Snow White and the Giants

Snow White and the Giants by J. T. McIntosh Page A

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Authors: J. T. McIntosh
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made a friend in the last fifteen years. He

would die without making another friend. He had become an amalgam of

armor and anger and acid and antagonism, a fortress on an island that

no army would ever want to storm. On the mainland, they'd march past

the defenses against nothing with scarcely a derisive smile.

Only Jota and I (and Barbara, in a different but not warmer way) would

ever put up with Gil.

Jota . . . I had admired and envied him. He had done and was still doing

many things I wished I could do, and his amatory success was the least

of these. He was, after all, a Jack of all trades (even if master of none).

There was nothing he couldn't turn his hand to. He had the courage or

selfishness or brute insensitiveness to do what he liked and invariably

get away with it. Most people treat you as your own attitude and

expectation invites them to treat you. And Jota got what he wanted --

whatever it was. Always. Everywhere.

I had had every right to object when Jota's roving eye lighted on

Sheila. I had no right to object when Miranda caught his eye, but I did.

Surprisingly, the meeting was brought to order by Miranda. She suddenly

said: "I must be going," and walked out as abruptly as she had left me

outside the Red Lion.

"That girl," said Jota, "fills me with a quite irresistible desire to

see that dark head on a white pillow. It will not be resisted. Now --

what's going on?"

He hadn't changed. He had never, I suspected, been in love; he had a

completely mistaken idea of what love was. Stumbling and imperfect as

our connubial relations were, I believed that both Gil and I knew far

more about love than Jota would have learned by the time he died.

Although a great deal of his time and too much of his energy were

expended on women, he was always able to dismiss them completely as

he did now. Once or twice, long ago, I had heard him make passionate

word-love to a girl whom he knew, in the Biblical sense, make another

date with her, and then say cheerfully, the moment she was gone: "Thank

God that's the last I'll see of that cow."

He heard our side of the story first. He wanted it that way, and things

were generally done Jota's way.

Gil had nothing fresh to say. The giants had not been near his house

again. I glossed over the fact that I had not yet asked Dina to go and

stay with the Carswells.

In my turn I told them all the facts but not all my guesses.

Then Jota said: "All right, let's call on the giants. We'll go to

the camp."

It was only to he expected that Jota would propose direct action.

Gil was reluctant. He didn't say he was afraid to go. He argued against

the idea in general. But when Jota and I decided to go without him,

Gil stopped arguing and seemed to think it might be a good idea.

So Jota and I went to look at the giants' base.

Chapter Four

I drove home first, taking Jota with me, for he insisted we should change

into dark clothes.

We knew the place where the camp must be: "In a bend on the river about

a mile upstream." It was a piece of wasteland which campers had used

before, but not often, because modern campers had cars or caravans or

bicycles or trucks, and if they hadn't they wanted to be near a road

where they could catch buses. This spot was near no road, and anybody

camping there who wanted to come into Shuteley had to walk all the way.

It was a good place, perhaps the best place in the vicinity, for campers

who wanted privacy. Yet it was also a place where anyone who wanted to

spy on them could do so very easily.

And yet, as I said to Jota just before turning into our drive: "We may

be making fools of ourselves. If they knew the precise second when you'd

walk into my office, don't they know already that we're on our way to

spy on them?"

Such considerations didn't bother Jota. "Then something may develop. And

that's what we want."

I left the car outside the house, and Jota took his one trunk inside

with him.

Sheila met us in the hall, and

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