Second story: Sometime in the mid-nineties a young poet made a pilgrimage to Larry’s house. From Iowa, I think. Larry put him up in the living room where the poet wrote poems while maintaining a staggering blood-alcohol level that sometimes led to howling. Days passed, then weeks. Leanne would step over him and his empty beer cans on her way out the door for school in the mornings. Finally Mary Annie couldn’t take it any longer; she told Larry he had to evict the poet. “I can’t,” protested Larry, softhearted to a fault. “He says he’s got something wrong with the brakes on his car.” Sympathy long exhausted, Mary Annie glared at him and said: “He doesn’t need brakes to leave, Larry.”