What If?

Hollis was here over the weekend, home from the university. I was amused at him walking around with a book in his hand and earphones on his ears. He said he was reading and listening to Moby Dick. In one of the rare moments when he was disconnected from his literature I got a chance to talk to him. He said things were going well, except in one of his classes where they were assigned to play a game called "What if?" He chose the subject of Billy the Kid. I mean like what would Billy have amounted to if he had survived the Garrett bullet or even if he had chosen to walk a path more akin to the straight and narrow. Hollis found this a little disconcerting because he would wander off into theories (he called them hypotheses) so real to him, he found it difficult to get back to what really happened. I told him this may be a good thing if he could just learn to control it. Now that's advice I just pulled out of the air. I have no idea what all that means.
Willene Smartz came by yesterday afternoon to visit Dorothy. A long time ago Willene and I used to go out together some. When I saw her standing beside Dorothy and saw how well-kept Dorothy was and how Willene had let herself go so bad, the first thing I thought of was this what-if game. I quickly got that out of my mind. The result of that what-if was a condition I did not want to consider.