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that, can you tell me that?” Dillon said. “Couple weeks ago these two gentlemen from Detroit came in and had a couple of drinks, and then they sort of look around and the next thing I know they inform me that we are going partners. They give me some time to think about it, you know, and while I think I make a few phone calls. So that when the few minutes are up I had maybe six or seven friends of mine in there and I took the opportunity to go out in the back and get a piece of pipe that I keep around. I hit them a couple of good ones and we throw them out in the street in front of a cab.
    “Then two nights ago I get five of these Micmacs come in, real Indians, for a change, and they have a little firewater and begin to break up some of the furniture. So me and a few friends hadda use the pipe on them.
    “So this broad hollers at me there, just a few minutes ago, about the everlasting flames, and I consider myself a fairly intelligent guy and all that, pretty good judgment, I get drunk once in a while now and then, but I got this strong idea I would like to go up with that piece of pipe under my coat and say: Well, what do I do about those fellows from Detroit, you want to tell me that? The Indians too. Jesus going to punish me for that? And then whack her once or twice across the snout to bring her to her senses.”
    The young bum had cornered a middle-aged, rather stout businessman right in the middle of the mall, with open space all around. “I want to tell you something,” Dillon said. “That kid may be a down-and-outer there, but he has pretty good moves. I think he used to be a basketball player, maybe.
    “Anyway,” he said, “I still got a certain amount of my sanityleft and I didn’t have the pipe with me, so I don’t say anything to her and I don’t bop her a couple, like I would like to. You can’t reason with these people, you know. They get that idea in their heads, all they can do is stand there and bellyache Gospel at you, enough to drive a man out of what little mind he’s got left.
    “I knew this guy, met him when I was at Lewisburg on that federal thing back there three, four years ago. Forget what he was in there for, B and E in a federal building, maybe, post office job. Anyway, not a bad guy. Big, used to box some. He comes from down around New Bedford there. So we strike up a friendship.
    “I get out first,” Dillon said. “I come back here. I let him know where I am. So when they parole him, he goes home to live with his wife and her mother but he knows where I am if he needs to get ahold of me. And it wasn’t very long before he needed to. Because those two women went right to work driving him out of his mind. Dumb Portuguese types, you know, and what did they do when he was in jail but they decide they don’t want to be Catholics any more, they’re going to be, what is it, Jehovah’s Witnesses. Beautiful. Guy comes home, knows the construction business pretty good, gets himself a job, every night he comes home, there’s maybe a ballgame on or something, they want him to go out and stand on the sidewalk in front of the supermarket, peddling Jesus to every poor bastard that comes around to get a pound of fish.
    “So he starts coming up here,” Dillon said, “every chance he gets, just to have a little peace and quiet. And the next thing I notice, he’s coming up this one time and he doesn’t go back. So I say to him, what’re you doing here. And he says: ‘For Christ sake, you aren’t going to start in on me, are you?’
    “I had some room,” Dillon said. “I was separated from my wife at the time and I had some room. I let him stay with me. Hedrinks a bottle of beer and he watches the ballgame while I’m working and during the day, well, I don’t know what he does. The best he can, probably.
    “Naturally, it’s just a matter of time the parole officer makes a report and says he’s missing visits, which is true, and that his family says he doesn’t come home,