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A few hours later Saul corrals the Ram in front of Sladich's Bar. What a surprise to see a name like this out west. Inside,
he half expects cowboy rabbis huddled over the bar, the Torah unscrolled the entire length. Not too far from the truth. Alcohol
can have the power of the Pentateuch. Genesis . . . Jim Beam. And certainly the debate is lively even though everyone makes
the same point:
All
down the shitter, the whole kit and caboodle!
These muttering men notice Saul's arrival but they don't stare for more than a second. The sole woman, her eyelashes so lacquered
they practically crackle, has her arms around two geezers. They should be singing some bawdy song, the way they rock back
and forth, but they don't seem to have the memory for the lyrics. Saul moseys to the bar. The amount of smoke is amazing,
ashtrays blooming with spent cigarettes, and the floor is covered with the crushed exoskeletons of peanuts. But this adds
to the unmistakable flavor of the West. In Disneyland, these people would be mechanical, drinking their whiskey, telling their
pre-taped stories, only their outfits would be different: ten-gallon hats, chaps, holstered Colts, and maybe a player piano
instead of a jukebox. Saul scoots onto a stool and—what the hell—shouts, "Drinks on the house."

The bartender pokes his head up. "What the fuck?" he says.

"Drinks all around. On me, I guess. Drinks on me."

"Damn right," the bartender says. He goes about filling and refilling glasses, handing out beer. "And what do you want, Rockefeller?"

"A whiskey. Make it a double." Saul, nervous at the prospect of hard liquor, fiddles his bulky gold Rolex, close to ten thousand
dollars on his wrist. Oh shit! Does everyone notice? I mean, you don't wear flashy jewelry—and that always seemed to be a
sign of great restraint—but in here, your working-class conversion might be blown by precision timing. Saul slips off the
watch; maybe he'll pawn it later.

The bartender pushes the whiskey forward. Saul picks up the drink, pauses, tries not to smell the high-octane fumes, smiles,
slams back the shot (please, whatever you do, don't puke) and raps the empty glass against the counter. Eye ducts tear. Salivary
glands flood. Everything threatens to liquefy, to overflow, but the levee holds and the booze recedes. Whew! An apple-juice
chaser would be nice, something acidic to cut the aftertaste, but the bartender, without even asking, pours a refill.

"Oh, great," Saul says, defeated by charity. "I tell you what, give everyone a shot of their choice. I'm paying."

"You just bought a round."

"Well, I'm buying again." Saul bends over and sips off the amber meniscus (if only whiskey were more like wine). But the hard
living of this second drink is a touch easier to stomach. He glances about the bar, disappointed at the initial public reaction
to his generosity—nobody moves, nobody says thank you, nobody appreciates the money spent—but eventually, in collective slow
motion, a dirty dozen surrounds this patron of the patrons.

"You feeling good?" one of them asks. He has a deposit of spittle on his lower lip, a small dot which conjoins to the upper
lip every time he talks. "Must be feeling mighty fucking good, I'd say."

"I guess," Saul answers. "Though we're all miserable."

"I hear you."

Another person hobbles over with a severe limp—this is a town of limps, from logging accidents to motorcycle crashes to birth
defects as a result of mining techniques, and the sidewalk often resembles a hospital hallway. He pats Saul on the shoulder.
"I tell you the 'Auld Lang Syne' is playing today. Heard it when I woke. Guy Lombardo conducting in my head, clear as a bell."
His words are not so much spoken as distilled.

Saul nods. "We might walk in newness of life."

"That's right."

Someone yells out, "Where you from?"

"Who the hell knows anymore?" Saul says.

A cluck of agreement. "Fucking said it, you did."

"What's the name?" the same someone yells out again.

"What does it matter? My people don't know me."

"You said it."

Saul looks over the crowd and tells them, "We are members of one another." And he pulls out his Italian-leather wallet and
slaps down his second-to-last hundred-dollar bill. "Let's drink on Mr. Franklin's bill. I know he won't mind."

And yes, people cheer, and yes, people practically lift Saul onto their shoulders, as if he were a beloved coach on a forever
losing team. "Good on you!" they say, their strength made perfect in weakness.

An empty wallet later and everyone is second-stage drunk and everyone is in cars and everyone is driving to someone's house—it
belongs to the quiet guy who stayed at the end of the bar, the guy who drank the free drinks without saying so much as a "Thanks"
until he picked himself off the stool and said, "Party at my place." Saul hauls a cargo of men and loose bottles, each rolling
with every turn, and next to him, in the front seat, sits a young man called Digger.

"Shit," Digger says, "I've always read about the mysterious stranger, ever since
Shane
in the sixth grade. Guess I've been waiting for him to show up, it seems at least. Can screw with your head, though. Things'll
change, that's what you think, things'll change without lifting a goddamn finger. That's the problem with the whole country,
I suppose."

"Alan Ladd," Saul mutters.

Digger cracks his knuckles against his chin. "So, mister," he says, "where you staying in Anaconda?"

"Don't know."

"My mom and I have an extra room. Could stay there, that is if you want."

"Maybe."

"Do you smoke grass?"

"Not right now."

"Okay. But if you want, just say 'Open sesame.' I also got some crystal meth if that's of interest."

The procession takes a left onto a "No Trespassing" dirt road and continues for another mile, along scrub, until it arrives
at an old homesteading shack. This place is battered, a corner of the tin roof pared back, the porch sagging, but it still
seems inhabitable. Curtains are in the windows; posies in the window boxes. The cars park in a haphazard fashion, and people
stumble from their splayed wings. Everyone is unhappy with the brightness of the afternoon sun. Otherwise, there is a jubilance.

"Before we get to drinking, I wanted to have some fun." The host pops his trunk, reaches in and grabs gun after gun, all different
sizes and different types: pistols, rifles, shotguns, assault weapons, a high-tension crossbow. Saul is amazed. It's like
being at the circus and watching the clowns pile out of that tiny Volkswagen.

"All right!"

"There you go!"

"Whose place is this?" Saul asks.

The host says, "Mine," and then hands him an AK-47. Fully loaded, you just have to point and pull and light things up.

"That's it, buddy. Blow the shit out of the old inheritance."

Saul slips his finger through the trigger guard; his splinted middle finger sticks out in a Fuck You kind of way. "Anyone
in the house?" he asks.

"God no. Think I'm crazy? Just let her rip."

Saul aims down the barrel. What to shoot at? The window? In the movies all gunplay happens through windows, the shattering
glass, the husband pushing his wife and child to the floor, the desperate crawling toward the .45 on the coffee table. Death
only comes through the window. Or the door. Saul sights onto the weather-worn door. Often the secondary character gets it
like this, answering the bell and kack! Saul fires. The noise is instant echo, the recoil bruising, but the result isn't nearly
as impressive: a bloom of dust and a small hole. That's it. The smell of pyrocellu-lose enters his nose. Saul, a staunch gun-control
advocate, expected more from such violence.

"You got to lean on it. Let it loose."

"Remember the fucking Alamo!"

"Porkchop Hill!"

Digger instructs, "Keep your finger down. Full fucking auto."

Without aiming this time, Saul empties the clip in a flurry of gunfire. This is more like it. The repetitious noise—kacka!kacka!
kacka!—the shaking kick, the flash of expelled shell casings, the incidental warmth of the muzzle, all of this slowly melts
your insides until the only thing that remains is the beat of your heart. It's like being underwater, in your pool, lungs
ready for air, but you wait, you push yourself for no reason, just inches from the surface, waiting.

"You fucking killer!"

Saul, ammo spent, is given another banana clip and is shown how to eject and insert. It's very easy. He prepares to let loose
again, the honored guest to this destruction, but down the road he notices a sheriffs patrol car approaching with a tail of
dust. Shit! The gig is up. The state patrol's APB must've been picked up by the local law enforcement. Saul snuggles the stock
of the AK-47 under his armpit. This is it. He squeezes the handgrip. The car stops. Surrender or go out in a blaze of glory.
The engine shuts down. A fresh silence possesses all things. The sheriff staggers out, gravy stains on his untucked shirt,
his belt mysteriously undone. Every step forward is accompanied by a step sideways. "Howdy, boys," he manages to say.

"Hey there, Willie."

The sheriff unholsters his gun and—boom! boom! boom! what the hell is that? a .357 Magnum?—fires. Saul flinches. Explosions
wisp from the chimney; chunks of brick rain down on tin. "Roger be here soon with the flamethrower," the sheriff shouts.

"Super."

And now everyone is holding a gun, some holding two, and a massive volley cracks through the valley, and a renewed Saul joins
the enfilade—wood splinters, glass breaks, curtains drift, posies shred into confetti—and as he blasts away, Saul imagines
wave after wave of an attacking public, a persecuting public, their bodies falling to the ground, bleeding and injured, but
there are more behind them, an endless charge from that front door, each person getting closer and closer, and your ammunition
is running low, and your chances are slim, but at least you'll die a hero.

girl with large
foot jumping rope

MY KID MAKES A controlled slide downstairs and stops in between me and the TV. He's a funny kid. People say he looks a lot
like Becky—the slim nose, the oval mouth, the curly blond hair, while my hair is straight and black like a well-groomed Indian—but
every time I look at him I see my eyes and my chin and I know that this is my boy. "Hey, Sport," I say. I call him Sport.
It makes me
feel
like a father. "What's up, Sport?"

He doesn't say a word, simply stands there, Pledge-ofAllegiance straight. He's seven years old and short for his age—I guess
it's a real issue at school, you know, with all the teasing, all the stupid names—and he does this crazy thing with his lips
when he's upset, kind of curls them like a disgusted Frenchman. He's doing that now. "Everything all right, Sport?" I say.

He nods without conviction.

Then I glance down and notice his feet, his socks, really, those white athletic socks that kids wear all the time. Tube socks,
we used to call them. Anyway, these socks are soaking wet, so are the cuffs of his pants. He looks as if he's been dancing
in some fountain in Paris.

"What's up, Josh?" I say, dropping Sport and putting a little sternness in my voice, the you-can-tell-me sort of voice, the
voice of the good cop. Becky is the bad cop.

It comes out in one burst, and since he's an emotional boy, he starts to cry. I can't understand a word the poor guy says,
but whatever it is, it breaks my heart. I lean down and take him in my arms and rub the back of his neck and whisper in his
ear, "It's all right, it's all right," even though I have no idea what he's done. But he's a pretty earnest kid with this
incredible sense of justice, like he's a representative from the UN. I put him on my lap, and he curls in under my armpit.
And Jesus, I almost get weepy. If the phone rang right now, I'd just let it ring.

"I'm sorry, Dad," Josh says after he's mostly controlled himself. He wipes at his eyes and nose with the sleeve of his shirt.
But when he breathes, his body shudders. "I just, it just happened," he says.

I brush aside some loose hair and touch his cheek. "Tell me what happened, Sport."

"The toilet's all clogged up." And then he has another fit, this time smaller and probably crafted for my benefit.

"Is that all?" I say. "Is that the whole problem?" And I give him a wide, carefree smile. I show him the gap in my front teeth,
the gap I can shoot a spray of water through. His face relaxes a bit. He's an oversensitive kid—Becky and I know that—and
we're trying to equip him with a sense of fun, a joie de vivre. If something breaks, it's broken, no big deal. If a friend
calls you a name or throws dirt at you, shake it off. If you can't whistle, hey, you can't whistle. For a month we played
that stupid song "Don't Worry, Be Happy," hoping the groove would sink in. But these ploys aren't really working, and anything
can set him off. Just the other day a moth fluttered too close to his face—sure, it was a huge hairy moth, I mean, a cousin
to Mothra—but he was sobbing like it was the end of the world. It shatters me. The boy's seven years old; he shouldn't be
depressed yet.

"Well, Sport," I say, "why don't we hustle on up there and figure this thing out. Okay?"

"Okay," he says.

I lift him off my lap and lower him to the ground as if we're members of some acrobatic family. "Ta-dah," I sing. His socks
have left wet blotches all over my pants. "Hey, Sport," I say, pointing to my groin. "Looks like your dad peed in his pants."
He gawks at me oddly, like he doesn't know it's a joke, and then I start to laugh so he'll get to laughing, and finally he
does. It's a great laugh, my laugh, open mouthed and joyous—a man's laugh, my father's laugh—and we laugh some more when Josh
flaps around like he's wearing soggy clown shoes. Yep, my eyes, my chin, and my laugh; the rest is Becky.

I was supposed to take Josh to school, actually just walk with him to the bus stop, but I decided it'd be much more important
for him to spend the day with his dad. I had plans. The zoo, a movie, maybe some ice cream, and then back home to cook dinner
for Becky—turkey and sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top. It was going to be a good day. But I got tired waking up, I
got tired getting out of bed, I got so tired shuffling toward the bathroom that I was too tired to take a shower, and I love
taking showers. Becky says it's a stage, a "guy thing." I don't know what the hell that means, but I'm using my vacation days
from work because I know if I go there I'll do something stupid like smash a computer or fling sharpened pencils at my secretary;
I'd probably call Joe Lester a fucking fat-ass drunk and he'd pull that gun he keeps in his bottom drawer. In the end, no
doubt about it, I'd get fired. So now I sit at home in my suit because it makes the boredom seem more productive. "Just wallow,"
Becky told me before she went to work, "like a duck, quack, quack."

Josh and I walk upstairs. I can see little footprints blurred on the rug; they're the size of my hand. I point to them and
say, "You'd make a lousy criminal."

Josh is quiet, solemn, even. As we get closer to the hall bathroom, he begins to move slower, lingering before each step.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," I say, "the defendant's footprints lead straight to the bathroom." I tousle Josh's hair
and then reach down and pull his hand out of his pocket so I can hold it. "It's no big deal, Sport," I say.

He looks up at me. We're in front of the bathroom door. It's closed. Taped to the door is one of his colorful drawings of
a military airdrop. Stick-figure paratroopers hang in a flak-filled sky. They're huge, much bigger than the plane they've
jumped from, and this lack of perspective seems to have cost them their lives. Death comes with a red crayon.

"I'm not going to be mad," I say to Josh. "I love you." I grab for the doorknob, and I must admit this feeling of suspense
settles in my gut. Turds, I'm thinking, are there going to be turds? I imagine them floating near the lip of the toilet bowl,
my son's turds, and maybe a few of them have slipped over the side like barrels over Niagara Falls. And this strange thought
comes to me: I haven't seen my son's shit in a long time. When he was a baby, then a toddler, Becky and I seemed to be always
dealing with it—the diapers, the potty training—but now that he's a middle-aged boy, shit, like so many other things, has
snuck into his private world.

"Dad?"

"Yeah?"

Josh makes a gesture with his head, a small tilt—I've seen Becky do the same thing a thousand times—and I realize that I'm
just standing there.

"Right," I say.

I open the door. We both pause in the doorway as if we're waiting out an earthquake. There's water on the floor, and it smells
dank, like mop water. I look over to the toilet—the shag seat cover is closed—and see no traces of shit on the linoleum. To
lighten things up, to take the worry out of Josh's face, I belt out, "I'm singing in the rain, just singing in the rain, what
a glorious feeling, I'm happy again," and dance around the bathroom. But Josh seems even more troubled, his wonderful chin
lowered into a crescent of soft flesh. "C'mon, Sport," I say, "don't sweat it so much." I go over to the toilet, lift the
seat and peer down inside. There are no wads of toilet paper, no floating turds; the water is clear and only slightly higher
than average. "This is nothing, Sport," I say. Josh steps into the bathroom. His socks are now gray. "Were you going number
two?" I ask.

"Uh . . . no," he says.

"Well, what happened?"

Josh is not a good liar; he's like Becky that way. Their eyes search for an ideal explanation that will somehow forgive the
truth. For them lying is like picking a perfect peach. "Nothing," Josh says.

"Then how'd it clog?"

"I'm sorry," he says.

"No, don't worry about it. I'm just curious."

"I don't know."

"Well," I say. And we both stand there. I feel like we're flushing his soon-to-be-dead goldfish down the toilet, saying a
few words before Raphael and Leonardo swirl away to the great beyond. "Well," I say again, and I reach over and push down
the metal handle.

Josh looks up at me, almost frightened.

"It's a test," I explain.

The water rises with incredible speed. I think of those sub movies when a depth charge hits its mark and men rush for the
closing hatch. Josh steps back as the water swells over the side and spreads across the floor. A stray Q-tip floats by. Flotsam
or jetsam? I never can remember which is which.

"Oh," Josh says.

"I guess it's still clogged."

He nods.

"Well, Sport," I say, "why don't you hustle downstairs and get us a mop." Josh turns and scoots down the hall. Fresh footprints
appear on the rug. I survey the scene, then reach over and grab the plunger from the corner. There is something reassuring
about a plunger, something constant—that after all these years of technological advancement, the plunger has stayed the same,
has retained its simple design of slim wooden rod screwed into rubber suction cup. You buy one plunger and it will last you
your entire life; it will, in fact, outlast you. Those are things you don't think about in a hardware store.

I hold the plunger over the top-full toilet. There's a dilemma of displacement below me. That's the problem with messy cures,
the collateral damage. But I have no choice. I submerge the plunger over the suck hole—I don't know what you call it but it
looks like a heel stamped into the porcelain—and start to pump. What with that heel, the churning water sounds like someone
running through mud. After six solid thrusts, I stop for a second, then I give it four more. There is no release, no sudden
evacuation so satisfying to the domestically incompetent. "Jesus," I say. And then I do something really stupid, I flush the
toilet again. The water rises. I slam shut the toilet seat and sit on the shag cozy. Out of sight, out of mind, though my
shoes get soaked.

"You tired, Dad?"

I lift my head and glance over at Josh. He doesn't have the mop, but instead has this book that my brother Bruce gave me for
my birthday. It's a bizarre book filled with medical photographs from late in the last century. When it arrived in the mail
Becky shook her head and said, "Typical." Bruce lives in Virginia, and on summer weekends he reenacts Civil War battles. He
really fits the part: long beard, bad teeth, and he has the rebel yell down pat. Every Saturday he gets killed in the first
wave of the first battle of Bull Run. Poor Josh is very scared of him—I don't blame him—but he loves this book and lugs it
around like a talisman. He can spend hours leafing through the pages, studying each picture with utmost concentration, copying
a few of them on tracing paper. Sometimes he points one out to me: a Civil War veteran—a young guy, barely in his twenties—coldly
displaying the stump of his amputation and the awful infection that resulted. His eyes are so proud and unflinching, I can
almost hear him say,
Check out this
shit.
And then there are the horrendous photographs of tumors run amok, of dermatolysis, of elephantiasis, of people savaged by
their own bodies. I can't believe my Josh looks at this stuff, and I've tried my best to take the book away from him, but
he moans like Linus without his blanket. Becky thinks he'll be a doctor, but Jesus, such grim misery can wait.

"Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"You tired, Dad?"

"Tired?"

"Yeah."

"No," I tell him, "I'm fine." Then I say, "Where's the mop?"

Josh breaks down again—I swear his face is made of clay, the way it can crease and sag and fall apart—and while he sobs he
tries to talk. He sounds Arabic. "It's all right, Josh." I take him in my arms, his arms still wrapped around that book.

I make out a word. "Leaking," he says.

"What?"

"It's leaking downstairs."

"Leaking?"

He nods.

"Well, okay. Let's investigate." I carry Josh downstairs. "What was it you flushed down the toilet?" I ask him.

"Nothing," and then he adds, "I swear, Daddy."

We walk into the living room and Josh points toward the back wall. A dark stain is on the carpet; on the ceiling a slight
seam of water drips every few seconds. "Oops," I say. The two of us watch this slow progress, and standing there, I feel like
I'm showing him the moon for the first time. Josh reaches up and touches the ceiling. Water slides down his finger. "We're
making a mess," I say. Josh presses his palm against the ceiling. "That's dirty water," I tell him. We go into the kitchen
and grab a mop and bucket from the closet.

While I mop the bathroom floor, Josh sits on the sink, the book splayed across his knees, a toothbrush in his mouth even though
he's not brushing his teeth.

"Dad," he says.

"Yeah."

"Here." He tilts the book in my direction.

This photograph is one of his favorites, and he's always showing it to me, as if he wants me to read him a story about this
bonneted girl, a very normal-looking kid, who wears a lovely dress with an intricate collar and a pinned rose. She could've
been going to church, or maybe to an Easter parade, but today she wants to play. In her raised hands she holds a jump rope.
That'll be fun. But something is very wrong with her left foot; it's huge, about six times the size of her other foot. A special
boot—the size and color of a prizewinning eggplant—has been crafted by some miracle cobbler. And she stands there, ready to
jump rope even though you know there's no way with that foot of hers, and her face, sweet with close-cropped bangs and a timid
smile, looks at you with slightly arched eyebrows. It's sad, but it's beyond sad. It's so sad it seems to slip into the hopeful.

"That's something," I say to Josh.

He nods with a certain understanding beyond me. I'd prefer Heidi or Pippi Longstockings.

"A tough break," I say.

Josh leans his head against the medicine-cabinet mirror, and the reflection turns him into a Siamese twin. That'd be a tough
way to go through life, especially if you had to share a skull. But today they can separate you, they can fix you, but I wonder
if you'd stare at your brother or your sister and try to figure out where you once fit—kneecap to kneecap, spine to spine—if
your body was nothing more than a piece of a puzzle.