Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/11



"THE thing then is, Ken, remember your dad, keep out of strange beds and wash your neck reg'lar," Uncle Joe had said. "Son, you're a man now." Ken's breath had been stilled as he listened. "You're leaving home," continued homely Uncle Joe. "You've been pampered a bit too much. Folks call this Texas, and Texas it is to us older ones—but to you, Texas could be New York or Chicago or most anywhere."

That was Uncle Joe.

Dad was different. Dad was thin. Uncle Joe was fat. Uncle Joe's clothes hung about him loose-like. Dad's fit. But Ken more or less liked Uncle Joe because he was so human. Dad, of course, was human—a sweet, reasonable father, worried by failing eyes and failing business—but for a young fellow, take Uncle Joe.

The car turned into the Camino and Ken took a look at Weber's Drug Store. Funny to be leaving it, leaving the Coca Cola cowboys and Ike and his son, Dave, and the jolt of alkie that Ike served with lemon phosphate straight. Code—code for a slug of alkie and that dizzy feeling and dad with his Presbyterian manners and thin mouth setting itself like a line dividing heaven and hell.

Here on the corner of Alamo, the church. Ken sat straight. Indefinable his reactions toward the church. He did love Jesus. Not that pale Jesus of Mr. Barton's dry sermons, but the lush vivid-cheeked Christ who had