Galumphing home behind the stars; the P.O.W. table and the chickpea catapult

texture · 11 Nov YDAU

• When: 11 Nov YDAU — the run back past the Hammond golf course (reported in the match frame) and supper (1810h+).
• What: When "some higher-up had sent Mary Esther Thode out on her little yellow Vespa with the order for their match" — the Hal-Stice exhibition, the scene noting "Stice and Hal were in different age-divisions this year" — the delivery catches the pecking order mid-run: Thode pulls up alongside front-runners Stice and Wayne as they clear the golf course, "Hal a good half km. behind them with galumphers Kornspan and Kahn." At supper that evening Kahn and Kornspan "eat with such horrible P.O.W.ish gusto that nobody else will sit with them" — by themselves at a small table behind Schacht and Struck, utensils glittering amid a kind of fine mist or spray. Later, with the dining hall's anxious energy centered on Stice, "Petropolis Kahn is preparing to catapult a chickpea at somebody." — and then, the meal done, the standing custom of event 1 kicks in and Kahn comes over to the best table.