Murray was the sort of name he might have expected his father to pick. Murray : not a family name, not a friend's name, not some old blowhard up in New Hampshire (his father's home state) who'd sat around in the general store playing checkers and sucking his teeth. Murray was a name you couldn't do anything with. Murr — what the hell kind of nickname was that? The kids in second and third grade had certainly seen the name's possibilities. With the appropriate swishes and vocal flutings, they called him Mary.
He smiled often, he could make his knuckles crack like pistol shots, and he had the courtesy to address him as Gaylord, and not by some ridiculous title of his own.