stump at all on the other, and stood with a crutch. They were begging. I saw the taxi driver make small brushing movements out the window, as if shooing flies.

     A second taxi pulled up, and the one on the crutch lurched over to it. I saw that his crutch was the carved fork of a sapling. He propped himself against it at the open rear window, leaned nearly inside. Then drew back, extended his hand off the crutch and accepted a couple of coins.

     He touched his hand to his forehead. The light changed. The taxis bellowed blue smoke. The beggars scurried, ragged wraiths moving in streetlamp penumbra, fleeing back into the shadows. They went out of sight, under the cover of some shrubs that grew high and weedy behind the sidewalk. The bushes hid them, but I knew they were there, dark within the darkness, and it filled me with a dread I could not name.

· 4 ·

I have never had a lot of friends. I have never been close to many people.

     Not that I'm unfriendly, or especially difficult. My problem is putting forth. I am reluctant to infringe—I would not presume to breach boundaries.

     My father, who was the only adult I knew well until I had nearly become one, was not nearly so punctilious. His name was Earl. He traded oil field hardware in Kern County, California, and played steel guitar in a country-and-western band that sometimes shared a bill with Buck Owens in Bakersfield. He bought a new Cadillac convertible every September, he wore old pawn turquoise, and he smoked Camels down to the shortest butts I ever saw.

     And he had friends, friends close and distant, constant and occasional. He reaped affection. I knew his secret;