Groat Cakes

	The fraternity boys both got up and went to the table.  One of them racked the balls and the other talked to him in muffled tones, as if plotting a secret strategy.  When the balls were racked, one of them stood leaning on his pool cue and the other sat back down and took a drink from a bottle of Olympia beer that sat on their table.
	Ellis went to the table, chalked the tip of his cue stick and broke the balls.  The fellow that had racked had packed the balls loosely, and they didn't scatter much from the bunch.  The two-ball-did go into a side pocket and he took another shot.  He missed the six-ball, but buried the cue-ball in the pack of balls that still sat pretty much where they had been racked.
	"Sorry," he said, looking over at the well-groomed man who was going to have to make the best of a bad leave.
	The man nodded, shook his head, and got up.  He approached the table slowly, looking at the possibilities.  The trouble with a leave like this was, that there are so many possibilities, and they are all complicated.  He looked at the pack of balls for a full minute and then bent over and shot hard into the pack.  Balls rolled everywhere.  Three balls fell into the pockets, one striped-ball of his own, and two solid-balls that he would have rather stayed on the table.
	"Shit!" he said.  "At least it's opened up a little."
	The balls had spread out over the entire table, and at first glance it looked like it might be easy pickings, but when he looked further, he could see that the cue-ball had wedged itself between the end rail and the three-ball, touching both.  The guy shook his head and turned to his partner.  His partner shrugged and said nothing.  The well-groomed man did the only thing he could.  He tried to shoot the cue-ball into a place that would give Duncan a poor shot.  He didn't do too badly.  The ball bounced off the side rail and rolled to the other end of the table near a cluster of three or four balls.  Duncan got up and shot, but nothing went in.  The other man shot, making two more striped-balls before he missed.  The game was even now, with three balls down for each side.  Ellis stood and looked at the situation from afar, before approaching the table.  He had four balls to make plus the eight-ball.  They were spread out all over the table, which meant he had to do some careful shooting each time to get shape for the next shot.
	"Where do I start?" he said looking down at Duncan sitting next to where he stood.
	"Get that six-ball out of there and try to get shape on the seven in the other corner," he said.  "At least that's what I'd do."
	Ellis went to the table and did just what Duncan had told him to do.  It worked, and he made both the balls and was left with a straight in on the next ball and then an easy shot on both the last ball and the eight.  He made them all and the game was over.  The well-groomed fraternity boy sat down scowling and his partner brought a dollar over to Ellis and Duncan's table.
	"Nice shooting," he said, and returned to his table to sulk with his partner.
	The fat kid got up and racked the balls for another game.  Duncan and Ellis won this game too, and the next and the next.  They won seven games straight before Ellis scratched shooting the eight-ball and they had to sit out until their quarter came up again and they could get back in the playing.
	It was after midnight before Duncan and Ellis left the bar.  They had made twenty-five dollars at the pool tables.  They were also a bit tipsy from the beer they had consumed, and thought it best to take the back road home.  The only problem now was to get out of town without getting stopped by the police.  Duncan was sorry he had parked the car on Main Street, but there it was, straight across the street from the bar, and there was nothing to do but get in and drive away.  They both walked to the corner and crossed the street at the light.  They window shopped a little as a cop drove by on his regular check of the area, and when he turned the corner, they jumped into the Toyota and pulled away from the curb.  Duncan drove straight up Main Street, crossed Grand Avenue and headed out of town past the drive-in theater to the Union Flat road that would take them home.  The sky was clear and the moon was nearly full.  It shined down, lighting up the snow-covered hills before them as if it were day.  The road had been well plowed nearly to the pavement, and the snow was piled along the edge a couple of feet deep.  When they got to Union Flat, Duncan turned right on the snow covered gravel road and they proceeded down the valley.  Ellis rolled a cigarette and lit it.
	"Well, we did pretty good tonight," he said, filling the car with smoke.
	"No shit!"  Duncan answered.  "I think we only lost three games.  Or should I say you lost three games."  Ellis had scratched three times while trying to make the eight-ball, making for their only losses.
	"We had to lose a few times, or they'd never play us again, or they'd break our thumbs or something," Ellis said.  "You have to play them along so they don't catch on they're getting hustled.  In fact, we probably should have lost a few more."
	"I suppose, but we made twenty-five bucks, and that's nothing to sneeze at, you know.  Duncan too lit a cigarette, and turned off the car lights.  There was enough moon light to see, but with everything covered with snow, including the road, it was hard to make out where they were, so he turned them back on and drove along quietly until they came to Union Station.
	"Why do they call this Union Station?" he asked.  "There's no station here.  It's just a bunch of grain elevators."
	"Oh, I don't know.  That's just what they call it," Ellis answered.  There is a rail road track for the trains to haul wheat out of here.  They can call it a station if they want I guess.
	"Should I try to head over the hill from Gale and Liz's?"  Duncan asked.
	"In your wildest dreams," Ellis laughed.  "Only if you want to walk the last mile to the house.  Fred and I skied down that yesterday and I can promise that not even you could make it up there."
	Duncan laughed.  "I was just kidding, but with all this coal in the back, the Toyota can go anywhere."
	"Yeah right, even through a three foot drift a quarter of a mile long, I suppose."
	"Sure, if I'm driving.  I'm ready for a joint.  I wish you'd brought one for the trip home."
	"We'll be there pretty soon," Ellis said, rolling his window down a crack and throwing out his cigarette butt.
	Duncan sped up a little just thinking of the big fat joint he would roll when they got home.  The snow pack on the road had taken out the ruts and bumps that usually accompany gravel roads, and they rolled along smoothly.  They passed the dirt road up over the hill from Gale and Liz's without further comment and headed for the paved road that connected Colfax with the Snake River at Almota.  Duncan turned right on this road, traveled about two miles and turned right again.  They were now heading up Rebel Flat Creek, and only a few miles from home.
	Ellis yawned.  "I'm kinda tired," he said.  "It's hard work, taking all that money from the fraternity boys, and then you have to drink all that beer along with it.  I might even piss my pants before we get home."
	"Oh quit your whining.  We made enough money to buy some real groceries next time we go into town," Duncan said, sliding almost into the ditch as he navigated around a sharp corner in the road.
	"Keep that up, and I will piss my pants," Ellis squealed.
	Duncan sped up a little more just to get to Ellis, and then slid sideways into the driveway and came to a stop.
	"Here we are, safe and sound.  Hope you didn't lose your water on that last corner."  Duncan laughed and hopped out of the car.  "I suppose the coal can wait till tomorrow.  I just want to burn some 'tuna' and watch the rest of the late show."
	"I'll help you with the joint, but I'm afraid the late show will be over by now."  Ellis got out as well, and relieved himself in the driveway before he followed Duncan into the house.
	The house was quiet and looked as if everyone had gone to bed.  One light burned in the bathroom, and the stove was nearly out.  Duncan went back out onto the porch and got a can of coal for the stove and opened the draft to get it going.  Ellis sat down at the kitchen table and began to roll a large two paper joint that was sure to lull them into some far off dimension, while Duncan fiddled with the television, trying to improve the poor picture.  The late movie (something with Cary Grant and Doris Day) was still playing, but it looked as if it was about over.  When Ellis came into the room with the joint, Duncan had just flopped down on the couch with his feet up on the coffee table and Birthday and Sundance had curled up on either side of him.  Punt was wagging his tail and trying to get in Ellis' way just for the attention it would afford.  Ellis sat down in the overstuffed chair by the door and the dog stuck his head in his lap.  He lit the joint and stroked the dog's head at the same time, then handing the sweet smelling little cylinder to Duncan, he gave his full attention to Punt, who seemed to be exceptionally in need of it.  The movie ended about half way through the smoking of the joint, there was one last commercial and then two jet fighters flew low over some dessert somewhere while the national anthem played, indicating the station was about to sign off for the night.
	The national anthem quit and the white noise of nothing came over the airway along with the fuzz of the empty screen.  Duncan got up, turned off the television, announced he was going to bed and went upstairs.  Ellis got up, put two more cans of coal into the stove and damped it down for the night.  After turning off the lights, he and Punt headed out through the back porch to Ellis' nest of straw and went to bed as well.  Punt curled up next to him in what little room was left in this makeshift box that Ellis called a bed, and was soon breathing smoothly.
	Ellis lay thinking of Molly.  It had all happened so fast and easy that it worried him.  Girlfriends had never come this easily for him and it seemed that something must be wrong.  He had met her just before he and Fred had gone to Seattle.  She had finally decided to leave her abusive husband and had literally escaped to the safety of her brother's home for a while to let things cool off.  Ellis had met her merely by accident when he went to visit Dave one afternoon.  They had talked briefly, but seemed to have little in common, except recent break-ups with a spouse, and nothing had really sparked on that first encounter.  He had happened by later in the same week, and this time Molly had been the only one home.  They sat drinking coffee and relating stories of their previous relationships for nearly an hour.  This time, even though neither had realized it, they formed a kind of bond.  It was a loose fabric, woven from their very different past experiences.  Somehow the different lives they had led seemed to fill the voids in the other, and they grew closer without being conscious of it.  While in Seattle, Ellis had only thought of her a couple of times, and even then, his thoughts hadn't wandered into the realms of anything like where they were now.  He had only thought of her on a physical plane at first, but now she was more.  He thought that it was right after his return from Seattle, when he and Duncan had stopped by with the dumpster gleanings, that things had changed.  Something had happened, sitting there on the couch in Dave and Carol's living room that seemed to turn his attention from the physical to the metaphysical.
	Punt began to snort and whimper from some kind of dream.  Ellis slid a hand out into the cold from inside his sleeping bag and stroked him on the neck.  He let out a deep sigh and returned to his steady breathing of before.  Ellis wondered if he had interrupted a nightmare or had gotten in the way of some wonderful virtual experience the dog could never recover.
	His thoughts returned to Molly and the natural way they had fallen into each other's lives.  He wondered if this would become another one of his short flings with someone not looking for the same kind of permanence that he seemed to be in search of.  Ellis thought of himself as one of those neomodern, liberal thinkers that was out to reconstruct the world into something magical and perfect.  He didn't realize how old-fashioned he really was.  He had risen from that old school, where law was supposed to be the natural outgrowth of right and wrong, not the other way around, like his world had become.  He was in many ways an outlaw.  He lived without regard to the law, but instead, acted in accordance with some personal link to that fragile thread we call 'good'.  His mother had once told him, that she 'didn't care what he did or became in this life, as long as he was nice'.  This had stuck in his head and came drifting to the surface now and then, when he least expected it.  He thought about the coal he and Duncan had hoisted into the back of the Toyota earlier and wondered how it fit in with his mother's words.  This thought swirled him around for long enough that he finally fell asleep with images of a Christmas stocking full of the stuff.
	When Ellis awoke, the sun had just begun to peek in through the window of his room.  Punt's stirring woke him.  Then he noticed Fred's footsteps at the bottom of the stairs, and quietly moving through the room toward the door.  Punt hopped out of the makeshift bed and quickly followed Fred outside.  Ellis could hear the clicking sound of his toenails against the bare wood floor.  It was cold in the room, and Ellis could see his breath.  It was thick white breath, like blowing out smoke from a cigarette.  He wondered if he could blow out enough to form a cloud.  Maybe it would even rain.  It was certainly too cold for rain.  Snow seemed more likely, but then he figured, he had been breathing all night and hadn't made a cloud yet.  He supposed that the cloud idea was out of the question, and yawned.  His face was cold, now that he had pulled his head out from under the covers, and it made him shiver slightly.  The thought of crawling out of his sleeping bag and putting on cold clothes was less than inviting.  He heard Fred come back in from outside and dig the coffee can into a sack of coal.  This made him think that if he waited a little longer, the house would be warm when he went in, and he snuggled deeper into his sack.
	The sun was now shining brightly through the window, casting its rays onto the workbench that partitioned off his part of the room from what had become a hallway leading from the doorway to the stairs.  The workbench had a back on it that went up five or six feet, where Ellis had hung his most precious tools.  He had the usual screwdrivers and pliers and a few wrenches, but he also had a couple of handsaws and several hammers.  There were nearly a dozen chisels and a set of hand planes ranging from only an inch or two long to one that must have been ten or twelve inches in length.  The bench itself was littered with bits of wood, and bone, and antler along with an array of tools that had been left lying there after being used.  The small face he had recently carved into a piece of deer antler peered down at him from where it lay near the edge of the bench, some four or five feet from where he remained, still engulfed in his sleeping bag.  He noticed a spot of rust that had formed on, the otherwise shiny surface of, one of the hand planes.
	The sight of the rust brought him immediately up out of bed and to the edge of his bench.  He plucked the plane from where it hung and examined the spot carefully.  He picked one of his feet up off the cold floor and pressed it against his leg, hoping to warm it a little, and then taking a piece of very fine sand paper from amidst the mess on the bench, he rubbed off the spot of rust.  He then picked his clothes up off a nearby chair and quickly dressed, giving an audible shudder as he slid into his icy cold blue jeans.  Once dressed, he picked up the antler face from the bench, and placing it in his shirt pocket, he headed out back to let off a bit of water.  As he passed the thermometer hanging on the end of the bench, he noticed it read thirteen degrees.  That made him shiver again and he wrapped his arms around himself.
	When he returned to the house, the fire was beginning to pick up from its evening rest, but the rooms were still quite cold.  Fred had put the coffeepot on the stove and was huddled near it imagining more heat was emanating from it than actually was.  Ellis crowded the stove opposite Fred and then put his hands directly on the cast-iron sides of the firebox.
	"Well, it's warmer than the air," he said, as he slowly took his hands from the stove.
	"It was almost out," Fred said, putting a hand on the side of the stove for a moment.  "It'll perk up here in a minute, but it's going to be a while before there's any coffee."
	Ellis walked over to the couch and sat down.  No sooner had he sat, than there was a scratch at the door.  He rose and opened the front door to the house.  All three dogs traipsed in and wandered around for a few moments before finding a place to lie down.  Fred went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and stood staring into it for a full minute before closing it.
	"There's not much in there, but some eggs," he said, and then looking across the room to the counter, he saw a plate stacked with, what appeared to be groatcakes.  "Oh, here's some of Francine's groats.  We can see if they are any better than the ones you made.  It's not that yours weren't good, but let's see what a woman's touch can do for them."  He picked up two from the plate and walked back into the parlor.  When he reached the door, he tossed one to Ellis.  Punt, who lay on the floor, quickly raised himself and made a lunge for the cake as it passed over his head.  He was too slow and the groat made it safely into Ellis' grasp.
	"It seems a little firmer than the ones I made.  In fact it seems like it could be used as an anvil or something," he said turning the thing over in his hands.  "It could be that this is what a day old groat cake is supposed to be like."
	Fred took a bite from the edge of the cake with difficulty and began to chew.  "It still tastes fine," he said, sitting in the large chair near the door.
	Ellis too, took a bite from his cake and they sat quietly eating their breakfast.  All three dogs looked on longingly, hoping to receive a crumb or two.  When Ellis had finished his cake, he took his tobacco from his shirt pocket and began to fashion a cigarette.  Fred got up and went into the kitchen.  Then taking a coffee cup from out of the sink, he rinsed it and took a long drink of water to wash down the rest of the groat cake.  He returned to the parlor and looked into the stove.  Taking an iron poker that hung on the wall behind the stove, he jabbed at the pile of coal that lay smoldering in the bottom of the fire box, and it flamed up, beginning finally to put out a bit of heat.  He then went out on the back porch with the coffee can and returned with it full of coal, which he set on the floor next to the stove.
	"It's not ready for that yet, but it will be soon," he said.  "I thought you and Duncan were going to get more coal."
	"Oh, we did," Ellis answered.  "In fact we got quite a bit, a couple three sacks and two large boxes full.  It's still in the Toyota."
	"Good.  Hey, you want'a go for a long ski, down toward the breaks of the Snake?"  Fred asked, reaching down and stroking one of the dogs.
	"Maybe.  I want to work on this little netsuke some today," he answered, taking the carving from his shirt pocket and inspecting it.
	"What the hell's a netsuke?"  Fred asked.
	"It's a small carving," Ellis answered, tossing the little head to Fred, who looked at it carelessly "used kind of like a watch fob.  There's a whole art form, or whatever, in Japan dedicated to the carving of the things.  It's really just a little carving with a cord attached to it and then hooked on to something else at the other end.  The Japanese, in the old days, would hook their purse on one end of the cord and a netsuke to the other end, and then loop it over their belt.  I guess they didn't have pockets."
	"What the hell good is it now?"  Fred asked, pitching the piece of antler back to Ellis.  "I mean, shit, nobody wears stuff like that anymore."
	"Oh, I don't know, they're just neat little things, and I'm going to make a bunch of'em," Ellis answered.  Then with one hand, he reached into his pants pocket for his jackknife, and with the other, he placed the face portion of the carving into his mouth.  When he had produced the knife, he used both hands to open, this, his most valued tool.
	Fred glanced over at him.  "Are you going to eat it?" he asked.
	Ellis took the thing from his mouth and laughed.  "No.  It just softens up the surface of the antler if you get it wet, so it's easier to carve."  He began to work on a detail of the face with the tip of his knife.
	Fred rose, and walked to the stove.  He put in the can of coal he had earlier set on the floor, and then walked over to the television, switching it on.  He stood patiently in front of it while it warmed up enough for the picture to come on, in its normal fuzzy condition, switched back and forth through the three or four channels they could get, stopping at one, and then he sat back down.  He had picked some talk show.  The subject for the day was 'child pregnancy and its relationship to god and society'.  There was a panel, consisting of a Methodist preacher, a sociologist, a Catholic priest, a girl about fifteen that was obviously in the family way, and her mother.  The host of the show smiled broadly as he introduced his guests and then asked the priest to tell the audience what the bible had to say about teen pregnancy.
	"Well," he said, "there isn't much directly relating to the age of those issuing children, but there is quite a lot mentioned in the 'Good Book' about producing children out of wedlock and the sins involved in . . . " he paused looking for the right word, and then proceeded.  ". . . involved in producing children outside of marriage.  The Church would view this . . ."
	"We'll get to that in a moment father.  I can call you father, can't I?" the host asked as he cut short his explanation.  He turned toward the sociologist and asked for a very brief introduction to the effects of teen pregnancy on the society.  The sociologist tried in a few words to explain the complications this could have on the family and the culture in general.  The host then walked directly to the little girl, who had begun to squirm uncomfortably in her chair.  He put his hand on her shoulder.  She tightened and attempted to pull away, but there was no where to go.
	"Would you like to give us your views on this subject?" he asked.
	"No!" was her only reply, and she began to sob.
	"Jesus Christ, Fred, are we going to have to be subjected to this bullshit," Ellis asked in disgust.
	"I thought you might learn something here," Fred said laughing.
	Can't you find some dumb cartoon, or something on that thing?"  Ellis pleaded.
	Fred went back to the television and switched channels.  The first channel was so fuzzy that he couldn't tell what was going on.  The second was a cartoon and the last was the morning news.
	"What do you want, news or cartoons?" he asked.
	"I don't care.  I just didn't want to listen to that other bullshit," Ellis answered.
	Fred left the television tuned to the cartoons and sat back down.  The coffee started to perk.
	"Finally!" he said.  "The coffee's about ready."  He got back up, with a groan and went into the kitchen.  He ran a little water into a couple of, only-slightly-dirty, cups and returned, setting the cups on the low table in front of the couch.  He opened the small tin where they kept joints, and there was a fresh supply of neatly rolled little cylinders in the tin.  He removed one and inspected it carefully.
	"That Francine sure does know how to roll a good joint," he said walking to the stove and checking the darkness of the liquid percolating up through the glass top on the coffeepot.  "Looks ready to me."  He took the pot from the stove, poured both cups full, and sat down, lighting the joint.
	As they sat smoking and drinking their coffee, they became aware of the sounds of someone shuffling around upstairs.  Presently Duncan scuttled down the stairs and appeared in the doorway, in bare feet, looking as disheveled as usual.
	"I thought I sensed a good combination of smells to start out the day," he said, as Fred handed him the joint.  He took a hit, handed it back to Fred and went into the kitchen in search of a coffee cup.
	When he returned, he poured himself a cup of coffee and glanced at the television.  "What's this cartoon shit?" he asked.  "There's a good program about teen pregnancy on that morning talk show."  He walked to the television and switched the channel back to the panel.
	". . . but God would never approve of these kinds of carryings on among our children."  The Methodist preacher was saying as they broke in.
	"Jesus, Duncan, we just switched off that bunch of shit," Ellis complained.
	"Hey, this is good stuff.  It'll go along with my book about Soap operas.  This is where they get the raw materials for the script of those things," Duncan said and sat down next to Ellis on the couch.
	"No wonder those fucking things are so bad," Ellis remarked as he took what was left of the joint from Fred.
	"You guys just don't appreciate the finer points of good drama and the subtle relationship these things have to reality."  Duncan protested.
	"I guess not," Fred said putting his feet up on the coffee table.  Those soaps are bad enough, but at least they have a thin thread of plot to them.  These damn things are just bad from beginning to end."  He scooted himself around in the chair, and then went on.  "All they do is suck in a whole group of pathetic people without lives of their own.  I suppose they have their place for those people looking to come up with something to fill the space between their dreams, if they even have dreams.  I guess, at least, they get some kind of vicarious pleasure out of them, but if they weren't there at all, it seems like those people would have to get a real life."
	"No shit," Ellis threw in, dropping his carving into his lap.  "I think they even encourage people to accept the kinds of conditions that the soaps portray.  People get so wrapped up in the lives of those dumb shits in the soap opera that they forget they even have a life of their own.  They see all the characters on the TV having affairs and being miserable in general, and they think that's the way you're supposed to live.  And these talk shows are even worse.  They get a handful of poor miserable people up on the stage, and then harass the hell out of them with a panel of fools that don't know shit about what's even going on, and the host just eggs the whole thing on.  Look at that asshole.  He's doing his best to keep that poor little girl sobbing, just for the audience's evil pleasures.  Either that or he just likes to make little girls cry.  He's keeping that preacher so fired up he may even have a heart attack."
	"That'll help his ratings if he can pull that off," Fred added.
	"Yeah he could probably add half a million viewers to tomorrow's show if that happens," Ellis continued.  "You wait, he'll work the sociologist into claiming that this poor pregnant girl has single-handedly set the society into a downhill slide that will ruin us all.  And look at the mother.  She's about to blow up with rage.  Either that or she may just collapse from sheer embarrassment.  There's no moral, social lesson, or any other kind of redeeming character to the thing.  We'd be better off with public hangings or something like that.  At least we'd be getting rid of a few bad apples at the same time the rest us got whatever it is you get out of a thing like that."
	"Now public hangings would really be cool," Duncan agreed with a snicker, getting up and going into the kitchen.
	"You're sick Duncan," Fred said, getting up and changing the Television channel over to the morning news.  "Here Duncan, take a look at what's really happening in the world, instead of that made-up bullshit."
	The Television blared on, but it was no less dismal than before.  It showed pictures of South Vietnamese civilians, mostly women and children, stealing food and other things from an army depot near Saigon.  The American troops were attempting to stop the thieves, but only half-heartedly, and the announcer was explaining how these people would steal anything that wasn't tied down, and even that didn't stop them at times.
	"Here you go Duncan," Fred called to him.  "This one might show you some good shit for your midnight coal runs."
	Duncan wandered into the parlor with a freshly buttered groat cake, but the television had already switched stories to the Lieutenant Calley trial.  There were no photographs, but only quick artist's drawings of the courtroom.  Calley was represented as a hard and mean-spirited man sitting in front of his co-conspirators.  The announcer reported that Sergeant Dursi had testified that, "Yes he, himself had killed a baby, but only under direct orders from Calley, and that Calley had eagerly killed many civilians on his own."
	"There you go Duncan.  That ought to brighten up your day a little," Ellis said shaking his head and returning to his carving.
	"Oh my God!"  Duncan burst out.  "Did you see that?  Tuna fish is poisonous.  It's full of mercury.  Holy shit, I've eaten tons of tuna fish.  It's my favorite food, and now it's poison.  I'm probably going to die."
	"You're probably poisonous yourself," Fred said laughing.  "That's probably why you're going bald so early.  In fact you're probably unsafe to have around.  You may even be exuding mercury vapor as you stand there."
	Duncan went to the chair next to the television and sat down, looking seriously concerned.  "Does this mean I have to quit eating tuna fish?" he asked.
	"It's probably too late for that," Fred said.  "You're a goner already."
	The morning news went to a commercial, selling pickup trucks of some kind, and Duncan leaned forward, picking up the small tin of joints from the coffee table.  "Well, if I'm going to die, I may as well get good and stoned for what little time's left," he said taking one of Francine's perfectly rolled joints from the tin and leaning back in the chair.  He sat there contemplating the mercury announcement for a few minutes, and then lit the little cylinder.  He sat there quietly listening to, but not watching the news as it continued through the list of menacing headlines.  As the list went on, the room seemed to get darker and take on a gloom of its own as if echoing the conditions around the world.  Finally the news ended with the announcement that they should all stay tuned for the continued episode of some soap opera.  Duncan perked up at the sound of this, and rose, moving to the couch next to Ellis where he could see the television better.  He had nearly finished off the joint, but handed what was left to Ellis as he sat down.
	"Here." he said.  "I kinda bogarted that didn't I?"
	Ellis took it, inhaled a small drag, and passed the remainder on to Fred.  The three of them sat quietly for some time.  Duncan was engrossed in the intricate web of the soap opera.  Fred, though he seemed connected to the television, was in truth, far away atop his skis in the deep snow of some imaginary vista.  His abilities as a skier were vastly improved from reality and he swished down impossibly steep slopes with ease.  He wasn't sure of, or even concerned with where he was, but the view was spectacular.  He could see for miles, maybe even hundreds of miles.  He seemed to be descending the slopes of the tallest of many high mountains that made up his vision.  As he plunged down the side of this snowy peak in carefully controlled, and sweeping 'S' curves, he noticed that the tops of the adjacent mountains were bare of snow and always remained below him.  These rugged giants, that had previously presented all the appearances of a Himalayan mountain range, now receded and flattened with his descent.  It was as if he had fallen into some kind of time warp, and was privy to the natural process that wears down the rough edges of our world.  Like time-lapse photography, spread over millions of years, these rocky crags shrank and softened before his eyes, and by the time he had slid to a stop at the bottom of the highest peak, he was standing in the middle of smooth gently rolling hills.  He looked back to where he had come from, and even the highest peak was gone, transformed into just another wind blown hill.
	Ellis held his carving, turning it from side to side.  The face had emerged from within the antler, and now rested on the surface.  The details and expression, however, were not yet articulated, nor was there an opening in the mouth, where he would eventually attach the cord.  The carefully delineated hair flowed back from the scalp like the little head faced into a strong breeze.  The mouth was partially formed, but without the hole to open it.  He had trouble deciding where it was exactly.  It was time to drill the hole.  He got up, went out to his room, and presently returned with a hand drill and a small leather pouch of drill bits.  Selecting the proper size of bit, he chucked it into the drill.  Holding the handle of the drill against his stomach, he carefully placed the tip of the bit into the center of the small depression he had made between the lips on his carving and began to slowly turn the handle of the drill.  The sharp bit cut slowly into the antler as he held the carving tightly against it.  As the hole deepened and there was little chance of the bit slipping out, he turned the crank of the drill faster.  The pithy center of the antler cut easily and he soon had an opening that passed through the entire carving.  He wanted the head to be nearly hollow and with a larger bit, a half inch in diameter, he drilled in from the backside nearly an inch, to form a cavity in the back of the carving.  He returned the drill bit to the leather pouch and placed it along with the drill on the coffee table in front of him.
	"Francine will kill you if she catches you whittling in the house," Duncan said, glancing over at the antler chips that covered Ellis' lap.
	Ellis shuddered a little to think of the confrontation that was bound to occur as soon as she got up and came down stairs.  He did his best to collect the chips that had fallen in his lap and onto the couch and took them to the stove, dumping them into the fire.  He returned to the couch and inspected the accuracy of the hole he had just drilled.  When he was satisfied that they were placed properly, he began shaping the mouth with the tip of his jackknife.
	Whittling was one of those slow methodical things that let Ellis work and think and dream, all at the same time.  It only required a corner of his brain to keep his knife shaving off those little bits of material that weren't part of the figure held within the antler, and the rest of his gray matter could be used to plow through the vast quantities of electrical impulses that seemed to hang suspended inside his cranium, waiting to be reviewed.  Most of the time his recall was much like throwing a handful of sand into the air and grabbing little particles at random, with the emphasis on 'random'.  For some reason, probably related to DNA or even drugs, his grab and hold functions only worked on special occasions, and the images displayed on his internal screen had a tendency to wander like a stream flowing along a wide flat valley.  But, like downhill water, heading for the sea, his mental meanderings, nearly always were directed at something larger than himself.  He didn't pigeon hole or separate things into well defined categories, but instead, he pitched everything into a kind of stew that simmered steadily in the cauldrons of his skull, and as each bubble came to the surface and popped, it became another flash of consciousness.
	Ellis dreamed along in this fashion for most of the next hour, paying little or no attention to the television blaring away next to him.  It wasn't until John and Francine clunked down the stairs around ten o'clock, that he became aware of anything outside the confines of his own theater.
	John stood in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs and Francine went into the bathroom.
	"Things are pretty quiet down here," he said moving into the room and standing next to the stove.  Nobody said a word.  He rubbed his hands in front of the stove and then opened it.  Leaving the door ajar, he went to the back hallway with the coal can and returned with it full, dumping the contents into the fire.  "Boy it is quiet in here.  The place is full of zombies."  Hearing Francine leave the bathroom, he turned and headed that way.
	Francine picked up a coffee cup from the counter and appeared in the doorway.  Taking the coffeepot from the top of the stove, she poured herself a cup and set the pot back.  She looked around the room as she took a drink of the barely warm liquid, and as her eyes landed on Ellis and his scattering of antler chips, she burst forth, spraying lukewarm coffee throughout the room.
	"What are you doing?" she screamed.  "That mess!  You're making a huge fucking mess.  If we had a vacuum cleaner that would be one thing, but we don't, and you better get that cleaned up right now."
	"What did I tell you?"  Duncan replied, looking over at Ellis.
	"Jesus Francine," Ellis said, brushing the shavings from his lap and onto the already soiled shag carpet that covered the floor.  "See, they just went away.  Besides they're just little bits of deer antler."
	"I suppose you killed the deer for his horns too," she said a little more composed.
	"No." he returned calmly.  "I think Gale found them in the woods.  They do fall off every year, you know."  He continued to whittle away on the detail of an ear that had begun to emerge from the antler.
	John came out of the bathroom and joined the rest of the group with a yawn and stretched his arms above his head.  "What's all the yelling in here?" he asked.
	"Oh it's just Ellis." she answered.  "He's making a mess on the rug."
	"We've told you over and over not to mess on the carpet, Ellis," Fred threw in, with a chuckle.  "You have to go outside for that sort of thing, or there's always the bathroom you know."
	"That'll be next," Francine added, pouring the rest of the coffee into her cup and handing it to John.  "Here take that.  It's not very hot, but I'm going to make a fresh pot."  She walked into the kitchen, removing the lid of the pot.  As she took out the percolator pipe and the basket of grounds on top, the basket slipped from her grasp and fell to the floor, strewing the grounds in a wide array across the faded linoleum and under the kitchen table.
	"God you're messy Francine," Ellis said, leaning forward to see the calamity.
	"At least I'm going to clean it up," she returned, setting the spilled basket into the sink and reaching for the broom.
	"You guys better settle down," Duncan announced.  "I can't hear what's going on with my show."
	"What the hell's the difference," Fred said.  "They say almost the same thing every day, and you know what they're going to say anyway.  It might be better if you just turned the sound off and made up your own script."
	"Yeah really Duncan," John said taking a drink of his now cold coffee.  "Look there, she's telling that guy off the same way they always do.  She should have just said, 'Eat shit and die, you asshole.'  It would be good for all those housewives watching everywhere too."
	"There's nothing wrong with housewives," Francine chimed in from the kitchen.  "They do more than most men out there, who are just fucking up the world, you know."  She came in with the coffeepot, put it on the stove, and then opened the fire box door to check the fire.  Looking over at Ellis, she couldn't help but comment.  "God Ellis, you've made a mess again."
	"Oh shit!  Sorry." he said, scooping up as much as he could in one motion from his lap and then stepping over the coffee table where he dumped what he'd gathered into the open stove.  "There is that better?" he said, smiling at Francine and sitting back down.
	Fred stretched and yawned, sitting up a little from his slouched down position in the soft chair.  "I hope we don't have to banish Ellis to the barn with the dogs and the pig," he said, and before anybody could respond, he continued in a different vein.  "Really Duncan, you ought to turn off the sound, and we can all work together and come up with a better script than what they've got there."
	"Okay Fred, you be that older woman and Francine can be the young one.  John can be the guy from next door and I'll be the asshole everybody's pissed at."  Duncan got up and turned the sound off and returned to his seat beside Ellis.
	"Who's Ellis going to be?" asked Francine.
	"I'll just sit here and make a mess," Ellis said, continuing to work on his carving.  "That's what I do best anyway."
	"Ellis can be the narrator and pick up any other characters as they show up," Duncan said.
	They had a little trouble getting started, and Ellis had to narrate for a minute or two to set the mood, but after a couple of false starts the dialogue began to flow.  John and Fred had rather mundane parts with little in the way of action or fiery dialogue, but they kept up fine and played their parts quite well.  Duncan had the main role of the unfaithful husband and sleazy car salesman.  His acidic humor fit the part perfectly and he came up with lines that, on several occasions, had everyone laughing beyond control.  Francine had no trouble playing the whiny wife that had been cheated in every way.  She even managed to bring in a lesbian relationship with the older woman and a tacit relationship with the neighbor.  Both of which gave Duncan a chance to explode into wonderful fits of staged emotion.  Their little play went on for fifteen minutes or more with only a couple of breakdowns in the continuity, usually caused by hysterical laughter.  Ellis' narration was seldom needed and he spent the time more engrossed in his whittling that he did the reworked soap opera.  A commercial finally brought a much needed break in their little play, and they lay back giggling at their brief comedy.  Duncan continued to add the dialogue to the commercial, and when he said, in a high pitched falsetto, "and these newly shaped Pampers really do keep the shit off your carpet," the group howled with laughter.
	John reached for the candy tin on the table, and taking the last joint from it, he announced, "This is the last one, Francine.  You're going to have to get to work refilling our little medicine box.  We wouldn't want to be out of medicinal supplies."
	"I have to do everything around here," she said.  "You guys would be lost without me.  The place would just fall apart."
	"Yeah really Francine, as long as you're doing everything, would you mind going out and taking a leak for me?"  Ellis asked.
	"Sure I'd be glad to," she answered, "but I'd have to piss on my leg to really do it right.  God, you're messy Ellis.  I'll bet you're even messy when you pee."
	"Yeah, I don't even undo my fly," he returned.  "I just pee my pants, where ever I am."
	"That figures," was all she had to say to that.  She took a match from her shirt pocket, lit the joint that had been hanging loosely from John's lips, and the room quieted down for the duration of its brief and smoky life.
	Ellis got up about halfway through the ceremony, picked up the coal can on the way by and went outside to relieve himself.  Punt followed him out, and together they stood in the side yard of the farm and watered the frozen ground.  The sun shown brightly through a high thin layer of clouds that defused the light enough to reduce shadows to a mere trace.  It was still quite cold and the snow crunched under his footsteps.  He hadn't brought his coat and the chill kept him from lingering in the morning air.  He returned to the back porch, filled the can with coal and went in.
	"Hey Ellis," Francine called as he came in.  "Bring me one of those bags of pot, and I'll roll up a bunch of new joints,"
	Ellis set the coal on the kitchen table and took the large brown sack from under the kitchen counter, removed one of the little baggies and returned the sack to the cupboard.  He walked into the parlor and tossed the marijuana to Francine.  "Here you go," he said, as he opened the door of the parlor stove and dumped in the can of coal.  He sat back down on the couch and produced the small carving from his shirt pocket.  As he rolled it around looking at it from all sides, Francine stepped forward and plucked it from his fingers.  He glanced up, fearful of what she might do with his precious little scrap of antler, but she merely examined it carefully and tossed it back.
	"That's pretty cool," she said.  "What is it?"
	"Don't ask," Fred said.
	"It's a netsuke," Ellis said.
	"Right, What's that?" she asked.
	Ellis went through the whole explanation again for her, and she seemed to appreciate the history of this obscure little art form, as well as this particular one he was working on.  He took his knife from his pocket and worked away at creating another pile of chips in his lap.  Francine went into the other room and put a stack of records on the stereo and turned it on.  The record dropped and the first note burst out into the room with a force that could have easily broken several windows, if allowed to continue for very long.  She quickly turned down the volume to a respectable roar and went into the kitchen where she sat down at the kitchen table and began to roll a new set of perfect joints.  They were smooth and uniform, and as she lined them up in front of herself, they made her think of a picket fence.  After she had made nearly a dozen of the little cylinders she resealed the baggie, gathered up her creations, brought them into the parlor and put them into the candy tin.
	"Hey anybody want some more of Ellis' groatcakes?" she asked.
	She obtained a positive nod or two and a couple of 'okays'.  This seemed to be enough reinforcement and she returned to the kitchen, where she began preparing for a new task.  She took several sacks out of the cupboard and set them on the counter, along with a large bowl.  The frying pan sat crusted with leftover potatoes and eggs near the sink.  Fred got up and made his way through the kitchen to use the bathroom.  Seeing the dirty frying pan on the counter, he grabbed it, set it on the floor and called for Birthday to come clean it out.  The dog jumped up and trotted into the kitchen.  Francine scowled at both Fred and the dog, but didn't say a word.
	"I'll wash that when he gets all the leftovers out of there," he said and disappeared into the bathroom.
	When he returned, he was true to his word.  He took the pan to the sink, ran hot water into it and scrubbed it thoroughly.  He even set it on the parlor stove to dry.
	"Thanks Fred.  Hope you got all the dog tongue juices out of it," she said laughing.
	"Any day could be the last of the running water, you know," he said, turning back into the kitchen.  "It's getting cold, and that well can't last much longer.  Those dog tongue juices will be all we have.  Duncan even uses them to take a bath.  He just rubs an old hunk of hamburger on his body and lets them lick him all over."
	"Yeah right," Duncan spoke up from the parlor.  "And then Fred eats the hamburger."
	"Oh God, you guys sometimes make me want to throw up," Francine said, pouring one of the several flours into a measuring cup.
	Fred watched her carefully measure out the flour.  "You're getting pretty carried away with accuracy there, aren't you?"
	"What do you mean?" she asked.
	"I mean, I don't think that groatcakes can be measured out."  He turned and took the now dry frying pan from the parlor stove and set it on the counter near her work.
	"Jesus Francine!  You're not measuring any of the stuff for the cakes, are you?"  Ellis called from the parlor.
	"I can measure shit if I want to," she answered.  "How the hell else can you ever figure out what works best?"
	"That's just the point," Ellis protested.  "Groats have to be one of those random things, like life itself.  They have been handed down to us from the God of winter himself, like the snows and the cold North wind.  They come as an abstract nourishment to bring us safely through the cold months with our bellies full and our hearts pure."
	"God Ellis, you're so full of shit," Francine said, continuing to measure out each ingredient into the mixing bowl.
	The record ended, and there was a brief period of silence before the next record dropped with a little clunk and the needle set scratchily on its surface.  The voice of Bob Dylan measured out the time in jerky segments of verse, accompanied by the jangle of his guitar and the wail of a harmonica.
	"What the hell Ellis, are you going to go skiing or not?"  Fred asked, walking into the parlor and perching on the arm of the nearest chair.
	"Yeah, I guess so, but let's wait until the groats are out so we can take a couple with us," he answered.
	"Hey does this kitchen stove work?"  Francine asked from the kitchen counter, where she was finishing up mixing the cakes.
	Yeah, but the chimney needs to be cleaned and we'd have to haul more coal to keep it running," Fred answered.
	How hard would that be?" she asked.
	It's just a matter of hauling more coal, but I don't think we have all the shit to clean the chimney." he said.
	"It's easy to clean the chimney," Ellis said, setting his carving on the coffee table.  "You just tie a rope to the leg of a chicken and lower it down the chimney, it flaps around and knocks all the shit off the sides, and you clean it out at that little door behind the stove."
	"Jesus Christ Ellis, you should be locked up," Francine said with a little shiver at the thought of the poor chicken hanging down the dark chimney.
	"Ah shit," he said.  "The chicken doesn't really like it, but it doesn't usually hurt'em too much and they get over it.  Sometimes they don't lay too well for a while after that."
	"Jesus Ellis, you ought to be put to sleep."  Francine picked up the pan of uncooked cakes, brought them into the parlor and put them on the stove.  "Anybody seen the lid for this pan.  I can't find it in there anywhere."
	"Oh yeah, I put it in the cupboard where the tuna is," Ellis said, resuming work on his netsuke.  He carved off a couple of little chips of antler, and then looked up at Fred, still sitting on the arm of the chair.  "Hey Fred, isn't there a big set of tire chains for a truck out back in that junk shed?"
	"I don't think there's a set, but there is one hanging on the wall next to that broken window," he answered.  "What do you want a set of chains for?"
	"One's enough.  They make a good alternative to the chicken."  Ellis stood up, put his jackknife in his pocket and stretched.  "You just drag it up and down inside the chimney and it'll knock all the shit off the sides.  Does the chimney draw at all?"  He walked into the kitchen, slid several things away from the chimney and opened the clean-out door at the bottom.
	"Hey Francine, do you have a small mirror about that big."  He held his hands up measuring about four by four inches.
	"I've got a round one, a little smaller than that," she answered.
	"That'll be great," he said.  "Can I use it to look up the chimney?"
	"It's right in there, in the cabinet in the bathroom," she said.
	Ellis found the mirror and poked it in the clean-out door.  He adjusted the angle to reflect the light from the sky that should come down the chimney, and sure enough there was a hole all the way to the top.  It was a small hole, but at least the chimney wasn't plugged completely.  Ellis went back into the parlor and stood by the stove for a moment looking at John, and Duncan, and Fred entrenched in front of the silent television.
	"Who wants to help me clean the chimney?" he asked.
	There was no answer.  He asked again.  This time Duncan looked up blankly.
	"What do you want to do that for?" he asked.  "You can't clean it now.  There's a fire in the stove."
	"I know that.  I mean the kitchen chimney," Ellis answered.
	"What the hell for?"  John asked.
	"Francine might be able to fix up some better vittles if there was an oven and a real stove," he said, with a slight tone of exasperation.
	"Don't think I'm going to do all the cooking around here, just because there's a stove though," Francine chipped in.  "I do most shit around here already."
	"You might as well clean the chimney too then," Duncan said with a wry chuckle.
	"Don't be an asshole Duncan," She replied.
	"I'll help you Ellis," Fred said, and started up out of the soft chair he had slid down into.
	"I'll go get a rope and that chain from the shed," Ellis announced, happy to finally get some help.  "I think I can get to the chimney by crawling out the window in your room."
	"That roof is going to be slick as hell," Fred said.  "What do you want me to do?"
	"You need to find something to put all the ash in and something to dig it out of the clean-out hole," Ellis answered.  "It looks like there's going to be a lot of it.  You'll have to pull on one end of the rope too, if I can get it down through there to you."
	Fred didn't quite know what he meant by this last statement, but he went out back looking for a bucket for the ashes and something to scoop them with.  Ellis put on his coat and went out to the shed.  When he returned he had two lengths of light rope and the tire chain.
	"Well, I'll go up stairs and crawl out the window and drop this shit down the chimney," Ellis said.  "If I fall off the roof, I hope someone will come drag me into the house so I don't freeze to death at least.  Oh here Fred," he handed Fred one of the short lengths of rope, "you take this, and when the chain gets to the bottom of the chimney, you tie this on it and then we can pull it back and forth inside."
	Ellis headed out the back door and up to Fred's room.  He slid up the bottom half of the old double hung window and carefully crawled out onto the roof, carrying the rope and chain.  There was about six inches of snow covering the roof and it was quite slick.  He worked his way up the valley to the top and straddled the peak.  Sliding along the crest, he finally made it to the chimney.  The bricks around the top were loose and several were missing.  As he cautiously stood up on the peak next to the chimney, he hoped that none of the missing bricks had fallen inward, and lay somewhere within the chimney, obstructing the opening.  When he had gotten himself upright on the crest of the roof and braced against the chimney, he tied the rope to the chain, and called down the opening.
	"Here it comes, Fred."
	He lowered the chain down the hole.  It disappeared into the darkness.  It went down smoothly for five or six feet and then came to rest.  He pulled it up to the top and then dropped it.  This time it went a little farther and stopped again.  Ellis knew that the soot and ash could build up a dam half way down that would take a long pole to break up if he wasn't careful, and he wondered how he could avoid this.  He pulled up the chain again and stuck his head right up to the opening in the top of the chimney.
	"Hey Fred," he called.  "Can you hear me?"
"Barely," Fred called back.  "There's a lot of stuff coming down."
	"Clean it out as we go," Ellis hollered down the chimney, and dropped the chain again.  It seemed like it went a little further this time, and he pulled it up again.  He waited for a few moments for Fred to clean out the soot that he thought must be building up at the bottom of the chimney, and then dropped the chain again.  After several more drops of the chain, he heard Fred's voice emanating up the chimney.
	"It's down," Fred called.  Let me tie on my rope."
	Ellis waited and presently he heard Fred call.  "Okay!"
	"You just hang on to your end of the rope and I'll drop the chain a few more times, and bang it around in there," Ellis called back down the chimney, and he began to pull the rope up.  He slid the chain up and down a dozen times or more, and then bent over the opening and called back down to Fred.
	"Hey Fred, take that mirror and look up the hole, and tell me if it's clear of shit."
	"Okay," he called back.  "Francine's about to piss her pants about the mess we've made."  He took the mirror and looked up the chimney.  Ellis leaned back to get out of the light that would shine down the hole, and presently Fred called back up the chimney.
	"Hey Ellis, there's a big hunk of shit about half way up."
	"Okay," Ellis called down, and he pulled the chain up to what he thought would be the right place and began to flap it around as best he could.  After a bit of this in several places, he dropped the chain to the bottom.
	"How's that?" he asked.
	Fred poked the mirror back into the clean out hole and looked up at the now, square patch of light that shone down through the brick column.
	"Looks pretty good from here," Fred called up the chimney.
	"Okay, I'll pull up the chain and we're done," Ellis called down and he pulled up the rope and chain.  When he had it all up out of the chimney, he threw it off the side of the roof, and carefully turned his back to the chimney and sat back down on the crest of the roof.  He scooted an inch or two at a time back to where the peak of two roof sections met at a right angle and slid down the valley they formed.  As he started down, one foot slid out from under him.  He landed on his butt and began to pick up speed.  He scrambled to get his feet back under him, but he could tell he was out of control, and as he went by the window he had crawled out of, he knew he was headed for the ground.  He felt like he was in a luge race without a sled.  He only slid eight or ten feet, but it seemed to take forever before he went over the edge of the roof.  He only fell a few feet before landing in a large lilac bush that was growing next to the house.  There was the sound of breaking branches and a thump as he hit the ground.  He felt a sharp pain on the side of his face where a broken branch had scraped him as he fell through the lilac, but other than that, he seemed unhurt.  He put his hand up to his cheek.  It was slippery.  When he took his hand away, it was covered with blood.  Not a whole lot, but enough to tell he had gouged himself pretty good, and he put his hand back over the wound.  He got up and headed around the house for the backdoor.  He met Fred as he rounded the corner.
	"You okay?"  Fred asked, as he saw him holding his face.
	"Boy that was quite a ride," Ellis answered.  "I'm okay, but I think I gouged up my cheek pretty good."  He took his hand away from his face to let Fred see the damage.
	"Oh shit!"  Fred said, grabbing Ellis' arm to stop him.  "That doesn't look too good.  Let's go in and take a better look at it."
	"Okay," Ellis answered.  I'll go in.  Oh, why don't you go grab the rope and chain?  They're around where I fell by that bush back there."  He pointed back to where he had just come from.
	Fred went back to the scene of the fall, found the chain and rope along with several branches broken off the lilac bush and returned to the house with the chain.  Ellis went into the house through the back porch, holding his hand tightly to his cheek.
	Francine was at the sink rinsing the bowl she had mixed the groatcakes in.  "Jesus Christ!  You made a mess in here," she said as he entered the kitchen.  I hope you two plan on cleaning it up."  She turned to look at him as she set the bowl on the counter, and saw the blood oozing out between his fingers.  "God!  What happened to you?  Are you okay?"  She stepped across the kitchen with the dishtowel still in her hand and took Ellis by the arm he held over the cut.  "Let me see that Ellis.  How bad is it."
	There was the sound of the chain being thrown carelessly to the floor on the back porch and Fred came into the kitchen.  "Ellis fell off the roof and got a pretty bad cut on his face," he said, stepping to where the two of them stood near the cook stove.
	"What's that?  Ellis' hurt," Duncan said from the parlor as he joined them in the kitchen.
	Ellis took his hand away from his face and the blood immediately began to flow out of the wound.  "Shit that doesn't look good," Francine said, putting the towel up to his cheek to soak up the blood.  She held it tightly against the cut for a few moments and when she took it away, they could see a tear in the side of his cheek about two inches long and well down into the flesh.  It quickly filled with blood again and began to run down his cheek.  She put the towel back against the gash.  "I'll bet that hurts.  Here hold that up there," she said turning to go into the bathroom.  "Do we have any first aid stuff?"
	"Not really," Fred said.  "I think we have a few band aids, but this is beyond that.  I think he needs a few stitches.
	Ellis stood, leaned up against the cook stove with the towel pressed to his cheek, looking a little pale.  "Fuck!" he said loudly.  "I don't want to go to the God damn hospital.  Can't we just tape the thing shut and forget it?"
	"Boy, I don't think so," Fred said.  "Doesn't it hurt?"
	"Not yet, but I bet it will pretty soon," he answered.  And it's going to hurt a lot more if I have to go get a bunch of damn stitches."
	"Well you have to," Francine said.  "This thing isn't going to tape up very well at all."
	John, who had gone upstairs, heard the commotion and came thumping down the stairs into the kitchen.  "What's all the excitement in here?" he asked.
	Ellis took the towel away from his face to show John what was going on, and the blood quickly filled the cut and ran down into his thin beard.
	"Oh shit!"  John said and turned away.  "What are we going to do?"
	"Nothing," Ellis said.
	"No, you're going into the hospital and get some stitches, and that's all there is to it," Francine said with an authority that made Ellis look at her in a different light than he had seen her before.
	"Okay!" he said. "I'll go, but I still think you could just tape it shut."
	Fred didn't say anything, but he looked at Ellis and shook his head in disapproval.
	"How'd that happen?"  John asked turning back to the group.
	"Oh, Ellis fell off the roof and killed a bush out back of the house," Duncan said, as he walked back into the parlor and sat down.
	Ellis laughed mildly at that, and said, "No shit, that poor lilac will never be quite the same.  Hey, is there another rag or something around?  This one's starting to get pretty full of blood."
	"Jesus Ellis," John said weakly.  "You're so gruesome."
	"I can't help it," Ellis answered.  "I can't just tell it to stop bleeding or anything."
	"Who's going to take him into town?"  Francine asked, walking into the bathroom for another towel.  As she passed the freshly cleaned chimney, she stepped in the soot that had spilled out onto the floor in front of the bathroom door.  "God, you guys made a mess in here," she couldn't help but remark.
	"I'll take him in," Fred answered.
	"Yeah sure, that way you can get out of cleaning all this soot up," she said, returning with a moderately clean hand towel.
	"I can clean that up first," Fred answered.  "Where's the broom?"
	"No you guys get going.  I'll clean it up," she said, folding and handing Ellis the towel.  "I'd just have to clean it again after you left anyway.  You know you could never make me happy."  She gave Fred a smile and waved them both off, like she was shooing a dog or cat off the porch.  "If you could find me a new mop while you're in there, it would sure make me happy though," she added, stepping back into the bathroom and grabbing the well worn mop from the bucket, and returning with it, she held it out for Fred to see.  "I just want to replace this raggy stuff.  You can't mop up anything with this worn out piece of shit."
	"Where do you find something like that?"  Fred asked.
	"Any grocery store," she answered, shaking her head at how dumb he seemed to be.  "I don't think it would cost more than a buck or two."
	"Okay, we'll take a look," he said taking his coat off the back of one of the kitchen chairs.  "I didn't think I'd ever be buying a mop."
	"It'll be good for you," she said laughing.  "I'm going to domesticate the whole batch of you boys before I'm done, you know.  I've already got John well on the way."
	"I heard that," John called from the parlor.  "You might think so, but I could revert at any time."
	Where's your coat Ellis?"  Fred asked.
	"It's hanging there by the door," Ellis said pointing to the coat hooks next to the back door.
	"See, I have Ellis headed in the right direction too," she said with a sarcastic smile for Ellis.  "I've only been here for week and already he's hanging up his coat."
	"You'll never domesticate me," Duncan said from the other room.
	"You're going to be a challenge Duncan," she said, "and I'm going to have to start by just house training you."
	"God you're strict Francine," Duncan added.  "Hey you guys better burn one before you leave for the hospital.  Medicinal purposes you know."
	"We can smoke one on the way in," Fred said walking into the parlor for a joint.
	Duncan already had the candy tin open and handed Fred two joints.  "Here you better take a couple.  That's a pretty bad cut.  No you better take four."  He took two more of the slim white cylinders from the tin and handed it to Fred.
	"Thanks," he said, slipping them into his shirt pocket and heading out of the room.  "We'll need them before we get back."
	"You got everything you need Ellis," Fred said as he went through the kitchen.
	"I guess," he said, and then trying to stall, he added,  "Can't we just tape it shut and forget the hospital."
	"Absolutely not Ellis," Francine said firmly.  "You get out of here right now before you bleed to death."
	"It's quit bleeding," he said, taking the towel away from his cheek to show her.  The blood flowed up out of the wound and began to run down his face again.
	"No it hasn't," she said with a disgusted scowl.  "You guys just get going," and she shooed them out the back door.
	It was still cold out, and Ellis shivered as he headed for the Volvo.  Several small red stains in the snow could be seen where he had dripped blood on his way into the house.  Punt greeted them, tail wagging, as they reached the car, and Ellis patted him on the head.  "You stay here buddy." he said, opening the door.  "We'll be back."
	Fred started the car and handed Ellis one of the joints, without a word.  As they pulled out of the driveway, Ellis awkwardly lit the joint, took a long hit and handed it back to Fred.  There was a scattering of clouds hanging motionless in the still air.  The sun had woven its way down through them in places to form shadow patterns on the snow-covered hills.  The rounded forms of the hills themselves cast their own shadows from the low angle of the winter sun, and the combination of these soft and hard shapes that lay on the surface of the ground, provided Ellis with a pleasant diversion from the pain that was beginning to present itself to the ragged nerve endings of his cut.  The Volvo traveled smoothly along the snow-packed gravel road, around the gentle sweeping curves, rising and settling with the rolling nature of these wind-blown and wave-like hills.  Ellis took his tobacco from his pocket and began to roll a cigarette with considerable difficulty.  He tried to hold the towel against his cheek with his shoulder, but that left him little dexterity in that arm and hand.  Finally he scooted around, pressing his face and towel against the back of the seat and managed to roll and light the cigarette.
	"Well, this thing's starting to hurt now," he said, straightening himself in the seat.
	"Yeah, I'm not surprised, that's a pretty deep gouge," Fred remarked.  "It's really jagged too.  I'll bet it leaves a nasty scar.  Is it still bleeding?"
	Ellis took the towel away from his face to let Fred look, but before Fred could say anything he could feel the dark crimson fluid ooze up out of the opening and begin to flow down his cheek.
	"That's a bad one alright.  It might bleed for days if you don't get it sewed up," he said.
	"God I hate that," Ellis whined.  "Some inexperienced nurse will probably get in there and scrub the shit out of it with a wire brush or something."
	"Maybe she'll be cute, and they may even give you some good drugs for the pain, and Molly will make an appropriate fuss over you, I suppose."
	"I'm not sure it'll all be worth it, but some good pain killers would be nice," Ellis mused.
	They reached the highway and Fred turned toward Pullman.  The road was clear of snow, and what little traffic there was, moved along rapidly.  It took about fifteen or twenty minutes before they crested the hill at the edge of town and began to drop into the populated valley below.  At the foot of the hill, they stopped for a street light and watched a steady stream of cars pass in front of them on their way to and from the many endeavors of their occupants' lives.  The light turned green, and they made their way across the street and up onto the hill where the hospital perched precariously, looking out over the bustle of the community.  Fred pulled into the parking lot and stopped in front of a sign that read "Patient Parking".  They got out and headed for the main entrance.  Ellis removed the towel, refolded it and pressed it back against his face, just in time to catch a drip before it ran into his beard.  They approached the desk where a heavy-set middle-aged woman, that reminded Ellis of the witch from Hansel and Gretle, asked what they wanted.
	"He's got a bad cut on his face," Fred answered, as Ellis removed the towel momentarily for her to see.
	"Take a seat, we'll get to you in a few minutes," she almost growled.  "There's quite a few people here in front of you.  Here, fill this out while you're waiting."  She shoved a clipboard with a form attached to it at Ellis.  They sat down and Ellis began to fill out the form.  The very first question asked for his student identification number, and he got up to ask what he should put there if he wasn't a student.
	"We can't treat you here if you're not a student," she snapped at him.  "This is the University Infirmary.  You'll have to go to the hospital's emergency room."
	"Oh, where's that?"  Ellis asked.
	She waved her arm off in the direction and said, "end of the hall, down the stairs and to the left."  She looked at him blankly and shook her head in a way that made him glad to be in the wrong place.  He turned in the direction she had indicated and started off.
	"Hey!" she snapped at him again.  "You might want to leave that clipboard here.  They have their own down there."
	He returned to the desk, set the clipboard in front of her with a sarcastic smile, and headed toward the stairs again.  Fred rose from his seat and as he walked past the woman he hesitated long enough to catch her eye.
	"You know," he said, and after a pause long enough to get her full attention, "you don't have to be such a bitch about it."
	There was a muffled giggle from the students in the waiting room, and Fred followed Ellis down the hallway.  The dragon woman looked visibly shocked by Fred's comment, but said nothing, and they were soon making their way down the stairs.
	"God, I can't believe you said that to her," Ellis said, as he reached the doorway at the bottom of the steps.
	"I was right though, wasn't I?"  Fred said, following him through the door.
	There was a long hallway to the left with several doors leading off of it.  There were normal engraved plastic hospital signs above these doors reading 'X-ray' and 'Laboratory' and so on.  At the end of the hall were large double doors with 'Emergency' pasted above them in letters most of a foot high.  They walked the nearly fifty feet to these swinging double doors and went in.  They entered a large brightly-lit room with a counter directly in front of them and a young woman sitting at a desk behind it.  She looked up as they came in and smiled.
	"Oh, oh," she said.  "What have we got here?"
	Ellis took the towel from his face and showed her his cheek.  "Clumsiness," he said, and returned the now blood-stained towel to his face.
	"Ooo," she said, scrunching up her face a little.  "That looks kinda nasty."  She stood and came out from behind the desk and leaned forward over the counter.  "Here, let me take a better look at that."
	Ellis pressed his belly against the front of the counter and took away the towel, tipping his head to give her a good look.  He could feel the blood begin to dribble down his face again.
	"That is a nasty one," she said.  "How long ago did you do this?"
	Ellis looked at Fred, who said, "about an hour ago or a little less."
	"How did it happen?" she asked.  "Oh, you can hold that rag back on there if you would.  We can't be getting blood all over the front desk, now can we?"  She smiled at Ellis, turned back to her desk, picked up the telephone, and dialing a single number, waited for a moment before she began to speak into it.
	"Hi Jan, I have a fellow down here with a cut on his face that's going to need a suture or two.  Is doctor Castino up your way?"  She paused for a moment, all the time smiling at Ellis.  "Well, we'll get him ready and you see if you can't get him down here as soon as you can.  Okay thanks.  Bye."
	She set the phone down and went back to the counter where Fred and Ellis stood waiting.  She picked up a form, clipped to a clipboard, and handing it to Fred, she said, "here, you fill out what you can on that and I'll take . . ." she paused and looked at Ellis.  "What's your name?"
	"Ellis," he answered.
	You come with me Ellis, and we'll see if we can't get you cleaned up and ready for the doctor when he gets down here, and then he can poke some little holes in you."
	Ellis moaned.
	"Oh, he won't hurt you much, really," she replied
	"I'm not worried about him," he returned.  "It's the cleaned up part that's going to hurt."
	"Oh, you've been through this before it sounds like," she said with a chuckle.
	"Yeah, a time or two," he answered.
	"Are you a little accident-prone?" she asked.
	"I guess so," he said.
	"Oh, you didn't tell me how you did this," she said.
	Ellis told the whole story in detail while she gathered the equipment to scrub the cut.  She also reached into a large flat drawer, took out the suture for the doctor, and placed it in a tray.
	"That must have been quite a sight.  I wish I'd been there.  Now, why don't you hop up on that table and I can get you cleaned up," she said, turning toward him with a plastic squeeze bottle and a small slim stick wrapped on one end with cotton.  "Here, I'm going to deaden that a little first."
	Ellis hesitated from removing the towel from the cut, scowled at her for a moment, and then took it away, holding it in his lap.  She squirted some solution from the bottle onto the cotton and dabbed it on the cut.  He expected it to sting, but instead it seemed to take away some of the pain that had by now begun to be quite uncomfortable.
	"See, that didn't hurt, did it?" she said daubing a little more of the liquid into the wound.
	"No, it actually feels better," he answered.
	"Well it's going to get better and better.  That's what we're here for," she said, still smiling at him.  "Let's give that a minute or two and then I'll really numb it up and you won't feel anything there while I scrub it up and the doctor sews you back together."
	She turned back to the counter and took a syringe from a cabinet and filled it with, what Ellis figured must be Novocain or something like it.  He shuddered to think of her shoving that needle into his cut, but sat there bravely.  Presently, she turned and gave him an affected smile and said, "this may sting a little, but you can handle it."
	He braced himself, and she did just what he had feared.  She poked the needle right into the cut and squeezed a few drops of the fluid into the gash.  She did it three times and by the third one, he could barely feel it.
	"There that wasn't so bad, now was it," she said.
	"God, I hate that part," he said, smiling back at her.
	"You have been through this before, haven't you."  She turned away and threw the syringe into the trashcan next to the counter.
	"Yeah, I guess I've buggered myself up a few times," he answered, "and this next part, the scrubbing, is always the worst."
	"It won't be bad.  You have a rather nasty laceration, but it's pretty clean," she said, looking into the cut.  "I'm just going to wash it out a little."
	 The cut had become completely numb by now, and Ellis sat quietly while the nurse flushed it out with saline solution, wiping away the excess along with the blood that seemed to keep flowing to the surface and down his cheek.  When she had finished washing the wound, she turned back to the counter and picked up a disposable razor.
	"Here, let's get some of your beard away from that cut, so the doctor doesn't stitch any of it into the thing." and she proceeded to shave off the thin hair around the effected area.  When she had finished she folded several layers of sterile gauze into a thick pad and handed it to Ellis.
	"Here hold that tightly on there and it won't bleed so much." she said turning away.  "I'm going to see if I can't find doctor Castino, and get you sewed back together."  She left the room.  As she went through the waiting room, Ellis could hear her speak to Fred.  "How are you doing with that awful form?" she asked.
	"I have most of it, but there are a few things I don't know," he answered.
	"Your friend's right in there.  You can go in and get him to answer those things for you if you like."  She then whisked away down the long hallway in search of the doctor.
	Fred came into the room and found Ellis sitting dully on the operating table with his feet dangling over the side holding the thick pad against the side of his face.
	"Hi.  I need help with a couple questions on this dumb form," he said.
	"What's that?"
	"How's your face feel?"
	"Numb."
	"Well, what's your social security number?"
	Ellis recited it to him.
	"You have that memorized," Fred said.  "I have to look it up every time I need it."
	"Yeah, my dad made me memorize that years ago," Ellis announced a little proud.  "He said it would come in handy.  It has."
	"What's your birth date?"
	Ellis told him.
	"Where were you born?"
	"What the hell do they want to know that for?"  Ellis asked.
	"How should I know," Fred answered, "but they do.  Where was it?"
	"Actually I don't know," Ellis responded.  "I was adopted and somehow they lost those records.  Just leave it blank and see what they do."
	"They'll get over it," Fred said.  "Do you have insurance?"
	"No."
	"Who do you want them to contact in case of emergency?
	"Fuck, I don't know."  Ellis looked puzzled.  Not long ago, he would have put his parents there, but since the blow up with his dad, he didn't feel like doing that.  He sat there thinking more about the blow up than the question.  All he had done is say 'shit' in front of his mother and his dad had just flown into a rage and told him to 'never darken his door again'.  That seemed a little extreme, even for his dad.  There had to be something else he didn't know about that pissed him off enough to do that, he thought.  Who else would they contact though?  He just couldn't think of anyone.
	"Just leave that blank too," he said finally.
	"Okay, here's the last one.  Where do you want the bill sent?"  Fred looked up at Ellis and grinned at that question.
	Ellis gulped and made a little face to go with it.  "Shit, I don't know.  I don't have any money anyway.  How much do you think it'll be."
	"I don't have any idea, millions probably," he said.
	"No shit, it might as well be," Ellis shook his head in dismay.  "Do we have an address at the farm?" he asked.
	"Yeah, it's just a route number, but it'll make'em happy."  Fred wrote the route and box number on the form.  "Here you need to sign this to make it all official," he said, handing Ellis the clipboard.
	He took it, signed the bottom of the page and handed it back, just as the nurse came in with the doctor.
	"Well, so you stuck your face somewhere it didn't belong, huh?" the doctor announced as he entered the room.
	"Yeah, I guess so," Ellis answered.
	"Let's see what we have here," he said walking up and standing in front of Ellis.  Ellis lowered the towel exposing the cut, and doctor Castino poked around at it roughly for a moment.  "Well, it looks like we might be able to put this back together.  You may have a little scar, but it shouldn't show much once your beard grows back over it.  What did you get tangled up with here anyway?" he asked.
	"A mean lilac bush got a hold of me," Ellis answered.
	"Mean isn't the word for it.  Did it jump out at you or what?" he asked.
	"No, not really," Ellis chuckled.  "Actually it was just sitting there minding its own business, and I fell off the roof and landed right in the middle of it."
	"So you attacked it, so to speak," the doctor mused, all the while preparing the suture.
	"You might say that," Ellis answered.
	"What were you doing up on the roof this time of year?"  Castino kept pressing.
	Ellis explained, and when he had finished the doctor began the process of sewing the ragged flaps of skin back together.  It only took eight stitches and he was done.  He set everything back on the tray and looked carefully at his work, holding Ellis by the chin and turning his head back and forth.  "Well, there you go.  You're as good as new, but like I said, you may get a slight mark of distinction out of it."
	Ellis hopped off the table and stepped to a mirror over the sink, looking at the freshly closed wound.  "That looks pretty acceptable," he said.
	"Acceptable!"  Castino said, sounding a little offended.  "That's one hell of a fine job, considering how you looked coming in here."
	"Oh no, I didn't mean that," Ellis retreated.  "It looks great, really."
	The doctor smiled and walked toward the door.  "I better finish my rounds" he said, and then stopped at the doorway and turned to Ellis once more.  "You keep that clean, and go to your regular doctor in about a week to get those sutures out."  Reaching in his pocket, he took out a small plastic pill bottle and tossed it to Ellis.  "Here, that may hurt a little after the anesthetic wears off.  This might help you sleep better tonight, but you should be fine by tomorrow.  Remember to keep that clean.  Don't be afraid to wash it gently with a little soap, and leave it open to the air, That will help it heal faster."  He smiled and turned, leaving the room.
	"Well," said the nurse, "I guess you're ready to go."  She gestured for him to lead the way.  When they had all passed into the waiting room she went behind her desk and sat down.  "You take care, and stay out of the bushes for a while."
	"Oh I will," Ellis said, putting his hand up to the cut.  He could feel the stitches with his fingers, but he could feel nothing in his face.  "Thank you very much."
	Ellis turned and followed Fred who was half way down the hall.  Fred held the door at the bottom of the stairs and they headed up to the floor above.  As they walked by the heavy-set woman they had encountered before, she looked up, scowled, and pushed her chair back from her desk.
	"Hold on there," she said, addressing Fred.  "You're kind of an impertinent young man, and I think you'd better learn some manners."
	"Oh, you think so," Fred said, pausing again in front of her desk.  Then leaning down, he put both hands on the edge of her desk, and in a near whisper, he said, "I'm sorry if I was rude or anything, but your presence is very unbecoming."  He straightened back up and walked away, leaving the poor woman speechless again.
	They left the hospital and walked across the parking lot to the Volvo.  Fred jumped in and started the car.  Ellis stood next to the car for a moment looking back up the hill at the campus, and the students making their way to and from their various classes.  It hadn't been that long since he was part of this circus and he felt both glad to be out of the rat race, and at the same time, he seemed to miss some aspects of it.  He got in the car and Fred pulled out of the lot and into the street.
	"How do you feel?"  Fred asked.
	"Oh, I don't know.  Not too bad," he answered.
	"Feel up to getting a bunch of coal?  Now that you got the kitchen stove running, we're going to need more than we did before," Fred said as he pulled across an intersection and headed in the direction of downtown.  "I'll bet Francine keeps that cook stove running all the time."
	"Yeah, no shit, I may have fucked up there," Ellis agreed.  "We're going to need to figure out how to get some firewood maybe.  I wish we had a pick-up truck.  We could just back up to the coal pile and shovel like mad, and get a week or two's coal all at once, if we were careful.
	"No shit!"  Fred exclaimed.  "That might work.  We know a bunch of people with pick-ups.  Hell, Gale has one I'll bet he'd let us use."
	"We can go by there on the way home and see," Ellis said, and in the meantime we can get a sack or two.  Do you have anything to put it in?"
	"No, all that shit's in Duncan's car, but we need to go to the store anyway.  We can get something there along with Francine's fucking mop," Fred said.  "God, I swear that girl's going to be the death of us all."
	"Really.  She reminds me of a house mother we had in the fraternity I was in up in Cheney."  Ellis laughed, and reached in his pocket for his tobacco.  "We need to kill an hour or so before it's dark enough to get coal.  Why don't we go to the grocery store and then up to Dave's and burn one until it's dark.  We can probably even mooch a beer off Dave."
	"You mean Molly's, don't you," Fred said, giving Ellis a look out of the corner of his eye.
	Ellis didn't say anything, but knew he was right.  Fred laughed at Ellis' silence and headed for the store.  When they got there, Fred parked and they went in after a mop.  The store was bright, and warm, and full of people pushing shopping carts laden with all kinds of, what seemed to dumpster divers, like exotic foods.  Ellis wondered how they could consume all that stuff without becoming fat as pigs.  On second look, he noticed that most of them were more than a bit porcine.
	"Where would you look for a mop?"  Fred asked.
	"I have no idea," Ellis answered, looking at the signs at the end of each aisle.  "How about 'housewares'?  That might have them."
	They wandered down the houseware isle, and presently came to a display of complete mops of several different kinds.  Fred found a rack of replacement parts, and sure enough, there were some raggy looking things just like Francine wanted.  There were two kinds.  One was only a dollar twenty-nine, and looked real thin.  The other was nice and fat, but cost a dollar and eighty-nine cents.
	"What do you think Ellis should we get her the Cadillac, or just get her the cheapo?"
	"Oh, I don't know.  It might be worth the sixty cents just to keep her happy," Ellis said and took the expensive one from the rack.  "It does look like it's a lot better, don't you think?"
	"Yeah, what the hell, it's only money.  I hope she appreciates it," Fred agreed.  "I can't believe anyone would bother mopping that place, but if it keeps her from nagging, it's worth it."
	"You know, she may be kinda different, but I am getting to like her anyway," Ellis announced.
	"She's probably the most normal one of us all out there," Fred said, looking around the store at the flock of people pushing their carts, full to the brim with stuff of all sorts.
	They stood in the checkout line for at least ten minutes waiting to buy the mop and then left, a little worse for wear from the experience.  Fred drove the car around back to the dumpster and stopped.  There were several good-sized boxes that would do nicely for coal and he put them in the trunk of the Volvo.  Ellis found a hand full of carrots and some onions that still looked edible, and then, resting, half hidden under a stack of flattened cardboard boxes, was a full sack of potatoes.  He reached in and pulled them out, and underneath them was a flattened carton of Top Brand tobacco.  There were twelve, still sealed pouches.  The only damage was that they had been smashed, and the outer box, containing each separate pouch was misshapen.
	"Wow!" he exclaimed.  "Look at this.  What a find."  He reached in, almost tipping forward and falling into the dumpster, and retrieved the squashed carton.  Fred looked at him holding his prize and shook his head in dismay.
	"How nice," he said.  "Now you can poison us for free.  What a deal."
	"No shit!"  Ellis was ecstatic.  "You know how much this shit costs?
	"Yeah, I know.  We've all saved." Fred laughed and turned back to the car loading the potatoes.  "Is there anything else in there worth getting?"
	Ellis looked back over the side of the dumpster, still clutching the tobacco.  "I don't see anything."
	"Well, let's get the hell out of here then," Fred said closing the trunk and walking to the drivers side of the car and getting in.  Ellis got in as well, and they drove away.
	Fred picked a path through fairly thick traffic, and finally worked his way up the backside of College Hill to where Dave and Carol lived.  They parked, went up to the house and knocked.  They heard Dave yell to come in over the blare of both the television and the stereo, and they entered.  As usual it was warmer than need be in the house and they immediately took off their coats.
	"I said you could come in, but I didn't say you could take off your coats," Dave said as he leaned back and turned down the stereo.
	Fred threw his coat at him.  It landed right on him, covering his head and shoulders, spilling much of the beer he held on his lap.
	"You fucker!"  Dave bellowed, throwing the coat off onto the floor.  "Jesus Christ, now I'm all wet."
	"It's good for you, you asshole," Fred said laughing.  "What's up.  You want to burn one or not?"
	Carol came in from the kitchen, drying her hands on a dishtowel, with her normal cheery expression.  "Hi you guys.  Did I hear someone say it was time to burn one?"
	"No time like the present," Fred said sitting in a chair across from Dave.
	"Let me call Molly.  She'll be glad to see you Ellis," she said looking at him for the first time.  "Jesus what did you do to your face?"
	Ellis touched his cheek gingerly and turned it toward her for a better look.  "I got mouthy with Fred, and he beat me up," he said with a grin.
	"Yeah right," Fred said shaking his head.  "The dumb shit fell off the roof and landed in a lilac bush."
	"What the hell you doing on the roof?  Serves you right for being such a klutz."  Dave said with a rough laugh.
	"That looks awful," Carol said turning away.  "I'll get Molly.  She'll be more sympathetic than he is."  She went to the head of the stairs and called down for Molly to join them.
	Carol returned with two beers.  "Here you look like you could use a beer Ellis," she said holding one of the bottles out to him.  "How about you Fred?"  She handed him one as well, and looked back at Ellis.  "What did happen?" she asked.
	"Oh, we were cleaning the chimney, and I slipped on the snow coming back down off the roof, and landed on a bush next to the house.  I must have broke a branch or something, and it poked me," he said, just as Molly came into the room.  Ellis turned with a smile to greet her, and said, "Hi."
	She beamed until she noticed the gash on his cheek, and then her expression turned almost to horror.  "Oh Ellis!" she squealed.  "What happened?  Are you okay?  Come in the kitchen and let me look at that."  She led him into the kitchen where there was more light, looking closely at his wound.  It gave him a warm feeling to have her fuss over him and he stood there holding both her hands in his.
	"I'm okay," he said.  "It's really nothing."
	"That's nothing!" she said reaching up and gently touching his face.  "What happened?"
	"It's a long story," he said with a smile.  "I'll tell you later, right now I just want a big hug."
	They put their arms around each other and pressed their bodies into one mass of warmth and affection.  After a moment or two, they pulled away enough to let their lips meet and kissed.  It was a long, warm, deep kiss that continued until they heard Dave hollering from the other room.
	"Hey you two, that's a bunch longer than it takes to look at a tiny little cut like that.  What the hell you doing with my sister in there, you masher Ellis.
	"God Dave, you're such a butt sometimes," Carol said, shaking her head.
	Ellis and Molly broke away, but continued to look on each other with a glow that could have lit up one of the Carlsbad Caverns, and then went into the living room to join the group.  Fred had just lit the joint and passed it to Dave.  The five of them smoked in near silence until there was nothing left, but a roach and then Carol threw it into the fireplace and sat down.  Molly and Ellis had already taken a seat, squished together so closely on the couch that they barely covered one of the cushions.
	Fred leaned back in his chair, took a drink from his beer, and let out the last little bit of marijuana smoke he had been holding.  "Well we're in after more coal," he said.  "That is, besides getting Ellis sewed back up from his little mishap."
	"You call that little," Molly uttered, with a mild shudder.
	"It's no big deal," Ellis asserted, taking her hand.
	"Now that we cleaned the chimney," he continued, "we're going to burn at least twice as much coal.  Francine's probably going to have the cook stove running all the time."
	"Who's Francine?"  Carol asked.
	Oh, you haven't heard about Francine," Fred went on.  "John picked her up at some anti-war rally about a week or so ago, and she's been living out there ever since.  She's okay, but I think we're a little too crude for her and she's always trying to clean the place up."
	"It's about time someone looked after you batch of scruffy hooligans out there," Carol said with a chuckle.
	"Yeah, well, she sure is trying.  She got me to buy her a fucking mop, and she's even got Ellis hanging up his coat."
	Molly gave Ellis a sideways glance that had a mild touch of jealousy attached to it and then squeezed his hand.
	Fred went on for a few minutes, telling them how Francine had gotten there, and then looking out the window, said, "Looks like it's dark out there.  We better go get some coal."
	"Yeah I suppose we should," Ellis answered.
	"You're not going to leave already.  You just got here," Molly complained, and leaning over, she whispered in Ellis' ear.  "Can you come back and spend the night?"
	Ellis smiled and nodded. "Sure if it's okay with bully boy over there."
	"What's that," Dave said, tipping up what was left of his beer and draining it down his throat.
	"Ellis is coming back to stay the night, big mouth," Molly said firmly.
	"Oh I see.  I suppose you two will be having sex next," he said with a roaring laugh.  "Right here under my roof too."
	Molly flushed brightly, and Carol spluttered.  "God dammit Dave, I'm going to have your fucking tongue cut out."
	"You'd be sorry if you did," he said with a sly grin that made Carol flush as well.  "Oh hell, why would I give a shit?  You're a big girl.  If you want to hang out with a scruffy little fucker like Ellis, it's okay by me."  He looked over at Ellis and winked.
	"Hey, if you hurry up, there's a good movie on the tube.  I can't remember the name, but it's got more blood and sex than anything I've ever seen on TV."  Dave said rubbing his hands together.
	"We're not going to watch that damn thing again Dave," Carol said firmly.  "There's a really good Cary Grant movie on, that I've been wanting to see again for years, and we're watching it, and if you don't like it Dave, you can go over to Rod and Willie's and watch your blood and gore crap with them.  They watch all that kinda shit."
	Dave howled with laughter.  "God, I love it when you're like that.  It just turns me on."  He leaned back in his chair and stretched out full length.  "Okay it's Cary Grant, but only if you get me another beer."  He tossed his empty beer can to her.
	She caught it deftly, shook her head and went into the kitchen.  When she returned, she had a fresh beer in her hand.  "Here, you want this, asshole," she said and tossed it across the room to him.
	"Jesus Christ Carol, now it's all shook up, " he complained.
	"Good!" was her only reply, and she turned, going back into the kitchen.
	"Well, let's go get some coal, and then I'll bring you back here," Fred said, getting up from the chair he was sitting in, and picking up his coat, that still lay in the middle of the floor.
	Ellis rose, picked up his coat from the end of the couch and put it on.  "I'll be back in a little bit then," he said, as Fred opened the door.
	"Don't take too long, Ellis," Molly said, reaching over and giving him a little affectionate pinch on the leg.
	He turned back to her and smiled.  "This won't take too long," he said,  "unless we get busted or something."  He turned away and they left shutting the door behind them.
	Molly looked over at Dave, and said, "why do you have to be such an asshole around Ellis?  You know it's not just Ellis either.  You've been like that around every boy-friend I've ever had, even when we were in high school."  She sat up straight on the couch and folded her arms in front of her, looking rather stern.  "I can take care of myself, you know.  You just get off on making fun of other people, and no one thinks you're as cute as you think you are.  In fact you're not as cool as you think.  It's really kinda sad, when you think of it, how you're always sticking your fucking nose into everybody else's business and making fun of them, when you don't have much of a life of your own.  You're not even taking school very seriously anymore.  You used to do so well at it."  She stood up and started to leave, then stopped and turned back to him, sitting across the room.  "I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings, Dave, but you can't just keep treating people that way."  She turned back toward the kitchen and walked away.
	"She's right, you know," Carol called from the kitchen.  "What do you say we make something to eat," she said to Molly, opening the refrigerator.  "We're all probably hungry, and Ellis will be too when he gets back here."
	"That sounds good," Molly answered.  "What should we make?"
	"Oh, I don't know, let's take a look in here and see what there is."  Carol started rummaging around on the shelves of the refrigerator, and they went to work.
	Fred and Ellis drove to the University coal pile, filled three cardboard boxes with coal and left without incident.  They then headed back to Dave and Carol's, without any other stops.
	"How you gonna get back to the farm?"  Fred asked.
	"I don't really know," Ellis responded, "but I suppose I'll just have to wait for John or Duncan to come into school, or else I could hitchhike.  I wish I'd thought to leave my skis somewhere out by the road.  I could have skied in from there if I had."
	"It's really hard to count on John or Duncan," Fred said with a snicker.  "They only go to school when they feel like it, and that seems to be less and less these days.  I'll have them check with Dave or Carol if they come in though."
	"Yeah, for whatever good that'll do," Ellis grumped.  "I'll probably just have to hitchhike."
	"You know," Fred offered, "I could take your skis out to that clump of trees at the head of Haines driveway tomorrow and you could at least ski in from there, that would save you having to walk through all this snow."
	"That would be cool, if you'd do that.  Man, that would save me from one hell of a hard walk on the back road."  Ellis yawned, and felt his cheek.  The feeling was beginning to return and it had started to hurt a little.
	"Hey, can I have one of those joints you still have?"  Ellis asked.
	"Sure, you can have them both," Fred answered.  "I'm just going to head home as soon as I drop you off at Molly's.  You can lay one on Dave, and maybe he'll leave you two alone."
	"He sure is being an asshole," Ellis remarked.
	"Oh, I think he's just teasing his sister more than anything, but he is kind of a pain in the butt," Fred mused.  "I really wonder sometimes how Carol puts up with him."
	The little Volvo pulled up in front of the house and stopped.  Ellis opened the door and stepped out.  "Well, I'll see you tomorrow or so.  You're really going to take my skis out to the road?" he asked.
	"Oh yeah, they'll be there sometime in the afternoon." Fred answered.
	"Well Jesus, thanks.  That'll really help.  See you then."  Ellis shut the door and Fred pulled slowly away.
	Ellis turned and trudged through the deep snow to the house.  He kicked most of the snow off his feet on the stairs and then knocked.  Dave called for him to come in and he did.
	"Shit, that didn't take long," Dave said, getting up and changing the channel on the television.
	"No, we're getting the coal scam down to a fine science."  Ellis took off his coat and laid it over the back of the couch.  "I think we're going to try and get a whole pick-up truck full one of these days."
	"I wonder what they'd do to you if they caught you," Dave thought out loud.
	"Probably not too much, but I'd just as soon not find out."  Ellis said, and walked into the kitchen, where he could hear Carol and Molly rustling around.
	"Hey Ellis, grab a couple of beers out of the fridge when you come back in here," Dave called from the living room.
	Molly met him at the kitchen door with a warm smile.  They touched each other gently, but said nothing.  Words weren't necessary for the moment.
	"Hi Ellis," Carol said, looking up from cutting vegetables.  "That was quick.  Are you hungry?  We're making some rice and vegetables, and there's apple pie for dessert."
	"Wow!  That sounds really good," Ellis answered.  "I am kinda hungry.  I had pretty much forgotten my stomach, what with this thing."  He put his hand to his cheek, feeling the bristly ends of the stitches.  They were tender, and he took his hand away, making a slight grimace as he did so.
	"God, that looks sore.  You poor thing," Molly said, giving him a look of sympathy.
	"It's starting to hurt alright, but it's not too bad, and the doctor gave me some kind of pain pills for it."  He took the little bottle out of his pocket and read the label.  "Emperin Compound #3," he read out loud.  "Oh boy, some good old opiates, that ought to keep me feeling no pain for a while."  He opened the bottle and dumped the contents out in his hand.  There were ten pills.  "No shit!  This could keep me out of trouble for a few days at least."
	"Hey Ellis, you going to get us a beer or what," Dave pestered from the other room.
	Ellis returned the pills to the bottle and put it back in his pocket.  Carol opened the refrigerator, took out two beers and handed them to Ellis.  "Here you better get one of these in to grumpy before he has a conniption fit."
	Ellis took the beers, and went into the living room.  "Here."  He handed one of the beers to Dave and opened the other for himself.  "What are you watching?"
	"Candid Camera," Dave answered.  "It's pretty dumb, but there are some funny things on there sometimes.  Did you see the one where the cute co-ed came on to the cop on the beat, and he took her up on it, and then he tried to arrest the whole group, cameraman and all."
	"No, I must have missed that one, but we do watch that sometimes out at the farm."  Ellis sat down and put his feet up on one of the low tables that cluttered the room.
	"Hey Dave," Ellis said quietly, looking over at him sitting slouched in his recliner like a big bear.  His shirt was half open in the front, and his hairy belly stuck out through the opening.  His shoes were off and lay on the floor next to two crumpled beer cans.
	"Yeah, what's that?"  Dave returned, glancing at him and then back to the television.
	"You seem to have a problem with Molly and I getting it together," Ellis blurted out.  "What's the deal?"
	Dave looked over at him again, but this time his attention was not back with the television.  "What do you mean?"
	"Oh, I don't know exactly, but you just don't act like you dig it."  Ellis took his feet off the little table and took a drink from the beer he held.
	"I can't say I give a shit one way or the other really, but she is married you know."  He took a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and put one in his mouth, then holding the pack out to Ellis, he said, "Here, want one of these?"  Ellis took one and lighting a match, he lit both of their smokes, and Dave continued.  "Her ex-husband, or I guess not yet, but soon I hope, is a real asshole.  He used to just terrorize her continually, and he even used to beat her up on occasion.  Not too bad or anything, but he used to push her around and one time he threw her down a flight of stairs and she had to go to the hospital.  I fucking near killed him once.  I guess that whole deal has me a little protective.  Maybe a little too protective even, but she is my only sister, and you know how that can be."
	Ellis leaned forward, flipped the ash from his cigarette into the ashtray on the low table and looked over at Dave.  "Well, I guess I understand some, but you know, I'm not like that, and my intentions here are straight up.  In fact I think I am falling for her in a big way, and I think she is too actually.  I think you ought'a give us a little space."
	"I guess I've been teasing her all her life, like brothers do you know," he said.  "It's just kind of a habit.  I suppose I could ease up a little.  If it's space you want, you've got it, but don't fuck her over.  I don't think she could take it right now."
	"Deal," Ellis replied.  He leaned back in the chair and took another drink.  What you gonna do when you get out of school here?" he asked.  "You're done this spring aren't you."
	"Shit, I don't know," Dave said.  "What the fuck made you ask that?  I guess I'll have a degree in math, but I don't really feel like going to work in some big corporation or anything.  I may go somewhere and work on a masters, but all that'll do is put off finding some job I'd hate anyway."
	"Yeah, I know what you mean," Ellis agreed.  "It's the same with me too.  A masters in art might get a guy a job as a college teacher somewhere, but I don't think I could handle it.  The university system has so much bullshit involved with it that I couldn't even make it through the masters degree part, much less try and teach a bunch of kids all that shit."
	"You got kicked out didn't you?"  Dave asked.
	"Yeah."  Ellis leaned forward and deposited his ash in the ashtray again.
	"How the fuck do you do that?"
	"Oh," Ellis chuckled.  "I just called it like I saw it and they didn't like it."
	"How's that?"
	I made a bunch of ceramic dog turds, and told them that, quote 'Art's shit', and you might as well call it like it is."  Ellis laughed as he remembered the incident.  "God those little dog turds were more real than a dog turd itself."
	"You mean you just told them that 'Art was shit'?"  Dave laughed out loud and blew out a thick cloud of smoke.  "That's kinda like telling them they've been wasting their time all these years, isn't it?  How'd they like that?  Well, I guess they kicked you out of the program."
	"Yeah, no shit." Ellis chuckled.  "I didn't really mean that painting, or sculpture, or whatever was shit in itself, but that the kind of 'Ebony Tower' level of the art world is just fucked.  There's so much politics involved.  It's not so much whether a person is good at whatever it is, but it has way more to do with who you know and who you blow.  It's just a bunch of political bullshit, and I don't want anything to do with that crap."
	"Yeah I think I know what you men," he said, but he didn't sound like he really did.
	"You know, it's pretty much the same in your field, math."  Ellis went on.  "You've seen all the back-biting shit that goes on up there between the professors, and even the students.  Then when you get out, the same thing goes on wherever you go to work, more than likely."
	"I suppose it's like that with everything," Dave agreed.  "Back home we grew up on a lemon and orange orchard, and the farmers were always fucking with each other, my dad included, trying to get a better price, or get to market first, or something, and all at the expense of the other farmers.  They couldn't just raise their crop and be happy with that.  It's kinda just the American way, competition and all that shit.  It's fucking capitalism, is what it is."
	"No shit!"  Ellis concurred.  "It's capitalism and greed, but I sure don't know what you can do about it.  It's permeated our whole society from the top down.  It's built into the structures that run everything from the government to our personal relationships, and it's especially prevalent in the fabric of our economic system.  Frankly, I think it's just a basic flaw in the nature of the human critter.  We're just plain greedy, and that's all there is to it."
	Carol and Molly both came into the living room, each carrying two plates heaped with food.  "Dinner's served.  Garbage, A-La-Rice," Carol announced.  Molly set both the plates she carried on the low table in front of the couch and sat down.  She looked over at Ellis, across the room, and motioned for him to join her.  Carol handed Dave one of the plates and then sat down where Ellis had been sitting.
	"Well, it's a 'dumpster dinner'.  These are all the vegetables Ellis has been bringing us.  They look pretty good don't they?"  Molly said as Ellis sat next to her on the couch, and she leaned her head on his shoulder briefly.
	Carol took a bite of the rice and vegetable mix and after chewing it up, she looked over at Dave and smiled.  "What do you think?  Not too bad for garbage.  The leftovers of our over affluent society."
	Ellis and Dave exchanged glances, and then they both looked quizzically at Carol, who became a little nervous from the sudden attention.  "What's the deal?  Why are you both looking at me?  What did I say?" she asked.
	Dave laughed.  "Oh nothing, you just picked up kinda where we left off in our conversation about society."
	"Oh yeah, what about society?"  Molly asked.
	"Yeah really, What about society?"  Ellis said.  "That's kind of the question.  It's out of control.  I suppose it's always been that way, but it seems more out of control than ever these days."
	"Where do you think it will all end?"  Molly asked.
	"End," Dave said.  "Who knows if it will end, unless we blow ourselves up?"
	"Or poison ourselves with pollution," Ellis threw in.
	"What are you guys talking about anyway?"  Carol quizzed.
	"Oh, it's just the nature of our society to . . . to live . . . to live somehow within the bullshit of the bureaucracy, I guess," Ellis answered hesitantly, not really having an answer for her.
	"Well, we're not really living within that normal society, are we?"  Molly said.  "We've kinda broke free, don't you think?"
	"Free!"  Dave spluttered, with his mouth full.  "What's so free about this?  We're sitting here eating garbage, good garbage," he said holding up both his hands in a gesture he hoped would emphasize he liked his meal, "but garbage nevertheless.  None of us are ever really free, not even the rich and powerful.  They're just as trapped in this fucking deal as the rest of us poor bastards at the bottom, by their insatiable drive to stay at the top."
	Carol put her fork down with a clink, and looked first, at Molly and Ellis, and then Dave.  "You know it's like there are two separate societies.  There's the rich and powerful, like you say, and then there's this other group that . . . that dances around the edges of the first group's affluence, pilfering the leftovers of their spoils.  Really, we're all just serfs, maybe even slaves, to that big fucking machine lumbering along like a steam-roller, squishing the souls out of us all for fuel to keep going."
	"Oh shit, that's good Carol," Ellis agreed.  "Now, how do you change it?"
	"No way," she answered.  "I'm just going to eat my pilferings happily and watch a good movie."  She looked at her wristwatch.  " Shit it's time for the movie."  She jumped up, changed the channel on the television to the movie and sat back down.  The credits were just ending and she breathed a sigh of relief.  " Oh good.  We didn't miss the first part.  It's really important."
	"God this is such a lame movie," Dave complained.  "Do we really have to sit through this damn thing again?"
	"Dave," Carol asserted.  "Molly and I have sat here quietly, and been subjected to mountains of sex and violence nearly every night since she got here, and tonight we're going to watch something different, whether you like it or not, and you're not going to say another word."
	"Look out Ellis," Dave said, getting up from his chair and walking toward the kitchen.  "This stuff needs more salt.  You better watch it Ellis.  About the time you get tangled up with women like this, you can just kiss off your chances of ever doing what you want again."
	"Jesus Christ Dave, you're such a spoiled brat.  I can hardly believe it," Molly said, showing little patience.  "You're just a baby if you don't get your way, and you have been ever since I can remember."
	Dave didn't respond, but continued to the kitchen after salt.  The movie began with one dark shadowed figure stalking another to the sound track of distant jungle drums set in the foreground of a subdued classical selection.  Dave returned and sat down without a word, and they were all silent until the first commercial.
	"Hey Ellis," Dave said with a loud burp.  "You want to go down town and play a little pool?"
	Ellis had a mouthful of rice and vegetables that gave him a little time to decide how to turn Dave down, and finally, after swallowing and taking a drink of beer, he merely said, "not really."
	"I might give you a chance to win back the two bucks I won from you last time we played."  He had a kind of beckoning smile on his face that fit well with his generally manipulative nature.
	"Yeah right, you just got lucky last time, and slopped in everything you shot at."  Ellis scraped what was left of his dinner into a pile that would be easy to scoop up.  "No.  I think I'll just stay right where I am.  This isn't too bad a movie.  You might like it yourself."
	"Really Dave," Molly said, putting her hand on Ellis' leg.  Ellis comes by to see me, and you try and drag him off to the bar.  Just relax."
	"Have another beer Dave," Carol said, trying to placate him.  "You'll like the movie.  It has a little violence and there's even a couple of good love scenes."
	"Yeah, I know.  I've seen the damn thing before and they don't show anything in those love scenes," he grumbled.
	"That's because they're love scenes, not drippy sex scenes.  Use your imagination, Dave, if you have any."  Carol let out a disgusted sounding, half laugh half snort and took a mouthful of food.
	The commercial ended, the movie continued, and they all sat in silence as they began to be sucked into a South Sea drama embroiled in suspense and intrigue.  Ellis and Molly finished their dinner and snuggled closely together into the soft cushions of the couch.  Even Dave settled back and took in the movie with a kind of complacent interest.  Carol tucked her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and sat glued to the unfolding plot.  At the next commercial, Molly hopped up and went into another room, returning with a blanket, which she spread out over Ellis and then crawled in next to him.  It didn't seem cold enough for a blanket, but it gave them both a sense of privacy and togetherness.  The movie was set on a South Sea island with lots of palm trees, and ocean, and sand.
	"There's our beach," Molly whispered, reaching over and laying her hand on Ellis' stomach.  He didn't say anything, but pulled her closer and gently kissed her on the cheek.  She looked up at him, smiled and rested her head on his chest.
	No one moved for more than an hour.  Carol hadn't missed a moment of the movie and Dave sat quietly, showing interest, at least in appearance.  Molly and Ellis sat, lay snuggled together under the blanket on one end of the couch, only partly aware of the movie and completely aware of each other.  They touched each other cautiously under the blanket from time to time, and by mid-movie she had unbuttoned most of his shirt buttons and her sweater had risen most of the way to her breasts.  Presently she yawned, gave a little moan and whispered to Ellis, "I keep nodding off.  You want to go to bed?"
	He stretched slightly and looked at her.  "Yeah, I've lost track of the movie," he said yawning himself.
	"I can tell," she whispered, running her hand along the waistband of his underwear, where she could feel the obvious indications of his attention having been diverted from the movie to something else.  She sat up pulling her sweater back down where it belonged as she let the blanket fall to her lap.
	"We're going to bed," she said to anyone listening, and got up.
	"Oh good," Dave spoke up.  "Now I can have the couch."
	"No, we can have the couch," Carol added.
	"Mmm, that sounds fun," Dave said, getting out of the chair, and as Ellis and Molly retreated to the downstairs, Carol and Dave moved onto the couch for the rest of the movie.
	Ellis closed the door at the top of the stairs and watched Molly descend into the darkness in front of him.  She reached the bottom, took one step toward her room and faded completely away.  Moments later she reached the light chain and the basement lit dimly.  Ellis turned off the light at the head of the stairs and went down.  The door to Molly's room was open and the light was on.  He clicked off the light outside her room and went in closing the door.  She had already pulled her sweater over her head and was letting it fall to the floor.
	"Is it warm enough in here?" she asked.
	"Oh yeah, it feels just right," he answered.  He was nervous, but he didn't know why.  He had been in similar positions before, and this wasn't the first time for him and Molly either.  Everything felt different this time.  Somehow it was more real, more serious or something.  Molly looked at him in a casual manner and began undoing the buckle of her belt.  Ellis finished unbuttoning his shirt and took it off, setting it on the chair beside her bed.  She finished undressing and turned down the quilt covering the bed.  Ellis slipped off the rest his clothes, piling them, almost neatly, on the chair.  A candle, stuck crudely into a brass holder, sat on her desk with a book of matches.
	"Should I light the candle?" he asked.
	"Please," she said, bending over and opening the lid to a small portable record player that sat on the floor near her bookcase.
	She had already put several records on the spindle and when she switched the little player on, the turntable began to revolve, the first disk dropped and the needle settled into the groove of the record with a brief scratchy sound.  She had chosen some soft classical music with the ocean-spray of a piano dancing through the middle of many gentle violins and cellos.  One lonely flute peered up out of the surf, and hopped from wave to wave like it was being chased by the piano.  As Ellis lit the candle, she switched off the electric light, and when he turned from the desk she was standing, facing him, in the middle of the room.  They stood motionless for a few moments taking in the scene of each other in the flickering candlelight.  Her soft forms, like the rolling hills of the Palouse, blended with the shadows they cast on the walls of the room.  His more angular lines, silhouetted by the glimmering light of the candle behind him, seemed to echo the feeling of the flute that still skipped along the crest of the waves.  Ellis moved to her and put his hands on her bare hips, sliding them around to her buttocks and up the full length of her back, feeling each little bump of her spine beneath the smooth skin that held her forms in place.  She too, put her arms around him and pulled him closer.  They stood silently in the dim light, surrounded by the watery sounds of the record player, absorbing as much of each other as they could, before Molly pulled him toward her bed.  On the bed, they lay pressed tightly together exploring the surfaces of the other's body.  Their hands meandered delicately, like the flute, from one place to the next, and then following the lead of the cello, dove deeper into the folds and valleys of the unconcealed terrain.  Their breathing mated with the music, adding to it a gentle surf, rolling up the sand along the beach, and like the end of one movement and the beginning of the next, their explorations went deeper, taking on the rhythm of the incoming tide.  The piano curled the edges of each wave, and the flute left little white caps on a few, but it was the violins and cellos that pushed these swells to the surface where they picked up speed and rolled farther up the beach with each pulse.  Each wave increased in size until it came crashing onto the sand in cadence with the sound of each breath they took, and by the time the brass section arrived to announce the high tide and the end of the second movement, they were ready to melt into the foam of the last wave.  The third movement was slow, and quiet, and void of the piano and the flute.  Molly and Ellis lay, still entangled in the surf, as the tide began to slowly ebb.
	Warm, and spent, and filled with a feeling of uneasy satisfaction, they lay next to each other for the rest of the record and half of the next, before either spoke.  The mood of the second record was gay and light, and bounced their thoughts back and forth from the deep union they had felt some minutes before, to the uncertain character of their alliance.  Was this confederacy held in place only by the present heat, misting up out of deep ocean crevasses, or was it a true merger, the kind that endures through those earthquakes that shake the very foundations of a relationship?  Was their union like a chemical compound that would fuse them into something new and unique, withstanding the inevitable distillations of time, or was it more like a solution, where the mere jostlings of life would pull them back apart and return them to their separate entities?  Neither Ellis nor Molly knew much of science or chemistry, but the forces by which they operate were nevertheless at play.  There was no way of knowing which kind of coupling had taken place between them, and like the flickering light of the candle that shone on them simultaneously, they both realized only time could give them an answer.
	They had been lying on their backs for some time, drifting with their thoughts, unaware of the parallel paths they traveled, and then, as if empowered by a single will, they turned toward each other and kissed ever so gently.
	"I can't tell," she whispered, "how much I care for you."
	"I know," he whispered back.  "I feel the same way.  I can't tell how much I want.  I know that right now, I want everything there is of you."
	He could see her smile in the dim light, and then she leaned forward and kissed him again.  "Me too," she said.  "I just want all of you right now, all at once, but I'm afraid of something and I can't tell what it is."
	She leaned up on one elbow and looked deep into his face.  He pulled her closer, then on top of him, holding her tightly and kissing her on the neck.  She murmured slightly as his hands began to re-explore the ground he had meandered over before, and soon they were both making a return trip along fresh paths into this new land they had found together.
	The cycling of the record player exhausted the stack of records, the candle burned low, and the insecurities of before were nearly forgotten.  They felt like they had formed a union, like the water of two streams at their confluence, co-mingling into something fresh and new, to be pulled along in the same direction.  Ellis got up, blew out the flame of the candle, covered Molly with the quilt, and crawled back in beside her.  She rolled toward him and let an arm fall across his chest.  Sleep came comfortably and deep for both of them.
	It wasn't until the sound of Dave's voice, from the top of the stairs, crept in through the cracks in Molly's door, that either stirred.
	"Hey Molly!  Molly, Frank's on the phone," he called loudly.
	Molly rolled onto her back and opened her eyes to the darkness of her room.  She could feel Ellis still lying beside her, and it reminded her of the warm comfort she had felt the night before.  Ellis too, had been roused by the sound of Dave's voice, and like Molly, the message had flitted by without registering.
	"Hey!  Molly!"  Dave called again.  "Franks on the telephone."
	This time she heard him clearly and sat straight up on the bed.  "Oh shit!" she said throwing off the cover.  "That bastard can ruin anything."  She crawled over Ellis and sat on the edge of the bed.  "Okay, I'm coming," she called up to Dave.  Ellis put his hand on her arm and gave it a little squeeze.  "I'm sorry," she said softly to him.  "I'll be right back."
	"It's alright," he whispered to her.  "I'll be here."  She got up and turned on the light.  It was bright, and she moaned, partly from the glare of it, but mostly at the thought of having to talk to her husband, especially now.
	When she turned and looked back at Ellis, he was up on one elbow.  He smiled as their eyes met.  "I do care a lot for you," he said, holding out his hand to her.
	She took his hand, bent over and kissed him on the forehead, and then turning to her clothes closet she said, "good, I care for you too."  She took a robe from the closet and putting it on, she stepped to the door.  "I'll be right back," she said with a warm smile, and then as the smile faded, she added, "why did that asshole call now?"
	She left the room, leaving the door standing open.  The morning light filtered in through the basement windows and she easily found her way up the stairs.  Ellis too, could see that another morning had found its way into his life, and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.  "God damn that Frank," he said out loud, wondering if this phone call was going to end something, which even though it was very new, seemed right to him.  He put on his clothes, straightened the quilt on the bed and sat down in the chair by the desk.  When, in five or ten minutes, Molly had not returned, he stood up and headed for the kitchen.  As he approached the bottom of the steps, Carol opened the basement door and called loudly down the stairs.
	"Ellis!  We have breakfast. . ." as she saw him heading up the stairs, she paused and lowering her voice, "cooking up here.  Good you're up.  Breakfast is almost ready.  Molly's husband Frank is on the phone.  It sounds like he's threatening to come up here and drag her back to San Diego."
	Ellis reached the top of the stairs and joined Carol and Dave in the kitchen.  There was a small breakfast nook that jutted out from the room five or six feet and he sat down across the table from Dave.
	"Hi," he said smiling.  Then nodding toward the other room where they could hear Molly talking on the phone to Frank, he said,  "I wish that asshole was here right now, I'd kill the fucker."
	"Dave, don't talk like that," Carol said, frowning at him.
	"Yeah I know," he said shaking his head, "but I'm so sick of him terrorizing her that I might, if he doesn't just get the fuck out of all our lives.
	"God Frank!"  Molly could be heard saying from the other room.  "I just want you to stay completely away from me.  I mean it."
	Dave got up and walked into the next room with Molly.  "Here, let me talk to him for a minute," he said.
	"Be my guest."  She handed him the telephone.  "He thinks he's going to drive up here and take me back there.  No fucking way.  It's just not going to happen."
	Dave took the telephone, covered the mouthpiece and looked at Molly.  "Are you sure you want out of this thing with Frank?"
	"I never want to see him again," she started into the kitchen and then turned back long enough to say, "and I never want to talk to him again either."
	Dave put the phone to his ear.  "Hey Frank are you still there?"  There was a brief pause and then Dave continued in an angry tone.  "Listen Frank.  Just fuckin' listen for a minute, will yah?  Look, Molly's taken enough of your abuse and she's finished with you.  And we're finished with you too.  And if you come up here and fuck with her or me, I will kill you.  Have you got that?  Is that real clear?  I'm just not going to fuck with you anymore, not even once."
	There was another pause and then Dave hung up the telephone and returned to the kitchen.  Molly had sat next to Ellis in the breakfast nook her head resting in her arms on the table.  Carol had set two cups of coffee in front of them and Ellis had begun to sip at his.  Dave sat down across from them and Carol brought him a cup as well and returned to the stove where she was scrambling a pan of eggs.
	"I don't think I can eat," Molly said without raising her head.  "You better eat something," Carol urged.  "It'll make you feel better.  You've seen the last of Frank.  Isn't that right Dave?"
	"Oh, I don't know," Dave mumbled, shaking his head.  "I think he might just come up here."
	"I wish you hadn't threatened him like that."  Carol said as she began parceling the eggs onto plates.  "You know how he is.  That'll just make him more likely to do something rash."
	Molly moaned at the thought of Frank showing up.  She raised her head and looked across the table at Dave.  She had slight tear drips that ran down her face.  She wiped them off with her sleeve and tried to smile.  "I have to face up to this.  I can't just run from him forever."
	"Maybe we can get a restraining order that'll keep him away," Carol offered.
	"That might be a little hard from here," Dave said, taking a drink of his coffee, "and I can't imagine it doing much good anyway.  I don't think he'd pay any attention to it."
	"It might be worth a try," Ellis threw in.  "Are there any records of his violence down there?"
	"I had to go to the hospital the time he threw me down the stairs.  We told them what happened and they brought in the police that time."  Molly said looking a little brighter.  "But then all it did was really piss Frank off, and he was more of an asshole than ever."
	"Well, it might show that Molly is in danger," Ellis said, "and then if one of us does actually have to off him . . ."
	"Not you too," Carol interrupted.  "Nobody's going to kill anyone."
	"That's not a bad idea, really," Dave said as Carol put the plates of eggs and toast on the table and sat down.  "You know how Frank is.  He isn't going to just let this thing drop.  If he comes up here, we're going to have a confrontation, and I'll bet it won't be good."
	Molly began to cry again, this time with a few muffled sobs.  "Oh Ellis.  Why did I let you get dragged into this?  It just isn't fair."
	"Fair doesn't have anything to do with it," Ellis said with a little chuckle.  "I'm in, and if it comes to having to deal with Frank, then I can do that too."
	"What do you mean by that?"  Carol asked apprehensively.
	"What ever it takes to get him to leave Molly alone . . ." Ellis paused, swallowing a mouthful of eggs, "forever."
	"Look," Dave said, "right after breakfast I'll see what we can do about a restraining order, but right now let's just eat and forget about the asshole."  He took a drink of his coffee and dug into his eggs.  "Hey Carol, is there anymore coffee?"
	"Sure."  She got up and went to the stove, returning with the pot.
	The four of them sat quietly eating for a few minutes before Molly dropped her fork into her eggs, got up and ran for her room in the basement.  Tears streamed down her face and she sobbed pitifully.  They all looked up as she left, but no one said a word.  Ellis started to get up, but Carol reached across the table and restrained him with a gentle hand on his arm.  He settled back into the seat and took another bite of his breakfast.
	"Well," Dave said shaking his head, "now you know what it's like to get involved with our family."
	Ellis looked up at Carol.  "Is this the norm?" he asked.
	She didn't answer him.  Dave finished chewing and washed his eggs down with a gulp of coffee.  "No actually we have a pretty good family," he said.  "It's just Frank.  Molly was kinda rebellious when she was younger, and she ran off with him when she was barely seventeen.  No one liked him, not even Molly really, but it got her out of the house and showed our parents that she could do whatever she wanted.  It never was a good thing, and I guess she's lucky in one respect, that they don't have any kids.  Frank was always trying to get her to have some, but I guess she fended that off somehow.  This whole thing may just blow over by itself, but at any rate we'll bring it to an end soon.  She did file for a divorce before she came up here and Frank's been served with those papers.  Maybe if we can get a restraining order, he'll just drop it."
	"Not Frank," Carol said.  "Ellis, why don't you take her breakfast down to her before it gets too cold."
	 Ellis took his last bite of eggs.  "Okay," he said and got up.
	Carol got up as well and taking a tray from the counter she put Molly's plate along with both her and Ellis' coffee on it and smiled at him.  "Here."
	As Ellis reached the bottom of the stairs, he could see the door to Molly's room standing open, but there was no light in the room.  He went to the door, pulled it further open with his foot and went in.  He could barely tell that she lay on top of her bed in the dim light.  He set the tray on the desk and lit the remainder of the candle from the night before.
	"I brought your breakfast down," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed, and rubbing her back softly with one hand.  "Don't you worry.  Frank's not going to come up here and hurt you.  Dave and I won't let that happen."
	"Oh Ellis," she moaned.  "You should just forget me right now.  I'm bound to be more trouble than I could possibly be worth."  She rolled over on her back, looking up at him through wet eyes.  She had tearstains running down her cheeks and a drippy nose, but to Ellis, it only seemed to increase his feelings for her.  It put him in that natural male protective role, and gave him a purpose beyond his affection, which in itself, was becoming stronger.
	"That depends on what you're worth," he said smiling at her, "and to me, you're worth much more than the little bit of trouble this may turn out to be."
	"Oh, you don't know Frank," she said.  "God, I hope we can keep him from coming up here."
	"That would sure make it easier, alright," Ellis answered.  "It may be hard, because there's two states involved, but don't worry.  It'll be okay."  He bent down and kissed her gently on the edge of the mouth.  "I'm not going to give up on you just because of some damn mean-ass husband from the past."
	She put her arms around him, pulling him closer to her and said, "I hope you still feel like that when this is all over." she paused and then added, "if it ever is."
	"It will be, and when it is, I'll still be right here."  He swung his legs onto the bed and lay down beside her.  "Nothing but you could send me away now," he said.  "The spell has been cast."
	"Could I send you away?" she asked weakly.
	"With great difficulty," he answered.
	"If Frank comes up here and it gets dangerous, can I send you away then?" she persisted.
	"Let's wait and see if it comes to that," Ellis said, "but I'm not going to bail out just because it may get rough.  Look," he continued, "we'll do this thing together, and when we get Frank out of the way, we can work on our own trip."
	She pulled him tight against her body and held him there.  "I just don't think you know what you're getting into.  Frank is just plain mean, and he doesn't give up, even when he knows he can't win.  He might just hound me forever."  She squeezed him even tighter and gave a little sob.
	"Listen," he said, "forever is a long time.  If he comes up here, he'll either go back with his tail between his legs, or he'll go back in a box."
	"Don't talk like that Ellis," she sobbed.  "It scares me."
	"It'll be okay," he reassured, giving her a kiss on the cheek.  "Hey, you better eat something."  He sat up, and looked back down at her lying vulnerable on the bed.
	She lay on the bed, her eyes damp with tears, looking up at the ceiling.  "I should have known he wouldn't just let me leave.  That would have been too easy for everyone.  And now. . . " She reached up and wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater.  "And now I don't know what to do.  I should just go back to San Diego and . . ." She sat up, pulling her hair back away from her face.  ". . . and just accept whatever happens with Frank."
	Ellis got up, turned on the ceiling light, took the tray from the desk and set it on her lap.  "Here eat your breakfast."  He picked up his coffee from the tray and took a drink.  "Look, you're not going anywhere.  You're staying right here, and we're going to work this thing out.  There's got to be some way to keep Frank away from here, and we'll find it."
	Molly took a bite of toast and then some eggs.  Slowly, but steadily she finished the food on her plate and set the tray aside.  She looked across the room at Ellis, who had sat in the chair near the desk, and took a sip of her coffee.  "I don't know what I'd do without you right now Ellis.  This would be a lot harder if I didn't have you here."
	"Look, let's not worry about Frank for now," Ellis said.  "Even if he does come, it'll take him a few days to get here, and by then we'll have a restraining order or we'll figure something else out."
	"Like what?"  She finished her coffee and set the empty cup on the tray next to her on the bed.
	Ellis stood up and turning to the desk, he blew out the candle.  "Don't you worry about that.  Dave and I will think of something."  He walked to the bed and bending down, kissed her on the forehead as he picked up the tray.  "Let's go up stairs.  Dave and Carol may have it figured out already."
	"I doubt it," she said, getting up and following Ellis from the room.
	When they arrived upstairs, Carol was finishing up the dishes and Dave was on the telephone.
	"Here give me those dishes," she said taking the tray from Ellis.  "Dave's trying to find out how you get a restraining order."
	"Who's he talking to?"  Ellis asked.
	"I think he called the local police first, just to find out what to do," she answered, then taking another look at Ellis' cheek and scrunching up her face, she said, "God that cut looks sore."
	"Oh, it's not too bad," he said.  "I'd even forgot about it."
	Molly went into the living room where Dave was, and Ellis sat down at the breakfast nook.  The sun had come out, and the snow, covering everything in the backyard, sparkled like little gemstones scattered by fairies in the night.  No one had ventured into this private enclave since the snow had fallen and it had a pristine appearance, void of footprints or other marks of man.  Even the lawn furniture, the fence, and the concrete birdbath were partially separated from their link with mankind by the thick white mantle that had piled up on top of them.  There was a pure, clean, virginity to the yard.  It emanated a kind of quiet serenity that soothed the rough edges of Ellis' jangled nerve ends and let his worries of Frank slip away momentarily.  He slid comfortably, even eagerly into a fusion with this careless, peaceful scene.  He absorbed it almost greedily, but it wasn't enough to tear him away from the thought of the inevitable bummer that Frank would most certainly bring with him when he came to collect what he thought of as his personal property.
	Dave finished his phone call and came back into the kitchen followed by Molly.  She looked better than she did earlier, but her face was still red and puffy, and there were still signs of where tears had run down her cheeks.  Dave sat down in the breakfast nook, and Molly remained standing in the doorway of the kitchen, leaning against the door jam.
	"Morning Ellis," Dave said.  "You sure look like shit, like Frank may have got a hold of you already."  He added with a little chuckle, and then continued in a more serious tone.  "Well it isn't going to be easy, but I think it can be done.  I have to get a hold of the court in Colfax and convince them of what a dangerous asshole Frank is and then they will go ahead and issue the restraining order, but since Frank's in California, we are responsible for getting the papers served to him.  We also need to make sure the cops up here have a description of him and a picture of him if possible, so they can enforce it if he shows up here.
	"He will," Molly said.  "I just know he will."
	"Maybe," Dave said, "but maybe not.  The cop I talked to said that if he even shows up in this state, they'll throw him in jail.  That is if we can work fast and get him served with the papers before he heads up here.  We also need to convince the people in Colfax that the order is warranted.  We should have a good chance since he has a record in California.  Remember when he got arrested for that fight in the bar a few years ago, and about the same time he got busted for selling speed, and then there's the time he put Molly in the hospital and we had him arrested for that.  We may have to get a lawyer down there to figure out how to deliver the papers to him, and it'll probably take a day or two, because of the mail."
	"You better get working on it right away then," Carol urged.
	Yeah, I'm going to have a cigarette and start making some calls."  Dave took his smokes out of his pocket and offered one to Ellis, who took one and fished around in his pocket for matches.  Finding them, he lit both their cigarettes, and slid along the bench he sat at, making room for Molly.  He looked at her and patted the seat next to him as a gesture for her to come sit with him.  She came slowly across the kitchen and sat on the bench.
	Carol picked up the coffeepot and joined them at the table.  She re-filled everyone's cup and set the pot between them.
	"Maybe we should get a hold of dad's lawyer and see if he could get it all done faster."  Molly said in a quiet tone, that still showed signs of her previous sobbing.
	"That's probably a good idea," Dave agreed.  "I'll have to call dad to find out the number.  In fact, I better do that right now or he may be gone."  He started to slide out of the seat, but bumped into Carol, spilling some of her coffee.
	"Jesus Dave," she said, giving him a glare and sliding off the bench quickly to avoid the spilled coffee running off the table onto her lap.
	"I'm sorry," Dave said, as Carol went to the sink.  "Here, throw me the dishcloth."
	"I'll get it," Carol said, coming back to the table.  "You go make your call."
	Dave left the room, Carol cleaned up the spilled coffee, and Molly leaned back against the wall and produced a slight smile.  "Whatever happens at least it will be over pretty soon."  She took a drink of her coffee and looked at Ellis.  "Here let me have a drag on your cigarette."
	"What!  You don't smoke," he said.
	"I just want one hit," she said, "maybe it'll keep me from being so nervous."
	Ellis handed her the cigarette, shaking his head.  "Don't get addicted to this shit like Dave and me," he said.
	She took a small drag on the cigarette and immediately choked.  "God!" she said, when she regained her composure.  "I could never get addicted to these damn things.  I don't see why I can smoke pot without any trouble, but I can't even take one little drag on a cigarette."
	"That's because cigarettes are poisonous, and marijuana isn't," Carol expounded with a smile,  "and the government just hasn't figured it out yet."
	Ellis took the cigarette back from Molly, reached in his shirt pocket and producing a joint, held it out in front of her.  "Here, if you want to relax, smoke this instead."
	"I think I'll wait to see what has to be done about Frank before I do any of that today.  I'll probably have to talk to someone official before it's done," she said waiving the joint away.
	"Don't let Dave see that," Carol whispered, "or he'll get stoned and never get this thing done in time to stop Frank from coming up here and making all our lives hell."
	Ellis quickly slipped the joint back in his pocket.  "That's probably a good idea," he agreed.  "I'll bet you guys have to go to Colfax and talk to the sheriff or the prosecutor, or even a judge or something.  That shouldn't take too long, but getting the papers served to Frank in California is going to take some time."
	Dave returned from the living room.  "Hey Molly," he said as he entered the kitchen, "dad wants to talk to you for a second.  I need to talk to him again after you're done."
	She slid off the padded wooden bench and headed for the phone.  "Oh shit!" she said under her breath with a slight shiver.  "What's he want to lecture me about now?"
	When she had left, Carol slid along the bench on her side of the breakfast nook allowing Dave to sit next to her, and asked, "What's he want?"
	"Oh, he's just worried about her and wants to let her know, I think," he answered, and then looking at Ellis, he continued.  "Things got bad enough down there, with Frank, just before she came up here that dad pretty much sent her here by force.  Not really by force, force, but he sure encouraged her to finally file for the divorce and get out of there.  She moved in with them for most of that last week down there, while she went through the divorce shit, and Frank kept coming by the house making threats to everyone, that if she didn't come back home, he was going to make some kind of real trouble.  The old man said he started keeping a shotgun handy.  That's fairly serious for him.  He must have really felt like Frank was a danger."
	"That fucking Frank," Carol blurted out, "I think I could kill that asshole myself."
	"Oh!  You too, huh," Dave said, giving her a look of surprise.  "That fucker gets to you that way, doesn't he."
	"Yeah, I know," she said.  "It's awful, but he has just gotta get out of our lives, and that's all there is to it."
	Ellis took the last drag on his cigarette and put it out in the ashtray that sat on the table.  "I don't really know how I fit into all this, but I guess I've pretty much fallen for Molly and I couldn't pull out if I wanted to.  And, I don't want out, so I guess I'm in.  We're just going to have to do whatever it takes to get Frank to leave her alone.  Forever."
	"God damn, I don't want to see that fucker up here," Dave said, shaking his head and taking another cigarette out of the pack lying on the table and lighting it.  Molly and I have to go to Colfax and petition the court for this fucking restraining thing, and then somehow get it to California and delivered, in person, to Frank before he tries to head up here."
	"He could have already left," Carol worried.  "You know how rash he is sometimes."
	"Sometimes?"  Dave answered.  "He's always rash, if you ask me."
	Ellis began rolling a cigarette, and Dave pushed his pack across the table at him, offering him one of his ready-rolled.  Ellis shook his head and kept rolling.  Molly came back into the kitchen, putting her head on Ellis' shoulder as she sat down next to him.
	"Dad's still on the phone." she said.
	Dave went back into the living room, leaving the three of them sitting in the brightly-lit breakfast nook.  Carol leaned against the outside wall and put her feet up on the bench where Dave had been sitting.  "Well," she said.  "Ellis says he's fallen for you, and you're stuck with him."
	Ellis looked surprised that she had said this, but merely nodded slightly and didn't say a word.  Molly smiled at Carol, gave Ellis a little hug, and let out a long sigh.  "It's sure nice to feel like this about someone, and have them feel the same way," she said.
	Ellis put his arm around her and gave her a squeeze.  "This is going to turn out okay in the end.  Don't you worry."
	Dave returned to the kitchen with the phone book and sat down.  He poured the last of the coffee into his cup, set the empty pot back on the table and began thumbing through the telephone book, looking for the prosecuting attorney's number.  "Jesus Christ!  Why do they make it so hard to find the government offices?"
	"Here give me that," Carol said firmly.  "What are you looking for?"
	He handed over the book and told her what he was looking for.  She turned a couple of pages and handed it back, pointing to the number.  "Here," she said, "you couldn't find shit in a barn full of pigs."  She scooted herself toward Dave on the bench.  "Let me out and I'll make another pot of coffee."
	"Let me do that," Molly said sliding off the end of the bench and picking up the pot from the table.  "It'll give me something to keep my mind off Frank, for at least a minute or two."
	Dave took a drink of his coffee, reached across the table and picked up a small pad of scratch paper.  Taking a pen from his shirt pocket, he wrote the number on the top sheet of paper and tore it from the pad.  "I've been thinking," Dave said.
	"Finally!"  Carol interrupted.  "I was wondering if you'd ever get around to that."
	"Fuck you Carol!" he said shaking his head.  "I'm serious.  I've been thinking that if Frank does come up here, maybe Molly ought to go out to the farm with you, Ellis.  Frank has no idea where that is, and we might be able to avoid a really ugly scene.  Dad said he would get a hold of his lawyer and see if he could deliver the restraining order, if we can get it there in time.  He can also let us know if Frank gets it at all.  Are you ready to go to Colfax?" he said, looking up at Molly, who was still making the fresh pot of coffee.
	"I suppose I'll have to go, won't I?" she said accompanied with a long tired sigh.
	"There's no way around it," Dave answered.  "You're going to have to file for this thing and sign it, I'm sure."
	"Yeah, I guess I'm ready, but I'll have to change my clothes first.  It'll just take a minute.  Do you want'a go right now?" she asked.
	"Oh, I don't know," he said.  "Let's have another cup of coffee.  God I wish we had a joint or something.  You got any pot with you, Ellis?"
	Ellis shifted uneasily on the bench.  "Yeah I got a couple, but maybe we should wait until we get done in Colfax.  I hate to even think of that place when I'm stoned," he said, taking his tobacco out of his pocket and setting it on the table.
	"You're right, that would be better," he said, taking a drink of coffee.  "I know what you mean about Colfax.  The place is crawling with cops, what with the sheriff's office and the State Patrol and the city cops.  They got enough police there to start an army.  County seat's are all like that everywhere, I think."
	"Yeah, and I think the sheriff's boys are the worst," Ellis agreed.  "It seems like they just go around looking for trouble, and if they can't find it, they make some up.
	"They're kinda mean too," Carol said.  Remember when Bill Wheeler got busted with one little joint?  They threw him in jail and then beat him up just for having long hair."
	"Well, that's what Bill said," Dave added, "but I'll bet he gave'em a bunch of shit, and maybe even started the fight.  You know how he is."
	"I'm going to go change my clothes," Molly said.  "Are you coming with us Ellis?  I hope.  It would make me feel braver."  She looked as though she would collapse if he said no.
	"If it would make you feel better, I'll go," he answered, "but I wish I had a clean shirt to wear.  This one is a rag and has blood drooled on it from yesterday."
	"Oh, I have a bunch of shirts you can wear," she said.  "In fact, I have just the perfect shirt.  I've always wanted to get you into my shirt.  I have some pants too, if you'd like."  She wrinkled her nose at him and smiled, as she opened the basement door and disappeared down the stairs.
	"You two are so moony," Carol said.  "It must be nice.  Remember when we were like that Dave?"
	Dave grunted an affirmation, but didn't look like he really remembered.
	"It would be a lot nicer if Frank was completely out of the picture," Ellis said, picking his tobacco up from where he'd set it on the table and digging around in his pocket for some papers.
	"Here, have one of these," Dave said, pushing his pack toward him.
	"No.  I actually like these better," he said folding a cigarette paper just right.  "I really like to make them.  It kinda gives a personal touch to the whole process of smoking."
	When Molly came back upstairs, she was dressed in clean gray Levi's, a blue cotton blouse and a wool sweater that was somewhere between blue and gray in color and had small silver buttons down the front.  She had with her a reddish plaid shirt for Ellis.
	"Here, try that on," she said tossing the shirt at Ellis and sliding in next to him on the wooden bench.
	He held it up in front of him, and then turning to her with a broad smile, he said, "thanks, you're a real peach."
	She smiled and gave him a little squeeze on the leg.  "Whatever it takes to keep you happy."
	"Boy that won't last for long," Dave said, looking over at Carol.
	"That goes both ways," she said.  "When Dave and I first got together he used to get up early and make coffee and then breakfast, but now he just lies around in bed until all that shit's done, and I have to drag him out here to even eat the stuff."
	Dave looked at his watch and took the last drink of his coffee.  "Well," he said, "it's nearly nine o'clock.  I suppose we should go to Colfax and get this over with."
	"Okay, let me out and I'll change my shirt," Ellis said, starting to scoot out of the nook.  Molly slid off the bench, letting him out, and he changed shirts as he walked into the living room.  He threw his blood-stained shirt on the arm of a chair, picked up his coat that still lay draped over the back of the couch, and put it on.  Walking back into the kitchen he could see that Dave hadn't moved and Molly had sat back down at the breakfast nook.
	"What the hell," he said.  "I thought we were going to Colfax.  Are you two going to lolly-gag around here all day, or what?"
	"That's a family trait," Carol said with a chuckle.  "They like to get you all jacked-up to do something and then sit around until you forget what you were about to do.  You'll get used to it."
	"Keep your pants on," Dave snorted.  "We're coming."
	Molly got up and stretched, holding her arms up high and yawning at the same time.  "We do that, don't we?" she said picking up her and Ellis' coffee cups and placing them on the counter.
	"All the time," Carol agreed.
	Dave stood up and walking past Ellis at the doorway, went into the living room.  Molly followed him and together they went to the hooks by the front door, took their coats and put them on.  "Well let's go then," he said turning to open the front door.
	"Oh, go start the car Dave," Molly said, turning and running back through the living room.  "I have to get something out of my room.  I'll be right there."
	Dave and Ellis went to the car and got in.  It was cold and frosty in the Volkswagen, but it started immediately.  They sat there waiting for Molly to return.  Dave lit a cigarette and blew the smoke, in a thick cloud, out into the confined space, filling it.  "You know this thing with Frank," he said, "is really fairly serious.  He's a bad dude, and we've all got to be very careful.
	Ellis began to roll a cigarette, and looked through the smoke screen to where Dave sat staring straight ahead out the front window of the little bug.  "You think he's really dangerous?" he asked.
	"Oh yeah, he's more than dangerous.  I don't think he's all there," Dave explained.  "He's not stupid or anything, but he is crazy.  He has a really short fuse, and he just blows up over nothing sometimes.  I can only imagine what he'll do when he really does have something to be pissed about, like Molly leaving.  When he gets up here, and I do think he'll be here in a few days, regardless of this restraining order, he's going to be looking for you, as well as her.  She said something this morning about having found someone that made her feel good, instead of the awful way he made her feel.  That'll put him on your trail for sure.  He's the kind of guy that can't take being put down or dumped, just on general principal.  He thinks he owns Molly, like you might own a car or something, and he's going to look at it like you stole something that belongs to him.  He always carried a gun in the car down in San Diego, and I wouldn't expect him to leave it there when he comes up here."
	Ellis lit his cigarette and rolled the side window down an inch or so.  "Fuck!  I sure can get myself into some of the damnedest situations.  I'm not sorry or anything.  I do care a lot for your sister, and I'll do whatever it takes to keep her safe, but it looks like I might have to keep myself safe too."
	"Shit, you're probably in more danger than she is, if he does come up here."  Dave reached under the seat of the Volkswagen and pulled out a brown paper sack.  He reached in, withdrew a gun, and handed it to Ellis.  "Do you have one of these?" he asked.  "This is a thirty-eight Smith.  It's not as powerful as some, but it'll do the job if it has to."
	Ellis took the gun and looked at it, turning it slowly in his hands.  The bluing had been mostly worn off and the wood grips had been scratched and nicked.  He could see the brass rims of the casings around the edge of the cylinder.  He handed it back to Dave.  "This thing's loaded," he said.
	"You bet.  What good's an unloaded gun?"  Dave answered.  "Have you guys got a gun out there?"
	"Well, I have an old thirty-thirty Winchester that belonged to my dad," Ellis answered, "but I don't have a pistol."
	"That thirty-thirty will do okay, but it's kinda big and cumbersome to pack around.  You better keep it loaded and handy.  You may need it before this thing's over.  It might not be a bad idea to find a pistol to keep around a little closer either."
	Molly came out of the house as Dave was sliding the pistol back under the seat.  "Don't say anything to her about guns.  It really freaks her out, and she doesn't need any more to worry about right now."
	Molly got in the back seat of the car, which hadn't warmed up much, but at least the frost had begun to melt on the windows.  Dave backed out of the driveway and they headed for Colfax.
	Pulling into Colfax, they could look down the full length of the main street.  It was most of a mile long, lined with turn of the century buildings two and three stories high.  These buildings, made of brick, for the most part, had been designed to accommodate retail business on the street level with offices and apartments on the upper floors.  The second and third floors of these structures lay mostly vacant, with only memories of their onetime occupants to offset the dust and debris that had built up since the rooms had been filled with the warmth and bustle of their tenants.  Colored lights and decorations ran from one end of the street to the other, in acknowledgment of the soon to come Christmas holidays, and a steady stream of cars passed in either direction along this thoroughfare.  They had to pass nearly the full length of this avenue before they came to the courthouse, which was much newer than the rest of the structures in view.  They parked on the street in front of the building and got out of the little Volkswagen onto the snow-cleared sidewalk.
	"Where do we go?"  Molly asked as Ellis shut the car door.
	"I'm not dead sure," Dave answered, "but I thought we would start with the sheriff's office."
	"God, I hate going in there," Ellis said with a little shiver that twinged him from head to foot.  "I don't even like to see those assholes."
	"Oh you dip-shit, Ellis," Dave laughed.  "They won't hurt you.  We're here to get their help.  They'll love it.  They get to do their job."
	They entered the Courthouse and headed down a long hallway for the sheriff's office.  This brightly-lit tunnel, with doorways off to either side, gave off a vague and dismal aura of governmental bureaucracy, which had been carefully designed to conjure up a subconscious feeling of timidity.  The institutional green walls and fake-marble floors seemed to cast a shadow on their mission.  They were received in the sheriff's office with a coolness that must have had more to do with Dave and Ellis' long hair than anything else, and found that they were just beginning their journey through the matrix of government.  Before they were done they had visited three offices of the courthouse with several trips back and forth from one to the other.  They did succeed in obtaining a restraining order, but its delivery would be a separate problem.  It was, as they had learned before, their own worry as to how to get the papers to Frank in California, and if he did come up here, the local agencies would offer only minimal help with the enforcement of the order.  They were treated as if they were more of a problem than was Frank, and they left the building feeling poorly used.
	"Why do I feel like I'm less than a person?"  Molly asked as they walked down the steps of the building to the street.  "It's like everyone we talked to in that place thought I should be locked up instead of Frank.  What would it have been like if we were black or something?"
	"No shit!"  Dave said.  "If we'd been black they probably would have locked us up, or just shot us on the spot.  What's with those people?  It's like they just don't give a damn about anyone but their little group of local cronies.  God, what a bunch of uptight assholes.  It doesn't look like we're going to get much help from them."
	"I told you I didn't like to even see those fuckers," Ellis said as they got to the car.  "This whole fucking town's a shit hole, if you ask me.  It's always been like this too.  I don't even come near the place if I can avoid it."
	They got into the car and Dave started the motor.  The frost had formed again on the windows, but this time on the inside.  Dave took the ice scraper and scoured off the window in front and beside him, and handed the scraper to Ellis, who did the same.
	"Molly, you better clean off the rear windows too," Ellis said handing her the plastic scraper.  "We wouldn't want to give them any reason to mess with us."  He took out his tobacco in preparation to roll a cigarette, while Dave warmed up the car.
	"Here, smoke one of these," Dave said handing Ellis a ready-made cigarette.  "You'll probably get us busted rolling that here."
	"No shit!"  Ellis said with a disgusted snort, and putting away his tobacco, he took the cigarette from Dave.  "Let's just get the hell out of here."
	Dave pulled the little Volkswagen away from the curb.  "What's the best way out?" he asked.
	"Turn right, right here," Ellis answered pointing to the intersection they were approaching.  "Then turn right again at the end of the block.  We'll just head down that back street, and then we can get back on the main drag and head out of town.  There's a stop sign about half way down the back street.  Don't miss it.  They've carefully hidden it behind a tree like a trap.  It's right in front of the local police station."
	"Nice little town you've got here Ellis," Dave said with a chuckle.
	"Right!  Don't lay any responsibility for this place on me, man," Ellis said shaking his head.  "This place has probably always been uptight.  And you're right about black folks.  There aren't any here.  I mean none, zero.  I think that if any tried to move in, they'd just run them out of town on a hot poker."
	"Where should I get some cigarettes in this place?"  Dave asked.  "I'm about out."
	"Here's the stop sign, Dave," Ellis said as they approached an intersection.  Look how they conveniently hid it behind that big maple tree.  In the summer you can't see it at all."  He blew out a large breath of smoke and looked over at Dave with a scowl.  "You would want to stop again in this place.  You'll love the grocery store.  It's back over on the main drag, on the way out of town.  Take a right again at the next corner and then a left and we'll go right by it."
	Dave did as he was told and presently they pulled into the small parking lot at the grocery.  The lot was nearly full and he pulled in between two pick-up trucks and parked.
	"I'll be just a minute if you want to wait here," he said opening the door and getting out.
	"I don't want to go in," Ellis said turning to look at Molly.  "How about you?"
	"I don't want to go anywhere," she said, and Dave shut the door and went into the store.
	"How you doing?"  Ellis asked her, reaching back and touching her on the leg.
	"I'm okay, I guess," she answered.  "This whole thing is such a mess.  I just wish it were over.  I've never hated anyone before, but I think I'm beginning to hate Frank."
	"Yeah I know what you mean," Ellis said.  "I've never even met the asshole, and I already think I hate him.  Don't worry though, it'll turn out okay in the end."
	"I hope so," she said with a sniffle.  "I just want to be with you, without him hanging over our head."
	"We're going to be together, don't worry about that," Ellis said, "and if he comes up here and hassles you, I'll take care of him."
	"You don't know how bad he is, Ellis.  And he's pretty big too," she said.  I don't want you getting into any fight or anything.  I don't think you'd come out of that very well."
	"Don't worry, I don't fight much, but there are other ways to take care of assholes like that."
	"Like what?" she asked with a little alarm.
	"Oh, let's just say there are other ways, and leave it at that," Ellis said with a smile.
	Dave came out of the store shaking his head, walked to the car and opened the door.  "I see what you mean about the grocery store, Ellis," he said getting in and shutting the door.  "If looks could kill, I'd be dead a dozen times.  Everyone in there stared at me like I was some kind of freak.  The lady at the counter just took my money and grunted.  She even looked over my five dollar bill like it was fake or something."  He started the car and backed out of the parking place.  "Let's go out to your place Ellis, as long as we're this close," he said pulling out onto the street.
	"Sure if you want to," Ellis said.  "That would be great.  Molly's never seen the farm."
	"Yeah, I'd like to see your place," she said.
	Dave turned onto the street and headed Southwest out of town toward the farm.  The little Volkswagen strained as it pulled the steep hill on the South end of town and the tires spun briefly in several places before they reached the top.  By the time they passed the radio station and the County Hospital, the car was beginning to warm up and they were safely out of town.  They traveled for several miles on a well-plowed paved road through the snow-covered hills, wandering around some and over others.  Presently they came to the gravel road that led to the farm, and turned left.  Here the road had been plowed only enough to make it barely passable, and the tires spun at every rise of this narrow trail.  The first farmhouse they came to lay close to the road with several outbuildings clustered around it.  Smoke came in billows from the chimney and lay like a curtain on the still air, spreading across the valley.  This old homestead must have been built before there was much traffic on the little road, which divided the place in half.  The barn, chicken house, and a machine shop lay on the far side of the road, forcing the owner to travel back and forth several times a day in the doing of his chores.
	"Slow down as you go by this place," Ellis said as they approached the group of buildings.  "It's almost like we have to go right through their front yard."
	Dave slowed slightly as they went by, and an elderly man waived from the porch.  Ellis waived back, but the frost on the side window prevented him from being seen.  They went on to the next and then the next old farmstead before they rounded the last corner and the farm came into view.  It sat hunkered down alongside the road, looking more abandoned than lived in.  A thin wisp of dark smoke drifted up lazily from the chimney, providing the only sign of life.  They pulled into the driveway and stopped.  Francine could be seen looking out the kitchen window, and then the door opened, and all three dogs came bounding out across the side yard, barking and circling the car like a pack of wolves surrounding a wounded deer.
	"Was that Francine?"  Dave asked as he shut off the car.  "She's a good looker."
	"So's Carol, Dave," Molly said in a disgusted tone.
	"I know, I know," he answered.  "I can look, can't I?"
	Well, here we are," Ellis said as he opened the door and stepped out into the snow.  The dogs all crowded around him until Punt growled a few times and Birthday and Sundance backed away, leaving him to greet Ellis alone.  Ellis held the front seat forward for Molly to get out, and Punt started to get into the back seat with her.
	"Get out of there, you hairy mutt," he said laughing.  "You're not going anywhere.  That's Punt.  He's my dog mostly, I guess.  My ex-wife left him here when she moved out."
	Molly pet the dog timidly and then stepped out of the car.  Dave had already gotten out and was throwing snow at the other two dogs that were barking and bouncing around him playfully.  Effie, the pig oinked loudly from the couch on the front porch where she lay sunning herself.
	"Oh, there's a pig on the porch," Molly said, covering her mouth with one hand and reaching to take Ellis' hand with the other.  "Oh, it's so cute."
	"You call that thing cute?"  Dave said coming around the car and heading for the porch.  "I can't believe you let that big ugly thing up there."
	"I don't know how we'd stop her," Ellis remarked.  "We can barely keep her out of the house.  Let's go in.  It's cold out here."
	They trooped up onto the porch.  Ellis stroked Effie on the stomach as he went by her, still stretched out on the couch, and she gave out some little affectionate grunts.  Dave opened the door and went into the kitchen followed by Molly and Ellis.  Ellis made introductions and they took off their coats.  Francine, like Ellis predicted, had fired up the kitchen stove and kept it going continuously since the day before.  A greater supply of coal was definitely going to be needed.  She had gotten serious about making groatcakes and made two batches, one the day before and another was about to come out of the oven.  The kitchen was warm and toasty.  There were no dirty dishes, except those she had used to make the groatcakes, and the counters were clean and uncluttered.  She had found several cotton flour sacks and a sack that at one time held dried beans, and fashioned them into curtains, which she had tacked up over the kitchen windows and then pulled neatly to the side.  These added a sort of domesticity to the room that had for some time been dormant.
	"Ellis this place isn't anywhere near as bad as you made it sound," Molly said hanging her coat over the back of a chair.  "This place is really nice and cozy."
	"You should have seen it when I first came," Francine said taking the coffeepot from the stove.
	"Yeah, Francine's our decorator," Duncan said with a laugh from the parlor.
	"More like maid, don't you think?" she said.  "The pay's good though.  A cold bed and all the garbage you can eat.  Here Molly, have a cup of coffee.  It's nice to have another woman around.  These guys are okay, but they're a little like having animals in the house.  Just one step above the dogs, or maybe that's one step below.  Sometimes it's hard to tell."
	Dave and Ellis had gone into the parlor where John, Duncan, and Fred had been watching one of Duncan's favorite soap-operas.  Ellis related his experience at the hospital to everyone's enjoyment, and they settled down to smoke a joint.  Molly and Francine sat down at the kitchen table for some much needed girl-talk for Francine.  It had been most of two weeks since she had even seen another woman, and although the boys had become acceptable to her, they weren't the same as having another of her own kind to communicate with.  They sat, coffee in hand, and talked at length about their past lives and the horrors of their ex-husbands.  Presently Francine got up and went to the stove, taking out the groatcakes that had been baking in the oven.  Having been baked, instead of Ellis' method of cooking on top of the stove in a frying pan, they had risen nicely and looked more like normal muffins than the usual free-form glob that had previously been produced.  She set the fresh cakes on the counter to cool and walked to the parlor.
	"Hand me a joint out of that tin, will you Fred," she said standing in the doorway.  Fred opened the tin and taking out a single joint, tossed it gently across the room, where Francine caught it deftly and thanking him, she returned to he kitchen.
	"Here, have a little more coffee," she said, taking the pot off the stove and setting it on the table between them.  "If those guys can sit around smoking dope, I guess we can too."  She lit the joint and handed it to Molly.
	"That sounds good," Molly replied.  "That ordeal with the restraining order and the courthouse really put me on edge."  She took a long hit, held it for sometime, and only after taking a drink of her coffee did she let out the remainder of the smoke that had not been absorbed into her system.  They sat smoking quietly in the warmth of the bright kitchen until the joint had been diminished to a short roach, and Francine threw the remainder in the stove.
	"You want to try a groat cake?"  Francine asked.  "Ellis thinks he invented them, but they're really nothing more than a biscuit or a muffin.  We only got this stove going yesterday, and before that, these guys just cooked, if you could call it that, on that piece of shit in the other room.  You can hardly even make coffee on the damn thing."  She leaned back in her chair and folded her hands behind her head.  "You know, sometimes I think men are just plain stupid.  All they think about most of the time is food and sex, and they don't know how to do either very well."  She laughed at herself and looked into the parlor to make sure no one had heard her.  "How long are you going to be around up here?" she asked.
	"Boy, I don't know.  If it wasn't for the trouble with my ex-husband, I'd be tempted to stick around and see what Ellis and I can put together.  As it is, I feel like flying off to Bumfuk Egypt, or some other place as far away as I can get."  She picked up the coffeepot and refilled her cup.  "Oh, I suppose I will stick around though.  Ellis and I have already made a pretty good start, and I owe it to myself to have a real relationship for a change.  What have you got for plans?  Are you going to get back into graduate school?"
	"Yeah, I think so."  She poured herself another cup of coffee and placed the pot back on the stove.  "It's pretty much too late to do anything this year, even if I had the money, but I think I'll start again next fall.  It may depend some on John and what he's up to by then.  You know it's kinda funny.  We just met by accident and he took me in after the fire without really knowing me, but then we started to hit it off, and now we seem to have a pretty good relationship.  He's really gentle and sensitive, and boy that's nice compared with my ex.  He was such a bully.  Not mean or anything, but he always had to do things his way, with never a thought to what I wanted."
	"Yeah I know what you mean."  Molly said looking around the room and then into the parlor.  Is there another number around?  I still kind of have the shakes from that awful courthouse."
	"Oh yeah, we have lots of pot around these days."  She got up and went into the parlor.
	"Hey Fred, toss me another joint would you."  She put a hand on John's shoulder who sat with his back to her near the door.
	"Sure here," he said as he tossed the tin itself to her.  "You guys are really smoking it up.
	She caught the tin, took one joint out, and threw it back.  "One will be enough for now.  Thanks!"  She returned to the kitchen table, lit the joint and sat down, handing it to Molly.
	"Maybe I can get so stoned, I'll forget all about Frank and San Diego altogether."  She took the joint from Francine and drew the smoke deeply into her lungs.  "You know my husband was the same way.  He never gave a thought to what I wanted to do, or be, or anything.  Ellis seems different.  He's always trying to please me, maybe even too much.  I guess they're all like that at first.  I'll just have to see how it goes.  I graduated from college a year ago down in San Diego with a degree in English literature, and I suppose I could go to graduate school, but I don't know what I'd do with a master's degree, but teach at some college somewhere, and I don't think I'd like to do that much.  I'm just going to play things by ear for a while, but I am going to have to find a job of some kind pretty soon.  I can't just live off Dave and Carol forever."
	"I know what you mean," Francine agreed.  "I have to find a job too.  Living's pretty easy out here, but there's nothing to do.  I've read every book in the house, even a couple of Duncan's text books, and I'm about to go nuts for lack of something to do.  That goddamn TV's on all the time out there, and I can tell you, I'm about to sabotage the damn thing, just to keep it quiet for a while.  Those guys would have to figure out something else to do with their time.  It would probably be good for them.  God, I'd hate to see John and Duncan's grades.  They only go into school about half the time and I don't think they ever do their assignments.  They'll probably both flunk out this semester, but I don't think it worries them one little bit."  She got up and went to the counter where she had placed the groatcakes.  Taking two of them from the pan, she cut them open with a knife that lay on the counter, buttered them and put them on a small plate.  She took the rest of them, still in the pan into the parlor along with the butter and a knife.
	"Here!" she said, as she set them on the low table in front of the couch.  "Try these out.  Ellis, you probably won't like the improvement in the texture, but you'll survive."
	"Oh boy, food," John said as she started out of the room.  "Thanks."
	"Oh boy, food!" she said more to Molly than anyone.  "Now if they had some sex, they'd be in heaven, wouldn't they?"  She chuckled and returned to the kitchen.
	"What's sex have to do with anything?"  Dave asked watching her leave and then turning to John.  What the hell's she talking about?"
	"Oh who knows?"  Duncan burst out reaching for a cake.  "She babbles about a lot of stuff sometimes."
	Francine took the plate with the two buttered cakes from the counter and set them on the table between she and Molly.  "See what I mean.  Food and sex, that's all they ever think about.  It must be easy to not have your mind cluttered up with anything else."