Tales of the Madman Underground Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary

Cussing a Blue Streak Does Not Work on Goddam Ghoul Bastards (Thursday, September 6, 1973)

  • Rise and shine, kids. It's a whole new day in the life of Karl Shoemaker … and it's starting at 5:30 a.m. Karl has work at another one of his jobs—hauling furniture for the local upholsterer, old Mr. Browning.
  • In the living room,his mom is passed out on the couch in her party clothes, including her signature sexy boots. She briefly wakes up and mumbles about how Mr. Browning doesn't pay Karl enough.
  • He covers her up with a blanket and sets her alarm clock for her. Watching her go back to sleep, he thinks he can see what his father must have seen in her years before.
  • Today, Karl is just helping Browning with a pickup, which means a ride across town in his hearse. Yup, you read that right. Apparently, it's the only vehicle he could get that a couch would fit in.
  • On the way, Browning makes small talk with Karl about school and whether he has any friends. This just makes Karl think about whether Marti still likes him after his disastrous admission of the Operation Be Normal plan.
  • The pickup is at the home of Rose Carson, Browning's best friend from when he graduated high school approximately a million years ago. Rose and Browning have a bizarre conversation that mixes sexual references and nostalgic stories of their youth with reports of how nice their friends' funerals were. Um, weird.
  • The hearse draws a crowd of neighbors who think Rose is dead. When they carry the couch outside, Browning launches into a profanity-laden tirade about what horrible people they are.
  • On the way home, Browning continues the rant privately for Karl, saying that those people should be !@#$%* ashamed of themselves and it's his !@#$%* job to use a lot of !@$%*& bad language to !@#$%* make them ashamed.
  • He finishes off the tirade with a moral: You have to keep your friends close because when you get old, they'll be all you have left. Karl doesn't seem to quite see how this fits in with the previous topic of conversation, but oh well.