Despite the friendly jeers of his companions, he had straggled two hundred yards behind the rest of his troop. I give him gratitude and a little grovel as he checks out his necklace in the mirror above the water cooler. The cadillac followed behind until they reached the intersection of the vashon highway.

He seemed to have reverted to being hardly more than a boy. But he forged those struggles into a singular body of literary work.