Free Slow Learner by Thomas Pynchon

finally came to rest was the dead center, the single point which implied an entire low country. Whenever he was away from Cindy and could think he would picture his life as a surface in the process of change, much as the floor of the dump was in transition: from concavity or inclosure to perhaps a flatness like the one he stood in now. What he worried about was any eventual convexity, a shrinking, it might be, of the planet itself to some palpable curvature of whatever he would be standing on, so that he would be left sticking out like a projected radius, unsheltered and reeling across the empty lunes of his tiny sphere.
    Rocco left them with another gallon of muscatel which he had found under the seat and went bouncing and snarling away into the gathering darkness. Bolingbroke unscrewed the cap and drank. They passed the bottle around and Bolingbroke said, "Come on, we'll find mattresses." He led them up a slope, around a tall tower of bank run, past half an acre of abandoned refrigerators, bicycles, baby carriages, washing machines, sinks, toilets, bedsprings, TV sets, pots and pans and stoves and air-conditioners and finally over a dune to where the mattresses were. "Biggest bed in the world," Bolingbroke said. "Take your pick." There must have been thousands of mattresses. Flange found a three-quarter-width inner-spring and Pig, who would probably never get accustomed to civilian life, selected a pallet about two inches thick and three feet wide. "I wouldn't feel comfortable otherwise," Pig said.
    "Hurry up," Bolingbroke called softly, nervously. He had climbed to the top of the dune and was looking back in the direction they had come. "Hurry. It's almost dark."
    "What's wrong," Flange said, lugging the mattress up the slope to stand next to him and peer out over the junk pile. "You have prowlers at night?"
    "Something like that," Bolingbroke said, uncomfortable. "Come on." They trudged back, retracing their steps, no one speaking. At the place where the truck had stopped they angled off to the left. Above them towered the incinerator, its stacks tall and black against the last sky-glow. The three entered a narrow ravine which had garbage scattered twenty feet up its sides. Flange got the feeling that this dump was like an island or enclave in the dreary country around it, a discrete kingdom with Bolingbroke its uncontested ruler. The ravine ran on for a hundred yards, steep-sided and tortuous, until at length it opened out on a small valley completely filled with cast-off rubber tires from cars, trucks, tractors and airplanes; and in the center on a slight eminence stood Bolingbroke's shack, jury-rigged out of tar paper and refrigerator sides and haphazardly acquired wooden beams and pipes and shingles. "Home," Bolingbroke said. "Now we play follow the leader." It was like running a maze. Sometimes the stacks of tires were twice as high as Flange, threatening to topple at the slightest jar. The smell of rubber was strong in the air. "Be careful with them mattresses," Bolingbroke whispered, "don't step out of line. I got booby traps set up."
    "For what," Pig said, but Bolingbroke either had not heard or was ignoring the question. They reached the shack and Bolingbroke unlocked the door, which was made from the side of a heavy packing case and was secured by a large padlock. Inside was absolute blackness. There were no windows. Bolingbroke lit a kerosene lamp and in the flickering yellow light Flange could see the walls covered with photographs clipped out of every publication, it seemed, put out since the Depression.
    A brightly colored pin-up of Brigitte Bardot was flanked by newspaper photos of the Duke of Windsor making his abdication speech and the Hindenburg going up in flames. There were Ruby Keeler and Hoover and MacArthur. Jack Sharkey, Whirlaway, Lauren Bacall and God knew how many others in a rogues' gallery of faded sensation fragile as tabloid paper, blurred as the common humanity of a nine-day