Merilee passed through a momentary impulse to cover the steak platter and fan away the odor of flesh, which would be offensive to the nostrils of the Master.

Alyosha said there was a present for them in his car and asked Sam to bring it in. Hearing the screen door slam, Merilee said softly, "My husband-to-be still eats meat."

Again the practiced hands of Alyosha the Lovely, who worked as a masseur when he worked, descended on her head. "Do not worry daughter. WHEN LENT OUT FOR LOVE, OUR SOULS CAN NOT BE BRUISED OR DAMAGED."

What Sam returned with they laid out on the table under the flickering candles. Small tinfoil packages of hash like Christmas tree ornaments. Half-full Baggies of grass carefully rerolled and taped. Capsules, many tabs, which shivered and bobbed to the touch.

"From the rest of the Tribe to you," said Alyosha. "They want you to have them."

Merilee nodded and accepted it all gracefully, though the obvious "why?" lingered unspoken a long moment in the aromatic thick air.

"Because of diminishing supplies," Alyosha finally said, "tonight, in cabins and canyons and teepees the sad decision has been made and camps broken. Tomorrow at dawn the caravans and convoys roll. They can't take their stuff over the border so they are leaving it with you and me. The Brothers and Sisters told me to say: 'Merilee. There is nothing we regret leaving behind but you and our master. But we see you, who have been unstinting mother to us all and dispenser of many joys, we see you at last joyful with Straight Sam. So we leave you happy, knowing that you and Sam and Alyosha will truck on down when you can.'"

"Where's the Tribe splitting for?" Sam asked.

"Mexique," Alyosha replied.

13. A consideration of the dangers of submarine male continence

The dogs lay curled together on the bathmat. Alfred snorted and thumped his tail in his sleep which caused Girl to sigh and wake up.

Dawn was coming, the first light of day an ugly unpromising gray thing as always in the south of California. The water had gotten cold. Merilee stretched her toes up and slowly turned on a dribble of hot. Sam, sleeping head on her breast, stirred and she ran her fingers through his hair to soothe him back to sleep.

Sam from the circus. Who could ever have thought Merilee would be marrying a guy who managed the Sea Anchor Motel in Balboa, who earned thirteen-five. a guy who was winging it up to a hotel convention in San Francisco this morning? The news would blow Ada Mama's ever-loving mind.

Girl snuffled and Merilee reached over the edge of the bathtub and found her velvet ear, the one with the chunk gone, and stroked it. The keeds had wanted to come in the water with them, but Sam had disallowed the: and Merilee felt badly for Girl.

"Will you tell me a story?" her lover murmured.

"I didn't know you were awake. OK."

And she told him again about finding Girl. Just a puppy dying of starvation and beating on a garbage heap out back of San Jose. How Merilee took her up into her arms though so bad she smelled and so near death she was, and how Merilee whispered to her "we are in this together old Girl" and carried her home and started in to nursing herself and the pup back to health and life.

Why were Sam's tears running onto her breast? It made him cry, he said, to think of his big Merilee spaced out in the era before there was even the word for it. Merilee and Girl living off the pungent food nice people had thrown away, Merilee and Girl wandering barefoot both of them in the mountains beyond Los Gatos.

She tried again to tell him of the efficacy of that period in her life, how she had been born then, but Sam would not believe. His juice flowed steadily into her.

Why wasn't I there to take care of you all? I was a scholarship kid then polishing the shoes of my betters at Wharton-

But it all happened for the best, Sam. If Girl and I hadn't gotten lockjaw from being barefoot we would never have come home, I would never have met Alyosha and joined the South Coast Tribe. I would never have been there watching the stars at Palomar and you would never have found Girl and me hitchhiking to Ceres and-

Sam the esposo-to-be had dropped off again and his head had sunk underwater. Merilee hadn't noticed. She lifted him up by the curly black hair. thus saving his life. He sputtered but didn't wake. Prodigiously-strong Merilee stood him up against the wall and dried him off with a towel and then carried him firemanstyle over her shoulder in to the bed and laid him out. The keeds came