"Y’know what I think?" said Fontenot. Fontenot had never been so garrulous before, but it was clear to Oscar that, in his retirement, the old man was desperately lonely. "People are different nowadays. They buffalo way too easy, they lost their starch somehow. It has something to do with that sperm-count crash, all those pesticide hormone poisonings. You get these combinations of pollutants, all these yuppie flus and allergies...."