The Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis

of his favorite tidbits, including chicken livers, fudge, deviled eggs and a can of sweetened condensed milk, very hard to find these days. With that they would make some snow ice cream.
    The second and greater surprise was that Mother Mack was to accompany them. She, a plump squab like her daughter, hastened to say that she hoped Mr. Popper would not take it amiss, as suggesting in any way that June needed a chaperone, or that she, Mrs. Mack, was pushing herself forward. It was just that she had been housebound all winter and would like to join them in their outing, in their excursion through the countryside and a day at the ranch. Would it be inconvenient? She knew that three made a crowd. Would she be excess baggage?
    â€œCertainly not,” said Popper. “The more, the merrier. Three, you know, is the perfect number. Unity plus two. It’s just the thing. I should have thought of it myself.”
    He was already a little drunk and on the bus ride to Hogandale he got worse. He drank openly from half-pint bottles of rum that he kept stowed in the major pockets of his overcoat and suit coat. There was a certain amount of gurgling and spillage that June found embarrassing. Here was a loutish side of Austin she had not seen before. At the Blue Hole he was always the gentleman, always removing his hat and never spitting or blowing his nose on the floor or using foul language. She wondered if he might be nervous. Men were so odd in their dealings with women.
    What had escaped June’s notice in recent weeks was that Popper had become a drunk. The decline had been rapid, and she, blinded by affection, had failed to recognize the signs—the rheumy eye, the splotchy face, the trembling hand, the loss of appetite, the repetitive monologue, the misbuttoned shirt and, perhaps most conclusive, the use of ever smaller bottles, this being the pathetic buying pattern of many alcoholics. She knew nothing of his solitary drinking, at all hours, in bed, on the street, in moving vehicles and public toilets. Huggins at his worst had never been so completely bedeviled.
    He became loud and jolly on the bus, talking to the passengers at large about his dream of the night before, in which a rat had raced up his trouser leg. June and her mother looked away. An old woman at the back said, “A rat dream means your enemies are stirring. That’s what the dream book says.”
    On arrival in Hogandale, June was annoyed to find that she and her mom would have to walk down a steep hill. Their short legs and platform shoes were ill suited for such a rough descent.
    Popper said, “This tramp in the snow will get our blood going. It will make us crave our dinner all the more.”
    As they stumbled along, June suddenly remembered Austin’s partner. She expressed concern that there might not be enough food for four people, and further, that the food was rich and perhaps unsuitable for an old man in poor health.
    â€œOh no, he won’t be joining us,” said Popper. “Cezar is not a sociable man. He lies up all winter and lives off his hump. He’ll be upstairs mashing his weeds. I’ll leave a little pot of something outside his door that he can eat with his ivory chopsticks. If we’re lucky we won’t even catch a glimpse of him.”
    They had reached the desolate edge of town.
    â€œCareful now, ladies, watch your step.”
    On a rocky lot there loomed up out of the mist an old house made of gray boards. It was frankly a house, angular and upright: There were no cows about and no pens, barns, troughs or other signs of pastoral industry. No collie dog named Shep ran to greet them. The woodpile was just that, a low sprawl of sticks minimally organized, like something beavers might have thrown together. Under a window toward the rear of the house there was a snowcapped mound of cans and garbage. It was a ranch unlike any the two Macks had ever seen before.
    â€œA little haze today,” said