Chapter Two. The Jungles of Edna

"Now that's a job with a future!" Edna said. "People will always need doughnuts, you know!"





Ed could easily see him as the subject of one of those homey Rockwell Kent covers on The Saturday Evening Post.





And because one of his novels had the word "horses" in the title, he was usually put to work writing scenarios for westerns.





Hugh remembered that the boys had been invited to a party at Betty and Harry's a couple of nights before and wondered how it had gone.





"Well now!" Hugh said. "This sounds promising!"





"And that Rhonda Fleming!" Ed said. "Mother of mercy! For a minute there I thought she was going to sit in my lap!"





"Oh, I don't know if they need to worry too much," Horace said with a little smile.





"Everybody's buzzing about this flick Goldwyn's making."





"Jungle war!" Johnny said. "But no Japs. Everybody does Japs."





"It's the western half of Indochina," Ed said. "It follows a long river, running down from deep jungles..."





"He and that bastard Errol Flynn sent a mash note to Ward Bond and signed my name to it," Horace said.





"It would be great to have Wagner blaring while the helicopters are attacking," Ed said. "I know! The Hall of the Mountain King!"





When they finally remembered Suzette's tea service it was dark, and they made a great deal of noise trying to set it gently outside her door.





Jeroboam Clapp was the leader of the Church of the Blazing Spotlight of God, which conducted its services in a car wash on Pico Boulevard that lay frozen half-completed by some city mix-up about water supplies.





"Downright apocalyptic!" Ed said. "Warners loves that doom and gloom! Remember Dead End?"




"Then his lips begin to move slowly...tortuously...and he says..."
"It's horrible...it's horrible...!"