Odds Against Tomorrow

Chapter Twenty

Ingram came downstairs at eight o’clock, his body pinched and shrunken within the folds of Earl’s big overcoat. He rubbed his hands together and crouched by the small blaze that Lorraine had started in the fireplace. Without looking at him, Earl said sharply, “You should drink something. You’ll freeze to death.”

“I’m okay, just cold.” Ingram could hardly feel his hands; they were hard and dry as weathered bones.

The old man was back in his customary place, snoring feebly under the mound of gray blankets. There was a worn Bible under his bed, beside a jar of medicine which generated the foul, acrid stench in the room.

Lorraine stood close to the fire, hugging herself tightly; she had washed in cold water, and now her skin stung uncomfortably and the sinuses had begun to throb behind her forehead and cheekbones.

“Maybe you better go upstairs for a while,” Ingram said to her. “We can take turns. It’s too cold to stay up there all day.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll come up when I get warm. We want to keep—” He stopped and stared at the splintered case of the radio. “Hey, what happened?”

“I turned my ankle and stumbled against the table,” Lorraine said, watching Earl’s frowning face. “We heard the six-thirty news, and I was just turning off the radio.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” Ingram said slowly. “But you heard the news, at least.”

“We heard it,” Earl said without looking at Ingram. “I told you I’d listen, didn’t I?”

“Sure, that’s right,” Ingram said, wondering what had got Earl into this mood; he was staring at the floor, his face hard and drawn with tension. Maybe his wound was hurting a lot.

Lorraine walked across to the kitchen door, but stopped there and looked back at Earl. “Tell him what we heard,” she said.

“Yeah, let’s hear it,” Ingram said, puzzled by the insistence of her tone, and the restless anger in Earl’s face.

“It’s your lucky day,” Earl said, limping over to the windows.

“What do you mean?”

“The cops don’t want you, that’s what I mean. I’m the only one they want.”

So that’s what’s bothering him, Ingram thought. He glanced around at Lorraine, but she must have slipped through the door as Earl was speaking.

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Ingram said. “The cops might have been confused for a while. But they’d get the real story quick enough.”

“You’re just lucky, that’s all.” Earl stared out at the broad, black meadow that swept up to a stand of poplars a quarter of a mile from the house. Everything was cold and lonely; the very earth seemed beaten and helpless and forsaken. Crows winged through the damp gray air toward the bare trees, occasionally crying out pointless warnings against the silence. The sound tightened the sick, weightless feeling in his stomach, and made the muscles of his throat crawl with nausea. Say it, finish it, he thought. Lorraine was right. Who the hell was he? What did he mean to them? Not a goddam thing. A colored guy they’d never seen before. A loud-mouth, smart-aleck jig. Brush him off like a piece of dirt... He tried to pump up his anger, but he was too weak and sick...

“You sure you heard that news straight?” Ingram said dubiously.

“Yeah, I heard it straight,” Earl muttered. “The delivery boy from the drugstore disappeared after the holdup.” The lie he had planned tasted bitter on his tongue. “He had a record. Did time somewhere. I guess he was scared the cops would figure he was in on the job.”

“The poor bastard,” Ingram said. “They will figure that now.”

“Don’t waste your sympathy on him. Worry about me, for Christ’s sake.” Earl turned from the window but he couldn’t meet Ingram’s eyes. “I mean something, too, don’t I?”

“Yeah, sure,” Ingram said. “We got to get you out of this mess. But how about that doctor? You mean the radio didn’t say anything about him?”

“Not a peep. Your grandstand play paid off, I guess. You were the big hero, saving the doctor and his kid from me. That was smart, Sambo.”

“You know I did right. You know that. If we’d kept them here the whole country would be swarming with cops. They wouldn’t just be waiting at roadblocks. They’d be buzzing around our ears like hornets.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Earl said wearily and returned to the sofa. “But it saved your neck, too. The doc is covering for you.”

Ingram picked up the radio and turned it around in his hands. “It’s pretty funny, in a way. I rob a bank and kidnap a couple of people and nothing happens. I overpark ten minutes at home and a dozen cops jump me. It’s funny.” He took a penknife from his pocket and sat down, studying the radio. “I guess we better split up when we leave here. You think that makes sense?”

“Sure, you’re in the clear,” Earl said bitterly. “You might as well bug-out.” His thoughts were angrily confused; he had wanted Ingram to suggest this, hadn’t he? They’d stacked things so he’d leap at the chance to get away from them. So why chew him out for it?

“Hell, I’ll stick if you want me to,” Ingram said, unscrewing the back plate of the radio. “But a white man and a colored man traveling together attract attention. You know that. You and your woman will have a better chance without me.”

“Okay, okay,” Earl said shortly. “We’ll split up.”

“I can go on foot,” Ingram said. “Hop the bus on the highway and be on my way. You and your woman shouldn’t have any trouble getting out in the car.”

“Okay, goddamit, we’ll split up.”

“We going to meet at the World Series?” Ingram asked with a faint smile.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Earl said, rubbing his forehead. “We’ll drink some beer and I’ll tell you what to watch for.” Why did he say that? he thought. Why keep piling up lies? “What the hell are you doing with the radio?” he said abruptly.

Ingram had arranged a number of parts in a neat pattern on the table. “Maybe I can fix it,” he said.

“Yeah? What do you know about radios?”

“Can’t hurt to try, can it? These old sets were made good and solid. Like those old dollar Ingersoll watches. You drop ’em and they usually work better afterwards.” He peered into the radio, puckering up his lips in a soundless whistle.

“No good, eh?” Earl watched him closely, sick and weary with a new fear: he didn’t want Ingram to know they’d lied to him. Let him find out when the cops grabbed him. Not here... “It’s too busted-up, eh?” he said, unable to keep the hope from his voice.

Ingram glanced at him. “Maybe, maybe not.” He went back to work. “If the rectifier tube is shot, there’s no chance. But it might just be the speaker leads are pulled loose. Something like that.”

“Where’d you learn about radios?”

“In the Army. I was in a communications section.”

“Communications, eh?” Earl put a cigarette in his mouth and struck a match with a flip of his thumbnail. “That was a soft touch, I guess.”

“No, sir. They worked us four hours on and four hours off for three days at a stretch. That was overseas, though. In the States it wasn’t bad.”

“Where were you overseas?”

“England. Near a town called Weymouth most of the time. But we got to London regularly.”

Earl said dryly, “You call England overseas?”

Ingram grinned. “You show me a way to get there on dry land.”

Earl stood and limped back to the windows, savoring a sudden, stimulating anger; it was a sustaining emotion, a hot thing that burned away all the doubts that had been nagging at him. The wise-cracking about the Army had triggered it; that’s the way they all acted when they forgot their place. Puffed up, slapping your back and offering you drinks out of their bottle. Crowding close to you... Earl knew this as a general truth, but he wasn’t interested in general truths now; he was suddenly aware of a big truth; it was all right for him to hate Ingram. It was a responsibility, in fact, doubly important since Ingram had done him a favor. That was the essential thing. You treated people the way they ought to be treated — regardless of how they treated you. That’s what took guts.

The thoughts beat warmly in his mind, suffusing him with a sense of virtue and confidence. It was okay to lie to Ingram; it was a duty. Earl wasn’t sure how he had reached these conclusions, but their truth couldn’t be denied; they rang vigorously through his whole body, drowning out the tiny voices of doubt and guilt.

“So how was it overseas?” he said quietly, standing rigid and tense with his back to Ingram. “How was the stuff in England, Sambo?”

“We didn’t have it too bad.” Ingram bent over the radio, frowning intently at one of the tubes. “We lived in barracks, and the CO was pretty good about passes.”

“It sounds nice and cozy,” Earl said.

“The Army’s the Army,” Ingram said. “Good deal or bad deal, it’s still the Army. You know that.”

Earl watched him with narrowed eyes. “You must have liked England, I guess. They went for you over there, I heard.”

“The people were real nice.” Ingram laughed. “You ask ’em for directions and they’d take your arm and walk halfway to where you were going, saying, ‘You cawn’t miss it, old chap, really you cawn’t!’” Ingram shook his head. “They talk like that, no kidding.”

“You’ve got the limey accent down pretty good. Somebody must have taught it to you.”

“I heard enough of it, I guess.” Earl limped back toward the sofa, staring at Ingram’s bent head. “You got along fine with the people, didn’t you?”

“Most of them were friendly to soldiers. You know how that is. They’d show us pictures of their sons off in Burma or some place, ask questions about America.”

“You must have given ’em an earful,” Earl said.

Ingram shrugged and managed a smile. He could feel Earl’s anger beating at him like a blast furnace. What the hell was wrong with him? What had started him up like this?

“Well, how about the people, Sambo?” Earl said. “I’d like to know about them. I never saw anything but mud and Germans.”

“Well, they were friendly and nice, like I told you.” He knew now what Earl was getting at, and an old primitive caution stirred in his blood. “I didn’t get to know any of them real well, but they were always nice to us.”

“You didn’t get to know any of them, eh?”

“Well, I knew one fellow pretty well,” Ingram said. “Not for long, but that didn’t seem to matter. He was the kind of guy you understood right away, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m dumb, Sambo. I don’t know what you mean.”

“I met him in a bar one night in London,” Ingram said. “He was just standing there with a beer and we got to talking.”

“You went into the bars with them, eh?”

Ingram looked steadily at him. “That’s right. We used the same toilets, too. That’s what we were fighting for. Democracy. Community crap houses.”

“So what about him?” Earl’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “What about him, Sambo?”

“He was from Scotland,” Ingram said, still staring steadily at the anger in Earl’s face. “He was about sixty. He liked music. He asked me if I’d like to go to a concert with him the next day. I said fine. We went to the concert. Next day he took me and a buddy of mine around London. Out to neighborhoods where there were row after row of little brick houses with flower gardens in front of them. Then he took us to Piccadilly, and then to the East End where the people were so poor they never used up their Scotch and gin rations. All the little pubs had Scotch and gin. He knew a lot about history. He told us that an Englishman named Disraeli once said, ‘The good things in life are for the few — the very few.’ The Scotchman didn’t like that idea. He dropped us at Paddington Station and we caught the train back to our outfit.” Ingram let his penknife fall to the table. “That’s the story of the people of England.”

“Well, why did he pick you up? Was he queer?”

“You couldn’t prove it by me.”

“And how about the girls? How about the shack jobs, Sambo?”

Ingram shifted his eyes from Earl’s face. He couldn’t face the senseless anger there. Why? he thought bitterly. Why should I have to apologize for what my body did ten years ago? “I’ll tell you this much,” he said, suddenly contemptuous of himself and contemptuous of Earl. “I never took anything in England that wasn’t offered to me. On a platter.”

“A great war you had. You weren’t in the Army, you were in heaven.”

“They gave me a soldier suit and put me on a ship. What was I supposed to do? Jump overboard and swim to the front lines with my rifle in my mouth?”

Earl stood and limped back to the windows, embittered and consumed by his restless anger.

“You should have tagged along with me, Sambo,” he said. “You’d have seen the war. I left the States a Pfc. Four years later I was platoon sergeant. There were only about a dozen guys in our outfit that made the trip the whole way. The rest were shot up in Africa or France or Germany. Anytime they got overstocked with Purple Hearts they’d send us back to the line.”

“You were with the First, I guess.”

“You heard about it, eh?”

“Sure. That was one of the real Glory outfits.”

“You’re frigging right it was.” He limped up and down the room, inflated with belligerent pride. “They took the greatest bunch of guys in the world to make that outfit, then killed half of them to make a name for it. You know something? Every officer we left the States with was killed in action. The CO, his exec, four second looies. All killed in action.” Earl moved to the sofa, feeling suddenly confused and weary. His mood was changing, softening; the cold knot of anger in his breast seemed to be melting. “One of our second lieutenants was just a kid,” he said shaking his head slowly. “A guy named Murdock. He played football at Santa Clara. God, he was a hell of an athlete. He had everything. Good-looking, a big grin on his face all the time. He was never discouraged about things. He was an optimist, I guess you’d call him. He kept everybody cheered up. He got hit in France. A bullet went right through his helmet, in the back, out the front. When we turned him over a couple of guys started swearing — it was just wrong to see him busted-up like that.”

Earl had forgotten Ingram, forgotten the bitterly cold room with its medicinal stink, forgotten that he would die if the police caught him; everything was crowded from his mind by proud, painful memories of the Army. It had been the best time of his life. There was no doubt of that. With all the mud and crap, the best time he’d ever known.

He’d griped about it then, like everybody else, because he had been ashamed to admit what he really felt. Even combat was different for him than for the other guys. It made him wild and giddy, but it wasn’t like fear at all; it was a roller-coaster feeling, almost too exhilarating to bear. That’s why he’d yelled and shouted like a madman at times. Just to release the thing...

They had put together five big years, marking them with graves that stretched all the way back to Africa. They were an outfit, something you gave to and took from at the same time, something bigger than just one hundred and fifty foot soldiers. Then the outfit broke up and the guys scattered all over the country. And there was never a postcard or a telephone call from any of them, never a way to keep the memories alive. It was like the whole thing never happened.

Once, in Davenport, Iowa, Earl had met a man from the outfit — Hilstutter, a tough, savvy sort of guy, a good soldier. Hilstutter hadn’t changed; he was a little fatter, that was all. They stood talking on the sidewalk, Hilstutter nodding at him and saying, “Yeah, that was a bad night,” or “What ever happened to So-and-so, I wonder” — nodding as Earl talked on eagerly, recalling some of the big times in the Army. And then Hilstutter had said, “You haven’t changed, Sarge. You look great.” And he’d shaken hands after that and glanced at his watch. Had to get rolling, he said. Had to get home to his wife...

And that was all. Earl had stared after him, watching the dumpy little man hurry off down the sidewalk, looking just like any one of a thousand guys you’d see in a crowded city. After soldiering together five years that’s all it meant to Hilstutter: a hello, a hand shake, a good-by.

The real outfit was dead, he thought gloomily. The dead ones had made the outfit’s record — the silent dead of the old First. It was funny, the dead ones kept the memories alive. The others didn’t count. Scattered all over the country, watering lawns, growing fat and bald, forgetting the whole damned thing as soon as they got their discharge papers in their hands.

Ingram’s hands were still; he was watching the pain and confusion in Earl’s face, wondering about the man. He said at last, “How did you get the Silver Star?”

Earl looked at him curiously. “How did you know about that?”

Ingram dug around in his overcoat pocket and pulled out Lorraine’s car keys. The Silver Star gleamed brightly on his brown palm. “I figured it was yours,” he said.

“You figured right,” Earl said, nodding a little. He was silent for a few seconds, a humorless smile twisting his lips. Then he shrugged and fumbled for the pack of cigarettes.

“We got caught in the basement of a German farmhouse that night,” he said. “Six of us. We thought it was a good place to hole up, but the Germans came back with tanks and cut us off. They moved their company headquarters right into the house. We could hear ’em talking up above us, getting food ready, posting details. I didn’t know what to do. We talked it over and decided to wait until dawn, then slip out a basement window and crawl through the Krauts to our own lines.” Earl lighted his cigarette, remembering the smell of root vegetables in the basement, the slick muddy floor and the growling sound of German voices above their heads. He laughed. “We made it too, out the window, through the yard and into an orchard. Everybody was on his own, taking off at half-minute intervals. It was just like a field problem. But only five of us made it — one guy was missing, a big clodhopper replacement who’d just been with the outfit a week. I didn’t even know his goddam name. Monroe or Morgan or something like that. He was always picking his nose and stamping his feet.” Earl shook his head. “You know the kind of guy? Useless. But I had to go back and get him. I found him about ten feet from the house, huddled on the ground, too scared to move. Frozen there like a big pile of crap. I practically had to drag him back. But this time our luck was no good. A guard heard us and started shouting. They all began yelling then and flashing torches around — you know Krauts blow sky-high if you take ’em by surprise. Greatest soldiers in the world when everything’s going according to the book. But when things snafu they act like a bunch of crazy women. Anyway, I got this Morgan into the orchard and started shooting back. The trees were pretty good cover. Morgan or Monroe or whatever in hell his name was made a run for it and got hit. I kept moving from tree to tree and firing and the Krauts never charged. They must have figured we were a recon section. I picked up Morgan — that was his name, I guess — and dragged him back to our lines. And that was it.” Earl drew deeply on his cigarette, then threw it at the fireplace. “So they gave me the medal.” He stood up feeling bitter and ill at ease. “That and a dime buys a cup of coffee, I guess you know.”

Ingram smiled and studied the Silver Star. “I got a Good Conduct medal. That’s something, ain’t it?”

“The medals were mostly a lot of crap,” Earl said.

“I don’t think so.”

“To hell with it, anyway. You did what you were told, right? You said that yourself. You didn’t ask them to send you to England — I didn’t ask for Africa, France and Germany. They sent us, that’s all. You did your job, that’s all anybody can do. What’s there to worry about?” He squeezed Ingram’s shoulder as he limped past him. “Forget it, Sambo. You got as much right to be proud of yourself as a man with the Medal of Honor hanging around his neck.”

“Well, that’s one way of looking at it, I suppose.” He grinned with a kind of foolish pleasure; the touch of Earl’s hand on his shoulder had started him tingling all over. “Maybe you’re right at that.”

“Sure, I’m right.” Standing behind Ingram, Earl looked curiously at his hand, a frown darkening his eyes. Then he stared at Ingram, exasperated with himself. “How’re you coming with the radio?” he said. “You’re a communications man. How’re you doing?”

“It’s useless,” Ingram said, but he was still smiling. “It’s shot to pieces.”

“I could have told you that.”

Ingram sighed and turned around to look at Earl. “You know, I don’t understand you.”

“Well, so what? What difference does that make?”

“You might be the last man I see on this earth,” Ingram said. “That makes a difference. You’re like a magazine serial story I may not have a chance to finish.”

“So what don’t you understand?” Earl was limping back and forth in front of the fireplace, staring at Ingram with tense, irritable eyes. “Am I some kind of a freak? Do I have two heads or something?”

“Why didn’t you make something of yourself, that’s what I can’t figure out. You’ve a lot of good stuff in you. How come you never used it?”

“What do you know about it? You don’t know me at all, Sambo.”

“I’ve got eyes and ears.” Ingram smiled. “You’re not the smartest guy in the world, of course, but that’s not too important.”

“I get along. I always did okay.”

“You don’t have to pretend with me. You probably couldn’t fool me if you wanted to.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“We’ve been through something, that’s all. I got a chance to know you pretty well.”

“You don’t know a damned thing about me. Get that into your skull.” Earl’s voice rose angrily. “Stop worrying about me.”

“You know me, don’t you? Why can’t it work the other way round?”

“What the hell do I know about you?”

“You know you can trust me. How many people do you know that well? Enough to trust, I mean?”

“I didn’t have any choice,” Earl said, looking away from Ingram. “I had to trust you.”

“Sure. And it turned out okay. You know, it might not be a bad idea if there was a law to make people trust one another. Everybody would probably be surprised how well things turned out.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Okay, I’m crazy. But how come you never settled down to a good job? With your Army record and everything, you could have made something of yourself.”

“Christ, I don’t know,” Earl said impatiently. “Nobody knows things like that.” He limped back and forth in front of the fireplace, suddenly filled with a weary despair. “Nothing ever worked, that’s all. I kept striking out. That just happens. Look at any Skid Row. You’ll see people wandering around with eyes like balls of glass. What happened to them? You think they know?” Earl stopped and pounded his fist on the table. “Like hell they do. They’ll tell you about a mother or father, or a girl maybe, but they can’t tell you about themselves. They don’t know what happened, they just don’t know. That’s why stories and movies are always about heroes. The life of a bum doesn’t make any sense. It’s just—” He shook his head with futile anger. “It’s just a mess.”

“But you’re no broken-down derelict,” Ingram said. “You’re a big healthy man. You could have been a construction worker or truck driver or a lumberjack or something. Or maybe got in with a veterans’ organization — with your record they could have used you for a showpiece.”

“Ah, cut it out,” Earl said wearily. “I was no good, that’s all. And I knew it. That was the toughest thing. I knew it.”

“Lots of people think that about themselves. Go into a bar where they’re playing the blues and you’ll find plenty of them. That’s why the blues got sung in the first place. They aren’t for heroes and good guys. They’re for people in a mess.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Earl was trying anxiously to organize his feelings into words. He knew it was important to be honest now; this was a chance to drive the thing into the open. He had never made the effort before; some guilty fear had always restrained him. “Now listen! I knew I was no good,” he said, speaking slowly and quietly. “I don’t mean I was a drunk or a deadbeat or anything like that. What I did had nothing to do with it. What I did might be good, but I was no good.” Earl swore under his breath, infuriated by the futility of his words. “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. Finding what he wanted to say was like picking up a pin with gloves on — a frustrating, hopeless task. “You understand?” he said desperately. “The stuff I’m made of is no good. That’s what I’m trying to say. I’m put together with bargain-basement junk. That’s the feeling I can never shake. Don’t you see what I mean?”

“It doesn’t make sense. Why should you think that?”

“You don’t understand. You’re not listening to me.” Earl sat on the edge of the sofa and stared anxiously at Ingram. “Take a car that’s put together with cheap, worn-out parts. And filled up with watered gas and dirty oil. What’s going to happen to it? It’s going to break down, fall to pieces. You can tinker with it, and keep it washed and polished, but it’s never going to be any good. That’s what I’m like. I always knew that about myself.” Earl was breathing slowly and heavily. “I knew it. Sometimes I’d look at my hands and think about it. I’d see the skin and the veins and the hair, and I’d realize that none of it was any good.” He stared at Ingram in a silence that was broken only by the feeble snores of the old man in the corner. The coldness and stench of the big bare room seemed to force them closer together, compressing them into a single unit of humanity. Earl’s tension and fear lessened; he felt at ease with Ingram suddenly, understanding him, and depending on him for understanding. They were both in the same mess, he realized. Not just in trouble... it was more than that. They were alive and they were alone, he thought, but something helped him to realize that these terms meant pretty much the same thing; one stemmed inevitably from the other. There was no terror in this knowledge; the real terror was not knowing that everybody faced the same problem. That everybody was alone. Not just you...

“You see, Sambo—” He hesitated. “You mind me calling you Sambo?”

“It’s as good a name as any.”

“Well—” Earl stared at his grimy hand, studying the dirt-rimmed nails, and the hair coiling strongly on the brown skin. “I always knew I was no good. Because I knew where I came from. I knew my old man.” There was pain in the admission, but no shame; it was just a hard, bitter fact.

“That’s a load to carry,” Ingram said. “But hell, you and your old man are two different people. He’s him. You’re you.”

“I know,” Earl said thoughtfully. “I just figured that out. And you told me I was dumb.”

“Not dumb,” Ingram said, shaking his head. “Just not smart. There’s a big difference. Let’s have a drink on it, okay?”

As he was looking for Earl’s glass Crazybone came in from the kitchen humming softly under her breath. “The fox hunters are coming,” she cried merrily. “I just saw one of their hounds in the meadow. Oh, there’s a fine sight.” She pirouetted slowly, patting the back of her head with both hands. “The gentlemen in their red coats, and the ladies so calm and fine leaping over the fences.” She laughed shrilly. “Sometimes the ladies fall on their fine round tails, too. Oh, dearie me, it’s a sight.”

The old man stirred under the blankets. “You’ve woke me,” he muttered petulantly.

“I better let Lorraine come down,” Ingram said. “We’ve been gabbing here more than an hour.”

Crazybone stared at the parts Ingram had removed from the radio. “Won’t do you no good to fix it,” she said, shaking her head firmly. “She’ll just break it again.”

“Who?” Ingram said.

“The woman. She’s bad-tempered and destructive, qualities you don’t find in true ladies. Ladies are sweet and gentle.”

“What’s she talking about?” Ingram said to Earl.

“She’s crazy. It was an accident. Lory stumbled against the table.”

“Ha, ha,” Crazybone laughed gaily. “That’s her story. But she picked it up and threw it down. And I know why.”

Ingram stared at the cracked plastic case of the radio. It was pretty banged-up for a fall from a table... The tiniest of doubts nagged at him. “Why did she break it?” he said slowly.

“She doesn’t like music,” Crazybone said promptly and cheerfully. “She isn’t gentle and sweet. What a curse for a good man!”

Ingram sighed and smiled sheepishly at Earl; the suspicion he had almost entertained made him warm with embarrassment. “Rumors every hour on the hour,” he said. “She’d go great in the Army.”

But Earl wasn’t looking at him; he was staring through the windows at the layers of white fog rolling over the wet fields. “You better go on upstairs,” he said slowly. “Keep an eye out for those fox hunters.”

“All right. Sure, Earl.”