An impromptu barbecue was fomented in the L-shaped compound as word got out that Rufus had slid into town. Various shirttail relations and friends began to pull up. Accustomed to solitude, Rufus had to suppress a fight-or-flight reaction as one person after another came up to interact with him socially. Most of these exchanges were either (1) rote friendly joshing about Rufus’s unusual looks, stature, and way of life, frequently softened by the exclamation "kee!" meaning "not!" or "just kidding!" or (2) congratulating him in a more serious way about his destruction of Snout. This feat—minus the part of the story where a business jet did most of the work for him—had somehow made its way into the oral tradition. Everyone, of course, knew the first part of that story: what had happened to Adele. Word seemed to have got around that Snout was no more and that Rufus had something to do with that. People had filled in the missing details with a conjectural story line that made Rufus out to be pretty heroic. Explaining what had actually happened was, of course, completely out of the question, and so all Rufus could do was nod and accept their warm admiration.