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Show 157 People asked him where the baby was, and he smiled politely and asked, "What baby?" That he was immune to insults Lorin found intolerable. Still, Lorin prided himself on a generous streak, and a terrible story about Shannon made it almost possible to forgive this immunity. Once, it seemed, at his high school in San Bernardino, when he was a raw-boned sixteen, Shannon was set upon in the locker room by ten or twelve husky youths, some of them younger than himself, just as he had thrown his last stitch into his locker and closed it to go to the showers. Already dressed themselves and having waited for this moment, they pushed and dragged him over benches and between tiers of lockers where startled freshmen who were not in on the prank watched without saying anything, glad that this was not happening to them. He was pulled through the door that led from the locker room into the vestibule that had the doorway to the towel room on one side and the lavatory on the other, and directly ahead the heavy steel door to the outside. His bare feet beating against the concrete floor he was forced to this door, one of his tormentors hit the crash bar to open it, and the others shoved him outside, pulling the door quickly shut and locked. It was the end of a period and students were already coming and going along the asphalt quad between classes. A crowd gathered to watch the spectacle of a tall skinny kid, stark naked, beating with both fists against the steel door and screaming while small spurts of urine drew horizontal lines across the door and ran in long fingers to the bottom. He was rescued by one of the coaches and taken home hysterical where he required sedatives for several days. His father was said not to be sympathetic; he felt his son should have given a better account of himself than that. Lorin thought so too. "I see we're wearing our green pointy tonight, Shannon," he said, |