"I wouldn't sit down on that piano stool, if I were you," Stu said.
"Shit, no! Wouldn't do at all, would it?" He changed course and headed toward the back of the small clearing. Stu saw there was an orange and white cooler chest in the shade back there, with what looked like a white lawn tablecloth folded on top of it. When Bateman fluffed it out, Stu saw that was just what it was.
"Used to be part of the communion set at the Grace Baptist Church in Woodsville," Bateman said. "I liberated it. I don't think the Baptists will miss it. They've all gone home to Jesus. At least all the Woodsville Baptists have. They can celebrate their communion in person now. Although I think the Baptists are going to find heaven a great letdown unless the management allows them television - or perhaps they call it heavenvision up there - on which they can watch Jerry Falwell and Jack van Impe. What we have here is an old pagan communing with nature instead. Kojak, don't step on the tablecloth. Control, always remember that, Kojak. In all you do, make control your watchword. Shall we step across the road and have a wash, Mr. Redman?"
"Make it Stu."
"All right, I will."
They went down the road and washed in the cold, clear water. Stu felt happy. Meeting this particular man at this particular time seemed somehow exactly right. Downstream from them Kojak lapped at the water and then bounded off into the woods, barking happily. He flushed a wood pheasant and Stu watched it explode up from the brush and thought with some surprise that just maybe everything would be all right. Somehow all right.
He didn't care much for the caviar - it tasted like cold fish jelly - but Bateman also had a pepperoni, a salami, two tins of sardines, some slightly mushy apples, and a large box of Keebler fig bars. Wonderful for the bowels, fig bars, Bateman said. Stu's bowels had been giving him no grief at all since he'd gotten out of Stovington and started walking, but he liked fig bars anyway, and helped himself to half a dozen. In fact, he ate hugely of everything.
During the meal, which was eaten largely on Saltines, Bateman told Stu he had been an assistant professor of sociology at Woodsville Community College. Woodsville, he said, was a small town ("famous for its community college and its four gas stations," he told Stu) another six miles down the road. His wife had been dead ten years. They had been childless. Most of his colleagues had not cared for him, he said, and the feeling had been heartily mutual. "They thought I was a lunatic," he said. "The strong possibility that they were right did nothing to improve our relations." He had accepted the superflu epidemic with equanimity, he said, because at last he would be able to retire and paint full-time, as he had always wanted to do.
As he divided the dessert (a Sara Lee poundcake) and handed Stu his half on a paper plate, he said, "I'm a horrible painter, horrible. But I simply tell myself that this July there is no one on earth painting better landscapes than Glendon Pequod Bateman, B.A., M.A., M.F.A. A cheap ego trip, but mine own."
"Was Kojak your dog before?"
"No - that would have been a rather amazing coincidence, wouldn't it? I believe Kojak belonged to someone across town. I saw him occasionally, but since I didn't know what his name was, I have taken the liberty of rechristening him. He doesn't seem to mind. Excuse me for a minute, Stu."
He trotted across the road and Stu heard him splashing in the water. He came back shortly, pantslegs rolled to his knees. He was carrying a dripping six-pack of Narragansett beer in each hand.
"This was supposed to go with the meal. Stupid of me."
"It goes just as well after," Stu said, pulling a can off the template. "Thanks."
They pulled their ringtabs and Bateman raised his can. "To us, Stu. May we have happy days, satisfied minds, and little or no low back pain."
"Amen to that." They clicked their cans together and drank. Stu thought that a swallow of beer had never tasted so good to him before and probably never would again.
"You're a man of few words," Bateman said. "I hope you don't feel that I'm dancing on the grave of the world, so to speak."