his hands. I felt like I almost understood.

  "This is for me," I said slowly, and Craphound nodded encouragingly. "This isfor me, and you're keeping the glasses. And I'll look at this and feel. . ."

  "You understand," Craphound said, looking somehow relieved.

  And I _did_. I understood that an alien wearing a cowboy hat and sixguns andgiving them away was a poem and a story, and a thirtyish bachelor trying tospend half a month's rent on four glasses so that he could remember hisGrandma's kitchen was a story and a poem, and that the disused fairgroundoutside Calgary was a story and a poem, too.

  "You're craphounds!" I said. "All of you!"

  Craphound smiled so I could see his gums and I put down the cowboy trunk andclapped my hands.

  #

  Scott recovered from his shock by spending the night at his office, crunchingnumbers talking on the phone, and generally getting while the getting was good.He had an edge -- no one else knew that they were going.

  He went pro later that week, opened a chi-chi boutique on Queen Street, andhired me on as chief picker and factum factotum.

  Scott was not Billy the Kid. Just another Bay Street shyster with a cowboyjones. From the way they come down and spend, there must be a million of them.

  Our draw in the window is a beautiful mannequin I found, straight out of theFifties, a little boy we call The Beaver. He dresses in chaps and a Sheriff'sbadge and sixguns and a miniature Stetson and cowboy boots with worn spurs, andrests one foot on a beautiful miniature steamer trunk whose leather is workedwith cowboy motifs.

  He's not for sale at any price.

  --

  Craphound 1998-3-1 A science-fiction short story by Cory Doctorow about alien thrift-store enthusiasts, from the short story collection "A Place So Foreign and Eight More," published by Four Walls Eight Windows press in September, 2003 (ISBN: 1568582862) Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow

 

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