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
Ann Purser
Morgan Rice
Promised to Me
Robert Bausch
Alex Lukeman
Joyee Flynn
Odette C. Bell
Marissa Honeycutt
J.B. Garner
Tracy Rozzlynn