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Show All the Variables & Other Love Stories 53 They found poor Beau Walker the next morning curled up under the stairs at the foot of the U.S. Army recruiters' office, shivering with fever and utterly blind. That's God's truth. Blind, and sobbing about Jay Meeks being ten feet tall and the devil himself. They found Beau Walker so blind he might as well have had no eyes at all. Beau Walker had got himself properly drank and marched right up the Army recruiters' office stairs, to Melissa Johnson's apartment door. He had the whole town's support behind him, since they had all grown tired of broad daylight lasting all through the night, and with the weeping, too, not a man was able to sleep with Melissa Johnson showing Jay Meeks whatever it was she had up there. Beau Walker pounded on the door until someone opened it. He swept right in and shoved Jay Meeks aside and took Melissa Johnson into his arms with every intention of laying her whether she wanted it or not. Beau swore later that was when Jay Meeks stood upon, black as tar and vicious as hell, ten feet tall or more, eyes of fired steel that clenched down in Beau's throat and willed him away. Out the door and down the stairs. "You love me!" Melissa Johnson cried out. "No," Jay Meeks said. "Yes!" Melissa Johnson insisted, "You love me. It's true. Dare not deny me three times. You see me truly, and are not afraid!" Beau Walker said later he heard all this sitting at the bottom of the stairs, rubbing his skull. He went out to his daddy's pickup and fetched his Adams State College baseball bat from the cab, and hauled back up the stairs set to punish Jay Meeks once and for all. When he got to the top of the stairs, he threw the unlocked door wide and beheld Melissa Johnson bent in half, her naked ankles braced hard against Jay Meeks' shoulders. |