Chapter 15: Mike or Alec or Rufus

Mike or Alec or Rufus I don’t know whether Jacob Coplin was tall or short. All of him I ever got a look at was his round head—naked scalp and wrinkled face, both of them the color and texture of Manila paper—propped up on white pillows in a big four-poster bed. The rest of him was buried under a thick pile of bedding. Besides he and I in the room that first time, there were his wife, a roly-poly woman with lines in a plump white face like scratches in ivory; his daughter Phyllis, a smart…