"It's like he was deceased, like your father. Away in the arms of God (sob). But, then, we know he's here on earth and can't even sit down with us to enjoy a shortcake tonight."

Then, right before another conflagration of tears, I'd usually be saved by Aunt Sarah Lou, who'd waddle in with some fresh strawberries guaranteed to be from Louisiana, the kind we put more store by than those big California berries that seem to never taste just right. She didn't need to be introduced to the subject or the situation. Particularly if she'd had a beer or two at Tiny's Tavern on the way home from the market.

"Angel Louise Whittimore! Goddamn it! That child of yours has given up his Christian responsibility! He's no longer honoring his mother. He's providing nothing for any of us poor, indigent family members who are manless except for unhealthy little literary Percy B. here. He's out there living amongst savages on the frontier and taking up their habits as well as those of the monog-, monag-, many-wived devils that call themselves Saints. You must pray for

him

"But Sarah Lou, he is my love, my baby, my child."” "Not your baby," I'd repeat.

"And you must pray for him silently!" Sarah Lou would add with such emphasis that her watermelon-shaped breasts, which looked awfully heavy at such moments, would shake a little because of the physical strain of shouting. One thing about Sarah Lou, she knew a thing or two. And if she didn't know she'd find out. She hadn't run the Starlite Guest House ("Southern Hospitality in the Middle West") for twenty-four years just for the fun of it. She had purposely collected knowledge about people, their foibles and their foolishness, their weakness and their strength, and she was always ready to adopt the characteristics that appealed to her fat fancy and to comment on them and to judge the ones she didn't adopt.

Long after dialogues such as those I've just told you about ceased, when Mother could be satisfied with one strawberry shortcake a week and her original conception that more than that was a sin, after she'd gained back the three pounds and several extras, Aunt Sarah Lou told me the truth that she knew about Albert, that he had a female appetite for men.

"Besides," she remarked, "he was a pimply-skinned little moon-faced pip squeak!"

That last exclamation shocked me because it was quoted right out of my everyday diary. How was I to know she'd find it on the bookshelf, much less read the entry I'd made shortly after Albert ran off with pig eyes from Idaho, at the time when I was resentful and a little bit jealous. So I had to keep my mouth shut and try not to register any reaction and hope she'd not blackmail me. She might carry blackmail around in the back of her mind forever, too, because she was—and is a powerful woman doing the work of two men every day and using a good bit of the profit of her labor to support Mother, who is a bit vague even when it comes to baking shortcake biscuits, and me. She calls me "literary" because I have thick glasses, don't work very regularly, and have the name Percy B. That is, she could carry the idea of blackmail around in her mind until yesterday when I found out the real truth about Sarah Lou Birdsong.

I had always known that Sarah Lou had strong passions and had always suspected that they carried over into the realm of sex. Women who run boarding houses but still wear Channel No. 5 and transparent nylon slips with yards of lacy trim almost give away their earthiness as far as I'm concerned, if you