8

The Weeder rang up his physicist friend from a pay phone that night. “Am I interrupting anything?” he demanded.

“If I said yes, would you hang up?” Early asked.

“I’d talk faster.”

“Talk fast, then.”

“Does the word Stufftingle ring any bells?”

Early laughed into the phone. “You’ve been robbing graves again.”

The Weeder force-fed some quarters into the slot and pressed his ear to the receiver.

“You could count the people who recognize that word today on the fingers of one hand,” Early was saying. “Back in the early 1940s we had a gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, that produced the enriched uranium which went into the wedges of the first atomic bombs. One of the physicists working on the project circulated a spoof describing the finished product produced at Oak Ridge as ousten-stufftingle, and the people who produced it as shizzlefrinks. It got quite a laugh at the time. Hello? Are you still on the line, Silas?”

“I’m here.”

“Ha! The moral of the story is that you aren’t the only one to go around armed with a sense of humor.”