Kineo Town Manager: 'I Don't Know What They 2 page

Patients who enter Henry's office for the first time are presented with a choice they usually don't register as a choice. When they come in they see a pleasant (if rather dim) room, with a fireplace to the left. It's equipped with one of those everlasting logs, steel disguised as birch with four cunningly placed gas jets beneath. Beside the fireplace is a wing chair, where Henry always sits beneath an excellent reproduction of Van Gogh's 'Marigolds'. (Henry sometimes tells colleagues that every psychiatrist should have at least one Van Gogh in his or her consulting space.) Across the room is an easy chair and a couch. Henry is always interested to see which one a new patient will choose. Certainly he has been plying the trade long enough to know that what a patient chooses the first time is what he or she will choose almost every time. There is a paper in this. Henry knows there is, but he cannot isolate the thesis. And in any case, he finds he has less interest these days in such things as papers and journals and conventions and colloquia. They used to matter, but now things have changed. He is sleeping less, eating less, laughing less, too. A darkness has come into his own life ­that polarizing filter — and Henry finds he has no objection to this. Less glare.

Barry Newman was a couch man from the first, and Henry has never once made the mistake of believing this has anything to do with Barry's mental condition. The couch is simply more comfortable for Barry, although Henry sometimes has to give him a hand to get Barry up from it when his fifty minutes have expired. Barry Newman stands five-seven and weighs four hundred and twenty pounds. This makes the couch his friend.

Barry Newman's sessions tend to be long, droning accounts of each week's adventures in gastronomy. Not that Barry is a discriminating eater, oh, no, Barry is the antithesis of that. Barry eats anything that happens to stray into his orbit. Barry is an eating machine. And his memory, on this subject, at least, is eidetic. He is to food what Henry's old friend Pete is to directions and geography.

Henry has almost given up trying to drag Barry away from the trees and make him examine the forest. Partly this is because of Barry's soft but implacable desire to discuss food in its specifics; partly it's because Henry doesn't like Barry and never has. Barry's parents are dead. Dad went when Barry was sixteen, Morn when he was twenty-two. They left a very large estate, but it is in trust until Barry is thirty. He can get the principal then . . . if he continues in therapy. If not, the principal will remain in trust until he is fifty.

Henry doubts Barry Newman will make fifty.

Barry's blood pressure (he has told Henry this with some pride) is one-ninety over one-forty.

Barry's whole cholesterol number is two hundred and ninety; he is a lipid goldmine.

I'm a walking stroke, I'm a walking heart attack, he has told Henry, speaking with the gleeful solemnity of one who can state the hard, cold truth because he knows in his soul that such ends are not meant for him, not for him, no, not for him.

'I had two of those Burger King X-tras for lunch,' he is saying now. 'I love those, because the cheese is actually hot.' His fleshy lips — ­oddly small lips for such a large man, the lips of a perch — tighten and tremble, as if tasting that exquisitely hot cheese. 'I also had a shake, and on my way back home I had a couple of Mallomars. I took a nap, and when I got up I microwaved a whole package of those frozen waffles. "Leggo my Eggo!"' he cries, then laughs. It is the laugh of a man in the grip of fond recall — the sight of a sunset, the firm feel of a woman's breast through a thin silk shirt (not that Barry has, in Henry's estimation, ever felt such a thing), or the packed warmth of beach sand.

'Most people use the toaster oven for their Eggo waffles,' Barry continues, 'but I find that makes them too crispy. The microwave just gets them hot and soft. Hot . . . and soft.' He smacks his little perch lips. 'I had a certain amount of guilt about eating the whole package.' He throws this last in almost as an aside, as if remembering Henry has a job to do here. He throws out similar little treats four or five times in every session . . . and then it's back to the food.

Barry has now reached Tuesday evening. Since this is Friday, there are plenty of meals and snacks still to go. Henry lets his mind drift. Barry is his last appointment of the day. When Barry has finished taking caloric inventory, Henry is going back to his apartment to pack. He'll be up tomorrow at Six A.M., and sometime between seven and eight, Jonesy will pull into his driveway. They will pack their stuff into Henry's old Scout, which he now keeps around solely for their autumn hunting trips, and by eight-thirty the two of them will be on their way north. Along the way they will pick up Pete in Bridgton, and then the Beav, who still lives close to Derry. By evening they will be at Hole in the Wall up in the Jefferson Tract, playing cards in the living room and listening to the wind hoot around the eaves. Their guns will be leaning in the corner of the kitchen, their hunting licenses hung over the hook on the back door.

He will be with his friends, and that always feels like coming home. For a week, that polarizing filter may lift a little bit. They will talk about old times, they will laugh at Beaver's outrageous profanities, and if one or more of them actually shoots a deer, that will be an extra added attraction. Together they are still good. Together they still defeat time.

Far in the background, Barry Newman drones on and on. Pork chops and mashed potatoes and corn on the cob dripping with butter and Pepperidge Farm chocolate cake and a bowl of Pepsi Cola with four scoops of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream floating in it and eggs fried eggs boiled eggs poached . . .

Henry nods in all the right places and hears it all without really listening. This is an old psychiatric skill.

God knows Henry and his old friends have their problems. Beaver is terrible when it comes to relationships, Pete drinks too much (way too much is what Henry thinks), Jonesy and Carla have had a near-miss with divorce, and Henry is now struggling with a depression that seems to him every bit as seductive as it does unpleasant. So yes, they have their problems. But together they are still good, still able to light it up, and by tomorrow night they will be together. For eight days, this year. That's good.

'I know I shouldn't, but I just get this compulsion early in the morning. Maybe it's low blood sugar, I think it might be that. Anyway, I ate the rest of the pound-cake that was in the fridge, then I got in the car and drove down to Dunkin' Donuts and I got a dozen of the Dutch Apple and four or—'

Henry, still thinking about the annual hunting trip that starts tomorrow, isn't aware of what he is saying until it is out.

'Maybe this compulsive eating, Barry, maybe it has something to do with thinking you killed your mother. Do you think that's possible?'

Barry's words stop. Henry looks up and sees Barry Newman staring at him with eyes so wide they are actually visible. And although Henry knows he should stop — he has no business doing this at all, it has absolutely nothing to do with therapy — he doesn't want to stop. Some of this may have to do with thinking about his old friends, but most of it is just seeing that shocked look on Barry's face, and the pallor of his cheek. What really bugs Henry about Barry, he supposes, is Barry's complacency. His inner assurance that there is no need to change his self-destructive behavior, let alone search for its roots.

'You do think you killed her, don't you?' Henry asks. He speaks casually, almost lightly.

'I — I never — I resent—'

'She called and she called, said she was having chest-pains, but of course she said that often, didn't she? Every other week. Every other day, it sometimes seemed. Calling downstairs to you. "Barry, phone Dr Withers. Barry, call an ambulance. Barry, dial 911."'

They have never talked about Barry's parents. In his soft, fat, implacable way, Barry will not allow it. He will begin to discuss them — or seem to — and then bingo, he'll be talking about roast lamb again, or roast chicken, or roast duck with orange sauce. Back to the inventory. Hence Henry knows nothing about Barry's parents, certainly not about the day Barry's mother died, falling out of bed and pissing on the carpet, still calling and calling, three hundred pounds and so disgustingly fat, calling and calling. He can know nothing about that because he hasn't been told, but he does know. And Barry was thinner then. A relatively svelte one-ninety.

This is Henry's version of the line. Seeing the line. Henry hasn't seen it for maybe five years now (unless he sometimes sees it in dreams), thought all that was over, and now here it is again.

'You sat there in front of the TV, listening to her yell,' he says. 'You sat there watching Ricky Lake and eating — what? — a Sara Lee cheesecake? A bowl of ice cream? I don't know. But you let her yell.'

'Stop it!'

'You let her yell, and really, why not? She'd been crying wolf her whole life. You are not a stupid man and you know that's true. This sort of thing happens. I think you know that, too. You've cast yourself in your own little Tennessee Williams play simply because you like to eat. But guess what, Barry? It's really going to kill you. In your secret heart you don't believe that, but it's true. Your heart's already beating like a premature burial victim beating his fists on the lid of a coffin. What's it going to be like eighty or a hundred pounds from now?'

'Shut—'

'When you fall, Barry, it's going to be like the fall of Babel in the desert. The people who see you go down will talk about it for years. Man, you'll shake the dishes right off the shelves—'

'Stop it!' Barry is sitting up now, he hasn't needed Henry to give him a hand this time, and he is deadly pale except for little red roses, one growing in each check.

'—you'll splash the coffee right out of the cups, and you'll piss yourself just like she did—'

'STOP IT!' Barry Newman shrieks. 'STOP IT, YOU MON­STER!'

But Henry can't. Henry can't. He sees the line and when you see it, you can't unsee it.

'—unless you wake up from this poisoned dream you're having. You see, Barry—'

But Barry doesn't want to see, absolutely will not see. Out the door he runs, vast buttocks jiggling, and he is gone.

At first Henry sits where he is, not moving, listening to the departing thunder of the one-man buffalo herd that is Barry Newman.

The outer room is empty; he has no receptionist, and with Barry gone, the week is over. Just as well. That was a mess. He goes to the couch and lies down on it.

'Doctor,' he says, 'I just fucked up. 'How did you do that, Henry?

'I told a patient the truth.

'lf we know the truth, Henry, does it not set us free?

'No,' he replies to himself, looking up at the ceiling. 'Not in the slightest.

'Close your eyes, Henry.

'All right, doctor.'

He closes his eyes. The room is replaced by darkness, and that is good. Darkness has become his friend. Tomorrow he will see his other friends (three of them, anyway), and the light will once more seem good. But now . . . now ...

'Doctor?

'Yes, Henry.

'This is a bona fide case of same shit, different day. Do you know that?

'What does that mean, Henry? What does that mean to you?

'Everything,' he says, eyes closed, and then adds: 'Nothing.' But that's a lie. Not the first one that was ever told in here.

He lies on the couch, eyes closed and hands folded on his chest, and after a little while he sleeps.

The next day the four of them drive up to Hole in the Wall, and it is a great eight days. The great hunting trips are coming to an end, only a few left, although they of course do not know this. The real darkness is still a few years away, but it is coming.

The darkness is coming.

2001: Jonesy's Student-Teacher Conference

We don't know the days that will change our lives. Probably just as well. On the day that will change his, Jonesy is in his third-floor John Jay College office, looking out at his little slice of Boston and thinking how wrong T.S. Eliot had been to call April the cruelest month just because an itinerant carpenter from Nazareth supposedly got himself crucified then for fomenting rebellion. Anyone who lives in Boston knows that it's March that's the cruelest, holding out a few clays of false hope and then gleefully hitting you with the shit. Today is one of the untrustworthy ones when it looks as if spring might really be coming, and he's thinking about taking a walk when the bit of impending nastiness just ahead is over. Of course at this point, Jonesy has no idea how nasty a day can get; no idea that he is going to finish this one in a hospital room, smashed up and fighting for his goddam life.

Same shit, different day, he thinks, but this will be different shit indeed.

That's when the phone rings, and he grabs it at once, filled with a hopeful premonition: it'll be the Defuniak kid, calling to cancel his eleven-o'clock. He's gotten a whiff of what's in the wind, Jonesy thinks, and that is very possible. Usually it's the students who make appointments to see the teacher. When a kid gets a message saying that one of his teachers wants to see him . . . well, you don't have to be a rocket-scientist, as the saying goes.

'Hello, it's Jones,' he says.

'Hey, Jonesy, how's life treating you?'

He'd know that voice anywhere. 'Henry! Hey! Good, life's good!'

Life does not, in fact, seem all that great, not with Defuniak due in a quarter of an hour, but it's all relative, isn't it? Compared to where he's going to be twelve hours from now, hooked up to all those beeping machines, one operation behind him and three more ahead of him, Jonesy is, as they say, farting through silk.

'Glad to hear it.'

Jonesy might have heard the heaviness in Henry's voice, but more likely it's a thing he senses.

'Henry? What's wrong?'

Silence. Jonesy is about to ask again when Henry answers.

'A patient of mine died yesterday. I happened to see the obit in the paper. Barry Newman, his name was.' Henry pauses. 'He was a couch man.'

Jonesy doesn't know what that means, but his old friend is hurting. He knows that.

'Suicide?'

'Heart attack. At the age of twenty-nine. Dug his grave with his own fork and spoon.'

'I'm sorry.'

'He hasn't been my patient for almost three years. I scared him away. I had one of those things. Do you know what I'm talking about?'

Jonesy thinks he does. 'Was it the line?'

Henry sighs. It doesn't sound like regret to Jonesy. It sounds like relief 'Yeah. I kind of socked it to him. He took off like his ass was on fire.'

'That doesn't make you responsible for his coronary.'

'Maybe you're right. But that's not the way it feels.' A pause. And then, with a shade of amusement: 'Isn't that a line from a Jim Croce song? Are you all right, Jonesy?'

'Me? Yeah. Why do you ask?'

'I don't know,' Henry says. 'Only . . . I've been thinking about you ever since I opened the paper and saw Barry's picture on the obituary page. I want you to be careful.'

Around his bones (many of which will soon be broken), Jonesy feels a slight coldness. 'What exactly are you talking about?'

'I don't know,' Henry says. 'Maybe nothing. But . . .'

'Is it the line now?' Jonesy is alarmed. He swings around in his chair and looks out the window at the chancy spring sunlight. It crosses his mind that maybe the Defuniak kid is disturbed, maybe he's carrying a gun (packing heat, as they say in the mystery and suspense novels Jonesy likes to read in his spare time) and Henry has somehow picked this up.

'I don't know. The most likely thing is that I'm just having a displaced reaction from seeing Barry's picture on the all-done page. But watch yourself the next little while, would you?'

'Well . . . yeah. I can do that.'

'Good.'

'And you're okay?'

'I'm fine.'

But Jonesy doesn't think Henry is fine at all. He's about to say something else when someone clears his throat behind him and he realizes that Defuniak has probably arrived.

'Well, that's good,' he says, and swivels around in his chair. Yep, there's his eleven-o'clock in the doorway, not looking dangerous at all: just a kid bundled into a big old duffel coat that's too heavy for the day, looking thin and underfed, wearing one earring and a punky haircut that spikes over his worried eyes. 'Henry, I've got an appointment. I'll call you back—'

'No, that's not necessary. Really.'

'You're sure?'

'I am. But there's one other thing. Got thirty more seconds?'

'Sure, you bet.' He holds up a finger to Defuniak and Defuniak nods. But he just goes on standing there until Jonesy points to the one chair in the little office besides his own that isn't stacked with books. Defuniak goes to it reluctantly. Into the phone, Jonesy says, 'Shoot.'

'I think we ought to go back to Derry. Just a quick trip, just you and me. See our old friend.'

'You mean—?' But he doesn't want to say that name, that baby-sounding name, with a stranger in the room.

He doesn't have to; Henry says it for him. Once they were a quartet, then for a little while they were five, and then they were four again. But the fifth one has never exactly left them. Henry says that name, the name of a boy who is magically still a boy. About him, Henry's worries are more clear, more easily expressed. It isn't anything he knows, he tells Jonesy, just a feeling that their old pal might need a visit.

'Have you talked to his mother?' Jonesy asked.

'I think,' Henry says, 'it might be better if we just . . . you know, orbited on in there. How's your calendar look for this weekend? Or the one after?'

Jonesy doesn't need to check. The weekend starts day after tomorrow. There's a faculty thing Saturday afternoon, but he can easily get clear of that.

'I'm fine both days this weekend,' he says. 'If I was to come by Saturday? At ten?'

'That'd be fine.' Henry sounds relieved, more like himself. Jonesy relaxes a little. 'You're sure?'

'If you think we ought to go see . . .' Jonesy hesitates. ' . . . see Douglas, then probably we should. It's been too long.'

'Your appointment's there, isn't he?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Okay. I'll look for you at ten on Saturday. Hey, maybe we'll take the Scout. Give it a run. How would that be?'

'That would be terrific.'

Henry laughs. 'Carla still makin your lunch, Jonesy?'

'She is. 'Jonesy looks toward his briefcase.

'What you got today? Tuna fish?'

'Egg salad.'

'Mmm-mmm. Okay, I'm out of here. SSDD, right?'

'SSDD,' Jonesy agrees. He can't call their old friend by his right name in front of a student, but SSDD is all right. 'Talk to you I—'

'Arid take care of yourself I mean it.' The emphasis in Henry's voice is unmistakable, and a little scary. But before Jonesy can respond (and what he would say with Defuniak sitting in the corner, watching and listening, he doesn't know), Henry is gone.

Jonesy looks at the phone thoughtfully for a moment, then hangs up. He flips a page on his desk calendar, and on Saturday he crosses out Drinks at Dean Jacobson's house and writes Beg off — going to Derry with Henry to see D. But this is an appointment he will not keep. By Saturday, Derry and his old friends will be the furthest things from his mind.

Jonesy pulls in a deep breath, lets it out, and transfers his attention to his troublesome eleven-o'clock. The kid shifts uncomfortably in his chair. He has a pretty good idea why he's been summoned here, Jonesy guesses.

'So, Mr Defuniak,' he says. 'You're from Maine, according to your records.'

'Uh, yeah. Pittsfield. I—'

'Your records also say that you're here on scholarship, and that you've done well.'

The kid, he sees, is actually a lot more than worried. The kid is on the verge of tears. Christ, but this is hard. Jonesy has never had to accuse a student of cheating before, but he supposes this won't be the last time. He only hopes it doesn't happen too often. Because this is hard, what Beaver would call a fuckarow.

'Mr Defuniak — David — do you know what happens to scholarships if the students holding them are caught cheating? On a mid-term exam, let us say?'

The kid jerks as if a hidden prankster under his chair has just triggered a low-voltage electrical charge into one of his skinny buttocks. Now his lips are trembling and the first tear, oh God, there it goes down his unshaven boy's cheek.

'I can tell you, 'Jonesy says. 'Such scholarships evaporate. That's what happens to them. Poof, and gone into thin air.'

There is a folder on Jonesy's desk. He opens it and takes out a European History mid-term, one of those multiple-choice monstrosities upon which the Department, in its great unwisdom, insists. Written on top of this one, in the black strokes of an IBM pencil ('Make sure your marks are heavy and unbroken, and if you need to erase, erase completely'), is the name DAVID DEFUNIAK.

'I've reviewed your course-work, David; I've re-scanned your paper on feudalism in France during the middle ages; I've even been through your transcripts. You haven't exhibited brilliance, but you've done okay. And I'm aware that you're simply satisfying a requirement here — your real interests don't lie in my field, do they?'

Defuniak shakes his head mutely. The tears gleam on his cheeks in that untrustworthy mid-March sunlight.

There's a box of Kleenex on the comer of Jonesy's desk, and he tosses it to the boy, who catches it easily even in his distress. Good reflexes. When you're nineteen, all your wiring is still nice and tight, all your connections nice and solid.

Wait a few years, Mr Defuniak, he thinks. I'm only thirty-seven and already some of my wires are getting loose.

'Maybe you deserve another chance, 'Jonesy says.

Slowly and deliberately, he begins to crumple Defuniak's mid­term, which is suspiciously perfect, A-plus work, into a ball.

'Maybe what happened is you were sick the day of the mid­-term, and you never took it at all.'

'I was sick,' David Defuniak says eagerly. 'I think I had the flu.'

'Then maybe I ought to give you a take-home essay instead of the multiple-choice test to which your colleagues have been subjected. If you want it. To make up for the test you missed. Would you want that?'

'Yeah,' the kid says, wiping his eyes madly with a large swatch of tissues. At least he hasn't gone through all that small-time cheapshit stuff about how Jonesy can't prove it, can't prove a thing, he'd take it to the Student Affairs Council, he'd call a protest, blah-blah-blah­de-blah. He's crying instead, which is uncomfortable to witness but probably a good sign — nineteen is young, but too many of them have lost most of their consciences by the time they get there. Defuniak has pretty much owned up, which suggests there might still be a man in there, waiting to come out. 'Yeah, that'd be great.'

'And you understand that if anything like this ever happens again—'

'It won't,' the kid says fervently. 'It won't, Professor Jones.' Although Jonesy is only an associate professor, he doesn't bother to correct him. Someday, after all, he will be Professor Jones. He better be; he and his wife have a houseful of kids, and if there aren't at least a few salary-bumps in his future, life is apt to be a pretty tough scramble. They've had some tough scrambles already.

'I hope not,' he says. 'Give me three thousand words on the short-term results of the Norman Conquest, David, all right? Cite sources but no need of footnotes. Keep it informal, but present a cogent thesis. I want it by next Monday. Understood?'

'Yes. Yes, sir.'

'Then why don't you go on and get started.' He points at Defuniak's tatty footwear. 'And the next time you think of buying beer, buy some new sneakers instead. I wouldn't want you to catch the flu again.'

Defuniak goes to the door, then turns. He is anxious to be gone before Mr Jones changes his mind, but he is also nineteen. And curious. 'How did you know? You weren't even there that day. Some grad student proctored the test.'

'I knew, and that's enough,' Jonesy says with some asperity. 'Go on, son. Write a good paper. Hold onto your scholarship. I'm from Maine myself — Derry — and I know Pittsfield. It's a better place to be from than to go back to.'

'You got that right,' Defuniak says fervently. 'Thank you. Thank you for giving me a chance.'

'Close the door on your way out.'

Defuniak — who will spend his sneaker-money not on beer but on a get-well bouquet for Jonesy — goes out, obediently closing the door behind him. Jonesy swings around and looks out the window again. The sunshine is untrustworthy but enticing. And because the Defuniak thing went better than he had expected, he thinks he wants to get out in that sunlight before more March clouds — and maybe snow — come rolling in. He has planned to eat in his office, but a new plan occurs to him. It is absolutely the worst plan of his life, but of course Jonesy doesn't know that. The plan is to grab his briefcase, pick up a copy of the Boston Phoenix, and walk across the river to Cambridge. He'll sit on a bench and eat his egg salad sandwich in the sun.

He gets up to put Defuniak's file in the cabinet marked D-F. How did you know? the boy had asked, and Jonesy supposes that was a good question. An excellent question, really, The answer is this: he knew because . . . sometimes he does. That's the truth, and there's no other. If someone put a gun to his head, he'd say he found out during the first class after the mid-term, that it was right there in the front of David Defuniak's mind, big and bright, flashing on and off in guilty red neon: CHEATER CHEATER CHEATER.

But man, that's dope — he can't read minds. He never could. Never-ever, never-ever, never-ever could. Sometimes things flash into his head, yes — he knew about his wife's problems with pills that way, and he supposes he might have known in that same way that Henry was depressed when he called (No, it was in his voice, doofus, that's all it was), but stuff like that hardly ever happens anymore. There has been nothing really odd since the business with Josie Rinkenhauer. Maybe there was something once, and maybe it trailed them out of their childhoods and adolescence, but surely it is gone now. Or almost gone.

Almost.

He circles the words going to Derry on his desk calendar, then grabs his briefcase. As he does, a new thought comes to him, sudden and meaningless but very powerful: Watch out for Mr Gray.

He stops with one hand on his doorknob. That was his own voice, no doubt about it.

'What?' he asks the empty room.

Nothing.

Jonesy steps out of his office, closes the door, and tests the lock.

In the comer of his door's bulletin board is a blank white card. Jonesy unpins it and turns it over. On the flip side is the printed message BACK AT ONE - UNTIL THEN I'M HISTORY. He pins the message side to the bulletin board with perfect confidence, but it will be almost two months before Jonesy enters this room again and sees his desk calendar still turned to St Patrick's Day.

Take care of yourself, Henry said, but Jonesy isn't thinking about taking care of himself. He is thinking about March sunlight. He's thinking about eating his sandwich. He's thinking he might watch a few girls over on the Cambridge side — skirts are short, and March winds are frisky. He's thinking about all sorts of things, but watching out for Mr Gray isn't one of them. Neither is taking care of himself

This is a mistake. This is also how lives change forever.

P A R T O N E

CANCER

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke

CHAPTER ONE

McCARTHY

Jonesy almost shot the guy when he came out of the woods. How close? Another pound on the Garand's trigger, maybe just a half. Later, hyped on the clarity that sometimes comes to the horrified mind, he wished he had shot before he saw the orange cap and the orange flagman's vest. Killing Richard McCarthy couldn't have hurt, and it might have helped. Killing McCarthy might have saved them all.

Pete and Henry had gone to Gosselin's Market, the closest store, to stock up on bread, canned goods, and beer, the real essential. They had plenty for another two days, but the radio said there might be snow coming. Henry had already gotten his deer, a good-sized doe, and Jonesy had an idea Pete cared a lot more about making sure of the beer supply than he did about getting his own deer — for Pete Moore, hunting was a hobby, beer a religion. The Beaver was out there someplace, but Jonesy hadn't heard the crack of a rifle any closer than five miles, so he guessed that the Beav, like him, was still waiting,

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 502