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were rusted. The live-animal cages were empty.
    Doc sat down in his old chair and a weight descended on him. He cursed Old Jingleballicks, savoring his quiet poisonous words, and then automatically he got up and walked across the silent street to Lee Chong’s grocery for beer. A well-dressed man of Mexican appearance stood behind the counter, and only then did Doc remember that Lee Chong was gone.
    â€œBeer,” said Doc. “Two quarts.”
    â€œComing up,” said the Patrón.
    â€œIs Mack around?”
    â€œSure. I guess so.”
    â€œTell him I want to see him.”
    â€œTell him who wants to see him?”
    â€œTell him Doc is back.”
    â€œOkay, Doc,” said the Patrón. “This kind of beer all right?”
    â€œAny kind of beer’s all right,” said Doc.
    Doc and Mack sat late together in the laboratory. The beer lost its edge and a quart of Old Tennis Shoes took its place while Mack filled in the lost years.
    Change was everywhere. People were gone, or changed, and that was almost like being gone. Names were mentioned sadly, even the names of the living. Gay was dead, killed by a piece of anti-aircraft fallback in London. He couldn’t keep his nose out of the sky during a bombing. His wife easily remarried on his insurance, but at the Palace Flop house they kept Gay’s bed just as it was, before he went—a little shrine to Gay. No one was permitted to sit on Gay’s bed.
    And Mack told Doc how Whitey No. 1 took a job in a war plant in Oakland and broke his leg the second day and spent three months in luxury. In his white hospital bed he learned to play rhythm harmonica, an accomplishment he enjoyed all the rest of his life.
    Then there was the new Whitey, Whitey No. 2, and Mack was proud of him, for Whitey No. 2 had joined First Marines and gone out as a replacement. Someone, not Whitey No. 2, said he had won a Bronze Star, but if he had he’d lost it, so there was no proof. But he never forgave the Marine Corps for taking his prize away from him—a quart jar of ears pickled in brandy. He’d wanted to put that jar on the shelf over his bed, a memento of his ser vice to his country.
    Eddie had stayed on his job with Wide Ida at the Café La Ida. The medical examiner, when he looked at his check sheet and saw what was wrong with Eddie, came to the conclusion that Eddie had been technically dead for twelve years. But Eddie got around just the same, and what with the draft taking everybody away he very nearly became a permanent bartender for Wide Ida. Out of sentiment he emptied the wining jug into a series of little kegs, and when each keg was full he bunged it and buried it. Right now the Palace is the best-endowed flop house in Monterey County.
    Down about the middle of the first quart of Old Tennis Shoes, Mack told how Dora Flood had died in her sleep, leaving the Bear Flag bereft. Her girls were brokenhearted. They put on a lady-drunk that lasted three days, stuck a “Not Open for Business” sign on the door, but through the walls you could hear them doing honor to Dora in three-part harmony—“Rock of Ages,” “Asleep in the Deep,” and “St. James Infirmary.” Those girls really mourned—they mourned like coyotes.
    The Bear Flag was taken over by Dora’s next of kin, an older sister who came down from San Francisco, where for some years she had been running a Midnight Mission on Howard Street, running it at a profit. She had been a silent partner all along and had dictated its unique practices and policies. For instance, Dora had wanted to name her place the Lone Star, because once in her youth she had spent a wonderful weekend in Fort Worth. But her sister insisted that it be called the Bear Flag, in honor of California. She said if you were hustling a state you should do honor to that state. She didn’t find her new profession very different from her old, and she thought of both as a