He checked just for an instant, then he hit the stopper with his palm and put the jug back in the drawer and he swung around to face me. The man I was looking at was me. I've never had a delicate look, but the face was hewn out of earth's premordial rock, weathered to a saddle brown and lined a little by time's erosion, then polished with a hand finer than Cellini's to a portrait of power held in restraint.
1968.