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116 1962 Whorehouse On the ranch, to keep myself from going stir crazy, I order books through the mail, mostly history and biographies, some travel. I read novels when I can find the right ones. I make sure that all the books are paperbacks , so I can carry them in my saddlebags and behind the seat of the pickup truck. The books become worn and fragile from handling and I have to tape them, just to keep the pages from falling out. I wear out three different copies of ­ FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS. At night, reading, I keep the small light burning near my bunk until the other hands make me turn it out. The ranch has one big advantage—there is no place to spend money. When I draw my pay I stuff it in the war bag I keep under my bunk and then, once a month or so, Will, Caton and I, and now and then some of the other hands, take the old pickup truck and drive the rutted dirt road out to the highway, then the two-lane blacktop into town. We go to a movie, hang out in the feed store or the town’s one saloon. Or maybe visit the whorehouse. But the town is so small that the whorehouse has only two whores, both of them fat, and something about fat whores in The Pale Light of Sunset 117 tiny whorehouses makes me a little crazy. We drink a little, laugh a little, fuck a little, and then something always comes over me—maybe it is the whiskey, but I always think it is the sight of unrestrained flopping hugely fat breasts. I see a pair of them heading toward me, drooping and bobbing through a doorway, like two small blimps in mating season, and I just fall over, shaking, laughing, out of control. Fat arms rise out of the flesh at the side of the tits and grab me, shoving me out into the tiny waiting room where I rumble toward the door, trying to keep from choking on my own spit and laughter. Always, always, I stumble over some guy’s feet and there are some words and maybe a half-assed punch or two thrown and somebody ends up being thrown out into the street. Usually me. Shit. I never learned to get out of there the easy way. Maybe I should write down some of this shit. ...

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