Otis had a girl named Enid. She was the one he mostly did not want to face.
Manheim Brattwhiler knew about Enid. He was amazed Otis would consider going off to the service when Enid Copwhithle was available to him if he stayed in Johnson County. He could not imagine Otis deserting any girl who would have him.
"Otis spends most of his time at the pig barn," Manheim thought aloud. "What's he going to do in the service?"
"He'll end up burnin' down the barracks with an arc welder," Manheim thought, even louder.
Judge Fussbender gavelled Manheim to silence.
Manheim Brattwhiler was Roscoe's much younger brother.
He was also the biggest coward in three counties, as everyone knew. He was in a huge pickle since his Otis had beaten up his brother and his nephew.
"You got to go try some of him on," his sister Elenora told him. "You can't let him jest strut around all proud with two of our menfolk wearin' patches a'cause of him."
Manheim did not want to be the third Brattwhiler in patches.
"Otis has no neck," Manheim told Elenora. "He all shoulders and chest and bullet head. I don't know where to hit him. He has no neck," Manheim repeated, bleating.
"Please send me to the service now, Jedge Fussbender," Otis told His Honor. "If'n ya sen' me now, I'll be more glad to go."
Judge Fussbender did not care if Otis was happy or unhappy by this point. Judge Fussbender just wanted Otis to go off to the service in place of his sister Myra's son, Milo, whose happiness he did not much care about, either. Judge Fussbender wanted peace in his own home, where his sister, Myra, Milo's mother, served as his cook and housekeeper, though, since Milo's draft number had come up at 85, Myra had not done much cooking or housekeeping, since she was so worried Milo might be drafted and go off to war.
"I tell you, I simply have the vapors, what with this talk of my only child, going off to war, what with the draft and all," Myra told Judge Fussbender over and over again.
Judge Fussbender did not know what the vapors were. He did not know how one could get the vapors, except, possibly, by eating spring beans too much. Judge Fussbender did not know why vapors or spring beans or the draft should serve as an excuse for not washing his socks or cooking him pot roast on Sunday, with potatoes and carrots in the big roaster and sweet rolls with honey on the side.
Judge Fussbender liked to take his meals at home, breakfast, lunch and dinner. If he ate at the diner or at the hamburger counter, people would often bother him about some case before him or some case about to come before him or some case they thought should come before him. They often upset his digestion. He liked to eat at home, breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day.
He liked to go down to his Episcopal church on Sunday. He had been raised a Baptist but the Baptists had gotten so loud, he moved over to the little Episcopal church. He did not mind the kneeling or the beads they handed him, this being a High Church Episcopal Church, with an organ and no choir. He liked the Book of Prayer, though he never read it, because it fitted so nicely in his hand. He liked the hymns in the hymnal because most of them were set to waltz time and were easy to keep time to.
"The Episcopals had sense enough to skip the Reformation," Judge Fussebender often told his Baptist friends, who knew no more of church history than he.
"They don't get loud or shrill. I can think in church," he added.
"I go to the Baptist Church so I don't have to think in church," his old friends often told him.
Now, Judge Fussbender had to decide how to keep Milo Sloan out of the draft. He went to church more often than year. He really needed to think.