"He whacks off in his pants," Amy had once confided to Fran. "How's that for nasty? Whacks off in his pants and wears the same pair of undershorts until they'll just about stand up by themselves."
Harold's hair was black and greasy. He was fairly tall, about six-one, but he was carrying nearly two hundred and forty pounds. He favored cowboy boots with pointed toes, wide leather garrison belts that he was constantly hitching up because his belly was considerably bigger than his butt, and flowered shirts that billowed on him like staysails. Frannie didn't care how much he whacked off, how much weight he carried, or if he was imitating Wright Morris this week or Hubert Selby, Jr. But looking at him - she always felt uncomfortable and a little disgusted, as if she sensed by low-grade telepathy that almost every thought Harold had was coated lightly with slime. She didn't think, even in a situation like this, that Harold could be dangerous, but he would probably be as unpleasant as always, perhaps more so.
He hadn't seen her. He was looking up at the house. "Anybody home?" he shouted, then reached through the Cadillac's window and honked the horn. The sound jagged on Frannie's nerves. She would have kept silent, except that when Harold turned around to get back into the car, he would see the excavation, and her sitting on the end of it. For a moment she was tempted to crawl deeper into the garden and just lie low among the peas and beans until he got tired and went away.
Stop it, she told herself, just stop it. He's another living human being, anyway.
"Over here, Harold," she called.
Harold jumped, his large bu**ocks joggling inside his tight pants. Obviously he had just been going through the motions, not really expecting to find anyone. He turned around and Fran walked to the edge of the garden, brushing at her legs, resigned to being stared at in her white gym shorts and halter. Harold's eyes crawled over her with great avidity as he came to meet her.
"Say, Fran," he said happily.
"Hi, Harold."
"I'd heard that you were having some success in resisting the dread disease, so I made this my first stop. I'm canvassing the township." He smiled at her, revealing teeth that had, at best, a nodding acquaintance with his toothbrush.
"I was awfully sorry to hear about Amy, Harold. Are your mother and father - ?"
"I'm afraid so," Harold said. He bowed his head for a moment, then jerked it up, making his clotted hair fly. "But life goes on, does it not?"
"I guess it does," Fran said wanly. His eyes were on her beasts again, dancing across them, and she wished for a sweater.
"How do you like my car?"
"It's Mr. Brannigan's, isn't it?" Roy Brannigan was a local realtor.
"It was," Harold said indifferently. "I used to believe that, in these days of shortages, anyone who drove such a thyroidal monster ought to be hung from the nearest Sunoco sign, but all of that has changed. Less people means more petrol." Petrol, Fran thought dazedly, he actually said petrol. "More everything," Harold finished. His eyes took on a fugitive gleam as they dropped to the cup of her navel, rebounded to her face, dropped to her shorts, and bounced to her face again. His smile was both jolly and uneasy.
"Harold, if you'll excuse me - "
"But whatever can you be doing, my child?"
The unreality was trying to creep back in again, and she found herself wondering just how much the human brain could be expected to stand before snapping like an overtaxed rubber band. My parents are dead, but I can take it. Some weird disease seems to have spread across the entire country, maybe the entire world, mowing down the righteous and the unrighteous alike - I can take it. I'm digging a hole in the garden my father was weeding only last week, and when it's deep enough I guess I'm going to put him in it - I think I can take it. But Harold Lauder in Roy Brannigan's Cadillac, feeling me up with his eyes and calling me "my child"? I don't know, my Lord. I just don't know.
"Harold," she said patiently. "I am not your child. I am five years older than you. It is physically impossible for me to be your child."
"Just a figure of speech," he said, blinking a little at her controlled ferocity. "Anyway, what is it? That hole?"
"A grave. For my father."
"Oh," Harold Lauder said in a small, uneasy voice.
"I'm going in to get a drink of water before I finish up. To be blunt, Harold, I'd just as soon you went away. I'm upset."
"I can understand that," he said stiffly. "But Fran... in the garden?"
She had started toward the house, but now she rounded on him, furious. "Well, what would you suggest? That I put him in a coffin and drag him out to the cemetery? What in the name of God for? He loved his garden! And what's it to you, anyway? What business is it of yours?"