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lovemaking.

SIX
    WHAT A RUSH it had been. Being fawned over. Fought over. “I get the first live shot . . . Bullshit. I was here first . . . I set this up before you got here.” Treated with respect. Treated like someone with a mind. Called “Mister” every time he turned around. “You’re doing fine, Mr. Trip . . . Thank you for your time, Mr. Trip . . . How can we reach you later, Mr. Trip?” He was finished with all the television interviews by a little after ten o’clock Sunday night. Finally got to pull his hat back on. They didn’t go for his hat. Told him to take it off for the on-camera interviews. They said they couldn’t see his face when he had the hat on. He took it off to please the reporters. Especially the pretty women. All his life—with one exception—just the homely ones went for him, and then only when they were lonely. He’d slept with a lot of ugly, depressed women. He liked being liked by attractive women, and being liked by more than one person at any one time was a complete novelty.
    The only other time he’d been showered with that sort of group approval was when he found that little girl’snecklace. A few years earlier. A Wisconsin town, outside of Eau Claire. The maintenance engineer for a manufacturing company said he’d buy a couple of five-gallon buckets of degreaser and a bunch of mops if Trip would help comb a farmer’s cornfield for a missing kid. Reluctantly, he went along. A hot August afternoon, and the corn was tall. He’d bent over to tie his shoes in between the rows and found the child’s jewelry. Then the cops found the kid. Alive. Then it started. Newspaper interviews. People stopping him on the sidewalk and shaking his hand. Strangers in the bar slapping him on the back, buying him beer. At first he was terrified of the fuss. Tried to numb his nerves with booze and pills. Took someone out one night when he wasn’t prepared. He wanted to leave town right away, but there were too many reporters waiting for interviews. He didn’t want to raise suspicions. He got scared when a cop noticed his cracked windshield the next day, but a couple of people stood up for him. Said the crack had been there all along. He’d never had anyone stand up for him like that. Not since Snow White. That’s when he warmed up to the attention, discovered it wasn’t so bad if it was positive. The town’s mayor, who owned a trophy shop, even gave him an award with his name engraved on it. A bowling trophy. The message said: Thank you, Justice Trip. You bowled us over with your help . Probably a leftover from a bowling tournament, but Trip didn’t care. He’d never before won a prize for anything.
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    MOST of his thirty-six years, he’d been afraid of any sort of attention. Self-conscious about his height—nearly seven feet—he walked hunched over. He stared down because looking up never got him anything but whispers and stares. Even in kindergarten he was big, and he was so afraid to draw attention to himself he’d pee in his pants rather than raise his hand and ask to go to the bathroom. He finally trained himself to go without water all day. Everyone expected him to play basketball when he gotolder, but he got tangled in his own legs. He was smart, but doing well in class would have drawn attention. He worked at mediocrity and kept his grades to C’s. Worst of all was the teasing about his stutter. The more the other kids teased, the worse it got. He’d try to go all day without talking. Then he’d hear: “What’s wrong? The c . . . c . . . cat g . . . got your t . . . t . . . tongue?” When he’d come home from school crying because of the mean kids, Pa would tell him they’d get theirs. He’d say, “What goes around comes around.”
    His pa was tall, too, but he