Matt Conner is sixty-two. He caught the tail end of Vietnam and came home in ?72 full of anger and guilt. Whiskey was Matt's anodyne, and barroom brawls were his way of dealing with the America he felt had betrayed him. When he wasn't drinking and fighting, he worked on a bridge-building crew in Tacoma. He became tough and mean and filled with anguish. And then he met Pam, a hippy from Shreveport who worked in a coffee shop he used to sober up in...