He said, “Hey,” and we all looked at him, and Ray said, “Ask him what he wants, Joe.”

Joe was nearest. He tipped his chair backward and said, “What do you want?”

The rummy said, “Did I hear you gentlemen mention dinosaurs?”

He was just a little weavy, and his eyes looked like they were bleeding, and you could only tell his shirt was once white by guessing, but it must’ve been the way he talked. It didn’t sound rummy, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, Joe sort of eased up and said, “Sure. Something you want to know?”

He sort of smiled at us. It was a funny smile; it started at the mouth and ended just before it touched the eyes. He said, “Did you want to build a time machine and go back to find out what happened to the dinosaurs?”

I could see Joe was figuring that some kind of confidence game was coming up. I was figuring the same thing. Joe said, “Why? You aiming to offer to build one for me?”

The rummy showed a mess of teeth and said. “No, sir. I could but I won’t. You know why? Because I built a time machine for myself a couple of years ago and went back to the Mesozoic Era and found out what happened to the dinosaurs.”

Later on, I looked up how to spell “Mesozoic,” which is why I got it right. in case you’re wondering, and I found nut that the Mesozoic Era is when a11 the dinosaurs were doing whatever dinosaurs do. Rut of course at the time this is just so much double-talk to me, and mostly I was thinking we had a lunatic talking to us. Joe claimed afterward that he knew about this Mesozoic thing, but he’ll have to talk lots longer and louder before Ray and I believe him.

But that did it just the same. We said to the rummy to come over to our table. I guess I figured we could listen to him for a while and maybe get some of the bottle, and the others must have figured the same. But he held his bottle tight in his right hand when he sat down and that’s where he kept it. it. [sic]