Willard and His Bowling Trophies by Richard Brautigan Page B

time.
    “No,” John said. “I didn’t hear anything.”
    “I thought I heard something,” Patricia said.
    “Well, I didn’t hear anything,” John said. “What did you hear? What did it sound like?”
    “I don’t know,” she said.
    John reached over and touched Patricia’s hair. It felt beautiful in the dark.
    “Maybe it was your imagination,” he said.

A change of plans
    After the brief violent outburst from the oldest Logan brother, the little hotel room had been returned to normal and the Logan brothers had gone back to waiting again for the telephone to ring and a voice to tell them where the bowling trophies were.
    The Logan brother who had lost his cool wasn’t sitting by the telephone any more. He had changed places on the bed with the comic-book-reading Logan who’d forgotten his comic book when they moved.
    He was going to ask his brother to hand him the comic book but his brother was reading it now and he felt that it was better not to disturb him.
    The comic-book-reading Logan had hurt his wrist in the wrestling match with his totally berserk brother and he thought that it was best just to let things be and for his brother to read the comic book in his stead.
    The beer-drinker Logan still wanted a beer but he knew he wouldn’t get one until the evening’s activities were over and so . . . he felt sort of hopeless.
    The telephone Logan who was now the comic book-reading Logan was absent-mindedly staring at the same salve ad that he had put his brother down for reading a little while ago, but he really didn’t see the ad. It was just color and motion in his hands. He was actually thinking about the bowling trophies and the people who had stolen them. He was thinking very hard and very grimly about them.
    Then he looked up from the comic book to the telephone. The telephone was not ringing. It was just a strange black silent object on a table.
    “Let’s kill them,” he said.
    “What?” the brother by the telephone said.
    “I said, let’s kill them.”
    “Kill who?”
    “You know who. The bastards who stole our bowling trophies. They don’t deserve to live. Look what they’ve done to us. They’ve made us into animals. We’re just animals now. Fucking animals.”
    “You mean, you want to kill them?”
    “That’s right.”
    “What do you think?” the one by the telephone asked the Logan who didn’t have a beer in his hand but wanted one to be there and not having a beer in his hand suddenly made him very mad.
    “Sure,” he said. “Let’s kill them.”
    If he’d had a beer, cold and comfortable, in his hand he would not have wanted to kill them. He would have said instead, “No, let’s just beat the shit out of them and get our trophies and go home.”
    But because he didn’t have a can of beer in his hand, he said, “Sure, let’s kill them.”
    Now two Logan brothers were staring at the Logan brother who was sitting beside the telephone but would have preferred to be a child, selling salve to his neighbors and earning lots of money selling something that made people feel better when they used it and afterwards thought kindly of him for selling the salve to them.
    “OK,” he said, because he always did what his brothers did.
    “Then it’s settled,” the Logan with the comic book on his lap said.
    “Are you reading that comic book?” his brother asked him.
    “No.”
    “Then can I read it?”
    “Sure.” His brother handed him the comic book and he immediately turned to the salve ad. Before he lost himself in the ad again, he thought for a moment about killing the people who’d stolen the bowling trophies. He’d never killed anybody before. He turned the comic book a few pages to some characters in the comic book who were killing each other. They were using axes and it was very bloody. A hand was lying on the floor. The hand did not look happy.
    He looked up from the comic book to his brother on the bed. “How are we going to kill them?” he asked.
    “We’ll