And a pair of children, I suppose?

Yes.

All right. But I’m not living on your money. I’m a working man. I believe in working for my bread—six months a year. That’s the way we’re going to live. In honest poverty. Voluntary simplicity, like Thoreau said. The pederast? Yeah—him.

THEY WOULD SETTLE for the time being on Tucson, Arizona, a resort town for trust funders and rednecks both, with a symphony orchestra for ambitious violinists. In January Claire enrolled at the University, beginning her senior year as a student of higher learning. Henry complained when he discovered that she had borrowed money from her mother in order to pay the high tuition fees required of nonresidents.

Nonresident? he said; we live here.

We have to live here for a year to qualify as residents.

Lie.

I’d rather not, Henry; and you’ve still got Utah plates on that truck of yours.

Well, goddamnit I’m your husband; I pay the bills around here, not your mother.

Then you’d better get a job, earn some money.

All right, I’ll earn some money. While she was at school he disassembled, cleaned and reassembled his revolver and his deer rifle and went off into the desert with D. K. Hooligan for target practice. Borrowing his friend’s ear protectors, he fired five rounds out of six into a beer can at fifty feet with the .357 and seven out of seven at a hundred feet with the .30-.30. Satisfied, Hooligan hired him for a one-night job at a nameless dirt airstrip on the Papago Indian Reservation fifty miles southwest of Tucson. The plane came in at twilight from the south, circled twice, put down and taxied to a stop. The pilot did not shut off the motor. There was an exchange of light signals between the airplane and Hooligan. Hooligan put away his flashlight, unchained the huge wallet from the hip pocket of his jeans and walked to the side of the plane, under the wing. Henry waited fifty feet away under the branches of a mesquite tree, rifle in his hands, revolver in his belt. He watched the door of the plane open, heard a quiet exchange of words, saw a dozen squarish bundles in white sacking tumble out, saw Hooligan pay and shake hands with the man inside. The engine roared, the pilot released the brakes, the airplane rolled then raced down the remainder of the strip, bouncing over bursage and panic grass and took off, wings waggling, into the flamboyant Papago sunset.

Henry and D. K. loaded the odd-size bales of what looked and felt like alfalfa into Hooligan’s van and started off for Tucson.

Friends of yours? Henry asked.

We’ve been doing business for a while.

Why’d you need me?

Hooligan smiled his rich and satisfied smile. That’s the kind of business it is, he said. Friendly but not too friendly.

They knew I was there? Under the tree?

You bet. That’s the first thing I told them. About my friend Dogmeat the Green Beret. They could see you. They trust my judgment.