Fiction by Marlin Barton

Marlin Barton is from the Black Belt region of Alabama. His most recent book is a novel, Children of Dust, which was a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. He's published two earlier novels, The Cross Garden and A Broken Thing, and three collections of short stories: The Dry Well, Dancing by the River, and Pasture Art. His stories have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, including Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. He's also been awarded the Truman Capote Prize for short fiction by an Alabama writer. He teaches in, and helps direct, the Writing Our Stories project, a program for juvenile offenders created by the Alabama Writers' Forum, and he's been teaching in the low residency MFA program at Converse University since 2010.

You Can’t Lose What You Never Had,

and You Can’t Catch What You Already Got

She was cheating on both of them. Curtis knew that’s how Rodney saw it, and Curtis guessed he did too. Maybe that’s what set them to rights, misery loving company. Not that the healing between them was complete—how could it be when they both hurt so bad—but here they were together again in Curtis’s truck, riding backroads at night just like in high school, and that had to mean something. Maybe hurt could break you and heal you. Curtis wasn’t sure. Could be he’d see things more clearly once his divorce from Sharon was final. 

They were still on blacktop and had just passed an orange Ditch Witch mired down in mud. After another half mile they passed the sign for Runaway Branch boat landing. Curtis had always wondered why it was called Runaway. Now the sign seemed to hold meaning, as if it were pointing them in the right direction, toward Sharon. 

“You sure you remember where his camp house is?” Curtis asked. 

“I remember about where it is. Keep going.” Rodney tapped the end of his cane against the door in a steady rhythm. “Take that dirt road that comes up in a couple of miles. The house is way down near the end of it. Anyway, we’ll see his truck and Sharon’s car.”

“If you’re so sure she’s there, why even bother to look?”

“I got to know beyond any doubt.”

“And that’s all, right?” Curtis said. “Just to see for sure. You don’t have anything else in mind?”

 “Just a drive-by, Curtis, a drive-by.” Rodney unscrewed the silver elephant head at the top of his cane, then carefully raised the other end and let the cylindrical flask slide into his waiting right hand. 

“Why’d you buy that thing?”

 “I told you, I’ve got gout, and it proves I’m no longer a redneck.”

 “How do you figure that?”

 “Am I drinking beer and throwing the cans out the window? And how many rednecks buy from Sharper Image?” 

Curtis had thought about reaching into the small cooler at his feet and pulling out another beer, but now he decided against it. “When did you buy that cane?”

“A year ago.”

 “You ain’t had gout for a year. Besides, nobody gets gout at thirty-six.”

“Daddy gets it bad. I knew I’d get it at some point.”

“You got drunk and stubbed your toe real bad and don’t remember. That’s what you got. The cane makes you look like a cripple.”

Rodney raised the flask, took a deep drink of what Curtis knew was vodka, and then lowered the container. “I feel like a cripple. I’m emotionally crippled.”

Curtis closed his eyes in exasperation, then opened them, and saw a low-hanging crescent moon that looked, at the moment, like a sling. “Where’d you learn to say something like that?”

“From shrinks on T.V.” 

“Good lord. So now instead of coming up with all kinds of physical health problems that you ain’t got, you can come up with mental health problems?”

“I know I’m a hypochondriac.”

“First accurate diagnosis you ever made. By the way, you got your heart medicine with you?”

 “Real funny. But yeah, I got a roll of antacids in my pocket. If you’d ever had chest pains like that you wouldn’t of thought it was indigestion either and would have gone to the emergency room same as I did. And if your heart was hurting as bad as mine right now, you wouldn’t be making jokes like that. Don’t you care where she is and who she’s with? And don’t you know you could use this against her? She’s still your wife.”

Curtis slowed, looking for the dirt road he’d turn onto for the drive through deep woods that flooded whenever the Tennahpush River took a notion. The water drove wildlife out and maybe drowned some creatures that were burrowed down in the holes they called home, never expecting the river they drank from could turn into a predator. 

He left Rodney’s questions about Sharon unanswered. Rodney might imagine illnesses he didn’t have, but he wasn’t dumb. He’d realize that his old friend’s answers could have come back in the spring when Curtis had taken a call for a plumbing job at one the motels on the highway coming into Demarville and spotted Rodney’s truck and Sharon’s tan Buick parked side by side on the backside of the motel. 

Rodney took another drink, and then a third. Maybe at the moment it was easier for him to drink than to talk, figuring he might say something he didn’t mean to say and find himself answering for Curtis and damning himself with every word. He knew good and well Curtis did care when he saw Rodney’s truck at the motel that still advertised Television and Air-Conditioning, and that he could have used Sharon’s adultery against her by naming Rodney.

He spotted the dirt road and made the turn, his low beams lighting the trunks of hardwoods and pines that were stained three feet up from the ground with mud and silt from the last flood. A doe sprang across the road and disappeared. Even in her fear she moved with grace. You had to admire grace when you saw it and be grateful for it when it came upon you, like when you stood at a motel door with a pipe wrench in your hand and then put it back in your toolbox before you knocked and called your best friend’s name. 

The smell of burning leaves entered the cab through their open windows, and then they passed a camp house and saw the shadow of a man standing beside a circle of burning embers. Rodney took another drink and held the cane upright between his knees. “Must live there year ’round,” he said. “Thinks it’s a home and not a camp house. Wants to keep a nice yard.”

 “How would you know? Does your trailer feel like home?” Curtis asked, already guessing the answer, which is probably why he asked. 

 “It did,” Rodney said, sounding like he might say more but caught himself and didn’t say what Curtis knew he was thinking, that it felt like home when Sharon finally moved in, but now that she was stepping out on them with Henry Stiles, or so Rodney believed, the trailer felt like just what it was, nothing but a single-wide with worn-out furniture and jerry-rigged plumbing. It wasn’t a home at all like the one he’d had when he’d been married to Teresa, a woman who was too good for him but hadn’t known it when she married him.

The leaf smoke emptied from the cab and Curtis could smell the river now, its mud, its hint of rot, but with the cleaner smell of free-flowing water on top of it. You couldn’t separate it out, though. You had to breathe in the mud and rot along with the smell of the water moving past. He followed the path his headlights made for him, rounded curves, and passed more camp houses, most of them dark and reaching up into the dark on stilts. 

 “I’m about to run out of road,” Curtis said and began to slow the truck. 

 “It’s the last one up on the left. I remember. Don’t you? We went to some big ole parties here back in high school.”

“I remember Henry Stiles whipping your ass one night. Why you wanted to take on an all-state linebacker two years older than us I don’t know.”

 “Go to hell, Curtis. He did not beat my ass. It was a damn draw.” Rodney replaced the flask and screwed the top back on the hollow cane. “Cut your lights and pull up to the drive but don’t pull in.”

He did as Rodney asked, saw the house above them was completely dark, and realized no car or truck was parked beneath it. “They’re not here,” he said. “You sure this is Stiles’s place?” 

 “I'm sure.” 

He put the truck back in gear but kept his foot on the brake for the moment, his headlights still dark. “This is just like you, and I should have known better all along.”

Rodney held his arm out the open window and slapped his hand against the roof over the cab, not hard in anger but more like out of frustrated expectation. “What you mean by that?”   

“You’re dreaming up ailments you ain’t got. Maybe she did go shopping with friends in Tuscaloosa, just like she told you.”

 “Then why did I recognize Henry Stiles’s voice when I answered her phone and he told me he had the wrong number?”

Curtis turned his headlights on and set them on bright. “Maybe you heard wrong. Could be your ears are fading fast. You’ll be deaf in a month.” He began pulling away, looking for enough room to turn around.

“We ain’t leaving yet. They’re gon’ show. Pull behind those cedars.”

“This ain’t what we talked about.” 

 “I got to take a leak anyway. It’s my prostate. It’s enlarged.”

Curtis shook his head, slowly crept beyond the small thicket, and began to back in beside it. “It ain’t your prostate.”

     Rodney unlocked his door and twisted toward the opening with his cane in his hand. “What is it then?”

 “It’s your alcoholism. Your bladder’s a flask that stays full to the brim with vodka.”

Rodney let out a breath and slid out the door, remaining silent, as if no diagnosis with any truth in it bore discussion. Why discuss it if you didn’t have to convince someone of the symptoms and the fact? Curtis heard the stream of urine hit against his back tire and couldn’t help but think of Rodney as leaving him a specimen. 

He hoped Rodney was wrong, that Sharon wasn’t cheating on him with yet another man as Rodney had been telling him for weeks, somehow it not mattering that their divorce was almost final now. Another hurt confirmed would only grow the hurt already there, even though he knew there wasn’t any hope for the marriage. Maybe he could forgive her at some point. Or had it been the beginning of forgiveness when he’d put that pipe wrench away? He didn’t know. Could be that what he’d felt as he stood at their motel room door was something else, like defeat, not any level of forgiveness at all, only an admission deep down in some flooded chamber of himself that two eighteen-year-olds could never have lasted when the only thing that had ever held them together was what they’d conceived out of wedlock and reckless teenage abandon, a daughter named Amanda who was now eighteen herself, making her own way, leaving her parents abandoned to their own letting go of nothing. Maybe Sharon’s turning to Rodney had been leaving the something of nothing for more nothing, comfort in what she knew. And maybe the reason he hadn’t hung up on Rodney when Rodney had finally called him was because some of what he was thinking now he already knew without knowing and knew that for Rodney to do what he’d done meant that he was truly in love with Sharon. And it could be his friendship with Rodney wasn’t nothing, because, after all, they’d known each other since their memories first began back in sandboxes and Sunday school, through little league and football, then girls and hunting, and finally the hurt a girl could do to a boy’s pride. 

Rodney was climbing back in the cab now, and Curtis heard what sounded like the silver elephant head bang against the side of the truck. Rodney then eased the cane in, and Curtis watched him caress the elephant head as if he were soothing the animal after an injury. Rodney pulled the door shut and began to tap the end of the cane against the floorboard in an uneven rhythm. 

Curtis found himself trying to count the beats, then quit. “You know they say some people use liquor as a crutch. With that walking stick full of vodka, I guess you’re walking proof.”

 “Stop giving me shit. I’m tired of it. And yeah, I’m proof all right, about a hundred and twenty.” He stopped the cane in mid beat. “I tell you what. I can’t keep just sitting here. I’m going up to the house, take a look in the windows, and see what I can see."

“That makes no sense. There’s nothing to see. You know they ain’t there.”

Rodney reached for the door handle. “I don’t care. I got to do something. You stay here.” 

“I ought to drive on home. Would if I had any sense.”

Rodney now leaned toward him in the dark cab, and Curtis noticed again the mixed smell of the river and the hint of smoke that came riding in with it. And there was more too. Maybe the scent of Rodney’s aftershave or the vapor of distilled spirits. “Don’t leave me here,” he said. “I mean it. Please.” 

Rodney sounded just like the boy he’d once been. “You know I’m not leaving,” Curtis said. “Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

Rodney pushed the door open and light filled the cab again. He glanced back at Curtis and for just a moment his face looked jaundiced and aged, but his dark eyes were intent, as if some scene only he could see were already playing out before him. Rodney slid out of the truck, slammed the door, and passed in front of Curtis, cane in hand, his stride a little awkward but more than steady. Curtis sat still but felt charged by the creeping thought that though the house was dark something was surely being set into motion now and that this was why he’d come, to be on hand for it. He heard a creature pawing through dried leaves and wondered what it was: possum, raccoon, or fox.

When he’d knocked on the motel room door and called Rodney’s name, he’d guessed at who would answer and decided it wouldn’t be Rodney. He’d been right. Sharon always faced up to things when she had to. She eased the door open, probably after looking through the peephole, and she peered at him without her glasses. He didn’t see fear in her eyes. What he saw was more akin to sorrow—for him. For a moment she didn’t speak, and he realized she was fully dressed, which meant they hadn’t started or were done and about to leave. Then he saw the twisted covers on the bed. 

“I’m not fool enough to try to deny it,” she said. He looked past her again and saw Rodney standing in the bathroom doorway. Then he looked back at her. “I’m just sorry it’s Rodney," she added, knowing, it seemed, that if he somehow hadn’t seen Rodney’s truck already, he’d just seen Rodney.

“You don’t get any credit for honesty,” he said, "not here, not when things are this obvious.” She didn’t respond, and in that moment of silence he understood what she had already admitted to, maybe without knowing it, that if it hadn’t been Rodney, it would have been someone else.

She stepped out onto the walkway and tried to close the door behind her, but he stopped it with an open palm and pushed it back.

“Cuss me out,” she said, and then he did, ashamed that he’d waited until she gave him permission, as if he were no kind of man at all, certainly not one who could keep a wife happy. With every four-letter word he spat, he knew how pathetic he sounded, how much sadness he’d already been carrying.

 “Just get your purse and go,” he finally said, and she did, walking away with her tiny brown bag that held so little. 

Then he was left alone with Rodney, who was now sitting on the bed but stood up when Curtis entered the room. He rose with an old man’s effort, as if guilt could accumulate like decades and lodge in every joint. 

 “How long? Tell me or I’ll break your jaw.”

“Months,” Rodney said, straightening himself. “I’m sorry, man. If it means anything, I love her. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t of done it. I swear.”

“You poor bastard,” he’d said and almost meant it. Later, he did, but only after Sharon had moved into Rodney’s trailer.

Now as he sat in his truck, looking out at the dark woods, he wondered why he’d called Rodney’s name at the motel door and not Sharon’s.

Probably ten more minutes passed, though it seemed longer, and Rodney still hadn’t returned to the truck. Then Curtis saw lights winding through the trees, brightening their muddy trunks like searchlights. He hoped the beams would soon stop and disappear in front of another camp house. They didn’t, just kept coming, and when the vehicle turned in the last drive, he saw it was a truck. In a moment, he heard one door slam, not two. At least Sharon wasn’t with him. But what would Rodney do? How big a fool would he be?

Curtis eased his door open after switching off the overhead light, but he stayed put, listening for heated voices. None came. The only thing that broke the quiet was that same restless creature, maybe a sly fox or a bandit raccoon, and he decided that he should have known Rodney would keep himself hushed, hidden behind a tree. Lights came on in the house and then two outdoor floodlights flashed on, awaiting someone’s arrival, which he now dreaded even beyond what he’d imagined. 

Then it was as if he saw the second set of headlights before they appeared, his dread so deep it generated sharp white lights and projected them through the woods, and they kept coming and made the turn that revealed Sharon’s car. 

Once she pulled far enough into the dirt drive, he could no longer see her, and he hoped he wouldn’t hear her either, because if he did, it meant Rodney had showed himself, which he’d promised not to do, but Sharon’s appearance would be more than he could bear. 

Curtis climbed out of his truck and eased the door shut. He crept through the shadows of trees and toward the trouble he knew was coming.

He heard Sharon first, before the opening and closing of her car door. So she had to have called Rodney’s name through her open window, though not loudly. Odd how sound always carried so easily in the dark. Curtis pictured Rodney with one hand on the car roof, the other holding his cane, while he leaned down into the window. Curtis thought how Sharon was bound to feel trapped, just as she had to have felt when he was at the motel room door. He hurried now and wondered for whose sake. 

“I knew it. Damn you.” Rodney wasn’t yelling, but his voice was raised, and the sound of his hurt rose with it, like something floating on the night air. 

Curtis stopped, holding back just at the edge of the drive, feeling like the moment between them was too private and knew Sharon would not want to see him there, and he couldn’t blame her. Why would she? And why was he there?

“Get back from the door, Rodney,” she said, her voice calm but firm, a tone Curtis knew so well it was as if she were speaking to him and calling him by the wrong name. 

Curtis took two steps forward and saw her standing with her back to him, Rodney just beyond her, facing her.

“I can’t believe you. Why are you doing this?” Rodney said. “Tell me.”

There was a long pause then, as if Sharon was trying to decide something and Rodney was allowing her the time. Curtis looked up at the camp house, but Stiles didn’t show himself and so must not have heard them yet. He was bound to soon enough. 

Still Sharon didn’t answer.

“Don’t try to tell me it ain’t what it looks like.” Rodney raised his hollow cane, not in a way that looked threatening but as if he’d just realized he was holding it and wondered where it came from, unaware of any ailment other than the hurt standing in front of him on two long legs. 

“I won’t tell you it’s not what it looks like,” she said finally. She looked upward a moment, not at the house but seemingly at the bare limbs and dark sky. “Because that wouldn’t be true,” she said in a quieter voice, and it sounded to Curtis as though she was trying to convince herself of something. 

Rodney stepped even closer to her and thrust his face inches from her own. “You bitch,” he said, or yelled, rather, and his voice carried through the woods and echoed back. 

Curtis didn’t wait any longer but walked out of the trees and toward Rodney, who was still facing him but didn’t yet see him. “That’s enough, Rodney. Use that cane and back away from her.”

Sharon turned and faced him and seemed to spot him moving into the light more quickly than Rodney even. “What in the world?” she said. And then, “Hell, I should have guessed the two of you would be together.”

“This ain’t your business,” Rodney said, though Curtis noticed he had at least stepped backward. “Maybe it is my business. Like you told me a little while ago, she is still my wife.”

Sharon shook her head. “That’s a hard claim to make, Curtis.”

They all heard the door open and the screen slam shut like a slap. Henry Stiles walked to the edge of his deck and peered down at them, looking larger than the last time Curtis had seen him. “Y’all having a party and didn’t invite me?”

No one answered and Stiles started down the steps, taking each one slowly. Curtis looked over at Rodney and tried to get a sense of what Rodney might do. He decided there wasn’t much Rodney could do, not with his limp and with how much he’d had to drink.  

“You’ve set up quite the little scene here, Rodney,” Sharon said in a low voice and then looked at Curtis. He knew she was blaming him too. “Where’s your truck?” she said, guessing rightly, of course, that he’d driven them. 

Curtis knew he was about to sound like a fool. “Behind some cedars.”

Sharon lowered her head, as if to say, Is it any wonder I’ve left you both behind?

Rodney held his cane in front of him, both hands atop the silver head, his weight leaned against it. “I should have known if you’d cheat on Curtis, you’d cheat on me.”

Curtis could see that she wanted to respond, but she hesitated again, maybe because she wasn’t sure what to say, though that wasn’t like her. Something held her back. 

“Be careful how you judge,” she finally managed, once again in her firm tone. “You might could say you cheated on Curtis.”

Rodney opened his mouth as if to speak but no words came, maybe his own shame stopping him. 

“But I’m sorry,” she said now. “I should have, well, I guess, handled it differently.” The way she stumbled made Curtis feel like she was making something up as she went, telling a story she didn’t know how to end. 

Stiles was at her side now. He’d always worn his hair long, but now it was so closely cropped it made his head look larger, not smaller, and his overall size and reach was so great that he would make almost any woman look small in comparison. Maybe Sharon found comfort in his largeness, but the way she stood upright and unbending made her a match for him. And yet when Stiles slipped his arm behind her and around her waist, pulling her close, Curtis saw what wasn’t there and recognized it in a way others wouldn’t because what wasn’t there was the same thing that had always been missing between them. There had been a shared comfort, but a woman needed more than that, and even if he didn’t know it, a man did too. Looking at Sharon, he didn’t see her giving into the embrace, didn’t see her giving over some little part of herself, just as she never had with him or he with her. If she stayed with Stiles, he didn’t figure on her being happy, and he took no pleasure in the thought. 

“Rodney,” Stiles said now, “I got nothing against you. I never really did. I don’t want to fight you. And didn’t all those years ago. But you shouldn’t have come out here like this. It makes you look desperate. No woman wants to see that.”

“Why don’t you go to hell? Just go to hell.”

Stiles merely nodded his head and looked away, not as if he were trying to gather his anger and put it to sudden use, but as if he couldn’t bear to look at the boy he’d once beaten. 

Curtis turned toward Rodney, hoping he wouldn’t make some stupid lunge at Stiles and swing a fist that would only throw him off balance and onto the ground. Rodney remained still, leaning on his hollow cane, his eyes darting side to side, like some small, cornered animal with water rising all around him. Curtis found himself wanting to say or do something for Rodney, but he knew it wouldn’t help. Rodney had to find an escape out of his own desperation and weakness. And maybe embarrassment too, as Curtis saw in the way Rodney’s eyes were now widened as he looked at each of them, somehow—even in his drunkenness—able to judge the way others saw him. 

He lifted his cane up, looked down at the tip, and then let the cane slide through the fingers of his right hand until he grasped the elephant head. Then he touched the tip to the ground without putting his weight against it. “I came here for just one reason, to find out if what I knew was true. Y’all do what you want.” He was looking at Sharon as he spoke, and while his voice quivered, as if his vocal cords had grown thin, he got the words said, and Curtis wondered which of the two of them, himself or Rodney, felt more relief. Rodney slowly turned from them and began walking away, using the walking stick as he needed. “You coming, Curtis?” he called out without looking back.

Curtis saw that Sharon had let go of Stiles, now stood separately from him, and she met Curtis’s gaze, holding it in a familiar manner that told him she had something she wanted to say. “You go ahead and get in the truck. I’ll be on in a minute.”

Rodney didn’t respond, and Curtis waited on Sharon, who was likely giving Rodney time to move past earshot. 

It was Stiles who spoke first. “Good to see you again, Curtis. It’s been a while.”

Curtis realized the strangeness of what he’d just heard, the attempt at small talk from a man sleeping with his wife. But even more oddly, the words felt natural enough, not forced, and raised no animosity in him. “You too,” he said. Curtis almost wanted to laugh at his own words. 

Stiles turned to Sharon and placed a hand on her shoulder. “You coming up in a few minutes?” It wasn’t really a question, or a giving of permission, only an acknowledgment that Stiles knew she wanted what might be a final moment with her husband while he was still her husband. 

Sharon didn’t have to answer him, and she watched while Stiles walked up the steps and reached his deck, where Rodney and Stiles had once fought. Curtis heard the screen door slam again. “I’m glad Henry didn’t go after him,” he said. “He could have and wouldn’t have been completely in the wrong. I guess Rodney had already been wronged, though.”

Sharon leaned against her car and was quiet a moment. Then she folded her arms under her breasts, not in a way that looked defensive but as if she was settling in to talk. “Not really,” she said. “He wasn’t wronged.” 

“What do you mean?”

“I know you remember their fight. We were both there. You remember what started it?”

Curtis walked over and leaned beside her. They were looking up at the deck, and he felt they were both seeing the fight all over again. “I remember Rodney kept picking at him.”

“He did. Then he called him a name. You might not recall it, but Henry didn’t date much in high school. So Rodney goaded him, called him a queer. And that’s when Henry busted into him and didn’t let up.”

“Okay,” Curtis said, waiting for whatever part of the story that was coming next. When she didn’t continue, he looked over at her. 

“Think about it, Curtis.” She unfolded her arms and placed her palms against the car on either side of her. “Why did I just tell you that? Why would that word have set Henry off so bad? You’re not stupid.”

Sometimes knowing came suddenly, and it did now. “But he was married for a few years,” he said.

“So.” She stood away from the car and faced him. “Marriage doesn’t always mean all it should. We both know that.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“For one thing, I know I can trust you to keep your mouth shut and not ever tell Rodney. But mainly I don’t want you to think even worse of me than you already do. I’m not a tramp. There weren’t any others. If you can forgive Rodney, maybe you can forgive me.”

“But now Rodney thinks worse of you.”

“He’ll just have to. I had to get away from him. Otherwise, he was never going to let go. This is what it took. I was already planning on spending the night here. Sometimes a woman does what she has to.”

He couldn’t disagree with her and didn’t try. 

“Maybe what I did with Rodney was my way of getting out of our marriage. I’m sorry.” She moved a little closer to him, and he again smelled a hint of smoke in the air. “But you know when I realized it was really over for us?”

He didn’t think he wanted to hear the answer, but he accepted that it was coming. 

“It was when you called Rodney’s name at that door and not mine. That’s when I knew.”

He didn’t try to respond. He only nodded an admission of his own failure. 

She looked up at the tree limbs and the dark sky again. “So tell me, why did you come out here with Rodney? You didn’t have to. He did betray you, after all.”

Curtis knew the answer to her question, though unlike Sharon, he wasn’t sure when he knew it. Maybe when Rodney got in her face and cussed her. Maybe before that. Whatever the case, he didn’t want to tell her he came to protect her, not when she’d always been able to take care of herself. It had been an impulse within him, maybe one any man would have toward a woman no matter how much the two had hurt each other. Or maybe it was more complicated than he could understand. 

“You not going to answer?”

He only shrugged his shoulders and looked at her. She knew the answer as well as he did.  

Instead of laughing lightly or making a smart remark, Sharon stared down at the ground and kept staring. It seemed to Curtis that maybe she’d spotted some small, valuable item she could pick up and keep for herself, something he might have dropped there, though not carelessly.