Steven Castle

Tennessee Tuxedo looked in the mirror. He hadn’t really seen himself lately. Gone was the taut face, the sharp profile of his beaked nose, the look of a coiled spring behind his narrow-set eyes. There were countless lines of wrinkles on his high forehead. His long face actually drooped outward at his cheeks, their edges now blurred by the gray stubble he could no longer shave closely. His skin wasn’t white or some old-man mushroom hue. It looked jaundiced. Years ago he would look at his reflection and see something smaller, thinner, more vulnerable than the others, and know he must survive on his wits. He had once longed to appear rounder and fuller, perhaps like big ol’ Chum. Now how he yearned to see those pinched features from his past.

They were forgotten. All of them here. Tennessee, Chumley, Dudley Do Right and Wally Gator and ol’ Snagglepuss and Polly Purebred and Savoir Faire, even Huckleberry Hound. Huckleberry! Who was once a legend! Nobody cared about them. Not only did no one write to Tennessee Tuxedo any more; no one even knew who he was.