Watch out for Frank

	"Pretty easy alright," Molly agreed.  "I kinda like sex though."
	"Oh I do too, but there is more to life out there."  Francine glanced into the parlor, and then back to Molly.  "If it was just up to men, the population explosion would be twice as bad.  Sometimes I think they just want to make more babies so there will be someone else to order around and do the work they should be doing in the first place."  She laughed out loud at the thought of all the men lying around giving orders to each other, and none of them doing a thing.  "I mean shit, look at them out there.  All five of them, sucked into that stupid box full of wires, like it was something holy.  I'll bet there's a million things they could be doing that would be more useful."
	Molly laughed, took a bite of her cake and washed it down with a sip of coffee.  "You're a hard woman, Francine, but you're right.  We do most of the work in this world, and always have.  And you know, I think this liberation thing we're pushing, is only going to make it so we do all the work, even the stuff they won't let us do now."
	"Yeah that's probably true," Francine agreed,  "but in a few years, or however long it takes, we'll have them where we want them."
	"Where's that?"  Molly asked.
	"We women will have done everything for long enough that they won't know how to do anything anymore," she explained,  "and then we'll have them at our mercy.  Then they can have their food and sex, but only at our giving.  We could even keep them penned up like cows, and just let them out when we want them for our own pleasures. . . ."
	"You know, I think I saw a science-fiction movie one time kinda like that," Molly interrupted.  "It was some other planet, where the women did just what you're saying.  They kept the men in slavery and just did whatever they liked with them."
	"In some ways, it's a little like that now," Francine said with a chuckle.  Men are so dense and they have such one-track minds, that you can get them to do most anything you want.  All you have to do is waive a little food or sex in front of them, and they're putty.  You know they say they're the stronger sex, but that kinda depends on how you define stronger, I'd think."
	Molly gave out a little snort that was a cross between a laugh and a question mark, and leaned back in her chair.  "I wonder why we had so much trouble with our ex-husbands then?  Did we just fuck up, or were they both just odd-balls that couldn't be trained?"
	"Yeah, I don't know," Francine pondered.  We probably did something wrong.  I sure wouldn't want to admit my ex was special or anything.  He was just an asshole, but see, if we ran the show, we could just dispense with all the assholes, and we would only have to deal with the ones we could manipulate."
	"It sounds too easy," Molly said.  "What would we do with all the assholes?  There's a hell of a lot of them, I think."
	"Oh, I don't know."  She paused for a moment and then looking out the window and thinking of Effie lying stretched out comfortably on the couch, she continued.  "Well shit!  We could just feed them to the hogs, at least then they wouldn't pile up in the corners and stink."  She laughed and finished her coffee.  "Hey!  You want to see the rest of the house.  It isn't much, but it is kind of a cool old place."
	"Sure," she answered.
	They both got up, and Francine went toward the parlor, pausing at the door.  As Molly came up beside her, she pointed into the room, where Ellis, and Dave, and the others sat glued to the television, and spoke softly.  "This little nest is where the animals hang out most of the time."  She swung around toward the bathroom, took a couple of steps and turning back to face Molly, she added, "That is when they're not making a mess somewhere else."  She reached the bathroom and went in.  "Here's the bathroom.  It's a pigsty, but at least it works . . so far.  They say it freezes up when it gets really cold out.  In fact, all the water in the place is supposed to freeze when it gets cold."
	"You mean it gets colder than it is now around here?"  Molly asked.
	"Oh yeah!  It's probably about twenty or better out there now.  Shit, it can get twenty below if it wants to," Francine explained walking deeper into the room and pointing to an outside door set between two multi-paned windows.  "Look at this, a door outside into the garden.  Well, it could be a garden if you wanted it to be.  Right now it's just an area with a bunch of junk and old boards lying around.  I saw it just before it snowed, covering all that shit up.  It really could be kinda nice in the spring to have a door out of the bath and into a flower garden, but now all it does is make this room colder."
	"You mean it gets twenty degrees below zero here?"  Molly asked again.
	"It sure can.  I haven't been here that long, but it did last year.  In fact, it got that cold for about a week, before it warmed up to somewhere around zero for another week.  Here, let me show you my favorite room."  She walked past Molly, and leaving the bathroom, she turned through another door only a few feet away.
	Molly followed, and found herself in a poorly lit room about twelve feet square.  It was full up to the waist with a sundry of things.  There seemed to be several pieces of furniture, hidden under piles of clothes, books, cardboard boxes full of everything imaginable, and much more.  There was barely space left for two people to be in the room.  The little clearing in which they stood was right in front of the record player.  There were records, in and out of their album covers, lying on top of the mess anywhere that could be reached from this, the only place to stand.  There were two large windows with curtains lowered on adjacent walls and a door that led to the upstairs next to the doorway they had come in by.
	"This is my favorite room in the house," Francine said as she put an album on the record player.  "It's a mess now, but I think I'm going to haul all this shit out of here and clean it up.  I know where I can borrow a sewing machine, and maybe I can make some new clothes."
	This made Molly think of her own sewing machine back in San Diego.  She had left it, along with most of her belongings in the house where she and Frank had lived.  "Yeah, it would make a nice sewing room, or anything else for that matter, if you can ever get all this stuff out of here.  I'll bet it's nice and bright when you open those curtains."
	The needle hit the record with a little scratch and then there was the sound of drums, a guitar, and presently the clear shrill voice of Jefferson Airplane's, Grace Slick.  Francine reached over, turned the sound down to where she thought it wouldn't disturb the boys in the other room, and turned to Molly.  "Let's go upstairs and I'll show you John's and my room," she said going through the narrow doorway that led up the steep stairs.  The stairway was dark like a mineshaft and each tread squeaked in turn as they stepped on them.  At the top, Francine opened a door and light flowed down the stairs as if they were about to enter something special, or a magic world, instead of the dingy upper floor of an old farmhouse.  There was a short hallway that ran perpendicular to where they had entered and a doorway at either end of the hall.  Both doors were open and revealed small, but bright rooms.
	"That's Duncan's room," Francine said pointing to a mass of tangled clothes and books drooling out of a doorway to the right, "and this is my room, or John's and mine, anyway."  She took a couple of steps and entered a neatly kept bedroom with a large wrought iron bed sticking out from one wall like a squared off peninsula.  Francine had decorated as best she could with the little she had to work with, and there was a poster and several pictures stuck to the walls, along with an ancient looking tapestry, portraying peasants harvesting a field of grain, that covered the remainder of the wall that held the door.  There was also an oak press-back chair sitting next to a nightstand near the bed.
	"Cool old tapestry," Molly remarked, as it caught the sweep of her eye, moving around the room.
	"That's the only thing I saved from the fire, except a few clothes," Francine said, reaching over and touching the tapestry.
	"That must be awful to just lose everything like that," Molly sympathized.
	"It is.  You don't realize how much stuff you have until something like that happens.  I had collected a lot of really neat stuff.  I had a collection of teacups.  Some of them were real old and valuable, and they were just burned up.  All I could find of them were a bunch of broken chunks of pottery.  There wasn't one of them left.  I also had a lot of nice clothes, and they're gone.  I'm going to have to replace some of them if I'm ever going to find a job.  Can you imagine going in for a job interview looking like this."  She chuckled a little at the thought.  "It does make it easy to get dressed in the morning though.  You don't have to spend a lot time deciding what to wear.  You just put on whatever's lying there from the night before.  Oh, it's not really that bad.  People have given me a few old clothes, and I shouldn't complain.  I haven't froze yet, at least."
	"I know it's not the same thing, because I did it to myself, but I suppose that everything I left at home when I left Frank, is gone forever.  He'll just throw it out or give it to one of his girlfriends."
	Francine looked sharply at her.  A sad countenance spread over Molly's face as she recalled all the times she had wrestled with the knowledge of Frank's wanderings.  "You mean he messed around on the side as well as being such an asshole?"
	"Yeah, it was just one more thing to make me feel worthless.  God, it took a long time to figure out what a bunch of shit that was.  I'm still trying to get out from under that one."  Molly paused, looked around the room again, and then at Francine.  "Well, you know how that goes.  You've been through it too."
	"Sorta," Francine said, nodding her head, "but Paul, that was his name, only messed around once, I guess, that I knew about anyway, and then he just split with her and left me right on the spot.  I think he only knew her for about a week or so when he left.  That must have been a real whirlwind relationship, I'd think.  It must have been fun for them I guess though."  She looked at Molly and smiled.  "I wouldn't mind having an affair like that, with all your juices flowing in every direction, overriding good sense."  She paused again briefly and her smile faded.  "Oh, I don't know.  It probably would end in a big mess, but it would be fun for a while.  It looks like you and Ellis could be in the middle of a nice hot one right now."
	Molly nodded and blushed.  "Yeah, I guess we're kinda in heat alright, and if it wasn't for all the outside forces, we might even be able to make something out of it.  You never know though, it might be the outside forces that keep it warm.  If it wasn't for them, our whole relationship might fold up.  The whole damn thing is so confusing right now, I just don't know what I'm doing really.  I sure do like Ellis though."
	"Don't give up.  Things are going to get better, for both of us, I hope."  Francine turned to leave the room.  "Well let me show you the rest of the place."
	Molly followed her out of the room, down the stairs and into the kitchen.  "You better grab your coat for the rest of the tour," Francine said reaching for her own coat that hung on a nail by the back door, "it's cold as hell in the back part of the house."
	They both put on their coats and went out through the back porch to where Fred and Ellis slept.  The door into the back of the house squeaked loudly as they opened it, and the dim weight of the room fell upon them.  The room appeared to Molly as if it had never been painted, and it appeared to Francine as if it had never been cleaned.  They may have both been right.  The dingy wooden walls and ceiling showed no signs of paint, but instead, looked like those rustic old boards from an ancient barn.  There were cobwebs hanging in the corners and an abandon wasp's nest attached to the ceiling near an empty light socket in the center of the room.  The floor, although it had been cleared of the large objects that one would be likely to trip over, had not been swept since the last ice age, and the accumulation of dust and dirt had begun to form a slight hill that seemed to roll up at one end of the room near the stairs.  Fred, in his passage to and from his room, had trod a path through the center of this geological rise in the elevation of the floor.
	"This is Ellis' room, or den, or whatever you'd call it," Francine said as she reached the far side of the room and turned to survey the hovel.  There's no electricity or heat out here, and you can see how much house cleaning goes on.  Actually, Fred and Ellis are less messy than John and Duncan, but I think it's just because they have this God-awful hole out here, and it fills their needs for that kind of thing."  She turned to head up the stairs.  "Here let's look upstairs, if we dare.  I haven't been up there for a while.  God only knows what we'll find."  Francine tromped up the narrow stairs with Molly behind her.
	When they reached the top, they were confronted, first, by a cardboard box of books, about two feet square, right in the middle of the doorway into Fred's room, and second by a large pile of what appeared to be clothing that seemed to crawl out from under his bed, across the floor and had begun to work it's way toward the stairs.  The walls were completely bare of anything but the wooden boards that mostly separated the room from the outside.  There were several gaps in these boards that had been stuffed with an item or two of clothing to keep most of the wind from blowing in, and both the windows were broken and had been covered with clear, but foggy plastic to prevent the weather from coming directly into the room at will.  For furniture, there was nothing more than a bed, which in itself, was little more than a frame, springs, and a lumpy stained mattress with a sleeping bag thrown on top,  There was also an old nail keg sitting next to the bed with a kerosene lantern perched on several books that had somehow managed to work their way up off the floor.
	Molly stood in the doorway with the box of books and surveyed the interior of the room.  "God, this looks like a documentary movie about poverty or something," she finally said.  "Whatever that is coming out from under the bed, looks like it might be alive."
	"I'll bet if it was warmer, it would smell alive too," Francine said, "or maybe like it used to be alive.  Pretty amazing, huh.  I can't believe anyone would live like this, but it must be good enough for Fred.  Other than this, he's really pretty normal.  Had enough?" she said as she noticed Molly pulling away from the doorway and back toward the stairs.
	"Yeah, I want to look at Ellis' room again.  If I have to spend some time out here, I better look and see if I could even stand to spend the night in that mess down there."  She turned and went back down the narrow steps with Francine chuckling behind her.
	"Maybe you could help me clear out that room off the kitchen, and then you could use it if Frank gets out of hand.  There aren't anymore beds, but we could figure something out."  Francine shivered from the cold as she stepped lightly down the stairs.
	Molly didn't answer, but reached the bottom of the steps and went behind the workbench to where Ellis' box of straw filled the far corner of the room.  It looked quite cozy to her with the exception of the sleeping bags tangled into a knot in the middle of the box.  "This actually looks pretty nice, if there was something besides those two smelly sleeping bags to crawl into," she said turning to Francine.
	"Those are probably pretty bad," Francine agreed.  "Ellis calls them his fart sacks, and he lets that dog of his sleep in there with him on really cold nights."
	"Well, it looks like, if I have to come out here," she said, "I better bring some bedding of my own."
	"Yeah, and lots of it," Francine said.
	"No shit.  I'll bet it's cold as hell out here at night," Molly agreed.
	"You can bet it doesn't get any warmer out here at night, but then two people can always keep warmer than one, and you can always put the dog in there too."  Francine laughed and headed toward the door out of the room.  "Speaking of cold, let's get back into the warm part of the house.  I'm about to freeze out here."
	Molly took one last look around Ellis' room as she followed Francine back into the kitchen.  They took off their coats and hung them by the back door.  Francine poured coffee and they sat down at the kitchen table.  Ellis got up from the couch in the parlor and after looking in the stove, came into the kitchen to join them.
	"What's up in here?" he said as he joined them at the table.
	"Oh, I just finished showing Molly the house, and we've been talking about how messy men are and what a pain in the butt you all are.  How's that?  You asked."  Francine said, getting up and going to the sink.  She picked up a coffee cup, rinsed it and returned to the table.  "See that.  I'm already waiting on you.  Have some coffee."
	Ellis chuckled to himself, but let out a little smirk.  "God I didn't know we were so bad, but thanks for the cup.  Aren't you going to pour it for me too," he said taking the coffeepot and filling his cup.
	Francine looked at Molly as he made the last remark and they both giggled and shook their heads in disgust.  "I showed Molly your room, Ellis," she said as if it would disturb him.
	"Well it wasn't messy in there, was it?" he said defensively.  "I keep all my tools and stuff hung right where they belong."
	When was the last time you swept the floor?"  Francine asked.
	He thought for a moment.  "I never have," he said shrugging his shoulders.  "What good would that do?"
	"I'm afraid we can't answer that for you," Molly said.  "Roll one of your cigarettes.  I want a puff or two."
Ellis gave her a quizzical look.  "That's twice you've smoked today.  Are you going to start smoking?"
	"Probably not," she answered, "but you never know.  This great Northwest makes a girl do funny things.  Don't you think Francine?"
	"It's a funny place alright, but I'm kinda getting to like it after a year."  Francine took a drink of her coffee and reached across the table, taking the tobacco and papers out of Ellis' hands as he began to roll a cigarette.  "Here, let me do that.  You wouldn't want Molly to have to smoke on one of those ragged things you make."
	"You could really get to be a bully, if given half a chance," Ellis said, relinquishing his makings.  Then looking over at Molly, he asked, "Well, what did you think of Fred's and my rooms?"
	"Medieval, is, I think the best word for them," she said with a playfully stern countenance.  "They're also cold."
	There was a roar of laughter from the other room, Dave rose from one of the overstuffed chairs and came into the kitchen still chuckling to himself.  He stretched and yawned, and then putting one foot up on the seat of a kitchen chair, he leaned over the table and said, "What do you think Molly?  We ought to be getting back to town.  I need to get a hold of dad's lawyer and see if we can get this thing delivered somehow."
	"I know," she said.  "We should, but I don't want to leave.  It's so peaceful and quiet out here."
	"I don't know.  I guess you could stay here if you wanted," he returned.  "You may have to eventually anyway."
	"No.  I'll go back in with you," she consented.  "I couldn't stand not knowing what was going on with Frank.  I can't just hide out.  I am going to have . . ."
	"If it comes to that," Dave interrupted, "you'll hide out alright.  We're not going to have any repeats of some of the scenes we had back in San Diego."
	"Look Dave!"  Molly flared.  "This is my trip.  I appreciate all the support I'm getting, but I still have to make the final decisions."
	"Okay, okay!  I don't want to argue about it, but I do have to make a few phone calls.'  He took his foot off the chair and zipped up his coat.  You can do whatever you want, but if he comes up here and it looks like it might get real ugly, then I may have to intervene.  Molly said nothing, but she felt a kind of rage, much like the anger Frank could make her feel.  She wondered if it was still Frank or could Dave push the same button.  She went to the hooks by the back door and took her coat.  She walked back across the kitchen putting on the coat and stopping in front of Dave, she said, "Don't push it Dave.  Just drop it for now."
	 Ellis got out of his chair and stood awkwardly next to the table facing them.  "I think I'll stay out here, but I'll see you tomorrow or the next day for sure."
	She reached out and touched him on the arm.  "I'm sorry Ellis.  I hope this is over pretty soon."
	"It's Okay.  It'll be over soon enough, and it's going to turn out fine.  You'll see." Ellis relaxed a bit and took her hand in his.  "You listen to Dave.  It sounds to me like Frank could be real dangerous if he comes up here and I don't want you to get hurt."
	"Well, I don't want anyone to get hurt either," she said.  "I know how to handle Frank, I've been doing it for years."
	"You call that handling Frank?"  Dave couldn't let it pass without reminding her of the past.
	"Dammit Dave, just let it drop."  Molly sounded irritated now, and she zipped up her coat and turned toward the back door.  "Let's go then."  Ellis followed her, and they went out past the coal sacks and into the yard.  The snow glistened in the sun, making them squint their eyes and the mist from their breath hung in front of them in the still cold air.  The day was beautiful, and it almost let Molly forget the confrontation with her brother.  They stopped near Dave's car waiting for him to come out of the house.  Molly reached over, took Ellis' hand, and stood looking across the expanse of hills rolling off into the distance.  She felt as though Frank was a million miles away and his reach could never find her here in this peaceful valley.  Finally, she squeezed Ellis' hand and turned to him.
	"Ellis," she said.  "Don't wait too long to come see me.  I'll miss you."  She moved closer to him and they kissed, a kind of tender light kiss, and then stood there looking into each other's face for nearly a minute, before Dave came out, interrupting their silent communication.
	"I won't be long," Ellis said, giving her a hug.  "I'll be in tomorrow or the next day.  If Frank somehow shows up before then, you get yourself out here, or at least let me know he's around.  Even if you have to send Carol or someone out to let me know."
	"Alright, I will, but don't you start in like Dave."  She gave his hand another little squeeze and turned away, getting into the passenger side of the car.
	"Well, I guess we'll see you pretty soon," Dave said as he walked up to the car.
	Ellis walked around to where Dave had stopped next to the driver's door, and leaned up against the car.  "Look Dave, do you think you could keep me posted somehow, if things look like trouble?" he said.  "If Frank does just drive straight up here, he could be on the road right now, and actually get here by tomorrow.  If he shows up, I really need to know, or she has to get right out here."
	"We'll get word to you somehow, even if I have to get someone to come out here just for that."  He said opening the door and climbing in the car.  "See you later."
	Ellis walked around the car to Molly's side.  She rolled down the frosty window as Dave started the motor and let it warm momentarily.  He bent down and kissed her once more and then stepped back from the little Volkswagen.  "See you real soon."
	"I hope so," she said as Dave backed the car out of the driveway and headed back to town.
	Ellis waived and then turned, walking back into the house.  He hadn't noticed the cold until he started back in and he gave a convulsive shiver as he opened the back door.  Francine was clearing off the kitchen table and as he entered.  "I like Molly," she said.  "She seems real nice.  I hope she does come out here for a while, but God, I hope nothing happens awful with that Frank.  He makes my ex-husband sound like a prince.  If he ever shows up out here, I'll shoot him myself.  Do you still have that rifle out there in your room?"
	Ellis shook his head, just to think of all the horrible possibilities.  "It's out there, but I only have about ten bullets.  You might be better off if you didn't get involved in this mess."
	"Yeah, I know," she agreed, "but I feel like Molly's my friend, and I can't really just stand by if there's something I can do.  In fact I'd feel better if we had a couple of guns out here."
	Ellis looked at her with a bit of amazement.  "That blows me away to hear you say that.  Gale's hunting bothered you so much, I thought you'd be afraid of guns, or at least not want any around."
  	"I don't like hunting, and I could never shoot an animal," she said, but I could shoot an asshole like Frank without a blink.  Fuckers like that, don't deserve to live in this world, and I wouldn't have to think twice before dispensing with one of them."
	"Remind me to stay on your good side," he said sitting down at the table.  He reached over to the stove from where he sat and picked up the coffeepot.  It felt about half full, and looking at Francine, who had just finished clearing the table and stacking the dishes in the sink, and asked, "you want anymore coffee?"
	"I think I've had enough, but you can," she answered.  "Here's your cup."  She reached into the sink and handed him the cup he had been using before.  He filled it, set the pot back on the stove and picked up his tobacco that still lay on the table.
	"Do you think that Frank will come up here?"  Ellis asked, as he began to roll a cigarette.
	Francine had begun to fill the sink with water and she turned halfway around toward him with one hand still on the faucet.  "There's no way to tell really, but from talking to Molly, it seems like he's always felt he owned her.  Not so much like you would own a book or a shoe or something, but kinda like you would own a dog or cat.  She even said that he used to order her around like you would a dog.  He'd tell her when and where to sit, or what to make for dinner, and then he might come home and eat it if he felt like it.  It seems to me that someone like that would probably come up here and try and get his property back.  Yeah, I think he'll come up here."
	"I suppose you're right," he said.  "When do you think he'll get here?"
	"I'm afraid he's already started.  Molly thought he probably had anyway," she said.  "He could be here as early as tomorrow."
	"That would make, getting the restraining order delivered to him kinda hard, I'd think," Ellis said, as he took a drink of his coffee and lit the cigarette he had finished rolling.  "Jesus Christ!  That doesn't give us much time to prepare."
	"Prepare what?"  Francine asked, turning from the sink.
	"Fuck, I don't know, but we need to have some kinda plan, don't we?" he asked.
	"In some ways we have to be real careful that we don't get ourselves in trouble," Francine pondered.  "I mean real trouble."  She dried her hands and picking up a coffee cup, she joined Ellis at the table.  He filled her cup and set the pot on the stove again.  "As much as it might be the right thing to do, we can't just kill the asshole," she added.
	"Yeah, I see what you mean," Ellis agreed.  "I guess Frank has to make the first move.  I'd sure hate to have to rely on the Sheriff's department to deal with him."
	"It sounds like they don't really care much about dealing with this thing," she acknowledged, "but that might be okay too.  Molly said he would probably be carrying a gun of his own, so that could make him fair game in some ways, I'd think."
	"Fuck!  I don't want to shoot anyone.  I just want the asshole to leave us alone," Ellis said, taking a drag on his cigarette and blowing it out in a large perfect smoke ring that encircled his coffee cup.
	"Wow!  That was cool," Francine said, looking at the ring as it dissipated.
	"I couldn't do that in a million years, if I tried," he said with a chuckle.
	Duncan got up from the couch and wandered into the kitchen.  "Well Ellis, Dave says you're going to get us all murdered in our sleep."
	"Oh yeah, you think he'll kill us all, huh?"  Ellis asked, looking up at him standing there with a silly smirk on his face.
	"Well, that's what Dave said and he knows the guy," Duncan answered, pulling a chair out from the table and sitting down.
	"What exactly did Dave say?"  Francine asked.
	"Oh, he said this Frank, or whatever his name is, is a pretty dangerous dude and we ought to be real careful of him."  Duncan got back up, went to the sink and taking a cup, returned to the table.  Francine handed him the coffeepot from the stove.  He poured his cup full and handed it back.  "Yeah, Dave made this Frank guy sound real bad.  I guess he's a big speed dealer down there in San Diego.  Maybe he'll bring some good shit up with him, and we can all get some before he kills us."
	"Oh, you're real funny Duncan," Francine said, giving him a disgusted look.  "This thing's fairly serious.  I think we should figure out what we're going to do, instead of making stupid jokes about it."
	"Oh shit Francine, so far there's nothing but talk.  The guy probably won't even come up here.  Shit, that's a long ways, just to hassle an ex-wife."  Duncan laughed.  Hell, he's probably so fucked up that he couldn't find his way up here anyway."
	"I don't know, Duncan," Ellis said.  "Like you said though, he's probably all strung out on speed, but that could make him kinda pumped to drive two thousand miles, just to be an asshole.  I think we better watch it and keep an eye out for him."
	"How the hell is he going to find us out here, even if Molly does move in?"  He asked.
	"I have no idea," Ellis answered, "but it's possible and I think we ought to figure he will.  If we don't have to deal with him, all the better, but if we do, we need to be ready."
	"Hey Fred!  Do you still have that pistol your dad gave you?"  Duncan yelled into the other room.
	"Huh, what?"  Fred answered, still partially attached to the television.
	"Do you still have that gun you had a while ago?"  Duncan asked again.
	"Oh yeah, I have both of them," he said.  There's a twenty-two rifle and an old thirty-eight pistol, but I don't have any ammunition for the thirty-eight.  What the fuck, are we going to have to fortify out here, or what?  Jesus Christ, Ellis, what have you got us into?"
	"Yeah I know," Ellis responded.  "If I had a lick of sense, I'd take Molly and split somewhere as far away as we could find, but I have no idea where to start.  This whole thing could come down by tomorrow or the next day, and be over just as fast."
	"It's how it gets over that worries me," Francine said.
	"No shit," Duncan agreed.
	"Well, like Boesel always said,  'stay fluid',"  Fred said, getting up from the parlor and walking into the kitchen.  "I guess if this thing is going to happen, then we ought to be ready.  What the hell, if this asshole Frank is going to fuck with us, we should give him something to remember us by.  He sounds like a complete looser.  The best thing for the world would be for him not to go home at all, or go home in a sack.  Maybe he'll give us a chance to improve the plight of mankind."
	"You guys are crazy," John spoke up from the parlor.  What are we going to have, a gun battle in the driveway, or what?"
	"Really, that sounds awful," Francine tossed in.
	"Oh I don't know," Fred chuckled,  "that sounds more exciting than what's been going on around here.  Shit, we have him out-gunned.  The dogs can let us know when he shows up and then we can fan out and take him down.  I saw it in a movie one time."
	"Jesus Fred," Duncan laughed.  "You guys give me shit for living in a dream-world.  You're way out there now.  I can just see us in a gun battle, all huddled up somewhere, cringing in a corner.  Are we all going . . ."
	"Speak for yourself," Fred interrupted.  "I don't know about you, but Ellis and I will be armed and dangerous by dark."  Looking over at Ellis for support, he continued.  "Maybe we should go into town and get some bullets for my pistol.  God, this is starting to get kinda fun.  What do you think, Ellis?" 
	"I don't know if I'd call it fun, but it could get exciting," Ellis answered.  "Where we going to get the money for bullets?"
	"I have a little stashed away in my room, just for this kinda thing," Fred admitted.  "I knew you'd get us into something like this."  He laughed and then looking over at Duncan, who sat shaking his head, continued.  "We'll keep you safe from the big bully.  That fucker doesn't know what he's dealing with.  This is the great Northwest, where men are men, and we'll send the asshole back home so full of lead, he'll sink like a rock."  He laughed again, pulled out a chair, swung it around and sat down backwards, straddling the seat with his arms resting on the back.
	"Jesus Christ, Fred!"  Francine blurted out.  "Who you think you are, John Wayne or something?  You probably don't even know which end of the gun the bullet comes out of.  And another thing, I thought men had jobs and actually worked for a living, instead of diving in dumpsters for stale donuts."
	"Now she's getting mean," Fred said, flushing.  "That was a low blow.  I was a goddamn expert marksman in the navy, I'll have you know.  So don't you worry about me and guns."
	"Boy, that gives me a real feeling of security to know I have you two between me and the likes of this Frank guy."  She leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on Ellis' lap.  "Hey John, bring a joint in here and join us.  We need some brain food for these two idiots.  Maybe it'll bring them back to the real world."
	"Oh yeah, is there such a thing as the real world?"  John laughed, got up from his chair, took one of the slender white cylinders from the candy tin and came into the kitchen.  "I think you guys are all crazy.  I think we should just clean the place out of all this shit," he handed the joint to Ellis, "and let the cops know we're in danger."  He walked around the table and sat down.
	"I suppose we should clean out the house of any contraband, just in case, but I sure wouldn't tell the cops we even know this thing's coming down," Fred warned.  "They'll start hanging around out here like a bad smell and they'll never leave us alone.  This place has a reputation with them anyway, after that pot bust out here a couple years ago.  We don't want to remind them the place even exists, if we don't have to."
	"Well, that's true, but I don't want any part of this gun deal."  John shook his head and took the joint from Francine as it made its way around the table.
	"Oh shit, there's not going to be any shooting anyway," Ellis said, taking his tobacco and papers out of his pocket.  "Frank doesn't even know we exist and no one's going to tell him.  In fact, we don't know he's even going to come up here."
	"I'm still going to get some ammunition for my pistol," Fred said getting up and pacing the kitchen floor.
	"I guess if we went into town, we could find out if Dave got the restraining order delivered down in San Diego," Ellis said.  "When do you want to go?"
	"I don't know how he could get that done by now," Francine said, shaking her head.  "It would take the mail a day or two just to get the thing down there, then someone has to find him and deliver it.  That is if they can even find him."
	"Isn't there some way besides the mail that things like that can get there?  They don't have to mail it, do they?"  John asked.
	"How would you do it?"  Francine asked.  "I don't think you can just pick up the phone and call a thing like that down there.  I think the original copy, with the judge's signature and everything has to be physically sent down there and then someone has to hand deliver it to the guy.  That could take some time."
	"Yeah, he could never get it at all, or he could be halfway up here by the time the orders even get to California."  Ellis agreed, lighting his cigarette.  "Shit, he could have already jumped on a plane and be standing in line at the car rental place in Spokane right now."
	"That's a comforting thought," Francine said reaching over, taking Ellis' cigarette out of his hand and taking a drag.  "God, Ellis you would have to think of that."
	"What do you say Ellis?"  Fred prompted from where he stood looking out the window into the snow filled driveway.  "You want to go into town with me?"
	"Right now?"  He asked.
	Sure, why not?  That is, if we're going to be armed and dangerous by dark."  Fred turned from the window and leaned against the counter with his arms folded in front of him.
	Ellis stood up, letting Francine's legs drop off his lap with a thump.  "Okay then, let's go."
	"There's an empty box and a sack out there on the porch for coal if it gets dark enough to go by there," Duncan reminded them, as they headed out the back door.
	Fred went up to his room and returned with the pistol his dad had given him.  Ellis took the rifle from the corner along with about a dozen cartridges and they both went back into the kitchen.  Fred leaned up against the stove looking at the old thirty-eight Smith & Wesson.  The blued finish was nearly gone and the black hard-rubber grips were scratched and worn.  Ellis walked through the room to near the parlor door, stopped and began loading the Winchester.  He slid each bullet into a hinged trap door on the side of the rifle's action, pushing it the last little way with the tip of the next cartridge.  He put six of the slender brass and lead bullets into the gun and set the rest on the counter next to where he stood.
	"Jesus, Ellis," John said looking alarmed.  "You didn't load that thing, did you?"
	"Well hell yes!"  Ellis snapped at him.  "What the hell good is it empty?"
	"Couldn't we just point it at him," John asked plaintively, "and make him get out of here?"
	"Jesus Christ!  Don't let him anywhere near that gun," Fred said grabbing his coat off a nail by the back door.  "He'll get us all killed."
	"No shit!"  Ellis said.  "Jesus John, You don't ever want to point a gun at somebody unless you plan on using the thing."  He handed the rifle to Francine.  "Here, you're in charge of this thing.  You know how to run it?"
	"Sure," she said pointing the rifle at the floor.  "Is it chambered?"
	"No, but the magazine's full."  Ellis answered.
	"Well then sure, it's easy.  I just cycle the lever to load it, aim it at the asshole and blow his fucking head off."  She looked up at Ellis with a sly grin and then over at John, who sat looking horrified.  "What do you think?  You didn't know I was a gun moll did you?"
	John shook his head in dismay, got up from the table and went quietly into the parlor.  Everyone laughed but, John.  Fred went out the back door carrying his pistol, and Ellis followed on his heels, leaving Francine holding the Winchester rifle.
	Francine held the rifle, turning it in her hands for a few minutes before she stood up, walked around behind the stove and leaned the gun in the corner formed where the chimney met the wall.  Holding the gun had made her remember the many times she had gone hunting with her father when she was a child.  Having no brothers for her father to teach the ropes to, he had made her his number one sidekick early in life, and since he had been an avid sportsman, she had tramped at his side through many a woods while growing up.  They had hunted birds and deer during the fall and winter and fished the local streams and lakes in the spring and summer.  She had liked the time outdoors and the long walks in the forest.  She had even enjoyed the endless hours, sitting quietly in the small wooden boat, waiting for a fish to bite, but she had never liked the killing.
	She had, to her father's dismay, never shot a deer.  She had killed pheasants and grouse, but she had never killed a single deer.  She had shot at deer, at least he thought she had, but the truth of the matter was, that she had always shot to miss the deer on purpose.  She was a good shot and her father could never understand why she always missed her deer, year after year.  Little did he know that she had shot right where she aimed to shoot and she never let on any different.  "You'll get him next year," he'd say at the end of every season, and she'd smile and nod her head and say, "I hope so, dad."
	She went to the sink, rinsed the coffee cups, and washed the several dishes that sat on the counter.  She picked up the six remaining thirty-thirty cartridges that Ellis had left on the counter and sat down alone at the kitchen table.  Duncan had returned to whatever television program he and John had been engrossed in earlier, and she was left to sit quietly with her many thoughts.  She poured another cup of coffee, leaned her elbows on the table and looked out the large window across the driveway to where the barn stood leaning away from the prevailing winds.
	She was unnerved by the idea that this awful sounding Frank fellow was going to make trouble for the whole lot of them, but she wasn't scared in the least.  It also disconcerted her that John and Duncan seemed intimidated by the pending possibilities.  It made her wonder about her present relationship with John.  He was certainly a nice, gentle, man, but she wasn't sure if he could be counted on in a tight spot.  Fred and Ellis sounded tough, but they too were probably far more talk than action.  She was sure that it was up to her, and her alone, to keep Frank from doing them all in.  She stood the bullets up on the table in a straight line and then rearranged them several times before gathering them all up and taking them to the cupboard, where she set them on the bottom shelf next to a stack of soup bowls.
	Without any conscious effort, she went into the crowded junk room where the record player was and digging through the piles of records, she found a classical selection by Brahms, put it on the player and went into the parlor.  Picking up the book she had been reading, she sat down across the room from John and Duncan in the smaller of the two moth-eaten overstuffed chairs.
	"Jesus, Francine," Duncan said, not looking away from the television.  "Where'd you find that record?"
	"Oh, it was in there with rest of that mess, buried under one of the piles," she said opening her book and putting her feet up on the low table in the middle of the room.  She sat reading for some time with the sound of the television tuned out as best she could and the soothing tones of Brahms as close to the surface as she could keep them.  John got up, went to the bathroom and returned.
	"Is that gun going to sit there behind the stove from now on, or what?"  He asked sitting back down.
	"Is it still loaded?"  Duncan asked. 
	"It's loaded," Francine announced, barely looking over her book.  "You don't like it there?"
	"Oh, I don't know," John replied.  "I guess that I just don't like having it around at all.  What if it just falls over and goes off?  It could kill any one of us."
	Francine dropped her book to her lap and looked at John for a moment before saying anything.  "You really are afraid of guns, aren't you?"
 	"I don't know if I'd say I was afraid of them," he responded, "but I sure don't like them.  They're always right in the middle of some kind of trouble and it seems to me that just having one around is going to bring trouble right to our door."
	"Yeah, I agree with John," Duncan said.  "I don't even know this Frank guy, but I think he's going to be better prepared for a gun fight than any of us."
	"You guys really get me," Francine said, looking perturbed.  "Supposing that some big deal even comes from this thing, which is unlikely anyway, I just can't believe that anyone would just sit there and do nothing like you two.  It's like you think right and wrong, and justice are something for someone else to deal with."
	"Shit Francine!"  Duncan burst out.  "Right and wrong don't have anything to do with it.  What the hell's right about this guy Frank coming out here and hassling us, if he ever does?  Like you say."
	"That's just what I mean," she came back at him.  "It's not right.  It's wrong.  It's wrong as hell and we shouldn't let him get away with it," then leaning forward and looking at John, she continued,  "Jesus John, I met you at a political demonstration.  Does this mean you're not really ready to stand behind what you believe in?  Come on, you guys.  Let's take a stand against the bullies of the world and do whatever it takes.  She relaxed and fell back into the placidity of the old chair.  "Hey Duncan, bum me one of your cigarettes, would'ya?  You guys are going to make me start smoking again."
	Duncan reached in his shirt pocket, tossed her a cigarette and took one out for himself.  "You know, it's not like we're chickenshit or anything," he said.  "I just don't think it's the right way to deal with this thing.  It just doesn't make any sense to put us all in danger for someone we don't even know.  And what happens if one of you does shoot this guy?  Then we're going to have every cop in the world out here."
	Really Francine, this thing's none of our business, and we should stay out of it," John agreed.  "We're just sticking our neck in a noose for someone we hardly even know.  I think we should just let the cops handle it.  That's what they're there for."
	She took a long drag on the cigarette, tipped her head back and blew the smoke, swirling into the air above her.  Tucking her legs up to her chest, she glared across the room to where both the boys sat and looked first at one, then the other.  "Let me get this right," she began.  "One, since we don't really know this person very well, we shouldn't help her.  Two, because there's a certain amount of danger involved, we should stay out of the thing.  And three, we should kiss-off our convictions of right and wrong in favor of apathy and cowardice."  She paused for a moment, then just as John started to respond, she put her feet back on the floor, looked over at him and stood up.  "God, I just can't hardly believe it.  You guys really disappoint me.  I think the best thing you two can do, is stay the hell out of the way.  Maybe under your beds would be a good place."  She walked into the kitchen and began shuffling around aimlessly, rearranging dishes on the counter.
	"What do you think we ought to do?"  John asked Duncan.
	"Man, I don't know," Duncan said.  "How the hell did we get into this thing anyway?  Somehow, I had a feeling about Ellis when he first came here.  I just had a feeling about him, that he'd bring some shit like this down on us.  Maybe he should move into town with Molly until this whole thing blows over."
	"You guys are missing the whole point," Francine interjected, walking to the parlor door and looking in on the two of them slouched in their seats.  "Look, everybody's trying to avoid a confrontation with this Frank guy.  That's why Molly's maybe going to come out here in the first place, because he doesn't even know this place exists.  This whole thing could get solved without any confrontation at all.  You know that restraining order is supposed to keep Frank out of the state, and when the cops find him up here, they'll run him out and that should be the end of it.  The only reason we're getting ready for trouble is on the bare chance that he does figure out Molly's out here.  It's not like we're out looking for a fight or anything.  We're just trying to be prepared for the possibility, and it's not very likely anything will happen at all."  She turned, walking to the kitchen stove and opened the firebox, checking the fire.  "Come on you guys, let's pull together and help someone, whether we know them all that well or not.  I am getting to know Molly and I like her real well."
	"Maybe you should move in to Dave and Carol's too," Duncan announced.  "You can have a whole army in there if you want.  I just don't want all this shit taking place out here."
	"What about Fred?"  She came back to the doorway.  "You going to kick him out too?  What the fuck's wrong with you two?  I thought you had a kind of family out here.  Everything's cool as long as there isn't anything to ruffle your quiet little world, but the minute a big wave rolls in, you guys run for shore.  I'm afraid you're just a pair of water-asses with hardly enough spine to even crawl under a rock on your own."  She went back to the stove shaking her head.  "You know that if you were in the same jam as Molly, Fred and Ellis would help you, no matter what it took."
	The winter sun was well past its zenith by the time Fred and Ellis rolled into town.  Traffic was light, the roads were bare of the recently fallen snow, and colorful Christmas decorations hung from the lamp poles and adorned the many shop fronts that lined the main street.  Chuck's Hardware store, was tucked in between two large retail businesses on this main drag.  Fred pulled the little Volvo into a parking space across the street from the hardware store and they jaywalked between the few cars that passed by in either direction.  Ellis' gloom over the pending problem that confronted them lightened as he neared the store and by the time the many tools and assorted hardware stretched out before him, he had almost forgotten the grim purpose of their mission.  A display of Case pocketknives caught his eye first as he sauntered down the isle directly in front of where they had entered.  He wished he could buy one of these fine knives, but knew that the one he had carried for the past six or eight years would continue to serve him well for a good long time to come.
	Fred went straight to the sporting goods section.  He first came to a glass case containing some dozen or more handguns.  There were three auto-loading pistols scattered among the group.  One was a twenty-two caliber, made by Ruger and the other two were Colt forty-five automatics, like those he had trained with in the navy.  These heavy, squareish, blued-steel pistols swept Fred back in time several years to the pistol range at boot camp, where he had earned his expert marksman status with guns like these.  He could still feel the power of the large, relatively slow moving bullet, as it began its short journey down the barrel of the gun, transferring its energy back into his outstretched arms.  He could remember how, when he pulled the trigger, the barrel raised slightly from the recoil, settled back on sight and was ready to fire again.  He stood looking into the case for several minutes, reminiscing and wondering how he could own one of these fine firearms.  Ellis' meanderings finally brought him to where Fred stood staring into the gun case.
	"I wouldn't mind having one of these," Ellis said, pointing at a handsomely blued revolver.
	"Yeah, that's a nice one, but look at this," Fred answered, pointing at the Colt automatic that had spurred his memories.
	"You like those automatics don't you?"  Ellis said.  "They just don't feel right to me.  I'm kind of a revolver man myself.  They may not shoot as fast, but they don't ever jam or screw up.  Not to mention that they just look better."
	"Really, you don't like the looks of that Colt?"  Fred said.  "God, I think it's beautiful.  I want one."
	"Well, it looks like if you had three hundred bucks you could have one."  Ellis laughed, moving his gaze to the rack of rifles behind the counter.  There must have been twenty or more rifles of various calibers, along with several shotguns standing on their butt-stocks against the wall.  "Look, there's a thirty-thirty just like mine."
	I wonder if we should get some more ammunition for that while we're here?"  Fred asked.  "I'll bet they're expensive."
	"I've got about a dozen rounds left, but I sure wouldn't mind shooting it a few times.  It's been a long time since I've shot it at all and I have no idea if it's even sighted in anymore."  He moved down the isle a short ways to where box after box of ammunition lay stacked on several shelves.  Looking through the array of various colored boxes, he came to the thirty-eight ammunition first.  There were four choices of bullet weights, ranging from a fast little one hundred and twenty-five-grain slug, to the heavier, but slower one hundred and sixty grain bullet.
	"What kinda bullets you want Fred?"  Ellis asked, picking up one of the boxes and turning it over to look at the price.
	"Have they got any hundred and fifty-eight grain hollow points?"  He asked.
	"Yeah, right here."  Ellis handed the box he had picked up to Fred.  "Five ninety-five for fifty of them."
	"That's not too bad," he said, "What about thirty-thirty cartridges, how much are they?"
Ellis perused down the row of boxes until he came to the rifle ammunition and picked up a box of thirty-thirty cartridges.  "Shit they're a buck more and you don't even get half as many," he said.
"Yeah, I know.  Rifle ammunition is always more expensive, but we have enough for both boxes," he said.  "What kind of bullet do you shoot in that thing?"
"Shit, it's been so long, I can't remember."  He looked at the choices that ranged from a hundred and ten-grain varmint slug to the hundred and seventy grain large game round.  "Well, I'd say Frank would fall more into the large game category, wouldn't you?"  He asked.
"That sounds about right," Fred answered with a chuckle.
Ellis took the box of hundred and seventy grain silver-tip bullets from the shelf.  "You think we can afford both of these, huh?"
	"Sure, I told you I had a little stash put away for something like this."  He turned back around to the pistol display and gave the Colt auto one last covetous look before heading for the checkout counter.  "Damn, I want one of those Colts."
	They walked back along the isle to the front of the store, where the cash register sat in front of the entrance and set both boxes of ammunition on the counter.  An attractive girl in her teens smiled and took the boxes.  Turning them over to find the price, she poked the proper numbers into the register and announced a total of thirteen dollars and sixty-five cents.  Fred produced a twenty-dollar bill, she gave him his change and put the bullets in a small sack.  They left the store, jaywalked back across the street to the car and got in.
	"Well, it's still too light to get coal," Fred said starting the motor.  "What do you say we go by Dave's and see where they got with the restraining order?"
	"Yeah, that sounds good," Ellis agreed.  "I just don't see what good that'll do though.  It's just a piece of paper.  Frank doesn't seem like the kinda guy that would even read the thing."
	"He doesn't sound like he could even read it, if he wanted too," Fred said laughing.
	"Yeah really.  Molly said she met him at college, however, so he probably can, but he doesn't sound too smart."  Ellis took out his makings and began to roll a cigarette.
	Fred had pulled the little Volvo out into the street and was preparing to turn left toward the college where Dave and Carol lived.  The light at the intersection turned yellow and as he sped up to sneak through the light, the car spun sideways, sliding diagonally across the intersection and into the curb, right in front of the bank.
	"Jesus, Fred!  Take it easy," Ellis said gathering up the tobacco that had spilled from the jolt of hitting the curb.
	"Sorry," he said.  "I didn't mean to blow up.  He looked around, somewhat embarrassed, then pulled away from the curb and proceeded on their way.  "That was sure lucky.  The street doesn't look that slick."
	They drove along quietly, Ellis finished making and lit his cigarette and within several minutes, they were pulling up in front of Molly's.  They trooped out of the car, up to the front door and knocked just as Carol opened it for them.  She smiled, welcoming them in and shut the door behind them.
	"I thought we might see you again today, Ellis," she said, signaling them to follow her into the kitchen, where Dave and Molly sat at the breakfast nook.  Molly gave Fred a glance and smile, and then looked almost longingly at Ellis, patting the seat with her hand and scooting deeper into the nook, she made room for him to sit next to her.
	"Go sit down Fred," Carol said.  "I'm just fussing around here, getting ready to make some dinner.  Can you two stay for something to eat?"
	"Sure why not," Fred said, sitting down next to Dave.  "We can always eat real food."
	"You guy's don't have real food out there?"  Carol looked at Fred and shook her head.
	"I hate to admit it," Ellis spoke up, "but it's got better since Francine's kinda taken over the kitchen."
	"I like Francine," Molly said, putting her hand on Ellis' leg.  "I hope I can get to know her better.  I really can't say I know John very well, but they don't seem very well matched."
	"Yeah, they're pretty different," Ellis agreed, "but they seem to get along okay.  I don't think it'll last too long though.  You know how John is.  He kinda keeps his love-life moving along, never sticking with one girl long enough to get pinned down."
	"I'd kinda think she's more Fred's type," Molly blurted out, wrinkling her nose and grinning at Fred.
	Yeah really Fred," Ellis chuckled.
	"Don't get me involved in anything," he said, holding his hands up in front of him.  "I don't need any women terrorizing me.  Things are just fine without the troubles that could bring."
	'Oh Fred!"  Carol spoke up from her dinner preparations.  "I didn't know you were such a misogynist."
	"I'm not a misogynist," Fred defended himself.  "I just don't need to be bothered by all that shit that goes along with falling in love.  You end up all tied down and having to answer for every little thing you do.  I've got no problem with women at all.  They're just fine and I'd say equal in most respects, but I just don't want one to call my own."
	"Oh!"  Carol jumped him.  "You think we're like pets or something."
	"No!  No!"  He denied Carols accusation.  "If anything, we're the pets, if there's any of that involved.  I just don't want a girlfriend, that's all.
	They all laughed, Carol the hardest.  "Oh Fred, you'll get yours one of these days.  I'd really like to see you fall in love with some nice girl.  I'll bet you'd be like a moon struck cow."
	Fred looked out the window into the darkness that had fallen since they arrived.  "Let's go fill up on coal Ellis, and I won't have to listen to all this nonsense."
	"I didn't know you were so sensitive," Carol remarked with a grin.
	Ellis slid out of the seat and stretched.  "I suppose we should.  It won't take more that about fifteen, twenty minutes.  How's that going to work out for you Carol?"
	"Oh, that should be fine," she answered.  "It'll take me longer than that to put things together here."
	"Hey!  I forgot to ask," Ellis said.  "What happened with getting the restraining order delivered?"
	"Oh shit!"  Dave answered.  It isn't going to happen.  It looks like Frank left right after he hung up the phone this morning.  It sounds like he's on his way up here right now.  At least he's driving, but that could put him in here tomorrow if he drives straight through.  I got a hold of dad's lawyer and he tried to deliver the thing, but Frank had already left.  I guess the neighbor said he asked them to feed the cats for a few days and then he piled a bunch of stuff in his car and left.  So it looks to me like he's headed this way."
	Molly moaned and put her head down on the table.  Ellis went back to the nook, sat down and put his hand on her back, stroking it gently.  "Don't worry, it'll be over soon.  The restraining order still applies, and if we can put him in touch with the authorities up here, he'll have to leave.  If not Fred and I have prepared for the worst, if it comes to that."
	"What do you mean, the worst?"  Carol asked.
	"You probably aren't going to like this," Ellis answered, "but we're now armed out there.  Duncan and John are bummed, but Francine sounds almost like she could really get into it.  I'd say that if Frank ever finds the farm, he'll wish he hadn't."
	"What are you guys armed with?"  Dave asked.
	Fred reached in his pocket, produced a thirty-eight cartridge and tossed it to Dave.  "We've also got a thirty-thirty out at the farm, loaded up and ready to go."
	"Good.  Does anyone know how to use them?"  Dave asked.
	"Oh, I don't know about Duncan and John," Ellis said, "but I think the rest of us can do the job if it comes to that.  I just wish we had one more gun out there, but I guess we'll be alright."
	I might be able to dig up one more from a guy I know," Dave said.  You guys go get your coal and I'll make a phone call and see what I can find.  A twelve gauge shotgun might be a nice addition out there."
	Ellis gave Molly a light squeeze on the shoulder and stood up.  Fred followed and they strolled out of the kitchen to where their coats lay waiting, draped over the couch.  After putting them on and a brief goodbye, they left the house on the coal run.  The temperature had dropped along with the sun and they both shivered slightly as they walked to the car.  Fred started the Volvo and let it warm for a minute while Ellis began to roll a cigarette.  As Fred pulled away from the curb, Ellis lit his cigarette and blew out a large cloud of smoke, causing Fred to cough and open his side window.
	I wonder how long we're going to get away with gleaning coal from the college?"  Fred asked.
	"I don't know," Ellis said.  I know what you mean though, so far it's been almost too easy.  Kinda like one of these times, they'll be waiting for us with one of those SWAT teams or something."
	Fred laughed halfheartedly.  "Yeah, no shit.  If they had a SWAT team around here, they'd probably bring it out.  I can't believe we didn't even bring one joint into town with us.  I wouldn't mind burning one right now."
	"Yeah, me too," Ellis agreed.  "You know, we probably ought to get as much coal as we can, since we may have trouble getting into town for a while, what with Frank showing up at any time."
	"That's true.  I wish we had brought a couple of those boxes from the farm.  Maybe we ought to go by the store and see if there's any out back there."
	"Yeah maybe, or we could spread that ratty old tarp out in the trunk and just fill it up."  Ellis turned around, looking into the back seat.  "Have you got anything we can scoop it into the trunk with?"
	"There's an old shovel back there with a broken off handle and I think there's still a small bucket in the trunk."  Fred turned the car toward the small park that lay near the coal pile at the foot of the hill.  "We better stop before we get there and spread that tarp out so we don't have to spend any more time than we have to at the pile."  He pulled over to the side of the road in front of one of the many sorority houses that lined the streets in the neighborhood.  They both jumped out and quickly spread the tarp neatly across the floor of the trunk to prevent the coal from making too much of a mess.  When this was done, they hopped back into the car and Fred maneuvered the Volvo down over the back side of the hill to the pile of coal.  He drove around the pile once to make sure they were alone and then backed up to the pile at a spot where the snow had been scraped off by the heavy equipment the college used to load coal into the huge steam boilers that heated most of the university buildings.  They got out and quickly went to work, Fred with the shortened shovel and Ellis with the bucket.  It was hard to be quiet and once when they let the shovel and bucket clang together, they stopped for a moment to listen.  When they heard nor saw nothing they resumed their gleanings and were soon finished.  As they walked back to the front of the car, they could see that the poor little Volvo squatted sharply in the rear from the added weight.
	"God damn," Fred said quietly, opening the front door.  "We really got a load that time.  Hope it doesn't break anything."
	"You'll be okay," Ellis said as he got in, and they drove away.
	Fred pulled the car slowly away from the pile with the headlights off.  When they were back on the street he switched on the lights and headed toward the center of town.  The weight in the trunk was enough to nearly lift the front tires off the ground, which made steering somewhat difficult, but he managed to herd the car along the snow covered side roads until they came to the bare Main Street that ran the full length of the down town.
	"We've got plenty of time," Fred said.  "Do you want to stop down here for anything?"
	"Not really," Ellis answered.  They passed the pizza parlor, a half dozen other retail stores and then turned right at the same corner where they had slid into the curb.  A corner where two banks sat facing each other, like a pair of moneylenders carefully positioned to squeeze everyone that passed between them.  They went right by the police station sitting sleepily next to the frozen river that meandered through town and then started up the hill to Dave's house.  They passed both the gray-stone churches with their steeples poked high above the streets and then leveling out, worked their way through the maze of fraternity and sorority houses before coming to rest once more in front of Dave and Carol's.
	"Did you ever load that pistol?"  Ellis asked as Fred turned off the car.
	"No.  I probably should though," Fred answered, reaching under the seat and pulling the gun from where it rested on the floor of the car.  "It's not much good like this."  He swung the cylinder sideways out of the frame, reached into the box of cartridges that lay between them and began sliding bullets into the chambers of the cylinder.  "Are these things safe loaded up with all six rounds?"  He asked, holding the sixth bullet in his hand.
	"Man, I don't know," Ellis answered.  "Maybe you should leave one empty under the hammer."
	Fred put the last bullet into his pocket, closed the cylinder, leaving the empty hole directly under the hammer and firing pin and set the gun on the seat of the car.  "What should I do with this thing.  I hate to leave it in the car, but I don't really feel like packing it around either."
	"It'll be okay under the seat, I'd think."  Ellis opened the door, stepping into the deep snow piled up along side the street and shut the door again.
	Fred slid the pistol under the front seat, got out and followed Ellis up the walkway to the house.  Ellis knocked on the door and went in without waiting for an answer.  They took off their coats laid them on the couch and joined Carol and Dave in the kitchen.
	"That was quick," Carol said.  "Did you even get any coal?"
	"Yeah.  We almost got more than we could carry," Fred answered.  We just filled the trunk up as far as we could.'  He laughed.  "The rear bumper's nearly dragging on the ground, we got so much.
	"Well that ought to last a while," she said.  "Molly went down stairs to her room, Ellis.  You should go see her.  She really seems down about this whole thing with Frank.
	"Sure."  Ellis responded, and without another word, he opened the basement door and disappeared down the stairs.  When he knocked at her bedroom door there was a faint grunt or moan or some other indistinguishable sound that he couldn't decipher and he opened the door slowly and cautiously.  Molly lay on her stomach in the middle of her bed.  She looked up as Ellis entered and smiled weakly.  He walked to the side of the bed and sat down next to her, putting his hand on her back.
	"You okay?"  He asked.
	"Yeah, I guess," she said, rolling over on her side, facing him.  "I'm just tired.  I can't think of anything but that goddamn Frank and how he's messed up my life for as long as I've known him.  I can't help but feel that it's really all my own fault, just for letting it happen, but damn, I don't know what I'd have done different except not get involved with him in the first place.  Everybody tried to talk me out of marrying him, but I wouldn't listen to any of them and I guess it's my turn to pay for it.  I was just thinking before you came in that it seems like I've been trying to get away from him since about a month after the wedding.  I've been running away, or at least wanting to run away for seven years.  Seven years!"  She leaned up on one elbow with her hand under the side of her head.  "I'd probably be better off if I was running to something instead of away, but right now there's nothing to run to."  Ellis, who had been staring at the lovers walking in the surf, in the poster on the wall, looked quickly over at her.  "Oh, there's you, and how I feel about you."  She said, reaching out and taking hold of his hand.  "But it isn't right to run to another person like that.  You know what I mean.  It's like, I have to hold up my own end of life, and then if we can have something on top of that, it's wonderful.  Far more wonderful than if I was just using you, somehow vicariously, for my being, or my center, or something."  She let go of his hand and rolled over on her back, looking up at the ceiling.  "Oh shit, I don't know if that even makes any sense.  It just seems like, so far, I'm just getting the hell away from Frank, instead of working toward anything.  In my own life, I mean."
	Ellis sat silently looking at her for several minutes.  Her still, symmetrical form, with her hands folded across her stomach and her glassed-over eyes staring straight ahead, made him think of a corpse lying there before him.  He didn't like that thought and he pushed it away, replacing it with visions of Sleeping Beauty from the fairy tale.  This didn't fit either and he tried several other images unsuccessfully before she turned her gaze from the ceiling to him, and his need to wander in the realms of the unreal drifted away.
	"Do you know what I'm talking about?"  She asked.  "You're not running from anything."
	"I think so," he said, with a bit of hesitance in his voice.  "I'm not running from anything I guess, but I can't say that I'm particularly aimed at anything either.  I kind of feel like I'm just floating around in a big vat, trying to sort out all the directions.  It's almost like they all aim the same way, at least they all end at the same place.  No matter where you head off to in the beginning, you always just end up dead in the end.  The only difference is, how you get there.  It's like one big long fishing trip where you have to throw back all your fish when you're finished.  All you get to keep is the experience, and maybe not even the memory of it.  I think maybe, life is nothing more than the process of doing it."
	"Maybe," she said, "but if that's the case, then I have to find my own place in that process."
	"Yeah, I guess we all do," he said smiling and reaching over, taking her hand in his.  "Right now though, we just have to work through this thing with Frank, and when that's done, we can move on to the next fishing hole.  It's like we're born high in the mountains, as a little droplet of water that begins its journey downhill and as it gains in time and experiences, it becomes a tiny little creek and then a stream and then a river.  Each experience adds a little more to the volume of the flow as it works its way downhill, sometimes flowing through gentle flat lands, and other times spilling over jagged rocky ledges as a waterfall and then crashing into a turbulent pool at the bottom.  But in the end, we always end up the same, merged into the vast oceans with all the rest of the little droplets."
	She smiled and squeezed his hand, pulling him toward her.  "Is Frank that turbulent pool?"
	"Maybe," he answered.  "Or maybe he's that long fall before you get to the pool.  I don't think we can know that kinda thing for sure."
	The sound of Carol's voice at the head of the stairs, calling them to dinner, brought them away from the endless fishing trip and back to the confines of the present.  Molly pulled him to her, they kissed briefly and then went upstairs to dinner.
	Dinner consisted of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans and a fresh tossed salad.  A stack of plates sat on the counter along with the salad.  The rest of the food was still on the stove keeping warm.  Dave and Fred had already served up and gone into the living room where they sat in front of the television.
	"Hi," Carol said with a warm smile as Ellis and Molly arrived in the kitchen.  "You two serve yourself and go sit down.  I'm just making a pot of coffee for after dinner and then I'll join you."
	"Wow!  This really looks good," Ellis said, looking at the assortment of food laid out before them.  It's been a long time since I've eaten this good."  Then, looking at Molly and shaking his head, he continued.  "Dinners at the farm, as you will discover, are a bit simpler.  Potatoes and onions, and then there's always onions and potatoes.  Of coarse on special occasions, we may have a bit of dumpster gleanings to add to that, but in general we eat pretty much the same thing every day."
	"I'll survive," Molly answered.  "I lived on dry cereal and peanut butter for the first years of my life and I didn't cook anything but rice for a couple of years after Frank and I first got married."  She smiled, thinking about those times.  "God he hated that.  He used to sneak out and get hamburgers nearly every day."
	They served themselves and went into the living room.  Carol finished filling the coffee maker, served up her own dinner and joined them.  The news was blaring away its ominous messages from around the globe, but even film footage of an orphanage blasted to bits in Dacca Pakistan couldn't spoil this exceptional meal.  The splintered wreckage showed nearly half of the one hundred children killed in the bombing along with bits and pieces of many.  No one would claim responsibility for the bombing and they all blamed the other side.  After a short commercial, the newscaster came back and told of how an ex-Viet Nam vet from Florida, had murdered his wife and two children, then shot himself.
	"Oh great," Carol burst out.  "Now we can train all our young men up to be killers for their country and then send them home to kill their families.  Man, we sure have a good thing going here."
	"No shit!"  Ellis agreed.  "That goddamn war is going to blow this country wide open.  The place will never be the same again."
	"Nothing will ever be same anyway," Fred said through a mouth full of mashed potatoes.
	"Maybe so," Ellis said, "but this war's going to lead down an endless path to hell and take us all with it.  We started out to build this country in the name of freedom, to get away from oppression and now we're the goddamn oppressor.  Nothing's really changed from the old feudal days when the guy with the biggest sword ruled the roost.  Here we are, a thousand years later, and the bullies are still pushing around the weak and helpless.  Of coarse, here in America, we do it in the name of helping these feeble little countries advance into the twentieth century, but in reality, we just want to milk them for everything we can get out of them.  All this talk about humanitarianism, is just bullshit.  Not only are we extracting the resources from these places for our own benefit, but we're sucking the very shadows out of these people.  And then, these same people look up out of the hole we've dug for them and want to emulate us.  Jesus Christ!  You'd think they'd have more goddamn sense.  I swear, humans are not an advanced life form.  We can't be.  Our only advancement, as far as I can see , is that we just get more cunning in ways to torment each other.  Sometimes I think that the evolution of our brain is going the wrong way."
	Dave leaned back and roared with laughter.  "Holy shit, Ellis, you're going to have to get with it.  That's just the way the world works.  You can't change a damn thing.  You might as well join up and get your piece of the place, or someone else will get it for themselves."
	"Goddamn it!  I just don't want to play that way," Ellis burst out.  "I'm not the perfect angel or anything, but I sure can't see, aiming myself at some kind of goal, where I just grab the biggest piece I can chew off.  That's why we're going to run out of recourses before too long.  That's why the place is sinking in its own sewage.  Jesus Christ, Dave, it's that very idea of getting the biggest piece you can hold that's brought us to the mess we're in now.  I can't believe you're trying to justify this disgusting status quo that has most of the world in virtual chains.  And then..."
	Shit Ellis," Dave interrupted, "you're so melodramatic, I can hardly believe I'm hearing this crap.  I'm not justifying the way things are.  I'm just telling you the way it is.  I didn't make it that way.  Nobody made it that way.  That's just the way it evolved.  I'm not going to pass any judgements on it one way or the other, but I am going to live here and that means I have to play the game.  And as long as I have to play, I might as well play excellently.  That Ellis, is why I'm taking this education thing seriously.  I'm going to make a lot of money and get my piece."
	"You're going to make a lot of money with a math degree?"  Fred asked, barely looking away from his meal.
	"Hell yes," Dave answered.  "Math is the answer to everything.  It's the nature of the universe.  Everything, God included, if you want to throw him in.  It all boils down to math at its very finest.  That's why all this shit Ellis is worrying about doesn't even matter.  Everything is just part of the big equation.  The environmental situation, the political scene, over population, especially over population, it's all just part of the equation.  It's like the formula got laid out back at the time of the big bang and there's no changing it now.  It's set in stone.  Even this ugly deal with Frank is part of the original equation and we just have to ride it through."
At the mention of Frank, Molly slid out of the fog she had been immersed in and returned to her place in Dave's formula.  She'd heard everything he said, but it had only partially registered through the thick mist she had pulled up over herself to protect what was left of her sanity.  "What do you mean, Frank's just part of the equation?"  She asked.  "There's no way, he could be part of any equation, at least not any equation with a solution."
	"Aha, that's the nice thing about math."  Dave smiled and set down his fork.  "There's always a way to cancel out part of a nice clean equation and Frank is about to be crossed out of this one.  All we have to do, is subtract one Frank from each side and he's gone."
	"I wish it was that easy," Ellis said, finishing up the last bit of potatoes on his plate.  "It would sure be nice if we could take care of him with a pencil instead of pistol."
	"That's just the point," Dave explained.  "The pistol might be the solution for Frank."
	"Oh God!"  Molly moaned.
	"Really Dave,"  Carol added.
	"The thing is that each step of the solution is only revealed in its proper time.  We don't get to see what's next.  Oh sure, you can guess or even predict with some accuracy, but the true answers only come as time unfolds them.  The ball's in motion, boys and girls.  All we can do is watch it roll."
	"Dave, you're full of shit, interesting maybe, but full of shit," Fred said, finishing his dinner and looking up from his plate.  You make it sound like I don't have the choice of staying where I am, or getting up and walking out of here right now."
	"Well you may think you have a choice, but all you really get to do is just what the formula says you do."  Dave got up and moved toward the kitchen.  "I need another beer.  Anyone else?"
	Fred and Ellis accepted the offer, and the girls declined.  Dave took his plate into the kitchen, pulled three beers from the refrigerator and returned to his chair.
	"Well, I don't buy all that bullshit," Fred said as Dave slid into the soft cushions of the old recliner.  "It's just a little too pat, too easy an answer.  It takes away any meaning or personal responsibility."
	"Oh Dave would like that part alright."  Carol interjected.  "The no responsibility."
	"Yeah really," Molly added.  This isn't something new with him.  He's been shirking responsibility forever."
	"I think you two are starting to catch on," Dave returned.  "There isn't any such thing as responsibility.  It's just a word we made up to try and keep people in line.  It's one of those Christian guilt things, designed to make you think you have a choice.  The truth is, there's no such thing as choice.  There never has been."
	"Hell Dave, you're just talking about predestination," Fred said with a yawn.  It's been around for a long time.  You're not talking anything new, you know."
	"Sure, I know that," he agreed, "But that's just it.  There isn't anything new.  It's all been figured out beforehand.  Like a deck of cards, once it's been shuffled, the order is set and they're going to turn up in the same order, no matter how you might wish for something else."
	"Well then, if that's the case, Why are we going to all the trouble of preparing for Frank, if it doesn't matter what we do?"  Ellis took a drink of his fresh beer and began to roll a cigarette.  "I mean shit, if it's all going to turn out the same anyway, why did Fred and I waste a bunch of money on buying bullets?"
	"You dumb shit!"  Dave laughed.  "Because that was one of the cards, that's all.  It was part of the equation.
	The twenty minute lull took over and there was a brief moment of silence before Carol got up and gathered up several of the empty plates and headed for the kitchen.  "I think it sounds just a little too simple for me."
	Molly stood up and stretched her arms up over her head, pulling her sweater up above her belt and exposing her navel.  Ellis reached up and gently put his index finger into the enticing little depression.  She dropped her arms and slapped him halfheartedly on top of the head with a smile.  "Later, you pervert," she said bending over, picking up hers and Ellis' plate and disappearing into the kitchen.
	"Personally Dave," Fred began.  "I think you have your head up your butt.  All this predestination bullshit is a waste of time and probably even a little dangerous.  It seems to me, that if you start relying on things to happen, 'the way they would anyway,'" he held both hands up, extending two fingers on each, indicating quotation marks, "you're bound to start letting go of your life, and just become a jellyfish."
	"I think I'd agree with that."  Ellis lit his cigarette and blew a gush of blue-white smoke out into the room.  "It just seems like a cop-out to me."
	Dave roared with laughter and pulled a cigarette out of his pack.  "Ah, fuck you guys, if you can't take a joke.  You're getting too serious.  Like you said," he glanced at Fred, "it's nothing new.  I'm not alone in thinking shit like that."
	"Well you got the shit part right anyway,"  Fred said with a chuckle, and then changing the subject he stood up and stretched his legs.  "Hey, you got any smokin tuna around.  I'd sure like to burn one right now."
	"What the hell, you're the guys with the big stash these days," Dave lit his cigarette and flipped the match toward the ashtray sitting next to him.  The match bounced out of the little brass tray and onto the floor.
	"Yeah I know," Fred confessed, "but we got so excited about buying bullets that we just forgot to grab some before we left."
	Dave put the foot rest down on the recliner, leaned over, retrieved the spent match and stood up, putting it back in the ashtray.  "I've got a little." He said.  "I suppose you two might be worth a hit or two, even if you do think you have some control over things."  He walked out of the room through the hallway to his and Carol's bedroom, returning momentarily with a small wooden box and a large pipe. The pipe was a nearly foot tall ceramic Buddha holding a large bowl in his hands.  It had a cloth covered flexible hose coming out of his back with a brass mouthpiece on the end.
	"Wow!" Ellis said, getting up and following Dave across the room.  "Where'd you get that thing?"
	Dave set the Buddha down on the low table next to his chair and sat down still holding the wooden box.  "Oh I've had it for a long time.  I only use it for special occasions and I only put the best pot in it.  Buddha deserves only the good shit, don't you think?"
	"Sure, you got some good pot?"  Fred asked.
	"No shit.  I've got a little bit of a Thai stick left that I brought up here from California last fall."  Dave opened the box and took a small metal tin out of it.
	"You've been holding out on us, haven't you?"  Fred said jokingly.
	"You bet I have, but we wouldn't have this little bit tonight if I hadn't been."  He opened the tin and took out a brown gob of plant material.  It looked like a bunch of crumbled and compressed up dried leaves that had been glued to a short stick.  It had a fuzzy appearance on the surface as if someone had carefully stuck little brown hairs on it.  He held the small marijuana flower bud out for Ellis to see.  "Here, smell that."
	Ellis bent forward and inhaled a deep whiff of the flower bud. "Wow!  That smells good.  Thai stick huh?  Boy, it's been a long time since I've seen any of that."
	Dave leaned forward, holding the bud out to Fred, who sat several feet away.  "here, take a whiff of this."
	Fred waved it away.  "I can smell it from here," he said.  "It smells great.  That kinda shit is hard to find and it's real spendy when you do find it.
	"No shit," Dave agreed.  "A guy down there owed me some money or I wouldn't have this."  He pulled off a little of the crumbly dry flower bud and put it in the bowl Buddha held in his lap.  The bowl was big enough that it could have held two or three times as much as all he had in the little tin.  He poked the crumb of marijuana down onto a small screen at the bottom of the bowl and handed the brass mouthpiece to Ellis.  "Here, don't get greedy or it'll tear your lungs out."
	Ellis took the mouthpiece, put it to his lips and as Dave struck a match, holding it over the tiny crumb, he sucked just sufficiently enough to draw the flame down across the crumb, into the body of Buddha and out through the tube in its back.  The piece of marijuana sat motionless on the screen, glowing a bright red for a moment before it turned completely to ash and became little more than a 'C' on the chart of elements, in some dusty chemistry classroom.  Ellis sucked the smoke from this little burning ember deep into his lungs, quickly handed the mouthpiece to Dave and sat down right where he was, on the floor between Dave and Fred.  His face got red as he tried to fight off coughing back out the smoke, he had just so deliberately inhaled.
	"Here!"  Dave handed him the beer he was holding.  "What did I tell you?  I told you not to get so greedy, didn't I?"
	Ellis couldn't hold it any longer.  He let out the deep breath of smoke he had been holding with one wheezy cough that seared his throat as it passed back through.  He took a small drink from Dave's beer and swallowed it quick before he coughed again.  He repeated this coughing and drinking several times until he gathered some control of his breath again and then took a long drink of the beer and handed it back to Dave only half full.
	"Thanks," he said.  "I'd have died for sure without that.  Sorry I drank most of it."
	Dave took his beer and shook his head at Ellis, who was still laboring with his breathing.  "Serves you right.  That could have been two hits if you hadn't tried to kill yourself."  He broke off another piece from the bud, placed it in the pipe bowl and handed the tube past Ellis to Fred, who had leaned forward to take it.  Fred, who had learned Ellis' lesson, took a moderate hit on the pipe and sat quietly holding his breath while Dave finished off what was left.  Ellis got up, went over to the couch where he had been sitting before the entrance of the Thai stick, picked up his own beer and returned to where Dave and Fred sat at the far end of the room.
	Holding the nearly full beer out to Dave, he spoke, still a little hoarse from coughing.  "Here Dave, take this one.  It's still full and I drank most of yours."
	They exchanged cans of beer and Dave broke another small piece off the bud,  put it in the Buddha bowl and handed the brass mouthpiece to Ellis.  "Here, do you think you can be a little less greedy this time?"
	"Promise."  Ellis said putting the brass tip of the hose in his mouth.  Dave lit the little dab of pot while Ellis carefully and slowly drew a small breath of smoke and air through the tube and into his lungs.  This time he stopped before he hurt himself.  Fred and Dave did the same and the three of them sat quietly in a mild stupor for a few minutes while the drug took effect.
	"What do I smell going on in here?"  Carol said, coming into the living room wiping her hands on a dish towel.
	Dave was jerked away from the cloudy thoughts of Frank and when he might show up.  "Oh, it's some of that Thai stick we brought up from San Diego," he said reaching for the mouthpiece that lay on the table beside him.
	"Oh shit, I don't want any of that stuff.  It puts me in a coma and then gives me a headache.  I think I'll pass on that."  She turned around and went back into the kitchen to finish up the dishes.
	"Well, what's the plan?"  He said, closing the little tin and putting it back into the wooden box.  "When do you think Frank will show up here?"
	Ellis stood up from where he had perched himself on the corner of the low coffee table and stretched his legs.  "It's kinda hard to say, but he could be here soon, like tomorrow if he drives straight through."
	"That's true," Fred agreed.
	"That's what I figure too," Dave concurred.  "If that's the case, then Molly ought to go out to your place tonight and then if he does show up tomorrow, I can give him the restraining order."
	"You have the restraining order?"  Ellis asked.
	"Well, I have a copy of it.  I don't think it would be a legal delivery, but it might scare him into leaving."
	"Boy, I don't know about that," Fred said, leaning back in his chair.  "He doesn't sound like the kinda guy that would come this far, to just turn around and go home empty-handed that easily."
	"That's probably true, but at least he'll know the law's looking for him up here.  It might make him a little nervous and he won't be able to snoop around for Molly as freely."  Dave got up and moved toward the kitchen.  "Hey Molly!"  He called as he neared the kitchen door.
	"She went down stairs to get her things ready to go out to the farm," Carol said turning to face him.
	"Oh good," he said stopping at the door.  "I thought we might have to talk her into going out there and you know how stubborn she can be when she wants to."
	"No, she agrees that would be the best way for now.  I really don't think she wants a confrontation with Frank, if she can avoid it.  She knows better than any of us what an asshole he is and she just doesn't want to see him at all."  She dried the last plate and put it up in the cupboard.  "I'm done in here.  What are you guys doing, besides smoking yourselves into a coma?"
	"Nothing really, but I suppose we ought to make a plan for how to deal with Frank when he gets here."  He turned, walking back to the living room with Carol right behind him.
	"Well," Dave said as he entered the living room."  "I guess Molly's getting her stuff gathered up to move out to the farm for a while.  You guys think you can keep Frank out of there if he ever finds the place?"
	"I think we'll be okay," Ellis answered.  "The dogs won't let anyone near the place without making a lot of noise and then we can take care of things from there.  Say, I thought you were going to find us a shotgun."
	"I can't get a hold of the guy," he said, "but I'll keep trying."
	Fred took his feet off the low table and looked as if he might stand up, but then just pulled his pant legs down and leaned back in the chair once more.  "We can probably dig up another gun of some kind from Gale."
	"That gives me an idea," Dave sat down in his chair and took a cigarette from his pack.  You think he'd mind being a kind of liaison between us.  He could keep in touch with us and then if anything comes down, he can get word to you guys.  It sure wouldn't take care of all the possibilities, but it might help some."
	"We can go by there on the way home and see what he says."  Fred picked up his beer and drinking down the last warm dregs, stood up.  "In fact we ought to be getting out of here or he will have gone to bed."
	Carol, who was still standing in the archway between the living room and what was originally designed as a dining room, stepped the rest of the way into the living room and began gathering up the empty beer cans.  They must go to bed early," she said.  It's only eight-thirty."
	"Well, you never can tell with him," Fred muttered.  "Sometimes he goes hunting real early in the morning.  We probably ought to get out there if we're going to be sure of catching him."
	The basement door opened and shut, footsteps could be heard in the kitchen and then Molly appeared in the living room with an old tattered brown suitcase in one hand, a pillow and a heavy winter coat under her arm.
	"Well, I guess I'm as ready as I'll ever be," she said, setting down her suitcase.  "Do you think you can put up with me out there, Ellis?"
	"I think I'll manage.  It's more a matter of whether you can put up with us and the place itself."  Ellis walked across the room, took his coat from the back of the couch and put it on.  Then, he picked up Fred's coat and tossed it to him as he too, moved across the room toward the front door.
	Molly set the pillow on the edge of the couch, put on her coat and then looked over at Carol with a single tear in one eye.  "God I hope this doesn't cause a lot of trouble for you guys."
	"Don't you worry about us, we'll be okay.  You just be careful and don't give up.  There is life after Frank."  She reached over and gave Molly a squeeze on the arm.
	Fred had reached the front door and stood waiting with his hand on the knob.  When Molly finished putting on her coat, he opened the door and went out.  Ellis held the door for her and went out himself.  "Well, we'll see you in a few days.  Keep us informed if you can and I'll have Gale stop by tomorrow if he can help us."
	They all said good-bye, Ellis shut the door and the three of them headed for the Volvo.  Molly put the suitcase in the back seat along with her pillow and crawled in beside them.  Fred and Ellis got in the front and they were off.  They wound their way down off the hill, through the downtown district and out the back way toward Union Flat Creek.  Once they reached the edge of town, traffic diminished to nothing and they rolled along in the quiet confines created by their headlights.  It was an isolated world of its own, limited to the black asphalt of the road contrasted with the white of the snow, plowed up along the sides.  Everything else seemed to fade away in a blur.  The car was loaded heavy enough that it moved under them in a rhythmic sway that lulled them into silence for some time.  About eight miles out, Union Flat Creek meandered through the low open hills to the South.  They turned right and pointed the Volvo down stream, traveling along at the edge of the creek.  The road steepened slightly as they made their way into the shallow canyon formed by the flowing water cutting its way into the basalt.  This was the same stream Fred and Ellis had skied along several days before checking traps.  Several mailboxes popped out of the darkness as their dimly lighted world traveled steadily along in the direction of Gale's place.  This road had not been plowed as thoroughly and snow covered the roadway, leaving little contrast from which to make out the edges of their path.  Fred swayed gently from side to side of the road as he nearly felt his way along, more by experience than by any ability to see where they were.
	"Boy this is sure the long way home," Fred said finally.
	"No kidding.  I think it's somewhere near twenty miles," Ellis agreed.
	"It's more like twenty-two miles.  You have to go way out past the farm and then come back around to it."  Fred sat up straight and leaned forward peering out the front window.  "God damn it's dark out there.  I can hardly see where we are."
	Ellis took out his cigarette makings and turned back around to Molly, who had been sitting quietly leaned up against her suitcase and pillow.  He smiled, but no one could see in the darkness.  "How are you doing back there?"
	"I'm okay," she said.  "I didn't realize you lived this far from town.  It must be hard for John and Duncan to get into school every day."
	Fred and Ellis both laughed and Ellis struck a match to light his cigarette.  "It would be hard if they went in every day, but I don't think they go more than half the time , if that."
	"How do they get through school?"  She asked.  "They must be really smart."
	Fred chuckled, looked into the rearview mirror trying to get a glimpse of her and then looked back at what little he could see of the road.  "Oh, I don't know about that, but they do seem to do pretty well in school.  They haven't flunked out yet.  In fact, they both get good grades in most things.  John nearly flunked PE last spring.  You know how classes like that are.  They just grade on attendance pretty much and I think he only went about half the time.  He had to go in and beg the teacher for a passing grade, but he pulled it off."
	"You guys live a pretty casual life up here," Molly said, sitting up straight in the rear seat.  "I can't believe how laid back people are.  It's like a different country or something.  I don't know how you ever get things done."
	"That's just it, we don't," Fred said.  "We just get lots of things started."  He laughed and swerved slightly to miss a mouse that had wandered onto the road and froze momentarily in the headlights.  "I take that back, it's not really true.  We get stuff done.  It just takes a little longer, but what the hell, who's in a big hurry?  Maybe we even get things done better because we take our time."  He looked around, trying to make out some of the landmarks along the side of the road in the dark.  "What the hell, Ellis. Did we miss the turn off?  I can't tell where we fucking are."
	"No," Ellis said.  "It's just up around this next corner though.  I sure hope Gale is still up."
	"Yeah, me too," Fred concurred.  "I hope he has an extra gun of some kind we can borrow for a while."  A smaller road off to the left appeared out of the blackness and he turned.  The car swayed drastically as they turned and went off the edge of the paved road onto the rutted and snow-covered gravel.  The car took on a kind of rhythmic up and down motion, like a giant park toy on springs.  The even spacing of the ruts along with the added weight of the coal, made the little Volvo gallop at first and then buck as it turned sideways in the road.  Finally, they slid bouncing to a stop, facing the wrong direction and only half on the road.
	"Oh shit!"  Fred exclaimed loudly, when the car had stopped moving.
	"Well, you're Sort'a on the road," Ellis said laughing.
	"You won't be laughing so hard if we're stuck here."  Fred restarted the car, which had died somehow during the slide and put it in gear.  Letting out the clutch slowly, he attempted to inch them out of the snow bank where they now sat.  The moment the tires began to move, they spun and sunk deeper into the snow.  Fred let off the gas immediately and pushed in the clutch.
"Now how funny is it?"  He asked, giving Ellis a sarcastic look in the darkness.
"Oh shit, we'll get out of here, don't sweat it." Ellis said opening the door and stepping out into the snow.
	"I can help," Molly said pushing the seat forward and getting out as well.
	They went around to the back of the car where it had borrowed itself into the plowed up snow at the side of the road.  One wheel was completely off the road and sunk several inches into the soft shoulder.  Ellis and Molly got around behind the car, taking up positions from which to push.
	"Okay!  Ellis called.  "Give it a try."
	Fred tried again, but again the tires only spun.
	We need a shovel," Molly said stepping around to the side of the car.
	"We have one in the trunk.  It's not that good of one, but it'll be better than nothing."  Ellis leaned away from the car and went up to Fred's window.
	Fred rolled down the window.  "What do you think?"  He asked.
	"I think we need to dig a little under that one wheel.  I need to get in the trunk."
	"It's not locked," Fred said opening the door.  "I think I have a flashlight in the jockey box.  He reached across the front seat, fished around in the dark and presently joined the others, flashlight in hand.  Ellis climbed into the snow bank, opened the trunk lid and took the shovel out.  The shortened handle made digging difficult, but he managed to move enough snow to see the buried tire.  It rested in a slight depression and had polished the snow to a shine under it where it had spun.  Luckily there was considerable snow built up in front of the tire that could be removed, allowing them, if not a downhill run, at least a level approach, back onto the road.  If only the ground they sat on would hold up and not sink anymore, they would be okay.
	"You think that'll work?"  Ellis said looking up at Fred with the flashlight and Molly with a concerned look on her face.
	"I hope so." Molly said.
	Fred handed her the flashlight and got back into the car without a word.  Ellis set the shovel in the trunk and they both prepared to push again.  They pushed for all they were worth, Fred eased out on the clutch and the car moved slowly back out onto the road.
	"Yeah!  Ellis yelled. "We got it."
	"Whew! Molly announced.  "How far would we have had to walk If that hadn't worked?"
	 "Not too far," Ellis answered, walking to the car and shutting the trunk.  "We're only a mile or so from Gale's and then another mile, maybe, home."
	"Get in you two," Fred called from the car.  "You can't be standing around out there all night."
	They got back in the car and Fred drove away.  After they had gone about a hundred yards, Ellis looked quizzically over at Fred.  "Where are you going?"
	"Gale's, where the hell do you think?"  He answered.
	"Well you're going the wrong direction," Ellis pronounced.
	Molly laughed and leaned forward.  "Don't you remember, we got turned around when we slid in the ditch."
	"Oh yeah that's right," Fred chuckled, slowing to a stop.  "I kinda spaced that out, didn't I?"
	"Jesus Fred, and you're the one driving," Ellis ribbed him.  "We've put our lives in your hands and you don't even know which way you're going."
	"Really, how's it feel to live on the edge."  Fred laughed, turned the car around and headed off again in the right direction.
	Ellis turned part way in his seat to face Molly.  "Walking wouldn't have been much fun.  We live straight over the hill from Gale, a little less than a mile, but it's up real steep, through a field of deep snow.  It's not too bad on skis, but even then, it's a hard uphill climb.  They came around a corner in the road and looking off in the darkness, could see the lights of a distant farmhouse.
	"Look at that," Ellis said.  "Their lights are on.  They must still be up."
	"Great!  Has Molly met Liz?"  Fred asked.
	"No I don't thin..."  Ellis started.
	"No, I haven't met either one of them yet," Molly stuck in.
	"Oh, I think you'll like Liz," Fred remarked.  "She's real quiet, but she's real nice when you get to know her.  She works for the library at the college, but she's really a farm girl at heart.  Hey Ellis,  what kinda gun do you think we should get if we have a choice?"
	"I don't think we'll get too much choice," Ellis answered.  "He only has hunting guns and I don't think he has too many of them.  You know, it's hunting season too and he may be using them all right now."
	"Maybe, but I'll bet he has an extra one or two lying around," Fred insisted.
	They pulled into the driveway and stopped next to Gale's 1952 Chevy pickup truck.  "Should I wait here?"  Molly asked as Fred and Ellis swung open the doors to the car.
	"Oh, you better come meet your new neighbor.  This could take a few minutes."  Ellis stepped out and held the seat forward for her as she climbed out beside him.  As they went through the gate and walked up the walkway to the house, they could see a curtain pull back and Liz's head appeared, back lit in the window.  She opened the door just as the three of them stepped up on the porch and invited them in.  Ellis introduced Molly and Liz and then asked where Gale was hiding.
	"Oh, he just got in from hunting about half hour ago and he's taking a bath.  He'll be out in a minute."  She went to the cook stove, lifted the steel eye over the fire box and put a piece of wood into the dwindling fire.  Picking up a tea kettle from the top of the stove, she swished it around, checking it's contents and turned to Molly who still stood near the door.  "Let's have a cup of tea while we wait for Gale," she said to her.  Then glancing over at Fred, she pointed at a bottle of wine on the counter near where he stood.  "You guys can have a glass of wine if you like.  I don't think there's enough tea left and you don't want any anyway."
	Molly smiled, accepted the offer of tea and then she and Liz sat at the kitchen table sipping their tea.  Fred said nothing ,but gave Ellis a glance for his confirmation on the wine and picked up the bottle.  He opened one of the cupboards above the counter hoping to find glasses, but only found plates and bowls instead.
	"Look up in that one," Liz said pointing to another cupboard.
	He found the glasses, poured several fingers full into two of them and then he and Ellis went into the living room to wait for Gale to finish his bath.
	"Um, that's real good.  What kind is it?"  Molly asked after she had taken a sip of the warm liquid.
	"It's some special stuff they sell over at the Pike Street Market in Seattle.  I think they call it Pike Street Special, or something like that.  It's probably just some kind of black tea with a bunch of cinnamon and orange peal in it, but I think it's real good."
	"It was kinda hard to tell in the dark, but this place seems really cool.  How long have you lived here?"  Molly asked.
	Liz took a cigarette from a pack of Lucky Strikes on the table and lit it.  "A little over a year," she said.  "We like it real well, except it's too close to the road.  We keep losing cats to the cars that speed by out there, but other than that and the landlord's kind of a turd head, it's okay.  What do those guys want Gale for, this time of night?"
	Molly looked up from her tea, shook her head slightly and began to explain the whole story to Liz in as short a form as she could.
Gale came out of the back of the house, bare-chested, still drying his hair and looking as wild and woolly as Fred and Ellis had ever seen him.  When satisfied his hair was dry enough, he threw the towel on the back of a chair.  "What's up?"  He said going into the kitchen to get himself a glass of wine.  Liz introduced him to Molly, he returned to the living room with a glass and the bottle and he sat down with both in his lap.  "Well, what's up with you guys?"
	Ellis leaned back in his chair and began to roll a cigarette.  "Well let's see.  Where do I begin?  It's kind of a long story, but I'll try to make it as short as I can."  He told Gale about their predicament as briefly as he could ending up with their request for additional armament.
	"Jesus Christ!"  Gale said.  "It sounds like you guys could end up in jail, if you're not real careful.  I mean shit, If you have to shoot this guy, you better make sure, it at least looks like self defense.  You can't just go shooting people, you know."
	"That's why we need it," Fred cut in.  "We just want to make sure he doesn't fuck with us at the farm."
	"Hell," Ellis added, "we aren't going to go looking for him, if that's what you're thinking."
	"Well, I wouldn't want to give you anything that's registered to me, that's for sure."  He got up and taking a shirt from the back of a chair, put it on and sat back down.  "I don't think I want you guys, maybe, shooting someone with a gun that can be traced to me, but I do have an old twenty-gauge side-by-side that shouldn't be traceable to anybody.  I could loan that to you, I guess." He took a drink of his wine and noticing that Fred's glass was nearly empty, held out the bottle to him.
	"That would be great," Fred said, taking the bottle and pouring his glass full.  "I don't think we'll even need it, but we want to have it around, just in case.
	Gale shook his head, stood back up and left the room.  When he came back, he was carrying a shotgun.  The two long barrels, sitting side by side, were as shiny blue-black as a wet night and it's smooth lines reminded Ellis of a modern sculpture he had seen in an art museum somewhere.  The wooden stock glistened through many layers of varnish.  Gale held the gun out in front of him, looking at it for a moment and then handed it to Ellis.
	"Here take good care of that," he said.  "It's a nice gun.  I don't want it back all scratched up.  My cousin gave me that a long time ago, before I moved out here from Minnesota and even though I don't use it much anymore, I don't want to lose it or have it fucked up."
	Ellis held the shotgun gingerly, afraid of leaving some kind of mark on it.  He swung the barrel around, careful not to point it at anyone, aiming it at the floor and pushed the release lever to the side. The gun broke neatly in half, the barrels hinged downward, exposing two large holes that held the cartridges when it was loaded.  He snapped the breach shut again with a click and pointing it at the ceiling, handed it to Fred.  "That is a nice gun,"  he said.  "I'll treat it like it was a baby."
	"You better, or you'll think this Frank guy's a prince," Gale remarked.  "I suppose you need some shells for it too?"
	"Yeah really," Fred answered.  " We aren't very prepared for this kind of shit and then we spent nearly all our money on the shells for my old thirty-eight and Ellis' thirty-thirty."
	"Yeah, I guess we need something to shoot out of it," Ellis added.  He took a drink of his wine and put his cigarette out in a small, round, glass ashtray that sat on the edge of a cluttered low table between he and Gale.
Gale left the room again and returned with a box of shells and an old sock with something lumpy bulging through the sides of it.  He sat down, sliding the box of shells toward Ellis on the low table.  There's a bunch of number two shot I used to use for ducks," then reaching into the sock and bringing out a handful of loose shells, "and here's some number two buck."  He set them on the table next to the box he had already put there.  It looks like I only have five of the buck shot, but one's enough."  He looked first at Ellis, then Fred and smiled slightly from the corners of his mouth.
	"Double-ought buck, That should to be enough," Ellis said, picking up one of the shells from the table.
	"No, they're just number two buck," Gale corrected him.  "I haven't ever found anything bigger than that for a twenty-gauge.  I guess if you want larger pellets, you have to load them yourself.  They may be out there, but I've never seen them."
	I never have either," Fred agreed, leaning the gun into the corner made by a table and chair coming together.  "When I was a kid, I used a twenty-gauge and I always wanted to take a few deer rounds with me when I went bird hunting.  I had to use slugs, because I couldn't find any double-ought buck anywhere."
	"Are you going to go out hunting tomorrow morning?"  Ellis asked.
	"Yeah if I get to bed in time," he answered.
	"We probably should get home ourselves," Fred said, standing up.  "Oh, by the way, would you mind going by to see Dave before you come home tomorrow.  You could find out what's going on with Frank, if he got here yet or not and anything else Dave or Carol might know about this damn mess."
	"Yeah, I suppose I could, but..."  Gale began.
	"Ellis and I could ski down here after you get home and find out what's up," Fred interrupted before Gale could finish.  That way you won't have to drive all the way around to our place and then back again.
	"That sounds okay.  I was just going to say that your place is really out of the way these days.  He got up, picked up the loose buck-shot cartridges, put them in the sock and handed them to Ellis, who was standing by now as well.
	Fred picked up the shotgun, Ellis the box of shells and they all went into the kitchen.  Molly looked up from where she sat talking and drinking tea with Liz.
	"You two look like you're ready to go," she said and finished up her tea.
	"Yeah, we better hit the road," Ellis answered.  He turned to look at Gale.  "We'll have some smoking tuna for you next time we see you.  It's not the best, but it works.  Thanks for the loan."  He pointed at the gun Fred held under his arm like he was back in the field, looking for a bird to flush up in front of him at any moment.
	Gale nodded.  "Remember, take care of it."
	Molly got up, took her coat from the back of the chair she had been sitting in and put it on.  She walked to the door and putting her hand on the knob, she turned to see Fred and Ellis still standing in the middle of the kitchen floor like a pair of penguins.  "Are we going or not?" She asked.
	They both returned with a jerk, Fred from his brief hunting trip and Ellis from somewhere beyond description.  "I guess so," Ellis said automatically.  "Boy, you're sure in a hurry."
	"Oh, I'm not in any hurry, but if we're going, why wait around?"  She opened the door and turned back to Liz.  "See ya soon.  I'll be in the neighborhood for a while I guess.  Thanks for the tea."
	Everyone said goodnight and the three of them left, Molly leading the way.  When they got to the car, Molly climbed in the back, Fred handed the gun to Ellis and they both got into the front with Fred driving as usual.
	"How's your driving Fred?"  Ellis asked as he shut the door.
	"I don't know.  I guess we'll find out soon enough," he answered with a laugh that sounded more nervous than humorous.
	"I hope we find out it's fine," Molly said uneasily from the back seat.
	We'll be okay," Ellis said.  "We're on back roads from here, That is if he can stay on the road."
	"Hell, this old car knows the way home from here by itself," Fred said with a laugh again.  This time he had a sound of confidence in his voice that only partially gave Molly any feeling of security.
	Fred started the car, backed out of the driveway and proceeded down the valley.  The darkness was complete except for the thin headlights piercing a shallow hole into its firm grip on their small world.  It was cold inside the car and the frost built up on the windshield nearly as fast as Fred could rub it off with an old rag he kept just for that purpose.  Ellis sat squarely in the front seat next to him with the gun across his lap.  He entertained brief thoughts of some old crusty-looking cowboy riding shotgun high on the bouncy seat of a stagecoach.  It made him feel like he must have a definite role to play in whatever dramatic vignette was approaching.  At least he hoped it would be a vignette and not some long drawn out melodrama with a sour ending.  The tunnel of dim light they traveled through seemed to pull them along, like a magnet, into the future. It all seemed so simple, first things were in front of them and then they were behind.  They passed through their present in a flash that went by too fast to confirm and looking out to the far reaches of the headlights, the future seemed easier to hold onto than either, past or present.  The only problem was, that he could see nothing out there but the endless snowy road, bathed in the pale lights of the car.
	When Fred came to the paved road leading up out of the valley, he turned without stopping at the stop sign.  Here too, the plows had cleared the snow down to the asphalt and its icy blackness bit the bottom out of their lighted tunnel.  The center line seemed to float in the middle of a void that for some reason supported them as they rolled quietly along.  Once out of the Union Flat valley, Fred turned again, onto a snow covered road that brought them the last couple of miles to the farm.  There was one bare bulb glaring out from where it hung down in the center of the kitchen.  The rest of the house was dark.  The dogs were waiting at the head of the driveway, and they began to bounce and turn circles the minute they recognized the sound of the little Volvo.  Light from the single source in the kitchen pierced through the windows and out onto the snow filled yard, creating sharp patterns in the blackness that had settled in on them like a coverlet.  The dogs romped in this light as if they were part of a carefully choreographed dance routine.  Francine could be seen sitting at the kitchen table reading a book.  She got up and looked out the window as they pulled into the driveway and stopped beside Duncan's Toyota.  Ellis handed Fred the box of shells as they all got out and greeted the dogs.  Molly drug her suitcase from the back seat with some effort and then she and Ellis followed Fred to the house.  With the shotgun under his arm, Ellis walked into the house like he had just got down off the seat of a stage coach and was headed into a saloon for a beer.  Francine greeted them with a smile.  Ellis leaned the shotgun in the corner and sat down at the table in the kitchen.
	"Where's John and Duncan?"  Fred asked, taking off his coat and draping it over a chair.
	"They went to bed.  John and I had a big fight.  Actually we all three had a fight over the guns in the house and I think John and I found our basic difference."
	"Oh yeah, what's that?"  Fred pursued further.
	"That he's a coward," she said.  "In fact, they're both just plain chicken shit.  They'd rather crawl under a rock than stand up and protect themselves.  I just can't fucking believe it.  They talk big about stuff, but when it comes down to actually doing anything about it, they fold up like a limp rag."
	"This is all because of me," Molly said, swinging a chair around, sitting backwards on it and laying her head on the top of the back rest.  Tomorrow, I'll just get out of here and you guys can just relax and go back to your quiet life."
	"Oh no you don't," Francine shot out.  "This thing between John and I was bound to happen sooner or later.  I'm glad it happened now and not some time down the road, after we built up a bunch of stuff that's hard to break.  This is just something that we had to find out sooner or later anyway.  Your situation may have brought it out now, but it would have come up eventually.  We're probably both better off that it came along now."
	Fred pulled the pistol out of his belt and laid it on the counter, before pulling up a chair and sitting down next to Ellis.  "Well, that's too bad," he said.  I can sure see how this thing with all the guns could bum those guys out though.  They just aren't into shit like that.  I don't think either of them have ever even held one and the idea of maybe having to shoot someone is just plain out of the question for both of them.  I guess, in some ways, they're right.  If everyone was as peaceful as they are, we'd probably have a lot better world than we do now."
	"Yeah, but it's not like that," Francine said.  "There's still guys like Frank out there that we all have to deal with and it's just our turn to take care of it this time."  She walked over to where Ellis had set the shotgun and picked it up.  Breaking it open, she examined the chambers and closed it again.  She put it to her shoulder, pointed it out the kitchen window and pulled both triggers.  Click, click.  "Damn, this is a nice gun.  Where'd you get this?"  She sat down at the table next to Fred, cradling the gun in her lap.
	"Gale loaned it to us," Ellis said, "but boy we better take good care of it."
	"Damn, I had a gun just like this when I was a kid."  She turned the gun over in her hands, looking closely at it.  "Charles Daly," she read off the side of the receiver.  "Shit, that's just what I had.  My daddy bought it for me when I turned thirteen.  He said a teenager needed a better gun than what I'd been shooting.  I won the fucking county trap shoot with this very same gun.  Everybody really envied that gun.  They mostly had Stevens' and old J.C. Higgins'.  Do you think he'd sell the thing?"
	"Boy, I don't know," Ellis answered.  "His cousin or someone gave it to him and he may not even consider getting rid of it.  I don't think he even wanted to loan it to us.  You never know though.  Hey!  I think we better burn one."  He got up and went into the parlor to get a joint from the tin on the coffee table.  "Hey Francine, you've been falling down on your job.  The joint tin's empty.  We'll never make it around here without an ample supply of your perfect little cylinders."  He laughed as he returned to the kitchen and digging around in the cupboard, he produced a baggie of marijuana, which he tossed on the table in front of her.
	"You guys are going to be helpless without me around here, " she said, picking up the baggie and taking a pack of cigarette papers Ellis had thrown onto the table.
	"What do you mean?  Are you leaving?"  Fred asked.
	"Well shit," she said.  "I think John and I are finished and I should probably pull out as soon as I can find somewhere else to live."
	"Oh I don't know about that," Ellis said putting his feet up on an empty chair.  "Just because you and John aren't together, doesn't mean you have to leave.  It won't matter to him, I don't think."
	"Well, there aren't anymore beds in the place," she said, putting the final twist on the joint, she had been rolling.
	"You can have the couch," Fred said.
	"Well, that's where I am now, I guess."  She reached into her shirt pocket, produced a match and lit the joint.
	Molly took the joint, drew deeply from it and passed it to Ellis.  "Maybe we could find a place in town," she said blowing out a thin stream of unabsorbed smoke.
	"Oh shit Francine, I think we can work something out here, if you want to stay," Fred said, taking the joint from Ellis.  "You could probably move into that room there."  He pointed to the room where the record player was.
	"Mmm, now that's a thought," she answered.  "We'll just have to see what happens.  I don't want to cause any trouble between you guys."
	There was a scratch at the door.  Fred got up and let in the dogs.  They straggled in one at a time, letting in a burst of cold air.  He went to the stove, looking in on the nearly expired fire.  "Shit, the fires almost out."  He picked up the coffee can from the floor and went out onto the porch for more coal.  When he had refueled both stoves, he returned to the table and sat down, taking the remainder of the joint from Francine.  "Well, do we need a plan for the next few days in regards to Frank?"
	Molly shuddered slightly at the mention of him.  "I don't think he'll ever find us out here," she said.
	"Probably not, but we should figure out what to do if he does," Francine said, opening the baggie to roll another joint.
	"For one thing," Ellis said, "we can't act all paranoid about it, or we're going to get John and Duncan even more freaked out than they already are.  I think we just have to act normal, but we have to stay ready and be a little more aware of what's going on outside."
"The dogs can keep us posted on what's going on out there," Fred spoke up, "but we better pay attention to them if they get to barking.  I don't think we'll have to wait too long for something to happen.  Either this thing will come down in the next couple of days or it'll blow over."
	Francine looked around the room, finally resting her eyes on a section of an outdated newspaper sitting on the counter near the sink, behind her.  She reached back, almost tipping over in her chair and grabbed the paper.  Laying it on the table before her, she spread out her joint-making materials and began rolling.  Glancing up at Molly and catching her eye and without a pause, she spoke.  "Do you think there's any chance you can talk to Frank?  I mean if he shows up here, could you convince him that you're done with him and he should just leave you alone?  You think anyone can reason with him?"
	Molly shook her head as she watched Francine pull nearly a dozen cigarette papers from the packet and lay them out on the newspaper.  "No," she said.  "I've never been able to reason with him.  Reason just isn't part of him.  That's part of the problem, he does whatever he wants and the hell with anyone else."  She leaned her elbows on the table becoming engrossed in Francine's small one person assembly line.  She had dumped the bulk of the pot out of the baggie into a pile and was picking out the larger sticks and breaking up any clumps that would inhibit the making of a perfect joint.  "I don't think anyone could talk him out of whatever it is that he has in mind."
	"Well then," Ellis reasoned, "if he does show up, you better not get anywhere near him.  It sounds like he'd just grab you, throw you in the car and you'd be gone."
	"Probably," Molly agreed.
	"Okay then," Fred said, "if he comes here, we can't let him in the house.  We have to deal with him outside.  It might even be better if he is armed.  At least it would make a better case for self defense if it comes to that.  I guess we just have to make it clear that we're willing to deal with him anyway he wants it."
	There was a thump from upstairs, the sound of rustling around for a moment and then footsteps descending the stairs.  John showed up in the doorway of the kitchen, half dressed and looking very serious.  "I suppose you're all sitting here planing how to get us all killed."
	"Oh boy, we're going to go through this again," Francine said, looking up from her little assembly line.  "You two are such chicken-shits."
	"That doesn't have anything to do with it Francine."  John stepped into the kitchen, leaning up against the chrome railing on the front of the cook stove.  "You guys just want to shoot first and not even try to work this thing out in a reasonable way.  You're like a pack of wild dogs, all clamoring for a fight."
	"God damn John," Francine began, but Ellis interrupted.
	"Wait a minute, John."  He pushed his chair back a few inches.  "What would you do about the situation we're in here?"
	"I wouldn't get into a situation like this in the first place," he said, "but I can tell you what Duncan and I would do about it now.  We want all of you to just take your fucking war, or what ever you want to call it, the hell out of here and leave us in peace."
	"Oh sure, just turn your back on the whole thing.  Stick your fucking head in the sand and it'll all go neatly away."  Francine's tension built to the point that she tore the joint she was rolling in half and dropped it on the paper.  "Jesus Christ, John, how can you say that, 'don't get involved in the first place'?  That's just what you should do in the first place.  Get involved.  The other day at the demonstration you were shouting for a God damn revolution.  You think revolutions are nice neat peaceful little tea parties, or what?  You want to see changes around the world, but you don't want to deal with the messy stuff.  Well, I can tell you, that the world starts right here.  You don't have the stomach to really deal with the things that matter.  You aren't ready to get down in the ditch and shovel the shit.  The day to day hard work that it takes to get the fucker done.  You just want to deal with the warm cuddly part of everything.  I'm surprised you don't pack a fucking teddy bear around with you all the time.  It's like I said before, you two are just plain chicken shit. and I don't see how you can even live with yourselves."
	The air in the room thickened as she spoke.  Fred and Ellis and Molly sat frozen in their chairs, afraid to say a word.  Francine had said it all.  Molly knew she had come between old friends and stirred up emotions that may have been better left alone.  The kinds of feelings and passions that may have otherwise remained hidden under the veil that protects those fragile links between us all.
Ellis squirmed uneasily.  He knew that Francine was, at least partly right, but he hesitated to jump in.  He didn't feel that he'd lived there long enough.  He couldn't decide if it was really his place to start taking sides or not, but then he thought of how this was all taking place, largely, because of him.  It seemed to force him onto either one side or the other.  He knew that he had to play a part in the upcoming events, but he was sure that John and Duncan shouldn't be required to have anything to do with it if they didn't want to.  Suddenly, he wished John and Duncan weren't there at all.  That didn't seem right either.  In fact, there wasn't anything right about any of this.  This was one of those things like Dave was talking about earlier.  No choice.  There was no choice in the matter.  There wasn't any responsibility attached to it.  It was one of those things that had come to them and now they just had to face it, head on.
Fred had known John and Duncan for several years and knew well, how they felt about guns and their uses, but there didn't seem to be any good choices here.  It seemed to him that they had a vague duty to their own beliefs, if nothing else, maybe even a duty to right and wrong itself.  This guy Frank, whom only Molly actually knew, was surely an asshole and needed to be dealt with.  Molly wasn't capable of doing it alone and circumstance had laid the cards out into their hands.  They hadn't asked for this thing to be played out right in the middle of their lives, but then no one ever asks for this kind of thing.  These kinds of situations just blow around in the breeze like dust and settle out wherever they do.  It's not something you get to control.  Dave was at least right about the control part.  No one's ever, really in control.
	Well look John," Fred finally said.  "What would you do at this point?  Where do you think we ought to go from here?  Let's hear how you would handle Frank."
	"I wouldn't handle Frank at all," John snapped.  "I'd let the proper authorities handle him.  You've got a God damn restraining order.  He can't do a fucking thing.  All you have to do is..."
	"Jesus Christ you're naÔve," Ellis burst out.  " A restraining order is just a fucking piece of paper.  He's not going to pay any attention to that.  There aren't any 'PROPER' authorities."  He held up two fingers on both hands, indicating quotation marks.  "I think it's time we stood up and got counted for something.  I can't just sit by and let someone else do my work."
	"You don't know what you're talking about. This guy could be dangerous."  John leaned away from the stove and paced across the room to the counter by the sink.
	"We know this guy's dangerous, John," Fred responded.  "We know that.  That's why we got the guns out.  We're just not willing to let him intimidate us.  I can't crawl under the bed and forget guys like that are out there."
	"Well, it sure isn't my job to take care of guys like that," John said.
	"What if the people, who's job it is, can't or won't take care of it?"  Ellis asked.
	"You aren't going to wait and see if the law will deal with this guy, whoever he is," John asserted.  "You're all ready to drop him in his tracks without even giving the proper authorities a chance.  I think you're like a bunch of kids, playing cops and robbers or something."
	"Whatever," Francine said, waiving her hand at him, in show of her exasperation.
	John turned around to face the sink and picking up an empty coffee cup, he turned on the water.  There was a loud clunk, coming from the pipes, a whoosh of air and then another clunk, before a thin trickle of water began to flow.  He watched the water for a moment before turning to the rest of the group.
	"That's what it did last year," he said, "just before it froze up for the rest of the winter."
	"That's right," Fred agreed, turning to the sink.  "That isn't much water coming out of there either.  We better let it run for a little while.  Maybe it'll keep it from freezing."
	"Well, it won't freeze as long as it's running," John said holding his cup under the trickle. "but we can't just let it run forever.
	"Could we cover the well somehow?"  Ellis asked.
	"It's covered already," Fred said.  "Sort of."  He hesitated as he spoke, and then getting up and going to the sink, he looked at the stream of water, which had increased slightly.  "It looks like it's flowing a little more than it was a second ago."
	"There's not much of a cover on the well at all, really," John said, taking the cup from under the little flow of water and drinking it down in one large gulp.  "It's not really a well, but whatever you want to call it, it's only got a couple pieces of plywood lying on top of it."
	"What if we built up around it and covered it somehow?"  Francine asked.  "Do you think we might be able to keep it warm enough not to freeze?"
	John looked at her, surprised at her civility and shrugged his shoulders.  "I don't know," he said.  "We don't have much to build with around here."
	"Is any of that hay out in the barn, still in bales?"  She asked.
	"Yeah,"  Ellis spoke up.  "I saw a whole stack of bales behind the big pile of hay the pig lives in."
	"Couldn't we stack a bunch of bales around the thing?" Francine asked.
	"And then pile some on top too," Molly added.
	John looked over at her.  It was the first time he had heard her say a word.  It somehow made her real.  Before, she hadn't seemed real at all.  He had seen her, but she had been more of a dream of some kind.  In his mind, she had only lived through Ellis.  He had never seen her as a real person, only as the source of this recent bummer with all the guns.  Now, with only one sentence, she had solidified into an entity of her own.  It didn't change the way he felt about having the guns around the house, but it did put a different light on things.  The dangers that Frank posed to them all and himself in particular, didn't seem as removed from his reasoning anymore.
	"How can we keep the ones on the bottom from falling in the creek?"  John asked.
	"I'll bet we could build up over the creek with some of those boards out in the barn and then cover the whole thing over with hay," Ellis said, as the water gurgled loudly several times and came on full force, splashing water out of the sink and onto the floor.
	John quickly reached over and turned off the water.  "Now she's running," he said.  "Should I leave it off or let it run a little?"
	Fred walked to the bathroom where there was a thermometer just outside the window.  He turned the light on and peered out the window, cupping his hands on the glass to help cut down the glare from the bare light, hanging in the middle of the room.  Satisfied, he turned off the light and returned to the kitchen.  "Well, it's eighteen degrees out there," he said.  "What do you think?  Will it freeze up again, if we don't let it run?"
	"What happens if we do?"  Fred asked.  "I mean to the pump.  We might burn it up and then we would be screwed."
	"Does it run all the time, when the water is on?"  Ellis asked.
	"I don't think so," John said, turning the water on again.  The water gushed out fast and hard.  He turned it down to where it ran a thin stream about the size of a pencil.  "Actually, I think you can tell when the pump turns on, because it dims the lights in the house for a second."
	"Well shit then," Fred said, sitting back down at the table.  "If that's the case, we can just wait and see how often it runs.  How low can you make that water run, John?"
	John fiddled with the tap for a moment until he had the water running at a trickle again and then turned to Fred.  "What do you think of that?"  He asked.
	"That looks good," Fred acknowledged.  "Sit down here.  Let's burn one of these tunas of Francine's, even if they don't look like a tuna.  I think we're going to have to come up with another name for your joints, Francine.  They just aren't the right shape for a tuna.  They look more like camels."
	"Where's the humps," Ellis asked.
	"I mean camel cigarettes," Fred answered, picking up one of the little cylinders from the table.
	Francine took a stick match from her shirt pocket and handed it to him.  He lit the joint, took a drag and handed it to John, who had sat down with the group.
	"Hey John," Fred began, blowing out a thin stream of sweet smoke.  "I don't know what else we can really do, but be ready to protect ourselves from this Frank guy.  It's not like we're out looking for trouble or anything.  I can tell you this though,  We're going to do our best to keep you and Duncan out of the whole thing."
	Molly shifted nervously in her seat and looked at John.  "I just feel awful about all this.  This whole thing is all my fault.  I think that I should go back to Dave's in the morning and just face Frank when he comes.  There's no sense dragging all you into my problems.
	John looked over at her and smiled.  "It's not your fault.  It's Franks fault.  You're just trying to get away from him.  You're probably a lot safer out here than you would be at Dave's.  Frank will really have to do some tricks to find the place."
	"I don't know," Molly said.  "It's just not fair for you guys to have to get involved in my problems.  I should go back to Dave's, maybe even back to California."
	"No, You better stay here," John said taking the joint again from Fred.  "Duncan and I won't be much help, but we can stay out of the way and drive you all to the hospital when you get shot up."
	"That sounds a little more like it," Francine said.  "Now if you..."
	Ellis looked at her and shook his head slightly to stop her from saying anymore.  "You're right John.  This isn't Molly's fault. It isn't even her problem, alone.  It's more of a universal problem.  It's just time to stand up against the bullies and Frank's the one we have to deal with."
	"I guess so," John halfheartedly agreed.  "I'm afraid I can't go for all the guns, but you're right about the bullies.  I just don't think I could shoot anyone if I had to, for any reason.  In fact I know I couldn't, not anymore than I care to get shot myself.
	"That's okay, There's lots of things to do besides be in the infantry.  We're all after the same kind of place and you can do as much to get there as anyone.
	The lights dimmed momentarily, while the pump motor spun up to speed.  "Did you see that?"  Molly said.  "The lights dimmed.  How do we know when the pump shuts off?"
	"Look at that, "Fred said, pointing to the faucet.  "I think it's running harder than it was."  They all looked toward the sink and sure enough the little trickle of water had increased slightly.  As they watched, it dropped back to where John had set it before they smoked the joint.  "Shit, that's great.  It didn't run long at all, before it shut off."
	"Do you think the pump shut off, when the water dropped off like that?"  Ellis asked.
	"Yeah, I think we can leave it run like that all night and not hurt anything," John answered.  "Then we can try covering the well better in the morning."  He got up and went back to the sink, where he adjusted the faucet down a little more, to where it barely flowed.  "If you think that'll be safe until morning, I'm going back to bed."
	"I'm tired too," Molly spoke up and then yawning, she leaned forward putting her arms on the table and laying her head on them..
	"Yeah, I suppose we should see if we can make some kind of real bed out of that thing out there," Ellis said, pushing himself back from the table.
	"Did you bring some blankets, like I mentioned?"  Francine asked.
	"Oh no!  I forgot blankets," she answered.
	"Don't worry," John said, as he headed out of the kitchen, "there's a couple of old quilts in that room."  He pointed toward the side room off the kitchen, where the record player was.  "I think they're somewhere near the top of one of the piles of books.  There's also that blanket in the parlor."
	"That'll be plenty," Ellis said, going into the parlor.  He took the wadded up blanket from the couch and went to the other room.  Francine had already found the quilts and met him at the door.
	"Here," she said, handing them to him, "these ought to be enough, don't you think?"
	"Oh yeah, this is plenty," he answered, handing the whole mess to Molly.  "I have to get some light for out there."  He picked up a kerosene lantern from the counter and raised the glass.  Lighting a match, he poked it in under the glass, igniting the wick and the lantern came to life, with a little flame and a column of black smoke coming out the top.  He quickly lowered the glass lens and lowered the wick.  The smoke subsided and the old metal lantern gave off a soft glow.
	Molly and Ellis headed out the back door to his room.  John went upstairs, Fred went into the parlor to check the stove and Francine went into the bathroom, wondering if she should go up to bed with John or sleep on the couch.  She was still sure that she and John had reached an end to their relationship as lovers, but now that Molly and Ellis had taken the extra bed covers, she knew it would be too cold to sleep downstairs.  When she had finished in the bathroom, she trudged up the stairs to John's room.
	The lantern barely gave off enough light for Ellis and Molly to rearrange his box of straw into something acceptable for the two of them.  He opened up both of his sleeping bags, spreading one out neatly on the straw and then laid the other on top of it.  Molly spread the quilts and the blanket out on top of the sleeping bags and threw her pillow in next to Ellis' pillow.
	"That looks like it'll be warm enough, don't you think?"  She said.
	"It'll be cozy, once we get it warmed up," he answered.
	"I don't think we'll have any trouble doing that," she said with a grin that went unnoticed in the darkness.
	They undressed.  Ellis blew out the lantern and they crawled into the cold box of straw.  A few minutes later, Fred stumbled through the room in the darkness and went up to his room.  "Good night," he said on the way through.
	Ellis' straw bed was small and cramped, but they didn't mind.  It kept them snuggled together in a knot.  Their bare bodies mingled with each other in the darkness like cream mixing into a cup of coffee, until they became one.  Ellis woke up once during the night, wondering if all three guns were still sitting in the kitchen where he had last seen them.  This made him a bit uncomfortable, but he did nothing about it and presently went back to sleep.
	In the morning, Ellis woke to the sound of Fred tiptoeing down the squeaky stairs and through his room to the main house.  Molly and himself were still mashed together like a pair of books pressed into too small a place on a shelf.  The layers of thick bedding seemed to force them deep into the matted straw.  Looking out the window, he could see that the sky was overcast and it had begun to snow lightly.  He could, as usual, see his breath slowly dissipate into the cold air that filled the room and pulling himself up onto one elbow, he looked at Molly still sleeping peacefully beside him.
	"It's morning," he said softly.
	Molly stirred slightly, mumbling something indistinguishable and snuggled closer.
	"I'm going to get up," he said.  "You can sleep more if you like."
	She opened her eyes, blinking them a few times and when she finally focused and realized where she was, sat up.  The cold air rushed in under the blankets making them both shiver.  She immediately lay back down pulling the covers up over her head.  "Jesus, you can see your breath out there," she said with another little convulsive shiver.
	"Yeah, we're outside, almost," he said with a chuckle.
	"I'll freeze to death in two minutes if you leave," she complained.
	"Oh, it's not so bad out there," he said.  "It's warmer out now than it's has been.  You'll be okay."  He pulled the covers over his head as well and kissed her on the shoulder.
	She held him closer.  "Your not going anywhere yet," she said.  "Not until you warm me up some."
	"And how would you like me to do that?"  He asked.
	I think I can show you," she said, running her hand down his back and then around to his front, slipping it between them, where she found him attentive to her intentions.  She lifted her leg up over his and pulled him into her gently with a sigh of contentment.  They moved together, slowly at first and then as their heat increased, so did the rhythm of their movements and by the time the rhythm had reached its peak, the covers had slid away and only partially covered them.  It was only after this flush had begun to melt away that either of them noticed the return of the cold and pulled the blankets back into place.  They lay quietly for several minutes, regaining their awareness of time and watching their breath drift off into the room and disappear.
	"I hope the water's still running,"  Ellis said, rolling on to his back as best he could in the tight space where they lay.  "It would sure be nice if we could keep the well from freezing this year."
	"How deep is the well?"  She asked.
	"It's not really a well, actually," he explained.  "Somebody just dug a hole eight feet deep or so in the creek and stuck a submersible pump down in there.  I guess, when the creek freezes over deep enough, it stops working."
	"And we're just going to cover the whole thing over somehow?"  She pressed.
	"Yeah, I guess so," he said.  "It might just work too.  There's quite a bit of hay out in the barn.  We can probably get two or more layers of hay over the whole thing."  He lay there for a few minutes, dreading the thought of getting out of the warm nest and out into the cold air of the room.  "Well here it goes," he said, slipping out from under the covers and stepping onto the icy floor."  Jesus, it's cold out here."  He shivered and hugged his arms around himself, hopping from one foot to the other and finally stepped onto his pants, which lay on the floor.
	"I know," she said, "and you let most of it in here with me."
	"That'll keep you from lying around in bed all day," he said, with a laugh.
	She pulled her head in under the covers and curled into a ball in the center of the box.  "Maybe," she mumbled from under the blankets.
	Ellis dressed as fast as he could, his teeth chattering all the while.  When he finished, he reached down and patted her, now just a lump under the many layers of bedding in the center of his bed.  "I'm going into the house," he said.  "I'll see if I can rustle up some breakfast."  He started out of the room and then turned back momentarily.  "It's snowing."  He proceeded out of the room through the porch and into the kitchen.
	Fred, who stood at the counter making a pot of coffee, had already stoked up the fire in the parlor and started one in the kitchen cook stove.  The house felt warm and water still trickled slightly into the sink from the faucet they had left running the night before.  No one else was up, the television had not yet been turned on and the lack of stale noise seemed calming.  Ellis looked around the kitchen slowly, taking in the lived-in feeling it exuded.  His rifle was still where Francine had leaned it in the corner behind the stove and the shotgun rested next to it.
	"What are you looking around at?"  Fred said turning from the counter to put the coffee pot on the stove.
	"Oh nothing," Ellis answered.  "I was just thinking how nice it is when that TV isn't on."  He walked to the corner where the guns were and picked up the shotgun, breaking it open.  Two brass ended shell casings poked up at him from the chambers.  In the center of each one, the primer sat undimpled, like an eyeball, letting him know these were live shells.  He closed the breech and set the gun back in the corner.
	"Francine loaded this gun before she went up last night," Ellis said, sitting at the table.
	"I kinda thought so," Fred said, "I hadn't looked yet, but I noticed that there were only three of the buck-shot shells sitting up on the shelf with the others."  He pointed to a shelf in the cupboard above the counter.
	"Yeah, she's kind of into this thing with Frank, isn't she?"  Ellis said.  "I hope she doesn't do something dumb, like shoot him the minute he shows up."
	"He probably won't show at all, but I know what you mean.  This whole thing has to be handled carefully, to say the least."  He sat down across the table from Ellis, putting his feet up on one of the chairs.  "I don't think we want to shoot him outside if it can be helped.  I think it would be safer, from a self defense standpoint, to do it in the house."
	Ellis laughed and then picked up his tobacco that he had left lying there the night before.
	"What's so funny?"  Fred asked.
	"Oh, it just seems weird," Ellis answered.  I never thought I'd be trying to figure out how to not get in trouble for killing someone.  It just seems like we're plotting a murder, or something."
	"Yeah, I know, but we're not.  We're just trying to not get killed ourselves, by this maniac Frank guy."
	"I know, it just seems weird, that's all."  He paused to lick the gummed edge of the cigarette paper and then resumed as he finished rolling the crude cylinder.  "I think we just need to be damn careful we don't let him get the drop on us or get a hold of Molly and take off."
	"I suppose, if he does show up, one of us needs to kinda keep him covered, so to speak, just in case."  Fred said, as he slid the ashtray across the table toward Ellis.
	"I'm hungry.  What's around here to eat?"  Ellis asked, lighting the cigarette.
	"There's still a bunch of eggs and I think Francine made another batch of groatcakes yesterday while we were in town."  He got up from the table and opened a large tin container that sat on the counter.  "Yeah, this thing's full.  I hate to say it, but her cakes are a lot better than yours."
	"I know, but hers aren't really true groats either."  Ellis qualified Fred's statement.
	"Maybe not, but they're still better."  He took one out of the tin.  "Here, you want one?"  He said tossing a cake across the room to Ellis.
	"Yeah, maybe I'll put a few of them in the oven to warm up a little.  Is there any butter?"  Ellis got up and went to the cupboard and took a plate from the shelf, set a half dozen cakes on it and put them in the oven.
	"Oh yeah, we got everything.  I think there's even some strawberry jam."  Fred went into the parlor, took a joint from the candy tin and returned to the kitchen table.  "How many hay bales do you think are out in the barn?"
	"Oh shit, I don't know, but there is quite a pile of them.  How are we going to keep them from just falling into the hole out there?"  Ellis asked.
	"I don't know exactly," Fred answered, "but I think we can find enough boards and shit to lay over there first so the bales don't fall in.  I think there's even an old door to that machine shop that might cover the whole thing in one shot."
	"And then you think we can just pile bales on top of that and it'll do it?"  Ellis didn't sound convinced.
	"I don't know.  We'll just have to take a look and see what it's going to take.  It's worth a try.  It would sure be nice to not lose the water this winter."  He picked a wooden match up from the table and lit the joint.  "You want any of this," he asked, holding it out to Ellis.
	"I'll have a hit or two, I guess."  He took the joint, taking a small toke and handed it back.  "When do you think we'll see Frank?"
	"I don't know," he said.  "I don't think there's anyway we could see him today.  He couldn't even get here before today sometime and then it would take him a while to find us out here, if he even can.  I suppose if he knows your name and starts hanging around at the bar asking questions, he might eventually find out where you live, but that's the only way I can figure he'd find us."
	"Yeah, that's about the same thing I was thinking."  He took the joint from Fred, then handed it back again, without partaking and jumping up, he stepped quickly to the stove, opening the oven door.  "Oh shit, I hope I didn't burn the groats."
	"It isn't hot enough in there yet, to burn anything," Fred laughed.  "What's that coffee doing though?  It ought to be about ready."
	"Shit, it's barely warm in there," Ellis complained.
	"Well hell, I only lit the thing fifteen minutes ago,"  Fred said, "and I haven't flipped up the oven vent yet either.  Take a look at the coffee."
	Ellis peered at the coffee.  "It's just starting to perk," he said.  "What's this oven vent thing you didn't flip?"
	Fred leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head, joint still poking out of his mouth.  "See that little lever, sticking up from the stove top, back by the chimney pipe.  That forces the smoke to travel all the way around the oven and then go out down at the bottom of the stove.  The oven never will get hot if you don't lift that thing up."  He leaned forward again, taking a drag on the joint and then held it out to Ellis.  "Pull up that lever and smoke this.  You don't know much about these old stoves, do you?"
	"Shit, I've never been around one before.  How the hell would I know."  He flipped up the lever, took the joint and sat back down.  Well it looks like John and Francine made up."
	"She was sure pissed at him last night," Fred said, then glancing at the stove, he got up, taking the coffee pot and setting it on the table.  "This looks ready."  He picked up two unwashed cups from the counter by the sink and setting them on the table, he poured them full, leaving the pot on the table between the two of them.  "Here, these ought to be clean enough for us."
	There was a thump from upstairs and presently Duncan appeared in the doorway to the kitchen.  He looked disheveled as usual, hair uncombed, bare feet, and his shirt buttoned crooked.  He didn't say a word, but stared blankly at them for a moment and then went into the bathroom.  As the sound of his draining off the excess liquids of the previous day diminished, Fred called out to him.
	"Hey Duncan, what's the thermometer say in there?"
	Duncan wiped the fogginess from the glass and peered through.  "It says it's twenty-two."
	"I thought so," Fred answered.
	"You thought what," Duncan said coming into the kitchen, "that it was twenty-two?"
	"No, I just figured that it had warmed up a little since it started to snow."
	Duncan glanced out the window and shrugged his shoulders.  Then looking at the sink, he walked over and turned the water off.  Why's the water running?"  He asked.
	"It tried to freeze up last night, so we left it run a little," Fred answered.  "We're going to try to insulate the water hole out there today and see if we can stave off the freeze."
	Duncan took another dirty cup from the counter, blew into it, poured it full and set the pot back on the stove.  "Well, is this the day we all die?"  He said sitting down and putting his feet up on the chair between he and Ellis.
	"No one's going to die," Ellis said.  "You guys are so paranoid."
	"I just have a bad feeling about this deal," he said.  "That Frank guy's going to show up here one these days and it's going to get ugly."
	"It doesn't have to," Fred responded.
	"It doesn't really matter what we do now," Duncan began.  "Even if Molly wasn't here,  Frank's going to figure Ellis' been screwing his wife and he'll come looking for him.  I wouldn't want to be in your shoes."  He looked over at Ellis and scowled.
	Ellis shifted around in his chair, took a slow deliberate drink from his coffee cup and set the cup back on the table.  "I hadn't really thought of that, I guess, but it doesn't really matter, because Molly is here and she's not leaving.  I'm just as sorry this thing's taking place as you are, but it's really not any of our doing.  It's Frank's call and we're just trapped in the middle of the damn thing.  It's like that fucking war in Nam, we didn't make it happen, but they're sure going to make us fight the God damn thing.  It's just one of those things that one person starts and someone else has to finish."
	"Yeah, I know," Duncan agreed.  I guess I'd feel better if I thought that I could shoot someone if I had too, but I don't think I could pull the trigger, even if it meant I'd die if I didn't.  He got up and went into the parlor, returning in a moment with a joint from the candy tin.
	"That's just it, Duncan," Fred said, handing Duncan a match.  "You don't have to even touch one of the guns.  Ellis and Francine and I are perfectly willing to blow the fucker's head off if we have too and you and John can just sit back and watch if you like.  Personally, I don't think anything's going to come of this thing anyway, but we're going to be ready if it does.  Hell Duncan, just look at it like one of your soap operas"
	"The first thing we have to do though, is get that well covered up so the water doesn't freeze," Ellis said, beginning to roll another cigarette.
	Duncan lit the joint, took a drag and handed it to Fred.  "What was all the noise down here last night?"
	"Oh, we were just arguing about this deal with Molly's husband.  I think it's all worked out.  You two are going to stay out of it and we'll just have to be as careful as we can," Fred said blowing out excess smoke.
	"Well, I don't like it, but I guess it can't be helped," Duncan said, leaning back in his chair and looking out the window at the snow drifting slowly to the ground.
	"Hey Ellis, you better check the oven," Fred reminded him.  "Oh, I stuck my pistol up on the shelf by the plates, just so you know.  It's loaded, and by the way, Duncan, so are all the other guns as well."
	Duncan shuddered as he took a long pull on the reefer he held and then looked at Fred.  "Don't worry.  I have no intentions of touching any of them."
	Ellis opened the oven door and a gush of hot air flowed out into the room, enveloping Duncan, who sat directly in front of the stove.
	"Jesus, that feels good," Duncan said, scooting his chair a little, to allow Ellis better access to the oven.  "That thing puts out a lot of heat.  I think it might be better than the stove in the parlor."
	"No shit!"  Fred agreed.  "It's hard to imagine how a stove, as cool looking as that thing is, could be such a piece of shit, when it comes to putting out heat."
	Ellis pulled the plate of groats out of the oven and hurriedly set it on the table.  "Jesus, that's hot," he said, waiving his hands in the air, thinking it might cool them off faster.  "You know though, that old parlor stove seems to do better since we started putting coal in it.  That reminds me.  When was the last time anyone took the clinkers out of it?"
	"What do you mean?"  Fred asked.
	Ellis glanced over at him, catching his eye.  "You don't know much about these old stoves, do you?"  He said, smiling as Fred scowled at him, and handed him the joint.  "Coal becomes a big lumpy hunk of shit after it burns and you have to take it out of the stove all the time or the new coal doesn't burn worth a damn.  When I was kid, we burned coal, and my dad had to load this big metal stoker bin every morning and night.  And every morning he would take the clinkers out, put them in a bucket and then take them out and dump them.  He made a really nice cinder path along the edge of one of my mother's flower gardens.
	"Maybe that's why it doesn't seem to burn as well now as it used to," Fred said.  "No ones ever taken out the crud."
	"I've taken them out a couple of times, but I haven't for a while," Ellis said, as he opened the refrigerator to get the butter.  "Where's the strawberry jam?"
	"It's in there somewhere," Fred answered.
	Ellis found the jam and brought both it and the butter to the table, setting it next to the plate of groats.  "Here," he said, "I'll get a couple of butter-knives and we can have hot muffins."
	"They're muffins, if Francine made them," Duncan said, reaching for one, "and they're more like rocks, if you did."
	"That wasn't nice, even if it is true," Ellis answered, tossing the knives onto the table and sitting down.
	Molly and Francine showed up at the same time and John came down shortly after.  They all sat around eating muffins with jam and talked about the well project.  When they had finished the muffins and had come up with a plan, Francine announced that she thought they should just get it done with and they began by smoking one more joint for good luck.  That out of the way, they got up, Fred and Ellis went out to survey the project and the others finished getting dressed and bundled up for the cold outside.
	Ellis grabbed a little-used, snow shovel off the back porch as they headed out and they trudged through the deep snow toward the well.  Even though it had only snowed about a foot, the wind had whipped it around between the buildings and the trees, to where it had drifted two or three feet deep in places.  The well, or what they called the well, sat most of a hundred yards back from the house along the creek.  When they arrived, they found the snow built up around the edges in a soft, rounded circle about two feet high, forming a crater in the center where the plywood covered the pool of water they pumped from.  The wind had blown the snow off the plywood completely, leaving it bare and offering little insulation to the water and pump below.
	"Hell," Fred said, as he came up beside the crater-like form in the middle of the snow covered creek.  "There's the biggest part of our problem.  The snow has blown clean off the well-cover and it doesn't have any insulation at all."
	"Yeah, really," Ellis agreed.  "It looks to me like if we just put a bunch of bales on there, we'll be in business."
	"We'll at least have some insulation over the top, which should help a lot," Fred said.  "I think we better find some heavy boards to put under that plywood though.  See how they're all bowed down.  I don't think they'd hold the weight of any bales."
	"You're right," Ellis agreed again.  "I don't think that plywood would even hold the weight of the snow, if it hadn't blown off.  Why don't you go find some boards long enough to go across the hole and I'll dig the snow off around the thing so we can redo it?"
	"That sounds good to me," Fred said turning away and heading back the way they had come.
	Ellis began to shovel, moving the snow away from the plywood.  By the time Fred returned with four old rough-cut two-by-fours about eight feet long, he had most of the snow removed from around the edges and they removed the plywood.  Under the plywood, they found the pool of water had frozen at the surface into a small skating rink, most of eight feet in diameter.
	"That doesn't look too good," Fred said, staring at the thick sheet of ice.
	"It sure doesn't," Ellis agreed.  "I think we're going to have to chip that all out of there, before we cover it back up.  How thick do you think that ice is?"
	"I don't know," he said, tapping the surface of the ice with one of the boards.  The board striking the ice gave off a solid resonant sound that indicated the ice was fairly thick.  He poked at the ice a little harder.  It still sounded firm and thick.  Ellis, who stood on the opposite side of the circle from Fred, took a careful step onto the ice and when it seemed to support him, he walked out into the center of the little skating rink.  It held him without even creaking.
	"Wow!"  Ellis said.  "That shit's pretty thick.  We could just forget the water in the house and have a skating rink for the rest of the winter."  He attempted a little pirouette in the center of the ice and fell down.  Even that didn't cause the ice to crack or even groan.  He picked himself up and stepped to the edge where he had piled the snow.  "We're going to need some kind of heavy crowbar or something to break that shit out of there."
	"No shit," Fred agreed.  "I'll bet there's something like that in the old machine shed.  Let's go take a look."
	They walked back across the ice and beat their way through the snow toward the house again.  They met the others about half way back and stopped to confer about the problems they faced.  Fred explained the situation and suggested that they should start hauling bales of hay from the barn while he and Ellis removed the ice from the top of the pool.  Everyone agreed and they all set off to accomplish their task.  The inside of the machine shop was a disarray of junk and tools from when the place had been lived in by the farmer.  The many years of renters had added another layer of various things, including Fred's motor cycle.  They poked around and under things until Fred came up with a six foot iron bar about an inch in diameter.
	"Hey, look at this," he said, holding up the bar.  "This ought to do the job."
	Ellis looked up from where he was pawing through a pile of machinery parts.  "If it doesn't, we may be in trouble," he said, dropping the broken shovel handle he had picked up and walking over to where Fred stood.  "Yeah, that does look good.  Do you think there's a regular shovel or two in here?"
	"I've seen one in here somewhere," he said looking around at the piles of junk.  "There's one."  He pointed to the opening where a sliding door had been.  "Over there, leaning up by the door."  
	Ellis went over, picked up the shovel and turned back around.  "Well, let's go do it," he said, heading out of the building.
	As they trudged back through the snow, they could see the others, each carrying a bale of hay, making their way slowly toward them from the barn.  With Ellis leading the way, he and Fred returned to the frozen pool and began breaking up the ice.  It was nearly four inches thick and took several hard blows with the iron bar to break through,  but by the time the others arrived with the first load of bales, Fred had broken up most of it and Ellis was scooping it out with the shovel.  When the ice was all removed, they laid the two-by-fours across the small pool and then the plywood on top of them, forming a sturdy base on which to stack the hay.  Everyone headed back to the barn for another load of bales.  The trail they had beat through the snow made going a little easier this trip and after three more trips they had enough to cover the plywood with two layers of bales.
	"Is that going to do it?"  Francine asked as she hoisted the last bale into place.
	"I don't know if it'll do it," Fred answered, "but it sure won't hurt.  I don't see how it could do anything but help.  It would be nice if we had a big tarp or something to keep the hay from getting all wet."
	"What about that sliding door you were talking about?"  Ellis asked.  "The one that fell off the machine shop.  Isn't it leaning up against the back of the building?"
	"That might work," John said, leaning on a bale.  "It's big enough to cover the whole thing at once.  Man, it's heavy though.  I remember putting it up against the back of the machine shop last spring, after it blew off in that big wind storm.  That was the same storm that knocked the big branch out of the Locust tree in the front yard."
	"Well, let's go see if we can lug it over here," Francine said, turning back toward the shop.  "We all ought to be able to get it with three on a side."
	Single file, they all headed along the trail they had plowed through the snow back to the machine shop.  Then, trudging through snow waist deep that had drifted along the lee side of the building, they found the door leaning up against the back wall.  It seemed huge.  It barely fit under the eaves that were easily ten feet high and it must have been twelve feet long.  The construction was two solid layers of three-quarter inch boards, nailed together in two directions, one crossing the other at a ninety degree angle.  Someone had used thousands of nails, driven clear through both layers and bent over tightly on the far side, to fasten the many narrow tongue-and-grove planks into a singe huge sheet.
	"Well," Duncan announced, "let's tip it over on the snow and then pack it down there."
	He and Ellis, each took hold of one end of the door and pulled it away from the wall of the shop, letting it drop into the soft snow between them.  With a minimum of jockeying around for position, the six of them took their places along either side of the  large panel and together they lifted it off the ground.  With that many of them lifting, it didn't seem very heavy, but it quickly became apparent that they had to work together.
	"Where are we going with this thing?"  Molly asked, lurching out of control, as everyone but her swerved in her direction.
	"Yeah, we gotta stick together with this thing," John agreed.  "Why don't we go over there," he let go with one hand and pointed off to his left.  "Then if we go between those two big trees, there won't be anything else in the way."
	They headed off, breaking a new trail through the snow, which lay thick on top of long grass that tangled with their feet, as they trudged along.  Working completely together, like one might on smooth ground, was out of the question.  It was a chore to maintain hold of the cumbersome panel and still stay vertical, but with much effort they finally brought it to the edge of the newly covered pool.  With a little more effort, they managed to get it astradle the creek and with three of them on one side and three on the other, they hoisted the panel onto the bales.  It hung out over the sides of the bales, giving a bit more protection than they had bargained for and after they adjusted the evenness of the overhang, the whole thing took on a low outbuilding appearance.  They stood back and inspected their little structure.
	"I think it's kinda cute," Francine said finally, then looking at Ellis.  "You know Ellis, if you and Fred built a little house out of stacked up bales, you'd probably be warmer than back there in that unheated shed of a place you are now.  Jesus, that's not much better than just throwing your sleeping bags out on the yard."
	Everyone laughed.  "Hey, that's our palace back there.  Don't you be knocking it," Fred chuckled sarcastically.
	"You know that's not too bad of an idea," Ellis said seriously.  "It probably would be a lot warmer.  You'd at least hold in your body heat, if you could come up with a good tight door."
	"Well, you just go right ahead, Ellis," Fred said.  "You build yourself a little straw house out here somewhere and then I can work on my motorcycle in your room."
	"I just might," he answered.
	"Not while I'm out here, you won't," Molly spoke up.  Everybody looked at her, surprised at the firmness in her statement.
	"I see," Duncan said.  "That's your motorcycle now, huh.  That thing was left here years ago by someone that's supposedly going to come back for it."
	"Shit, he's never coming back for that thing," Fred said.  "I'd say, it's anyone's who can get it running.  You wait, I'll have the thing on the road next spring."
	Duncan laughed.  "How much you want to bet?" He said turning toward the house.  "You don't even have all the parts to work with.  I'm going back in.  There's a good show on the tube I don't want to miss."  He shuffled off in the direction of the house, kicking an occasional clump of snow as he went.
	Fred bent over, picked up the iron bar and the shovel.  "Well, I hope this does some good," he said tossing the shovel to Ellis.  "Let's go cook up a great big batch of spuds and eggs.  You know, I'm getting kinda cold now that we're just standing around out here."
	"Yeah really," John agreed, "I'll cut up the potatoes."
	The group plowed back through the now partially packed snow, to the old farmhouse and went inside.  Francine immediately took the broom and swept the snow, they had tracked in, back out the kitchen door and John took the sack of potatoes from the cupboard and began to wash them slightly in the sink.  Duncan had the television turned on about as loud as it would go, with another in the long series of soap-operas, emulating life from within the tube.
	"Hey Duncan," Fred yelled from the kitchen, "turn that fucker down.  Jesus Christ, you're going to break the windows out of the place.
	Fred pulled the thirty-eight out of his belt and laid it on the counter next to the tin of groatcakes.
	"Jesus Fred, you had that thing shoved down the front of your pants all that time?"  Francine said, watching him.
	"Sure, better safe than sorry, besides it's not really in the way or anything," he answered.
	"In the way of what?"  Ellis commented.  "You've got lots of room down there."
	"Jesus Ellis, you're so crude sometimes," Francine said, stopping her sweeping and looking at him sternly.
	"Really Ellis," Molly agreed.  "I can see we're going to have to work on your manners.  By the way how's that cut on your face doing?"
	"I'd forgot all about it ," he answered, putting his hand up to the cut.  "It doesn't hurt at all anymore.  I wonder when I should take out the stitches?"
	"You're going to take the stitches out yourself?"  Molly asked.
	"Sure, why not?" he said, sitting down at the table and taking his tobacco out of his pocket.
	"Oh, I guess," Molly said, shaking her head and sitting down next to him, "it just seems that's what doctors are for."
	"I suppose, if they didn't charge so much," he said, taking a large pinch of tobacco out of the pouch and putting it into the cigarette paper he held.  "I think I'll just take them out myself.  How hard could it be, anyway?"
	John finished washing the potatoes, cut them in thin slices and placed them in a large cast-iron frying pan with a glob of butter.  After setting this on the stove, he dug back into the cupboard and came out with a paper sack of yellow onions.  These he cut nearly as thin as the potatoes, gathered them up in his hands from the cutting board and dumped them into the pan with the potatoes.  The butter had already melted and he stirred the whole mess together with a wooden spoon.
	"You going to salt and pepper that stuff?"  Francine asked, setting the broom behind the stove next to the rifle and shotgun.
	"I don't know, do you think I should?" He asked.
	"I would," she replied.  "It would make it taste a whole lot better.  Here, let me season that for you."  Without waiting for an answer, she went to the cupboard, took down a shaker of salt and pepper and went to the pan on the stove.  She liberally dosed the contents of the pan with both and set them on top of the warming ovens.  "We need to get some garlic out here.  That would perk this stuff up."
	"No garlic!"  Duncan called from the parlor.
	"You really are alive in there," she called back.  "What have you got against garlic?"
	"It's awful shit, that's what.  And it gives you bad breath."  With that, as his last statement on the subject, he resumed his concentration on the synthetic drama before him.
	Francine went into the parlor.  "You wait and see what I can do to those potatoes with a little garlic," she said, reaching for the candy tin.  Duncan merely shook his head and said nothing.  She took two joints from the tin and returned to the kitchen, sitting down at the table.  Lighting one of the joints, she took a short drag, passed it to Ellis and then sat there stroking the other one, like she was trying to smooth out the already smooth white surface.  When the first joint had made a round and returned to her, she set down the one she had been fondling, took the lit one and breathed deeply of the sweet smoke.  John, who had only stopped cleaning up the counter long enough to take a hit, turned and looked at Fred.
	"Hey Fred," he said.  "can you move this gun off the counter?  I'm trying to clean up over here and it's kind of in the way."
	"Sure, just set it up on the shelf there." Fred answered.
	"I don't want to touch it," John returned.
	"Well shit," Fred said, getting up.  "It's not going to bite you."  He set the gun on the second shelf out of the way and sat back down.  "That's okay.  That was part of the deal.  You and Duncan don't have to have anything to do with the guns."  John turned and smiled at Fred and then as his eye caught the glance of Molly, his smile froze on her for a long moment.  Ellis was still busy struggling with the making of his cigarette and noticed nothing.
	"It looks to me, like, if it wasn't for John," Molly said, still caught by John's smile, "you guys would be living in a sty out here.
	John turned back toward her with the same smile.  "Yeah, that's probably true," he said.  "I think I'm the only one that does any dishes, but that's okay, I don't mind.  I keep my hands clean that way."
	This time, Ellis did notice the direction of John's gaze.  He thought he could almost feel the way John's eyes had reached out to touch Molly's.  It gave him a twinge of jealousy that shot up out of his groin into his consciousness and swirled around in his head like a spoon, stirring his thoughts and feelings into something he couldn't pin down.  It wasn't exactly negative, but it certainly didn't have a warm cuddly feeling attached to it either.  At first, as that glance was taking place, he had a clear picture of how he felt, but now, the more he tried to reconstitute that picture, the farther it swirled off into the smoke of his mind.  He reached deeper and deeper into the swirl until he became dizzy.  Finally, he had to put that cloudy picture out of the way entirely, on some dusty shelf, to regain enough equilibrium to remain seated.  Francine had lit the second joint and he rose up out of his fog as she held it out to him, nudging him on the shoulder as she did.  He took a hit and held it out to Molly, who passed and he handed it across the table to Fred.
	"I could use some coffee," Ellis said, yawning and pushing himself back from the table.
	"I think I'll make a fresh pot," Francine said, jumping up from the table and grabbing the pot from the stove.  "Here, there's a little left.  Where's your cup?"
	Ellis looked around.  "John washed it, I'll bet."
	"Probably, if it was in here or the parlor," John admitted, handing Francine a clean cup from the dish rack.
	She poured the remainder of the coffee into it, set it in front of Ellis and went to the counter to make a fresh pot.  John had done all the dishes, set them to dry and wiped the counters.  He then stepped to the table and sat down between Fred and Molly.
	"Well, what's up for the rest of the day?" He asked, not looking for an answer.  "It's only noon and we've fixed the well, the dishes are all clean at once and we haven't had to fight off any wild crazy rednecks or even Frank, but I guess there's still time for that yet."
	Molly shuddered visibly at the mention of Frank, and both John and Ellis looked at her.  She felt as if Frank hung over her head like an iron ball, about to crash in on her, as a wrecking ball might swing into an old building.  These thoughts and feelings about Frank overlaid any other thoughts she tried to have, conscious or subconscious.  She was at the mercy of the deal, as Dave would have put it.  The cards had been laid out and it was just a matter turning them over, one at a time, but time stood in her way.  She had plenty of other thoughts, thoughts of Ellis, the farm, what to do with her life, and now she had found some kind of fondness for John, the one person that had resisted her being there the most.  That thought confused her.  It made her feel a kind of disloyalty toward Ellis, this fondness for John.  But it wasn't disloyalty.  She did care for Ellis deeply in some kind of way that she couldn't identify, and really, she hadn't known him long enough to have a true loyalty to him.  Besides Dave and Carol, she didn't know anyone around here well enough for a true loyalty, like you can have for those people you have known for years.  She set off in her mind, to sort out these feelings, but they all rattled around inside her head like lose stones in the bottom of a tin can.  Each stone had a face or a place attached to it.  Each stone came and went, bouncing sharply off each other, clanging into the side of the can, until it gave her a headache and then there it was, the wrecking ball again.  This time it had Frank's face pasted on it and it seemed to be swinging right for her.  She gave up.  It was no use trying to figure things out now.  
	"How are your spuds doing?"  Francine asked, glancing at John.
	He leisurely looked over at the stove and then slowly got up, using Molly's chair to help him rise, he went to the stove and stirred the starchy glob in the frying pan.  He opened the eye of the stove and looked in on the fire, which had nearly burned away.  "I guess this stuff looks okay, but the fire's about out," he said and leaving the eye open, he went out the back door to the porch, returning promptly with a can of coal.  He carefully poured part of the coal into the firebox and spread it out over the existing embers with a short fire poker that hung on the side of the stove.  Placing the iron eye back over the hole, he gave the potatoes and onions another stir and sat down again.
	"Oh shit, that reminds me," Fred spoke up.  "Ellis and I filled the trunk of the Volvo with coal last night.  We should get it out of there sometime.  We need a bunch of sacks or boxes to put it in.  There's a hell of a lot of it."
	"That was a good way to get coal," Ellis said, picking his tobacco up off the table.  "I think we got about twice as much coal in half the time that way."
	"What way was that?"  Francine asked, partially leaning over Ellis to put the coffeepot on the stove.
	"We just shoveled it into the trunk on top of an old tarp," Ellis answered.  "The trunk's damn near full."
	"Yeah, and the ass end of my car is nearly dragging on the ground."  Fred laughed as he said this and got up.  He went into the parlor, where Duncan sat curled into a ball on the couch, watching his soap opera.  He opened the parlor stove to find the fire barely going.  "You cold Duncan?"  He asked.
	"Huh," Duncan mumbled.  "Oh yeah, it's freezing in here."
	"No wonder, the stoves about out," Fred said.  "You might want to check it once in a while."