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In the small house halfway up the next block, Sade enters as Vic broods with Russell about an unpleasant incident with Fred Stembottom. Often Fred will invite Vic and Sade over to play cards, but actually wants Vic to help with some bit of manual labor. This time it’s not a matter of pouring concrete floors, or building walls, but doing car repairs.
Isn’t Vic a self proclaimed guru at fixing clocks and other mechanical things? Sade claims that Vic has bragged about his pprowess at auto mechanics as well. So why is Vic so upsedt at the guise of the car repairs? Rather than admitting the limits of his ability with cars, Vic invents other reasons including being adverse to hetting his clothes greasy, aand difficult for Sade to have to washout.
Sade tells how pleasant the whole situation was presented to her by Ruthie. Roasted peanuts to munch on, and a general scene of other picnic fun. The extent of the car repairs is simply changing a tire, but Vic’s stubborness at the bait and switch scheme is the real burr under his saddle. Still, Sade makes him phone the Stembottoms to have it out with them.
PS: The scene ends with Vic getting Ruthie on the line, and we don’t know how this ends. I think Vic becomes a big chicken and melts. Sade knows him too well, and is terrified of offending a friend, or even a remote acquaintence to just let Vic pick up the phone and rant. If she thought he’d do anything other than go along with the plan, she would have been horrified, and did whatever it took to keep him from the phone.
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Okay, I don’t think Vic melted at all. We have seen other times where he was genuinely mad and got on the telephone (the incident with Gumpox’s blue eyes and him wanting to come over to talk about them comes to mind..) I do believe that Vic is generally a softie but there are other times – especially with Fred, who he doesn’t really like – that he gets mad. I feel he called him up and let him have it!