Macready didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be thinking. Then he nodded. “Now that you bring it up, he did,” he said. “Only once. It was one afternoon when I was helping him prepare those frogs of his for shipping. Steinbeck had been gone awhile. I don’t know where, but he hadn’t been around in probably two, three weeks. Ed was in a black mood, and I think it was because he missed his drinking buddy. Anyway, we were packing up frogs, and all of a sudden he asks me if I have a best friend. I told him I did. His name was Charlie Proctor. Then Ed asks me if I love him. ‘Who?’ I asked him, and he said, ‘Charlie. Do you love him?’ ”

Macready paused. The expression on his face was thoughtful, almost sad, as if something about the memory disturbed him. Hudson waited patiently for him to continue. Charlie, he thought while he waited. Then he warned himself. Don’t grasp at straws. It’s only a name.

“I didn’t understand what he meant,” Macready continued. “I said, ‘I guess I do, sure.’ He was looking at me with those dark eyes of his, and when I said that he sort of smiled at me. ‘That’s good, Eddie,’ he said. He always called me Eddie, like I was his son or something. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘A man should love his best friend. Because someday that might be all you have.’ Then he got real quiet, and after a while he said, ‘I love John like that. I love him so much I’d die for him if I had to.’ Only he didn’t say it like he was saying it to me. And it wasn’t like he was saying it to himself either. It sounded like he was saying it to someone I couldn’t see.”

Macready stopped speaking and looked through Hudson. After a long moment he shook his head. “I haven’t thought of that in years,” he said. “Probably not since the day it happened. Not until you asked me about it.” He gave a short laugh. “Funny the things that stick in your head.”

Hudson, his heart racing, was making notes on a piece of paper. “What do you think he meant by what he said?” he asked.

Macready cocked his head. “That he loved John?” he said. “I guess just that they were each other’s best friend. I don’t think anyone understood either of them the way they did each other. That was mighty important to Ricketts. Especially that it was someone like Steinbeck. Of course, Steinbeck admired Ed like crazy too. They were like two halves of the same person.”

Hudson, busy writing, looked up. “Two halves of the same person,” he repeated.