As in:
Malcolm figured that the greatest lesson Phillip Baines had passed on to him was how not to win. This was not, in any sense, because Phillip was a loser. To the contrary, he’d won more battles in his life than anyone else Malcolm knew, and often in grand fashion, with overflowing pints of Guinness, athletic finality, and sometimes even statements of remorse and contrition from his opponents.
But Phillip’s point to Malcolm, who had begun to win his fair share as well, is that you couldn’t win them all and you shouldn’t be afraid to fight your hardest for the things you were least likely to affect, or seem to affect. And when you did fight your hardest for good things that you couldn’t get done, Phillip told him, leave it on the pavement, or in the office. Don’t bring it home.
But as the years went by, Malcolm began to notice that Phillip was less eager, than ever, to throw in his towel. And he was taking it home, even making speeches in the kitchen that drove Eunice in several directions but usually to the garden if the weather was fair.
He was mad at bankers, cops, realtors, judges, and even a Little League umpire who’d called his 10 year-old great granddaughter out on strikes.
Was he losing it? Malcolm wondered.
The most peculiar part was also the most amusing. Phillip increasingly believed that the way he spoke and looked into the eyes of the banker, the cop, the realtor and the umpire would have eventual debilitating effects, like a voo-doo curse.
“Yeah, that is what I told him,” Phillip reported to Malcolm on a visit the week before the All Saints Dinner. “I said that if he ever pulled something like this on me or anyone else again that it would give him such boils on his ass that he’d want to go ice fishing in nothing but chaps.”
“No,” Malcolm replied. “You didn’t.”
“Did so,” Phillip said. “Just let that percolate into him. You’ll see.”
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