By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The scan-verified page closes the gun episode through hearsay: Bob mutters about wildlife, guns, and the BEACH fog, while the narrator arrives too late and preserves only two comic sentences.
The handwritten BEACH insertion makes the page feel more specifically coastal, while the crossed-out phrases leave the prose abrupt and slightly broken. Bob remains mostly an absence, assembled from reported speech and the blunt afterimage of the vanished gun.
A brief, mostly-hearsay epilogue to the gun-house brawl. Bob walks off 'mad', 'talked aloud to himself through the BEACH fog' with the aphorism 'Where there is wildlife, there are guns.' The narrator reports arriving too late - 'I had missed him just by minutes' - and reduces the wronged husband to deadpan comedy, 'amused' by 'the only two sentences / the man had aparently uttered: The gun is gone. And: The hell / with those two nuts.' The handwritten 'BEACH' insertion keeps the scene coastal; the violence survives only as reported speech and afterimage. Source spellings ('aparently', 'meet') are preserved.