That was one of Beans’s famous numbers. Good old Beans! Haw! Especially at the dinner table. You could count on him ripping one on nights (strange things going on in town? Waldo hadn’t noticed; strangest thing he’d seen was a greasy lug wrench tangled in black silk panties at the foot of the motel bed he used sometimes; he had passed it on to old Stu a night or so ago at the country club, asking if he could use it, and Stu said, sure he could, it was his, and they both elbowed each other and had a big laugh: you dirty dog!) when the fraternity had special guests like a rich alumnus or the dean of women, most often just when someone was about to make a speech, Waldo himself a frequent victim: “Now, brothers, we should all feel free to say exactly what we think.” Wurrrr-RRP! It was that or else honking his nose in a filthy rag if not the tablecloth itself or letting a thunderous fart, Beans won all the farting contests, too. The Wind Machine. Foghorn. Beans hated all ceremony—“People not acting like people,” he’d say, eructating consummately for emphasis — and his vulgar gestures, which he called “elocutionary,” were all meant, quite simply, to let the hot air out. Waldo sometimes imitated him, even to this day, much to the annoyance of Lorraine, who now crawled into bed beside him, and often as not to that purpose. Beans was a funny guy. He was adept at falling down stairs or off chairs, often grabbing, as though desperately, at some girl’s skirt as he fell, and he carried stickers around with him saying things like EAT ME and BACK OFF! I JUST CUT THE CHEESE! to slap on the backs of professors, BMOCs, and housemothers. He always kept a shirt at the bottom of the laundry basket for anyone who came in asking to borrow one for a big date, and he sometimes wore it himself to crowded classes or sorority parties, you couldn’t get within a mile of him. At an all-university symposium, hosted by the dean of students, on the topic of what his fraternity brothers knew as tomcatting and the rest of the world called rape, Beans turned up with a couple of old prosthetic limbs (or maybe they came off an amputeed mannequin) tucked into a sleeve and a pantleg, his limbs doubled away inside his clothes, and when some gangly man-eater started railing madly against what she called geeks and frat-brats, Beans leaned toward the audience and made an impassioned confession, colorfully detailed, of all his sins against womankind (back at the house, it became known as “Brother Beans’s Hymenbuster Address”), concluding with a promise to clap his offending organ in red-hot irons if it did not mind its p’s, q’s, and arse when appearing in public. “Just the same, hot stuff,” he added, turning to the rabid fraternophobe (could this have been Marge? Waldo wasn’t sure, but she was up there at State at the same time, politically gadflying as usual, though he didn’t know her then, not his field; which was, in a word, partying; in turn, not Marge’s), “I’d give an arm and a leg to get into your pants!” Whereupon, he ripped his leg out from his trousers, his arm from his shirt, and tossed them across the stage at the woman who looked like she was about to shit a brick from purple rage and terror. Applause, laughter, boos, and for beamish Beans another semester on probation, which he understood as his natural lot, prospering therein. At the reception party before John’s wedding, Beans got up and proposed a toast to the families of the bride and groom with his fly gaping, one of his favorite gags and always good for laughs, because even if you were in on it, the fun then was watching the others trying to decide where to look or how to get him to sit down. “Now, I want to be completely open about my true feelings here,” he would slur drunkenly, bending forward so as to spread the zippered doors more widely agape. “We are always so buttoned up about how we feel about one another. What’s there to hide? Nothing! Or almost nothing. So tonight, and especially for all you ladies, I’m going to reveal something I’ve never revealed before …” He was a riot out at the stag party, too, a one-man band, using all his appendages, even his prick and his nose and not excluding his butt, for percussion, himself as a wind instrument, or, rather, a whole wind section. Waldo could hardly wait to see what stunt he’d pull at the wedding itself, but, best he could remember, he never showed up. Too hungover maybe, or maybe John, for his own sake, or his bride’s, had him stowed away somewhere. Dear old Brother Beans. Hadn’t seen him since. Loved that sucker once. Now it was like he never was. Feeling sentimental, Waldo rolled over on his side and, nighty-nighting Lollie, popped a three-stage cracker in memory of his long-lost fraternity brother and of bygone days. Life, my love: funniest, saddest circus in town.