A Pig in a Mire

	"Yeah, Yeah," he answered.  "I was busy with this show."
	Fred snorted and turned away to get some fuel for the fire.
	"Is that stove all full of clinkers?"  Ellis asked, as Fred went through the kitchen.
	"You better take a look at it," he answered.  "I don't really know what I'm looking at in there, but there is a lot shit built up at the bottom where the fire is."
	Ellis got up, went into the parlor and opened the stove.  There was six or eight inches of clinker built up in a solid mass under the few embers that glowed on the surface.  "Yeah, the things full of clinkers," he said.  "We need to get them out of there somehow.  We had a special tool at home, when I was a kid, just for taking the things out.  We might be able to get them out with a small shovel and some kind of poker.  We also need a bucket to put'em in."
	"There's a bucket in the back of the car and that shovel you got the ice out of the well with is the only one around I think.  What kind of poker do you need?"
	"Oh, I don't know really.  Something with a hook on the end might work," Ellis answered.
	"Let's go out to the old shop and dig around in the junk again," Fred said.  "We might find something that'll work out there."
	They put their coats on and headed outside.  The snow was falling harder than before and the tracks they had made earlier were nearly covered.  They plowed their way to the old shop and began digging through the piles.  In a short time, Fred had found another shovel that had a broken handle and was somewhat smaller than the one they had used earlier.  Ellis had found three pieces of iron rod that he felt might help in their efforts.  One, a piece of reinforcing steel about three feet long that had been bent over at a right angle six inches from one end, and the other two were small pieces of angle iron a little over two feet long.  When they got to where Fred's car was parked, on the way back to the house, Fred opened the trunk and handed Ellis the bucket.
	"I think I'll see if I can back this thing up a little closer to the house," Fred announced, shutting the trunk.  "You know we're going to need something to put this coal in once we get it out of the car.  We need a coal bin or something."
	"What about that old metal watering trough out in the barn," Ellis mentioned.
	"That would be great, if there's room on the porch for it," Fred agreed.
	Ellis returned to the house with his makeshift tools and Fred started the car.  The extra weight of the coal gave him plenty of traction to back across the deep snow in the yard and soon the Volvo was idling smoothly about three feet from the back door.  He shut off the car and went into the house as well.  Ellis was busy in front of the stove, poking at the clinkers with the hooked iron rod, trying to pull them out the door into the shovel.  The bottom of the door was three or four inches higher than the mass of clinkers and they kept slipping back into the firebox.  The shovel was too wide to fit into the stove, so he couldn't scoop them out and he stopped in frustration.
	Francine came into the room, looking over Ellis' shoulder.  "Why don't you use those other two pieces of steel like chop sticks and just pick them out of there one at a time?"  She said, picking up the two chunks of angle iron and demonstrating on one of Duncan's shoes that he had kicked off next to the stove.
	"Shit, that might work," Ellis said taking the clumsy chopsticks from her.  He poked around with them in the stove until he had a large clinker separated out from the rest and then attempted to pick it up between the to pieces of angle iron.  They twisted as he did so and the clinker fell back into the fire.  All this time coal smoke wisped out of the stove into the room.
	"You better hurry up, Ellis, the house is filling up with smoke," Fred said from the kitchen.  "And I thought your cigarettes smelled bad."
	Ellis tried again and the clinker fell, once more back into the fire.  He failed again on the third try, and Francine nudged him away.
	"Here, let me do that," she said.  "You don't know how to operate chopsticks anyway.
	Ellis stepped back and held the shovel in front of the stove door and she deftly took the irons and picked the clumps of spent coal out of the stove, one at a time, setting them in the shovel, without dropping any.
	"See how easy that was," she said, when she had finished.  "You just have to have a little coordination, that's all."
	"Oh I see, and you're just the picture of grace, I suppose," he said sarcastically, dumping the last clinker into the bucket.
	She stood up, giving him a warm smile.  "If you say so."  She winked at him, turned away and went into the kitchen without another word.
	Ellis picked up the bucket, went outside and stood next to Fred's car, wondering where to dump the clinkers.  It seemed to him that he should build a path, like the one his father had built for his mother's flower garden, but there weren't any gardens here to make a path through.  The area out behind the bathroom had been a flower garden previously, but no one had cared for it in a long time.  It had rained considerably before he and Fred had gone to Seattle and the ground around the front porch had become quite muddy.  'Maybe, I should spread it around there,' he thought, turning that way.  When he got to the area, he couldn't remember where the muddy spots were, so he dumped the cinders in a pile at the side of the house near the porch, where it would be handy when the snow melted and the mud season began again in the spring.  He returned to the house, setting the bucket in the trunk of the Volvo as he went by and then went into his room to get a tape measure.  He measured in several directions on the back porch to see if the watering trough would fit and then went in the kitchen.
	"You want to go look at the watering trough?"  He said as he came through the door.
	"What are you going to water?"  Francine asked.
	We need something to put all that coal, out of Fred's trunk into," Ellis answered.
	"I think these potatoes and onions are ready to eat," John said.  Why don't we have some breakfast before you do that?"
	"That sounds good," Fred answered.  They gathered around the table and John portioned the gooey mess out of the frying pan onto plates and they ate.  Duncan came in from the parlor, grabbed a plate of food and returned to the soap opera.
When they had finished eating, Ellis pushed himself away from the table.  "Well, I guess we better get that trough, before the snow gets so deep we can't even find the barn," he said. 
	Fred got up, turned to the cupboard and took the pistol from the shelf, stuffing it in the belt of his pants.
	"Are you going to shoot the trough or what?"  John said with a laugh, as Fred zipped up his coat and picked his gloves up from the counter.
	Fred gave him a look of disapproval and then smiled as he and Ellis went out the back door.  It was snowing even harder.  It came down in large flakes, thick enough that the barn, less that two hundred feet from the house, was barely visible.  They made their way to the barn and were greeted by Effie the pig as they ducked in out of the falling snow.  She oinked a few times, holding up her snout, hoping one of them had brought her something to eat.  When she found nothing, she squealed a couple of short high-pitched grunts of disapproval and burrowed back in under the haymow.  Fred and Ellis went to the watering trough and pulled it out from under a pile of old boards.
	"It doesn't look like it would hold water anymore, but it'd sure hold a lot of coal," Fred said, leaning over the side, inspecting its condition.
	Ellis took the tape measure out of his coat pocket and stretched it the length of the trough.  Satisfied, he held the tape across its breadth.  "Shit, it's only four feet long.  That's six inches shorter than where it needs to go," he said, "and it won't stick out past the door or anything."  He put the tape back in his pocket and turned to survey their best path out of the cluttered barn.  
	"Well let's pack the thing back to the house," Fred said picking up one end.  "The thing sure is heavy."
	The two of them got down low, picked the trough up from the bottom and made their way out of the barn.  Ellis was in front, holding the trough around behind him.  Going was not easy once they were outside the barn and they made slow progress back to the house, but after considerable effort, they made it.  Fred had pulled the car up so close to the back door, it was hard to maneuver the trough in past it to the porch, but they finally managed to place it where they wanted.  They stepped back to look at their work.
	"Boy, that thing takes up a lot of room," Fred said, sliding the trough up tight against the wall of the porch.
	"Yeah, it sure makes it crowded in here," Ellis agreed, "but I don't know where else we could put the damn thing."
	"There really isn't anywhere else," Fred said.  "We might as well fill it up."  He picked up one of the two half full sacks of coal and dumped it into the trough.
	Ellis poured the other sack into the bin and together they picked up the large cardboard box full of coal that sat on the floor, dumping it in as well.
	"We need another bucket," Ellis said.
	"Why don't you grab that big cooking pot from under the sink," Fred said, "or better yet, that old waste basket, no one ever uses, in the bathroom."
	Ellis went into the house, grabbed the metal wastebasket, dumped the few bits of paper out into the parlor stove and returned outside.  Together they transferred the coal from the trunk to the bin and then Fred pulled the car back out onto the driveway.  The once watering trough, now coal bin, sat a little over half full, Taking up more than it's share of the back porch, but it was better than the sacks and boxes that had previously cluttered the area.  Fred took the tarp out of the trunk, shook the dust out of it and spread it neatly back in the trunk, ready for the next coal run.  Ellis scooped the wastebasket into the bin, filling it about half full and together they went inside.  Fred rebuilt the fire in the parlor stove and then joined the rest of the group in the kitchen.  Francine's fresh pot of coffee was ready and they all relaxed around the kitchen table with a cup.  Duncan hadn't moved from the couch in the parlor and still sat glued to the television.  John and Molly sat conversing quietly about some book on transcendental meditation they had both read and appeared to be quite comfortable with each others company.  Once again, Ellis felt a twinge of jealousy at the prospect of their increasing friendship, but he let it pass.  He was beginning to see that his relationship with her, might have been the result of her dilemma with Frank and not the magical spark that he had first thought.  He reminisced back through his many relationships with women.  All of which had ended in his being dumped for one reason or another.  This would be just one more in a long string.  He already knew that he fell in love too easily and here again he had jumped in, barely knowing the girl.  He took a drink of his coffee and smiled at his own misfortune, as if it was just another lesson learned.  It did cross his mind, however, that he probably hadn't learned much either.  
	"We got a lot done today," Francine said, setting her coffee cup down on the table.  "I think I'll make another batch of groats."
	"That would be great," Ellis agreed.  I think I'll pay attention to how you do it.  I have to admit that yours are a lot better than mine."
	"It's just a matter of proportion and I think baking them in the oven instead of that frying pan makes them a lot lighter and less apt to turn into rocks the next day."
	John stood up, stretched and walked into the parlor.  "Hey Duncan, you want to go into your three o'clock class?"  He asked.  "I think I'm going to go into my geology lab.  I have to do a bunch of shit in there, or I'll never pass the damn thing."
	Duncan looked up momentarily.  "No, I think I'll pass," he said, looking back at his soap opera.
	"Okay, then I'll just go alone."  He returned to the kitchen.  "Do we need anything from town?"  He asked.
	"Probably a million things that we can't afford," Francine spoke up, with a chuckle.
	"I should pick up some blankets," Molly said, leaning back in her chair.  "There's some other stuff I should have grabbed yesterday too."
	"You can ride along if you want," John offered.  "I could drop you off at Dave and Carol's and then pick you up after my class."
	"You want to go into town, Ellis?"  She asked.
	"Not really," he answered.  "Do you think it's a good idea for you to go in?  Frank could be there at Dave's right now."
	"Oh, I don't think he'll be there yet, and besides, I thought I'd stop and call there before we went by."  She got up and went into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.
	"We have to go right away, or I'll be late for my class," John called out to her.
	"I'll be right out," she called back through the thin door.  "Hey Francine,  if you need anything like cooking stuff, I have some money and I'd like to contribute."
	There were quite a few things Francine could use in the kitchen and she began to write them down on an envelope that had been sitting on the table for days.  When Molly came out of the bathroom, Francine handed her the list.  "Here," she said.  "You don't have to get everything there, but butter is probably the most important.  A little white flour would be good too.  Most of what we have here is that heavy stuff like buckwheat and soy flour.  If you can, get a small sack of those white beans, I'll make some soup.  The rest of that stuff would be nice, but it really isn't necessary."
	"I can get all of this stuff, it looks like." She said, looking over the list.  She went to the hooks by the back door, took her coat off and put it on.  John had already put on his and they went out.  The door shut behind them and the house was silent, except for the television.  They could hear Duncan's Toyota start up and then pull out of the driveway.
	Fred went into the parlor, joining Duncan in front of the tube.  Francine got up, went to the cupboard and began taking out the materials for a new batch of groatcakes.  "It looks to me like there might be something starting between those two," she said, as she set a large mixing bowl on the counter.
	"Yeah, I kinda noticed that myself," he agreed.
	"What do you think about that?"  She asked.
	"Oh, I don't know," he answered.  "I guess it doesn't really matter.  John's probably better suited for her than I am, really.  They are pretty much alike, kinda quiet and mellow.  It seems funny though, how I got us all into this thing with Frank and now, maybe she'll end up with the one person that was most against the whole deal."  He laughed and pulled his tobacco out of his pocket to prepare a cigarette.
	Francine came back over to the table, sat down and took a cigarette paper from the packet he had just tossed down between them.  When he had dumped the right amount of tobacco into the paper he held, she reached into the pouch and pinched out a small quantity for herself.  They both rolled a cigarette, hers being a neat cylinder and his, bulged in the middle, tapering toward both ends.  Ellis leaned back, picked the coffeepot up from the stove and filled both their cups.  She reached into her shirt pocket, produced a match and struck it on the leg of the table.  She held it out for him to light his cigarette and then lit her own.
	"Life's a funny thing sometimes," she said as she blew out a cloud of smoke.  "You just never know what's going to happen next.  I suppose that's good.  It would sure be a drag if you always did.  I don't know where your head's at with John and Molly, but I think they could become quite friendly.  John and I talked some last night about our relationship.  It didn't all come out in words, or anything, but it's over.  That's probably good.  We'd end up hating each other if we tried to pretend much longer."  She put her feet up on the chair between her and Ellis and took a long drag on her cigarette.
	Ellis put one foot up on the rung of the same chair and looked at her with a smile.  "Yeah," he said.  "Molly and I should probably do the same thing.  She's real nice and all, but we don't have much in common.  I've always done better with friends than I have with lovers anyway."  He took a drink of his coffee.  "Let's smoke one more joint, before we make those cakes, you're going to teach me how to make," he said.
	"Sounds good," she said going to the cupboard for the sack of pot.  "I need to roll up a few more anyway."  She took one of the small bags from the grocery sack, set it on the table and returned the grocery sack to the cupboard.  "I think I'll just roll up the rest of this baggie's worth," she said, holding it up between them.  She dumped the contents of the baggie out on the news paper and began.  The first joint, she tossed across the table to Ellis and continued rolling.  He lit it and they smoked quietly while she rolled a half dozen joints or more.  They finished smoking about the same time the pile of pot she was rolling from ran out and she pushed the little stack of cylinders across the table to him.
	"Here," she said, "why don't you put these in the tin in the other room and I'll get ready for your cooking lesson?"  She got up, went to the counter and continued her preparations for making groatcakes.
	Ellis took the little handful of joints into the Parlor and put them in the candy tin.  Duncan was glued to the television and Fred sat reading one of John's history textbooks.  He stood there for a moment looking at the television screen.  The fuzzy black and white picture, showed a man and woman sitting in the front seat of a convertible arguing about some other woman that the man had evidently been seeing on the side.  The scene was beginning to become quite a yelling match and Ellis turned away, shaking his head in disgust.  He returned to the kitchen and looked out the window of the side door that went out onto the front porch.  The snow was falling steadily as it had all day and it looked like there was about two inches of fresh accumulation.  As he looked, the snowplow came into sight down the road.  It rolled slowly along, turning a curl of the white powder off the road and into the ditch beside it.  When the plow reached their driveway, it pulled all the way in to turn around in the open space between the house and the old granary that sat out near the road.  The process of turning around scraped most of the snow clear in a large semi-circle, and when the driver backed around to get back out onto the road, he cleared the remaining snow from the driveway, leaving a large area scraped nearly down to the ground.
	"Did you see that," Ellis said.  "That guy just plowed our driveway out.  That was damn nice of him.  I hope he does that all winter."  Ellis went into the Parlor.  "Hey Fred," he said.  "The county snow plow man, just plowed our driveway for us."
	"Oh yeah," he said, looking up from his book.  "That's cool.  He did that last year too.  I don't think he did it every time, but he kept the whole area out there pretty clear as I remember."  He went back to reading the book and said no more.
	Ellis went back into the kitchen.  Francine was ready to begin making the cakes and she pushed a mixing bowl toward him, on the counter, as he came in.
	"Are you ready for your lesson?"  She asked.
	"I guess so,  What's first?"  He asked.
	"Wash your hands," she said, stepping back and gesturing to the sink.
	He washed his hands, dried them and held them out for her inspection.
	"That'll do," she said, handing him a measuring cup.  "Okay, put two cups of the whole wheat flour into the bowl."
	"Which is the whole wheat?"  He asked.
	She pointed at one of the paper sacks, she had lined up on the counter in front of him.  He dipped two cupfuls out of the sack into the bowl and stood there waiting.
	"Now put half a cup of the buckwheat flour in the bowl and the same of the soy flour."
	He did this and then following along, one item at a time, he added the sugar, salt, baking powder, and about a cup of powdered milk.  He looked at her questioningly and she handed him a large wooden spoon.
	"Stir that stuff all together," she said.
	As he mixed, she slid another, smaller bowl over near him and set a container of cooking oil next to it, along with two eggs, she had previously taken from the refrigerator.  "Okay, that's mixed enough," she said.  "Now put those eggs into that other bowl."  Ellis picked up the two eggs, set them, unbroken, into the bowl and looked up at her.
"You have to break them first, you dipshit," she said, shaking her head.
	"You didn't say to break them," he said with a chuckle and then took them out and broke them clumsily into the bowl.
	"Okay, now put about a tablespoon of that oil in there."
	"How much is that?"  He asked.
	"Here, I'll do that for you."  She poured a dollop that approximated a tablespoon of the oil into the bowl.  "About like that," she said.  "Now go over to the stove and get that kettle of water and put two cups of it into the bowl.  Then you need to stir that up real well.  You have to get the oil mixed in evenly."
	While he did this, she went to the stove, felt the heat inside the oven with her hand and then put more coal into the firebox.  She returned to the counter and taking a large cookie sheet from the dish rack, she rubbed a thin coat of butter on it and set it down near where Ellis was working.
	"Okay, now pour the liquid from that bowl into the other bowl and mix them together gently."
	Ellis dumped the liquids into the bowl of dry ingredients in one fell swoop sloshing bits of each out onto the counter.  "Oops," he said.
	"God, you're sure rammy," she said.  "You need to be a little more careful.  Now stir that carefully.  If you get too carried away, they'll turn out like rocks.  That's probably one of the reasons yours are so heavy."
	Ellis stirred the mixture sparingly, until it became a wet, lumpy, thick glob and then stopped, looking at her for further directions.
	"I'll make a cook out of you yet," she said.  "Now put a bunch of  spoonfuls of that out onto the cookie sheet.  Keep them far enough apart that they don't become one big glob when they cook and you're ready to bake them."
	Ellis did as he was told and carried the pan of cakes to the stove.  She opened the oven for him, he slid the cookie sheet in onto the top shelf and she closed the door.  "That oven isn't very hot, so it may take about a half hour or so, but we need to keep our eye on it so we don't burn them."  She went over to him, giving him a little hug with one arm around the shoulders.  "You did good, Ellis.  By the end of winter I'll have made a chef out of you."  Then turning to the counter, she pointed at the array of utensils.  "The final part is, that you have to clean up the mess."
	"I knew there was a catch to this somewhere," he said.
	"Oh, I'll help you with it," she said, smiling.
	Together, they cleaned up the mixing bowls and did the dishes left over from John's potato and onion meal.  Ellis looked outside several times while they cleaned and thought about going for a ski.  The snow was still coming down, not as hard as before, but it still softened the image of the barn, standing alone in the near distance from the house.
	"Have you ever skied?"  He asked her, as she wiped the counter with the dishrag.
	"You mean snow skied?"  She asked and he nodded in the affirmative.  "Oh yeah.  It's been a while, but when I was younger, we used to ski quite a bit.  Mostly cross country.  There aren't too many hills of any size where I grew up, but there was one ski hill not too far from our place and I went there a few times.  I didn't have the right equipment for zooming down big hills so I did most of my skiing, just sliding around in the back country around home.  I had a girl friend that used to go on long slides in the forest with me back there.  We used to call it going for a slide."  She finished wiping the counter and sat down, picking up Ellis' tobacco to roll a cigarette.
	"If you want to go for a slide, maybe Fred would let you use his skis."  He sat down across the table from her.
	"That might be kinda fun," she said, licking the gummed edge of the cigarette paper and rolling the little cylinder deftly between her long, thin fingers.  She pushed the makings across the table toward him.
	"Hey Fred," he called into the other room.  "What are the odds that Francine could use your skis?"
	Fred put down the book and came into the kitchen.  "Oh yeah," he said.  You know how to ski?"
	"I used to ski a fair amount when I was a kid, but it's been a while," she answered.  "I'll probably spend most of the time on my butt for a while, now."
	"I actually have two pair," he said.  "There's another pair up in my room.  They might fit you better too.  They also have some old fashioned bindings that will clamp onto almost any boot or shoe.  They'll need some clean up and wax and all that shit, but I think they'd work fine."
	"That would be cool," Ellis said, as he tried to separate two cigarette papers that had stuck together.
	"I'll go get them," Fred said, walking out through the back porch to the back of the house.
	Ellis looked at Francine's feet.  She was wearing a pair of moccasin toed boots that laced up her ankle about six inches.  They were dry and needed oil, but they looked like they would make satisfactory ski boots if they could be clamped into the bindings of the ski.  He finished rolling his cigarette, lit it and leaned back in his chair.  "I think those boots you're wearing will work fine, if you oil them up, so your feet don't get soaking wet," he said.  "I have some boot grease out in my room.  I'll get it and you can work on your boots while I see if I can get those skis ready to use."
	Ellis got up just as Fred came back into the kitchen carrying the skis.  He stopped to look at them.  They looked better than his own skis and the bindings were nearly the same as he used himself.  He went out to his room and rummaged around until he found the boot oil buried in a box under the workbench.  It was cold and he shivered as he picked up the ski boots his dad had given him along with his skis.  These boots dated back to the nineteen-twenties or thirties.  The bindings on his skis had been set up to fit these boots many years ago and had never been altered since.  He also grabbed a pair of canvas leggings he had bought in an army surplus store some years before.  He returned to the kitchen, set the oil and leggings on the table and threw his shoes on the floor.
	"Well, what do you think of the skis, Francine?"  He asked.
	"They look great," she answered.  "They're a little long, but they're better skis than I ever had back home.  I hope I can remember how to do this.  I'd hate to break my leg or anything."  She smiled and got up from the table, setting her coffee cup in the sink.  What's it going to take, to get these things ready to go?"
	"Let's take a look at how well those boots will fit in here first," Fred said, placing two chairs back to back, about four feet apart and setting one of the skis across the backs of the chairs.
	She had already taken off her boots and she handed one to Fred, who took the boot and placed it into the binding.  The metal toe clamps were spread a bit wider than they needed to be and the boot wiggled sideways in the binding.
	"I think we need to adjust the toe things here, but not too much," he said, "and then shorten the heel cable a little and they'll be fine."
	Fred went to small drawer under the counter and took out a screwdriver.  He loosened the screws holding the toe clamps, adjusted them to the width of her boots and tightened them back up.  Turning the small nut that adjusted the cable, he shortened it to where the boot was held firmly in the binding.  He handed her the boot back, set the ski up against the wall and placed the other ski on the chairs.  He did the same with this ski and the other boot.  When he had finished, he set the boot on the chair and turned the ski over, to examine the bottom.
	"These don't look bad at all," he said.  "I think if you scrape off the old dirty wax and just put on a fresh layer, they'll be great."
	"I can do that," Ellis said, moving to where he could work on the skis.
	Fred had brought a small cloth sack in with him from the back, he opened it up and dumped out several kinds of wax, a large cork and a plastic scraper.  "Here, take this and get off that old wax," he said, handing Ellis the scraper.
	Ellis spent several minutes getting the wax removed from the bottom of the ski, while Francine applied oil to her boots.  When he had the ski scraped off to the black base-coat, Ellis looked up at Fred and asked,  "How's that look?"
	"That's probably good enough," he answered.  "Now, I think I'd use that blue wax.  I think it will work pretty well, as cold as it is out.  When you get that on, in  a thin even coat, you can daub a little of that Clister wax on under the bindings about a foot either side.  You might want to check the wax out on your skis too before you go."
	When Ellis had cleaned and waxed both skis, he went out on the porch and brought his skis in as well.  Fred had gone back into the parlor and resumed reading John's textbook.  Francine had finished oiling her boots and put them back on.
	Would you like me to put some oil on your boots too?"  She asked.
	"That would be great, they could use it, I'm sure," he answered.  He placed his skis up on the backs of the chairs.  The wax on his skis was still in good condition, but the Clister wax was nearly gone.  He took the tube of wax and daubed the sticky substance along the bottom of the ski, under where his foot would be and setting it against the wall, he did the same with the other.
	"Hey Fred, can we use your ski poles?"  Ellis called into the parlor.
	"Sure, but don't break them or I may have to pull your head off," he called back, with a chuckle.
	"I'll be real careful," Francine said, finishing up Ellis' boots.
	Ellis sat down, put his boots on and then laced the leggings around his ankles and lower legs.  They both put on their coats, hats and gloves, took the skis and went out the back door.
	"See you guys," Ellis called as they went out.  "We won't be too long.  It's already starting to get dark out here."
	Ellis leaned his skis up against the side of the house and returned to the porch for the poles, while Francine put on her skis.  He came back out, poked a pair of poles into the snow next to her and put on his own skis.  When he stood back up from clamping the binding, Francine was standing upright sliding her skis back and forth on the snow remembering how it felt to ski.
	"Where should we go?"  She asked, pushing off with her poles and sliding unsteadily out into the driveway.
	Fred came out of the back door just as Ellis was about to slide away.  "Hey Ellis, you might ought to take this with you just in case Frank's here when you get back."  He held up the pistol in one hand.  "It shoves down in your belt pretty well, without being too much in the way."
	Ellis slid backwards to where Fred stood, took the gun and pulling up his coat, stuck the barrel down the front of his pants, letting his coat fall back down, covering it completely.  "Yeah, I suppose we're better safe than sorry," he said.  "Thanks."
Francine was testing her ski-legs in the level driveway, when Ellis caught up with her and together they slid, almost smoothly out onto the road, turned left and headed back the way he and Fred had skied several days before.
	"Why don't we ski up the valley a ways and then we'll have a nice gentle slope for the return trip?"  He said.
	"That sounds good," she said.  "I guess this is a little like what they say about riding a bicycle, You never really forget how to do it."
	They skied along until they came to the bend in the road.  There Ellis pointed himself off to the side, through the open wire gate that held in the landlords cattle, when they were in the lower pasture and then they headed up the gentle valley that carried Rebel Flat Creek.  The ground was lumpy and the tall grass along the edge of the pasture caused Francine to falter several times, tipping one way or the other, but she remained upright by use of her poles.  It had quit snowing and the sky had even begun to clear off in the east, exposing a little sliver of deep blue near the horizon.  They slid along comfortably to where the creek had cut its way the length of the valley.  The snow rounded over the edge of the bank and down to the water that gurgled quietly on its passive journey to the ocean.  A pair of Marsh hawks glided smoothly, about fifteen feet off the ground, hoping to find one more meal before darkness closed in on their hunting grounds.  With the snowfall having stopped and the sky clearing, a cold flow of air began to crowd its way down the valley, making their bare faces burn with the chill.
	Ellis wondered what Molly and John were doing.  He knew something had sparked between them back at the house and felt a kind of loss creep over him like the realization that his jackknife wasn't in his pocket, where he had thought it was.  He laughed to himself, thinking that he had compared her to a jackknife, but there was still a similarity in the feeling, the same question of misplacement.  With Molly, it was the misplacement of his heart.  He had thrown it out there open like a book, pages flipping from one to the next in the breeze of his emotions.  He hadn't waited for his brain to catch up with his own heat, or stood aside for a moment to look, even carelessly, at whether the pieces of that wonderful puzzle of love, fit the shapes of his, or her world.  He knew he couldn't blame her.  She was in the middle of running and like she had said, running away.  For her, it was a flight, a flight from the past.  Her future wasn't yet in view and even her present lagged behind, hidden by that frightful past, which kept dragging along beside her, like an anchor chained to one leg.  Her other leg was only partially free to explore those spaces that lay tucked between her daily activities.  Ellis could see that she was trapped by her own conflicting memories and her brief affair with him was the natural result of the turbulent flow inside her.
	Francine, on the other hand, was somehow grounded beyond the distractions of her topsy-turvy life.  She seemed to flow past the exodus of her husband and the fire that left her with nothing more than what she carried out of the trailer when it burned.  Ellis smiled to think that it could have been the fire itself, which had left her strong.  Maybe, that fire had taken all the physical evidence and all her painful recollections and sent them skyward, along with the sparks, and she had walked away unfettered by the ropes that seemed to tie Molly to her past.  Francine did have her funny ways, but then, who didn't?  She did seem to have relaxed her tendency, to keep everything clean and she was beginning to be at home under the conditions of the farm.
	They had plowed their way several hundred yards up the valley, Francine had passed Ellis and now, he followed in her tracks, as she slid smoothly up the gentle incline.  She had quickly regained her poise for the long narrow sticks she balanced on and she looked graceful, as he followed close behind her.  Her skis, sliding parallel to each other, breaking a fresh line in the snow and her rhythmic form gliding on top of it, held Ellis' attention like a carnival ride.  Watching her flow, almost like a wave, before him, put him in a suspension of the past weeks events.  He recalled each in turn, trying to put them in proper context, but they seemed to wiggle free from his grip and jump out of order, until they became a scramble.  He tried again, lining them up in sequence and then before he could get a grasp of what they meant, they would interfuse into some complex alloy of time and solidify into that one warm image of her gliding gracefully in front of him.  It seemed like Francine was leading him somewhere, not just up the valley, but somewhere into the distance, where he had never been before.
	The cloud cover had moved off to the north and a thin line of clear sky lay exposed on the south and west horizons.  The setting sun dropped into the opening and its brilliant rays cut through the vast expanse, illuminating them like a stage light, warming everything around them with a touch of gold.  Francine moved like a dancer on the edge of time, gilded by the last rays of a single day and as the sun slid below the horizon and the colors muted, Ellis caught a brief glimpse of the bond he was beginning to form with her.  This bond, born primarily out of his relationship with Molly and her pending problems with Frank, seemed not to be built from that natural heat of biology, or the backlash of past dilemmas, but rather from similarities in their purposes.  They both seemed to have a chip on their shoulder for the established order and the injustices that kept it afloat.  He thought of something a friend had told him sometime before.  'There are two kinds of people,' his friend had said, 'and when they come to a thick forest of trees in their path, one will weave in and out of them to get to the other side.  The other will cut a trail through them.  You are a tree cutter.'  Francine, he thought, would also cut a trail, and together, he and Francine had set out to cut a path through that forest of Franks and the injustices they represented.
	They had nearly reached the end of the valley and she stopped just below the apple tree that he and Fred had rested by several days before.  She turned to him as he slid up beside her.  "That was fun," she said.  "Oh look!"  She pointed in the direction they had come.  The edges of the clouds along the horizon were lit up like fire, red and orange and golden.  These brilliant hues faded back toward them through a full spectrum of color to a deep purple that hung over their heads like the coronation robes of some storybook king and queen.
	Francine stuck her poles in the snow beside her, leaned backwards, and landing on her back in the deep snow that had drifted in at the crest of the hill, she buried the tail end of her skis in the drift, leaving the front half sticking straight up in the air.  She swung her arms back and forth, creating a snow-angel and then lay there, looking up at the endless depth of color above her.
	"Make an angel, Ellis.  It's good luck," she said, swishing her arms again in the snow.
	He fell back into the snow bank and waived his arms, forming the wings of the angel and then lay still with his arms stretched out wide.  They both lay quietly for a few minutes, looking off into the purple sky until it faded back into gray.
	"It's so beautiful here," she said, bringing her arms up again along the wing forms she had made in the snow.  As she did so, their hands touched at the apex of the wings and she took a hold of his hand.  "You know," she said, "I almost wish that goddamn Frank would hurry up and come, so we can get this thing over with."
	Ellis' whole arm tingled slightly as she grasped his hand and he didn't hear what she had said.  He rolled toward her as best he could with his skis sticking straight up out of the snow.  "What?"  He asked.
	"I just said, I was tired of waiting for Frank to find us.  I'd like to get it over with, so John and Molly can do whatever it is they're going to do."
	"What do you think they're going to do?"  He asked.
	"I don't know?  They probably don't know themselves yet, but I'll bet they're on their way home right now, trying to figure out how to break it to us."
	"You mean how to dump us nicely," Ellis said smiling.
	"Yeah, it would have to be nicely."  She laughed.  "Neither of them would want to hurt anyone.  Jesus, look at what Molly put up with from Frank, before she finally left.  And John can be too mellow for his own good most of the time.  Yeah, I can just see them, about half way home, driving slow so it'll take longer, just trying to figure out how to dump us gently.  Too bad they don't know they could just do it and it'd be okay.  Shit, I guess I should speak for myself.  You may not be that easy to dump."
	Ellis laughed.  "Oh, I get dumped all the time.  I just snivel for a little while and then I'm okay again.  I don't even hold a grudge or anything."
	"Really," she said.  "I do.  Oh, I wouldn't hold a grudge against John, but that ex-husband of mine, I'd like to kick his ass for the way he ran off with that little bitch from Nebraska and left me without a dime.  What the hell, that's just water under the bridge.  It's probably a good thing it happened now instead of sometime down the road, when we had a bunch of kids or something.  If it wasn't her, it would have been some other little cutie."
	"Some things are like that, it's better to get them out of the way."  Ellis sat up.  Jesus, I'm starting to get cold," he said.  I've got to get moving or freeze to death."
	"Me too.  Let's climb to the top of the hill.  That'll warm us up and then we can get a good run back down.  I want'a see how fast I can get going."  She lifted her skis out of the snow, rolled to her side and stood up.
	Ellis struggled getting his skis unstuck, but finally managed to get himself upright and they plodded, herringbone style, to the top of the hill.  When they reached the top, Francine stopped and turned to him.  "You want to take the high road down the ridge," she said, pointing along the long sloping ridge, "or do you want to go right down the middle of the valley by the creek?"
	"If you want to go fast, it's steeper right here," Ellis answered, "but don't ski into the creek.  Stay to the left of that little dark line that runs down through there."  He pointed down into the valley where a slight line could barely be seen as it meandered back and forth along the bottom of the small watershed.
	"Okay, let's go."  She pushed off; picking up speed rapidly and soon became a faint blur to Ellis as the distance widened between them in the fading light.
	He stood on top of the hill watching her, as she became an ever-shrinking dark form.  When the ground leveled out, several hundred yards below him, he could see her slow and finally come to a stop near the creek.  He planted his ski poles and pushed off the crest of the hill, following in her tracks.  Soon the cold air was rushing past him, bringing tears to his eyes and diminishing what little vision he had.  When he reached where she stood waiting for him, he turned out of her tracks and slid past her most of fifty feet, before coming to a stop.
	"Wow!  That was a rush," she said sliding up beside him,  "We'll have to do this again in the daylight, when we can see where we're going."
	"Have you noticed the hill right across the road from the house?"  He asked.  "It's a lot steeper than this.  We could make a small jump about half way down and see if we can break a leg or something."
	"That sounds fun," she said with a chuckle.  "I have noticed it, but never really thought about how steep it is."
	"Yeah it's steep as hell and the snow drifts over the top edge of it, making it drop almost straight off.  It's kind of a hard climb to get up there, but it would be one hell of a ride once you got there."
	"We'll have to try that tomorrow.  Let's go back and make something to eat.  I'm getting hungry.  Maybe John and Molly are back with the groceries."  She slid forward along the edge of the creek, pushing herself occasionally with her poles to keep up momentum.
	Ellis followed beside her.  The slope was slight, but enough to keep them moving along with little effort and they had soon traversed the mile or so back to the gate where they had entered the pasture.  As they neared the farm, they could see John's car in the driveway, indicating he and Molly had returned from town.  They took their skis off in the side yard and leaned them up against the side of the house.
	"I think I should just tell Molly that she can get it on with John if she wants, before it gets to be a hassle for everyone."  Ellis said, poking his ski poles in the snow next to his skis.
	"Yeah, that would probably be the best," she agreed.  "How are you going to say it?  You should pick the right time, I suppose."
	"I'll have to figure it out.  I don't want it to come out sounding all wrong."  He hesitated for a moment before pushing the outside door open.  "I suppose, the sooner the better though."
	They entered the porch, stumbled over something in the dark and then went into the kitchen.  Molly was unloading two sacks of food onto the kitchen table, and John had gone into the parlor joining Duncan and Fred in front of the television.  Molly looked up, smiled weakly at Francine, glanced at Ellis briefly and then went back to unpacking the groceries.  The look he received from Molly told him all he needed to know and he decided to get the inevitable over with immediately.  He looked at Francine as she turned from hanging up her coat and nodded his head toward the parlor.  She needed no more of a hint and joined the others before the television.
	Molly had turned to the cupboard with a box of crackers, slid them onto a spot on the shelf and turned back to Ellis with a sad questioning look on her face as he approached her.  She started to say something, but stopped before she uttered a word.
	Ellis smiled.  "I know," he said.  "It's okay.  I think you and John are perfect.  And I'm happy for you both.  Really I mean it."
	She relaxed a little, but still had an inquiring look on her face.  She had been worrying about how to talk to him and now it was done.  She wondered how he had figured it out.  She didn't even know it was happening herself until their trip to town.  She leaned against the counter as her knees weakened a little, but she felt a sense of relief.
	"How..." she began.
	"I could just tell the way you two looked at each other," he said softly and then taking her hand, he looked into her face and smiled again.  "We can still be good friends, can't we?"
	She smiled finally and squeezed his hand.  "Oh yes," she said.  "God, I feel so much better."  She took a step forward, put her arms around him and gave him a long tight hug.  "Are you sure this is really okay with you?"  She asked.
	"Sure.  It's not like it's wonderful or anything, but it's okay," he answered, as she pulled away, taking both his hands in hers and smiling.  "It's funny how things turn out.  I think you and John are perfect for each other.  Better than we would have ended up down the road.  We've had some fun and I know my feelings for you are real enough, but I think we probably would have hurt each other eventually.  It's better like this."  He turned to the table full of groceries.  "Here, I'll help you put this stuff away."
	"Okay," she said, returning to the sacks on the table.  "What about Francine?"  She whispered, pausing in her unpacking and putting her hand on his arm.
	"Oh, she's just fine with it too.  We talked about it some while we were out skiing.  I don't see any reason you can't move into John's room right now, if you want."  He took the butter and a quart of milk from one of the sacks and placed them in the refrigerator.
	When they had finished putting away the groceries, Ellis went into the parlor and Molly went into the bathroom to draw water for a bath.  Francine looked quizzically at him from across the room.  He nodded his head slightly, winked and smiled, letting her know everything was worked out with he and Molly, then turned to the stove.  She nodded in return, glanced at John, who wasn't paying attention to either of them and then looked back at Ellis, who's back was now turned.
	"Oh shit!"  She said.  "Did Molly tell you they saw Frank in town?"
	"Fuck!"  Ellis said, quickly turning back around.  "What happened?"
	"Yeah, we saw him," John said.  "We were just driving away from getting her stuff from Dave and Carol's and he drove by, coming toward us.  He didn't see us, thank God.  He even parked right where we had been just seconds before."
	"You sure he didn't see you?"  Ellis asked.
	"Well, he probably saw me," John answered, "but he couldn't have seen Molly, or he would have come after us, I'm sure."
	"Molly recognized him, huh?"  Ellis asked.
	"Yeah, she said it was definitely Frank, alright.  It was starting to get dark, but if he'd been paying attention, he would have seen her for sure.  We just split and came straight home."
	"How long ago was that?"  Fred asked.
	John thought for a moment.  "Oh, I don't know," he said  "We've been here about ten fifteen minutes and we drove straight out here on the main highway.  We cut over on the Prune Orchard road, you know like we usually do."
	"Well it's been about an hour then," Ellis said walking back into the kitchen to hang up his coat.  He could hear the water running in the bathtub.  A thin line of light shown under the door and next to it, the rifle and shotgun stood in the corner behind the cook stove.  The sight of the two guns standing there, reminded him, he still had Fred's pistol stuffed down the front of his pants.  He went to the coat hooks by the back door and hung up his coat.  Pulling the thirty-eight from his pants, he set it on the counter and went back into the parlor.  Punt got up from in front of the stove, stretched himself out full length, yawned with a growly sounding sigh and went to the door.  Ellis opened the door out onto the front porch.  Punt slowly went to the door and looked out into the cold night.
	"Well go on out, if you're going," Ellis said, the dog went out and he shut the door again.
	Duncan got up from the chair he sat in, stepped over Fred's legs that stretched out onto the coffee table from the couch and picked up the candy tin.  He took a joint out, set it back on the table and returned to his chair.
	"Well shit," he said, "if we're about to have a good show out here, I might as well get stoned for it."
	"There's not going to be any show tonight," Francine said, stretching her legs out as far as she could to put her feet up on the table from the chair on the opposite side of the room.  "I think we can all relax for now, anyway."
	"That's easy for you to say," John said, shifting around nervously on the couch next to Fred.
	Duncan handed the joint to Fred, who took a hit and passed it on to John.  "Here, this'll relax you."
	John took the joint, but just held it.  "You think you guys can really keep Frank from hauling Molly back to California?"
	"This whole thing looks a little different, when you have a vested interest in things, doesn't it?"  Francine piped up.
	John snapped a look at her.  He wasn't sure what she meant, but it hit too close to home.
	Francine laughed, took her feet off the table and leaned forward taking the joint out of his hand.  "Here, give me that, if you're not going to smoke it," she said and laughed again.
	"I think," Ellis began, "what Francine's trying to say, is that we've all worked things out.  Everybody's cool with you and Molly."
	John looked stunned.  He was sure that his new relationship with Molly was just going to add to the already complicated situation they were in.  He couldn't figure, how things could have worked themselves out this easily.
	"What do you mean?"  He said, finally.
	Ellis laughed and sat down on the floor next to the stove, leaning up against the wall.  "Well," he said.  "Francine and I could tell, by the way you two were acting this morning that you were bound to get together.  We talked about it and decided it was for the best, at least for you two and we're cool with it.  That's all.  I just talked to Molly a minute ago, before she went in to take a bath and she's cool too.  So there it is.  It's a done deal."
	John still sat frozen in place.  Things were happening too fast for him.  He had heard what was said and he did understand, but it was just too simple.  The joint made it all the way around the room and Fred was handing it to him again.
	"Here, smoke this," Fred said, holding the joint out in front of his blank stare.
	He took the joint taking a hit, held it for a moment and then reached out toward Francine with it.
	"You finish that," she said, waiving him away and then picking the candy tin up from the table, she took another joint from it.  The five of them sat quietly smoking in front of the television until Molly came out from the bathroom.
	Molly walked through the kitchen and stood in the doorway to the parlor.  She had her hair wrapped up in a towel and stood looking around the room.  Everyone was looking at her.  John still took on the appearance of perplexed shock, and couldn't say a word.  Francine smiled and jumped up from her chair.  "Hey," she said, "why don't we make something to eat?"
	Ellis started to get up, but she waived him away and went into the kitchen.  Molly stood looking into the parlor for some sign from John for a moment and when she was un-rewarded, she turned back to the kitchen.  Francine had gone to the refrigerator and stood looking into it, trying to decide what to cook.  Francine turned to her and smiled.  "Do you have any good ideas for what to fix?"  She asked.
	"Did Ellis and you ..." she began.
	"Everything's been settled," Francine interrupted.  "Ellis and I talked about it this afternoon.  John and I were finished anyway and you and Ellis never should have started, not that it was all bad or anything.  I mean hell, you never would have met John probably, if it wasn't for him, but you and Ellis never should have tried to fall in love or anything.  You two are just too different.  He's like a little bantam rooster or something, always looking for a windmill to tilt or something like this thing with Frank.  He thrives on that kind of shit.  John's stable, mellow, gentle, you know, that's why you feel how you do about him.  This is going to work out for the best, for all of us.  Besides," she lowered her voice,  "he doesn't know it yet, but I think Ellis and I might have some fun of our own, before too long."
	"What about John?  Does he have ..."
	"Men are so dense most of the time," Francine continued.  "Look at him in there.  He's just now starting to catch on.  Poor boy, he still doesn't realize that he's getting just what he wants.  We had a long talk last night about goals and needs and all that kinda bullshit and he's still worried about who dumped who.  They call us the weaker sex, and most of the time we aren't quite as strong, but shit, the main reason men even have legs, is just to keep their brains from dragging on the ground.  Most of the time we have to think for them and then convince them they actually did come up with the ideas.  God forbid that we women ever think of anything original.  It might kill them."
	"What about Ellis?"  Molly asked.  "Do you think he's really okay with this.  I know what he says, but I'm not so sure he's as cool with it as he says."
	"Oh, I think he'll be fine," Francine answered.  "He knows you two couldn't last past the flash point.  I'm sure he doesn't realize it, but he needs someone that can keep him walking the line, so to speak.  He's kinda flighty, jumping from one branch to the next.  That's what makes him fun, I suppose, but he needs some girl that'll hold him on coarse.  I think he has a lot of potential, if he could just keep it directed, but he's going to need some help.  I think it would be a real challenge to mold him into something useful.  It's not that he's weak or anything.  It's just the way men are.  They just need a lot of outside direction.  There's damn few of them that don't.  I can sure tell you that John's going to need plenty himself, but it's a different kind of direction.  The kind, I think you can give him."
	"I don't know Francine," Molly said.  "You make it sound all so simple.  I'm not so sure it's that easy."
	"Oh, it's not easy at all," she said, "but it is simple.  Look at what you're dealing with, the brain of a man."  She laughed and pulled a package of bacon out of the refrigerator, holding it out to Molly.  "Did you have anything special planned for this?"  She asked.
	"No.  I just figured that no one out here had had any bacon for a while and thought it would be a real treat."
	"Well then, let's make breakfast.  There's still a bunch of eggs and we can fry up some potatoes to go with them."  She handed Molly the bacon and took a carton of eggs from the refrigerator, shutting the door.
	Molly opened the package of bacon, put it in a cast iron pan and put it on the stove near the back, where it would cook slowly.  Francine sliced up half a dozen large potatoes and started them cooking as well.  She also cut about a dozen more in half and set them on the stove in a pan of water to boil.
	"Don't let me forget to take these off before they cook too much and we can fry them tomorrow or the next day," she said.  "I think spuds are a lot better fried after they've been cooked some already.  They're not so sticky like fresh fried."
	"Yeah, I agree.  Oh, here.  I got some garlic at the store.  You can show Duncan how much better the potatoes are with a little more flavor."  Molly handed Francine a fresh clove from a small sack she had stashed in the cupboard.
	"Oh boy," Francine said taking the garlic.  "I better start him off kinda easy, don't you think?  Maybe we can ease him into this without him even noticing."
	The two of them prepared the food, got it to cooking on the stove and sat down at the kitchen table.  Francine had no sooner sat down, than she decided she wanted a cigarette and got back up, going into the parlor.  "Hey Ellis, can I bum some of your tobacco?"  She asked, and he handed it to her.  She returned to the kitchen and sat down again, putting her feet up on the chair between her and Molly.
	She rolled a cigarette and held it out to Molly.  "You want one of these?"  She asked.  Molly nodded without saying anything, took the cigarette and Francine rolled another for herself.  They sat for some time, listening to the bacon sizzle and discussing where Francine would sleep, now that she had turned her place in John's bed over to Molly.
	In the parlor, the four boys sat half watching Duncan's choice of sitcoms and talking about when Frank would find them.  John was beginning to become comfortable with the change from Francine to Molly, even though he was still not sure that he liked the idea that it was orchestrated without his knowledge.  Duncan was sure that Frank would kill them all, but John had changed his tune some, now that he, like Francine said, had a vested interest in the situation.  
	Suddenly there was a burst of barking from the front porch.  The other two dogs that had been asleep on the parlor floor jumped up, growled and went to the door.  Fred got up, went to the door, looked out to see car lights coming up the road and turned back to Ellis and the others.
	"Jesus Christ!"  He said.  "There's a car coming.  Who the hell could that be?"
	"Shit, I don't know," Ellis answered.  "Let the other dogs out.  That'll slow'em down.  Do you think this is it?"
	"Man, I don't know."  Fred opened the door, letting Birthday and Sundance out onto the porch, where they went to barking and growling.
Francine and Molly had gotten up at Punt's first bark and gone to the kitchen window.  Ellis jumped up from where he had been on the floor and went into the kitchen.  Francine went to where the guns leaned up behind the stove and picked them both up, handing the rifle to Ellis as he came in.
	"Here," she said, "Why don't you go out on the back porch.  It's dark enough out there, no one will see you and I'll go out the front.  Molly, you go into the parlor."
	Fred stepped into the kitchen, picked up his thirty-eight off the counter and stood there, undecided on what to do.  The car lights had nearly reached the driveway when Ellis and Francine went out the front and back doors, leaving Fred standing in the kitchen.  Molly went into the parlor and huddled on the couch next to John, who put his arm around her, hugging her closely to him.  Duncan peered out the window of the front door; sure this was the end.  As the headlights swung into the driveway, lighting up Francine, standing, shotgun in hand, next to the couch on the porch, Ellis could see that the approaching vehicle was only Gale, coming to give them an update on Frank's activities.
	Ellis stepped out of the back porch and called to Francine.  "Hey!  It's only Gale and Liz.  We can all relax."
The dogs continued to bark and run around in circles as the old pickup truck came to a stop in the driveway and Gale emerged from one side and Liz from the other.  Ellis walked out to greet them still carrying the thirty-thirty.  Francine relaxed, but remained standing on the front porch shotgun in hand.
	"Hi!"  Gale said as he stepped around the front of the truck and saw Ellis approaching.  "You guys are a little jumpy out here, aren't you?  You probably should be though, I saw that Frank guy in town not too long ago."
	"No shit," Ellis said.  So did Molly and John.  Where did you see him?"
	"He was down at the bar, asking around about you," Gale answered.
	Ellis shivered from the cold.  "Let's go in the house, it's freezing out here."
	"It's colder than that," Gale said.  "Hey Liz, grab that bottle of wine off the floor."
	She reached into the cab of the pickup, picked up the wine and followed Gale and Ellis into the house.  Francine had already returned to the kitchen and set the shotgun behind the stove.  John, Duncan and Molly were standing in the kitchen as Ellis came back in with Gale and Liz behind him.  The kitchen was crowded with all eight of them standing around and Francine, remembering their dinner, worked her way to the stove, pushing everything off to the edges where it was cooler.
	"Would someone hand me a fork, so I can check these potatoes," she asked.
	Ellis picked up a fork from the dish rack, handed it to her and then set his rifle behind the stove with the shotgun.  Francine poked the fork into a couple of the potatoes she had set to boil and determining they were cooked enough, she took the pot from the stove, making her way across the crowded kitchen to the sink.  She drained the water from the pan and set it on the counter.
	"Hey Gale, tell us about seeing Frank," Ellis asked, over the din of small talk that had begun the moment they had entered.
	"Sure," he said.  "Who wants some of this wine, first."  Duncan set several glasses from the cupboard on the counter and Gale began pouring them about half full from the gallon of Pissano he held.  "Well, Liz and I went into the bar and had a beer after work.  We'd been there about a half hour and this guy, we'd never seen before, comes in, orders a beer and sits up at the bar, watching everyone for a while.  Then he gets up and starts going from table to table, asking questions.  We couldn't here what he was asking for a while, but then he asked at the table next to us.  That Paul guy and his roommate Steve were sitting there next to us.  I can't remember their last names, but you know who I'm talking about.  Paul's that great big heavy guy with the long black hair, kinda looks like an Indian.  The other guy's smaller, but still pretty big.  You see them in there playing pool sometimes."
	"Yeah, I know who you're talking about," Duncan said, looking at Ellis.  "You remember, we took ten or fifteen bucks from them at pool not too long ago.  They were pissed about it."
	"Anyway," Gale continued, "he asked them about you and they knew you.  At least they knew who you were.  He pumped them on what you looked like, where you hung out and shit like that.  They didn't know where you lived or anything, but they pointed to Bill Sterninski, who was playing pool with some fraternity guy and he went over to talk to him."
	"Sterninski knows we live out here, but he's never been here," Duncan interjected.  "Without having been here, I don't think he could ever direct someone else out here, but you can bet he told Frank that we're out toward Colfax."
	"No shit," Gale said, "and it's just a matter of time, before he finds someone that can tell him how to find this place."
	Molly had sat down at the table along with John.  Duncan went into the parlor and returned with the candy tin.  He sat down next to John, took two joints from the tin, and lit them both, handing one to John and then he passed the other to Gale after taking a long hit.  The joints went around the room from person to person, calming the tensions that had been mounting since Gale and Liz's arrival and Gale re-filled the glasses that had been emptied.  Francine had gone back to the stove to tend the dinner still cooking there.  She placed the bacon in the warming oven and pushed the potatoes as far off to the edge as she could.
	We're about to eat something," she said turning to Liz.  "Do you want to stay and eat with us?"
	"I don't think so," she answered.  "We have some venison ready to cook at home, but thanks."
	"Yeah, we got some real food at home," Gale said, with a chuckle.  "I killed a big doe this morning and we're going to have fresh deer liver for dinner."
	Francine snapped a look at Gale.  "Oh, that's right you're the killer in the neighborhood," she said.
	"You bet," he said with a broad smile that showed his pride.  "That's why those deer are there, for me to kill.  Besides, what else are they good for?"
	Francine turned back to the stove, stirring the potatoes just for something to do in place of starting an argument that she knew would only cause a problem for now.  She wished that the situation was different and she could really wrestle with him over the subject, especially his statement that they were put here for him to kill.  Instead, she turned back around and asked how attached he was to the shotgun they had borrowed.  He implied that it was special to him and it wasn't for sale at any kind of reasonable price and then warned her that she better take good care of it.  She agreed that she would and indicated that if he ever felt like letting go of it, she was interested.
	"Well, we better be getting home," Gale said.  "It's getting cold and I have to make sure that deer doesn't freeze where I've got it hanging.  Does anyone want some more of this, before we split," he said, picking up the gallon jug of wine and holding it out to the group.  Fred and Duncan accepted, a few good-byes were said and Gale and Liz left for home.
	Ellis and Fred went into the parlor and sat down with what was left of their glasses of Pissano.  Duncan followed, going to the television, where he switched through the sparse selection of channels several times, before settling on a commercial for Ford cars and trucks.  Francine returned to the stove, pulled the potatoes back over the heat and set the bacon down onto the cooking surface from the warming oven.  She then went to the cupboard and took out a one-quart measuring container, set it on the counter and then dug deeper into the same area for another frying pan.  She came out empty-handed with a puzzled look on her face.
	"Damn," she said, standing up and turning to Molly and John, still sitting at the kitchen table.  "I could have sworn, I saw another frying pan in there somewhere."
	John turned to her and pointed to a cupboard door on the other side of the sink.  "I think there's one in the back of that one over there," he said.
	"Hey Molly, you want to break a bunch of eggs into that measuring cup, I just set out?"  She said opening the cupboard door John had directed her to and poking around in its depths.
	"Sure."  Molly hopped up and went to the counter, where Francine had set the eggs.  "How many should I put in there?"  She asked.
	"Oh, maybe all but two," Francine answered.  "I want to make some muffins tomorrow and I'll need a couple for that.  You'll have to scramble them with a fork.  We don't have an egg-beater."  She found the pan, set it on the stove and returned to the counter for a bit of butter.  As she returned to the pan with the butter, she patted John on the shoulder and paused momentarily.
	"Hey," she said, moving on to the stove.  "After dinner, I'll get most of my stuff out of the room upstairs and Molly can move in."
	"John looked at her with her back to him.  He then turned to Molly, who also had her back to him.  "You two really did just trade us off like a couple of books you're finished with, didn't you?"  He said, sounding somewhat dejected.
	"Sure, why not?"  Francine answered, with a laugh.  "When you're done with one book, it's time to start another, don't you think?"  She turned from the stove and walked past him back to the counter, where Molly was scrambling the eggs.  "You were a good read, John, but it's time for someone else to climb into your covers."
	Molly laughed.  "You sure have a way of putting things.  You and Ellis will do just fine."
	"Shhh," she said, holding her finger to her mouth.  "He doesn't know what I'm up to yet, and we wouldn't want him to get nervous.  Have you got those eggs about ready?"
	"Yeah, they're ready, here."  She pushed the measuring cup toward her and smiled, shaking her head.
	Francine took the eggs to the stove, poured them into the pan and gave them a stir.  While the eggs cooked, she put the potatoes she had boiled into the refrigerator and then did a bit of tidying up of the counter.  Molly set out enough assorted plates and silverware for the six of them, glanced at Francine for a sign that everything was ready and receiving a nod she stepped to the parlor door, announcing, "soup's on."
	They all gathered in the kitchen, grabbed plates from the counter and lined up cafeteria style at the stove.  Francine portioned out the eggs and potatoes to each of them and laid two crisp pieces of bacon on each of their plates.  Duncan and Fred returned to the television and the others sat down at the kitchen table.  They ate quietly and when they were all finished, Ellis asked where Francine had put his tobacco.  She pointed to the counter next to where Fred had set the pistol and he got it and returned to the table.
	"Well," Francine said, pushing her plate toward the center of the table, "unless anyone has an objection, I think I'll carve a place in that room over there, for me to sleep."  She pointed to the room off the kitchen where the record player was.
	John glanced through the open door into the cluttered room and smiled.  "Sounds okay to me, but it's going to take some carving.  That place is a mess.  I suppose you could haul a hell of a lot of it out to the granary where we dump other good shit we don't want.  What'll you use for a bed?"
	"Oh, I don't know.  I might just do like Ellis and sleep in a pile of straw."
	"It makes a pretty good bed," Ellis assured her, "if you don't mind little bits of it getting up your nose during the night.  I can help you make one if you like."
	"Sure," she agreed.  "I'll just sleep on the couch tonight, but tomorrow we could build something.  Right now, I'm just going to poke around in there, see what can go, and figure out how to arrange things.  It would do the records good to all go back in their covers."  She got up, looked into the firebox of the stove and put a half can of coal into the fire.
	"I'll take care of the dishes and clean up in here," Molly said, rising and gathering the dishes from the table.
	"I'll help you," John said and got up, going to the sink, where he began to draw water for washing.
	Ellis clumsily put the final twist on his cigarette and lit it, pushing himself away from the table.  He strolled into the parlor, sat on the arm of the chair by the door and looked blankly at the snowy picture on the tube.  "What's on?"  He asked.
	"Gunsmoke," Fred said, with out looking away from the scene of the interior of the Longbranch Saloon, with Doc and Kitty conversing over something at the bar.
	"That's what we need, right now," Ellis murmured, slumping down into the chair.  "Marshal Dillon would sure take care of Frank for us, if he was here."
	"I thought you guys had it all figured out," Duncan said scornfully.  "Like maybe, shoot him on sight or something."  He laughed nervously.  "What are you going to do with the body?"
	"We could feed him to Effie," Fred chuckled.  "That would sure make her happy most all winter."
	"Yeah, or maybe we could just drag him up on top of the hill and let the coyotes eat him and then the ravens could clean up the mess."  Ellis tossed out.
	"Speaking of mess, you're probably going to have one hell of a mess right here to clean up after you're done," Duncan complained.
	"Yeah!"  Fred began.  "It's a good thing we got that new mop.  Francine can really show her stuff.  What if we have ..."
	"I don't want to here anymore about it," Duncan interrupted.  "I'm just sick of the whole thing."  He lowered his voice.  "Now, you and John have traded girls like you were wandering around a swap meet and even John's about to start packing a gun, I'll bet."
	"Actually, the girls did the trading, if that's what happened," Ellis responded, a little defensively.  "I know I didn't have any say in the deal.  And, I don't think you're going to see John toting any guns around, either.  For that matter, nothing's really changed at all.  We have a friend that's in trouble and needs our help.  We're going to give it to her, and that's all there is to it."  Ellis leaned back in the chair, took a drag on his cigarette and put his feet up on the coffee table.
	Duncan resumed his concentration on the television and said no more on the subject.  A smile formed on Fred's face, but he kept silent and the three of them sat quietly brooding over the situation.  The sound of the television and the clinking of dishes in the kitchen were all that could be heard for some time.  Presently, the sound of Brahms seeped out of the room Francine was in.  She had found another classical record amongst the scattered pile of vinyl disks, and had put it on the player.  The subtle tittering of the piano mixed gently with the sound of horsehair drawn across the strings of a cello, to pull them away from their dark thoughts of Frank and along some distant melancholy trail.  Ellis closed his eyes and shut the television out as best he could, meandering with the notes to the edges of his consciousness.  Fred drifted between the two electronic devices, suspended by the mixture of soothing vibrations and Gunsmoke, while Duncan's firm hold on his beloved picture tube only loosened slightly.
	Gunsmoke ended on the side of right, and a series of commercials began to billow from the tube.  Ellis got up from the chair, walked to the doorway of the room where Francine was and watched her for a moment, as she stood returning the loose records to their cardboard covers.  She had her back to him and he couldn't help but notice what an attractive girl she was.  Her long dark hair hung in natural curls, halfway to her hips.  She had a thin supple figure with broad shoulders for a woman and large strong hands.  Even dressed in baggy blue-jeans and a men's flannel shirt, she gave Ellis' libido a warm sensation.  He was only partially aware that this same sensation, emanating from the same place, had on many previous occasions, aimed him off in the wrong direction.  There was something about that feeling bursting up out of the middle of him that gave him tunnel-vision.  It was like a bullet's view down the barrel of a gun.  He just fired himself at a single point and only after he was well on his way and it was too late to alter his destination, did he see anything but the target.  This had certainly been the case with Molly.  He had looked down that long barrel, seen nothing but her bull's eye and headed after it.  He knew what he was doing and that it didn't work, but he didn't know how to change it.
	Francine placed the last stray record into its cover, set it on the stack she had made next to her and stood looking at the ominous pile of junk.  Ellis stepped into the room.
	"The easy part's done," he said.  "Now what's next?"
	"Oh, don't scare me like that," she said, turning abruptly around.
	"Sorry.  Are you a little jumpy?"
	"Yeah, I suppose.  What with Frank probably showing up at any time."  She turned back to the room.  "You're right about the easy part.  Look at this mountain of shit.  What is all this stuff?  Whose is it?  Where the hell did it all come from?"  She let out a long sigh, put her hands on her hips and stood gazing at the piles.
	You ought to see the granary, if you think this is bad," Ellis said.  "It's so full, you can hardly get in there.  It seems like everyone that has ever lived out here left half their shit when they split and the new people just hauled what they didn't want out there and dumped it.  It's actually kinda neat.  There's a lot of cool stuff out there.  It's like a big jumbled rummage sale where everything's free.  We can haul most of this shit out there in the morning."
	"I just want to get to the bottom of all this shit and see if there's really a floor in here," she said laughing.  It looks like most of these boxes of books are old textbooks and magazines.  And look at this one."  She flipped open the top of a cardboard box near them.  "It's full of old Readers Digests.  And here's a box of rags.  Here's a box of little wood scraps."  She picked up the box of wood, handing it to Ellis.  "Here, set this one out by the stove and we can burn it."
	Ellis took the box into the kitchen, setting it on the table and opened the top.  Looking in, he found it to contain small pieces of exotic hardwood, several burls and many small pieces of antler and bone.  "Wow!"  He exclaimed.  "This box is a keeper.  It's full of really cool little pieces of shit to carve."
	"Okay, but it can't live in here," Francine announced.
	Ellis returned to Francine's new room and leaned against the doorjamb.  "Why don't we start making a pile of boxes in this corner and work our way to the back.  At least we'll have most of it ready to haul out tomorrow.  I wouldn't be surprised if half of it should be just taken to the dump.  I'll get those boxes we've been hauling coal in and we can put all that loose clothing in them."  He went out on the back porch and returned with three large boxes.  	"Here," he said, "hand me that pile of stuff over there and I'll put it in one of these boxes."
	She handed him an armload of clothes.  "I may want to look through that later.  There might be something in there I can wear."
	He wadded the clothes in the box, slid it into the corner and together they continued sorting through the array of junk.  They uncovered several pieces of furniture as they went.  One of which was a rather nice oak side-table with drop leaves.  There was also an overstuffed wingback chair with a moth-eaten sickly-green cover.  Francine flopped down into it and announced that it was still comfortable.  There were also two straight-backed kitchen chairs that would add to the seating in the kitchen.  Two small bookcases lay hidden under some boxes of old magazines and a pile of well-worn bedding.  There was even a box of dishes and several boxes of kitchen utensils that she set aside to be looked through later.  By the time they worked in the room for a little over an hour, Francine was exhausted and she sat down in the overstuffed chair putting her feet up on one of the boxes.
	"God!"  She said with a sigh.  "I need a cigarette."
	Ellis handed her his makings and sat down on a box of books.  She quickly rolled a cigarette and held it out to him.
	Here, you want one?"  She said.
	"Yeah, sure," he answered, taking the cigarette and inspecting it.  "Damn, you sure roll a fine smoke."
	She rolled another for herself and Ellis lit a match, holding it out to her.  She took a long drag and leaned back into the soft chair, blowing out a cloud of smoke.  "Thanks Ellis," she said.  "You were a lot of help.  We at least got to the bottom of most of it.  I've had it for one day."
	Molly came into the room and stood there for a moment surveying the piles they had stacked up along one wall.  "Wow!  You guys really made some progress in here," she said.
	"Oh shit!  I was going to get my stuff out of the room upstairs, wasn't I?"  Francine started to get up out of the chair, but fell back sinking deeper into the cushions.
	"Oh, don't bother with that now," Molly said shaking her head.  I'm just going to go to bed and I wondered if there was anything you needed up there."
	"Not really.  I don't have much up there.  I'll get it all out of there tomorrow.  Oh!  Can I use those blankets you brought out, just for a night or two?"  She asked.
	Well sure," Molly answered.  "You can probably keep using them too."
	"I found a bunch of bedding stuff in here, but it's filthy and I'll have to wash it before I dare get near it," she said pointing at a pile of sheets and blankets draped over several boxes in the corner.
	"Well, I guess I'll go to bed."  She turned to Ellis and then back to Francine.  "I can't believe you two.  You've been so nice to me and then all this with John and you, Ellis.  I just don't know what to say.  I can't believe it's happening."  She flushed as she spoke and fidgeted shifting her weight back and forth from one foot to the other.
	"Don't give it another thought," Ellis said smiling.  "This the way it was meant to be."
	"Yeah, this is going to turn out perfect for everyone," Francine agreed, giving Molly a wink that Ellis didn't notice.
	Molly left the room and went up the stairs to John's room.  Francine seemed to have sunk deeper into the chair, almost like she was becoming part of it.  Ellis perched on the edge of the box of books and looked at the pile of things they had stacked along the wall and shook his head.
	"I can't believe all this shit was in here," he said.  "It's going to be fun, hauling it out to the granary through the snow."
	"Oh, it won't be too bad.  I'll just pile it in the wheelbarrow and make a dozen trips or so."  She leaned forward in the chair, yawned and gave out a long satisfied sigh.  "Let's burn one and then I think I'll try and pry one of those guys off the couch and get some sleep.  I'm tired."
	Ellis got up and went into the parlor.  John was just getting up from the chair by the door.  He said goodnight and went up to his room and Molly.  Duncan and Fred still sat like statues in front of the television.  All three dogs lay curled up on the floor and the candy tin containing the joints was not in its normal place on the coffee table.  He remembered that Duncan had brought it into the kitchen.  He went to the kitchen table, picked up the tin, took out a joint and went back into Francine's new room.  She was still submerged in the overstuffed chair with her feet up on the box.  Her eyes were closed and she breathed deeply as if she had fallen asleep.
	"You'll have to come closer," she said, with out opening her eyes.  "I don't think I can even lean forward."
	He pulled up one of the chairs they had found buried in the room, lit the joint and sat down facing her.  She reached out lethargically for the joint and he placed it between her thumb and forefinger.  She took it, giving him a smile, but she didn't open her eyes.  They sat passing it back and forth for a few minutes and then heard the television click off and, first Fred stumble through the kitchen and out the back door, and then Duncan clunked up the stairs to his room.
	"Well it doesn't look like you'll have to fight for the couch," Ellis observed, as the sound of Duncan flopping into bed was heard filtering down the stairs.
	"Not unless it's too cold out there for you, alone," Francine said, opening her eyes finally.
	"Oh, I'll probably survive," he replied.  "Besides, I still have all those extra blankets we took out there last night and I have Punt to warm it up for starters."
	"What do you mean, 'starters'?"  She asked.
	"Well, I get Punt into the sleeping bag with me and by the time it's too warm for him, it's starting to get warm enough to be comfortable.  It's great.  He warms the bed up and then leaves me the whole thing for myself."
	Francine shook her head, took her feet off the box and tried to lean forward, but fell back into the chair.  "You know Ellis, domesticating you is going to be quite a challenge for some girl.  You're going to have to find one with real stamina," she said, trying unsuccessfully to get up again.
	"A few have tried, but they always give up about the time I fail the responsibility test," he said, getting up and walking to the kitchen door.
	John and Molly had done the dishes and put them away in the cupboard.  The counters were clean and uncluttered.  He walked to the stove, opened the eye over the firebox and looked in on a dwindling glow of embers.  Thinking that it might be warmer for Francine if the kitchen stayed warm, he put a can of coal in and set the air intake as low as he could.  He turned around surveying the orderly condition of the room and wondered if this was what Francine meant by domestication, but he knew her interpretation encompassed much more than a tidy kitchen.  Fred's pistol was not lying on the counter where he had last seen it and he hoped that Fred had taken it with him to bed.  The floor creaked slightly as he stepped around the table and into the parlor to check the stove in there.  The flames licked up the sides of the stove and danced playfully from a little mound of clinkers forming in the center of the round firebox.  He took an iron poker, spread the mound out flat, put in two cans of coal and shut the door, damping down the airflow.  Molly had left two or three blankets on the arm of the chair for Francine along with a pillow.  Returning to the other room, he found Francine sprawled out in the chair giving all appearances of being sound asleep.
	He patted her lightly on the thigh and she opened her eyes.  "You better go into the parlor and stretch out on the couch.  If you sleep here, you'll be so stiff tomorrow you won't even be able to move," he urged.
	She nodded, held her hands out for him to pull on and closed her eyes again.  "Help me up," she said.
	He took both her hands and pulled, but she went limp.  "Come on, you gotta help, god dammit."
	She opened her eyes and smiled up at him.  "Oh Ellis, you're no fun," she said.  "Okay, pull again and I'll get up."
	He pulled and this time she rose to a standing position.  He kept holding her hand, led her around the corner to the parlor and gently pushed her onto the couch.  She flopped down and he picked up the pillow tossing it at her.  She put it under her head and he picked up the blankets, spreading them over her.
	"Thank you Ellis," she said.  "Oh, will you bring that shotgun in here and lean it up somewhere close?"
	He brought the gun in from the kitchen, set it near her and turning off the light, started to leave.  As he walked by the couch, she reached out, stopping him.
	"Thanks, Ellis."
	"What for?"  He asked, turning to her.
	"Oh, I don't know.  I guess for letting John have Molly the way you did."
	Ellis snorted slightly with amusement and sat down on the coffee table.  "I think it's more the other way around, if anything.  They really are better suited for each other than they were for either of us, but I kinda think Molly figured it out first.  I'm just glad things turned out okay.  I think that Molly and I really kinda fell for each other there at first and somehow neither of us saw anything much beyond the fun.  So, it was fun.  And now maybe she and John can get into something real.  Like I said before, I get along better with friends than lovers."
	They looked at each other for a moment in the dim light that filtered in from the kitchen.
	"Is that a warning?"  She asked, pulling the covers closer around her shoulders.
	"Oh shit," he said laughing, "I don't know.  It probably should be though."  He stood up and turned to leave.  Then turning back to her, he bent down kissing her on the forehead and then slipped around the end of the table before she could react.
	"With all proper respect to chauvinism, " he said, "you are, truly, a juicy little morsel."  He then quickly went into the kitchen.
	"You're such a bastard sometimes.  You better run for it."  She laughed as she said this and pulled the covers over her head.
	Ellis went to the rifle behind the stove, picked it up and went out the back door.  He called out a 'goodnight' as the door swung shut and she answered one, but he was out of ear shot by then.  He went out side, relieved himself, called Punt and went to bed.
	The next day began slowly.  Francine was up first, but not until after eight o'clock.  She stirred around, pulling the clinkers from the stoves and rebuilding the fires.  Duncan showed up next, bare feet as usual and turned on the television.  Fred wandered through Ellis' room, letting the door slam, awakening him from a long series of dreams that had been playing in his head since he first fell asleep.  He lay there, trying unsuccessfully to recall the thread of these dreams for a while and then, after bracing himself for the cold, he climbed up out of his straw nest, dressed quickly and went into the main house.
	Francine sat at the kitchen table, drawing a plan for her new room.  The bed, she hoped Ellis would help her build and occupy, was to be next to the large window that looked out on the long forgotten flower garden behind the house.  The overstuffed chair would sit facing out the other window, so as to give a nice view up the valley and one of the small book shelves would be near enough to it that she could reach books comfortably from the chair.  The record player would be shifted along the wall to cover the doorway that led upstairs.  She didn't think she wanted two doors into the room, nor did she need direct access to the stairway.
	Ellis entered the kitchen and headed for the bathroom, setting the rifle behind the stove.  "Hi," he said as he went around the table.
	Francine said nothing to this, but as he came out of the bathroom, she was waiting for him with a cup of coffee.  "In the true nature of chauvinism, here's your morning coffee," she said, handing him the cup.
	He said nothing at first, but stood there staring at her.  Finally, he smiled, said thanks and walked to the parlor door, looking in on Duncan and Fred.  Duncan of coarse was glued to the tube and Fred was reading an old magazine of some sort.  He turned back to the kitchen, went to the table and sat down across from Francine, who had returned her thoughts to the remodeling of her room.
	"Here," she said, pushing the drawing toward him.  "What do you think of my floor plan?"
	He picked it up, studied it for a moment and pointed to what he assumed was the bed.  "That bed is going to be harder to build and take a bunch more material, if it's not in a corner," he said pushing the drawing back in front of her.
	"That's true," she said, puzzling for a moment.  "Do you think there's enough stuff to do it that way?"
	"Maybe, we'll have to look around out there."
	"I also want to get it up off the floor, so I can look out the window at the garden, when spring comes."  She took a drink of coffee, leaned back in her chair and put her hands behind her head.
	"What garden's that?"  Ellis asked.
	"The one I'm going to plant in the spring.  It's really already there, actually, or mostly there, anyway.  It just hasn't been taken care of.  Nobody's weeded it or anything, for years, but there are a lot of flowers out there buried in the weeds and grass.  I'll bet if I just nurse it along a little, it'll be real nice."
	Ellis shook his head and began to roll a cigarette.
	"What's the matter, don't you think I can make a garden?"  She asked.  "I may even plant some vegetables too.  I have had gardens, you know."
	"No, I was just thinking about your fancy bed plans," he said, dumping way too much tobacco into the cigarette paper he held and onto the table.
	"Fancy!"  She said.  "What's so fancy about a box full of straw?"
	"Well, I guess it's not fancy so much as it's going to take a lot of lumber we probably don't have around here.  My bed uses two walls and the floor for three of the sides of the box.  You're talking about coming up with five sides and then putting it up on legs.  I just don't know if we can come up with all that shit."  He licked the gummed edge of the paper, rolled the little cylinder between his fingers and stuck it in his mouth.
	She reached over, scooping the spilled tobacco toward her and began to fashion a cigarette for herself.  "I guess," she said.  "We'll have to see what we find out there.  If there isn't enough stuff, I just have to settle for a simple box like yours.  I was also thinking that if I didn't keep that big chair in there, we could rearrange the parlor and put it in there.  I think that if we moved a couple of things, it would fit.  It would be kinda nice if there was some place we could all sit around together."
	"Yeah maybe," he halfheartedly agreed.  If you bring those two strait chairs in here, there'll be enough for all of us."
	"That's true, but it wouldn't be as comfortable."  She put here feet up on the chair between them and lit her cigarette.
	There were a couple of thumps from upstairs and a giggle.  Presently John and Molly came down the stairs and showed up in the kitchen holding hands.  To Ellis, they looked like the couple walking on the beach, from the poster in Molly's room, in town.  It gave him a little twinge of loneliness and even a slight feeling of rejection, but it passed quickly as Francine reached under the table, poking him on the leg and nodding toward the pair of them.
	"Look at those two," she said.  "Don't they look like an advertisement for something?"
	Ellis chuckled.  "Yeah maybe, but for what?"  He asked.
	"Oh, I think they could be a mouthwash commercial.  You know, the one with 'morning-breath'."  She laughed and took a drink of coffee.
	"Don't pay any attention to them," John said, letting go of Molly's hand.  "They just wish they could have as much fun as we have."
	"Oh, don't you worry about that," Francine returned.  "We've both had a little of your kinda fun."  She took a drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke in their direction with a sly grin that made them both flush.
	John composed himself, took on a stern appearance and put an arm around Molly's shoulder.  "You two are both perverts," he said.  "You go ahead, Molly.  I can wait until you're done."  She went into the bathroom and shut the door, wearing a grin and without saying a word.
	John took a cup from the cupboard, filled it with coffee and sat down at the table.  Francine and Ellis were still chuckling about the fun they'd had with the both of them.  "Well, I'm going to have to go to school for the rest of the week," John announced.  "I have a test every day and a couple of papers that have to get in."
	"I suppose you've had the papers written for weeks, right?"  Francine said sarcastically.
	"Shit, I haven't even started either of them," he admitted.  "I thought that if I could coup myself up in the library, I could get them done.  There's no way I can get anything done around here right now.  I hope Molly can understand."
	"Oh, I don't think she'll have a problem with it.  She went to college, you know," Ellis assured him.
	Molly came out of the bathroom and sat down at the table.  John smiled at her and reached over, taking her hand.  "I have to go to school today," he said.  "You can come in with me, but I'm not sure it would be a good idea, what with Frank around."  He stood up and walked into the bathroom.
	Molly got up, poured herself some coffee and returned to her seat.  "I guess I'll just stay here," she said.  "There's plenty to do around here anyway.  What are you guys up to?"
	"Well, I'm going to work on fixing that room up," Francine said, pointing to her new room.  "I hope Ellis will help me build a bed in there.  There's another big soft chair in there.  Maybe you could figure out a way to rearrange the parlor so it would fit in there.  I hate to get rid of it, but it would be nice if we could all sit together in the parlor, sometimes."  Molly got up and went to the doorway of Francine's room.  She stood there for a moment looking in and then turned to Francine.  "That's a nice room.  You two made some progress last night.  I'll help you haul all this stuff out of here."
	"That would be cool.  We can get all that shit out of there, while Ellis figures out how to make a bed."  She looked over at him and put her hand on his arm,  "That is, if he will.  You will though, won't you Ellis?"
	"Yeah, I guess," he said, "if I can find enough stuff around to build it out of.  It's not going to be pretty or anything.  There's probably not much more than old fence rails and barn boards."
	"Oh that'd be fine.  Just so it's big enough for two and doesn't fall down and kill me in the middle of the night, sometime."
	"Two, huh.  Jesus you have a lot of criteria, considering the shit I'm going to have to build it out of.  I'll see what I can come up with."
	Duncan came into the kitchen.  "Where's John?"  He asked.
	Ellis nodded toward the bathroom.  "He's in there."
	Just as he said this, John came out.  "Hey John, I have to go in to school today.  In fact, I have to be there in about an hour and a half."
	"Yeah, me too," John said, looking at Molly for some sign of whether she would be going in with them, but she was looking at Francine's room plans and didn't see him.  "I have a ten o'clock class and I need to spend some time in the library, so I'll have to be in there for a while."
	"That's cool.  Maybe I can sniff around down at the bar and find out what Frank's found out."  Duncan pulled a chair out from under the table and sat down.
	"You better be careful, if you go to the bar," Ellis warned.  "All you need, is to have Frank be in there and have someone point you out as my roommate.  You'd have to do some fast talking to get out of that."
	"Yeah, no shit," he agreed.  "Maybe I'll just stay out of there."
	"You could sure go by the Safeway dumpster and see what's there.  If I give you some money, would you get me some tobacco?"  Ellis asked.
	"Sure.  I need to get some cigarettes anyway.  I guess I could go by Dave's and see what they know about Frank."  Then looking up at John still standing behind Molly, he asked:  "When do you want to leave?"
	"Oh, I suppose we should leave in about a half hour to forty-five minutes," he answered.  "What are you going to do?"  He asked, giving Molly's shoulder a gentle squeeze.
	She leaned her head back against his stomach, looking up at him as best she could.  "I think I'll stay here and help Francine fix up her new room," she answered.
	John looked into the room from where he stood and then stepped to the doorway.  "Jesus you guys really cleaned up in there last night.  What are you going to do with all this shit?"
	"We thought we might move it all up to your room," Francine said, with a chuckle.
	"No way," he said.  "There isn't enough room up there for half this shit.  I think you better drag it all out to the granary or something."
	She laughed.  "That's what we're going to do.  Is there anything you want out of all that junk?"
	"I don't think so," he answered.  "If I do, it'll be out there.  It's kinda fun to go through there once in a while anyway."  Then stepping back to where Molly sat and squeezing her shoulder.  "You'll like the granary," he said.  	"It's just full of cool shit left here by everyone that ever lived here.  Francine might even find a whole new wardrobe.  I don't know why I didn't think of that earlier."
	"I went through there a little once right after I got here and found a few things, but I didn't really dig very deep, it's such a mess out there."  Francine got up, went to the stove, checked the fire and put in a little coal.  She picked up the coffeepot, and held it out to the group.  "Who wants the last of this coffee," she said.  I think I'll make another pot."
	No one said a thing.  She poured the last of the pot into Ellis' cup and went to the sink.  Duncan yawned and shuffled out of the kitchen, back into the parlor.  He stood there for a moment, looking at the television and then went upstairs to get ready for school.  Ellis went out to his room, got a couple of dollars for tobacco from the pocket of his packsack along with a measuring tape and returned.  John and Molly had both gone upstairs and Francine had set a fresh pot of coffee on the stove to perk.  She had also put the last of the groat cakes in the oven to warm and was preparing to make a new batch.  She gave him a warm smile as he came back into the kitchen and asked if he was hungry.  He agreed that he was and went into her new room to make measurements for the bed.  When he was satisfied that he had adequate information to build a bed of sorts, he went into the parlor, where Fred sat, still reading a magazine.
	"Hey Fred," he said, sitting down across the room from him.  "What are you up to today?"
	"Oh, nothing much," he answered.  "I was thinking of going skiing, maybe.  I was also thinking of getting out my fly tying stuff and making some new flies for next spring."
	"No shit!  I didn't know you tied flies."  Ellis sounded interested.
	Fred nodded, with out saying a word or looking up from the magazine.
	"That sounds cool," Ellis remarked,  "I'd like to learn how to do that.  I have a fly pole that my dad gave me, but I've never used it.  Maybe next..."
	"You've never fished with flies?"  Francine interrupted from the kitchen.  "If you've never fly-fished, you've never really fished.  Fly-fishing is what fishing's all about.  All that bait and spinning stuff is just kinda pretend fishing."
	"Oh, so you're one of those high-falutin fisherman that look down on all us poor worm guys, huh."  Ellis complained.
	"Well, of coarse," she said and went back to her cooking.
	Ellis turned back to Fred.  "I was just wondering if you knew where I might start looking for lumber to build Francine some kinda bed."
	"Not really.  There's little bits of shit everywhere," he answered.  	"There's a bunch of stuff up in the loft of the barn and some plywood scraps leaning up against the far end of the granary.  I think there might be some old fence boards stacked up somewhere in the machine shop.  You'll just have to look around out there."
	"Well, I guess I'll just have to do that," he said, getting up and walking back into the kitchen.  He went over to where his rifle sat behind the stove and picked it up, looking at the rings attached to the barrel and stock, where a sling could be fastened.  Satisfied with what he saw, he set the gun back in the corner.  He went out to his room and quickly returned with a short length of soft cotton rope, which he tied to the rings of the rifle.  After adjusting the length of rope several times, he put on his coat and slung the gun over his shoulder.
	"Hey Francine, if I'm not back before Duncan leaves, give him this money for some tobacco," Ellis said, laying two dollars on the kitchen table and then he went out the back door.
	He trudged through the deep snow to the barn.  Effie met him at the door with affectionate oinks and a nuzzle or two.  He sat down on the haymow, scratching her ears for a few minutes before he began his search for wood.  There was still several tons of straw stacked up behind the large pile where Effie slept and behind that was an ancient baler that hadn't seen use for twenty years or more.  He took his rifle off, from over his shoulder and leaned it up against the old baler, so as to be less encumbered in his search for wood.  Along one side of the building were three separate stalls, designed to hold cows.  There were two or three old barrels that had once held oil and farm chemicals.  Leaning up against the wall was the better part of a sheet of plywood.  He picked this up, set it out in front of the stall and went to the next.  Here he found nothing but an empty area with what looked like two broken bales of hay.  The third stall was stuffed with various things, ranging from garden tools and a gas powered lawn mower, to boxes of parts to some kind of farm machinery.  There were pulleys, belts, oil filters, and any number of small parts that Ellis couldn't identify.  Leaning against the door to the outside were four or five nearly full sheets of three-quarter inch plywood.  He waded through the disarray of parts and tools to where the plywood stood and looked closely at it.  It was dirty and stained with motor oil, but otherwise in good sound condition.
	Next, he climbed the short ladder to the loft of the barn.  There were more broken bales of hay scattered about along with several two-foot high piles of empty gunnysacks.  There was a stack of four and six pane windows leaning against the gable end of the building.  There were eight windows in all, each a little different size, but all looked as if they had come from the same house at one time.  He went to the windows, looked at them one at a time and returned them to where they stood.  They were all in good condition, none of the glass was broken and even the glazing compound was still firmly in place.  He was wondering how he could make use of the windows, when he spied an odd metal object on the far side of the loft from where he stood.  As he went to the object, he recognized it as the wing from a small airplane.  Sitting on edge and leaning against the slope of the roof, it was about four and a half feet high and most of twelve feet long.  He looked around the loft for more of the plane, but none was to be seen.
	Around behind the wing, he found what he had been looking for.  There was a neatly stacked pile of boards of various dimensions.  There were several dozen two-by-fours, a dozen or more two-by-sixes, and enough one-by-sixes, he thought, to build a small house.  He pulled several boards out and although they were covered by a layer of dust, they were surprisingly straight and had never been used.  He slid some of each of the sizes of board over the side of the loft, resting their ends on the floor of the main barn.  They stuck up as high as himself, making them at least twelve to fourteen feet long.  He leaned against one of the posts holding up the roof and looked around at the other various items scattered about the loft, thinking he had found all he needed to build a new bed for Francine.  There was even enough lumber to build himself a better bed, if he wanted.
	It seemed odd to him that Fred hadn't remembered seeing the lumber he had just found, but maybe he had never explored beyond the haymow.  Instead of climbing back down the ladder, he jumped into the pile of hay, landing several feet from where Effie's ears poked up through the loose stems and leaves.  She squealed loudly from surprise and the hay around her exploded as she burst straight up out of the mow.  She gave out aggressive sounding grunts mixed with short squeals as she turned toward Ellis, who was just picking himself up from his landing.  He called her name several times, told her it was okay, and as she recognized him, she calmed down and began to oink affectionately.  He stroked her nose and ears, apologizing for having scared her and rolled off the edge of the mow to the floor.  He stood up, went to the baler and picked up his rifle.  Confident that he had found plenty of lumber to build the bed, he went straight back to the house.
	He shivered from the cold going through the back porch, and the warmth of the kitchen felt good as he entered.  Francine was just putting the groatcakes into the oven and John and Duncan were putting on their coats to leave for school.  Molly kissed John goodbye and they left.  Ellis took the thirty-thirty from his shoulder and set it behind the stove.
	"Well, did you find any old boards out there?"  Francine asked.
	"I found enough stuff to build a house if you want," he answered.
	"Really," she said looking excited.  "What kinda shape's it in?"
	"It's dirty, but otherwise it's in great shape.  It's all stacked up in the loft of the barn, along with a bunch of good windows and there's four or five sheets of plywood in there as well."  He went to the parlor, where Fred sat reading.
	"Hey Fred," he said, "why didn't you tell me there was part of an airplane out there?"
	"Huh!  Airplane!  What do you mean?"  He looked up from his magazine.
	"There's a goddamn airplane wing out there, up in the loft," Ellis said.
	"Wow, really, I've never been up in the loft.  Just a wing?"  He asked.
	"Yeah, just one wing.  I think it's a left wing off some kind of small plane.  And behind it, is a ton of brand new boards, just like I need for the bed.  I hope the landlord isn't saving them for something special."
	"I doubt he even knows they're there," Fred said, stretching his arms over his head.  "I'd go ahead and use them, if they'll do you any good."
	"Great!  Now I'd better figure out what I'm going to build."
	"I thought you were going to build a bed."  Fred said with a chuckle.
	"I am, but I have to make a plan of some kind, before I just start cutting shit up."  Ellis went back into the kitchen, sat down at the table and slid the drawing materials, which Francine had been using, over in front of himself.  He turned the paper over to the blank side and after a few minutes had several rough sketches for her to chose from.
	"Here," he said, "which of these beds do you want?"
	Francine came over from the sink, where she and Molly had been doing up the few dishes that had accumulated from her cooking and stood behind him.  	"Hmm," she said leaning down, putting her arms on his shoulders and nudging the back of his head with her breasts.
	His head pulsed slightly where they touched him and he leaned back gently into them.  She didn't pull away, but seemed to press them firmly against him.  He was sure that she could feel his heart beat a little faster and he was glad when she spoke.
	"Which one do you like best?"  She asked.
	"The middle one would be easiest to make, but I think the bottom one would look nicest," he said pointing to the third drawing he had made.
	"They all look a little like baby cribs," she said, with a short laugh.
	"Yeah, they kinda have to, if we're going to keep the straw from falling out on the floor.  I could lower the sides a little, but not too much."  He drew a line from the head to the foot of the bed and erased the line he had previously drawn.  "How's that?"  He asked.
	"Yeah, I like that better.  I want nice fat posts on the corners with balls on top," she said, standing up again.
	"Jesus Christ!"  He said, looking up at her still standing behind him.  	"You don't want much, do you?  First you just wanted something to sleep in and then you wanted it off the ground and in the middle of the room.  And now, you want a four poster with balls on top.  What the fuck you think this is, a furniture store or something?"
	She smiled at him and put her hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently.  "Oh Ellis, you could do it if you really wanted to.  I know you could."  She turned from him to the stove and checked the cakes in the oven.  Ellis shook his head and looked back at the drawing.
	"Where the hell am I going to get posts?"  He asked.  "I didn't find anything out there bigger than a two-by-six, and that's not going to make much of a post."
	"Oh, I'm just kidding, Ellis," she said.  “Those drawings look real nice and I'll be happy with whatever you make."  She turned and went into her new room.  Molly followed her and they stood together, looking at the pile of boxes that needed to be hauled to the granary.
	Fred got up from his reading and joined Ellis in the kitchen.  "Did you find all those wooden fence-posts out back of the granary?"  He asked.
	"I didn't even look," Ellis answered.  Are they all rotten?"
	"Oh no.  They're new ones.  Fresh split cedar posts, they haven't even been soaked in anything yet."  Fred walked to the sink, picked up a cup and went to the stove.  He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down.  "They're probably buried under a couple feet of snow, but they should be in good shape."
	Ellis thought for a moment.  Putting posts on the bed would require much more time and work, but they would make for a far nicer bed.  He picked up the pencil and pulled the paper over in front of him, starring at the drawings he had already done.  He took his makings from his pocket and rolled a cigarette, all the time studying his earlier drawings.  After lighting his smoke, he began to sketch and it wasn't long before he leaned back in his chair, blew out a thick cloud of blue-white smoke and pushed the new drawing across the table in front of Fred.  Fred turned the paper and looked at the fourth drawing.  It showed four corner posts with balls on both top and bottom.  The poles on one end standing taller than those on the other.  Suspended, above the floor and between the posts, was an open box.  The upper edge of the box was shaped in a series of curves that rose and fell; creating an interesting line that looked somewhat like the rolling hills all around them.  He smiled and pushed the paper back to Ellis.
	"When do you plan to have it done, sometime next year?"  Fred asked.
	"Yeah, maybe I shouldn't put the balls on the bottom," Ellis remarked.  They'll take too long and they're probably too much anyway."  He took a drag on his cigarette.  "That coffee looks good.  I think I'll have a cup."  He got up and went to the sink, moved several dishes in the drying rack and after finding his favorite cup, went to the stove.  "God I wish my coffee cup didn't keep getting washed and buried under everything so I can't even find it," he said pouring the cup full and walking to the doorway to Francine's room.  After looking at the available open space in the room, he went back to the kitchen table and sat down.
	"Hey Francine," he said looking toward her, over his shoulder, "if you can get all the extra shit out of that room, I could build your bed in there."
	"Oh," she said sadly.  "I wanted to get it all ready and then move the bed in there."
	"Well, there's two problems with that," he argued.  First, the bed won't fit through the door after it's done and second, I need some place to work on the thing that's warm."
	"It'll be so messy," she protested.
	"It's in there, or right in the middle of the kitchen," Ellis said with a laugh.  "I don't care, but I think it would be better in there.  I probably won't finish today."
	"You mean, I have to sleep on the couch again tonight?"  She whined.
	"You'll probably have to sleep on the couch for a month, as complicated as he has it now," Fred commented.
	"Alright!  Alright!  I'll get this room ready to become a fucking shop, but it better not stay like that for very long."  She came into the kitchen and picked up the paper with the drawing on it.  "Oh, that's nice Ellis.  I like those curvy lines on the edge."
	"I don't think I'll put the balls on the bottom of the legs," he said.
	"That's okay, I don't think I like them there anyway," she said, hoping to encourage him.
	"Well, the sooner you get that place cleared out, the sooner you'll have a bed," he said, looking up at her out of the corner of his eye, as he took a drink of coffee.
	"Alright," she said, turning to Molly, who stood in the doorway.
	"Let's get our coats on and haul this stuff out," Molly said.
	"Okay.  That building's not locked or anything is it?"  Francine asked, walking around the table to where her coat hung.
	"Hell no," Fred said, "but you might be careful when you open the door.  It might fall off in your hand."  He laughed and finished off his coffee in one big gulp.
	Molly followed Francine; they both put on their coats and went back to the new bedroom.  They each picked up a box, came back through the kitchen and went out the rear door.  Ellis smiled and leaned forward to put his cigarette out in the ashtray that sat in the middle of the table.
	"Well shit," he said.  "I suppose I ought to go gather up the wood and find all my tools."
	"You better build it good and sturdy," Fred said, with a laugh.  "You'll probably be sleeping in it too, before long."
	Ellis glared at him and didn't say a word, but subconsciously, he warmed to the idea.  He stood up, finished his coffee and set the cup back on the table.  "Don't let anybody wash this cup."  He put on his coat and gloves, going out the back door.
	He went first to the back of the granary.  There were several wooden fence gates, nearly hidden by the snow, leaned up against the side of the building.  A few feet in front of them was what looked like a large lump on the ground buried beneath the thick white blanket.  He brushed the snow off one end of the lump with his hand, uncovering part of a fence post.  He quickly brushed off more snow and pulled out several posts.  Looking at each one carefully, he picked out four straight evenly shaped ones and set them aside.  He went to the barn, picked out the boards he thought he would need and stacked them on the floor next to the haymow.  It took five trips back and forth to get it all moved to the house, but finally he had most of the materials leaning against the low roof on the front porch.  He went into his room and gathered up the tools he would need for the job.  There was a handsaw, several chisels, an old hand drill and auger bits, and a large wooden mallet along with a hammer.  When he returned to the kitchen, Francine and Molly had removed all the boxes and were piling the remaining articles in the room up against one wall, out of his way.
	"Gosh, this looks nice.  Maybe we should just make this room into a shop," Ellis said, as he stood in the doorway.
	Francine flashed a wicked look at him and held up her middle finger, indicating her disapproval of the idea.
	Ellis laughed and set his tools down on the floor.  The girls had already stacked the two straight-backed chairs up in the corner of the room and he went to them, pulling the top one from the pile.  "I think I'll need these to use as saw-horses," he said, setting them in the middle of the room.  "I'll bring the posts in first and get them ready, but I better sweep the snow off them first.  Where's the broom?"
	"It's just around the corner there by the bathroom," Molly said, pointing behind him.
	He took the broom, went out the side door from the kitchen and began to sweep off as much snow as he could from the fence posts.  When he had them as clean as he felt was necessary to keep Francine from yelling at him, he brought them into the house and laid them on the floor of the bedroom.  He thought for a moment about how long to make them and then, deciding to leave them as long as possible, he set one up on the two chairs and marked a line around the circumference about six inches from one end.  Taking his handsaw, he cut a little over an inch deep all around the post at that point.  He next, went to his toolbox and took up a wide chisel and the mallet.  Placing the chisel part way from the cut, he had made, to the end of the post, he struck it hard with the mallet.  A large chip of wood flew off and bounced across the room.  He turned the post slightly and repeated this process.  After about a dozen strikes with the mallet, he had made a notch around the post.  One side of the notch was formed by the saw cut and was square with the post.  The other sloped toward the bottom of the notch at the angle he had made with the chisel.  Walking around to the other side of his work, he repeated the chisel process, chipping away the wood in the direction of the end of the post.  When he had worked his way around the post, he had formed a crude ball on one end of what would soon become the first of the four bedposts.  He chiseled his way around the ball several more times, using lighter strokes until the ball was moderately round and then did the same to the other three fence-posts.
	He then laid all four posts out next to each other on the floor and measured up sixteen inches from the square end, putting a line at that point on each of them.  Running the tape-measure up the post another foot, he drew another line.  When he had the four posts marked out in this fashion, he drew a rectangle on each of them at these marks the size of the cross section of the two-by-sixes he was using for the bed-rails.  Putting an inch and a half auger bit into the drill, he carefully bored a hole through the post at either end of the marked off rectangle and then chipped the wood out between the two holes.  This created a hole through the post an inch and a half wide and five and one half inches long for the side rail to slide into.  He did the same thing a foot farther up the post at his second mark and then repeated the process on each of the posts.  He then took the posts and laid out a similar hole just above those he had already cut, but at right angles to the first ones.  These would hold the cross rails, to form the width of the bed.
	By the time he had cut all of the holes for the rails, he had spent most of two hours and was ready for a break.  He went into the kitchen and plopped down in a chair at the table.  Molly and Francine had been sitting there talking for most of the time he had been working and Francine asked him if he wanted coffee.
	"That would be great," he said, putting his feet up on one of the chairs.
	She brought him a cup, setting it on the table and then putting her hand on his shoulder, she asked:  "How are you coming?"
	"I have the hard part done, I think," he answered.  "If I cut all those holes in the right place, I should be able to just assemble the thing once I get the rails all cut the right length.  How wide you want the thing, anyway?"  He asked.
	She held her arms out as wide as she could reach,  "About that wide," she said.
	Ellis nodded, took a drink of his coffee and then taking his tobacco from the table, he rolled and lit a cigarette.  "Well shit then, I'll just make it the size of a regular double bed."  He looked up at Molly.  "How big is that bed of yours and John's?  You guys have the only double bed in the house."
	"I don't know," she answered.  It's a little short for him, he's so tall, but it's probably a normal size.  You'll have to go up there and measure it."
	"I suppose I should."  He went upstairs for a few minutes and returned with the measurements.
	"Well, the mattress is fifty-four by seventy-five," he said.  He wrote these numbers down on the paper he had made his rough plans on and then added the width of the posts to them.  "Hmm, that makes the bed; sixty-four by eighty-five inches."  He walked into the bedroom and stretched his tape-measure out on the floor.  Then laying two of the posts out on the floor where Francine had indicated the bed was to go, he adjusted them to the dimensions he had calculated.  "Here take a look at this," he said, standing back up.
	Francine came into the room and looked down at the two posts poking out from the wall.  "Jesus, that's big," she said.  "They take up most of the room.  Maybe that's too big."
	Ellis laid the tape-measure out from the wall, between the two posts.  	"Here," he said, pointing to eighty-five inches on the tape.  "It'll only come out to here."
	"Well that's better," she said, a little relieved, "but it's still so wide.  It takes up half that whole side of the room."
	"I could make it narrower, but it probably ought to stay about that long," Ellis offered.  "You could put it over in that corner and it wouldn't take up so much of the middle of the room.
	Francine looked puzzled and stood there staring at the posts lying on the floor.  "How about, if we make it just a little narrower, maybe three or four inches," she said.  "Then after you get it put together, we can figure out where it goes."
	"Okay, I'll knock four inches off the width.  That'll be easy."  He moved the posts out of the middle of the room and up against the wall out of his way.  	"Oh Francine, how'd you like to do me a favor?"  He asked as she started out of the room.
	"Sure, what?"  She turned, re-entering the bedroom.
	"I saw some sticks out in the barn that I think will work to peg this thing together.  I wonder if you'd go out there and get them for me?"
	"Yeah, I could do that.  Where are they and what do they look like?"
	"You can't miss them," he said.  "They're lying on top of this old baler, that's behind the pile of hay.  They are about three or four feet long and a little less than an inch in diameter.  Actually, they're not quite round.  They're octagonal or hexagonal or something, but you'll see them there on one end of the baler.  I need four or five of them."
	While Francine went to the barn, Ellis hauled in several two-by-sixes and cut them to the right length for the rails.  He was cutting the last cross-rail when she returned with the sticks he had sent her after and as he finished the cut and looked up at her standing in the doorway, he couldn't help but notice how lovely she was.  It gave him a little tingle somewhere in his belly that spread out slowly through his body and he became aware, really for the first time that Fred was right.  In all probability, he would soon be sharing this new bed with her.  He just stared up at her for a long moment, trying to gather his thoughts and feelings into something tangible.
	"What are you staring at?"  She asked, finally.  "Did I get the wrong thing or something?"
	"Oh no, those are the sticks," he said.  "I was just thinking how pretty you are with snot dripping off your nose."  He smiled and then quickly looked away.
	"Oh sure, thanks.  You're nice," she said, blushing slightly.  "I should whip you with one of these sticks," she said leaning them in the corner by the doorway.  She went into the kitchen, took off her coat and hung it on the rack by the back door.
	"Are you getting hungry, Ellis?"  She asked from the kitchen.
	"Yeah, I'm starving, but I want to get this thing put together first," he answered.  "You could help me here for a little while."  He went into the kitchen.  "I need to get some rope and a different drill bit.  I'll be right back."
	He went out to his room, returning in a few minutes with a length of light line and several auger bits.  Picking up one of the sticks she had brought in from the barn, he measured it and then chose a drill bit the right size to make a hole just smaller than the stick.  He cleared away the accumulation of boards that had built up around where he was working and swept the sawdust and wood chips into a pile out of the way.
	"Okay," he said, looking up at Francine, who stood in the doorway watching him, "If you'll hold this just like this, I'll but in the rails."  He set one of the posts on end and she came in and held it.  He stuffed the end of one of the two-by-sixes into the hole he had carved in the post.  Picking up a second post, he put the loose end of this first rail into the corresponding hole in it and then let the post lean against the wall while he selected another rail.  The second two-by-six was placed into the holes he had made a foot above where they had placed the first rail and then he tied the two rails together tightly to prevent them from slipping out while they finished the assembly.  Once he had worked his way around the bed frame and all the rails and posts were tied roughly in place, the bed stood, although wobbly, on it's own.
	"Now, I just have to drill two holes in each joint, drive those sticks into each hole and the thing should be fairly sturdy," Ellis said, standing back and admiring his work.
	"God, I hope it gets stronger when you put in the pegs," Francine remarked nervously.  "It looks like it could be a death-trap now, like it might just collapse and swallow us up."
	"Us!"  He looked at her with a smile.  "What makes you think I'd be dumb enough to get into a thing like that?  It's carefully designed to swallow you up in the middle of the night."
	"Yeah, I thought you might do something like that," she laughed.  "You may have to test it out, before I even get near it."
	"How'd you like to cut all the pegs, while I drill the holes?"  He picked up the saw, handed it to her and then measured the thickness of the posts in several places.  "It looks like, if you cut them all five inches long, they'll work out fine.  You can cut one exactly right and then use it to measure the rest of them.
	"Yeah, yeah, how many do you need?"  She asked, picking up the sticks from the corner.
	Ellis thought for a moment, then counting on his fingers and doing a little simple addition, he looked at her and said:  "Thirty-two."
	Francine cut pegs and Ellis drilled holes.  Before he drilled each hole, he was careful to be sure the bed was, at least somewhat, square and that the distance between posts was equal, both top and bottom.  After drilling each hole, he drove in a peg and soon, the bed took on a sturdiness that seemed to give Francine a sense of confidence that she wouldn't end up as part of a pile of sticks and boards in the middle of the night.  They worked together for most of an hour drilling holes and driving in the pegs.  When they had finished, the bed frame stood rigid and strong in the middle of the room.
	Francine sat down in one of the chairs they had been using as a sawhorse and groaned.  "I'm tired and hungry," she said.  "Let's eat something, before we go any farther."
	"Sounds good," he answered.  "Let's have a couple groatcakes and smoke a joint."  He stepped over behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, lightly massaging the muscles of her lower neck.  "What do you think?  It kinda looks like a monster.  You think you can sleep in there without getting nightmares?"
	"I don't know," she answered, tipping her head back to look up at him.  "It is kinda scary looking.  I might need some company on those dark nights."
	"Most nights are kinda dark," he said.
	"Yeah, I know," she said, smiling and reaching up, taking one of his hands in hers.
	He stepped around in front of her and straddling her legs, sat down on her lap.  "Do you think that would be a good idea?"  He asked, reaching up, holding her face gently in both his hands.
	"I don't know if it's a good idea, but it's an idea," she said, putting her arms around behind him and pulling him toward her slightly.
	With his hands still on her cheeks, he leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips.  It was sincere, if not passionate.  "I suppose we could give it a try," he said, "but I have to admit, it does scare me a little."
	"Why's that?"  She asked.
	"Oh, it just seems like I do fine until I fall in love and then I always screw thing up somehow."
	"Well, don't fall in love and maybe we'll be fine."  She reached up and stroked his cheek.
	"Maybe that's easy for you to say, but I've never managed to keep from it."  He kissed her again and then stood up.  "Let's eat something."
	They went into the kitchen.  She took two cakes from the tin on the counter and cut them open.  He went to the refrigerator, taking the butter and a small jar of strawberry jam from it and set them on the table.  They sat down, and ate quietly.  When they had eaten, Ellis pushed his plate away and rolled a cigarette.  Francine did the same and they sat across from each other for some time smoking.  Molly could be heard shuffling around upstairs and Fred could be seen in the parlor spreading his fly tying materials out on the coffee table.
	"We're ready to build the box for straw and then the things done," Ellis said, putting his cigarette out in the ashtray sitting between them.
	"Did you find any plywood out there?"  She asked.
	"Yeah there's plenty, but I was thinking about using real boards.  We could space them a little and I think it would look cool, kinda like a giant baby crib."
	"Wouldn't all the straw fall out?"  She asked.
	"I think if we just spaced them about an inch apart, we'd be okay.  We'd have to forget the curvy line on the top, but that would probably look weird anyway.  I just don't like working with plywood.  It's kinda like fake wood.  The rest of the thing is all rustic looking, and I don't think a bunch of plywood would look good."
	He stood up, walked to the window and looked out into the yard.  The sun was just setting and the sky was lit up brightly with reds and oranges.  There were two extra two-by-sixes leaning up against the porch that needed to go back to the barn and he would need a lot of one-by-sixes for the bottom and sides.  He turned back to the kitchen and Francine.  She was just lighting a joint and handed it to him.  He took a small hit and gave it back.
	"I think I'll get the rest of the boards for the bed before I do anymore of that," he said stepping to the coat rack for his coat.  "We're burning daylight and there's no lights in the barn."
	"I'll go with you and we can smoke it on the way."  She too put on her coat and they went out into cold dusk.  "Oh shit, what if Frank comes while we're in the barn," she said turning to go back in the house.  "I better bring one of the guns."
	She went back in and returned with Ellis' thirty-thirty slung over her shoulder.  Ellis had gathered up the two extra boards and together they trudged to the barn passing the joint back and forth as they went.  Effie greeted them with a few subdued oinks and a soft short squeal, but she didn't come out from her borough in the haymow.  Francine went over and stroked her nose while Ellis slid a goodly number of one-by-sixes down from the loft.  He found a small piece of heavy canvas lying near the boards that looked as if it might cover the bottom of the bed and prevent the straw from filtering out if the boards were not tight.  He threw this over the side and climbed down.  Francine sat in the hay next to Effie, whose head and nose were all that could be seen protruding from the mow.  She looked up at him as he walked up to them.
	"I'll bet if we snuggled in under the hay with Effie, it'd be nice and warm, don't you think?"  She smiled coyly as she said this and then made a slight attempt to burrow in next to the pig.
	"You're going to get to burrow in the hay all you can stand, here pretty soon," he said reaching down to give her a hand up.  "You'll be picking that shit out of your hair and underwear from now on."
	She looked disappointed that he didn't seem inclined to snuggle into the haymow with her, but she reached out, accepting his offer of a hand up.  She did try feebly to pull him down on top of her, but either he was ready or she wasn't really trying and she ended up standing beside him.  It was getting dark out and a cold breeze was beginning to blow in from the East.  They each picked up a portion of the boards and made their way back to the house.  Francine decided to make something nice for dinner and began her preparations in the kitchen, while Ellis sawed board after board to complete the bed.  When he finished, he stood back and chuckled softly to himself.  The bed looked like a cross between a hay feeder and a crude over-grown baby crib.
	"You want to take a look at it, finished," he said as he went into the kitchen.
	"Oh boy," she said turning toward him with a broad smile.  "You have it done already?"
	"Yeah, but you need to figure out where you want it.  It takes up half the room.
	She went into the bedroom and stood for a moment viewing the giant bed.  "You're right.  It won't fit in front of that window," she said, pointing to the window that looked out onto the old garden.  "I think we better put it over by that other window, or else tuck it into the corner and forget being able to look out the window in the mornings."
	"I think the corner's better.  If it's over in front of the window the sun will come in and wake us up in the mornings."
	She snapped a look at him and walked over beside him standing by the bed.  "Then you are going to try and sleep in here?"  She said putting her hand on his arm.
	He put his arm around her shoulder and looked at her out of the corner of his eye.  "Sure, I might as well, a guy's got to sleep somewhere."
	She passed her arm around his waist and squeezed firmly, rubbing a knuckle into one of his ribs.  "I was hoping you'd show a little more enthusiasm, you turd head."
	He flinched, but pulled her closer to him.  "I'm more enthusiastic than you might think," he said.  "In fact, I can't wait.  Let's hurry and get it shoved into the corner and hop in.  We don't even need any straw or blankets."
	"Oh, you're a real animal, all of a sudden," she kidded him.  "You better watch out or I'll have to show you what animal really means."
	He stepped back from her and picked up the broom that leaned against the wall, holding it up between them, as if to protect himself.  "Now, you're starting to scare me," he said laughing.  "You better keep your distance or I'll have to spank you."  He casually began to sweep the sawdust and wood chips from under the bed.
	"Promises, promises," she said, turning to walk out of the room.
	"Don't run off," he called after her.  "You need to help me move this monster into the corner."
	She returned and together they moved several things out of the corner and then slid the bed into place.  Ellis finished sweeping the floor while she stood admiring the new bed.  When he had a neat pile in the center of the floor he stopped and leaned the broom back against the wall.
	"I'll get the dustpan and pick that up," she offered, and then added; "if you'll go get the hay."
	He snorted.  "I thought it might work like that.  I have to be the one trudging through the snow again."
	"I'll make it up to you, somehow," she said, smiling and giving him a wink, as she turned and disappeared in search of the dustpan.  He followed her into the kitchen, then putting on his coat and taking a flashlight from the counter, he went out the backdoor, shaking his head, knowing he had gotten the short end of the deal.
	The breeze had picked up and the already fallen snow was beginning to blow along the ground.  Their footprints, leading to the barn, were half drifted full and little snow ridges were lining up behind anything that broke the free flow of the wind.  There was sparse cloud cover around the edges of the sky, but the center was clear above him and the moon, now nearly half waned, partially lit his way to the barn.  Above his knees, the air was clear and crisp, but below, the snow blew across the ground like smoke, swirling with the currents.  Ellis quickly zipped up his coat and stuffed his hands in his pockets, wishing he had brought his gloves.  The wind was behind him and he let it push him across the driveway toward the barn.  The wind bit at the back of his ears and he sucked his head down behind his collar as far as he could.  He picked up his pace for a few steps and then began to run.  The wind stayed with him, pushing him with an icy hand and the blowing snow swirled about his legs until he reached the large, open, barn door.  Here, the wind let him go and he stopped for a moment to look back at the house.  The warm glow from the windows contrasted with the cold moonlight.  He spoke softly to Effie, so as not to startle her and then turning on the flashlight, he went to the straw, stacked behind the mow.  Taking a bale from the stack, he clumsily made his way back to the doorway, still trying to use the flashlight.  Before heading out into the windy open ground, he switched off the light and shoved it down in his belt.  Then picking up the bale again and holding it up to block the wind from his face, he made his way, against the wind, as fast as he could, back across the driveway to the house.
	He paused on the back porch for a moment, rubbing his hands together, trying to get a little blood to flow back into them before he opened the back door and drug the bale of straw into the kitchen.
	"You're getting hay all over the kitchen, Ellis," Francine scolded from the sink as he slid the bale around the table, pushing chairs out of the way with it as he went.
	"Like I said before, you better get used to a little straw," he reminded her.  "You're going to be immersed in it soon enough."  Ellis continued to pull the bale around the table and into the bedroom, leaving a trail of straw behind him on the floor.  "Hey Fred, do you need any straw for your fly tying.  We got plenty."
	"No.  I think I'll stick with hair and feathers," he said getting up and coming into the bedroom to see what was going on.  "Wow!  That's a big unit.  It looks like it could swallow you up and you'd never be seen again."  He looked at Francine, who had come to the doorway and stood leaning against the jamb.
	"Yeah, I know," she agreed.  "Ellis promised he'd keep me safe from the thing, but I'm afraid it'll eat us both."
	Fred glanced over at Ellis and grinned, as if to say, I told you so and then looking back at Francine, he smiled and shook his head.  "I don't think you'll ever domesticate the little critter.  You might have better luck with punt or one of the other dogs.  Ellis would be better off out in the barn with the pig.  Then he'd be in his true element."  Fred laughed and went back into the parlor and his fly tying.
	Ellis chuckled as he spread the piece of tarp out over the bottom of the bed.  He then stood the bale on end next to the bed and cut the twine that bound it together.  The tight bale expanded several inches in length and little bits of straw flew off in all directions.  He pulled the compressed slices of straw from the bale, one at a time and fluffed them onto the tarp until the box he had made was full to the top.
	"God Ellis," Francine protested.  "You better stop or there won't be any room in there for us."
	"Oh, don't worry," he assured her.  "This stuff will mat way down.  It takes more than you might think.  I better go out to my bed and get the thing I covered my straw with and then you can get in there and pack it down."
	"What do you mean?"  She asked.
	"I covered the top of the straw with a sheet like thing and tucked it in around the edges to keep the shit from getting all over," he explained  "It sort of works, but a huge pillow slip would work a lot better.  Maybe you could make one, sometime."
	He turned and went out to his room.  As the door swung shut behind him, he was plunged into darkness so deep that he couldn't see a thing.  He carefully felt his way around his workbench to the bed.  He shuffled through his bedding and feeling the thin material that covered the straw, he pulled it out from under the sleeping bags and blankets.  Taking the blankets as well, he wadded them all into an armload and returned through the darkness to the front part of the house.
	Francine had already matted down the loose straw somewhat and together, they spread the thin material out over the bed, tucking it in as best they could.  Francine hopped into the large crib, lying flat on her back and smiling up at Ellis invitingly.
	"How is it?"  He asked.
	"God, It really is heavenly," she answered.  "You just melt down into it.  I can't believe how comfortable it is."  She rolled over on her stomach and snuggled down.
	"Well, it'll get harder after it all packs down, but it stays pretty comfortable."  He bent over and began to re-tie what was left of the straw bale.  "I think we better keep the rest of this bale around for a few days.  We'll want to add more straw a couple of times as this packs down."
	Francine sat up and leaned on the side rail.  "I love it," she said.  "Thanks Ellis."  She pulled him toward her and kissed him briefly on the mouth.  Then giving him a hard squeeze around the neck, she let him go.
	"Why don't you go into the parlor and smoke a joint or something and I'll finish dinner," she urged him.  "I'm making something special."
	Francine turned and went into the kitchen.  Ellis went into the parlor, joining Fred, who sat on the couch tying a fly.  He had clamped a small vise like devise, designed just for that purpose, onto the coffee table and was binding a tuft of fur onto a small hook, held tightly between the jaws of the vise with thin black thread.  Ellis watched intently as he bound off the short hairs of the fur and then tied on a neck hackle from a chicken and wound it the length of the tiny hook, tying it securely in place with the thread at the eye of the hook.  He applied a drop of glue at the knot and cut the thread.  Ellis picked up the candy tin from the table and took a joint from it.
	"You want'a help me smoke this?"  He asked, as he lit it.
	Fred reached across the table, taking the joint without saying a word.  He took a hit, handed it back and then loosened the jaws of the vise, letting the fly drop into the palm of his hand.  Holding it out for Ellis to see, he took the joint from him again.
	"There it is," he said.  "Do you think you could resist that, if you were a fish?"
	"I don't know," Ellis answered.  "What is it?"
	"Oh, I don't know.  It's just some kind of little fuzzy thing, but it'll catch fish.  I can guarantee that."
	"How do you know?"  Ellis asked.
	"I've tied flies that look like this before and they worked great.  In fact, I caught a sixteen incher on one just like this last summer up at Deer Lake."
	"It sure is tiny.  I don't know how a fish could even see the thing, much less get caught by it."
	"Shit Ellis, fish have really good eyes.  This is kinda small, but I've caught fish on flies a lot smaller than this.  This is a size eighteen hook.  My dad one time up in Canada caught a twenty-six inch Brown Trout on a size twenty-two hook.  It just depends on what they're feeding on.  Sometimes they're eating big old wooly worms and other times they may be slurping down little gnats.  And if they're feeding on gnats, you won't interest them much with anything very big.  Fish are kinda picky, most of the time."
	They finished smoking the joint and then Fred began another fly.  Ellis sat quietly watching him, as he clamped the hook in the vise and wrapped the length of it with thread.  One by one, he tied on the ingredients to this tiny little trickster and then finished it off with a few wraps of thread, a knot, and a drop of glue.  Presently they could hear Molly trundle down the stairs and she appeared in the parlor, looking blurry eyed and half-asleep.
	"Hi," she said with a yawn.  "Did you finish Francine's bed?"  She yawned again, this time with a moan attached.  "Jesus, I fell asleep up there and I can't wake up."  She stretched her arms above her head, pulling her sweater up, exposing her navel.  Ellis was reminded of another time she had done the same thing and he had poked his finger into the sweet little depression.  He had an urge to do this again, but refrained, feeling it inappropriate.  She pulled her sweater down and looked over at Fred's efforts.
	"Wow!  Those are cool," she said, picking up the small plate he had been putting his finished flies in.  "How can you make something so little?"
	"I don't know, you just make'em," he answered, clamping another hook into the vise.
	Molly watched as he tied another fly and then went into the kitchen.  Francine was working on a rice and vegetable casserole and Molly joined her in the preparation, after looking at the new bed.  Francine explained, in a low whisper, that Ellis was going to move into her room with her, at least for the time being and that their intimacy was advancing, just as she had planned.
	"Men are so malleable," she said.  "They're like clay, you can just mold them into anything you want.  All you have to do is offer them food or sex and they'll do most anything you want.  In fact, if you give them something a little weird, like a wet nose or something, they're completely at your mercy."
	"God Francine," Molly protested, "sometimes I can't decide whether you're a witch or a genius.  You seem to figure everything out so coldly and then head down that path without any heart.  I just can't keep my feelings out of my life, like you can."
	"Oh shit, don't ever think I leave my feelings behind or anything.  I just don't let the path I'm headed down get buried by them.  Like with Ellis, I knew as soon as I met him that if I ever let myself, I'd like him and maybe more.  But with him, you have to work around all the hang-ups he has about girls.  He mentioned one time, how many times he'd been dumped.  I think he's a little gun-shy of us in general and I'm just trying to soften that hard shell he thinks he has."
	"Do you really think he has a hard shell?"  Molly asked.
	"Oh no!  I just think, he thinks he has one and all I'm going to do is slip in under that part of him for a while and watch it melt away."
	"What if it doesn't?"  Molly asked.  "What if he just keeps his guard up and you never get through to the inside?"
	"I'll get there don't worry about that, but I guess if I don't for some reason, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it."  Francine laughed and shrugged her shoulders.  "Hey, you want to help me finish this up?"
	"Sure, what can I do?"
	"Here, you can cut up these carrots for a start."  She slid the cutting board toward her on the counter and went to the refrigerator.
	Ellis leaned back in the chair, put his feet up on the corner of the low table Fred was working on and took out his tobacco.  "Shit I hope John and Duncan get back pretty soon.  I'm about out of smokes."
	"Why don't you just quit smoking that shit?"  Fred asked.  That stuff's not good for you, you know."
	"Oh, I kinda like it and I'm addicted to the shit."
	"It's weird how pot is illegal and something as awful as tobacco isn't.  Somehow, we just get everything backwards.  The goddamn government is just a pawn of the big-money-boys and the rest of us don't even get much say in what happens.  You know, I'd really like to see some kind of revolution that put an end to that kinda shit, where the rich run everything."
	Shit, even if there was a revolution, the rich would end up on top anyway and we'd all be in the same place we are now.  The human critter's just a fucked up animal to start with and there's nothing we can do about it."  He finished rolling his cigarette and lit it, blowing a cloud of noxious smoke out into the room.
	"Here comes a car," Molly announced from the kitchen.
	Ellis stood up and looked out the window.  He could see the lights of a car coming up the road in the distance.  Punt, who had been curled up on the couch on the front porch, became aware of the approaching vehicle, jumped down with a growl and began to bark.  As the car turned into the driveway, his barks subsided and he stood silently watching the Toyota pull in and stop next to Fred's Volvo.  John and Duncan stepped out of the car and proceeded to the house, each carrying a grocery sack.  They stamped the snow off their feet as they came through the back porch and entered the kitchen.  Duncan set the sack he carried on the table and went to the window, looking intently back down the road they had driven in on.  John set his sack on the counter and looked out the window as well.  Molly went to him, putting her arm around his waist and squeezing him tightly.
	"Is there something wrong," she asked.
	"Yeah, what's the deal?"  Ellis asked.  "You guys look like you saw a ghost or something.
	"It looks okay," John said putting his arm around Molly and then turning to Ellis and Francine, who stood staring at he and Duncan.  "At least it looks like it."  He turned back to the window and peered off into the darkness.
	"Jesus Christ!  We saw Frank," Duncan burst out, turning around.  "In fact, he's been chasing us.  We ditched him back there a ways on the Prune Orchard Road, but he followed us all the way from town."  He fumbled around in his pocket for his cigarettes.  His hands shook and he was pale as the snow outside the window.
	"What do you mean Frank followed you?"  Francine asked.  "What you mean is that you led him here."
	"No," John answered.  "I think we lost him somewhere on the Prune Orchard Road."
	"I think he got stuck or went in the ditch or something," Duncan added nervously.
	"Yeah, no shit," John continued.  "One minute he was right behind us.  I mean right on our ass and then all of a sudden he was just gone.  It was like he just vanished."
	"Jesus Christ!"  Francine looked disgusted.  "He probably just turned his lights off and he's sitting out in the driveway right now.  How could you guys be so stupid as to lead him right to us?  I can't fucking believe you two."  She went to the stove and pulled the rice, which had begun to boil, to a cooler place on the large flat surface.
	"I don't think he's out there or the dogs would be raising hell," Fred said coming in from the parlor, "but you sure led him pretty close to the place."
	"Hey, what the hell were we supposed to do?"  Duncan objected, still white as a porcelain figurine.  "He might have killed us."
	Ellis shook his head and pulling a chair out from under the table, he sat down.  "Well fuck, there's nothing we can do about it now," he said.  "We'll just have to deal with him, and soon, it looks like."
	Francine stepped over behind Ellis and put her hand on his shoulder.  "We're as ready as we'll ever be.  I'd think, if we leave the dogs outside, they'll let us know if he shows up."  She paused for a moment and then turned back to the stove.  "Dinner will be ready pretty soon.  We might as well eat and forget about Frank until he gets here.  There's no sense sitting around here in a puddle of sweat, and getting ourselves all worked up."
	Molly hadn't said a word, but she looked scared and hung onto John as though he might vanish if she let go.  Duncan, still glancing out the window now and then, went to the table and began to pull things from the grocery sack.  First, he tossed Ellis three packages of tobacco and several books of matches.  Next, out came a six-pack of beer.  He tried to smile as he set it on the table, but it was lost in the paleness of his present condition.  He reached into the sack and pulled a second six-pack of beer out, opened one and sat down next to Ellis.
	"Here, have one of these."  He pushed the six-pack toward him and picked up one of the books of matches, lighting his cigarette.  "Well, I went into the bar while John finished up at the library and played a couple games of pool.  That's why we have this beer."  He pushed one of the six-packs over in front of Fred, who had just sat down next to him.  "I'd only played a couple of games, when this guy I'd never seen before came in and sat down at the bar.  He watched this other guy and I play another game and then just before we were done, he put a quarter up to challenge the table.  I won and while he was racking the balls, he asked if I knew a guy named Ellis."  He paused long enough to glance over at Ellis for a moment and then continued.  "I knew right then who he was and I didn't say anything.  The other guy, I'd just beaten, you know him, that Bill guy we beat all the time down there.  Well, he just up and tells him that we're roommates.  'Oh yeah,' he says and just finishes racking the balls.  Then he says he's been looking for you, that he met you hitchhiking somewhere in California and since he was in the area, he just wanted to look you up.  Well I was pretty nervous by then and I couldn't shoot for shit.  He beat me out of a buck and then played the other guy, Bill.  John came in while they were playing and I split before he could get anymore out of me, but he must have followed us to the grocery store, because when we came out, he was parked right next to us.  We tried to act like we didn't see him, but when we drove off, he followed us.  We went out through Albion and then took the back roads all the way to where the Shawnee Road comes out on the highway.  He just stayed behind us the whole way.  Shit I drove like a madman.  I'm surprised we didn't go in the ditch.  When we turned off on the Prune Orchard Road he got right on our ass and I drove even faster.  Fuck, we were sliding around all the corners, I don't know how we stayed on the road and then he disappeared right at that same corner John drove off last winter."  He paused again to look at Fred and took a drink of his beer.  "The only thing I can figure, is that he went off the road."
	John and Molly still stood at the counter.  Francine had put the cut-up vegetables into a frying pan and was sautéing them on the stove.  Fred got up, going into the parlor for a joint.
	"Well," Fred said coming back into the kitchen, "he'll have to get drug out of the ditch by the farmer that lives there.  If we're lucky, he'll give up on us for the night, but you can bet he'll start from there tomorrow and drive every road out here until he finds us."  He sat down, lit the joint and handed it to Duncan.
	Duncan took a drag, washed it down with a gulp of beer and passed it on.  "Shit, what are we going to do?"
	"That depends on what Frank does, I guess," Ellis said.
	Molly pulled herself away from John.  She was crying by now and tears ran freely down her cheeks.  "God, how could I get everyone in such a mess?"  She sniffled.  "I'm just going to go with him when he comes and then you guys will be out of it."
	"The hell you will!"  Francine said sternly, turning from the stove.  "You'll do no such thing.  We've all gone this far and we're going to take it to the end, whatever that is.  If we have to blow Frank's brains out, then that's what we'll do, but you're not going to go back with him and we're not going to quit now."  She paused for a moment, turning back to her sautÈing vegetables and then turned back to Molly and the others.  "And that's all there is to it."
	Molly sobbed and leaned into John, who held her tightly.  "Things will work out okay," he said.  "Let's not get in a panic.  I'll talk to him.  He has to listen to reason."
	Molly sobbed again and buried her face in his chest.  "Oh, he doesn't know what reason is," she blubbered.
	John led her into the parlor and they sat down on the couch.  "Oh, there's some groceries in that sack," he said as they went out.
	"Well, I guess we better keep our eyes peeled from now on," Fred said, taking the joint from Ellis.
	"Hey Duncan," Francine said.  "Take a look at the new bed Ellis made me this afternoon."  She pointed to her room.
	Duncan got up, went to the door of her room and peered in.  "It's big enough, don't you think?  In fact it looks big enough for both of you."
	"Yeah, it sure is," she agreed, turning to Ellis with a smile.
	Duncan turned from the doorway and sat back down at the table.  "What the hell," he said.  "Isn't anyone going to help me drink this beer?"
	Fred took a bottle from the pack and handed it to Ellis, who opened it and held it out to Francine.  She took it, said thanks and set it on top of the stove in front of her.  Fred handed him another and together, the four of them guzzled away merrily while dinner cooked on the stove.  Francine peeked into the large grocery sack John had set on the counter and then began pulling the items out one at a time.
	"Wow!  You guys must have been feeling pretty flush," she said, setting a package of bacon on the counter.  Along with the bacon there was a carton of eggs, butter, a five pound bag of whole-wheat flour, a bag of raisins and finally at the bottom of the sack was a large can of coffee.  "Aha, coffee," She said gleefully.  "We were just about out.  I'm glad to see this."  She went to the parlor door.  "Hey, what did you have in mind for the raisins?"
	"I thought you might like to put them in the groatcakes, or something," he answered.
	"Yeah, that'll be great."
	Molly looked up.  She had stopped crying and looked a little brighter.  "I collected all the stuff up stairs that I recognized as yours and then I forgot to bring them down, but it's all together," she said.
	"Oh thanks, I'll go get it after dinner.  Did you think about how we could fit that other big chair in here?  It just takes up too much space in my room."
	"I was just sitting here thinking about it right now," she said,  "The only thing I can figure is, if we blocked the front door with it, or put the couch there in front of the door and then put the chair here."
	"Either of those might work.  We don't use the front door much anyway, except to let the dogs in and out and it's only another couple feet around the corner to the door out from the kitchen."
	"How long until dinner?  Do we have time right now to try and move this stuff?"  John asked.
	"Yeah, I think the rice needs another ten minutes or so and then I want to mix it in with the vegetables and let it all fry for a little while.  You might as well go ahead and do it."
	"Let's do it then," John said, getting up from the couch.  "Hey you guys, you want'a help rearrange the parlor?"
	"Sure, why not," Duncan said, pushing himself away from the kitchen table.
	Fred and Ellis got up as well and went into the parlor.  "Jesus, it's pretty full in here now.  How are you going to fit anything else in here?"  Fred asked.
	"Well," John began.  "I think if we move the TV over there next to the stove and then slide that chair over that way and push the couch down into the corner, we can put the other chair right there in front of the door."
	"Yeah, that would work, or we could shove the couch up this way and put the chair down in that corner," Fred said pointing in all directions at once.
	"Either way, it doesn't matter to me," John concurred.  "First, let's get the coffee table out of here, so we have a little room to work."
	Duncan and Fred moved the table into the kitchen and John unplugged the television.  Ellis stepped over to the television, helping John move it and the table it sat on to the other wall and then ran the cord back to where it plugged in.  They next, slid the couch into the corner where John had first suggested, while Duncan and Fred carried the new chair in from Francine's room.  They had to tip it up on it's side to get it through the doorways, but once into the parlor, it fit nicely in front of the door.  They made a few slight adjustments, moved the coffee table back into the center of the room and stood back to admire their work.
	"Shit, that was easy," Fred said plopping down into the new chair and putting his feet up on the arm of the couch.  "You can even see the TV from everywhere now too."
	Duncan pointed to the coffee table and Fred's fly tying paraphernalia.  "You going fishing or something?" he said looking at Fred.
	"Yeah, I thought I'd see what I can catch out of Rebel Flat Creek," he answered with a laugh.
	"Yeah really," Duncan chuckled, walking around the table to the television and turning it on.
	"Shit, do we have to listen to that fucking thing?"  Fred mumbled.
	"You wouldn't want to miss the news, would you?"  Duncan said in as pompous a way as he could.  "We have to keep up on all the wonderful things going on in the world, you know.  We wouldn't want to get left behind, as America pushes its way forward into the face of the rest of the world.  You know, 'might is right' and all that sorta shit."
	"Yeah, we better see how many innocent woman and children we've killed over in Viet Nam today," Fred said shaking his head.  Besides they might advertise something we can't live without."
	"And here it is right now," Duncan announced.  "Oh boy, it's a new car."
	"Yeah, that would be nice, a brand new Ford," Fred agreed.  "All you need is Six thousand bucks.  I'll stick with my old Volvo."  He got up from the chair, moved to the couch and clamped another hook in his fly vise.  
	"What are you going to make, Fred?'  Duncan asked.
	"I think I'll make a few little black gnats."
	"Man, that's a tiny enough hook," John said, bending over to look closer at the small bent piece of steel.
	"Gnats aren't very big," was all Fred said as he began wrapping the hook with thread.
	"Dinner's ready," Francine called from the kitchen and everyone but Fred went in, lining up like school children in front of the stove.  Francine had already served herself and she took her dinner, went into the parlor and sat down in the new chair.  "Hey Ellis, when you come in here, would you bring me a beer?"
	He was last in line.  He stepped over to the table, taking one of the beers from the carton, opened it and went into the parlor.  Handing her the bottle, he started to turn back to the kitchen, but she stopped him with a gentle hand on the back of his leg.  He paused and turned back to her.  She sat, nearly submerged in the large soft chair, looking up at him with a contented smile and then lightly rubbed the back of his leg.
	"Thanks," she said.
	He smiled, turned and left the room with her eyes following him.  By the time they all served up their dinner and gone into the parlor, Fred had finished the gnat and he too went into the kitchen to get his share of the rice and vegetables.  After a quiet dinner, they all sat nestled together in the parlor watching television for several hours.  John and Molly went up to bed first.  Duncan followed shortly and Fred went out the back to his cold room soon after, leaving Ellis and Francine alone in the parlor.
	"Well," she said, stretching her arms up above her head and yawning.  "I'm ready to try out the new bed.  Why don't you stoke the fire while I put some blankets on it and then we can see if the thing will hold both of us without collapsing?"
	Ellis yawned as well and stood up, stepping to the stove.  The fire flickered gently and he reached down where the metal wastebasket sat half full of coal, dumping two cans full in on top of the fire.  "We're going to have to dump out these clinkers again tomorrow," he said, shutting the stove door.
	"Yeah, we should do that at least once a day, I suppose," she answered, walking into the bathroom to pee and brush her teeth.
	Ellis stacked the dishes, which had been set randomly on the counter into the sink and turned off the lights.  When Francine came out of the bathroom, he went in and shut the door.  She picked up both the shotgun and rifle, took them into the bedroom and set them against the wall next to the bed.  She undressed, crawled over the side of the large crib and settled into the soft straw.  He came out of the bathroom, removed his clothes and joined her.  They lay there side by side without a word for several minutes before Francine turned onto her side and, laid her arm across him.
	"This is really cozy," she said, stroking the thin hair on his chest.
	He turned toward her and ran his hand up the length of her body to her shoulder.  She was naked and smooth and warm.  He brushed her hair away from her face and pulled her closer to him, giving her a gentle squeeze.  Her lips touched his cheek lightly, then with only a brief hesitation, found their way to his lips and she kissed him softly.  He quivered a little with anticipation and returned her kiss, but pulled away after a short moment.
	"Do you know what you're doing, getting involved with me?"  He asked.
	"No, Should I?"  She asked, rubbing her hand along his back.
	"I don't know.  It just seems so weird how we've come together out of this mess with Frank and all.  It's like, no dates, no courting, no nothing and here we are, all snuggled up together.  I'm not complaining or anything, it's just so different from what it's always been like before."  He leaned toward her again and kissed her lightly on the lower lip.  "We just kinda came together without all the normal games."
	"Yeah, it's kind of like natural selection.  Like some natural force just pulled us together like a magnet of some kind and here we are, warm and cozy and no reason not to be."  She wrapped a leg around him and pulled him tight against her.
	He felt like he was melting into her body, like butter into a backed potato and his concerns slid smoothly away, drifting off into the distance like mist.  His lips found first her shoulder and then following the easy trail up along her neck to her mouth, he kissed her deeply.  Like explorers in unfamiliar territory, they slid their tongues along the edges of each other's mouth, as if tiptoeing along the edge of a stream before plunging in.  He could feel her nipples stiffen and stand up, pressing against his chest.  He let his lips meander down across her chin to her neck, wandering the length of her collarbone, out to her shoulder and back again.  He followed her sternum down between her breasts and then gently slid his tongue up along the side of one to its alert tip, encircling it carefully before surrounding it with his lips.  She quivered and gripped him tightly with her leg, nearly squeezing the air out of him and then she relaxed, giving him ample room to continue his exploration.  He traveled from one breast to the other and back before continuing down along her ribs, cataloging each in turn as he made his way to the depression of her navel.  As he ran his tongue around the smooth edges of this shallow crater, he was attracted by fine hairs that tickled his lips as he passed by.  He was drawn further, into the ever deepening forest and soon found himself lost among the thickening curls that led him, still further into the woods and finally to the edge of a moist and fragrant ravine.  He let his tongue wander along the rim of this crevasse momentarily, before venturing into the humid jungle below and then, like a serpent, he slid into this sweet pit as completely as he could.  He felt for a moment like a fat bear wiggling into his winter den, or a salmon swimming up stream to complete his cycle, but he soon came to the end of his line, his fins dangled in the abyss and he slithered back to the surface, where he contented himself with the smooth wet forms near the shore.  Like a carp, he splashed in the shallows, playfully immersing himself in this steamy broth that coated his tongue and with all the ecstasy of a pig in a mire, he gently nudged the edges of his wallow, looking for the perfect place to rest his nose.  He soaked himself, in this pulsing spa until he was out of breath and then came crawling up for air.  He let his tongue meander aimlessly back through the thick curls as they thinned to fuzz near her belly button and then sliding himself up past her breasts, with only a brief pause, he wrapped his arms around her and rolled them both over, so she lay above him.  In a single movement, she pulled him, slowly but completely, into her and they moved rhythmically together, causing the mortises of the bed to creak.  Their cadence waxed progressively until becoming an extended spasmodic shudder and then coasted back to a gradual roll, before subsiding in exhaustion.
	She lay quietly on top of him, listening to their heartbeats throttle back to normal and the sound of distant coyotes singing hymns to the night sky.  She was warm, and damp and tired.  She was ready to sleep.  The coyotes paused in their praises for a moment and she slid off him to one side, leaving him only partially covered by the blankets.
	Ellis felt contented, not only by their recent union, but also by the fact that he had managed to make love, he thought for the first time, without falling in love.  He had an honest affection for her, as well as what he considered an ample amount of respect, but he had stopped short of submitting himself to those emotions of love that had always in the past confined him into a narrow corridor.  He might fall in love if he chose, but it wasn't some internal command that held him hostage by his own emotions.  He felt unencumbered to take his own intellectual path without the restraints of love.  They had drawn no lines nor placed any boundaries on the direction or shape of things to come.  He was free, but he still felt a little hole in his vision.  It was more a blurry spot than a hole.  It seemed to nag at him like a sore muscle, from out of his otherwise contented state.  He rolled toward her, kissed her on the neck and said: "Goodnight."
	She had already let the coyote's songs lull her into some other distant world and she made no notice of him.  He turned onto his side, pulled the covers around him and drifted off to sleep himself.
	Morning came slowly and quietly.  The wind had subsided and Ellis opened his eyes to the sight of large snowflakes drifting down past the un-curtained window.  He lay there for some time, wondering what he may have started with Francine.  Once again, he thought of the lack of commitments they held between them and was glad, but it still made him uneasy.  He wasn't used to this kind of relationship.  Previously, he had always made commitments, at least to himself, about every girl he had ever slept with and with Francine, there were none that he could identify.  They had both presented themselves, no strings attached, and he just wasn't prepared to deal with it in his normal fashion.  It confused him.  It made him think of Boesel, his old friend that had always said; "Stay fluid."  This seemed like the only thing he could do.  There was no sense worrying about it for now, he thought.
	He looked over at Francine, still sleeping next to him and wondered how she felt about the turn in their relationship and then became aware that she may not even think of it as a change.  He realized how little he knew of this girl and questioned whether he had done the right thing by sleeping with her.  He realized that he was back to considering the question of commitment again and decided to push the whole matter out of his head for the time being.
	He sat up, letting the covers fall off his upper body.  The cold air in the room rushed under the blankets giving him goose bumps.  Francine stirred slightly and rolled toward him, without opening her eyes.  She mumbled something un-discernable and attempted to pull the covers up tightly around her neck.
	"It's snowing again," he said, slipping out from under the covers and crawling over the side of the bed rail, onto the cold floor.  He quickly stepped onto his pants that lay crumpled next to the bed, found his underwear and began getting dressed.  Francine woke and leaned up on one elbow, watching him, as she began to focus on the day.
	"How much has it snowed?"  She asked, yawning.
	He went to the window and looked out.  "Looks like a couple of inches," he said, "but I think it's about to quit."
	"How can you tell that?" she queried.
	"Oh, it seems like the flakes get huge like that, when it's about to quit."
	"You don't know that," she questioned.  "You're just making that up."
	"I guess I don't really know, but it just seems like it usually happens that way," he said, pulling on his shoes.  "I better check the fire.  I suppose I ought to start one in the kitchen too."  He left the room and went into the parlor.
	The fire was nearly out and the mass of clinkers loomed up out of the remaining embers like the cinder dome of a small volcano.  He found the bucket they had used previously and struggled clumsily to extract the fused mass from the firebox and into the bucket with the iron rods Francine had used earlier.  Once the clinkers were out, he gathered the smoldering remains of the fire to the center of the firebox, dumped two cans of coal onto them and shut the door.
	Francine had gotten up, dressed and was staring into the open firebox of the cook stove, as he went through the kitchen on his way to dump the ashes.  "Hold on a minute," she said.  "Lets get these big hunks out of here too before we start it up."
	He held the bucket next to the stove and she reached in, pulling two or three large clumps of clinker out.  She dropped them into the bucket and looked up at him.
	"Well, good morning," she said, reaching out and squeezing his arm gently.
	"Is it a good morning?"  He asked, smiling at her.
	"It is for me," she said, going around behind the stove to get part of an old newspaper to start the fire.
	"Good!  Me too," he said heading out the door.  He dumped the clinkers next to the front porch like he had before.  Turning to go back in, he realized he had to relieve himself and setting down the bucket, he walked around behind a lilac bush near the back door.  He peed into the snow, making a cavity, an inch or two in diameter, all the way to bare ground.  Picking up the bucket, he went into the house, stopping long enough on the porch to scoop into the coal bin for a bucket of coal.
	"Where you been dumping those things, anyway," Francine asked, as he set the bucket next to the stove.
	He told her and sat down at the kitchen table, picking up his tobacco and papers.  She had finished laying the fire and struck a match, poking it into the open firebox door.  The newspapers caught quickly and she pulled her hand out of the opening, shutting the door.  She prepared the coffeepot, filled it with water and put it on the stove.  Sitting down, she pulled the still open bag of tobacco over in front of her and rolled a cigarette for herself.  Ellis watched her roll a perfect cigarette, noticing that she did basically the same as he did, but it just came out better for some reason.  He wasn't sure what she did different, but it seemed there must be something.  She lit the cigarette, blew a cloud of smoke in his direction and smiled.
	"Well, what's up for the day?"  She asked.  You want'a go skiing, or do we have to wait around all day for Frank?"
	"I'd rather go skiing, but I suppose we better keep an eye out for him.  He could show up any minute, really."  Ellis got up and closed the primary draft on the stove, forcing the smoke to travel around the oven, before exiting to the chimney.  This changed the potential hot spot on the cooking surface and he slid the coffeepot a few inches to the right, before sitting down again.
	We might get away with making a cool run across the road on that steep hill I was telling you about," he said.
	Francine turned and looked out the kitchen window.  She could make out a steep hill across the road that disappeared up behind the cover of branches from several large locusts sitting in the front yard.
"Yeah, we might be able to go over there," she said, turning back to Ellis.  "We'd be able to see if anyone came.  If we took a gun, we could deal with him from there I guess, if we had to."
	"That might be okay," he agreed.  "It wouldn't be quite as good as being right here, but if Fred was here, we'd have him kinda surrounded, especially if one of us went down around the other side of the granary and came up from the barn.
	"Sounds like a plan.  We'll have to see how it goes," she said taking the nearly full ashtray and dumping the contents into the stove.  She adjusted the position of the coffeepot on the large cooking surface and sat back down.
	"You know your bed worked out real nice, Ellis, and that straw is really comfortable.  It doesn't take long for it to pack down to fit your body.  We already have two little dips, just the right size and shape for each of us.  I have a friend in town with a sewing machine that she doesn't use and I think she'll let me borrow it.  I could sew up a big pillowslip for the straw and then it wouldn't get in the bed with us.  I really want to get back into sewing.  I might even be able to make a little money doing it.  I made a lot of extra money, mending and making clothes for people when I was an undergraduate.  You'd be surprised how many people need pants hemmed and other shit done.  You did such a good job on the bed, I'll bet you could make me a nice sewing table sometime."
	"Yeah, there's still enough stuff out there to make a table of some kind, when the time comes," he said, glancing out the window.  "Look at that," he nodded out the window.  "It's stopped snowing, just like I said it would.  You should never doubt me.  I know all that kind of shit.  I'm never wrong about the weather."  He laughed, as if to admit how ludicrous his statement was and then got up, going to the window, where he stood staring down the road.
	"You know, I just wish that fucking Frank would come and get it over with," he began after a long pause.  "It's funny though, at first I was protecting Molly and covering my own ass, and now we're all just protecting Molly and John.  And they're too defenseless to even help themselves.  It's weird how things change like that."  He came back to the table and standing behind her, he pulled her hair from around her neck, bent down and kissed her on the forehead.  "That's just one of the things I like about you."
	"What's that?"  She asked.
	"Well, if you'll pardon the expression," he said, with a nervous grin, "you're really kind of a tough old broad.  You're not afraid to jump right into the middle of a mess and clean the son-of-a-bitch up.  Maybe, when this is all over with, we ought to move up into the mountains of Montana somewhere and really get back to the land."
	"I don't think I'd like it out there without any people.  I'm afraid I like to have a little more stimulus around.  Remember I was working on a degree in molecular biology and I haven't given that up yet.  It's something that really interests me and I think I can offer something to the field.  I guess I'm not ready to just hole up in the mountains."
	"Yeah, I'm probably not either.  It sounds cool, but you're right about the lack of stimulus out there, at least people stimulus.  I'd have to whittle faces on all the trees, just to have someone to talk to.  You think you'll finish your degree, huh?"
	"Oh yeah, I don't know when it'll work out, but it will.  I'm not worried about that.  It's just a matter of when.  I was doing real well in school and I've been thinking about applying for some scholarships and grants that would get me through.  I only have one more year to finish up.  I got a grant the first year from a big drug company back east to work on the relationship between nerve cells and the different kinds of proteins in the enzymes that we think might control them."
	"Wow!  That sounds heavy.  It also sounds over my head.  I took a biology class one time, but that's about it for me and science.  It sounds interesting though.  I wish I had more science smarts, but I just didn't do too well in those kind of classes and so I stayed away from them."
	"They're not any harder than any other classes.  It's just a matter of what you're interested in."  She got up, moved the coffee, which had started to perk, back from the heat a little and then went to the counter, taking a half dozen groat cakes from the tin.  She set them in a low pan and put them in the oven.
	"I suppose we ought to eat something," she said sitting back down.
	They heard the sound of the door into the back of the house slam and then Fred came into the kitchen.  He was fully dressed and carrying his pistol.  He set the gun on the counter and headed for the bathroom.  As he went past the door to Francine's room, he glanced in.
	"Well, it looks like the first big night in the new bed went okay, without the thing collapsing," he said chuckling and then disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
	Francine and Ellis looked at each other, made a humored little snort and smiled.  "He's just jealous that he's up there alone with no one to help keep him warm," she said and put her feet up on Ellis' lap, leaning back in her chair.
	The toilet flushed and Fred came out of the bathroom.  "Well, is this the day of the Frank?"  He asked, picking up the shotgun, cracking it open to see if it was loaded and then aiming it out the window.
	"I'd say, it is," Ellis answered.  "You think that coffee's about done?"
	"Yeah, I think it's ready.  Hey Fred why don't you grab some cups from over there?"
	He set the shotgun back in the corner, went to the dish rack, brought three cups to the table and sat down.
	"Aren't you going to pour it for us?"  Francine asked.
	"Oh, I suppose I could," he said, getting back up and going to the stove.  He poured the three cups full, set the pot back on the stove and sat down again.
	"Well, what's the plan?"  Fred began.  "Should we just plug him as soon as he drives in, or should we wait and see what he does first and then shoot him."  He laughed, showing that he wasn't serious and took a drink of coffee.
	"Jesus, I don't really know what to do, but you can bet we better be damn careful or we'll end up in prison for the rest of our lives," Ellis said.  "Any way you look at it, we're going to have the place crawling with cops for a while.  I suppose we should gather up anything that has to do with dope and get ready to ditch it.  This place will have to be clean as a whistle."
	"Yeah, no shit," Francine agreed.  "They'll crawl over this place like a bunch of cockroaches.  We need to get everything out of here, or at least ready, so we can get it out fast, if we need to."
	She took her feet off Ellis' lap and got up, going to the stove.  Opening the oven, she stuck her hand in to feel how hot it was and then shut it again.  "It's starting to heat up in there.  It shouldn't be too long before the cakes are warm enough."
	Fred got up and went to the sink, looking out the window.  The fresh snow had covered the tracks in the yard from the previous days and the gray sky cast no shadows, leaving little definition except for the contrast offered by the buildings and trees that seemed to sit randomly around the house.  He could see most of a half mile down the road, but even it had been obscured by the snow.  The fence line next to it was the only sign it was there at all.  Presently Effie meandered out of the barn and slowly made her way toward the house.  She swayed back and forth as she walked and she looked as though each step she took was a chore.  She didn't like either the cold or the snow and seemed to force herself along.  She trudged along the same path she always took from the barn to the house.  Several days before, she had cut this trail down through the snow, to where she could easily walk along without it touching her belly, but the wind from the night before, along with the fresh fall, had filled the path to the brim and she now plowed along, with the white powder half way up her sides.  She looked miserable, Fred thought, as he turned back to Ellis and Francine.
	Are there any of those dried peas left, we sometimes feed the pig?"  He asked.
	"Dried peas," Francine said.  We can make pea soup out of those."