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Show 418 bowed. Lorin kept an arm around his mother and looked around at the crowd gathered behind them and on the other side of the hole. It was a long prayer. Lorin could see Stephen at the edge of the crowd, ashen-faced and sullen, smoking cigarettes and grinding them into the grass with his heel. Later, as they all returned to the cars, Stephen walked at some distance from the rest of them, and during the drive home Lorin kept looking at him hut he wouldn't meet his eye. "I hate to leave him there," his mother said. "You know he's okay, Mother," Sonia said. At the house afterward, while the relatives and friends ate the meat-loaf and casseroles and jello salads and rolls and carrot sticks and radishes brought in large baskets by the ward relief society, the two of them went out to the back yard with the pint of scotch Lorin had brought with him in his suitcase. They sat on their heels side by side, hidden by the garage, leaning against the white clapboard wall and took turns with the bottle while Lorin told Stephen what he thought of him for being the disrespectful, callous, thoughtless and unfeeling little shit he had turned out to be. Lorin was very disappointed in his brother. He had been for years. * * * * * * Having no friends made it easier. Lorin crawled out of bed and felt his way on his hands and knees across the floor to where his alarm clock buzzed, and shut it off. He sat for a few minutes with his back against the wall, holding his head with one hand until the nausea went away, and with the other cradling his penis so it didn't touch the floor. The room |