HERE it comes, the trip he dreads: the one when he turnsfifty. All the other trips of his life seem to have led, ina blind man‘s march, toward this one. The hotel in Italywith Robert. The jaunt through France with Freddy. Thewild-hare cross-country journey after college to San Fran-cisco, to stay with someone named Lewis. And his childhoodtrips the camping trips his father took him on many times,
mostly to Civil War battlefields. How clearly Less rememberssearching their campsite for bullets and finding-wonder ofwonders! an arrowhead (time revealed the possibility his fa-ther had salted the area). The games of mumblety-peg inwhich clumsy young Less was entrusted with a switchbladeknife, which he fearfully tossed as if it were a poisonous snake