The trouble began with a peculiar joke that Ozzie manufactured one evening over dinner with his brother Edgar. They were enjoying a meal at the Pacific Dining Car to celebrate Julia and Ozzie’s tenth wedding anniversary. As was commonplace, there wasn’t much chatter between Julia and the two brothers. They were quiet, reserved people and not given to idle talk.

At one point during the dinner, with the only noise coming from their table being the sharp scrape of silverware on plates, Ozzie looked up from his T-Bone. Edgar was gingerly working a dollop of rice pilaf nestled comfortably next to his crisp asparagus. Ozzie watched with great fascination as his brother, practicing a ritual from childhood, forked at the rice from the middle, burrowing down until he reached the bottom.

Ozzie nudged Julia. “Look,” he said. “Edgar is burrowing at his rice.” And then he raised his voice an octave higher than Julia had ever heard, slapped the table hard, and declared, “Edgar burrows his rice! Edgar’s Rice Burrows!”

Ozzie expected a reaction, a quiet chuckle at least, but his brother and wife simply put their forks down and stared at him wordlessly.  “C’mon,” Ozzie urged. “Edgar’s Rice Burrows!” Nothing. Edgar blinked and Julia looked at the floral design on the rim of her plate.

Ozzie pushed his chair back from the table and bolted to his feet. He cupped his hands over his mouth and let out a strangled Tarzan yell that compelled every head to turn and every member of the waitstaff to freeze in their tracks.

“Now, here’s the challenge, hot shot,” Ozzie said to his brother in a tone that Edgar found unpleasantly menacing. “Was I doing the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan or Ron Ely? Answer quick, you cocksucker, and answer correctly ’cause there’s a steak knife here with your name on it if you get it wrong.”