Finally satisfied, he left the bathroom to begin packing. He took only his clothes and a few books, throwing them into his roommate’s suitcase. Haphazardly, he stuck notes and bits of paper in his pockets. He returned to the bathroom and carefully emptied half the contents of each pill bottle into an old Marlboro pack and put the rolled-up pack in the pocket of a pair of slacks in his suitcase. The bottles he put in the toe of a battered tennis shoe; then stuffed a dirty sweat sock after them and placed the shoe under Peters’ bed. He started to put his portable typewriter in its case, then became suddenly frantic with haste and left it overturned on the table. “Addresses!” He tore through the drawers of his desk until he found a small leather-covered book, but after leafing through it tore out one page and threw the rest to the floor. Finally, holding the big suitcase with both hands and breathing rapidly, he took a quick look around—“Okay”—and dashed out to the car. He pushed the suitcase into the back seat and jumped in and slammed the door. The thump hurt his ears. “No windows open.” And hot, oven-grill dashboard... He tried twice for the reverse gear, gave up and put it in forward, turning across the lawn and back on the driveway until he was facing the street. But he didn’t pull onto the street. He sat, racing the motor, looking out at the clean sweep of pavement passing in front of him. “Come on, man . . .” His ears were ringing from the door slam, as they had after the blast. He raced the motor, urging the car to decide which way to turn onto the street. “Come on, man...be serious.” Gearshift hot as a poker, and ears ringing ...finally, palm to face to somehow press away the ringing—I seemed to feel a tendoned hand playfully squeezing my knee, and a bagpipe’s whirling skirl wheezing in my throat—and discovers that he is weeping again; squeezing, wheezing and rattling the scene...and it is then— “Or if you can’t be serious,” I scolded, “at least be rational; who could possibly in this wasted world . . . ?”—that he remembers the postcard lying on the porch. (. . . the clouds file past. The bartender brings ’em on. The jukebox bubbles. And at the house Hank shouts hoarsely into a roomful of resistance: “. . . but goddammit what we’re talking about ain’t whether we’re gonna be the most popular folks in town if we sell to WP ...but about where we gonna get us some more labor?” He stops, looking about at the faces. “So . . . has anybody got any suggestions? Or want to volunteer for extra work?” After a short silence Joe Ben pops a handful of sunflower seeds into his mouth and holds up his hand. “I definitely ain’t volunteering for more labor,” he says, chewing, then bends his mouth back to his hand and begins spitting out the seeded hulls, “but I might have a little suggestion . . .”) The card was on the bottom step—a threepenny postcard in heavy black pencil with one line showing black and blacker, larger and larger than all the rest of the message. “You should be a big enough guy now, bub.” At first, I refused to believe it; but that hand kept squeezing my knee and those pipes kept wheezing in my chest, until a mirthless laughter began to spew out, as uncontrollable and uncalled-for as had been my attack of griefless tears—“From home...oh Christ, a card from the kinfo’k!”—and I was finally forced to face up to its existence. I walked back to sit in the idling car to read it, trying to control my spasms of laughter enough to make out the print. It was signed Uncle Joe Ben, and even through my mirth I could make out that the message was penciled in a rambling grade-school hand that could be none but Joe’s. “Sure. Uncle Joe’s hand. Absolutely.” But it was the heavier, surer addition at the bottom that commanded my eye, and as I read it it wasn’t Uncle Joe’s hand but Brother Hank’s voice that recited the words inside my head. “Leland. Old Henry stove up bad in accident—the show is in a bad tight for help—............