. . . “Just a sort of belladonna cocktail,” is how he allays the shocked concern of his beer-drinking friends. “One man’s poison is another man’s high.” Teddy, the part-time bartender and full-time owner of the Snag, though he might have been compelled to take open issue with the woodcarver’s choice of cocktails, would have been, of all the men in Wakonda, the man most likely to believe in the woodcarver’s principle. For the town’s leanest days were inordinately Teddy’s fattest, the town’s darkest nights his brightest. He turned more liquor Halloween night at the crowd’s disappointment than he would have sold if Big Newton had knocked Hank Stamper’s head off . . . and the Halloween rain that brought a deluge of despair down on the striking loggers the following day brought a jingle of joy from Teddy’s till. Floyd Evenwrite’s reaction to the rain was somewhat different. “Oh me, oh me, oh me.” He woke late Sunday morning, hung over and suspicious of the effect of last night’s beer on his bowels.
