Albert Scrim awoke with cumin and allspice on the scup of his tongue. He had eaten fishcakes the night before with an onion and garlic aspic. His father had insisted on braised mutton testicles stewed in Port and vinegar, but his mother refused to de-vein the testicles or serve Port with sheep. That afternoon Albert found a small plastic moustache in a box of Cracker Jacks, having prayed for a plastic whistle or a pocket-comb. The moustache pinched the fig of skin between his nose-holes, making him look like a circus clown with watery eyes. He was trying to reread Dante’s Inferno for the second time, but the words ran one into the other like crows feet. His father read Popular Mechanics and Reader’s Digest and waxed his moustache with skillet lard, twirling the ends into pikes. Albert’s father snuck a tureen of sheep’s testicles into the tool shed, opened his copy of Popular Mechanics, and relished in the fatty acrid taste of Port and mutton.
