Read The Nothing Man for Free Online

and dug some dry cigarettes out of the pocket of the car. I sat drinking and smoking, thinking how strange it was that the thing that had to be done was always the hardest to do.
    She wasn't bad, you see. She was weak, spiteful, stubborn; she'd made her own life a hell as a means of making mine one. But, except for what had happened to me, she wouldn't have done what she had. The flaws of character and spirit would never have appeared.
    I think the truest maxim ever coined is the one to the effect that untried virtue doesn't count.
    Years before, when I was a kid, I owned a little Ford runabout, a Model T. And I took care of that car as a man takes care of his love-for I did love it. I was and remain a Model T guy, more comfortable with imperfection than its opposite, cherishing the ability to discern and shore up a latent weakness. I knew the car wasn't a Cadillac. Hell, what would a guy like me do with a Cad? It was a Model T, and I treated it good and it treated me good. When I sold it, after two years of trouble-free driving, it was actually in better shape than the day I bought it.
    Two months later it was on the junk heap.
    Less than two months after I split with Ellen, she was whoring.
    I belched and kicked open the door of the car… It was too bad but that's the way it was. If I had to live, I had to work. And if I had to work, I had to be around people. And if I had to be around people, I had-I had to be around people. They mustn't know.
    Mr. Clinton Brown regrets the necessity of murdering Ellen Tanner Brown.
    I stuffed the full bottle into my pocket and carried the other under my arm. I staggered down the pier to the community dock and climbed down the ladder. Somewhere near the foot of it, I paused and peered around in the darkness. Then I said eenie-meenie-miney-moo-toodle-de-doo, and let go.
    Everything was a little confused for a moment. My head was planted firmly in a boat, but my feet were in the clouds.
    Having great faith in the wisdom of providence, particularly that section dealing with the laws of gravity, I remained unperturbed. _I am a _Courier_ man, I thought, and a _Courier_ man does not miss the boat_.
    My feet came down and my head came up, and my ass end was planted firmly in the water. Clear-eyed, I let it remain there while I got the bottle from under my arm and bought myself a drink. Then I pulled it over the side, untied the mooring rope, and picked up the oars.

5
    I have never been able to understand the high regard that leaders of dangerous missions have for sobriety. Sober, one challenges the fates; unsober, the fates cannot be bothered with you. While the drunk wanders unharmed amid six-lane traffic, a car swerves up on the sidewalk to pick off the sober man. While the drunk walks away from an eight-story fall, the sober man stumbles from the curve and breaks his neck. It never fails. That's the way it is, so that's the way it is.
    Take me, which you are doomed to do for some two hundred pages. Take me. I know nothing about boats. I had never been in a rowboat before. And while I wasn't drunk, naturally, since I cannot get drunk, I was very far from sober. A sober man would never have got fifty feet from the dock. Not being sober, I got a mile and a half, all the way to Rose Island.
    Due to my falling or being thrown out of the boat a couple of times, and subsequent willy-nilly driftings while the boat found me again, my trip was something less than speedy. But I got there. I pulled the boat up on the beach and finished the opened bottle. Then, having got my bearings, I headed for the Golden Eagle cottages.
    They were only about a block away. I couldn't have debarked much nearer to them if I'd ridden the ferry and taken a taxi. There were twelve of them, laid out in a triangle with its base to the ocean. Number seven was at the end. Its shades were drawn, but I could detect a little light inside. I seemed to hear a faint stirring and splashing.
    I tapped softly on the door. There was