“She’s a fine woman.”

“She’s a bitch.” Ballantine drinks deep, lowers the glass. Wipes his broad mouth. “But a good one, mind, a good bitch. In her goddamned cockeyed way she loves me, I’ll say that much for her. The kid has judgment. If only she weren’t so ugly. One thing I cannot and will not suffer is an ugly woman. There’s no excuse for it.”

He thinks, Dishonoring his wife, he dishonors himself. Spare us, old friend, these reductions.

“Of course,” Ballantine goes on, “I know what you’re thinking. In the dark it’s all the same, the standing cock hath no conscience, let alone the power of making aesthetic discriminations.” He pauses, grins. “Maybe that’s why I suffer from penis envy. My penis has more fun than I do.”

He adds bourbon and water to his glass, offers the same to Gatlin. Who shakes his head. “Will, get out of this. Do you know the etymology of the word ‘idiot’? No? What kind of philologist have we got here? Idiot: from the Greek idiots, meaning a ‘private’ person, one who is alone. By extension, one who lives alone.”

“I’m not alone.”

“You’re not?”

“I have excellent company.”

Ballantine frowns. “Yourself, I suppose. Don’t give me that Thoreauvian bullshit, man. Listen, leave this Smokey Bear stuff for the local jokels. They can hack it, they’ve got nothing to begin with anyway. But outside there’s a world, Will. The great world. All yours. Full of fruit, wine, beautiful ideas, lovely and lascivious ladies, enchanted cities, gardens of electricity and light.”

“I’ve been there.”

“Hah! listen to the—”

“Well quit of all that.”

“Ah, listen to the sonofabitch. He’s been there before. Well quit of the world. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus X. Christ. Where have I heard all this crap before? Where haven’t I heard it all before?”

Gatlin, patiently smoking his pipe, says nothing.

“Will, you need a woman.”

He lifts one eyebrow.

“Yes, a woman. Sex.”

“Love?”

“No, not love for godsake. Who said anything about love? Love is a disease. A social disease. A romantic, venereal, medieval disease. A hangover from the days of the fornicating troubadours and the gentlemen in iron britches. A disease for which marriage is the perfect cure. Never confuse love and sex. Fatal mistake.”

“I do not get them mixed up.”

“Yes, you do. I’m sure you do. That’s your trouble, man. So you’ve got to get out of here, get a job, a real job, a man’s job—”

“Become a professor like you.”

“That’s it. And grab a woman. Help the movement. Liberate a woman tonight. You’ll get stale out here in the woods, living like a bear. Your balls will shrink, your tongue grow stiff and heavy. Your mind will wither away. Whatever became of William Gatlin? Went mad flogging his bloody duff.”

“Poor Willy.”

“Poor Will, poor Will, poor Will, sick ghost of a dead bird haunting the woods of nowhere.”

Sad, sad…

“Prematurely middle-aged. Evading life. Wasting away. Look at you, flat as a board, you don’t get enough to eat for christsake. When’s the last time you had a full dinner, served by the woman who loves you?”