“Mad how?” I asked. “Mad like Charles Manson? Like Hannibal Lecter? How?”
“Mad how?” I asked. “Mad like Charles Manson? Like Hannibal Lecter? How?”
“Say like Howard Hughes,” he said. “Ever read any of the stories about him? The lengths he’d go to to get the things he wanted? It didn’t matter if it was a special kind of hot dog they only sold in L.A. or an airplane designer he wanted to steal from Lockheed or McDonnell-Douglas, he had to have what he wanted, and he wouldn’t rest until it was under his hand. Devore is the same way. He always was—even as a boy he was willful, according to the stories you hear in town.
“My own dad had one he used to tell. He said little Max Devore broke into Scant Larribee’s tack-shed one winter because he wanted the Flexible Flyer Scant give his boy Scooter for Christmas. Back around 1923, this would have been. Devore cut both his hands on broken glass, Dad said, but he got the sled. They found him near midnight, sliding down Sugar Maple Hill, holding his hands up to his chest when he went down. He’d bled all over his mittens and his snowsuit. There’s other stories you’ll hear about Maxie Devore as a kid—if you ask you’ll hear fifty different ones—and some may even be true. That one about the sled is true, though. I’d bet the farm on it. Because my father didn’t lie. It was against his religion.”
“Baptist?”
“Nosir, Yankee.”
