She gave me hell upside and down and then drove me down to Oswego to check on Monk. After Mary Lou died, he’d kept everything in the house the same—we walked in through the back porch as always, and Monk was fixing himself something to eat in the microwave. It was like old times. He was glad to see us and he had a lot he had to get out. This was before his son Barney died and he gave up hope altogether. We went and sat in the living room, and Monk looked at Tootie and she looked at him, and I saw real love between the two of them. The love of two friends. Monk had the emphysema and it was hard for him to talk. He said, “All that welding in bad conditions with no ventilation, three packs of Chesterfields a day. Coming up in the depression, it was hard. I had this old Oldsmobile—I was just a kid and it was my first car. It had a split windshield and the left side was broken out and, I don’t know, it must have been January. I remember I went over to my girlfriend’s house in that car and drank Coke and we played the player piano—‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,’ ‘Happy Days Are Here Again,’ ‘The Dark Town Strutters’ Ball’—when it started to blow real hard and I realized how late it was and I had to get home. I had to be to work the next day. The dagblam Oldsmobile overheated. We didn’t have antifreeze in those days but ran alcohol through the radiator, and the closer I got to town, the hotter the car got and the slower it was going until I finally made it downtown and stopped at the Strand. A Chinaman there gave me some water for my radiator. I practically had to beg for it, since it was midnight and they were closing. No gloves. Twelve below. Lightweight coat. No hat. By the time I got to the store the car was overheating again, and it kept going slower and slower until I had to downshift into first gear as I drove out Jericho Road toward my mother’s house. Finally the old car lugged to a stop and smoke started pouring out of the engine. I flipped up the hood and fire was coming out of the carburetor, so I ran over to the side of the road, scooping up frozen snow with my bare hands alongside a barbed-wire fence—can you imagine that?—trying to put it out. But that didn’t work, so I beat the flames with my jacket, and that caught on fire, and by the time the fire went out I was crying because I knew the engine was ruined and I just wanted to die. I was out there on Jericho Road by Blackberry Creek and I saw a light go on in Bobby O’Neil’s house and saw a face come up to the window and wipe away the steam. Bobby made a cup with his hands to look out—I can see his face now with that stupid look of his; he was half crazy—but then the light went out, and I was too ashamed to go knock on the door and ask for help, so I got in the car and huddled down, and before long I was in and out of sleep and realized that if I didn’t get up and do something I was going to freeze to death. Tootie, the wind was blowing so hard I had to walk home backwards! I thought the wind was going to cut me in half. Three miles of this. Frostbite ears, frostbite feet. My mother soaked them in cool water and put me to bed covered with wool blankets, and I just passed out, didn’t get to work on time, and was fired. There I was. The girlfriend two-timed me a day later, my car was shot, and no job. People don’t know how hard it was in those days.” This is what Monk said. Tootie and I got nuts the way he was telling the story, and we was laughing so hard we practically wet our pants. I hadn’t got nuts and laughed like that since Ida was alive. Ida could be fun and get you nuts—make you have a good time.