Mack and the boys came down to this place happily. It was perfect. If frogs were available, they would be here. It was a place to relax, a place to be happy. On the way out they had thriven. In addition to the big red chicken there was a sack of carrots which had fallen from a vegetable truck, half a dozen onions which had not. Mack had a bag of coffee in his pocket. In the truck there was a five-gallon can with the top cut off. The wining jug was nearly half full. Such things as salt and pepper had been brought. Mack and the boys would have thought anyone who traveled without salt, pepper, and coffee very silly indeed.

Without effort, confusion, or much thought, four round stones were rolled together on the little beach. The rooster who had challenged the sunrise of this very day lay dismembered and clean in water in the five gallon can with peeled onions about him, while a little fire of dead willow sticks sputtered between the stones, a very little fire. Only fools build big fires. It would take a long time to cook this rooster, for it had taken him a long time to achieve his size and muscularity. But as the water began to boil gently about him, he smelled good from the beginning.

Mack gave them a pep talk. “The best time for frogs is at night,” he said, “so I guess we’ll just lay around ’til it gets dark.” They sat in the shade and gradually one by one they stretched out and slept.

Mack was right. Frogs do not move around much in the daytime; they hide under ferns and they look secretly out of holes under rocks. The way to catch frogs is with a flashlight at night. The men slept knowing they might have a very active night. Only Hazel stayed awake to replenish the little fire under the cooking chicken. Hazel stuck his pocket knife into the muscles of the chicken.

There is no golden afternoon next to the cliff. When the sun went over it at about two o’clock a whispering shade came to the beach. The sycamores rustled in the afternoon breeze. Little water snakes slipped down to the rocks and then gently entered the water and swam along through the pool, their heads held up like little periscopes and a tiny wake spreading behind them. A big trout jumped in the pool. The gnats and mosquitoes which avoid the sun came out and buzzed over the water. All of the sun bugs, the flies, the dragonflies, the wasps, the hornets, went home. And as the shadow came to the beach, as the first quail began to call, Mack and the boys awakened. The smell of the chicken stew was heartbreaking. Hazel had picked a fresh bay leaf from a tree by the river and he had dropped it in. The carrots were in now. Coffee in its own can was simmering on its own rock, far enough from the flame so that it did not boil too hard. Mack awakened, started up, stretched, staggered to the pool, washed his face with cupped hands, hacked, spat, washed out his mouth, broke wind, tightened his belt, scratched his legs, combed his wet hair with his fingers, drank from the jug, belched and sat down by the fire. “By God that smells good,” he said.

Men all do about the same things when they wake up. Mack’s process was loosely the one all of them followed. And soon they had all come to the fire and complimented Hazel. Hazel stuck his pocket knife into the muscles of the chicken.

“He ain’t going to be what you’d call tender,” said Hazel. “You’d have to cook him about two weeks to get him tender. How old about do you judge he was, Mack?”

“I’m forty-eight and I ain’t as tough as he is,” said Mack.

Eddie said, “How old can a thicken get, do you think— that’s if nobody pushes him around or he don’t get sick?”

“That’s something nobody isn’t ever going to find out,” said Jones. It was a pleasant time. The jug went around and warmed them.

Jones said, “Eddie, I don’t mean to complain none. I was just thinkin’. S’pose you had two or three jugs back of the bar. S’pose you put all the whiskey in one and all the wine in another and all the beer in another—”

A slightly shocked silence followed the suggestion. “I didn’t mean nothing,” said Jones quickly. “I like it this way—” Jones talked too much then because he knew he had made a social blunder and he wasn’t able to stop. “What I like about it this way is you never know what kind of a drunk you’re going to get out of it,” he said, “You take whiskey,” he said hurriedly. “You more or less know what you’ll do. A fightin’ guy fights and a cryin’ guy cries, but this—” he said magnaminously— “why you don’t know whether it’ll run you up a pine tree or start you swimming to Santa Cruz. It’s more fun that way,” he said weakly.

“Speaking of swimming,” said Mack to fill in the indelicate place in the conversation and to shut Jones up. “I wonder whatever happened to that guy McKinley Moran. Remember that deep sea diver?”

“I remember him,” said Hughie. “I and him used to hang around together. He just didn’t get much work and then he got to drinking. It’s kind of tough on you divin’ and drinkin’. Got to worryin’ too. Finally he sold his suit and helmet and pump and went on a hell of a drunk and then he left town. I don’t know where he went. He wasn’t no good after he went down after that Wop that got took down with the anchor from the Twelve Brothers. McKinley just dove down. Bust his eardrums, and he wasn’t no good good after that. Didn’t hurt the Wop a bit.”

Mack sampled the jug again. “He used to make a lot of dough during Prohibition,” Mack said. “Used to get twenty-five bucks a day from the government to dive lookin’ for liquor on the bottom and he got three dollars a case from Louie for not findin’ it. Had it worked out so he brought up one case a day to keep the government happy. Louie didn’t mind that none. Made it so they didn’t get in no new divers. McKinley made a lot of dough.”