They were all in the kitchen, four kids, a fat wife, and Benotti in his undershirt The shirt looked like a joke. The serious part was all the muscle. He had no neck because of the muscles, and his arms showed no bones on account of the muscles. In a suit he might have looked short and fat, but this way I knew better. Nevertheless, I knocked on the screen door.

Benotti got up from the table and came over to see who it was. He peered through the screen like something at the zoo.

“Mister Benotti?” I said. “I’m Jack St. Louis.”

We had never met but he knew who I was. I don’t know how much he knew, but I did not approve of his reaction because he looked at me through the screen and started to laugh. Hahaha, he went and came out on the porch.

“Good evening,” I said.

Benotti turned back to the door and told his kids to stay at the table and to his wife he said that he’d be right back in. No. She needn’t put the food back in the oven.

“Wellsir,” he said to me. “Jack St. Louis,” and looked me all up and down. “You all dressed for the funeral?”

I had thought, on the way over and while cooling off from that last sight of Louie, maybe I’ll just talk to the man, clever extraction of news, background, information. Talk to him and-who knows-maybe we’ll get along. But with his looks and his attitude, I had a hard time with that plan. I waited till he was done laughing again and then I said, “No. I came to talk to you in polite English.”

“He talks fancy, like an actor. May I have your autograph?”

“All right.”

It is a matter of chemistry in the nerves that the other guy can never react fast enough to get out of the way, if you don’t telegraph. I never do. So I gave him my autograph willynilly, very anxious for speed, because I wanted to get two in while the getting was good.

He went ratatat on the clapboard behind him with the back of his head and then he said, fairly loud, “Eat your supper in there! I’ll be right in.”