the kind of dog who would be offended if a homosexual approached him. Michael thinks of the dog as a displaced person. He is aware that he and the dog get into a lot of cliched situations—man with dog curled at his side, sitting by fire; dog accepts food from man’s hand, licks hand when food is gone. Prudence was reluctant to let the big dog stay in the house. Silas won her over, though. Making fine use of another cliche at the time, Silas curled around her feet and beat his tail on the rug.
“Where’s Richard?” Sam asks.
“Richard and Prudence went to Manila.”
“Manila? Who are you?”
“I lost my job. I’m watching the house for them.”
“Lost your job—”
“Yeah. I don’t mind. Who wants to spend his life watching out that his machine doesn’t get him?”
“Where were you working?”
“Factory.”
Sam doesn’t have anything else to say. He was the man on the telephone, and he would like to know why Michael pretended to be Richard on the phone, but he sort of likes Michael and sees that it was a joke.
“That was pretty funny when we talked on the phone,” he says. “At least I’m glad to hear she’s not in California.”
“It’s not a bad place,” Michael says.
“She has a husband in California. She’s better off with Richard.”
“I see.”
“What do you do here?” Sam asks. “Just watch out for burglars?”
“Water the plants. Stuff like that.”
“You really got me good on the phone,” Sam says.
“Yeah. Not many people have called.”
“You have anything to drink here?” Sam asks.
“I drank all their liquor.”
“Like to go out for a beer?” Sam asks.
“Sure.”
Sam and Michael go to a bar Michael knows called Happy Jack’s. It’s a strange place, with “Heat Wave” on the jukebox, along with Tammy Wynette’s “Too Far Gone.”
“I wouldn’t mind passing an evening in the sweet arms of Tammy Wynette, even if she is a redneck,” Sam says.
The barmaid puts their empty beer bottles on her tray and walks away.
“She’s got big legs,” Michael says.
“But she’s got nice soft arms,” Sam says. “Like Tammy Wynette.”
As they talk, Tammy is singing about love and barrooms.
“What do you do?” Michael asks Sam.
“I’m a shoe salesman.”
“That doesn’t sound like much fun.”
“You didn’t ask me what I did for fun. You asked me what my job was.”
“What do you do for fun?” Michael asks.
“Listen to Tammy Wynette records,” Sam says.
“You think about Tammy Wynette a lot.”
“I once went out with a girl who looked like Tammy Wynette,” Sam says. “She wore a nice low-cut blouse, with white ruffles, and black high-heel shoes.”
Michael rubs his hand across his mouth.
“She had downy arms. You know what I mean. They weren’t really hairy,” Sam says.
“Excuse me,” Michael says.
In the bathroom, Michael hopes that Happy Jack isn’t drunk anywhere in the bar. When he gets drunk he likes to go into the bathroom and start fights. After a customer has had his face bashed in by Happy Jack, his partners usually explain to the customer that he is crazy. Today, nobody is in the bathroom except an old guy at the washbasin, who isn’t washing, though. He is standing there looking in the mirror. Then he sighs deeply.
Michael returns to their table. “What do you say we go back to the house?” he says to Sam.
“Have they got any Tammy Wynette records?”
“I don’t know. They might,” Michael says.
“O.K.,” Sam says.
