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Show RTVER "Six months! Jesus, all that hair in just six months!" He thought about this for a while. "Don't it itch?" "Nope," I said. He eased his massive weight down onto the naugahide opposite me. "You from California?" he asked. "Yep," I said. "What the hell are you doin' in this backwater?" I told him. "I've got this rowboat, see..." "Goddamn," he said when I was finished. "Just like Huck Finn." "I am Huck Finn," I said. He thought this was great. He laughed and slapped his ham-sized palm on the table top and ordered me another Pabst. "You know what?" he said. "I always wanted to do that, take a boat and go down the river. Just say to hell with everything and go, all the way down to New Orleans. Hell, all the way to the goddamn Gulf of Mexico!" "You ought to do it," I said. "Hell," he said, and stared off into space. When he refocused, he looked at me with a sort of wonderment. "You know what?" he said. "Yeah. I'll bet that if you were my age," I said, "you'd let your hair grow long." "Damn right," he said. "Down to my goddamn knees." The food was pretty terrible, but I wolfed it down and walked back to the levee in the moonlight. I got back to the boat exhausted. I searched out a place where the cows couldn't find me and fell asleep immediately. Drifting. When I remember drifting if s easy not to think about the long, cold, gray days in the wet wind. I mostly remember days like the one that dawned in -182- |