OCR Text |
Show Anting Alone pa g e 134 disintegrate, careers would be obsolete - or something. Come to think of it, they were sort of a drag to be around these days. They were showing evidence of aging. And Sam wondered sometimes why he drove all the way up (or down) to visit them whenever he had some free time from his busy teaching schedule. So anyway, Sam had waded into this barroom brawl. He would never really know why - ; was he prone to such noble impulses as self-sacrificing loyalty to friends? He doubted it. (Of course he doubted it - he was the Epic Poet of Low Self-Esteem.) Probably he was merely eager> somewhere in his big atrophied glands, to experience the sensation of 303 pounds plied assertively against the ligament and cartilage of another human being. And that's just what he experienced. He threw no punches - wisely, for such a heavy, sluggish man. He just bearhugged his opponent and whirled him around and around until his opponent's feet sailed out from under him and he landed on his butt on the floor. The guy was flat on his butt, legs stuck straight out, feet splayed like a little boy's. And he looked up slackjawed at this huge, orange-bearded face, Sam's face, that was bursting with something like pride. The guy was too scared to move. He looked Jewish, too, the redheaded freckled kind. Sam smiled down on him. And that was all. What we had here was a mock blood initiation rite. Everybody got bounced, and that's all. But Sam felt good. Damn good. Sam talked in monosyllables for several |