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is it needs the favor here? Isn’t me, I know.”
    “Yes it is,” the blocky man said. He grinned. “You got in the shit once. And
you
needed a favor. And you got it from the guy that knows your brother, all right? Now, the guy that called your brother, he owes
me
a favor. Because I did him a favor when a friend of
his
got dirty. So that is why you’re down here, pal—because
you
need a favor. You got to pay things back.”
    “I don’t have any trouble with that,” Earl said. “Paying things back, I mean. I just don’t like gettin’ a lot of shit for my trouble, all right? You wanna piss on someone, fine. Go ahead and do it. But don’t bring me down here, all this way from Boston, so you can do it on me.”
    “Well,” Battles said, “I see they didn’t break your spirit, any fuckin’ thing like that. You got a fresh mouth on you, pal. Anybody tell you that?”
    Earl shrugged. “I did my time,” he said. “I owe nobody nothing.”
    “Yeah,” Battles said, “but you didn’t do as
much
time, as everybody thought.”
    “Hey,” Earl said, “prisons’re overcrowded. Everybody knows that. I didn’t make any trouble. Kept my mouth shut, did my chores. So they let me out early. I’m supposed to complain? It wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be, but I wasn’t about to complain. ‘Get outta here,’ they say, and I got.”
    “Kept your mouth shut, huh?” Battles said. “That’s interesting to hear. There was some talk around, you weren’t doing that. And that’s how you got out so fast.”
    “There’s always talk around,” Earl said. “Look at thepapers they sell in the markets. ‘I Got Knocked Up by an Alien.’ ‘Rabbit-faced Baby with Ten-Inch Ears Born to Buck-toothed Mother, Loves Carrots.’ ’Fifty-seven T-Birds, for sale for fifty dollars, ’cause the owners died in them and rotted in the seats.”
    “Then there was,” Battles said, “you got out, but for a while you’re not around. Nobody ever saw you. Guys inna can behind you saw you walk the fuckin’ door, but nobody on the outside sees you, must’ve been a year.”
    “I was finding myself,” Earl said. “That’s what my daughter’s doing—she’s finding herself this year. You know where she’s looking? Greek islands. I get a couple under my belt, I’m out after work one night. I always get sentimental, I drink—just a regular slob. So I call up the former bride, just to see how things’re going. How’s her new guy treating her? Has he got a ten-inch dick? All that happy horseshit. And she tells me Sarah’s scrubbed the college, which I already paid about three hundred for the goddamned applications and the fuckin’ goddamned tests, and the down payment, deposit, all of which I hadda
earn.
And I say: ‘What the fuck is going on? She had her room already. I give her the TV set and I sent in the money. She’s not going out to U. Mass. Amherst, Boston isn’t good enough?’ And I get told, well, it’s my fault. ‘She never had a father.’ ‘Fuck you, she didn’t have a father,’ ’cause by now I’m getting mad. ‘She didn’t have a father, then how come I got all those goddamned canceled checks?’ ‘It’s not the same thing. Not like you were around.’ Well, that’s what I was doing, all right? Except I was older, and nobody sent me money. I got out the can and I dropped out, a while. And then I run out of themoney, and I didn’t see nobody standing by to buy me meals and keep me warm, so I went and got a job.”
    “Or our uncle got one for you,” Battles said.
    “Forget it,” Earl said. “I must’ve heard that from a couple dozen guys. That I was in the program. If I was in the program, if they’re protecting me, then how come you and those guys never heard a word about me? Did I ever testify? Did someone see me in court? Is there one single person who can say I ever did? Not a soul on this whole earth. Did they offer me? Of course. They offer everybody, if they think he’s got