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cigarette.
    `The way I figure it is the only reason they ain't made a frisbee of Earth before this is that they got a lot of smaller terrible things they want to do first.' 011y spat over the side of the boat into the bay. That's my great hope for mankind, he thought: man's got so many little sins he's got the hots for, he'll never get around to the big one.
    `You think so?' his son asked after, a pause.
    "Course I don't think so,' 011y snapped back irritably, again wiping his sweaty forehead with his thick-veined right arm. 'You know I don't like to do any thinking.' He chuckled. '
    Whenever I think - get a really deep thought, you know? - I always have to take a crap.'
    He paused and glared at his son, his eyes twinkling. 'Standing at the helm alone in a blow I gotta watch my mind like a cat, be sure no deep thoughts come, 'cause taking a crap on a bouncy ship when you're alone at the helm and havin' all you can do just standing much less squatting over a pail on a roller coaster while watching the compass and sail and handling the wheel is a trick I done once but don't hanker to do again.'
    He paused and frowned in concentration.
    `The deep thought I had that time was, "Time will tell." See? Deep thoughts just ain't worth the fuss and bother.'
    As he looked with mock severity at his son, who grinned
    back at him, 011y remembered that sail: in his old
    Chesapeake Bay skipjack that he'd owned and captained,
    dragging for oysters in those days instead of fiddling around with these tiny rakes. But he couldn't afford a skipjack now and couldn't pull his weight as crew so he'd settled for the Lucy Mae. It kept him alive, but barely.
    Shit, he thought, as he had to pause again, I wish to hell I'd just get it over with and croak. Not much sense in living if you can't work and can't fuck. Nowadays whenever he went into restaurants or bars and flirted with the cute little taut-butted waitresses they'd either be shocked at him or treat him like a harmless child. When a man couldn't turn a woman on it was time to cash in his chips. Women used to always be pestering him, first for his cock and then for his deep thoughts; he wished one were pestering him now.
    `Women are always asking what I'm thinkin',' he began saying aloud, watching three seagulls fly noisily around the stern of the Lucy Mae and then plop expectantly in the water. `But after four wives I finally figured how to handle 'em. I always say I'm thinking about the wind and weather and repairing my dinghy and how much I love her ass. Well, every woman I've known will frown and frown and frown until I get to my deep thoughts about her ass and then everything's jolly. A man who limits his deep thoughts to his woman's ass is a sober man, trustworthy and true, and likely to stay out of trouble.'
    Chris was smiling as he worked but Olly's face was as stern as a Baptist preacher. He paused and took a long drink of water from his glass on the deckhouse shelf. He damn well wished he had a lady these days whose ass he could praise, even if the ass were flatter than an ironing board.
    `Gettin' late, Pop,' Chris said to him, making him abruptly aware he was leaning on his rake again.
    `Late?' 011y snapped back. 'We just begun.' But he began to haul in his rake with a sense of relief. 'I been talkin' so much today I'm pooped,' he added. I do love talking, he thought as he emptied his last load into the boat. Especially my own talking. As Chris's mother
    once said, I think it was his mother, could've been someone else's, Òlly I never know'd a man who listened to hisself as good as you do.' He smiled to himself.
    `Cal Markham said this morning the radio makes it sound like war,' Chris said suddenly, as if it had been on his mind much of the day.
    011y looked at him in surprise. 'Son, you got to stop listening to people who babble,' he said firmly. "Course there's gonna be a war. They ain't keepin' all those jets dancing across the sky just for skywriting forever, you know. A gov'ment is a