Father and Son

by Larry Brown

Genres: Suspense

Synopsis

Larry Brown, a remarkable literary voice from the South, is a veteran of the Vietnam War and spent 17 years as a firefighter. Distilling his experiences, he has developed a deep understanding of the darker forces at work in men's souls.

In novels like Joe and On Fire, he has astounded critics and earned critical acclaim from many authors, including John Grisham and Pat Conroy. Father and Son follows a bad seed, Glenn Davis, who is deeply flawed and dangerous. After serving several years in prison, Glenn has returned to his rural Mississippi home, not sure what he wants or needs. Over the course of five days, he forges a path of destruction and violence that finally leads him to Sheriff Bobby Blanchard, who is everything Glenn is not.

Larry Brown wraps the listener up in the searing conflict between these two opposites. But from their inevitable stand-off, he skillfully spins them into unpredictable directions and reactions. The stunning conclusion, swelling with unexpected notes of peace and hope, resonates with Brown's powerful talent.

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Print pages: 299

Sample

It was Saturday when they drove the old car into town, returning him, passing by the big houses with their blankets of dark grass beneath the ancient oaks. Midday. A hot wind blew in the car windows and rattled papers on the dash as they went up the wide and shaded avenue toward the square. It was cooler here in the hills than it had been in the Delta that morning, though not by much.

“It’s been dry,” Puppy said. “Daddy’s well quit on him again. I’m afraid it dried up.”

Glen scratched at a tick bite behind his ear and crossed his legs in the seat.

“What’s he do for water?”

“I hauled him some. His pump may be messed up again, I don’t know. I guess you can see about it when you get out there. You are gonna go out there, ain’t you?”

“I don’t know if I’ll make it out there today or not,” Glen said. “I don’t see nobody here to meet us.”

“What’d you expect? A parade? Why don’t you go on out there and see him?”

“I’ll go see him sometime.”

“He ain’t in real good shape, you know.”

“I ain’t in real good shape myself,” Glen said.

Puppy slowed for the intersection, pulled up almost under the traffic light and stopped. “You hungry?”

“Yeah. Let’s go over to Winter’s and get a hamburger.”

Puppy glanced at him and studied the traffic light. “I kind of hoped you wouldn’t want to go over there right off the bat. Lunchtime and all. Crowd in there.”

Glen looked out over the square and the brick buildings that ringed it, the old whitewashed courthouse in the center where they had sentenced him. The dusty automobiles were parked at an angle against the deep curbing and people were moving on the sidewalks.

“I ain’t had any breakfast.”

The light changed and the battered old vehicle rolled forward.

“You should have told me. We could have stopped somewhere.”

“I was in a hurry.”

“Afraid they’d change their minds?”

“It wouldn’t have surprised me.”

Puppy nodded and turned the wheel to the right and eased along until he saw an open space. He guided the car in. The bumper scraped against the concrete and he shut the motor off. They got out and Puppy stopped at the parking meter and put a nickel in it and bumped it with his hand until the needle came up. He stepped up on the sidewalk, hitching at his baggy pants, tucking in the sweaty surplus of his shirttail.

“Well, hell, come on,” he said, and held the door of the cafe open for Glen. The screen door flapped shut behind them and they stood in a room floored with boards worn smooth from years of shoe leather. Slow fans hanging from the peeling wooden ceiling stirred the warm air.

“You want to set at the counter?” Puppy said. “Or do you want to get a table?”

“It don’t matter.” Glen was looking around to see who he knew in there.

“Hey Puppy,” said a man at the back. He was wearing overalls and he had one black lens in his eyeglasses. He nodded gravely to Glen and Glen returned it with a sparse movement of his head, but he didn’t say anything.

“Hey Woodrow,” Puppy said.

“Who’s that stranger you got with you?”

“You know who that is,” Puppy said. “Let’s just set at the counter, Glen.”

They eased onto a pair of round padded stools. The linoleum of the counter was so worn it had no pattern. They could see hamburger patties sizzling on the grill behind the register. The room smelled of smoke, onions, grease.

“Where’s Jewel?” said Glen.

“I don’t know.” Puppy was looking around. “I guess she’s in the back.” He nudged Glen in the ribs and gazed past his shoulder. “How’d you like to have you a little of that?”

Glen turned his head and saw a young woman reading a magazine and smoking a cigarette at one of the tables. She had on a white dress and she wore some colored plastic bracelets on her wrists. She looked oddly familiar to him, like some child he might once have known or merely spoken to.

“Uh-huh,” he said.

She rocked slightly in her seat to some tune in her head and mouthed silently the words she was reading.

“Who is that?”

“Erline Price.”

“Naw. That ain’t her, is it?”

“She’s growed up some, ain’t she?”

She must have heard them talking about her or sensed it. She looked up and squinted behind her glasses. She touched the frames to see better and nodded. “Hey Randolph. Hey Glen. I didn’t know you were home.”

“Yeah,” Glen said, smiling. “I just got in.”

She nodded, grinned, and went back to reading her magazine. After they turned away she looked back up at him again.

Jewel stopped halfway through the kitchen doors with a carton of hamburger patties in her hands. She set them on the counter and wiped the hair out of her eyes and came down to stand in front of Glen. She looked like she was about to cry.

“Don’t do that,” he said. She reached out and put her hand on his arm. He let it stay there but he kept watching her face. She looked around at the people studying them.

“I’ve got to turn these hamburgers,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

She went to the grill and started flipping hamburgers, glancing back at him, edging something out of her eye with the corner of her apron.

“Right in front of the whole goddamn town,” Puppy said in a low voice, and Glen turned to stare at him.

“You think I give a shit what these people think?”

Puppy put his elbows on the counter and laced his fingers together. He shifted on the stool and peered up at a ceiling fan for a moment. “Far as I know you never did care what anybody thought.”

“What y’all want to eat, Glen?” Jewel said.

“Just give us a couple of hamburgers apiece. And some Cokes. Make em to go.”

She came back over to where they sat. “Why don’t you eat in here? I want to talk to you. I got a lot I want to tell you.” She was trying to smile, trying to be cheerful. She didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands.

“We got to go out to the cemetery,” Puppy said. “Glen ain’t been out there yet.”

“Oh,” she said, watching him, glancing back at the grill where the smoke was rising thicker. “Well. I’ll hurry up and fix em then. I got some almost ready.” She turned away and stood at a table and began setting out buns from a cellophane pack. “Have you seen your daddy yet?”

“We just got in. Just this minute.”

“It sure don’t seem like three years now. Seems like it went by in a hurry. I sure was sorry to hear about your mama.”

Glen didn’t say anything. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, plucked a bit of tobacco off his tongue.

“Let me get your Cokes,” she said. She opened the drink box and reached in for a pair of short bottles, then pried their caps off and set them up on the counter. An old man in a suit walked up and leaned on it.

“You ain’t got my dinner ready yet?”

She snapped her face up and her eyes got bright and hard.

“I’m fixin em fast as I can, mister. You’ll just have to wait your turn like everbody else.”

The old man blinked and backed up. He looked at Glen and Puppy with a hostile glare and sat down, then leaned back in his chair and muttered to himself.

Jewel was stuffing a white sack full of hamburgers wrapped in waxed paper. Glen stood up and reached for some money but she said, “Don’t worry about that. I’m sorry I’m so busy right now. I’ll talk to you later. Okay?”

She watched his face for an answer.

“Okay?”

She started to turn away but he reached over and touched her arm. A small cloud of smoke was wafting up from the grill, spreading out along the ceiling, loud sizzling and grease burning. A few people stood up to see better. He took the neck of the sack and folded it down, not looking at her. But finally he did.

“I’ll see you,” he said.

“I hope so. You hardly ever wrote.”

“I got some stuff I got to take care of. You know. I got to see some people.”

“Let it go. Don’t go lookin for trouble. I can’t take no more of that.”

“Well,” he said.

She leaned close and whispered, “Things has changed, Glen. We got to have a talk.”

“Come on, Glen,” Puppy said. He was standing at the door with his hand on it.

Glen waved the hamburger sack at her. They went out. She went back to the grill and started scraping off the scorched meat and flinging it viciously into the garbage can. She cried a little but nobody said anything. They just watched her like an audience.

The gravel road curved away to a green and grassy hill bright and hot beneath the afternoon sun. They pulled up in the shade of the oaks and ate with the car doors open, the radio playing.

“You gonna start back up with her, I guess.”

Puppy wasn’t looking at him. He was staring out through the windshield, cupping his hamburger in both hands close to his lap. Glen balled up the waxed paper and started to throw it out the door, but dropped it on the floorboard instead. He turned slightly to watch his brother.

“What did you figure I’d do?”

“I don’t know. I thought you might want to go out to the place and stay with Daddy. Maybe try to stay out of trouble.”

“Bullshit, Randolph.” He watched a little breeze riffle through the leaves and turn their pale undersides up. A bird sang in the distance. “I ain’t gonna stay with Daddy. I got a house of my own. Even if I didn’t have a house of my own I wouldn’t stay with him.”

“You could try it and see how you like it.”

“I already know how I’d like it. If you so damn crazy about somebody to stay with him why don’t you go out there and stay with him?”

Puppy shook his head. “I’m just your brother. I just want to look out for you.”

“Naw, you just want to run my goddamn business for me.”

Puppy didn’t say anything. His stubbled jaw moved slowly as he chewed. Out past the dusty hood of the car the gravestones seemed to march away to the trees, the deep shade and cool of the bordering timber.

“Where’s she at?” said Glen.

“Over yonder on the right. Next to … well, close to Aunt Eva.”

They sat looking at the stones until Glen made a little motion with his hands.

“Is that where Theron is?”

Puppy studied him.

“Yeah, he’s over there too,” he said slowly. “I’d about decided you never would ask.”

Glen got out and stood in the gravel and looked back inside, holding on to the door handle.

“Well I’m gonna go on. See if I can find her.”

“I may walk out there after while.”

Glen let the door fall to and went up the road in front of the car. He walked fifty or sixty yards in the gravel and then stepped over a hog-wire fence, holding the wire down behind his buttocks with one hand and fending off the stands of briars with the other and stomping at them and swinging his legs over one at a time. A lizard rustled over a hot stone and the tall, dry sage grass sang softly in a short breath of wind. He stopped and looked for a moment at the stones. So many of them and where to start. The unbroken peace that place invoked. He went slowly, stepping between the headstones and pausing to read one here and there. He kept looking ahead for new earth. But it wouldn’t be new now. Not after a year. It would probably have grass growing on it by now. Each time he saw fresh dirt he went to it, but it was never hers. He was sweating a little under the sun, in the open glare of it, and he wondered what shape the house would be in after three years. He’d have to clean it all up, fix what was broken, get the electricity turned on. He had to see about his car and try to get it running, then look for a way to make some money. He had to see Jewel.

He stopped in the middle of the graveyard and looked around. Puppy had said next to Aunt Eva, but he wasn’t even sure where she was, and she’d been dead so long. Eva’s was an old funeral, barely remembered. Kids in ties and crying women, mud on their shoes. He was little then. A Davis or a Clark, she’d be next to them. He started reading the names on the stones and working his way right and suddenly found himself in the middle of them. They were all buried together, had been for the last hundred years. Fathers, mothers, children, the grandfathers and the dead from three wars. He found the grave but he couldn’t believe it. There was no stone, only a small metal shield with a white card clamped to it and the name of the funeral home embossed on it to mark her resting place. He squatted and peered at the card, the typewritten words of ink almost bled away. No flowers, plastic or any other kind. Not even the withered stems. Just a rough patch of ground with blue and red clay. He knew that she had probably been buried in the cheapest casket they could find.

He got on his knees there next to the little metal marker and tried to read the tiny words and numbers printed there. He looked back to see if his brother was coming. He could see Puppy’s feet sticking out a window of the car. Faint music drifted on the summer air. He felt close to these dead here with their stones and the finality of the earth that bound them together. There was a stone there he’d never visited and he finally turned his head and read it:

He cried then, rocking on his heels, watching the small brown striped bees hovering nearby in the scattered clover. After a while he stopped crying and wiped the wetness away from his face with his fingers and sat there, hardening his face, changing it so that his brother would not know that he had cried. He went out the gate and back down over the gravel to the car.

Puppy was lying on the seat, his eyes closed, his fingers intertwined peacefully on his chest. Glen slapped his feet down from where they were propped on the door, and when Puppy opened his eyes and started up he told him, “I ought to whip your ass. You and Daddy’s both.”

“You ain’t changed a damn bit.”

“What’d you do with her money? Spend it?”

Puppy held on to the back of the seat with one hand and the steering wheel with the other and struggled to pull himself upright.

“I ain’t seen the damn money. Daddy took care of all that stuff.”

“Why ain’t there a stone?”

Puppy glared at him and then came on out the door.

“Why don’t you ask him? They ain’t no need in gettin mad at me over it. I didn’t have nothin to do with it.”

Puppy stepped past him and pulled a cigarette out. Glen kicked at the rocks he stood on and looked again out over the grass. “How much you reckon one costs?”

Puppy lit his cigarette and sighed a lungful of smoke. He motioned helplessly. “I don’t know. I figure you could get one for a couple hundred if it ain’t too fancy. If you want, we can ride over to Tupelo one day and see.”

Glen leaned against the car and put his hands on the hood. “I like to never found her. All her brothers and everybody out here and you can’t even hardly find her place. I want us to ride over there one day before long and price one. You reckon they’d finance it?”

“I guess they would. They financed the funeral. We ain’t never paid for that yet.”

Puppy turned to the car and rested his arms on the roof, smoking his cigarette and tapping softly with the tips of his fingers on the faded paint and just waiting for the rest of the questions, a small annoyance showing on his face.

“So how much was the funeral?”

“I think it’s about twelve hundred dollars all told. It costs a right smart to get buried these days.”

“Well? Have you paid any on it?”

Puppy was evading his eyes. He was clearly troubled, but he began nodding.

“Sure. I made a few payments on it. When I could. Here and there.”

“How much?”

“Well goddamn, Glen, I got three kids to feed and bills to pay just like everbody else. Shit, I ain’t made out of money.”

“How much have you paid on it?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“How much would you guess?”

“Aw. I guess about thirty dollars.”

“Shit,” Glen said. He walked around the hood and got in the car on the other side. “Take me out to the house. I got a lot to do.”

Puppy got in the car and closed the door. “Well you don’t have to get pissed off about it. I’ve had a lot on me. It ain’t been easy for me neither.” He cranked the car and turned it around under the trees, backing up in the gravel and scraping his tailpipe on the bank.

“Damn,” he said. “This old car’s about wore out. I wish I had the money to buy me a new one. I went out there and cranked yours once in a while.”

“How long’s it been since you cranked it?”

Puppy started to answer and then saw a white car pull in off the highway and block the road. There was a six-pointed gold star emblazoned on the door. He hit the brakes and the right front wheel grabbed in the gravel so that the front slewed a little and they came to a sudden halt, sliding in the rocks. Dust flew up around them and came in through the windows.

“Son of a bitch,” Glen said. He put his hand on the door handle but Puppy grabbed his arm. He tried to get loose and out the door but Puppy held him tighter.

“Now wait a minute,” Puppy said.

“Wait’s ass. I want to talk to that bastard.”

“Hell. Don’t get sent back the first day you get home. You know he ain’t gonna take no shit off you.”

“But I’m supposed to take some off him?”

“Just wait and see what he wants.”

“I know what he wants. He wants to rub my nose in it.”

“Well don’t get out. Just stay in the car. Hear?”

Glen turned loose of the door handle and jerked his arm loose from Puppy, then eased back in the seat.

“I ain’t scared of him. I did my time.”

The sheriff got out of the car with his sunglasses on and left the door open. They could see a racked shotgun above and behind the front seat. When Puppy switched off his ignition they could hear the cruiser idling, the rough stutter of the cam. Bobby Blanchard wore blue jeans and a blue checked shirt. He wasn’t wearing a gun. He stopped about four feet away from the car and nodded to them.

“Hey Randolph. Hello Glen.”

Glen didn’t answer, just stared into the dark glasses on Bobby’s face. Bobby’s pants were wet below the knees.

“I ain’t come to give you a hard time, Glen.” He crossed his arms over his chest and studied the ground, toed at the gravel with his cowboy boot. “There’s not anything I can say that’ll make you feel better.”

“You got that right,” Glen said.

Bobby looked off to one side, looked up at the sky, then looked back. “I was just headed home to change clothes and I saw the car. I sure am sorry about your mama.”

“He’s just upset cause we ain’t got her a stone yet,” Puppy said.

“If it means anything from me, I hate it all happened like it did,” Bobby said. “I wish a lot of times I had a crystal ball. I could stop a lot of stuff before it starts.” He put his hands in his pockets and he seemed uncertain of what he was saying.

“I’m gonna make sure he stays out of trouble,” Puppy said.

“Why don’t you shut the hell up, Puppy?” Glen told him, and pointed to Bobby. “All he wants is somebody to kiss his ass.”

“The man just wants to talk to you.”

“I’ve done served my time, I told you. I don’t have to talk to nobody. You can set here and lick his ass all day if you want to but I ain’t.”

The man who’d sent him up pulled his sunglasses off. He flicked them lightly along his thigh. He hadn’t shaved and he rubbed unhappily at the black bristles on his jaw.

“I tell you what I’m gonna do, Glen. Just for today. While it’s just you and me and Puppy here. I’m gonna take a little shit off you so we can get it all straight.”

“I figured you’d get around to that.”

“I try to do my job. If somebody calls me up at two o’clock in the mornin, I get up and go. If it’s Saturday night and I got the fights on television, I get up and go. I been over at Spring Hill all night draggin a pond for a boy that drowned yesterday afternoon. We found him about an hour ago. Eleven years old. I just went and told his mama.”

“What in the hell’s that got to do with me?”

“Well, I’ll tell you. I get paid to do whatever needs to be done. I try my best to keep the drunks off the road and the troublemakers in line. Now I’ll be the first one to admit that you had some bad breaks. But it don’t excuse what you did.”

“I told you he run out in front of me.”

“You were drunk.”

“I spent three years of my life in that goddamn shit hole you put me in.”

“Which a lot of folks think wasn’t near long enough. Ed and Judy Hall would have loved to seen you rot down there. If you’d killed my kid I’d probably feel the same way. But I’m not the judge. I’m just the sheriff. You’re out now. All you got to do is act right. I know we ain’t never gonna be friends. You never did like me anyway.”

Glen was trembling and he didn’t trust his voice. He said, “Well let me just tell you a few things. I don’t want to be your friend. And I don’t need no lecture from you. Now what do you think about that?”

Bobby nodded and put his glasses back on.

“That’s about what I thought. But I tried. You got two years’ probation, right?”

“Eighteen months.”

“Who’s your probation officer?”

“I don’t know. I’m to go to the office.”

“It’s probably Dan Armstrong. When are you supposed to report?”

Glen made Bobby wait before he answered.

“Monday mornin.”

Bobby nodded a little more and he seemed to weigh this information while he watched the ground. He looked up quickly.

“Okay. He’s gonna tell you everything, so you don’t need to hear it from me. Your brother there could probably talk a little sense into you if you’d let him. Long as you stay straight, you won’t hear a word out of me. I don’t want you to think you got to carry a chip around on your shoulder. Now if you want to, we’ll shake hands like grown men. Put all this behind us.”

And he stepped closer and held his hand out, a big strong hand with freckles and fine black hair on his arm. He offered it and stood in the hot silence waiting. Glen spat out the window.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “Since it’s just us three out here. Just you and me and Puppy? You take that badge off for five minutes and I’ll stomp your ass in the ground. Then we’ll see if you want to be friends or not. See if you want to shake hands then.”

Bobby drew his hand back slowly and said, “You wouldn’t win.” He turned and walked back to his cruiser and got in and shut the door and turned around.

“Boy that was real smart,” Puppy said. “Man try to do you a favor and you.… Boy,” he said. He cranked the car. “I don’t believe you sometimes.”

“Why don’t you just carry me somewhere I can get a beer and shut up?” Glen said.

“You start any shit with him you’ll be right back in the pen.”

“He ain’t gonna send me back to the pen. He’ll have to kill me first.”

“If you don’t act right he will. And I didn’t think you was supposed to go in a bar while you’re on probation anyway. I thought you wanted to go home.”

“I don’t now.”

After Puppy had pulled out into the road and they were moving again, Glen said, “Hell, you can go in a store and buy me some, can’t you?”

“I guess I can. Have you got any money?”

“Hell yes, I’ve got some money. You ain’t got any on you?”

Puppy shook his head sadly. “Ain’t got much.”

“Didn’t you get paid yesterday?”

“I did. And I lost most of it in a card game. And I had to put gas in the car this mornin. Reckon I could get that back from you?”

Glen was already reaching for his billfold. “How much?”

“Aw. I guess about ten dollars. Ten or twelve.”

Glen gave him fifteen. They bumped over the rough old highway through the afternoon sun past stretches of timber and by yards with wrecked cars parked in orderly rows. He saw familiar things, a solitary tree in a field, the rotting hulk of a wooden wagon sinking its way into the ground. He watched everything until they pulled into a place near Abbeville, a little county joint with beer signs in the windows. Puppy parked and got out.

“What you want and how much?”

“Get a case and make sure it’s cold. Here.”

Glen handed him some more money and watched him climb the steps, could see him through the windows going to the big cooler. Cars and trucks passed down the road beside him. Finally Puppy came back out with the case slanted against his hip under one arm. Glen reached and opened the back door. Puppy slid the beer onto the seat, then took a six-pack around to the front.

Glen looked at the beer. He placed his hand on it. Cold in the hot air, clean little bright cans beginning to sweat. He tore one loose and opened it with the church key that was on the dash and turned it up to his mouth and let it stand there until he drained it. He took the can down, belched.

“That was pretty good,” he said, and got another one.

“Damn, Glen, they don’t allow you to drink on the premises. Got a sign right there.”

“I don’t give a shit. Now carry me over to Barlow’s.”

“You ain’t got no business over there. He’ll be drunk and you’ll be into it before you know it.”

“You sound like a old woman, Puppy. I got some unfinished business with him.”

Puppy turned the wheel and looked out the window to see if anything was coming.

“You had any sense you’d let it slide, too. You don’t need to go over there. Let’s go see Daddy.”

“I’ll go see him when I git goddamn good and ready. If you don’t want to take me I can find somebody else to run me over there.”

Puppy studied him for a few seconds, resigned to it.

“Hell, I’ll carry you. You gonna go anyway. Just don’t blame me if he whips your ass again.”

“Ain’t no son of a bitch gonna get me down and kick me and get away with it.”

“Yeah, and if you hadn’t cut him he probly wouldn’t’ve got you down and kicked you. Somebody cut me I’d kick him too. You lucky he didn’t shoot you. I would’ve.”

Puppy pulled out to the stop sign, then hit the gas. They didn’t talk for a while. The few houses alongside the road rapidly gave way to plowed or planted fields and spotted cows with outsized horns and barns with roofs of brown tin and gray rotting sides. Glen turned the vent so that the hot wind rushed in to ruffle his shirt, his hair. He opened a pack of Camels and dropped the wrapper out the window.

Puppy looked at him briefly, then turned his face back to the road.

“What’s the first day like down there?”

Glen didn’t look around. “Call you out on the grass. What they call the grass. Ain’t no grass, just dirt. Call you out to fight and if you don’t fight they take you down and fuck you in the ass.”

“You fight?”

“You goddamn right.”

“Ever day?”

“Till they left me alone.”

“How long did that take?”

“Bout a week.”

“You gonna give me one of them beers?”

Glen reached down and got him one and handed it to him. Puppy steered with his knees and got the opener and punched two holes in the can. Foam spurted from the top and he sucked at it. He drove with one hand, the beer between his legs, glancing out the window from time to time.

“He might not even be up,” he said. “This early.”

“He still got that monkey?”

“Last time I was over there he did. That’s about a ugly son of a bitch. You ever seen the way he acts around a woman that’s on her period?”

“Goes crazy, don’t he?” said Glen.

“Shit. Worse than that. Jumped on some old gal over there one night, had his dick run out. She like to had a goddamn fit. He’s bit several people.”

Glen finished his beer and threw the can out the window. He reached down for another just as they crossed the county line. “He better not bite me.”

After an eighth of a mile Puppy let off the gas and slowed the car, checking the rearview mirror, shifting down into second, and turning into a rutted dirt road where a weathered sign on a leaning post pointed a crooked red arrow toward BARLOW’S COLD BEERDANCING POOL.

The place wasn’t visible from the highway at all. It was hidden in a thicket of loblolly pine and the dried needles had coated the roof with a carpet of brown. On the front porch sat a Coke machine, several chairs, two big Walker hounds with slatted ribs and hanging tongues. The dogs rose to their feet with lifted hackles and. . .