, although come to think of it he was, then decided to give up
and returned to his ritual flagellations.

Fifteen minutes later, Clan Petroff was clustered around the breakfast
table. Father, son, mother, and daughter.

"Good morning, son!" exclaimed Mrs. Petroff. "I made you rice crackers and
rainwater, just the way you like it!"

"Thank you, mother," exclaimed Bernard. Nobody actually said anything in
the House of Petroff - instead, they exclaimed it. Sometimes they
declaimed it, and occasionally they delivered it, but usually they
exclaimed it. The sole exception was Bernard's sister, who was quite,
quite sure that everybody in her family other than herself was stark
raving bonkers.

Bernard's father, Samuel Petroff the IVth, stared at his son. Something
was preying on his mind, he could tell.

"Prithee, son," inquired Samuel Petroff the IVth, "What ails you this fine
morn?"

"'Tis nothing, father of mine," replied the son, not wanting to explore
what was eating him. It was that damned fiend Hieronymous again, whom he
hated with a vengeance. Confound it all, it ought to be HIM who was
receiving all these challenges, and who had Ancient Evils stalking after
him! His life of adventure had been usurped by some ... some USURPER! And
to top it all off, the damned fool had the nerve to go out drinking with
him, and that had NOT gone well at all. Oh no, no it had not, even if he
had met the most beautiful girl that he had met in his life that night.

"Is it girl trouble?" asked Samuel Petroff the IVth. "Forsooth, perhaps
you have met some fair and radiant maiden who has set your heart aflame?"

"I hope not," mumbled Moonshine Serenity Petroff. According to Petroff
traditions, she had been named by whoever was first to arrive at the
hospital with a shotgun full of rock salt. In Moonshine's case, it had
been Rottingus Harbnottle, the local hermit and friend of the family for
many years, and it was only two years later that Samuel Petroff the IVth
and wife had worked out exactly what sort of 'moonshine serenity' that
Rottingus was referring to. "If so, she's in trouble, whoever she is. Tell
me, brother, do you still start screaming in foreign languages when you
see cleavage?"

"Silence, foul sister!" exclaimed Bernard. "I'll have you know that it's
Japanese. And I think I'm chanelling Emperor Hirohito. And... erm, well,
maybe I do.... BAH! It's none of your business anyhow!"

"I remember," mused Bernard's father, "how on our wedding night your
mother had to tie me to the bed to stop me running away from her loving
embraces, babbling in Serbo-Croatian all the while. Mind you, I started to
enjoy that after awhile..."

"Eww," muttered Moonshine. "Please stop talking now."

"But enough dwelling in the past!" exclaimed Samuel Petroff the IVth
triumphantly, leaping enthusiastically to his feet. He threw one arm aloft
in a gesture of triumph; his hand smashed into a nearby hanging pot plant
and sent topsoil and lobelias flying in all directions. "Now we must eat -
yes, let us eat this noble breakfast that your mother, the loving and
nurturing Gewurztraminer, has prepared for us!"

A plate was thrown down on the table by the lovely Gewurtztraminer.

"YES!" exclaimed Samuel Petroff the Fourth. "It is pancakes! With these
pancakes to fuel us, we shall go forth and smite those who would DARE to
oppose the House of Petroff! You shall defeat your foe Hieronymous Smith
for once and for all, and shall capture the heart of the lovely lady whom
you have met!"

He leapt out of his chair erratically, and thrust one arm aloft into the
air to emphasize his point. It struck a light fixture, which promptly fell
down off the ceiling and smashed him on the head.

**** ZZZAPPP ****

"That hurt, you know," he declaimed from underneath the table.

"I do wish you would be more careful, darling," exclaimed Gewurztraminer,
as she wandered off to find bandages and soothing liniments for her
husband.

---

Hieronymous was more than a little bit curious about when Wilf had last
been to a Smith family reunion, but kept this to himself. The boiled egg
was a refreshing change in his diet, and soon he found himself hurtling
along the roads at break-neck speeds in Wilf's car-du-jour, an elderly
Mercedes with all four doors missing. While it may have been a Sunday,
Wilf was anything but a Sunday driver.

"You ever been to your ancestral home, lad?" asked Wilf. Hieronymous
replied in the negative. "A nice place," Wilf continued. "Very nice, yes.
Lots of trees. Oh ah. And gothic things. Who's the current owner?"

"Dunno," replied Hieronymous.

"Mmm," mumbled Wilf. "Oh, ah, mmm. Well, we shall have to see about that."
He spun the wheel dramatically, and the car veered onto the highway. The
old man bobbed and weaved through traffic, shouting and passing vehicles
and encouraging Hieronymous to join in. An hour or so later, they pulled
up at the site of the Hieronymous Smith family reunion - the only space
big enough in the nearby area capable of holding the entirety of Clan
Smith and their vast collection of draft beer on tap.

"Oh crud," said Hieronymous. "It's the YMCA again."

"Interesting, innit," replied Wilf casually, "how we always seem to end up
here?"

"Don't look at me - you're the one driving."

"Oh ah." Wilf opened the car door, then realized that there was, in fact,
no car door to open. He got out of the car anyways and headed into the
building.

Inside the main building, a bored looking secretary sat behind a desk
stacked full of pamphlets advertising "HEALTHY LIVING FOR YOUNG CHRISTIAN
BOYS!!!" with more exclamation marks than were absolutely necessary. In
front of the desk, a group of orthodox Jewish rabbis were clustered around
a lit blowtorch, staring at it enigmatically.

Occasionally one of them would chant at it in Yiddish. The others would
then nod sagely and the group would return to staring at the blowtorch.

Wilf and Hieronymous went up to the secretary, who was idly filing her
fingernails.

"Excuse me, miss?" asked Hieronymous. "We're looking for the convention."

"Oh yes," replied the secretary, "let me just finish filing my nails." She
deposited the last of her fingernail clippings in the small filing cabinet
under her desk. "You with the Smith party, the Ancient Evil convention, or
the rabbis-clustered-around-a-blowtorch association?"

"Ancient Evil?" asked Wilf.

"You heard me the first time," replied the secretary. "They're meeting
down the hall, in the Edgar Allen Poe Memorial Conference Center."

"Oh ah," replied Wilf. "No, we're with the Smiths."

"Oh, THEM," replied the secretary. "They're out back, camped on the back
lawn. Just look for the colourful tents and the kegs."

Wilf and Hieronymous thanked the secretary, then ran like the wind until
they were out of the building.

"Oy," said one of the rabbis.

"Oy," replied the others. Then they stared at the blowtorch some more.

--

"Did you hear THAT?!" asked Hieronymous. "The Ancient Evil is holding a
conference here! In the middle of my family reunion! It'll be a massacre!"

"Yeh, but for which side?" mused Wilf idly.

"What?"

"Never mind," replied the old man. "The best thing that we can do is to
pretend that nothing happened. I'll get the Silver Threads folks to run
Finkelstein down here; we can tell them that it's for his weekly bingo
game or summat like that." They walked to the payphones out front.

"You got a quarter?" asked Wilf. Hieronymous searched through his pockets
and came up with 22 cents, a collection of nineteenth century munition
pieces, and a thumbtack.

"AAAAAagh!" yelled Wilf. "THUMBTACK!"

"Calm down, it's only a little one."

"You never can tell," replied Wilf. "Thumbtacks are tricky buggers. That
reminds me, I ought to post satanic messages while I'm here. Oh ah." A
quick search of Wilf's own pockets revealed a six shilling book token that
expired in 1918.

"Bugger," muttered Wilf. "Nothing for it; we shall have to bum money off
of your father. Come on."

The two of them wandered down behind the YMCA and onto the back lawn, a
large area of well-maintained grass that was being happily destroyed by
the five thousand, two hundred and seventy nine members of the Smith
family setting up camp.

There were coloured tents. There were RVs. There were coloured tents
stacked on top of RVs. There were barbecues, and very large kegs of beer,
and very large quantities of alcohol in small bottles. People were
roasting large animals on spits on the lawn. People were playing musical
instruments. For the most part, they played whatever the hell they felt
like, but a large group of the musicians had decided to play "Day Tripper"
by the Beatles, in seven different keys and in tempos ranging from
ninety-six to a hundred and seventy-two beats per minute.

This isn't anything like a family reunion, Hieronymous thought. This is
more like a travelling circus.

And who the hell WERE these people, anyway? There were people everywhere.
The lawn was a sea of people, wearing colorful clothing, getting hammered,
and getting into fights.

Wilf, for the most part, seemed to be having a wonderful time. "This is
great!" he yelled. "Your family is great! Oh, AH!" With that, he ran off
into the crowd, looking for somebody who he could bum some money off of to
phone Finkelstein.

Hieronymous shrugged and waded into the crowd of people. Somebody passed
him a bottle full of something alcoholic. He took a swig, and it burned as
it went down.

"GRAannhp!" yelled the distant relative. "Whaaarb squirtle hsarg-bloop!"
With that, he fell over.

"Same to you!" replied Hieronymous cordially, and moved through the crowd
trying to find somebody that he knew. He soon found his father in front of
a large, maroon tent, grilling chicken breasts on top of a hibachi.

"Hieronymous!" yelled his father. "I'm glad you could make it!"

"Hi, dad," replied Hieronymous sheepishly. "Is that chicken?"

"It sure is! Would you like some?"

Hieronymous grabbed a chicken breast ecstatically. "Finally," he breathed.
"Food that isn't weird." He sat down and began to attack it as though he
hadn't eaten for years.

"Oh look!" exclaimed his mother, emerging from the maroon tent with a
platter of spaetzle and borgelnuskie. "Hieronymous! How come you never
write?"

"I phone you once a week," replied Hieronymous.

"It'd still be nice if you wrote occasionally, son," exclaimed his father.
"Nevertheless, it's great to see you here. How's the new job working out?"

"Not bad," replied Hieronymous. "Wilf keeps me busy, and..."

His mother dropped the plate of food she was carrying. Borgelnuskies
rolled all over the lawn, and occasionally exploded.

"Wilf?" asked his father. "Not... Wilf, you know... Wilf?"

"Yeah, that Wilf."

"Hieronymous!" exclaimed his mother. "How many times have I had to tell
you not to hang out with people like that!"

"Now, now," replied Hieronymous's father. "Wilf is perfectly harmless. And
it just goes to show you that, in the Smith family at least, the apple
doesn't fall far from the orange."

"But he's dangerous!" Hieronymous's mother protested. "You could get hurt.
He belongs in an institution or an old folks' home, or.... something, not
busy ranting about the ancient evil! He's no different from those people
that you see on the streets, yelling about aliens!"

"That's as may be," noted Incomprehensible Smith. "But the question
remains: does he pay on time?"

"He doesn't pay me at all," replied Hieronymous. "But it's better than
working at Uncle Repugnant's fish-packing factory."

"True!" exclaimed Hieronymous's dad. "And it's always an adventure, I'll
say that much about him. Is he still driving like a lunatic?"

"Oh ah," replied Wilf nonchalantly, strolling into the Smith family
campgrounds as if he owned the place. "Are those borgelnuskies? Splendid.
Got any root beer?"

"It's on the picnic table," replied Incomprehensible Smith.

"Wonderful," replied Wilf. "Now then, Incomprehensible, you old bugger,
can I borrow twenty-five cents? I need to make a phone call."

Incomprehensible Smith dug around in his apron pockets and extracted a
dingy-looking quarter.

"Thanks," replied Wilf. "Be back in a jiff." With that, he was swallowed
up by the crowd again.

"See what I mean?" complained Hieronymous's mother. "Really!"

"Now, Sally Anne, he's perfectly harmless. Just a perfectly harmless old
man."

"He tried to seduce my mother!"

"No, dear, I've explained this before, that was Mortimus Finkelstein, and
I think that actually trying to sleep with my mother-in-law is punishment
enough for his deeds. After all, it is in our beds that we are judged...
or something like that."

"Wait a sec," Hieronymous interrupted. "Mortimus J. Finkelstein... tried
to seduce Granny Smith?"

"True, but he's not a bad apple."

---

After his breakfast of vitalizing pancakes, Bernard Petroff set out along
the streets of Bakersfield. He wondered as he wandered, trying hard to
develop a new strategy that would allow him to defeat his rival once and
for all. And then there was the matter of that girl that he had met at the
... 'Gentumlan's Club'. Who was she? How had she stolen his heart? And
would she give it back, please?

"Blast it all!" he exclaimed. "I need somebody to help me understand
women!"

Across the street, Mortimus J. Finkelstein, that noted Lothario, Casanova,
Quixote and Amnesiac, was lost. He had forgotten where he had put the
Post-It note with his address on it, as well as where he could find the
Post-It note which told him where he kept all of his Post-It notes.
Somewhere in his clothing, or maybe it was in his carpet bag of Superspy
Equipment, he had a vial of blue pills that were made up of ground-up toad
brains or something that he was supposed to take when he forgot things
that he was supposed to remember, but he had forgotten where he had left
them.

All in all, he was very confused. What's more, he was at a Mexican
restaurant. He didn't know that Bakersfield HAD a Mexican restaurant.
Large waiters with moustaches and sombreros kept on passing him drinks,
and off in the distance a mariachi band was playing. He was supposed to be
keeping tabs on the ancient evil, but the only tab that he was keeping was
his bar tab. These marguerita things were very tasty, he was forced to
admit.

From across the street, he heard somebody yell, "I need somebody to help
me understand women!"

Hang on a moment, thought Finkelstein. He was reasonably sure that he was
supposed to be training somebody in the ways of seduction. Perhaps it was
this fellow? He got up from his chair, still clutching his drink, and
wandered over to where Bernard Petroff was busy cursing the fates.

"Excuse me," asked the wizened super-spy, "but did I just hear you say
that you needed somebody to teach you how to understand women?"

"I... I did, I guess," admitted Petroff. "Tell me, prune-shaped one! Can
you explain all?"

"Perhaps," said Finkelstein slyly. "Perhaps... if you were to do me a few
small favours."

"Such as?"

"Well, first off, I need to you tell me how to get back to my house."

"I can probably do that," conceded Bernard. "Can you tell me what your
house looks like?"

"It's big and it's awkward and it has seventy million closets and a
missile launcher and a waterslide."

"Oh," said Bernard. That could describe any number of houses in
Bakersfield. "How big is the waterslide?"

Just then, something in Mortimus J. Finkelstein's carpet bag began
ringing.

"Your bag is ringing," noted Bernard.

"I know that! Idiot!" snapped Finkelstein. He rummaged around in his
carpet bag and removed a cellular phone. "Hello?" he asked. "Who is
speaking, please?"

"It's me, Wilf!" replied a voice on the other end of the telephone.

"Oh, really? Jolly good," said Finkelstein. "Now who am I again? And do
you know where my house is?"

The voice on the other end of the telephone sighed. "Take your damned
pills, would you? They're in your carpet bag in the large pill bottle
marked PILLS."

Finkelstein swallowed a pill or two, and followed them up with a sip of
his margarita. "Much better," he managed after his memory had returned.
"Now then, what's the problem?"

"I'm at the lad's family reunion, and I've accidentally stumbled on a
Conference of the Ancient Evil!"

Finkelstein considered this news. "Great big knockers!" he finally
managed.

"Exactly," replied Wilf on the phone. "Oh ah. Now get your oh-so-British
hindquarters down to the YMCA and spy on them."

"But I'm with this very nice fellow with a bamboo sushi mat and..."

"Bring him along! Or whatever. Yeah, bring him along, he'll stop you from
forgetting where you're going. Just get down here and do your spy thing.
This is the first sign of major activity that we've seen in ages - and the
probability model certainly didn't predict this!"

"Oh ah," mused Finkelstein. He hung up the phone, and turned to Bernard
Petroff.

"Do you have a car?" he asked.