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about as old as the men who wore them. Sometimes
Peeler wore a washed-out gray-and-green baseball cap. The breast
pocket of Cloudy's jacket held a plastic case crammed full of
ballpoint pens, none of which Ned ever saw the man use.
    The baithouse was a place of wonder. At the
far end, beyond the tables and tubs, was a cleared area. Two beaten
old armchairs without legs sat on the ground, along with the front
seat taken from a car. The walls here were covered with tools and
equipment, every item of which was a mystery in itself to Ned.
Rusted beer cans lay all around the place, and new empties were
constantly being added to the collection. It was a crude and trashy
shed, but to a boy of nine-going-on-ten recently delivered from
city life it was a place of enchantment, a cool dark comfortable
haven from the heat and light of summer.
    "That's enough for now, I guess," Peeler
said. The pail of water teemed with crayfish. "They'll start eatin'
each other pretty soon if I don't get 'em into the tanks."
    "Eat each other?" Ned asked. "Like
cannibals?"
    "All I know is the longer we take the more
of their arms and legs you'll see floatin' around loose in
there."
    Back at the baithouse, they found Cloudy
sitting outside on a wooden crate, leaning against a pile of old
tires.
    "Look at that lazy son of a biscuit," Peeler
said loudly. "Hey, ain't you got enough tan on you already?"
    "Lunchtime," Cloudy said without bothering
to open his eyes.
    "He always sleeps through lunchtime," Peeler
explained to Ned. "You won't never see him eat no lunch."
    Peeler went inside the baithouse to take
care of the crayfish, but today Ned hung back, standing a few feet
away from Cloudy. He was curious about something, and it didn't
seem right to ask Peeler.
    "Cloudy."
    "Mm?"
    "What's that?"
    Cloudy opened his eyes a crack and saw that
Ned was pointing to the shack out behind the baithouse. It was a
tiny structure, four walls and a flat roof with a chimney pipe
sticking out, a door and a single window. Altogether, about twelve
feet square. Nearby was the wreck of an old car; the windows were
still intact but the body was covered with rust and the bare wheels
were overgrown with wild grass. It was a Studebaker, but now it
looked like the remains of a beached monster from another age.
    "That? That's Peeler's house."
    "Oh. I thought that's where he lives," Ned
said, nodding.
    "He don't live there,"
Cloudy corrected. "That's his house but he don't live in it. Oh,
no, he can't live
in it."
    "He can't? Why not?"
    "Go see for yourself," Cloudy suggested with
a wave of his hand. "Go ahead, open the door."
    "Won't he mind?"
    "Naw, Peeler don't mind. He show you hisself
if you ask him. Go ahead."
    Ned went over to the door of the shack and
hesitated briefly. What did he expect to find—a gutted interior, a
caved-in floor, a swarm of rats? It had to be something serious
enough- to drive a man from his own dwelling. Ned pulled the door
open and jumped back a step. Empty beer cans, dozens of them,
tumbled out of the shack and onto the ground. Ned could hear Cloudy
laughing behind him. .
    "Wow," Ned gasped. "Where did he get all
these cans?"
    This made Cloudy laugh even more. Ned moved
to take a closer look. The inside of the shack was a lake of empty
beer cans, four or five feet deep, wall to wall. Enough Iron City
cans to rebuild Pittsburgh from scratch, if that were ever
necessary. The top of a broom handle was just visible, sticking up
in the middle of the single room like the mast of a sunken ship.
Any other furniture or contents the place might hold could not be
seen. Ned couldn't begin to guess how many cans there might be.
    "He got some good old ones in there," Cloudy
said. "Down at the bottom."
    "Gosh, where does he live now?"
    "In the car, where else."
    "The car?"
    At that moment Peeler emerged from the
baithouse and threw a handful of crab scraps into the little
vegetable patch a few yards away. He glanced up at Ned.
    "Damn good car it is, too," he said