Page 34 of Truly, Madly Viking

"Joe has a great sense of humor. Ha, ha, ha."

I do?

"Jorund the Warrior, huh?" a man on his other side commented. "You one of them WWF crazies or something?" The man was about fifty years old with a receding hairline but a well-honed body that would do a Norseman proud. He wore the same blue braies as Jorund did... in fact, all the men, and Mag-he, too. His short-sleeved shert carried the words U.S. Navy SEAL.

It was odd this practice they had in this country of carrying messages on their sherts. Jorund had noticed this first at the orca place. Now not only did the man on one side of him wear words on his apparel about seals, but the clodpole on the other side proclaimed on his long-sleeved shert, I Don't Suffer from Insanity; I Enjoy Every Minute of It.

Back to the seal man. " 'Double-ewe, double ewe, if?' " Jorund inquired, as if he cared a whit... which he did not. The whole time he was thinking, Good Lord! One of these half-brains thinks he's a rooster, and the other thinks he's a seal.

What next?

"Cra-aaazy! I'm cra-aaazy for feelin' so lonely."

Another woman, huddled in a chair in the corner, began to sing.

Jorund almost fell out of his seat at the sudden singing.

The female was young, in her twenties, and pretty in a frightened-bird sort of way. Her voice was rather melodious, but singing spontaneously struck Jorund as rather... well, crazy. Crazy was a word he had learned from the black world box in his room, which he had come to find out was called a tea-vee.

"I go out walkin' after midnight..." the woman sang next.

He saw no one walking, and it was definitely far from midnight. Jorund glanced around and noticed that no one paid any mind to the singer. It was as if they didn't even hear her, or mayhap they were ignoring her, to spare her humiliation.

"WWF is the World Wrestling Federation," Mag-he explained.

At first, Jorund had to think what she was referring to; then he recalled that the seal man had asked if he was in the double-ewe, double-ewe, if.

"It includes professional wrestlers who put on rather flamboyant acts in the ring."

Jorund had no idea what she'd just said.

"Like Hulk Hogan. 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin. Jake the Snake. Or Jesse 'the Body' Ventura," the seal offered.

"I knew a Norseman once who called himself Snorri the Snake; he had a special talent for fluttering his tongue that women especially liked. But he lost a leg in some Saxon battle a few years back. 'Tis hard to keep track of all the Norse-Saxon battles. There are so many of them. The English weasels are always trying to provoke us Vikings." Jorund couldn't believe he was jabbering away like a magpie.

The rooster next to him suddenly became a snake and was darting his tongue in and out of his mouth and making slithering motions with his shoulders. Everyone else was gaping at Jorund as if he'd sprouted three heads, but they didn't even blink at the snake.

Jorund knew he spoke in what they considered a foreign accent, in words they were unfamiliar with, but really, he was not the odd bead in this circle. He continued expounding: "I can wrestle, of course, but mostly I am just a Viking... a Viking soldier."

"A soldier!" Steve, the seal fellow on his other side, exclaimed. "Son of a bitch! Don't tell me you have PTSD, too."

Jorund gave his attention to the man, who was sitting up straighter now.

"Pea-tea-ass-deed?"

"That's posttraumatic stress disorder," Mag-he interjected. "It's a syndrome that many soldiers get after active duty."

Another person with a sin-drone. Just like me.

"You were a warrior?" he asked Steve. "And you suffer from this Pea-tea-ass-deed?"

"Hell, yes. Along with alcoholism, chronic depression, a broken marriage, impotence, 'Nam shakes, flashbacks, nightmares that could turn your hair white. You name it, I got it."

"What is impotence?" he whispered in an aside to Steve.

"Involuntary downtime for your..." He waved a hand toward his genital area.

"Former Red Sox baseball player. Navy SEAL vet. Can't get the lead back in his pencil. What a laugh, huh?"