There was a small cry, and it wasn’t the owl’s. Lucien walked and puffed on a bait-shack-style corncob pipe, a Missouri meerschaum he’d bought on a stateside trip with his aunt. He had been away from the area for years, some years in which English was his second language. He was an iron man of information, but just maybe what passed for strength of character was nothing more than a low resting pulse rate. Using the corncob pipe as a prop, Lucien imagined himself old and alone on the ranch. In front of the frame house a piebald domestic duck cruised by itself on the green pond. Inside, an old man (the Lucien of the future) felt himself cooling, felt the heat of the light bulb on his hands as he turned the pages of his book. Lucien started to get nervous. That night the hired man had him down for ice cream and checkers. Though he scarcely knew him, Lucien played as though his life depended on it. Lucien knew W.T. took his frenzy for the creaking of a harsh and unremitting soul, but he played on.
