Fup

When these excesses of good will drew a barren, if polite, response from Tiny, Grand-daddy Jake had taken a jar out on the porch to wonder it through his mind. It took him awhile to get a firm grasp on the obvious: Tiny was devastated by his mother's death, and since only time and maybe a little tenderness would cure that, he decided to just be who he was and go on about his life, and if the boy wanted to join in, that was fine and welcome, and if he didn't… well, Jake was used to fishing by himself. Real feelings take time earning the trust to keep them true and, Jake reckoned, an immortal like himself had, if nothing else, plenty of time.

They also shared their passions, which were different in kind but not intensity. From the moment Jake had tasted the first batch run off from the dying Indian's recipe, his passion had been the refinement of whiskey; he pursued its perfection with the ardor of an old alchemist seeking the Philosopher's Stone. As he explained to anyone who'd listen, it wasn't so much purity he was after-hell, you could damn near buy pure alcohol-but something more precious: molecular character.

In the late '60s a hippie had wandered out to the ranch one day. After a

Tiny's passion was fences. Granddaddy Jake was convinced that Tiny's astonishing growth spurt between the ages of five and nine was due to the fact that he wanted to build fences so bad he'd forced himself to grow big enough to handle the tools. By the time he was twelve, Tiny was building fences that any master would admire, and by twenty his fences were so strong and graceful that the same masters were forced into envy. He worked in stone, picket, post amp; rail, and wire, but he liked the traditional California sheep fence best of all: 36" high sheep mesh stretched on 4x5" redwood posts with a single strand of barbed wire at the top. He like working in wire because wire twanged, and there was nothing that brought him deeper satisfaction than plucking the top strand of barbed wire and listening to it resonate all the way around the circuit of the fence. Lub Knowland called the fences "Tiny's guitars" and claimed to have heard their distinctive tones on a particularly clear day while he was fishing Beeler Lake in the eastern Sierras, some 200 miles away. Most folks however credited this claim as typical Lub Knowland bullshit.

Nobody was surprised that Tiny built excellent fences, for by temperament he was patient and precise. But nobody could understand why he built them, for Tiny and Granddaddy didn't run any stock, and since coyotes had eaten the Bollen brothers out of the sheep business two years before, none of their immediate neighbors did either.

Granddaddy Jake called him on it one night after di

But Tiny just shook his head and mumbled, "Naw, they're just fences, that's what I like to do."

Granddaddy almost pursued it, then let it slide, repeating with friendly derision, " 'Just fences, shit! That's like saying my whiskey is just something to drink."

Tiny, thanks to the bitter vigilance of Emma Gadderly at the Social Welfare Office, had to attend school. From the first grade through his high school graduation he received straight, solid C's, seldom spoke in class, had many pleasant acquaintances and no close friends. In his first day of gym class in high school, the football coach, who had ambitions for the head post at the local J.C., actually got down on his knees and begged Tiny to come out for the team. Tiny said he would like to but he had to get right home after school and work on the ranch fences. The same thing he told Sally A

He was content working on his fences. He pla

Tiny and Granddaddy Jake also shared the sufferings that inevitably attend serious passion. In Granddaddy's case, the cause of his pain was Emma Gadderly, for she-having discovered Jake's still-demanded action from Sheriff Hobson, who, sworn to his peaceful duty, came out and made Granddaddy move it. Until she discovered it again. It was a pain in the ass to keep moving it constantly, seriously irksome to have her leaning on his life, and he invariably included her in his oath-soaked screeds against the mendacious and venal, the tainted and corrupt, mentioning her in the same slimy company as card cheats, beer drinkers, and a sprinkling of his ex-wives. Tiny's nemesis was wild pigs. With their gristled snouts, powerful necks, and purposeful greed, wild pigs are the natural enemies of fences. They like to poke their snouts under them and rip upwards with wanton delight, creating a comfortable passage for their rotund bodies under the upsquashed arch of wire, and if that fails they just tear the fucker down. Tiny had seen three cases where they'd bitten right through the wire. One pig in particular was a personal torment. Lockjaw, so known because he'd never been heard to utter a sound, was a legend in the coastal hills both for his size and the wanto