CHAPTER NINEIt was a Friday, the night Ol’ Jolly died. In the front room, his darling wife was about her annual task of knitting children’s mittens when a monstrous quake roared up from beneath the earth to shake the dwelling loose of its anchors. Just as it began, it ceased. Not a handful of seconds spanned the whole of it. When the rolling ceased, she scurried to the kitchen only to discover her husband of fifty years sprawled in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. It was not an earthquake after all. It was the death of Ol’ Jolly himself.
That night, Beepah stood at the door to the gymnasium looking forlorn. He was easy enough to spot, taller and grayer than anyone in the place. He wore the lost old man look he had perfected over the course of my lifetime. He used it appropriately to ga
