Marvin had the kind of face that made people say, “He’ll never win a beauty contest.” As I was soon to discover, people were once again wrong. The great “they,” the ones we mean when we say “they say,” were often wrong but completely protected by being someone other than you and me.

Marvin’s eyes adjusted quickly and he headed straight for my booth. He dropped the huge book in front of me and sat facing me across the table. The pockets of his well-weathered denim jacket were as bulged out as his eyes. He folded his hands in front of him on the table and looked at me.

“Look at it,” Marvin said.

He was harmless and quiet, two levels below minimally bright. I pushed my Shadow videos aside and opened what was clearly an album of photographs and newspaper clippings. The first item was a newspaper clipping that said Marvin Uliaks, age three, had won the annual cutest child contest at the county fair in Ocala in 1957. The article, wiltingly Scotch-taped in the album like every other item, had a photograph of a smiling blond kid with curly hair wearing a sailor suit. The kid was pointing at the camera and beaming. Flanking the little boy were a thin, sober-looking man with a baby in his arms and a pretty brunette who was holding Marvin’s free hand. The woman wore a little hat and held her free hand up to shield out the sun. The man and woman were identified as the proud parents of Marvin.

“That’s me all right,” Marvin said, tapping a finger on the newspaper clipping. “My mother, my father, and my baby sister.

“My sister, Vera Lynn. She was named for a singer.”

“‘Till We Meet Again.’” I said.

“Don’t know where, don’t know when,” Marvin sang. Vera Lynn, the British singer during World War II, was a favorite of my father’s who made it through the war with all his organs and body parts except his right eye.

“Look at the next one,” Marvin said with excitement.