“I know why you came back,” said Grant, reaching out and taking the carved figure of Mr. Hands off the bar and placing it on the long shelf of knickknacks. “Where else would he belong, if not here?”

Randy stared at the figure for a long while, then nodded his head and grinned. “He looks almost at home up there, you know?”

“You bet he does,” said the Reverend.

Randy looked at the three faces around him. “Don’t you guys have, like, a thousand questions you want to ask me about this?”

“Not a one,” said Grant. “We know bullshit when we hear it.”

Randy nodded. “So…what do I do now?”

“Well,” said Jackson, “considering that you’ve had a bit of a trip, all things considered, I think maybe you ought to go back to the shelter with the Reverend here and—hey, wait a second. Where’d you get all that money you’re carrying?”

Randy reached into his pocket and pulled out the wad of fifties that Grant had seen earlier. “This? This is a little over six hundred dollars, and it’s every penny that I’ve managed to save from working odd jobs over the past several years. Reverend, you’re welcome to some of it if you’ll let me sleep over at your place tonight. I’m suddenly so…so tired…”

Before the Reverend could respond, Grant said, “I won’t hear of it, Randy. Look, I’ve got a spare room upstairs—it’s not much, but it’s pretty homey. We can maybe fix it up for you over the next few weeks. I can offer you room and board plus a hundred bucks a week to help me out here in the bar and kitchen. What do you say?”

Randy looked at all three of them again. “But you…you hardly know me.”

“We know you just fine,” said Jackson.

“And now we’ve got enough for a decent game of Monopoly,” said the Reverend.

“Plus,” said Grant, picking up the broken guitar neck from the shelf, “if you want to hear one of the stories behind one of these things, well…you’ve got to be a regular. Only regulars get to hear.”

“And you now have friends,” said the Reverend.

“Count on it,” said Jackson.

Grant leaned on the bar and waved the broken guitar neck in front of Randy. “So what do you say, my friend? You got a new home, if you want it—and besides, I’m sure that Linus would get a kick out of seeing you again. I’ll bet he’d like to hear your story.”

“C’mon,” said Jackson. “We don’t beg well…whatta you say?”

Randy looked around the bar, then at the three men—his three new friends—and then, finally, at the broken guitar neck. “I guess if I want to hear the story behind that damn thing, I’m staying.”

And then he looked up at the carved figure of Mr. Hands and, just for a moment, thought he heard Lucy and Ronnie and Sarah and Kylie and all of the others laughing as they said, Well, now we can all be together.