they neither liked nor disliked the old man to them he could have been the broken bell in the church tower which rang before and after mass and at noon and at six each evening its tone repetitive monotonous never breaking the boredom of the streets the old man was unimportant yet if he were not there they would have missed him as they would have missed the sounds of bees buzzing against the screen door in early june or the smell of thick tomato paste the ripe smell that was both sweet and sour rising up from aluminum trays wrapped in fly dotted cheesecloth or the surging whirling sounds of bats at night when their black bodies dived into the blackness above and below the amber street lights or the bay of female dogs in heat they never called him by name although he had one filippo rossi that s what he was called in the old country but here he was just signore or the old man but this was not unusual because youth in these quarters was always pushed at a distance from its elders youth obeyed when commanded it went to church on sunday and one saturday a month went to confession but youth asked nothing of its parents not a touch of the hand or a kiss given in passing the only thing unusual about the old man had long since happened but the past was dead here as the present was dead once the old man had had a wife and once she too ignored him with a tiny fur piece wrapped around her shoulders she wiggled her satin covered buttocks down the street before him and didn t stop in one hand she clutched a hundred dollar bill and in the other a straw suitcase the way she strutted down the street the old man would have been blind not to have noticed both without looking at him without looking at anything except drexel street directly in front of her she climbed up into one of those orange streetcars rode away in it and never came back but she shouldn t have come here in the first place the women had said no no not that one she thought she was bigger than we are because she came from torino eh torino she gave herself fancy airs just because she had a part on the stage in the old country she thought she could carry her head higher than ours they had slapped their thighs it s not for making pretty speeches about dante those actresses get paid so good henh calloused fingers caressed only by the smoothness of polished rosaries had swayed excitedly beneath puckered chins where tiny black hairs sprouted never to be tweezed away mauve colored mouths that had never known anything sweeter than the taste of new wine and the passion of man s tongue had not smiled but had condemned again and again puttana but if the old man even thought about his wife now nobody cared a fig it was enough for people to know that at one time he had looked down the street at the fleshy suppleness of a woman he had consumed watching her become thinner and thinner in the distance as thin as the seams on her stockings and still thinner his voice had not commanded her to stop it had not questioned why the women said they had seen him wave an exhausted farewell but he might have been shooing away the fleas that hopped from his yellow dog onto him he was never without that dog and his eyes those miniature sundials of variegated yellow had not altered their expression or direction the old man s very soul could have left him and flown down that street but he wouldn t have had anyone know it perhaps he had known then where that hundred dollar bill had come from and where it was taking his wife but when he called for his withered wrinkled sister rose to care for him and the children had he guessed that all he would remember of his woman was the memory of her climbing into that streetcar there seemed to be a contemptuous purpose in the way he sat there with his eyes glued to drexel street and his back in opposition to the church behind him for all he saw or cared to see this could have been a town in italy not the outskirts of philadelphia it could have been bari or chieti for the way it smelled what did it matter to him that the park at the foot of ash road stretched beneath elevated trains that roared from the stucco station into the city s center at half hour intervals or that the tiny creek spun its silent course toward the schuylkill this place was hatred to him just as hatred was his only companion in his aloneness to him they were one and the same sameness for the old man was framed in by a wall of ginkgo trees which divided these quarters from the city sameness lined the streets with two story houses the color of ash it slashed the sloping manure scented lawns with concrete steps which climbed upward to white wooden porches it swayed with the wicker swings and screeched with the rusted hinges of screen doors even the stable garage which housed nothing now but the scent of rot had a lawn before it and the coffee shop on drexel street where the men spent their evenings and sundays playing cards had a rose hedge beneath its window the hedge reeked of coffee dregs thrown against it only one house on the street had no lawn before it it squatted low and square upon the sidewalk with a heavy iron grating supporting a glass facade that was bartoli s shop above it from a second story showroom wooden angels surveyed the neighborhood did the old man remember them there yet everywhere else sameness was stucco and wood in square blocks like fortresses perched against the slant of the hill rising with the hill to the top where the church was and beyond that to the cemetery only paved alleyways tunneled through the walls of those fortresses into the mysterious core of intimacy behind the houses where backyards owned no fences where one man s property blended with the next to form courtyards in which no one knew privacy love and hatred and fear were one here shaded only by fig trees and grape vines and the forked tongue of gossip licked its sinister way from back porch to back porch the old man silently fed upon these streets they kept him alive waiting waiting for what and for whom only he could tell and would not it was as though he had made a pact with the devil himself but it was not yet time to pay the price he was holding out for something he was determined to hold out the old man s son threw himself down belly first upon a concrete step taking in the coolness of it and dreaming of the day he would be rich at fifteen he didn t care that he had no mother that he couldn t remember her face or her touch neither did he care that aunt rose provided for him he was named pompeii as a tribute to his heritage and he couldn t have cared less about that either to him life was a restless boredom that began with the rising sun and ended only with sleep when he would be a man he would be a rich man he would not be like the rich americans who lived in white columned houses on the other side of the park he would not ride the eight thirty local to the city each morning he would not carry a brief case nor would he work at all he would square his shoulders and carry a cane before each step he would sit inside the coffee shop and pound a gloved fist upon the table and a girl would hear him and come running bowing with her running calling out in her bowing at your service he would order her to bring coffee and would take from his vest pocket a thin black pipe which he would stuff he would not remove his gloves and light and smoke he could do that when he would be a man hey laura he called to his sister on the porch above the steps she was only ten months older than he laura what would you say if i smoked a pipe laura did not answer him she leaned unconcerned against the broken porch fence brushing and drying her wet gilded hair in the sun one lithe leg straddled the railing and swung loosely before the creaking torn pales her tanned foot whose arch swept high and white pointed artfully toward tapering toes toes like fingers whose tips glowed white all the while she sat there her sinewy arms swirled before her chest her face showed no sign of having heard pompeii it was a face that had lost its childlike softness and was beginning to fold within its fragile features a harshness that belied the lyric lines of its contours the eyes blue and always somewhat downcast possessed a sullen quality even though the boy could not see them he knew they were clouded by distance he was never sure they fully took him in pompeii called again laura but the only answer that reached him was the screeching of the porch rail from her leg moving against it she s in a mood he thought there s not a month she doesn t get herself in a mood well what did that matter when the sun was shining and there were dreams to dream about and as for his pipe if he wanted to smoke one nobody would stop him not even laura suddenly he was interrupted in his daydreaming by a warm wetness lapping against his chin and his eyes opened wide and long at the sight of a goat s claret tongue feasting against the salt taste of him above the tongue an aged yellow eye sallow and time cast encrusted within a sphere of marbleized pink skin stared unfalteringly at him christ sake goat git but the goat would not you re boiling milk ain t you soothing it with his hand knowing the whiskered jowls and the swollen smoothness of teats that wrinkled expectantly to his touch pompeii rolled over his head undulated gradually covering space to come straining beneath the taut belly within the warmth of those teats with his mouth opened wide he squirted the warm white milk against the roof of his mouth and his tongue savored the light earthy taste of it the boy s fingers and mouth operated with the skilled unity of a bagpipe player pressing and pulling delighting in what he did above him slid the evasive shadow of a storm cloud its form was a heavy figure in a fluttering soutane but the boy could see only the goat s belly the old man near the corner let the shadow pass over him sensing something portentous in it he knew it was there knew also what it was about but he wouldn t raise a finger except to smooth his yellow dog s back there would be time enough perhaps the old man reassured himself to pay the devil his due time enough to give up his soul in the meantime six sandals stained an ocher the same color as pompeii s shaved hair edged up close to him the clapping they made on the concrete interrupted him in the ecstatic pleasure he knew so that he quickly released his hold on the goat and pretended to be examining its haunches for ticks he knew at a glance that the biggest sandals belonged to niobe the neatest ones to concetta and the laced ones to romeo concetta s idiot brother pompeii expected romeo s small body to sink closer and closer to the ground he expected concetta s thin hand to reach down to grasp the boy and her shrill impetuous voice to sound against the rotundity of his disfigured flesh that was never sure of hearing anything people came in and out all evening to see the baby and hold it the room filled with smoke and maggie s head throbbed with excitement and fatigue but stuart had such a happy earnest look of proud possession on his face that maggie couldn t bear to do anything to quench it little anne rapidly outdistanced her mother in recovery in two months she became a fat highly social baby with a fuzz of flaxen hair all over her head she stopped flying into rages and started digesting her food she developed a peaches and cream complexion and a sunny disposition and she asked for nothing more of life than that she be kept dry and comfortable and fed huge amounts of food at stated intervals and be carried to where she could watch activity going on around her she was so heavy that maggie s arms shook from lifting her and taking care of her maggie couldn t seem to get her strength back or catch up with herself with all she had to do there was the big basket of clothes to be coaxed through the rackety old washer and lugged out and lugged back there was the daily round of household chores in which maggie insisted on participating worry had a great deal to do with it stuart had been laid off at the produce company and had to go back to sitting in his father s office taking what salary his father could hand out to him mr clifton would have preferred death and bankruptcy to having his son stay with his wife s people without contributing to his and his family s upkeep and besides that there were the things that had to be bought for the baby milk and orange juice and vitamins and soap just plain soap maggie and stuart pored over figures every night trying to find how they could squeeze out a few pennies more in desperation maggie consulted eugenia one afternoon do you think you could find me something i could do here at home to make some money so i could still watch the baby and do the rest of the things it seems to me you have enough to do as it is eugenia said she had been watching maggie go from the washing machine to the baby to the stove and back again i have plenty of odd moments when i could be doing something maggie said it would make me feel a lot better but the woman s exchange isn t taking baked goods any more and i can t leave the baby with grandma because she isn t strong enough and the baby s too young to be put in a nursery i should think so eugenia said for one thing you can stop keeping that child in starched dresses and changed from the skin out nineteen times a day she s so beautiful and i do like to keep her looking nice maggie said she picked up the baby and nuzzled her fat warm little neck she ll be just as beautiful in something that doesn t have to be ironed eugenia said evadna mae evans said she didn t put a thing on her child but a flannel wrapper until it was nine months old evadna mae evans got all her baby clothes from best s liliputian bazaar in new york and i m sick and tired of hearing about evadna mae evans well now maggie you don t have to snap at me eugenia said i m just thinking of a way for you to be sensible i m sorry i do seem to snap at everybody these days but i would like to think of a way to make a little extra money well let s see let s make a list of your assets maggie started laughing and she laughed so hard she couldn t stop and she kept on laughing while she lugged the clothes out to the yard to hang them up while the sun was still shining when she came back eugenia was sitting at the kitchen table with a pencil and envelope jotting down words and figures i have here that you could run a nursery of your own for working mothers eugenia said we could put up cribs on the second floor sleeping porch and turn the front bedroom into a playroom where it s nice and sunny but of course it would entail quite a bit of running up and down stairs and chris said you were to be careful about that what else you might set up a dress shop in the living room every woman in the block has tried that what about a tea room then you could set up tables in the front room and serve salads and your baked beans and brown bread and grandma could dress like a gypsy and tell fortunes it s too elaborate and grandma isn t strong enough to take on something like that and to tell you the truth neither am i eugenia sighed she said well those are the really interesting things but if you don t like any of those i can turn over some of my extra typing jobs to you if you think you can type well enough oh i m sure i could do that maggie said but it really wouldn t be fair taking your jobs away from you don t worry i can get plenty more eugenia said wondering where in the world she could maggie was looking much happier already clearing a space on the table and chattering about how she could put up a typewriter right there and be brushing up on her typing so eugenia wouldn t be ashamed of it and then whenever i have a minute i can be working at it and keep an eye on the baby and the stove at the same time and i can go back to my contests and be thinking while i m doing the washing what are you going to do with your feet so you don t waste anything maggie laughed she said oh eugenia i wish what i wish i had three wishes maggie said all of them for you it grew bitterly cold toward the end of november contributing to the miseries of countless numbers of people the temperature dropped to twenty below at night and stood at zero during the days the cold settled like a tangible pall over the mile high city locking it in an icy grip that harshened its outlines and altered its physical appearance it had a look of grim stark realism resembling other cities whose habitual climate was cold instead of the sprawling bumptious open handed greedy western city basking in eternal sunshine at the foot of mountains stored with endless riches and resources the jobless huddled in the streets outside of employment offices outside newspaper buildings in parks in relief lines outside government agencies there weren t facilities to take care of them there never had been a need felt for such facilities that kind of poverty was regarded as the exclusive property of the east which created depressions with their stock markets and their congested populations and their greedy centralization of industries protected by discriminatory freight rates the east was popularly supposed to have got the country into war and into depression dragging the west along and now the east was creating government agencies for which the west doubtless would have to pay the government offices were being opened but they weren t being opened fast enough and meanwhile the cold penetrated everything shivering people talked and argued all this government spending would have to be paid for somehow but on the other hand desperate circumstances called for desperate remedies and something had to be done something had to be done it was the theme song of millions of american people their personal problems no less urgent than those of the government something had to be done the abernathys said it to each other a dozen times a day something had to be done about the furnace the fuel bills the washing machine the doctor and dentist bills about making money stretch for food for the mortgage for taxes for shoes for half soles for overshoes for clothes for the new leaks in the roof for gas and light bills about keeping warm about keeping well about meeting the minor emergencies that came up once twice fifty times a day just dropping the baby s bottle and breaking it became a catastrophe and stuart wore out his shoes so fast that he was termed a major disaster the abernathy furnace consumed fuel like a giant ravenous maw that had to be appeased by hurling tons of coal into its evil red depths and no matter how much coal they put in the house remained cold cold came in the innumerable cracks that seemed to have sprung up under doors around loosened window frames from the sleeping porches the attic from the widened cracks between shingles on the roof presently they had to give up running the furnace at full capacity and depend on the old coal range in the kitchen which had never been removed when the new gas range was installed and the fireplaces and an electric heater in grandma s room it was so cold and so wretched that a sort of desperate gaiety infected all of them like people stormbound or shipwrecked or caught in some other freak of circumstance so that time stood still and minor anxieties fell away and the only important thing was to cling together and survive the pipes burst and they all laughed and stood in ice water to their ankles while they swabbed the bathrooms they lived mainly in the kitchen they moved maggie s bed and the baby s basket there and the rest of them undressed by the stove and ran groaning and shivering to the upper polar regions and plunged into icy beds grandma said it was just like the early mining camp days and it was the way people ought to live only she was getting too old to take the pleasure from it that she used to you said a mouthful eugenia said grimly eugenia hated being cold worse than anything and she was beginning to find the joys of poverty wearing thin she said to maggie that it was one thing to meet an emergency and another to wallow in it and it was beginning to look at if this one was going to last forever plenty of people are poor all their lives plenty of people haven t our brains and talent i know you when you start talking about brains and talent maggie said you re working up to something and if you don t watch out you ll ruin your whole life one of these days just to prove that the abernathy family is superior to everything even a depression the only thing that worries me is how i m going to prove it eugenia said they begged grandma to let them put a bed in the kitchen for her but grandma said she was getting too old to sleep in strange beds and be seen with her teeth out and that she hoped to die in privacy like a christian and if the lord willed it to be of pneumonia than it would have to be that way she didn t want to be the only one with a stove in her room especially as her life span was nearly run out anyway and she insisted that hope have the heater hope wouldn t hear of it and she took the heater back to grandma s room and grandma took it back to hope s room and the two of them dragged it back and forth until grandma tipped it over and almost set her bedspread on fire she said that proved she wasn t to be trusted with a fire in her room and she could be burned to a crisp without anybody knowing it eugenia suspected her of deliberately overturning the heater because she was getting tired of dragging it back and forth and still wanted her own way but hope said if grandma wouldn t have the heater nobody would have it so grandma had to give in thrifty of her to use it up unusual in a case like this but you can joke didn t you read it she s married that tenant i read it yes this ought to simplify tolley s life laban had more to say tolley had gone to live in california he d mentioned it himself at church and everybody seemed to have the idea that tolley had left because jenny had jilted him for roy robards it was plain as the nose on your face that they re laughing about it mamma zion stayed to get my pin but it ll be a cold day in june when i go back we will both go back laban kizzie turned to go inside let me stay and take the pictures you wanted mamma the sun s right pictures she swung around what pictures in brace s room you told me to bring my camera i m not going back indeed you are why should i want pictures of an empty room now tolley had no idea of marrying that sneaky little jenny this trip of his had nothing to do with her consorting with tenants and i am going to see that everybody at mt pleasant understands that simple fact wait for me laban i ll be dressed in half a second frank followed her into the bedroom hooked her dress up the back hurry frank they re not going to laugh at the fairbrothers and labans very long tolley s going is my fault i drove him away you know it and i ll tell everybody exactly how it happened she was so beautiful so valiant so pitiable he kissed her make your confession to god kizzie dear not to the congregation i ll decide that when i get there i was so cruel to tolley so unfair but i ll be fair now he is coming back isn t he frank yes oh yes what else was there to say returning to the log house he found some favorite lines from jonathan swift on his lips under the window in stormy weather i marry this man and woman together let none but him who rules the thunder put this man and woman asunder absolution for his lie he questioned god s taking time to telegraph the message but he felt better about kizzie and he took the sealed envelope from its pigeonhole wondering why he had preserved it if he died before she did she would never be unable to resist opening it in any case he would be thrusting a burden on his remaining sons making them parties to a deception peculiarly his own it was simply his necessity to confess which had made him write and keep this thing you ve told god frank he said why lacerate the congregation reaching for an old clay pot relic of pioneer days he tore the envelope in pieces dropping them into it touching the little pyre to flame watching it curl the red sealing wax melting and bubbling in the feathery ash surely now his beloved son could rest in peace and let me go for the night gathers me and in the night shall no man gather fruit a beautiful and haunting line a subtle genius swinburne difficult not to envy a gifted man and perhaps he did but there were great satisfactions even for a small man beyond his window were the greening trees new spring eternal hope eternal life there lay grand fair s quinzaine his own young parents graves but new life and promise for his sons grandsons he poured his thimble of wine for the toast he d made so often to absent loved ones but this last time he drank not to brace but to tolley mr robards jenny was the only person she knew of in the mt pleasant neighborhood who called him that was kind but too easygoing it didn t bother him for everybody from the blacksmith to the preacher to say howdy miss jenny adding a careless roy but it did her he could put a stop to it she told him again and again simply call mr whipsnade oscar and dr dunne p ga and c un major frank mr robards laughed said he d feel a damn fool plain out couldn t do that even to please her you could try and if i ever hear you say mist laban again i ll scream and don t tell me you didn t at church sunday i heard you he really hadn t meant to he assured her but it was plain to her that the importance of these small things was lost on mr robards how strange it was that he could give her this handsome house and carte blanche as to its beautiful furnishings and fail her in spiritual ways another weakness far more irritating than his manner of speaking which he made only token effort to change was his devotion to that old horse of tolley s her horse rather but mr robards now oh my yes indeed yes he called her the mare much as mrs whipsnade spoke of the queen god bless her he with fifteen or twenty horses or mares or geldings or what nots out there in the barn was reverent only of the mare the racin mare the revolting gunny for the first few months of their marriage she had tried to be nice about gunny going out with him to watch this pearl without price stamp imperiously around in her stall and what had happened gunny invariably tried to bite her nerves mr robards said just a nip anyway stand back miss jen she s oneasy of your scarf never quit that you sor l devil never concern for his wife s nerves or the danger that the curled lip and big teeth might mark their own dear baby due in january she musn t annoy gunny whose foal was due then too listening for hours to his laments that the war and mist fair s poverty afterwards had robbed the mare of many a racing triumph and to his predictions of greatness for the procession of foals to come jenny could look forward to years of conflict with an animal who disliked her intensely and showed it gunny symbolized so much that was unpleasant tolley the indifference with which the fairbrothers and indeed the whole neighborhood now treated her and which she would die rather than acknowledge to her husband his lack of understanding and sympathy in her present condition her disgusting swollen stomach human birth was no novelty to mr robards tillie was a fine midwife and could get here quick he suggested jenny s aversion to having dr dunne a former admirer seemed silly to him but he would humor her get anybody she wanted the best never being too good for her the chances were against his being here to humor her when her time came she was sure he would be in the barn or riding for the veterinarian night after night he stayed with gunny in the dead of winter rubbing her with quarts of expensive liniment fussing over her bran mash as the cook did over charlotte russe tracking manure on the pretty new carpet when he did come to the house yet when the dear baby came he had tillie over here in a jiffy and was as attentive and sweet and worried and happy when it was all over as any husband could have been jenny wished now that she had had dr dunne feeling that somehow he wouldn t have allowed the dear baby to turn into triplets there was something not nice about triplets though their father seemed pleased showing no disappointment that they hadn t been the son he wanted saying you don t see triplets trippin down the pike ever day miss jen hon rhyme em up cute arcilla flotilla edmonia for her mother she said firmly jennifer for herself and kezziah for miss kizzie he suggested she was mighty good to you past times an this ll fetch her now she must be thinking of a boy name something special just wait till she saw the mare s foal handsomest colt in all kentucky strong too up on his legs when he was an hour old what about royal robards why don t you name him jesus christ she burst into tears roy was deeply distressed he d had no idea how unhappy his sweet peach had been of course she wasn t herself right now but as her strength came back her spirits didn t seem to rise with it he had a good idea why not those elegant at home cards she sent out now she could wear her pretty clothes again and had the house all trimmed up hadn t brought many callers in two whole months doc dunne and miss sis had come so had miss shawnee rakestraw full of criticisms about the changes here giving thanks that her dear old father had gone to his heavenly rest last year saying how much she enjoyed her boarding house in town in inclement weather was looking forward to quinzaine spa this summer there was an idea miss kizzie had been right snippy ever since they were married though you d have thought a namesake would have brought her round oh she d come to see them once left silver teething rings for all of the trips but when miss jen went over right away to return the call miss kiz couldn t have been very cordial for she d come back before she hardly had time to get there more and more these days she d been driving that pretty little mare that looked like her over to tillie s and nick s his own old square frame box on posts chickens and cats and pups under the house everybody friendly inside making a to do over the babies dressed like dollies though he was glad she got on well with his young folks she ought to be welcome at the finest house in the land too it made him pretty hot under the collar after the idea miss sis had given him to be told by miss kiz that her holy spa was all reserved for this summer and next if you please and that much as she regretted it they would be unable to entertain mrs robards and the children she hoped they were well he didn t tell miss jen but she must have got word from the cook or nurse who of course knew those quinzaine nigs and she really took a fit if he ever did such a thing again she d die of shame have a party an leave em out hon he suggested a swell party send an invite to ever body but them those folks you met at the galt house the ones i ve got to know in this new jockey club affair the whole dang neighborhood we ll have oystchers couple bar l oystchers ll fetch in a crowd any time i ll see word gets round don t you dare miss jen was funny that way funny that she didn t seem to take to his ideas and perk up he was downright worried about her but there was one more thing he could try zion was surprised when roy s buggy stopped beside her on the pike one early summer day as she was walking home from the country school where she was teaching now that eph showers had had a call to preach in some mountain town roy smiled he did have a nice smile took off his hat most politely told her to hop in and he d give her a lift to quinzaine her hesitation was only momentary and she hoped he didn t notice it as she settled herself asked quickly how miss jenny and the babies were getting on see for yourself miss zion it won t take a minute he swung in through his own wide gateway them s the purtiest babes you ever did see but miss jen gets mighty lonesome she ll relish the sight of a friendly face miss kiz won t care your comin will she why of course not zion said uncomfortably he must have forgiven me henrietta murmured to the room the absolution of doaty s last will and testament was proof enough of that doaty would never have left her house to a godless woman she found herself wishing an old wish that she had told doaty she was running away that she had left something more behind her than the loving sorry note and her best garnet pin perhaps doaty had guessed already and kept her counsel henrietta thought it s extraordinary how much she always knew about both of us there had been more to know about hetty inevitably and most of it unfavorable adelia was the good one or if not always good less frequently tempted their childhood would have been quite circumspect without hetty s flair for drama especially through the long summers in winter in the city there had been the maneret school which taught excellently with a kind of austere passion for knowledge there had been lessons in french from a small polish nobleman with a really profound distaste for his pupils there had been the dancing class miss craddock thin and tireless with her supervising wand and her everlasting one two three one two three there had been supper parties and teas fetes and little balls mama small and pretty and gay and papa enormously jocular enormously possessive the sun around which the blackwell planets revolved mama had died before the corruption of the family circle the interruption of charles it was safe to assume that papa sighing heavily had said many times to his remaining daughter thank god your poor mother was spared this and indeed it might be true that it had been easier for henrietta to leave with her hand in charles hand just because her poor mother was gone already and would never know mama was vulnerable one had always felt the need to make a safe world around her but i would have gone anyway thought henrietta she had always been able to ignore the moral question because there had been no choice only at this moment perhaps because it was before dawn and she was lying in doaty s bed she found herself examining how others might regard her perhaps they would argue that morality consisted just of that ability to see a choice she turned on her side finding the idea oppressive if adelia had felt about someone as henrietta felt about charles would she have run away with him impossible to imagine adelia feeling so about anyone no temptation no sin no temptation no virtue a curious thought to end a curious night the birds were really awake now in a colloquy of music and light was beginning to creep across the room touching sill and door table and chair and all of doaty s flowers in their artificial blossom and leaf before anything else she would go to doaty s grave with flowers from doaty s forgotten garden everything must wait upon this mission this sentimental duty of a pilgrim whose nature avoided graveyards she closed her eyes remembering the small french cemetery enclosed by stone walls it had always seemed to rain there and even the grass was gray after the sad impatient moment waiting for comfort which could not come she slipped out of bed and went to the open window the garden below was lacy with dew and enchanting in its small wildness leaning out she could see a tangle of rosebush and honeysuckle one not quite come to bloom one just beyond it on a thrusting spray thick with thorns and dewdrops and swelling pink buds like a summer valentine a bird balanced and sang nondescriptly brown and alive with its own music a little engine of song it was so pretty and artless that she felt like a child again and would have enjoyed running out barefoot to play on the wet grass with all the growing things but doaty never permitted bare feet and she was decidedly not a child but une femme d un certain age feeling suddenly neat and subdued she dressed quite soberly and went downstairs rosa unbelievably was not yet up and about reassurance that rosa was human feeling protective toward this sleeping being henrietta found a yesterday bun and milk in a white jug a breakfast which was somewhat the equivalent of going barefoot outside the garden the tame wilderness yielded a patchwork bouquet of daisies sweet william scented stock and lady s bedstraw which she tied with long grasses and took back to show rosa who was now stirring about the kitchen and haranguing folly the poodle came gleefully to henrietta and begged for the flowers supplicating the air with prayerful forepaws henrietta held her bouquet out of reach and said it was for doaty rummaging in the dew said rosa coldly go change your shoes before you turn around she sounded so exactly like doaty that henrietta obeyed her under the clear impression that she could either comply or stay home folly danced eager for whatever lay beyond the door to a blackwell there was only one church the cemetery slumbered just behind it and the way lay through the village and close to the sea for the first time in thirty years henrietta walked down the narrow street with its shuttered shops just stirring and its inhabitants eying her with the frankest curiosity she smiled and bowed recalling the princess in a carriage feeling she had enjoyed when she was a child now some of the acknowledgments were cautious but all were interested an old man sitting against the wall of a cottage and waiting for the sun to find him gave her a more than reflective look as she passed the sap still plainly rising in his branches on an impulse she turned back and said good morning he cupped his ear and shook his head at her repetition announcing in a nettled way that he had heard her the first time he then offered his own estimate of the weather which was unenthusiastic summer s been slow to come he said it s my dryin out time he scowled at her flowers i m taking them to the cemetery said henrietta out of a vague feeling of hospitality they ll be takin me next he said pleasantly but not so soon s they plan see half of em in their graves before i choose my own coffin it s dryin myself out that does it he regarded her with rising hope you d like to hear how i go about it it s nice of you henrietta said doubtfully y re welcome he straightened himself soldierly against the wall and pulled his sprawled feet together so they stood side by side in their old boots his stick ceased to be a thing to rest his chin on and became a pointer for emphasizing the finer aspects of his text every month f r three days he said happily i take no water into my system no water whatsoever it rests the tissues henrietta murmured that she could quite see how it would and he nodded approval of her womanly good sense rests the tissues he said and pacifies the system my dad did it and he lived to a great age he looked up at her sharply don t remember do you she did suddenly through the link of memory with his father old titus who must have been in his nineties when henrietta ran away next to the blackwells titus had owned the island most and she and adelia had often stood in front of him silenced by his terrible years a scanty man with a thin beard and very deep set blue eyes like a mariner more aged than possible he had never spoken once to the awed sisters but his son had been friendly a big fellow of fifty or more a fishing boat captain and powerful like the sea it must be that son who sat before her now shriveled to half his size and half his senses she said gently of course i remember you not so well s i remember you he said y re the young blackwell woman ran away on a black night with a lawful wedded man i know all about you you do seem to said henrietta impressed can t blame a man for leavin his wife he said quite cheerfully left mine many a time only she never knew it man in a boat there s a lot of places he can put in at and a lot of reasons he can be away for a bit any harm in that probably said henrietta dryly he gave a short hard laugh and looked at her knowingly you d be the one to say he observed and she found herself liking his approval none too well but she could not defend herself and say that her actions were different since all actions had their own laws only this old man s connivance was even less to her taste than selma cotter s open censure well she had not come back to great island to be understood praised or condemned she had come to make her peace with the past and of that past this ancient of the earth was only a kind of shadow she started to move away just as a woman came out of the cottage a big boned drab haired figure with a clean apron tied over her limp print dress she smiled vaguely at henrietta and spoke to the old man you ve not had your breakfast yet gran dad y r dam porridge is no breakfast he said milk and sops he beat the air with his stick and it fell from his claws and clattered on the stones he s lowly today his grand daughter said wearily and bent to pick it up he s got this idea about drying out it ain t an idea if it ain t an idea she said how comes it you can drink beer but not water he looked piously to heaven and said beer don t affect the tissues none and the ingenious hypocrisy of this defense pleased henrietta so that she forgave him his stint of malevolence his grand daughter sighed come on do the children are eating and miss blackwell s on her way somewheres to the graveyard who ain t not me i ve got a day s work to do you ll be visiting miss doaty ma am henrietta nodded how much they knew about her the woman she must have been a tiny baby when hetty and delia had stood arm in arm watching great age grow small answered the nod with her own god rest her soul she was a sweet one come on now she put a strong hand under the old man s arm and lifted him up patiently with the gentle cruelty and necessary tyranny that the young show toward the very old he mumbled at her but let himself be led off inside the house shuffling mightily to make it clear how weak and aged he was and how he was buffeted about by those who still had their wicked strength there was a gabble of voices from indoors young hungry sounds like cats after fish and a burst of swearing from the old man henrietta looked down at her bouquet still lively with its color and scent and set her feet on their journey s way again leaving the village street and crossing the first field folly dancing ahead of her at the edge of the field the wild rolling land took over dotted with fat round bushes like sheep they were covered with tiny white blossoms their scant roots clawing at the stony ground and wild birds darted in and about and through them so they were nearly alive with the rustle and cry the air was full of sounds too but placid ones a terrestrial humming as much out of the earth as out of the blue sky she felt mindless walking and almost easy until the church spire told her she was near the cemetery and she caught herself wondering what she would say to doaty both church and graveyard were smaller than she remembered them how many things had lessened while she was gone away but the headstones had grown so thick in thirty years that to find one named dorothy tredding seemed suddenly impossible she sat down on the nearest fallen with age and gray with sea damp her fingers tracing the indecipherable carved letters padded with green moss the day s sun was gathering its strength in gold and she wished she had brought her parasol if only to shade doaty s flowers a small rock carved angel watched her from a nearby tomb the only angel in the cemetery she remembered suddenly a night of savage moonlight and scudding clouds when she and adelia having dared each other had stolen out of their great safe house and come here hand in hand hoping and fearing ghosts the momoyama family had come from miyagi prefecture in the northeast of the main japanese island of honshu where there are still traces of the mysterious ainu strain the ainus were a primitive people already living on the island before the principal ancestors of the japanese came from southern asia apparently they were of caucasian blood they had white skins and blue eyes all their men were bearded and many of their women were beautiful a pitiful few of them are left now to subsist mainly on the tourist trade and to sing their ancient tribal chants which have the same haunting sadness as the laments of the american indians most of them have been assimilated but sometimes a man in miyagi or akita prefectures is much more hairy than the average japanese and occasionally a girl will be strikingly lovely her coloring warmed and improved by a little of the tawny honey in the sun tint of the invaders from the south tommy momoyama was one of these fortunate occasions she was taller than most japanese girls and had the exquisitely willowy form of the japanese girl who is lucky enough to be tall her nose was higher of bridge her complexion so pale as to be quite susceptible to sunburn and the fish and vegetable diet of her forebears had given her teeth that were white and regular and strong her mouth soft and full was something for any man to dream about she had black eyes long and intriguingly tilted and the way she walked was melody she had been in japan just one week it was an alien land and she hated it intensely she was already considering putting in rebellious requests for duty at san diego bremerton the great lakes pensacola any place the navy had a hospital with a threat to resign her commission if the request were not granted anywhere would be better than the land of her ancestors there was nothing wrong with her job tommy had been assigned to the psychopathic ward there were no depressingly serious cases the ward doctor sometimes teamed up with the chaplain to serve as a marriage counselor sometimes the navy sent people back to the states to preserve a marriage but mental health as a rule was very high at present the doctor s main concern was in seeing to it that japanese salvage firms were not permitted to operate on the hulks of warships sunk too close inshore because the work involved setting off nerve shattering blasts at all hours tommy was interested in psychiatry because there was much an understanding nurse could do to help the patients but she suffered in her off duty hours such as now when she sat at a table in the coffee shop at the officers club having coffee and a hamburger to sustain her until dinnertime she had changed into a cocktail dress and the whole evening should have been before her but already she was beginning to get a tight feeling at the back of her neck this was one of the navy s crossroads you find them all around the world ships from the west coast rotated on six month tours of duty with the seventh fleet and yokosuka was the seventh fleet s principal port for maintenance upkeep and shore liberty sooner or later all the gray navy ships came in here if tommy sat long enough she would be sure to see all the young officers she had met in san diego and long beach and she wanted desperately to see someone she had known back there she felt rather than saw the approach of the good looking young man he came through from the fleet bar which was stag with the ice cubes tinkling in a glass he carried when he saw tommy sitting alone the tinkling sound stopped he was perhaps a trifle tipsy having been long at sea where drinking is not permitted and consequently out of practice he wore a brown tweed sports jacket obviously tailored in hong kong and he was of an age that marked him as a lieutenant probably off one of the carriers an aviator there was a fifty fifty chance perhaps that he would be unmarried and an even more slender chance that his approach would be different japan did something to a man and it wasn t just japan either because the same thing applied anywhere overseas it was as if foreign duty implied and excused license it intimated that the folks at home would never know about it and therefore why not then the young man in the brown sports jacket spoke and it was no different harro girl san he said turning on what was meant to be charm you catchee boy furiendo maybe you likee date with me i beg your pardon tommy said out of her cold rage i don t believe i know you and i can t understand your quaint brand of english it was meant to be english wasn t it the nice looking young officer fell back on his heels open mouthed and blushing at least he had the decency to blush she thought oh i m sorry you see i thought i mean i really had no idea oh yes you had ideas tommy interrupted furiously all wrong ones then she jerked her thumb toward the door in a very american gesture and dropped into navy slang take off fly boy uh sorry he muttered and took off obviously feeling like a fool the trouble was that there was no lasting satisfaction in this for tommy she felt like a fool too it hadn t been this way in college or in nurses training it wasn t this way in the hospital at san diego everybody had accepted her for what she was a very charming girl nobody had addressed her in broken english at any of those places nobody had suggested that she wasn t american there are spanish girls who look like tommy momoyama brunettes with a moorish hint of the orient in their faces there are beauties from the balkan states who are similarly endowed and back in the blessed united states they were regarded simply as pretty women now having been sent halfway around the world on a job she had not asked for tommy was being humiliated at every turn she looked around self consciously four little japanese waitresses were murdering the english language at the counter yuki kobayashi happened to be one of them everybody but tommy seemed to think it was charming when they called bifutek san for a steak sandwich or kohi futotsu for one cup of coffee two other japanese girls were sitting at the tables both quite pretty and well groomed one was with a whitehaired and doting lieutenant commander the other was with her american husband and their exceptionally appealing children seeing these did nothing for tommy s mood she told herself rebelliously and with pride i am an american and so she was and would remain but she was learning that so long as she was in this country and wore civilian dress in the club there would always be transient young men who would approach her with broken english there had been occasions when some of the more experienced had even addressed her in what might have been perfectly good japanese tommy wouldn t know after coming to america her parents had spoken only english one thing was becoming increasingly sure she had been sent to the wrong place for duty there was more to service in the navy nurse corps than the hours in the ward one had to have friends and a congenial life in after duty hours now there was raucous male singing from the fleet bar it was terribly off key and poorly done and tommy could never admit to herself that male companionship was a very natural and important thing but all at once she felt lonesome and put upon she finished her hamburger and drank her coffee and paid her check she got out of the coffee shop before the incident could be repeated eating while angry had given her a slight indigestion back in her living quarters at the hospital she took bicarbonate of soda and sulked then after a while she went to her mirror it was all true she certainly looked japanese and perhaps she could not really blame the young men and still they did not have to be so crude in their approach there was a letter to write to her mother and she tried to make its tone cheerful she promised that she would soon take a few day s leave and visit the uncle she had never seen on the island of oyajima which was not very far from yokosuka and tomorrow she would take time to shop for the kimono her mother wanted to present to the young wife of a faculty member as a hostess gown tommy of course had never heard of a kotowaza or japanese proverb which says tanin yori miuchi and is literally translated as relatives are better than strangers actually this is only another way of saying that blood is thicker than water doc doolittle s scheduled appearance at captain s mast was a very unusual thing because the discipline dispensed there is ordinarily for the young and immature and a chief is naturally expected to stay off the report but the beer hall riot in subic had been unusual too and walt perry was convinced that doc had started it through some expert tactics in rabble rousing just why anybody should wish to start a riot the executive officer didn t know in his opinion doc had not grown up the lieutenant was not entirely wrong in the belief there had never been a good reason for doc doolittle to grow up he had come into the navy too young with the image of the fun loving guns appleby before him the war found him much too early and its perils and especially its awful boredom were best forgotten in horseplay and elaborate practical jokes and even now doc had never found any stabilizing sobering influence he remained young at heart with an overdeveloped sense of humor he wisecracked about the captain s indoctrination of new men took great delight in slaughtering cockroaches with ethyl chloride and gave no thought for tomorrow he was doing thirty years and the navy would take care of him the job security enjoyed by doc doolittle and nearly all members of the armed forces is a wonderful thing actually all a man in uniform has to do is to get by he may not rise to the heights but he can get by and eventually be retired doc had been under restriction to the ship since the bustard left subic this deprived him of liberty in hong kong but he told boats mccafferty that hong kong was a book he had read before and the navy would always bring him there again some day at yokosuka he was restricted to the confines of the base because walt perry being thoughtful knew that doc might have to draw some medical supplies from the hospital or the supply base this gave doc the whole range of the naval establishment and suited him quite well there were two things he wanted to do inspect one of the many caves that had been dug into the hills on the naval base and visit an old shipmate a telephone line had been hooked up to connect the ship with the base exchange after supper doc called whitey gresham who was now a lieutenant and had a family well doc you old sonofabitch whitey exclaimed with true affection come over and have a drink we live down by the base commissary grab a taxi i ll be there but i ll walk doc said i ve got to run an errand on the way see you in about an hour he threw a smart salute at the gangway went up the dock and turned down the wide street in front of the petty officers club how he wondered does one enjoy one s spare time he considered some interesting excursion but he was on the road every day from dawn to dusk then there was exercise boating and hiking which was not only good for you but also made you more virile the thought of strenuous activity left him exhausted perhaps golf with a fashionable companion but he d lost his clubs hadn t played in years there was swimming over at the riverside hotel but his skin was so white he looked like the bottom of a frog perhaps a packing trip into the sierras let his beard grow but that was too stark i could he thought take a long walk but where the telephone rang you missed it buzz s voice said you should have gone over to the pagan room with us wow strippers but scrumptious and toodle williams and her all lesbian band hi buzz owen said i went over to the willows and dropped two notes tough buzz said listen we re having a stag dinner over at the pagan room on friday imagine a stag dinner with toodle williams he laughed and laughed owen wanted to be pleasant because buzz worked the territory next to his but he hadn t come to reno for stag dinners thanks owen said but friday is a long way off and anything can happen buzz was a tireless instigator who never let his victims rest when owen was finally rid of him there was a timid rap at the door yes owen called out yes i m mrs gertrude parker a soft voice explained and i d like to talk to you for a few minutes please ahah he thought a lush divorcee at last probably saw me in the lobby he was disappointed to find a nervous scrawny woman with a big hat standing at the door she frowned at his green pajamas with the yellow moons how do you do she said semi professionally our church is sponsoring a group of very courageous women up in alaska we call them lay sisters and they go among the eskimos making friends and bringing the light they re up there in that freezing climate and all of us have to try and help them oh you see she said looking past him into the room where the highball glasses sparkled dully in the bright light you and i can t understand the many hardships they have to undergo why is that she apparently wasn t satisfied with his reaction smug owen thought smug and sappy there was a slight nervous twitch in the region of her left eye it gave her a lewd winking effect have you ever tried to reason with an eskimo she asked winking wildly they are a very difficult group of people i don t know much about them owen admitted but i suppose they have their own religion and they probably resent outsiders coming in and telling them what to do and what not to do she smiled in a sickly tolerant fashion you know that s very interesting people don t know how much they give away about themselves by remarks like that the more canvassing i do the more i note how far most people are from their personal god forebearing owen kept his peace what would happen next that she was out for a touch was certain but when did she get to the pitch several people passed in the hall and stared as he slowly retreated trying to close the door a little and she slowly leaned toward him and raised her voice how did you get by the desk he asked curiously i m sure the hotel doesn t know you re wandering around the corridors knocking on strangers doors and talking down eskimos oh i just come once a week every day i visit a different hotel i feel it s my duty i do this work all on my own because i understand the difficulties and i want to help these lay sisters do you know these women go all through alaska and they don t have the proper facilities they travel in pairs as much as a hundred and fifty miles a day do you have any idea how far i travel every day i have the whole pacific northwest owen was aware he was getting overexcited but he couldn t help himself mrs gertrude parker drew back that s hardly a christian approach she remonstrated you re in the secular world i didn t say it was christian i don t think you ll find many active christian salesmen not that religion isn t big business those bibles and prayer books make a lot of money for publishing houses but they don t get top personnel our key salesmen are in appliances and cosmetics god i take it plays no part in this she said waspishly god doesn t have any appliance or cosmetics he said heatedly before he caught himself it sounded silly why go on more people were passing he had to find some way to close this impossible conversation and whiskey she said smiling and blinking at the highball glasses don t forget whiskey it s such a big seller you know he said getting a grip on himself i think you re going to have to excuse me i have an appointment i can imagine she said probably down at the bar but what do you want to do about the lay sisters they must be freezing up there now can t you help them leave a card or something i ll think it over i have no card she said bitterly you haven t been listening to what i ve been telling you i only hope my talking to you has helped you a little anyway because you need spiritual bucking up she looked crestfallen as if he had somehow disappointed the whole human race she stood indecisively for a moment then walked down the hall he heard her knocking on another door it took him about fifteen minutes to calm himself then he realized he was hungry he showered shaved dressed and went down to the dining room for breakfast on the way he stopped at the desk to receive his mail there was a check from his company and the usual enthusiastic bulletins on new lines they always issued his lawyer had sent him a statement on his overdue alimony and there was a letter from the collector of internal revenue asking him to stop in his office and explain last year s exemptions he ate breakfast in a sullen mood but afterwards when he walked out onto virginia street he felt braced he looked off to the crest of the sierras still white topped the glisten of the truckee river made a wide spangle he felt suddenly elated adventurous with any luck at all he could easily find a flowerpot although it was only three o clock he stopped in at the golden calf the tables were all spinning the dice rattling the bar crowded just to test himself he played roulette for quarters on his old combination five and seventeen and within an hour he had won surprisingly twenty dollars the way was opening up when the management brought around champagne the breakfast settled its whirling around in his stomach the golden calf was dimly lit with shaded neon there were more women than men in the place but he couldn t find a flowerpot they all had the hard look of gamblers who had stopped dreaming who automatically turned the cards hardly caring what showed up the mural around the wall depicted early settlers in covered wagons who appeared much more animated than the gamblers the women had a bright shining expectancy as they leaned out from the wall and gazed splendidly into the distance while the men were stern but hopeful all of course except the donner party who were bent on starving to death i wonder if they did eat each other at the end owen mused he sat down next to a heavily upholstered blonde but she was cleaned out in twenty minutes she sighed a dirty word and left owen was surprised to see mrs gertrude parker playing the one arm bandits that were cunningly arranged by the entrance she sat down and played two slots at once looking grim as if bested by mechanical devices and owen felt sorry for the lay sisters depending on her support a dried up cowboy sat down next to him in the blonde s place he was a little more authentic than usual because he smelled slightly of the stables what you need is a steady martingale the cowboy announced after watching owen play you can t build on your hit and miss five seventeen what are you playing owen asked i m just logging the cowboy explained i keep all these plays in this little black book and i watch over a twelve hour period to find out what numbers are repeating but roulette s not my game i m always trying to find a breaking table in blackjack incidentally i m pretty famous in these parts i m called the wrangler nice to know you don t you have to spend any time on your ranch well of course i do i m with the bar h pushing a horse called sparky he s my own horse and what i collect from him i use on blackjack this sparky can rack and single foot and he s the fastest thing in washoe county i figure if i can get any kind of publicity campaign going i ll land him on tv you know one of those favorite horses for some western hero i once trained a horse for hoot gibson but nothing like sparky he s a pinto and he photographs wonderfully five came up while owen was listening to the wrangler and he neglected to play a loss of ten dollars this proved conclusively that the wrangler was a jinx so he walked on down to hurrays an even more glorified gambling den than the golden calf when he looked in the back mrs gertrude parker was marking keno cards his adventurous spirit had waned he studied the pistol exhibition that hurrays featured as an added attraction he ogled a long redhead with green eyes but she was a shill with her money in front of her he had no great prejudice against shills it just seemed such a dry run there was no cash around everyone was flipping silver dollars the management discreetly withdrew the green stuff into the office and gave the customers chips or checks or premium points he read a special announcement whereby hurrays would feature a special floorshow at three a m starring adele the body brenner and fourteen glamorous schoolgirls he wondered if he might bag a tourist but they looked frightened of him he passed two brides both wearing orchids and they made him feel a little sad owen found buzz watching chuck a luck buzz had on a hawaiian shirt and was carrying some sun tan oil and dark glasses he was shorter and fatter than owen who felt good standing next to him we re all going over to lake tahoe and try our luck at cal neva buzz explained still instigating we ran into a guy at the pagan room who guarantees we can beat the wheel he started out as a stickman then became a pit boss until the club found him crossroading he was knocking down checks at faro i m allergic to tahoe owen explained something about the pollen well okay buzz said we ll see you around later owen went over to the crap table and the dice were hot but he couldn t pyramid with any consecutive success how s your luck honey a short platinum blonde in a bursting sun suit addressed him she looked well fed and prosperous but he didn t get the impression he was being propositioned the way he d been hoping i haven t had any luck since i was a baby stake me she said and let me at those dice i ll make them dance the tango we ll get it in a hurry and get it out let s have a drink and discuss a merger if you go broke she said smiling up at him i ll leave you sounds like real love owen said it sort of brings a lump to my throat my name s gisele the blonde said after she ordered a scotch named after the ballet my mother wanted to call me sylphide but it sounded too affected spencer said nothing is there any word you would like to offer in your own defense spencer shook his head alexander said answer me properly spencer spencer was quiet for a moment longer then he said there is nothing i want to say captain very well alexander walked away naval procedure he thought had its moments of grim humor philip spencer had cold bloodedly planned the murder of his captain yet it seemed in order to chide him for a lapse of proper address during the morning hours it became clear that the arrest of spencer was having no sobering effect upon the men of the somers those named in the greek paper were manufacturing reasons to steal aft under pretence of some call of duty so as to be near spencer watching an opportunity to communicate with him hostile glances were flashed at both alexander and gansevoort the two met in the captain s cabin what is the next step captain more arrests i fear in your opinion who is this e andrews on the certain list cromwell of course he is the oldest and most experienced of the lot he saw the dangers not the glories of being identified as a mutineer somehow he talked spencer into letting him use another name there was a tap at the door and oliver entered with the word that heiser wished to see the captain have him come in heiser breathless and wild eyed brought the chilling news that the handspikes heavers and holystones had been mysteriously removed from their customary places and also sir two articles which were considered souvenirs now must be regarded in another light entirely an african knife and battle ax are at this moment being sharpened by mckinley and green mckinley was overheard to say that he would like to get the knife into spencer s possession and that where did you gather all this information heiser who reported to you the disappearance of handspikes and heavers and who he was interrupted by a crash from the deck and sprang toward the ladder with gansevoort and heiser behind him a glance revealed that the main topgallant mast had been carried away the aimless milling about of what had been a well trained well organized crew struck alexander with horror he bellowed orders and watched the alert response of some of his men and watched too the way a dozen or more turned their heads questioningly toward the shackled figure as though for further instruction adrien deslonde hastened to alexander s side small violently jerked the weather royal brace with full intention to carry away the mast i saw him myself and it was done after consultation with cromwell i swear it sir and it was clear that adrien was not mistaken for both small and cromwell took no step toward aiding in the sending up of the new topgallant mast till philip spencer had given the signal to obey then with disappointment evident upon their faces they moved to the work alexander guessed that they had planned confusion and turmoil thinking it the ideal climate in which to begin battle and bloodshed their strategy was sound enough and he reasoned had been defeated only by philip spencer s unwillingness to sanction an idea he had not originated when the mast was raised alexander gave the order for small and cromwell to be placed under arrest and now three figures in irons sprawled upon the open deck and terror stalked the somers spencer s potential followers were openly sullen and morose missing muster without excuse expressing in ominous tones their displeasure at the prisoners being kept in irons communicating with the three by glance and signal one of the missing handspikes came out of its hiding place after midshipman tillotson had been insolently disobeyed by seaman wilson tillotson had reported the man to gansevoort and an hour later with back turned had been attacked by wilson brandishing the weapon wilson shackled and snarling was thrown with the other prisoners and was soon joined by green mckee and mckinley not a man on the brig loyal or villainous could be unaffected by the sight of seven men involved in the crime of mutiny in the tiny cabin alexander met with gansevoort heiser and wales to speak and to listen three days had passed since spencer s arrest and each day had brought new dangers new fears gansevoort said it requires an omniscient eye to select those if any on whom we can now rely to have the greek paper is not the great help that at first flush it seemed from actions aboard it is easy to guess that spencer s boast of twenty staunch followers was a modest estimate well heiser ventured why don t we hold an investigation with questioning and that would be worse than useless alexander broke in there is not space to hold or force to guard any increased number of prisoners besides suppose we hold a court of inquiry then what then we have informed a large number of our crew that when they reach the united states they will be punished but that in the meanwhile they may run loose and are expected to perform their jobs in good order mr heiser does this sound like a truly workable plan to you do you not think these men might choose the black flag here and now wales said of course they would they are about to do so at any moment as it is all that is needed is for one man to feel self confident enough to take the lead as soon as that one man is appointed by himself or the others or by a signal from spencer we are going to be rushed we are going to be rushed and murdered that is extravagant language mr wales we are not going to be rushed and murdered alexander said we are going to bring the somers into new york harbor safe and sound of course i agree with the captain gansevoort said thoughtfully but the conspiracy is ferocious and desperate the instinct of discipline has been lost anything is possible when anarchy has the upper hand he paused then added everything on a ship is a weapon implements of wood and iron are available for close and hasty combat no matter where a man stands and we are positive of so few and suspicious of so many we ourselves must stand sentinel alexander said under arms day and night watch and watch about those of us present the perry brothers deslonde and the other midshipmen now have the responsibility of the somers a great deal of labor we have as well for we are too uncertain of where trust may be placed and when he was alone again in the cabin alexander lowered his head into his arms and wept for he knew full well what must be done what in the end would be done with all his heart he had loved the navy and now he must act in accordance with the navy s implacable laws and when he did when he gave to his ship that protection necessary to preserve her honor he knew he would lose forever the navy to which he had dedicated his soul where had he failed how had he failed he who had tried so hard who had yearned so passionately to be a great officer it came to him as he wept there aboard the somers that it was as foolish to strive for greatness as to seek to storm the gates of heaven it was given or it was not given one did one s best and if fortune smiled there was a reward one did one s best and if fortune frowned an eighteen year old boy with murder in his heart sailed aboard one s ship and alexander sobbed like a girl for the dreams he had had and he felt no shame god knew his tears were his to shed if he so desired for it had not been with an egotist s rage for fame that he had held precious his naval career another field had given him fame enough to satisfy any egotist it was for love that he had served the navy to have someday that love returned was what he had lived for now the hope was gone yes he would bring the somers safely into new york harbor but at a price dear god at what a price and after a while he dried his tears and walked the deck as a captain should with assurance and dignity stern faced he inspected the prisoners satisfying himself that they were clean well fed and comfortable within reason the prisoners averted their eyes but not before he had glimpsed hatred and anger only cromwell the giant boatswain was mild mannered and respectful he said captain may i speak please captain i am innocent of any plot against you or the ship are you cromwell yes sir before god i swear i am innocent i know nothing of any plot if there is such a thing you are the only man aboard who can be in doubt i cannot speak for others sir but i am innocent he leaned closer to alexander squinting up at him from the deck surely captain you did not find my name on any suspicious paper or anything no cromwell i did not find your name you were careful about that now spencer seeming with effort to shake himself from lethargy spoke he said cromwell is telling you the truth he is innocent alexander shifted his gaze to spencer the calmness and detachment of his tone suggested unawareness of how implicit was his own guilt in the words he had used to defend cromwell alexander knew spencer too well to think him naive or thick skulled and in a sudden wave of painful clarity alexander recognized a kinship with spencer here was another human who understood the stupidity of quarreling with the inevitable there was good fortune and there was bad and philip spencer in handcuffs and ankle irons knew it to be a truth he expected nothing for himself but that which naturally follows those marked for misfortune the red haired captain towering above the prisoner as a symbol of decency and authority was shocked to find himself looking with sympathy upon philip spencer this tragic lad had forged his own shackles but he could not have done so could not have found the way had fortune favored him and because fortune had favored neither the prisoner nor the red haired captain they would be each other s undoing spencer if there is guilt if you do not deny your own how is it possible for cromwell to be innocent he was your constant companion the hazel eyes met alexander s i tell you he is innocent and do you think there is a reason why i should accept your word yes i have nothing to gain by defending cromwell nothing to lose either spencer that s true spencer agreed and withdrew himself from the conversation his eyes went back to contemplation of the sea i am innocent captain cromwell said again before god captain i am innocent and though it was logical that a man who could plot mass murder would not hesitate to speak an untruth still it was difficult to understand why spencer spoke only for cromwell the boatswain was as guilty as any no action of his could be interpreted in his favor and four midshipmen prior to their knowing the significance of the greek paper had seen it in cromwell s hands while spencer whispered explanations i thought midshipman rogers had told alexander that spencer was teaching him geometry it was fantastic to turn from the seven men in shackles to the wardroom where a class of apprentices awaited him this was a training ship and the training would continue but there was an element of frightful absurdity here which alexander recognized some of these apprentices were in physical strength already men and doubtless a percentage of them were spencer s followers rachel steered me along toward a school for young boys beginning to study the torah bits of trash lay in the roadway the air smelled warmish and foul a young man appeared out of a side alley and walked toward us with quick strides he wore a long double breasted coat of a heavy material dark trousers and black boots with buckles his black hat with its wide brim high crown and fur trim rode high with his head erect he approached not glancing at us and passed by with his clear eyes raised and fixed straight ahead he had a pinkish white complexion a small straight nose a short black beard and tightly curled paot i was suddenly conscious of my bare arms the girls in the market place wore long sleeved dresses and covered their legs with cloth stockings i turned and watched him stride down the center of the road his hands were swinging at his sides and he passed through the dingy market place with his back straight and pivoting on his heel he entered an old stone building rachel had seen me watching the young man she smiled when your mother was here he must have been a young boy like the ones you will see now i swallowed hard and looked down at my feet plodding along beside rachel she led me into a twisting side alley the dirty discolored buildings looked boarded up and their few windows stood high above our heads rachel said that schools and synagogues occupied most of the buildings we entered one where the front door stood ajar and climbed a flight of steep steps to the main floor an old man with a white beard and dressed in a long shabby coat baggy trousers and a black skullcap greeted us rachel talked to him he nodded clasping and unclasping his hands over his paunch and flicked glances at me i thought he would ask us to leave because rachel and i were bare armed but he looked down into his beard and preceded us down the corridor his toes pointed out toward the walls he stopped in front of a door placed a finger on his lips and still peering down into his beard pushed open the door to a classroom we stepped inside he left us little boys crowded together on long wooden benches and in the center of the room sat the teacher his black beard dripped down over the front of his coat one white hand poised a stick above his desk he turned his surly half closed eyes toward us stared for a second then shouted in yiddish one two three rapping the stick against the desk the little boys shrilled out a yiddish translation or interpretation of the five books of moses which they had previously chanted in hebrew they chanted a fixed tune in time to the report of the stick each boy opened his small mouth wide and rocked back and forth on the bench in the way his grandfather and great grandfather had studied and prayed in the ghettos of europe the boys were tiny they had large bright eyes the small upturned noses of all babies everywhere and hair cropped short except for the long ringlets of paot framing their little white faces they bent over yellowed prayerbooks and looked up only to watch the teacher since they did not glance curiously at us once i guessed that there was a penalty for distraction the guttural language from the ghetto stopped the teacher plunged the children into a new portion this time in hebrew rapping the stick incessantly one boy who rocked back and forth over his worn book had bright red hair and freckles his tightly curled paot hung down to his narrow shoulders in the center of his brilliant curls sat a small black skullcap his head barely rose above the table i stared at him for a long time he did not return my interest my eyes traveled over the bare walls and up to the one partially open window high above the little figures and back to the boys some of them ignored the texts and had apparently memorized the words long ago they singsonged the portion at the teacher who accompanied them in an off key baritone and spurred them on with the stick the tapping defined the rhythm and kept the boys awake i could not keep my eyes away from the boy with the red hair his body pitched back and forth on the bench his front teeth were missing i shuddered and backed out of the room rachel followed looked at me and clucked with her tongue we walked down the cool hall silently from behind us came the rapping of the stick and the high pitched voices of the boys who would grow to devote their lives to rigid study and prayer i said how long do they keep that up all day she said except for shabbat when they are praying all day i rubbed my hands together they had turned numb and prickly in the classroom the old man in the baggy clothes waited at the foot of the steps he glanced down into his beard and muttered something in yiddish rachel said he asks for money she passed by him i reached into the pocket of my skirt fingered ten pruta and dropped the coin then i picked it up again and handed it to the old man he thanked me i didn t look at him i grinned at rachel does this bother you i said she smiled to herself most of our sabras think it s horrible when we were fighting a few of our orthodox people were lying down in the roads so we could not pass they said that we must not fight but wait for the messiah i was amazed you had to have convictions to lie down in the road in all those clothes and appear as though you might wish to turn yourself out of your own home you had to be stupid or crazy or immortal and i wasn t i was american you had to know also that you were going to fail all of it might have been heroic but they had done it in the wrong place i resented them rachel faced me her bright eyes were twinkling she said sometimes i think they are keeping religion for us while we play around your mother hated this way of life she wished to change much for the children here i said quietly respectfully what did she do here in this section rachel clicked her tongue behind her teeth here nothing but when she saw the children you have just visited she wanted to take them away and put them out in the country in the kibbutzim she loved the children she was a strange woman your mother when she loved it was with a passion that drove her along and carried along with her those things she loved nothing was too impossible for her to do when she wanted she stayed here to work for aliah for many immigrants for many children the first thing they knew of israel and freedom was your mother sometimes it was dangerous for her rachel grinned slyly but she loved danger she took it with her wherever she went she chose it and i think she sought out danger as much as she sought out helping other people she was most strange woman ready to follow her impulse it was an impulse when she was here in me a she arim i was with her that led her to stay in israel your mother wanted to bring children to israel so that they could leave their ghettos here they did not need to be in ghettos if she could not take the children out of this section at least she could take other children out of their countries and put them on the farms she set out to make sure that no jewish child anyplace in the world had to live in a place such as this i said quietly gaining nerve ready to ask any question at all no matter how intimate ready to be rebuffed then why did she leave israel i d like to know that very much rachel clasped her hands together and slowed her pace the soles of her sandals reported sharply on the cobblestones she pursed her lips then clamped them together so tightly that i thought she was angry with me but she sighed and her face relaxed trouble came into her life she had good friends here people who liked her who loved her but she had to go out and hurt herself there was a man here in town he helped her meet people so she could go out and do the work she wanted she worked very hard there was a refugee who was able to come here because of her he came with his son at first i thought they were relatives of your mother but it was not so this refugee was a middle aged man a big handsome man with a strut to his walk as i have never before seen he had the black numerals on his arm so he had been branded in a concentration camp yet he walked like a young man often he was terribly despondent and talked to no one then he would walk off for a few days alone in the direction of europe all his family was dead except for his son your mother would always retrieve him when he wandered off and she would send him home to his son he loved the son and was always glad to be sent back to him then his son did something rachel threw up her hands i don t know what but something to an official here it was during the mandate and the son was imprisoned a few hours after the son was arrested your mother was informed she ran from a little group of us we were sitting together talking she went to the father and found he had hanged himself rachel paused it was silent in the stone alley then she continued with energy i myself did not see her until a week after she had run off to find the father no one saw her except the man reuveni yes i said i know him rachel gave me a direct bright eyed look she said reuveni wanted your mother to give up her deep interest in this refugee he said she would only hurt herself he complained to me once that i must talk to her when i did she shrugged her shoulders and said that reuveni wanted her to marry him i asked her if she would and she said she would not he had known when he first helped her to meet the right people and work with them that she did not intend to marry him anyway i did not see her until two weeks after the refugee hanged himself she came to me one day she was pale and skinny she was terribly alone and she said that after this man had been dead for a week she had gone to reuveni and accepted his proposal he shouted at her and told her he loved her and couldn t understand why she had upset herself but now he was happy she would let him straighten out her life and take care of her he would never let her harm herself again for one whole week he never let her stay alone she let him lead her around he took her to a doctor for she was run down nervous did not care where she was reuveni took her with him wherever he went he did not let her talk to people he did not let her choose her own food she was limp and beaten from her loss she did not care and i ll take you with me the two of them against the world that had been how she imagined it for when he began to talk and dream all at the same time making his plans as he went she had begun dreaming too but now the dream was over the big waking up had happened what did i imagine she thought did i see him about to swing low in a chariot or maybe poling up the south fork of the forked deer river braving the wastes dumped in it maybe i saw him on a barge with a gang of ethiopians poling it and i ll take you with me he had taken her all right wednesday nights after youth fellowship out of the church and into his big car it tooling over the road with him driving and the headlights sweeping the pike ahead and after he hit college his expansiveness the quaint little pine board tourist courts cabins really with a cute naked light bulb in the ceiling unfrosted and naked as a streetlight like the one on the corner where you used to play when you were a kid where you watched the bats swooping in after the bugs watching in between your bouts at hopscotch a room complete with moths pinging the light and the few casual cockroaches cruising the walls an insect highway patrol with feelers waving and the bed that sagged in a certain place where all the weight had been put too many times before and the walls fine and thin for overhearing talk in the next room when gratt went out for ice the sound coming through the walls like something on the other side of the curtain so you knew they heard you when they were quiet and while you lay wondering what they had heard you listened and gratt shafer would be in memphis today for the wedding rehearsal and then tomorrow he would marry just like everybody knew he would just like everybody knew all along like mattie and the mayor up there gripping the microphone and toonker burkette back in his office yanking out teeth like they all knew he would just like the balloon would go up and you could sit all day and wish it would spring a leak or blow to hell up and burn and nothing like that would happen or you could hope the parachute wouldn t open just so you could say you saw it not open not because you meant any harm to starkey poe in his suit of red underwear but mainly because you were tired of being an old maid a thing which cannot admit when it thinks it might be pregnant but must stand the dizzy feeling all alone and go on like everything is all right instead of being able to say to somebody in a normal voice i think i m pregnant you could wish that or you could wish your daddy would really do it kill gratt shafer like he said when you all the time all along could feel the nerve draining out of him like air out of a punctured tire when you are on a muddy road alone and it is raining and at night so you sit in the car and listen to the air run out and listen to the rain and see the mud in front of the headlights waiting for you for your new spectator pumps waiting for you to squat by yourself out there in your tight skirt crying and afraid and trying to get that damned son of a bitch tire off because that is being an old maid too if you happen to drive a car it is changing the tire yourself in the night and in the mud and the rain hating to get out in it but afraid to stay and afraid to try to walk out for help and every sound that might be the rain also might be the man who thinks after he has raped you he has to beat your brains out with a tire tool so you won t tell a combination like ham and eggs rape her and kill her and that is being an old maid too it is not having his baby nestled warm and fat against your breast and it is not having somebody that really gives a damn whether some tramp cracks your skull and most of all it is not having the only man you could love whether he drives a bread truck or delivers the mail or checks the berry crates down at the sheds or owns seventeen oil wells and six diamond mines for if you are anybody what he is or does makes no difference if he is the one he can even be a mild voiced little town guy with big town ideas and level gray eyes and a heart even houdini couldn t figure out how it is unlocked and he can be on the way to memphis your gratt shafer can and you discover you can stay alive and hate him and love him and want him even if it means you want him really want him dead because if you can t then nobody else can either nobody else can have him for you don t share him not even with god if it is love you don t and i ll take you with me even if that s all the promise he ever gave or ever will give the giving of it once was enough and you believed it then and you will always believe it even when it is finally the only thing in the world you have left to believe and the whole world is telling you that one was a lie even when he is on the way to memphis you will still have the promise resting inside you like a gift and it is he inside of you and in a way the promise works out true for whether he wants you or not you go with him in your heart you feel him every mile further away you feel where he is and what he sees and at night you feel when he is asleep or with the other woman the one that never could love him the way you do the one who got him because she didn t particularly give a damn whether she got him or didn t and you know you will always wonder all of your life whether it was because you wanted him so bad that you didn t get him and you can feel nearly sorry enough to cry when you think of that other guy the chump who begged you to marry him the one with the plastered hair and the car he couldn t afford and the too shiny shoes you think did he feel that way about me it comes to you that probably he did feel that way to let you use him like you did when you couldn t have gratt shafer that he must have since he was there like the radio for you to turn on or snap off when you got tired of him that other guy it dawns on you that instead of a lump to fill the seat across the bridge table from you he was a man and that because gratt shafer was making you miserable you were passing it down to him to gratt shafer s substitute that other guy and you wonder if that is why the little man lost his job and his car and stayed drunk about a year before he straightened out and moved to st louis where he got to be a big unhappy success you wonder if he looks at his wife now and thinks of you you wonder about the christmas card with no name on it and it comes to you that maybe it would have been better to have made somebody else happy if you couldn t be happy yourself to give somebody else the one they wanted to give them you damn the world she thought she looked out at the corn field the great green deep acres of it rolled out like the sea in the field beyond the whitewashed fence bordering the grounds the mayor envisioned factories there homes and factories and schools and a big wide federal highway instead of peaceful corn to rest your eyes on while you tried to rest your heart while you tried not to look at the balloon and the bandstand and the uniforms and the flash of the instruments the bands were impatient but they were the only ones the others the ones in the stands were spellbound for hearing the mayor was for them like listening to a symphony was for sophisticated folks in new york city it was like being in the concert hall in the afternoon and hearing the piano virtuoso rehearsing he was good and they knew that what he was doing for them he would do all over the united states some day so they stayed quiet and hung not on what he said but on how he said it not listening exactly but rather feeling if a man was good if he was going to be governor you felt it and you wanted him to go on forever you were sorry when he finished talking because while he was up there you were someone else and the world was something else too it was a place full of courage and hope and you were part of it you laughed and then your chest swelled and you felt you could cry for a little bit and then a feeling hit you like a chill in your stomach and the goose bumps rippled along your arm he hit the theme about dying to defend your country and you were ready to do it right then without a second thought while he talked you wouldn t trade being a west tennessee farmer for being anything else in the whole damned world no matter if it hadn t in six weeks rained enough to wet a rat s ass she glanced at the man nodding beside her a man with weather cracks furrowed into his lean cheeks with powdery pale eyes reflecting all the droughts he had seen reflecting the sky and the drought which must follow now in august yes with eyes predicting the drought and here it was only june only festival time again and thoughts of gratt shafer would not leave her i should have stayed at the store she thought back at the factory to you with the other old maids back there she was the youngest clerk and she was thirty four which made her young enough to resent the usual ideal working conditions like the unventilated toilet with the door you had to hold shut while you sat down there was no lock because herman didn t allow a lock a lock on the toilet would encourage malingering and primping the toilet hadn t had a sincere scrubbing in years and there were things written on the walls of the little boxed in place because you couldn t keep the public out entirely she could not count the times herman had rapped on the door just a couple of bangs that shook the whole damned closet and might someday break away the pipe connections from the wall the two little bangs meant that he was getting impatient to have a crowd of customers waited on and that if he had to he would jerk open the door and drag out by the opposite door handle which she would be clutching whichever the hell clerk it was who thought she could waste so much store time on the pot and the hours were six thirty in the morning until eleven at night on saturdays and during sales and there were no chairs and you couldn t smoke and the cooling was overhead fans and there was no porter or janitor among us we three handled quite a few small commissions from spot drawings for advertising agencies uptown to magazine work and quick lettering jobs each of us had his own specialty besides george did wonderful complicated pen and ink drawings like something out of a medieval miniature hundreds of delicate details crammed into an eight by ten sheet and looking as if they had been done under a jeweler s glass he also drew precise crisp spots which he sold to various literary and artistic journals the new yorker for instance or esquire i did book jackets and covers for paperback reprints naked girls huddling in corners of dingy furnished rooms while at the doorway daring the cops to take him is the guy in shirt sleeves clutching a revolver the book could be the brothers karamazov but it would still have the same jacket illustration i remember once i did a jacket for magpie press the book was a fine historical novel about edward and i did a week of research to get the details just right the fifteenth century armor furnishings clothes i even ferreted out the materials from which shields were made linden wood covered with leather so i d get the light reflections accurate mckenzie the art editor took one look at my finished sketch and said nothing doing rufus in the first place it s static in the second place it doesn t look authentic and in the third place it would cost a fortune to reproduce in the first place you ve got six colors there including gold i said mr mckenzie it is as authentic as careful research can make it he said that may be but it isn t authentic the way readers think they know from their researches into television and the movies that knights in the middle ages had beautiful flowing haircuts like little lord fauntleroy and only the villains had beards and girls couldn t have dressed like that it isn t transparent enough in the end i did the same old picture the naked girl and the guy in the doorway only i put a lord byron shirt on the guy gave him a sword instead of a pistol and painted in furniture from the stills of a costume movie mckenzie was as happy as a clam that s authenticity he said as for donald he actually sold paintings we all painted in our spare time and we had all started as easel painters with scholarships but he was the only one of us who made any regular money at it not much he sold perhaps three or four a year and usually all to joyce monmouth or her friends he had style a real inner vision of his very own it was strange stuff it reminded me of the pictures of a child but a child who has never played with other kids and has lived all its life with adults there was the freshness of color the freedom of perception the lack of self consciousness but with a twist that made the forms leap from the page and smack you in the eye we used to kid him by saying he only painted that way because he was so nearsighted it may have been true for all i know because his glasses were like the bottoms of milk bottles but it didn t prevent the paintings from being exciting he also had at times an uncanny absent minded air like a sleepwalker he would look right through you while you were talking to him and if you said for christ s sake donald you ve got prussian blue all over your shirt he would smile and nod and an hour later the paint would be all over his pants as well mrs monmouth thought of him as her discovery and she paid two to three hundred dollars for a painting it was all gravy and donald didn t need much to live on none of us did we shared the expenses of the studio and we all lived within walking distance of it in cheap lodgings of one kind or another attending the life class was my idea or rather askington s idea but i was ripe for it and the other two wouldn t have gone if i hadn t talked them into it i wanted to paint again i hadn t done a serious picture in almost a year it wasn t just the pressure of work although that was the excuse i often used even to myself it was the kind of work i was doing the quality of the ambition it awoke in me that kept me from painting i kept saying if i could just build up a reputation for myself make some real money get to be well known as an illustrator like peter askington for instance then i could take some time off and paint askington was a kind of goal i set myself i had admired him long before i talked to him it looked to me as though he had everything an artist could want joy in his work standing in the profession a large and steady income the night we first met at one of mrs monmouth s giant parties he was wearing a brown cashmere jacket with silver buttons and a soft pink viyella shirt instead of a necktie he wore a leather bolo drawn through a golden ring in which was set a lump of pale pure jade this set his tone richness of texture and color and another kind of richness as well for his clothing and decorations would have paid the brush off s rent for a year he was fifteen years older than i forty four but full of spring and sparkle he didn t look like what i thought of as an old man and his lively and erudite speech made him seem even younger he was one of the most prominent magazine illustrators in america you saw one of his paintings on the cover of one or another of the slick national magazines every month life had included him in its modern american artists series and had photographed him at his studio in the east sixties the corner of it you could see in the photograph looked as though it ought to have velasquez in it painting the royalty of spain i had a long talk with him we went into mrs monmouth s library which had low bookshelves all along the walls and above them a modigliani portrait a jackson pollock twelve feet long and a gorgeous miro with a yellow background that looked like an inscription from a martian tomb the fireplace had tiles made for mrs monmouth by picasso himself like certain expensive restaurants just sitting there gave you the illusion of being wealthy yourself in the course of our talk askington mentioned that he spent part of each week studying by yourself i asked no i take classes with different people he said i don t think i ve reached the point yet where i can say i know everything i ought to know about the craft besides it s important to the way a painter thinks that he should move in a certain atmosphere an atmosphere in which he may absorb the ideas of other masters as durer went to italy to meet bellini and mantegna he made a circle with his thumb and fingers painting isn t this big you know it doesn t embrace only the artist alone before his easel it is as large as all of art interdependent varied multitudinous he threw his arms wide his face shining the artist is like a fragment of a mosaic no he is more than that a virtuoso performer in some vast philharmonic one of these days i m going to organize a gigantic exhibition that will span everything that s being painted these days from extreme abstract expressionism to extreme photorealism and then you ll be able to see at a glance how much artists have in common with each other the eye is all inward or outward ah what a title for the exhibition the eye is all what do you study i asked i was fascinated just listening to him made me feel intelligent i m studying anatomy with burns he replied maybe you know him he teaches at the manhattan school of art i nodded i had studied with burns ten years before during the scholarship year the manhattan gave me along with the five hundred dollar prize for my paintings of bums on hudson street burns and i had not loved each other i m also studying enameling with hajime iijima he went on and twice a week i go to a life class taught by pendleton osric pendleton i said my god is he still alive he must be a million years old i went to a retrospective of his work when i was eighteen and i thought he was a contemporary of cezanne s not quite askington laughed he s about sixty now still painting still a kind of modern impressionist beautiful canvases of mountains and farms he even makes the city look like one of thoreau s hangouts i ve always admired him and when i heard he was taking a few pupils i went to him and joined his class yes it sounds great i said but suppose you don t think of yourself as an impressionist painter you re missing the point he said he has the magical eye and he is a great man contact with him is stimulating and that s the trouble with so many artists today they lack stimulation they sit alone in their rooms and try to paint and only succeed in isolating themselves still farther from life that s one of the reasons art is becoming a useless occupation in the middle ages in the renaissance right up to the early nineteenth century the painter was a giant in the world he was an artisan a man who studied his trade and developed his craftsmanship the way a goldsmith or a wood carver did he filled a real need showing society what it looked like turning it inside out portraying its wars and its leaders its ugliness and its beauties reflecting its profound religious impulses he was a propagandist they weren t afraid of the word then satirist nature lover philosopher scientist what you will a member of every party and of no party but look at us today we hold safe little jobs illustrating tooth paste ads or the salacious incidents in trivial novels and most of our easel painting is nothing but picking the fluff out of the navel so it can be contemplated in greater purity a bunch of amateur dervishes what we need is to get back to the group to learning and apprenticeship to the cafe and the school he could certainly talk the upshot of the evening was that i got the address of pendleton s studio or rather of the studio in which he gave his classes for he didn t work there himself and joined the life class which met every tuesday and thursday from ten to twelve in the morning it was an awkward hour but i didn t have to punch any time clock and it only meant that sometimes i had to stay a couple of hours later at the drawing board to finish up a job after a short time both george and donald joined the class with me so they wouldn t feel lonely and we used to hang a sign on the door of the brush off reading out to work it was mostly for the benefit of the mailman because hardly anybody else ever visited us in a way askington was right stimulating was the word for it i don t know that it was always as rewarding as i had expected it to be partly it was because pendleton himself wasn t what i anticipated i had come prepared to worship at the feet of this classic and he turned out to be a rather bitter old man who smelled of dead cigars no that isn t quite fair actually there was a lot of force in him which is why i kept on in that class instead of quitting after a week such a little thing to start with the car registration ida where is the car license she asked i can t find it in the glove compartment via must have it i answered readily enough recalling her last visit via she was frowning why should via have it had she forgotten she had signed the car away that whatever they mutually owned had been divided among the children i was silent i didn t want to stir things up i drive my own car by courtesy of via i m sure she d turn it over to you if you d rather you know that she looked as if she were accusing me of some fraud she must have taken the registration when she went to walter s i ll call her no thank you i want nothing of via s why should this suddenly assail her walter was giving me checks for my pay the household bills had she been in such a turmoil that this had slipped her mind what a fool i ve been she said quietly i knew all this but i paid no attention i don t even own the house i m standing in i was so sure it was all temporary that we would all embrace and then the lawyer would tear up all those things it narrows down down down and finally there is no way out if i am not to be mrs salter i am nothing i suppose i should have paid attention to that half murmured remark but it seemed one of those extreme statements women under stress indulge in i love you i hate you i feel like killing you and myself and in the same sequence i love you i think you re the most wonderful the most noble and so on and on meanwhile eating a good breakfast and dinner and enjoying living so i went about my business i made a lemon sponge a light dessert roasted a chicken parboiled some frozen vegetables so there would be something nice in the icebox for the weekend don t bother ida she said i have these appointments in town for saturday and i ll probably spend sunday with dolly or the thaxters at last i thought she s recovering her spirits with this movie to be in london and new faces about her there she would soon be a more tranquil a wiser person all the better for her stay out here i felt more cheerful as if i had had a part in bringing her through to a greater tolerance of herself and i went back to my own cottage to live my own little patch of life it was foggy that evening but the path to my house was so well grooved that i could feel my way accustomed as i was to the dense mists that rise from the sun warmed palisades of the river and sometimes last for days in the morning the fog was still thick so that to go to the village i crept along with my headlights full on i did notice a twinkle of light from the big house through the woods but as i had left a light on in my own house because of the fog i assumed mrs salter had done the same before she left for town i did my shopping had my dentist appointment and from there i went to the women s lunch at our parish church where we discussed plans for the annual christmas bazaar so that dusk was beginning to gather when i drove home in the late afternoon but the next day sunday why when i drove down to church didn t it speak to me seeing the lights still on and the day crisp and clear prisoners brought to the dock accused of murder or accident say they cannot remember and reading the accounts of their testimony you cannot believe that the mind can remove absent itself unsee when i came back from church at noon mrs thaxter was turning into the salter driveway even at a car s length i could sense that something was wrong and so i followed her up to the turnaround in front of the house dolly engisch was waiting there on the steps and she came running toward us she s nowhere nowhere she screamed and both women ran up to the house and i followed the search began in all the rooms running upstairs down opening closets talking exclaiming in rushes and gasps everything was as i had left it the night before last her portfolio and bag for town her lingerie and dress and shoes laid out only her mink coat was missing and she then the telephoning began i who until that day before had been mrs salter s friend her equal was the servant now it was dolly and mrs thaxter who were calling via everybody and when they spoke they spoke to each other and not to me and after i brought them sandwiches and coffee i had to go back to my place in the kitchen and wait sitting in the kitchen i recalled every word mrs salter said that could have been a sign to me if i am not to be mrs salter then i am nothing why didn t that alarm me then and when she returned from taking her guests back to new york she had said all they talked about was harvie harvie this harvie that when they know the truth will they drop away from me will i become a nothing and then i remembered a few years before after their return from a short trip to rome i had heard her boast over and over again on the boat people liked me for myself i had made a habit of calling her at night from my cottage just to check the last night i had called but the line was always busy and it reassured me i assumed it was one of those hour long conversations with dolly or constance she comfortable in bed but it seemed not from what they were saying then was it a final desperate plea from her to whom hanging on and on past any man s patience some final stab of conclusion she was found the day after at the bottom of the cliff i tried to believe that what must have happened was that restless disturbed by this telephone call or whatever she walked out in the night as she had a habit of doing sometimes she took the path that winds up around my cottage to the walk at the edge of the cliff it s so romantic up there she used to say with the broad river gleaming in its moontrack like an enormous dark mirror and all the sounds of the night so poetic with all that warm rain and the fog it might have been as simple as a loosened rock a misstep but i didn t really think it was as simple as that nor did anyone else when a fisherman brought her up in his arms still small as if she were a child asleep i began to shudder with a terrible excitement almost triumphant that i still cannot account for was it a hysterical release from the long strain of vigilance of those weeks that at last the vigilance the will gives way or what was it that before via sonny walter and all i began almost to dance with shuddering and cry out i knew she d do it i knew everyone stared at me and drew back their eyes turned cold and accusing even via s and they have never changed at the same time that i thought i understood her at long last and pitied her underneath this knowing had there burned unquenched by my pity a fire of hate an enduring envy that burst out in that ghastly outcry was that what had given way in me even now i am appalled at how little anyone knows of what they really are it is absurd of course to say that that one exclamation estranged me from the family i considered my very own but there it hangs a cooling void that broke our close connection with each other at the time i was filled with self pity at this separation but in the years since i have come to understand that the sight of me was painful to them after that outcry in my person they would always remember that last long time of me alone with her so if they told themselves that i could have prevented it i can understand that by now and love them still because everyone must justify have a scapegoat for what is not to be borne it is not their avoidance that rankles it is when i meet someone who was a close friend of the family and therefore of mine and they nod to me so coolly and walk away that it hurts i could tell them but no one ever asked why i had cried out so triumphantly at the sight of her body no i forget mrs mathias who had been away visiting a married daughter when it happened she haunted me she persisted in explaining how and why she had advised mrs salter to return to the country we all feel guilty i turned away from her coldly it was nobody s fault she overplayed her hand what do you mean she frowned why put such a high value on being top dog i added it was coarse almost insulting this harsh appraisal and she has never come to see me since but suppose she had not taken mrs mathias advice and lived on like thousands of women in towns dispossessed of love hanging on to makeshifts and altogether and finally arid if she chose and in that final decision discarded what above all all of us value life itself must she not have risen to her fullest height and transcending her murky self felt at last the passion of a great moral decision if they say i could have stopped her it is because they are ignorant of her last weeks of self examination her search into herself and its conclusions yes i had cried out that i knew she d do it but without my fully realizing it at the time it was a cry of triumph for her praise at her deliverance from pettiness and greed and guilt she was finally at rest in truth of her own proud free choice at rest with my darling ellen the first mrs salter mr salter came home the funeral service was in the house the methodist minister how clean and glistening his eyeglasses and his neat body standing beside that coffin with that doll inside a stranger speaking to strangers the old sacred words and the rain drumming incessantly in accompaniment seven days of relentless rain that turned the ground to mud so the burial had to be postponed i waited then via called to say they had decided to cremate her as they had ellen the thought leaped to my mind and did i want to meet her at the funeral home the next morning the coffin stood on trestles in a corner of the long low dimly lit funeral parlor on its dark shining surface the sheaf of white roses i had ordered i knelt just for decency i thought at the time but found myself whispering our father which art in heaven and it was only after that that something unlocked in me and i felt a grief via was in the parking lot when i went outside together we waited in her car until the hearse moved out and we followed it down into the heavy traffic of new jersey by the time we arrived and entered the building sacred music was already swelling out into the chapel like auditorium with its discreet symbols of religious faiths again i felt impelled to kneel and reached back and pulled via down something would come into her heart if nothing else the sounds of bach would give her some healing i had a rather small place of my own a nice bachelor apartment in a place called the lancaster arms uhhu she said hardly listening as she studied her left eyelid and then i had another place farther downtown i used as a studio uhhu i m not a man who has many close intimate friends carla he said wanting her to know all about him oh i d drink with newspaper people i think i was what you might call a convivial man and yet it was when i was alone in my studio doing my work that i really felt alive but i think a man needs at least one intimate friend to communicate with pausing he waited for her to turn to ask a question she showed no interest at all in the life he had led back home and it hurt him a little well what about you carla me she asked turning slowly what about me did you make friends easily umm uhhu somehow i imagine that as you grew up you were alone a lot how about it i guess so she said taking a kleenex from her purse when she had wiped some of the lipstick from her mouth she stared solemnly at her image in the mirror are your people still alive he asked trying to touch a part of her life alberto hadn t discussed so he could have something of her for himself you talk so well carla he went on you seem to have read so much you have a natural gift for words he added trying to flatter her vanity you must have been good at history at school where did you go to school what is this she asked turning suddenly don t you know all about me by this time my name s carla caneli this is my town i sleep with you you know something more about me every day don t you would you be happier if i made up some stories about my life told you some lies why are you trying to worry me i m not trying to worry you well all right then the cleansing tissues she had been using had been falling on the floor and he got up and picked up one then another hoping she would notice what he was doing at home he had been a clean orderly man and now he had to hide his annoyance was she just naturally sloppy about everything but her physical appearance he wondered would he have to clean up after her every day clean the kitchen the bathroom and get down on his knees and scrub the kitchen floor then hang up her dresses pick up her stockings make the bed while she lay around he straightened up ready to vent his exasperation then grew afraid if he dwelt on the indignities he suffered he would lose all respect for her and without the respect he might lose his view of her too what s the matter she asked suddenly nothing nothing at all he said quietly let s go out are those the only shoes you have sam what s the matter with them the heavy thick soles look at them they re an expensive english shoe for walking around a lot i like them sam no one around here wears such heavy soles can t you get another pair maybe i could he said surprised that she could turn from herself and notice anything about him i ll get an elegant pair of thin soled italian shoes tomorrow carla and i don t know why you want to go on wearing that outfit she said making a face what s the matter with it he had put on the gray jacket and the dark gray slacks and the fawn colored shirt he had worn that first night in rome when he had encountered her on the street oh sam you look like a tweedy englishman can t you wear something else and look a little more as though you belonged i don t mind at all he said delighted with her attention changing his clothes he put on his dark blue flannel suit and laid away the gray jacket with the feeling that he might be putting it aside for good but it was a hopeful sign he told himself she no longer wanted anything about him to remind her of the circumstances of their meeting that first night in parioli that day they loafed around just getting the feel of the city they looked at the ruins of the old roman wall on the lower via veneto then they went to the farnese gardens she had some amusing scandal about the farneses in the old days then they took a taxi to trastevere there s a church you should see she said and when they stood by the fountain in the piazza looking at santa maria he had to keep a straight face not letting on he had been there with alberto he let her tell him all about the church then they had dinner all evening she was eloquent and pleased with herself when they got home at midnight she was tired out and in the morning when he woke up at ten the church bells were ringing he had never heard so many bells and as he lay there listening he thought of her scolding him for his remarks when he had looked up at the obelisk and the church at the top of the spanish steps it was a good thing that she clung to her religion he thought she might like to take him to st peter s carla wake up he said shaking her it s ten o clock aren t you going out to mass you could take me to st peter s uhhu she muttered come on you ll be late i think i ll sleep in this morning she said drowsily and as she snuggled against him he wondered if she ever went to church why did he want her to go to church he wondered probably because it was a place where she might get a feeling of certainty and security it would be good for her it was too bad he had no feeling himself for church not his poor mother s fault she would have been better off if she had stuck to her bible as for himself he just didn t have the temperament for it from the time he had been at college he had achieved a certain tranquility and composure by accepting the fact that there were certain things he could never know then he thought of those old testament figures on the ceiling of the sistine chapel just figures out of a tribal folklore could he honestly believe it would be good for carla to have those old prophets gripping her imagination now being a woman though she would take only what she needed from church it was too bad he wasn t a catholic himself or a protestant or one of those amusing dogmatic atheists or a strict orthodox communist what was the matter with him that they all wearied him it was the times he was sure all the ideologies changing from day to day right under his eyes so how could a man look to any one of them for an enlargement of his freedom it was all too wearying look somewhere else but where just the same he thought pondering over it it would be a good thing for a girl like carla if she got up and went to church a half hour later he got her up to go out for breakfast so the ferraros hearing them hurrying down the stairs would think they were going to a late mass it seemed to him that if the ferraros felt sure of them could place them it would help him to feel more sure of himself with carla since we re having coffee with them this afternoon he said i think i ll ask the daughter if we can pay her to come in every day to clean for us and he waited for her to say oh no i can do it sam there s so little to do why not she said i m not good at that kind of thing this afternoon let s take an air with them let s be fine superior people of great dignity he said as if he were joking if you find it necessary sam go ahead she said turning on the stair i am what i am i can t help it her words remained with him worrying him for hours he didn t know how she would behave with other people when they walked into the ferraro apartment the old lady bowing and smiling said softly ciao and put out her hand her little brown face wrinkled up her brown eyes gleamed and with her little gestures she said all the courteous things agnese smiling too said ello and then more slowly i am happy and they sat down and began their little coffee party the ferraros offered them biscuits with the coffee acting only as interpreter carla her hands folded on her lap was utterly impersonal she would turn to them then turn to him then turn again watching her he felt like a spectator at a tennis game with the ball being bounced back and forth signora ferraro bobbing her head encouragingly asked sam about canada having a special interest carla translated the old woman had a nephew from north italy a poor boy from a lumber mill who had got tired of the seasonal unemployment and who had migrated to canada to work on the railway for a year the boy had lived in the bush in a boxcar did many of sam s countrymen live in boxcars in the bush had sam ever lived in a boxcar she wanted to know regretfully sam explained that he had no experience with boxcars just the same the old woman said she would write to her nephew in his boxcar and tell him she had met a nice man from his adopted country and sam thanked her and hoped he might meet her nephew back home and asked her if she had any further news of the pope a very great pope this one the old woman explained her black eyes sparkling an intellectual but very mystical too it was said that he had had a vision just as thousands that day in portugal had seen the sun dancing in the sky he had seen the same thing later in his own garden and she turned to agnese for confirmation agnese had been sitting quietly listening with the serenity of the unaware now a little flush came on her pale homely face and enchantment in her eyes the holy father would die soon she said to carla so she could translate for sam although he had a brilliant doctor a man who did not need the assistance of those doctors offered by the great rulers of the world yes the pope could die and quickly be made a saint no he was indeed a saint now nodding approvingly and swelling with importance the old lady whispered confidentially there was a certain discontent among the cardinals the pope in the splendor of his great intellect had neglected them a little there would be changes made and signor raymond should understand that when the pope died it was like the end of a regime in rome jobs would be lost and new faces would become prominent did signor raymond understand indeed he did sam said solemnly trying to get carla s eye surely she could see that these women were her italians too he thought devout orthodox and plain like a family she might meet in brooklyn or malta or ireland but carla s eyes were on agnese whose glowing face and softening eyes gave her a look of warmth and happiness and carla watching in wonder turned to sam it means so much to her it s like a flame i guess she said in a dreamy tone but one night dookiyoon moved in the direction of the women s lodge where shades of night had gone to purify herself with the blue flesh of night touching him he stood under a gentle hill caressing the flageolet with his lips making it whisper he saw her emerge suddenly coming in her unhesitant fashion her back stiff her head erect facing with contempt the night and whatever she would encounter as if in her extreme disdain and indifference she would pass by all the outraged looks of those whom she might approach in her dark scornful fashion she proceeded to her destination afraid of nothing not even the evil spirits which kept her company in her time of bleeding seeing her come he caught his breath feeling his heart bounce in him and turned away afraid now even he wanting her afraid of her and not knowing how to press his suit feared the evil presences in her metabolism more his breath caught and trembling he closed his eyes and stumbled off going he saw as often before some queer hideous yellow face over his head shining and weird like the old images which had invested him at other times like those that appear sometimes near the eyeballs when they are perhaps pressed by the thumbs he cried out to her his back turned then he fled not waiting to see if she minded him or took notice of his cry but she heard him go yet she did not hesitate and only turned slightly her neck tall as she looked in his direction and continued on her way toward the end of the camp elsewhere others heard and stopped and waited the women peering from their lodges then gathering in small curious clusters early spring came from her bed from beside her half drunk husband walitzee and stood at the entrance way to her lodge hearing the mild commotion the sound of hushed voices standing there she saw shades of night come through the trees and stop beside the lodge silent almost imperious her body taut simply standing without speaking or moving while the wife of walitzee waited perhaps denying the dread that moved in her when at last she could suffer the insult no longer nor face the girl s scorn she said in a voice overloud i shall call your father go back where you can bring no harm or i will go and get the old man from his bed so he can see your shame but the girl said only tell him i am here that i have come and it was not pile of clouds she meant but now with real anger at last something proud and indignant early spring stood like a she wolf before her den and cried i will not shriek at you i will tell you to go not begging telling you and unsheathing the knife she used for curing hides she stepped away from the lodge holding the knife at her side you bring only wickedness she said and it was not to a child any longer but to another woman who had come to skirt her lodge with the cunning hunger of a wild animal speaking in a low voice of loathing she went up to the girl who stood with the same upright scornful bearing and did not even look at the knife go take helsq iyokom your evil spirit to the young boys the woman said they do not have to face battle i will not let your evil in i will simply kill you first now go the other women had come close now their voices murmuring together until they stood buzzing in an angry knot their threats mingling rising nagging at each other each trying to make her indignation and anger felt they picked up sticks and hurled them at the girl the sticks fell like a shower around her and she felt them sting her flesh and send tiny points of pain along her thighs they were all shouting at her as if she were the embodiment of the evil she brought but she did not move taking the words and the sticks in that old defiance of her extreme youth until suddenly pile of clouds came howling among them swinging a great bullhide whip go back to your lodges he shouted a pack of dogs makes less noise he made the long whip sing and snap around their heads so that they ran screaming some tripping over themselves in their flight and early spring seized the whip and said if you must flog someone let it be her your daughter drive the demons out of her and teach her to stay away from my husband but the old man turned on her jerking the whip from her hand get into your hovel he spat go back to that double married man of yours who so parades his fine body among the young women keep him back if you must tell me what to do i will be the one to confront my daughter not the wife of him who leads her to sin she retreated before the naked shame in the old man and the fury beyond it and sank into the darkness of her lodge where walitzee stirred mumbling sitting up in a half stupor to say what worrisome thing happens i thought i dreamed of wolves fighting but she went to him and pressed herself against his nakedness smelling the stale odor of the whisky he had stolen from tuhulhulzote she said there is nothing that concerns you here lie back and go to sleep but do not dream do not let the wicked spirits enter your brain he sank back sighing and was soon asleep again outside the old man beyond all the curses of the spirits his daughter bore went to her and twisted the gnarled talons of his fingers in her hair and turned her and pushed her rudely ahead of him into the trees where the moon sent out a thousand arms and shoving her against a spruce her back to him he retreated with the whip and made it whine and crack in the damp air shortening its arc until it narrowed to her flesh and the sound of it snarled and cracked settling its own cruel demons on her shoulders while she stood as unchanged as dark and motionless as ever her eyes open and staring at the pale delineaments of the bark so close to her face she said to him her father how was i begotten in pain or joy is it for me to be forbidden the flesh you made grow on me they all know your foolish name she stared at the pale tracings on the tree hearing her breath refracted from it her face close and touching at time the rough edges of the bark she felt the lash bite and heard her father say in crazed monosyllables words which had no meaning like unnnt sssshoo the sounds of an animal in rage and despair suddenly the lash stopped fighting the air and she heard pile of clouds say in his high quavering voice did you follow me to see my shame move from the line or i will settle the whip on you move do you hear the anger of the whip s whine turning the girl saw dookiyoon standing between his narrow shoulders unbent his arms hanging long and resigned he said let me take her blows for there are demons in me too then without knowing why she found herself running from them fleeing wildly through the trees dodging her own shadows until she came to a little hollow in the rocky ground with a big stone in the center behind which she knelt and hid listening to the madness of her heart and wanting for once to cry for a while the young men waited outside the lodge of tuhulhulzote glorying in his harsh language as he talked with himself he shouted like a hoarse old mastiff his hair stiff and bristling he ranted and prophesied the doom of his enemies walking in circles in and out of his living place drinking stolen whisky in great gasping draughts until finally incoherent and sick he fell into his own oblivion he amused the young men who had been silent long enough but they could taste the appeasement of violence and retribution through his antics now they moved rubbing their flesh alive again disdaining the gloom they saw in the faces around them they came out and held their games and races it was they who held the future in their hands they went into the sun together and paraded grandly in their war clothes painting their faces with the sacred attis dug far off in the cave of skeletons they danced the paxam wildly at night the war dance and dipped their arrowheads in the venom of rattlesnakes and rode their horses in swift maneuvers firing their few guns in unison at some indeterminate signal walitzee was among them and sarpsis and they wore red blankets which flew like broad wings in the air of their passing and a very young one swan necklace tried to emulate them and followed timidly yellow wolf was there nephew of the young chief by an older brother long dead in whom also the disordered chemistries of youth worked he would spring bolt upright suddenly after sitting quietly with inaction because something had boiled over in his fermenting juices all the young men alokut among them challenged them in matched racing they raced and maneuvered for war swinging their horses in single file and then abreast like cavalry at times they would ride frenziedly through the camp letting the women see their courage how handsome they were in their regalia then again they would stand in circles making other preparations they combed their hair and streaked it at the part and greased the bangs so that the hair above their foreheads stood rigid like the tails of sage hens making love walitzee whitened his leggings with clay knowing the girl watched from her place in the trees he saw himself in a superior reflection and he was as a speeding arrow from the taut bow hurtling with a mad grace his maleness shining and scented with meadow rue he was always aware of the women s eyes which followed him admiring him and the suspicious envenomed eyes of pile of clouds and those of early spring haunted and now full of hurt and envy he felt so much like laughing even like shouting and crying out from the hilltops from which he could descend as an eagle in a mad caper from the cliffs he and sarpsis planned a great parade with the young men they would give one final testimony of their challenge to let the people see their arrogance they would ride with streaming amulets their colors ripening in the sun shouting the last bellicosity of a nation in the throes of death and so the sun came up again and for a moment its color was the young men s blood shifting then into the full heat and outcry which ran with their hearts they mounted their horses and rode off into the hills the young chief stared at the wall of his lodge listening the sound rose on the other side of the hills vanished and rose again and he could imagine the mad disheveled hoofs of the appaloosas horses the white men once had called the dogs of hell he saw them in fleet images as they came rolling and now burst across the ridge standing then with the others peering into the sun he saw the bright multicolored legion their hair flying like dark banners only the thunder the roll of drums the mad cacophony of the hoofs accompanying them they leaned into the wind and seemed like one thousand legged monster hurtling and plunging until suddenly they rose straight in their saddles and in one terrifying voice shouted ejaculated their grotesque cry of war she was moving through a screen of hemlocks in among the white birch and maples the sounds from the quarry began to pulse in her ears she stood once more listening she had never been here at this hour she felt as if some dark totally unfamiliar shape would clutch at her arm but she found the path she always used the stubs of branches she had broken those she had pushed aside and she walked easily now and more slowly until she could see the dark glisten of water beneath her if i ever committed suicide she thought i would dive straight down from here and no one would find me for days she smiled and expertly let herself downward holding this known root or that her sneakers sliding in the leaves she jumped out onto the flat expanse of rock and seating herself shook her short cut brown hair and tilted her chin far upward the reedy music of the frogs had faded but presently it began again growing in volume until it was vibrant julia felt at peace and drew her legs up and clasped her hands tightly around the bent knees she had accomplished a miracle this was her place the hour couldn t change it only only her thoughts were a little strange they were becoming confused perhaps it was because it was so late and because she had no business to be here now she was thinking of paul a few weeks ago in the easter holidays with her at one of those awful friday evening dancing class parties her mother had made her attend hello julie how are you and then off he went so casually to someone else with breasts better developed more obvious in a lower cut dress someone without a mouthful of wire bands and an inability to find words that would hold him i wish he was with me now she thought and that we were both the ages we are and doing what was once only pretense and acute embarrassment oh god i wish i were older or younger julia bentley thought i wish so much someone loved me george rawlings remembered seeing the door open sometime during the night millie in a white robe standing like a ghost at the threshold she had vanished he must have slept again he was staring at the blue china lamp left on beside him it seemed too much trouble even to reach for the switch but of course the impossible effort of leaving would have to be made on this monday morning this room was like a prison he would not be indebted to sam below him as if at the end of some remote tunnel he heard the humming of a vacuum cleaner his fingers fumbled across the bandages they had left both of his eyes uncovered well he told himself let s put the show on the road he was walking across to the bathroom he drank a glass of water and gripped the sink with both hands a fearful pain had come from his head as if the water were coursing up through the blood vessels and expanding them he recognized his jacket and trousers the fabric was dark the stains weren t too apparent and there were his shoes thank god but his shirt was one terrible mess he shivered and then tore away the blood soaked parts and wound the rest around his neck like a scarf sam would be amazed to find him gone millie would have to understand she must have put his clothes in the closet he found a lump rising in his throat because of that one simple act of tidiness he was on the verge of tears alex poldowski in a fashion he owed a debt to that effete gentleman at least alex had told him he wasn t dying perhaps george rawlings would be better off dead what time was it he peered at his wristwatch strange it was still running a quarter to seven too early for a vacuum cleaner but probably sam wanted the whole house in order before he came downstairs he was kneeling to tie his shoelaces his fingers felt absurdly thick and clumsy he rose slowly and looked into the mirror on the inside of the closet door he barely knew himself this was some freak two strands of adhesive tape across his nose like ugly roots from the mass of gauze suddenly moist over his cheekbones the surface however was perfectly white he was drinking another glass of water it was after seven o clock he was supposed to be in court this afternoon at city hall who would take over he d have to think but the main thing the imperative necessity was to leave before sam bentley was up and about and before millie detained him with sympathy he entered the hallway he was actually walking down the stairs a plane up in the sky above the clouds and this freakish wreck of a man desperately trying to get away father is that you the voice issued from the cavern of the hall below george did not reply is that you father who s there for a moment he felt like a thief discovered then julia appeared under the arch leading to the dining room she stood gazing at him uncle george he was trying to smile at her gosh you shouldn t be up should you i i was just leaving here julie i m all set just about to call a taxi she was wearing some sort of gray blazer she seemed overly tall her brow knitted in concern well at least you won t have to do that she was saying i m about to leave myself i ll drop you off you re leaving i m going back to school she answered pietro s driving me i m just finishing breakfast but have you told mother you were going she asked him no i just don t want anyone disturbed julie that s my wish it s quite a big one he added her face seemed to float in an implausibly bright shaft of sunlight well won t you come in then have a cup of coffee or something or maybe a drink she asked in a way that seemed oddly sophisticated considerate and yet perhaps partly scornful he tried to see her face more clearly no nothing at all he said after a moment s hesitation i ll just wait for you here he leaned his head against the wood paneling behind him but the vivid red images of pain inserted themselves against his eyelids he raised them julia moved past i have to say good bye upstairs i won t be long as a great favor julie he said please don t mention you ve seen me not to anyone no please i ll call your mother as soon as i get home it ll be so much easier all right she was staring at him i m fine julie please you just go ahead she had disappeared he could feel a pulse pounding against the bandages he imagined sam s voice george what the hell goes on i wouldn t have the strength to answer he thought maybe i couldn t have called a taxi he could hear the footsteps overhead he saw the suitcase which julia was holding he stood up i ll take that julie for you oh no she said i can manage she went ahead of him outside the lincoln was parked he could hardly believe he was getting in pietro was gazing at him in an insolent disdainful fashion but that didn t matter we ll drop mr rawlings off in ardmore julia said and for the merest second george was reminded of her father s tone with servants to the manner born odd to have such a thought at a time like this yet her inflection seemed forced or rehearsed he could not stop to analyze he had never felt particularly close to her carrie seemed more affectionate but obviously julia had respected his request he took her hand i wish i didn t have to go back to school she said and then i wish you lived in new york that s in the opposite direction i wish i did he responded i wish i wasn t wearing this ridiculous costume and that we could go to a theater together or a nice restaurant forget we knew he stopped speaking forget we ever knew what oh just sort of everything in general she said nothing until pietro had slackened their pace i know you feel badly but that sounds like such a queer thing for you to say does it he asked yes perhaps i m supposed to joke about things aren t i but sometimes life can be rather a disappointing business his voice seemed thick and purposeless he relinquished her hand he could see the stone building where he lived just a few more steps abruptly he reached into his pocket yes there was the key are you positive you ll be all right by yourself she asked him for a moment he smiled yes julie dear you ve done me the greatest possible service by myself i ll be fine take care of yourself then i will you also don t work too hard it was an automatic phrase as he crossed through the courtyard he regretted it he should have discovered a more tender farewell someone shouted at him well will you look at george rawlings what happened to you i bumped into a door handle george said someone laughed george walked steadily ahead into his entry his bandages seemed on fire he had shut his door with the brass number screwed to it in the kitchenette the raw whiskey made him gasp just one or two swallows he told himself enough to lessen some of the pain he was telephoning no millie i m home no really right as rain tell sam not to worry about the car i ll get it hauled away no please no visit today i ll be asleep for god s sake don t worry that upsets me more than anything yes sure i ll see the doctor this evening if you insist there was one more call to make joan did i wake you he asked yes i thought you d probably be up look sweetheart some fool was happened to be driving somewhat intoxicated last night unfortunately it turned out to be me but i wouldn t quite put it that way to the boss oh hell no i m not in a hospital i won t be in town for a couple of days though and there s that case i was supposed to handle this afternoon too bad a jury isn t involved i might struggle in for a jury i d win hands down but i thought maybe tony elliott could pinch hit for me he ll understand you might give him sort of a tactful nudge he s got all the facts i wouldn t want to ask for a postponement it s really just a routine thing what no darling i d rather you didn t come out a smile pulled at the lower strip of adhesive tape don t even send flowers i ll see you wednesday i ll bribe you with a nice he was about to say double martini but thought better of it i ll take you out to dinner okay he had put down the receiver a strange relationship between joan fulbright and himself who knew about it she lived alone in the older part of the city in one of those renovated houses whose brick facade some early settler had constructed she had two tiny rooms on the second floor she was a clever girl a most efficient secretary she let him come and go as he pleased or as it pleased her in the office you might have thought them only casual friends yet if he said make an excuse yourself come out here today she would have been on the next train and similarly if she had been in need he would have gone to her they make us conformists look good that s a peculiar way to think it wasn t just the obnoxious birds that had ruffled her own feathers of course she knew that it was jim s little sister myra the unreliable irresponsible forever flyaway myra she s a year older than i am lucy told herself come come jim said jollying lucy a little i love you susan ready lucy listened obviously susan was not upstairs busy feet showering like raindrops pattered around her room susan would be visiting her grandmother for only a few days but even at seven she was a prudent soul she always packed for a lifetime just in case not yet every doll in the house must be going with her she d better step on it it s a long way to websterville jim s fine young face was an expressive one too as he looked at her it registered anxiety you know he said myra wanted me to thank you for taking cathy it ll be only a couple of weeks before she finds a home for them in paris but even so she wants you to know that she s awfully grateful lucy did not believe him myra appreciated nothing jim had put the thanks in his sister s mouth darling she said and the single word mingled love and exasperation in an equal blend she should have told me herself and will it be only a couple of weeks remember what happened the last time leaving cathy with them myra had gone out to the coast for a supposedly brief visit but she had stayed all winter and cathy had stayed all winter too with them lucy suspected that myra would never have come home if gregg myra s husband hadn t gone out to fetch her that was an awfully long two weeks for an otherwise silent moment jim s keys jingled nervously in his pocket but she promised this will be different he said at last you ve got to admit she was smart to scare up this fine government job over there she ll get a home for herself and cathy in no time you ll see myra s settling down on the defensive he added i wish you d think what it must be like for her to be without greg to be a new widow a young widow it depends on the widow lucy had an idea that myra loved it and not for one moment did she believe that myra had settled down it seemed to lucy that all their married life she and jim had been doing nothing but rescue his sister from the constant crises that were her way of life remembering that succession of disasters she now considered cathy an ominous child cloud on her horizon it was not that she disliked cathy the youngster drew her troubled her depths whenever lucy saw her she tried without noise or fuss to give her the warmth she had never had from myra but cathy was myra s responsibility not hers i wouldn t even be surprised she said unhappily if myra tried to leave her with us forever myra loved big cities thousands of miles away in paris of all places she might forget she had ever been a mother lucy knew her too well to find it impossible that s a horrible thing to accuse her of jim was so indignant it was obvious that no matter what he said he too had seen the looming specter of a forever cathy he went to the foot of the stairs and shouted up fiercely susan susan get moving a startled piping sound returned don t yell at susan lucy said was it only a few nights ago that they had been standing together in front of the house looking at the moon washed river their arms around each other they had been talking of the present and the future their talk and their feeling had been as deep and warm as steeped in light as the air around them then from within the still sleeping house the telephone had rung myra with her news was on the other end of the line jim turned back from the stairway and looked at her his dark brows which had been lowered in anger smoothed please he said there isn t a chance of myra s letting anything like that happen let s stay friends but they weren t just friends lucy thought they were husband and wife and myra had no right muddling and chilling their marriage the only thing that had ever come between them was that worthless selfish sister of his lucy was sick of it well at last she said because susan was clattering down the stairs susan looked like an overwhelmed baby nurse her arms were straining with a burden of dolls i m ready she announced do you need that big bundle jim said his voice had sharp edges as though he knew very well lucy and he were not friends at the moment all that junk susan stared at him with hurt blue eyes that gushed an instant grief to her each of her dolls was a real person with a living heart now now lucy said approaching susan with a handkerchief mopping skillfully your father didn t mean it susan she gave jim a quick shape up look of warning she ll take every one of them jim groaned but he lifted susan s suitcase and said in a gentler tone sure the entire thousand and when you get back from grandma s cathy will be here to play with you nice no susan said grappling with her outsized armload of dolls with a scrooge like effect and at this point lucy thought there should be a lecture on little cousins sharing dolls but she could sympathize with susan there ought to be a limit to sharing too that was one more reason she didn t look forward to cathy s visit short or long the last one had been a lilliputian war she suspected that cathy had been competing with susan for attention that she had never had well jim said out of the silence let s get going dolls and all when the car with susan s hands waving wildly from the rear window disappeared down the driveway lucy stood looking after its pale dust the day was brilliant around her flower scented crisp with breeze yet her inner turmoil darkened it she had let jim go with a chilly good by a chillier kiss she was sorry and angry at herself because never in their life together had she done that she turned and began to walk toward the house at the feeding station the raffish group of cowbirds again bobbed and gobbled over the ground but now gorgeous among them was a beautiful red cardinal radiant in its feathered vestments the handsome bird was solitary its mate must be at home silently guarding their nest she had better stay there lucy thought the sly female cowbirds took instant advantage of nests without sentinels well lucy she said to herself abandoning the cardinals and the cowbirds she had a day of things to do among them she had to prepare the guest room how long would it be occupied she wondered with a baffled feeling of helplessness as long as the unscrupulous myra chose for a moment her mind returned again to the strange flying world of birds and she said to herself it isn t only birds that dump their children in other people s nests in the sunshine of late afternoon lucy stood looking at the ready guest room there were new yellow curtains bright as a child s life ought to be a new bedspread lively with hopping rabbits and hanging from the ceiling was an airy mother goose mobile spinning slowly in the breeze a row of little hangers waited for a child s clothes in the neatly empty closet since myra had always put most of greg s money on her own back lucy suspected that no more than a few of that long row would be needed the closet was faintly fragrant with lavender and as lucy shut the door an unhappy memory slipped into her mind like a lavender ghost greg s house on the day he was buried and the child pale silent baffled watching the funeral guests with panicky eyes many times since his death that memory had worried and troubled her out in the hall the upstairs phone shrilled and the small ghost vanished when she picked up the receiver her mother s cheerful voice was there websterville junction calling she said i just thought i d let you know myra dropped cathy this morning and jim picked cathy up and left susan a few hours ago i d have phoned sooner but i ve been busy i can imagine susan was an active character for mother to be able to call susan must be napping now surrounded by her multitude of dolls lucy drew out the chair and sat down she relaxed a little and some of the tension went out of her you could think yourself as grown up as methuselah yet the maternal voice still kept its comforting magic how was cathy subdued but myra was the merriest widow i ever saw on her way to the airport on her way to paris you bet lucy said to herself i ve been fixing up the guest room for cathy there was a momentary pause and then her mother said how long is she supposed to stay just for a couple of weeks till myra finds a place for them well this time there was a long silence while the telephone hummed faintly with a voiceless life puzzled lucy stared at the flowered wallpaper her mother was forthright she was not usually given to mysterious silences was she thinking along the same lines lucy was that it was quite possible cathy might be left with her for good you mean once myra gets to paris once the soft pretty moth found the bright light she had always wanted suddenly seekingly lucy asked mother do you know something i don t know again there was that curious pause and then her mother said i guess i do just before myra left she was saying good by to cathy and she didn t realize i was near she hesitated as though hunting over words and ways of putting them cathy was in tears of course and i heard myra say now be good and at christmastime i ll send you a wonderful present from paris shocked speechless lucy sat there then she jumped to her feet the elastic phone cord uncoiling like a black snake christmastime then it was no bogey she had dreamed up it was only too true myra had no intention whatever of sending for cathy in two weeks for a moment anger darkened the hallway about her and when she found her voice anger thickened it that does it she said i ll keep cathy for two weeks then if myra does nothing about fetching her i ll pack her right back to her mother if i have to take her myself her hand tightened on the receiver and that s what i m going to tell jim for lucy the day s nagging to and fro had come to an abrupt end as she hung up she saw through the hall s open window the purple black flying of the cowbirds wings and heard their grotesque singing cowbird myra she s not going to get away with it cathy is tired lucy thought watching them come slowly up the path the child s thin legs were plodding she trudged along slowly both hands clutching a tired teddy bear she was at the moment just a small walking package being delivered to her aunt s and uncle s house unlike susan she was traveling light the worn teddy bear a tiny suitcase that jim carried and the clothes she wore were all she had lucy glancing at the miniature case knew there would not be enough in it for the shortest of stays they would have to buy things for her she opened the door unimpressed the dog plopped on the sand quint couldn t blame maggie for disbelieving for eleven days they d done the same thing leaving the cottage quietly before breakfast before esperanza beach got jammed with tourists and beach balls and show offy lifeguards the swirling sand made quint s limp more pronounced they walked slowly past the sherbet colored cottages eleven lemon nine mint seven orange around the curve to a deserted stand with an eats sign jiggling in the wind now they were in friendly territory nobody around nothing but sand and a ridge of rocks sloping jaggedly to the water s edge his rock was to the right of a v shaped inlet a big brown lumpy rock trailing seaweed whiskers his rock was special because no one on the beach could see him here here he was enclosed and safe if a dragon or a sea monster came along didn t he have a red swiss hunting knife on his belt ten blades and a corkscrew here was a perfect place to lie down and make believe he was canute controlling the waves he was a knight of the round table sir quintus the brave slaying evil spirits and banshees and vampires and witches with warty noses one good thing about a suit of armor his leg wouldn t show he was the first astronaut on the moon chosen because of his small size and intrepid nature he was six feet one like his father with big hands and a hairy chest a man the weak and persecuted would turn to fearless every night when he wanted a drink of water didn t he practice being fearless by not turning on the bathroom light a dark bathroom can be pretty scary and he d creep back to bed proud of himself thinking tomorrow for sure i ll go down to the rock and keep my promise to dad he hadn t intended to make the promise it happened two weeks ago the night before his father left on a business trip to south america every piece of the nightmare was clear in place and when he woke up his father was saying stop screaming quint it s all right stop shaking he could remember the feel of his father s big hands the thump of his father s heart sending out signals regular like radar let s talk about the beach son while i m gone you get brown and fat as a pig hear look i can put two fingers between the cords in the back of your neck dr fortman says swimming would help your leg he says you re limping more than you need to how does he know big dumb nut he never had polio in the light from the bedside table his father looked so worried that the promise spilled out you just wait dad when you get back i ll probly be swimming better than victoria wait and see dad victoria was fourteen months younger than quint a head taller and could lick any boy or girl on the beach he called her fatso she called him stuck up that s why nobody plays with you mister stuck up or what was worse she prayed for him out loud at bedtime please lord gord please give my brother the strength to go swimming like he promised she s got a nerve quint said now to the clouds strength began to zip up and down his chest he felt strong as a giant he unlaced his high brown shoes and took off the metal brace on his leg he wadded his sweat shirt into a ball and stripped down to his swimming trunks goolick goooolick creaked a sea gull aw shut up he said he stood on the rock a skinny dignified boy surrounded by the ocean the wind bored a hole between his shoulder blades and when he looked at the choppy waves coming and going and crossing each other he could see his head down there bleeding wedged between the rocks and the waves i can t go in i m scared of the nightmare shivering he put on his clothes and shivering with shame he crawled to the narrow end of the rock and spat into the water watch it big shot a hoarse voice yelled back she was holding on to his rock with one hand she smelled of peppermints she wore a bathing suit like his mother s no straps on the shouders why didn t you duck he snapped this is my rock isn t is isn t is she was sore as a boil ever hear of squatter s rights sure they started with the kansas nebraska bill of eighteen mister big britches aren t you i m mark gordon peters the fifth they call me quint then why don t you stop squinting i said quint that s short for quintus quintus in latin means i can speak both kinds of latin smart aleck her cough sounded like cloth ripping you shouldn t smoke so much he said unconsciously imitating victoria s holier than thou voice i don t smoke she was horrified do you hell yes not having said hell before he stumbled a bit before gathering momentum sometimes eleven fourteen a day if i was your mama i d wop your tail off my mother never wops me i ve got this leg brace she seemed so unimpressed that he was obliged to roll up his blue jeans so she could see his brace dingy looking was what she said why don t you paint it red and white like a barber pole because maybe i won t have to wear it always dr fortman says if i exercise my leg more maybe i can use a cane when i m big she spouted a mouthful of water into the air a cane s mighty handy someone s walking past you want to stop him zoooop snag him around the neck with the crook in your cane or say a waiter brings you a bowl of soup with a dead fly in it all you got to do is bannnnnng stooooomp your cane on the floor hey will you look at that maggie had shaken himself awake and was licking the sand off his stubby whiskers and his long plume of a tail that s some dog what kind part collie part wire haired terrier quint glared he always did when people asked holy mackerel that s the most unique dog i ever saw she said firmly his real name s dimaggio only we call him maggie because he has to take tranquilizers he s braver than he looks he s been sick lately last tuesday he went on a ham jag a what he would have told her but victoria was yodeling that meant mama wants you quint come home or i ll come find you i gotta go even though this is my rock you can use it sometimes i come early in the morning so do i see you around mister squint that was how they started being friends they met next morning and all the mornings thereafter same time early before the fog burned off because she didn t like the sun it made her blister her name was sabella and the strip of seaweed around her neck was an emerald necklace the king gave her as a token of his undying love you going to marry the king no he s got a long beard and picks his teeth with a fork my hair is what he s nuts about naturally curly hair runs in my family personally i prefer straight hair like yours but as they say on the continent what can one do which continent name one i been there japan she said smelled pugh because people let dead fish lie on the beaches till the fish got hard as rocks then they scraped off the mold and made fish soup pugh camels in tripoli had harelips near galway the tinkers drove their caravans down to the beach and sang and drank and fought all night as for dancing holy mackerel he ought to see the gypsies in jerez they danced on the sand till your blood got hot and danced with them really quint smothered a yawn she made better pictures than any book he d read but he didn t say so artfully as the days went by he found occasion to tell her that his father had won the navy cross in the korean war that his baby sister could spit up through her nose when she felt like it that he personally had an iq of and was currently reading the mushr to ozon volume of the encyclopedia books are for schnooks she skipped a piece of water at him and laughed a funny hoarse laugh he liked to hear nobody ever appreciated his jokes as much as sabella what did one tonsil say to the other tonsil let s get dressed up the doctor s taking us out tonight and what time did the chinaman go to the dentist tooth hurty encouraged by her giggles he imitated maggie who was crazy about ham he described the ham decorated with pineapple and cherries cooling on the porch he snuck up on the ham like maggie gumming it with soft stumpy teeth then panting with thirst lapping up the water in the lagoon swelling up like a balloon staggering home to be sick while his mother said that does it that dog has to go say you re quite a comic sabella said admiringly ever thought about going on the stage he hadn t but it was such a nice thought that he nodded his head either that or a veterinarian better make up your mind son sabella said you can t serve cod and salmon sometimes they argued she said sharks have no bones and shrimp swam backward his encylopedia agreed with sabella next morning he tied a bunch of sea daisies with string and threw them across the v shaped inlet to the rock where she was swimming around boy could she catch like willie mays in the outfield nobody gave me flowers before thank you quint her face turned pink with pleasure and a smothered cough you can always tell a real gentleman they got a certain je ne say quok sometimes they didn t talk at all he daydreamed on the rock while she swam and splashed around once when she asked why he never went swimming and he answered don t feel like it he was tempted to tell her about being scared but victoria began yodeling just then and he went home carrying sabella in the back of his head not thinking about her just knowing she was there smiling smelling of peppermints as for his promise oh he had plenty of time buckets of time wednesday morning it happened they were eating breakfast we beseech thee lord gord to bless this food that was victoria saying grace while the baby sprayed raisin toast on her plastic bib same old breakfast till the phone rang making his mother s voice shake with excitement your daddy s in san francisco she told them he says he ll be here on the one o clock plane fifteen days early isn t that wonderful yeah keen a cave seemed to be opening in quint s stomach children we ll have to get organized the baby can have an early nap victoria i want you to quint closed the screen door quietly so maggie wouldn t be scared hurry up we re late he said noticing with a chill how gray the sky was this morning the fog like a rope along the horizon the choppy waves sending off sheets of blue and kool aid green the cave in his stomach hurt he had to go into the water he d tell sabella about the nightmare it had started two years ago when he was in an iron lung what caused it he didn t know the metal collar gagging his neck sweating so much the unbearable weight on his chest all of it together meant drowning the first time the nurse took him out of the lung she said if he got frightened she d put him back for a second when bobbie evans smashed up his car the jaguar his wife linda had given him for his last birthday and himself quite thoroughly with it driving back from an afternoon s golf at oakmont it seemed to mark the end of a long miswritten chapter in the social life of the community linda looked remote yet lovely in black and everyone held his or her breath not that linda was heartless not that she would do anything prematurely or in bad taste any more than john cooper would hadn t linda been a perfect wife to bobbie who was the least bit of a disappointment all these years wasn t john cooper even more attractive at forty seven than he had been twenty five years earlier and wasn t john s wife edythe even more appalling if possible didn t john cooper after all this time deserve something better of life wasn t it adult and realistic to look at it that way and romantic everybody knew that john cooper had married edythe on the rebound it was the kind of thing that could ruin a man s life and it was a tribute to john s strength of character and very real business ability that it hadn t ruined his of course there was nothing you could do but you still ought to be ashamed of yourself for letting it happen mousie chandler said to linda stuart poor john linda accepted the reproach which was something she did rarely in all her life and most rarely in that summer of when she was by all odds the prettiest and brightest young woman west of the allegheny mountains and john was surely one of the handsomer and brighter young men around pittsburgh for it had been john and linda ever since she had come out two seasons before at the golf club to the goggle eyed admiration not only of the stag line but even of her fellow debs john had claimed her from the stag line a young man a year out of dartmouth with skiing crinkles still around his eyes you saw them always together those years you talked about john and linda as an entity john and linda were at longue vue last night john and linda drove to conneaut in three and a half hours then there was a spat over something as there had been lovers spats before only this one didn t heal you still said john and linda but as if you were speaking of a national catastrophe such as the depression or dillinger it got worse instead of better first it came out after mr cooper s will was settled he had died the year before that john and his mother weren t rich any more and then there was linda s engagement to bobbie evans there was no connection between the two events because bobbie wasn t rich either though he was more aggressive than john he was a bright and handsome young man from new york who worked for the same steel company as john did some people said linda had just announced the engagement to jolt john into some action but when john came home from a business trip to cleveland with edythe with edythe his bride it could no longer be john and linda even to sentimental wishful thinkers it wasn t even john and edythe it was simply poor john there was nothing specifically wrong with edythe but there was absolutely nothing right about her either mousie chandler had been to school with her someplace near baltimore and tried to explain rather than defend her to the gang having lunch at horne s well you shouldn t underestimate edythe mousie said i know she gives the impression of being shallow and frivolous and scatterbrained she is frivolous and scatterbrained but she really isn t shallow bobbie and linda looked magnificent at their wedding john was at the church with edythe she giggled during the ceremony and mousie chandler who was one of linda s bridesmaids said john glared black as death at her as if he were choking she said poor john edythe settled down to become a social myth and a horrible example her hair never seemed to be in place and her skirts were never quite the correct length she didn t have a bad shape when you caught her at the pool at longue vue but her bathing suits were far from smart and you didn t see her much at longue vue or anywhere for john had drifted away from the gang mousie said it was because he was too proud to stand pity others thought he couldn t stand seeing linda mrs bobbie evans still so beautiful so much in command of everything there were less dramatic reasons too john s mother died not long after his marriage and there was even less cooper money left john sold the big old place in sewickley and bought a smaller house in fox chapel he was not reduced to poverty but his job at the steel company had become a real job and not a method of passing the day john was good at his job it probably wasn t hard for him to keep his nose to the grindstone with nothing but edythe to come home to though that may be unfair since ben cooper john s first son came along early in the cutest baby you ever saw and a blessing that he looked all cooper from fontanel to pink toes nary a trace of edythe but the continuing charm of the other children sally in and jack in and all john s success at his work only made edythe s dizziness and general uselessness more glaring she never could fit into a crowd which had known which still knew and admired linda when there was bridge at edythe s house the cards shuffled like wet graham crackers and the food probably was wet graham crackers she managed a missionary drive for the church once and got the books so confused that old mr webber the eldest elder who d never donated more than five dollars to anything had to cough up five hundred dollars to avoid a scandal in what edythe called the bosoms of the church john did find the missing checks and money afterward and the drive was actually oversubscribed which was a real bit of luck for the missionaries being an intelligent man john must have guessed what everyone thought about edythe but he never let on by so much as a brave smile poor john was the kind of stock that keeps a bargain without whimpering and maybe bends over backward to keep a bad one he was an attentive and generous husband overgenerous a lot of people felt because they knew that money must be a problem to him but he got ahead in business on leave from his job to an important washington assignment during the war after the war back to the heir apparency of the steel company the coopers saw bobbie and linda socially but no more than was necessary bobbie had been successful too though he didn t match john s pace and after all he didn t need to with all the stuart money he and linda settled down to being social leaders and linda managed to look a little more beautiful each year and then came the hairpin turn the smashed jaguar and linda mourning alone and lovely everyone held his or her breath don t think linda couldn t have got john back any time if she d tried mousie gordon who had been mousie chandler said between bites of a chicken sandwich at a luncheon table at le mont now you know she could ve but she isn t that kind of girl but now well it would be a blessing i think poor john linda evans felt more wretched than she had ever dreamed bobbie s death could move her to feeling what she felt was a bone deep loss with a sense of waste to it not so much sorrow for handsome ambitious bobbie but for the lost years that had been brought into high relief by his death she knew what people were thinking it was what she had been thinking herself it was up to her to save poor john dear john to undo the wrong she had done but she trembled at the decision as at the brink of a cold stream there was no one who would blame her or john she could be sure of that it might be rough on edythe at first but linda and john between them could make a settlement handsome enough to soothe her to send her back to cleveland or anywhere and linda felt capable of capturing the affection of the children anxious even since she and bobbie had had none of their own it would be good for them to have a mother they need not be ashamed of linda would have to wait she knew but what was a decent six months or so after the more than twenty years gone by years of watching while poor john struggled without the help and understanding of the kind of wife a man needed to get ahead of course he had done wonders alloy steels and regular steels had different sales departments at smith macisaacs where john and bobbie both worked bobbie had been head of the alloy division while john was just another good salesman in the regular branch so when old mr lovejoy the company president talked about putting in a single sales manager for both branches after the head of the regular steels had gone with carnegie illinois it looked like the perfect chance for bobbie for linda knew how to help her husband not just the stuart family contacts but also the little dinners for reuben lovejoy she was almost sick when bobbie came home with the news that poor john had won the job what did you do she asked bobbie you must have done something something wrong lord knows i had everything set for you bobbie said something about damned pittsburghers sticking together and linda got angry at him they had their first real fight and bobbie went off to get drunk linda dragooned her uncle donald murkland into a lunch the next day to find out what had happened he was a director of s m and must have been in on the decision but jolly old uncle donald would tell her no more than that bobbie had certainly been considered for the job but there were factors in a large company which outsiders and even some insiders couldn t understand he didn t tell her of the long board meeting where bobbie and john were weighed one against the other i m behind john cooper mr lovejoy said finally i think we re agreed that he and evans are equal in ability so we have to look at the thing in terms of incentive now i believe poor john ll work just a little harder with that wife of his i think he feels every chance he gets is his big chance bobbie with linda behind him will have plenty of other opportunities and also the money can t mean as much to bobbie bobbie will take the job as his just reward and work hard at it poor john will take it as a miracle and have every other independent steel company sitting up nights worrying about us most of the directors nodded uncle donald murkland found himself nodding agreement too after the surprise was over linda was almost as pleased as anyone with john s good luck though she agreed with bobbie s decision some months later to move to funk furnaces the job at funk wasn t particularly better but it got him away from being subordinate to john and assured him steady advancement since funk was owned to a large degree by various branches of linda s family poor john s rise continued to be meteoric when he was made a vice president only a year after the new sales job a leading business magazine ran his photograph with a brief biography in a series on national business leaders of the future she called then to say she had a baby sitter for that night shirley appreciated the chance to make some money such a nice little thing lives right in the building that s swell i said sweetly i could get along without that three dollars in some ways it was worth being out the money just knowing i was no longer obligated to nadine it was past midnight and we were in bed when the phone rang i stumbled through the hall wondering who would be calling at this hour i answered to find nadine at the other end you scared me half to death i said shakily what s wrong janice nobody answers at the apartment her voice came shrill i m absolutely frantic that stupid girl might have gone off and left francie oh she wouldn t do that i said she s probably fallen asleep and doesn t hear the phone but if you re worried you can go home and check i can t leave the party we re at ken thom s apartment and when one couple leaves early everything falls flat old mr thom is already down on wally and we simply can t afford to get ken mad at us i was all set for what came next janice could you possibly go over and make sure everything s all right i ll call you there in ten minutes i can t make it in ten minutes wondering as i said it why i should make it at all why should i go over at midnight to check on francie when her parents didn t care enough to leave a party fifteen minutes then please janice i ll be glad to pay you so sure that money could do anything all right i said i d do it not for the dollar or so nadine would give me but because there was the chance that something had gone wrong at the apartment and if i didn t go over who would chris was sound asleep and i didn t see any sense in waking him i dressed in the kitchen then left a note on the table telling him what had happened i drove off through the cool darkness to nadine s apartment and rang the bell and in a few seconds a young girl opened the door her face was flushed from sleep it s all right i said as she started to look scared mrs roberts had called and couldn t wake you i just came over to make sure everything was all right i m hard to wake up she faltered she didn t look over thirteen and nadine insisted that her sitters be reliable i have to get up early for church tomorrow she went on i didn t know it was going to be this late the phone started ringing that s mrs roberts again i said i ll answer it i crossed the beautifully furnished living room to the pale yellow phone i told nadine everything was fine and that i d be getting on home janice would you mind staying there was a ragged edge to her voice now as if she d been crying wally s drunk i ll get him out of here as soon as i possibly can but i don t want shirley to see him like this you know how gossip of that sort spreads through an apartment building not a word of thanks for what i d already done the receiver clicked in my ear she didn t even give me a chance to refuse well there wasn t any law that said i had to stay but then i looked at shirley and thought that i might as well the child needed her sleep and heaven knew what kind of a mess it would be with wally coming home drunk so i told her mrs roberts would pay her in the morning and she scooted off to her own apartment after i looked in at francie i went into the living room and waited i must have dozed off because i came to with a start at the sound of voices nadine s shrill with anger wally s loud and thick as i went to the door i heard the clock strike two i opened the door and wally stumbled in fast as if nadine had pushed him i had always thought she was so beautiful but now she looked ugly her skin was stretched so tight that her cheekbones stuck out and if looks could kill wally would have been dead pack your clothes she hissed pack and get out you re crazy wally said thickly he lurched and stumbled to the davenport and sank down on it and was instantly asleep nadine strode over to him and her pointed nails raked across his face i grabbed her arm and she turned on me and for a scared second i thought that maybe wally was right and she was crazy you stay out of this she spat at me he s ruined us do you hear me he s ruined us he insulted ken thom her eyes were wild he told ken to his face that he doesn t have what it takes to get a woman and the other people there were listening we re ruined and he s going to get out if i have to throw him down the stairs you d better simmer down i said nervously i was plenty scared in the state she was in she could actually kill him now you just take it easy and i ll make you some tea tea nadine screeched how can you be so damn stupid wally s lost his job ken will never forgive him never and we don t have any money we don t have a dime all we own is francie s bedroom set and the televison record player and we even owe on them and we ll be poor and have to live in a grubby little house like yours and all because of that i clamped my hand over her mouth to stop the stream of filth stop that you ll wake up the whole building wally can t go any place at this hour well then i ll get out but she looked uncertain she was coming to her senses enough to realize that you don t go traipsing off anywhere at two in the morning you go to bed i said curtly in the morning you and wally can talk things out she collapsed against me as if everything inside her snapped i got her into bed and sat with her until she had sobbed herself out it was three o clock before i figured it was all right to go i left her a limp bundle of self pity shivering with terror because her bubble had burst around her wally was snoring on the davenport i had done all i could i had done all i was going to do whether or not wally lost his job was no concern of mine i drove home found chris still asleep i snuggled up close to him loving him thankful for a man like him thankful i wasn t nadine i kept on being thankful in the afternoon nadine and wally came over with francie wally sat in our big chair his hands between his knees looking ready to cry i d had all this trouble with the old man that s why i drank so much i got fired yesterday for not attending to business old mr thom himself had stopped at the service station for a grease job wally confessed and couldn t get one because there were cars on the pits waiting to be repaired seems that the kid wally had hired had a repair business of his own going on the side mr thom had gotten wally on the phone and fired him i thought i d smooth things over through ken wally said miserably but ken got coy and wouldn t make any promises and i was plastered and i blew my stack and told him right to his face he d never slept with a woman i tried to quiet nadine because the children were there but she was beyond caring what she said things may smooth over yet chris said his nice lean face grave with honest concern but i couldn t help thinking that nadine and wally were getting just what they deserved now maybe they d realize that life can be tough when a bubble breaks there s nothing little by little during the week chris and i discovered the crazy unbelievable way nadine and wally had lived they had not only spent every cent they were in debt up to their necks owing on everything they owned on top of everything else they were two months behind on their apartment rent and the day wally received written notice that he was fired they were evicted worst of all wally had no training for any kind of work he had fallen into a soft job and now the job was gone and he was stranded chris fretted i wish we were in a position to offer a little money to tide them over i said i wished we were too it was easy enough to say it because of course we couldn t spare a cent but chris brightened up like a candle i m glad you feel that way honey there is one big way we can help them we can let them move in with us something i had simply never thought of something so incredible i just stared at him it was incredible he gave me an embarrassed pleading look i know we d be pretty crowded but it would only be for a couple of weeks until they get straightened out straightened out they d had years of making all that money i won t do it i said flatly nadine was always too good to live in a little house like this well now she can sleep in the street for all i care that isn t like you janice chris said uncomfortably then i felt uncomfortable too i didn t want to be like that mean and bitter but darn it all why should we help a couple of spoiled snobs who had looked down their noses at us but in the end we did it just seemed as if there was nothing else to do the finance company took all their furniture and they didn t have a cent to their name then wally got sick to my way of thinking he was scared sick his luck had failed him and it was easier to crawl off into bed than to get out and fight the world chris made trip after trip in our old car moving the clothes and dishes and the stock of groceries nadine had bought on special at least we ll eat i thought grimly as i put all the food away while i worked nadine sat and cried when she wasn t crying she was in our bedroom fighting with wally virus infection nothing she d scream at him you re too lazy to go out and look for another job you re just a no good bum it was a mess all right but it couldn t go on forever a couple of weeks chris had said i figured i could stand practically anything for a couple of weeks but the two weeks dragged into three and they were still with us nadine s constant nagging had finally gotten wally out of bed he set out every morning looking for work and come home around noon full of alibis and excuses wendell thom had black balled him nobody would even take his application you can get something nadine would snap you can get a job working in a grocery store if nothing else the high school kids have got everything sewed up he said a whine in his voice those damn punks taking work away from men who need it by fall they ll be back in school i d say trying to sound encouraging but this was only the middle of july and i couldn t take six more weeks of this i mentioned it to chris one stifling hot night when i had slipped outside for a breath of fresh air i don t really believe in intuition but i swear to you from the moment i opened my eyes i knew it was going to be a bad day part of it was the weather so foggy it would take me twice as long to get to the hospital part of it was being so tired i d not only had my usual full day yesterday but a dinner meeting as well that kept me up late but the rest of it the main part wasn t based on logic at all it was just going to be one of those days for the thousandth time i wished i d chosen some nice nine to five five days a week profession and for the thousandth time i answered myself i hadn t chosen medicine it had chosen me actually i shouldn t complain i told myself in the shaving mirror i had a lot to be thankful for a profession that brought me as good an income as mine wasn t to be sneezed at maybe i didn t see as much of gladdy as i d like but how much worse it would have been if i d had to board her out somewhere after alice went send my daughter to an orphanage or a boarding home at least we were together and we had mrs hodges bless her to look after us no mother could be fonder of gladdy than mrs hodges was i was lucky in lots of ways no doubt about it especially in the way gladdy had turned out growing up without a mother from the time she was three it wasn t a good thing for a child even knowing the kind of mother alice had been but i mustn t start on alice she is a closed book a picture i keep on my bureau but never look at if she d kept on as she d been going the story i d told gladdy would probably have been true by now anyhow as usual gladdy s bright smile greeted me at the breakfast table her first class wasn t until ten but she always got up to have breakfast with me it made me feel good and knowing that she d decided all on her own to go to college right here in town made me feel good too oh i knew that i couldn t give myself all the credit for her decision i had a feeling that young pete michelson the most promising intern at fairview had something to do with it too she d been out with pete the night before and her gay chatter about their date lightened my mood a little but once i was alone again driving to the hospital the heaviness returned if she and pete were really getting serious i d have to do some hard thinking should i tell him the truth about alice did he have a right to know the secret i d kept from gladdy all these years the boys were already waiting in the corridor outside my office when i got to fairview two interns and dick ishii the other resident i m chief of medicine here and this morning would start like all others with me taking the boys on the rounds pete was down on seven dick told me and he d meet us there there wasn t anything of special interest that morning no one sicker than they should have been pete came to meet us when we stepped out of the elevator on seven he d had a case of post operative shock but it was all taken care of now seven is a women s floor and as it happened not very busy right then when we d finished our regular rounds pete pointed me toward the small ward at the end of the floor got a new one in last night he said i haven t seen her yet but i hear she s a lulu i wasn t surprised the ward was a small one four beds kept reserved for female alcoholics we didn t get many at fairview and they were never pretty sights it was thought wiser to keep them segregated from the patients in the regular charity ward the moment i walked in the whole miserable feeling of the day seemed to focus on the woman in the bed they d cleaned her up some of course and she d pretty much slept off her drunk but there was something about her and i felt my lips forming a name alice but this woman s name was rose bancroft i looked at the chart for reassurance yes rose bancroft diagnosis acute alcoholism she looked about sixty though i recalled that the chart gave her age as forty four an ugly scar disfigured the somewhat familiar puffy face already marred by the tell tale network of broken red veins that heavy drinkers carry her coarse hair was two colored bleached blonde and its real dirty gray oh could it be no no it was an unfortunate resemblance that was all it was and i turned to dick forcing myself to put my disquiet out of my mind in a low voice dick filled us in she d been picked up downtown passed out in the doorway although quiet when they brought her in she d suddenly turned violent and had to be knocked out it was the old story we d keep her a day or two and the aa people would talk to her but if she wasn t interested she d just go back to the same life she d left turning toward the patient again i i can t describe what happened to me then except to say that i felt sick i tell you it took every ounce of control i had to be able to speak now miss or is it mrs bancroft i never liked going straight into an examination with patients it relaxes them i ve always thought to chat first this was one time i d have gladly broken my own rule but habit was too strong hey her voice was flat and dull but those penetrating eyes i had to turn my head away it was then that i saw what the drawn back covers revealed there were bloodspots on the sheet what s this i asked your period she shook her head i been spotting a little now and then she said quietly no emotion in her voice have you spoken to a doctor about it once again there was a negative shake i told miss groggins to move her down the hall where we had an examining table better do a papanicolaou i told pete it was only a few moments before miss groggins had her in the proper position for a vaginal but i couldn t see anything wrong on gross examination pete stood by with a slide and took the smear sent it down to the lab with a request for the test that done i told miss groggins to take her patient back to bed and again put her out of my mind i was busy the rest of the day late in the afternoon i was up on seven again one of my private patients was being admitted and i went in to see her settled on my way to the elevator i ran into pete i ve got the results on the bancroft smear test he said there s something there all right class three they said do you want to talk to her doctor well i didn t i didn t ever want to see that woman again but that was ridiculous of course all right we ll do a d and c and get her permission for a hysterectomy maybe it s nothing maybe it s intraepithelial or in situ can t take any chances if you can keep her here that long pete said wryly groggins tells me she s started badgering already wants to get out wants to get to her booze i guess i grimaced in distaste well better see what i can do we d been standing right outside miss bancroft s door and as i went to turn the knob to enter i was surprised to find that the door was slightly ajar but she seemed to be dozing and in any case we d been talking in low tones her eyes opened as soon as she heard me though and once again i felt an inward shiver i sure can t complain about the service in this place she said i just got through seeing one of you guys what do you want there was something almost insulting in her tone but i disregarded it i ve just been talking to dr michelson i said we d like you to have a dilatation and curettage that s quite minor nothing to worry about but we would like your permission to do that is to go further if it proves necessary no it was flat definite suppose you let me explain actually i rather doubt that we ll have to do this even if we do you ll be out of here in a week probably i was sure that was the difficulty she just didn t want to stay here where she couldn t get to the liquor no i looked at her in amazement i d had patients who d refused surgery before of course but never one who didn t show in one way or another the reason why mostly it was fear but this woman s voice didn t tremble and her hands were still on the coverlet will you tell me why i asked she smiled a smile without humor you shouldn t tell your little secrets outside of the patient s door she said i ve got cancer haven t i she went on disregarding my protests i m not going to be one of your guinea pigs let your pupils learn on someone else doctor just let me die in peace i stared at her almost speechless her little speech was totally out of character with the sort of person i thought she was even her voice had taken on a more cultivated tone this was someone who d come down in the world i thought a long long way down again there was something familiar about her something you haven t got cancer i said as strongly as i could i don t know what you heard that would make you think so but i assure you i don t even know myself so how can you be so sure and even if don t give me a lot of talk joe i gaped at her she could have found out my first name of course that wouldn t be difficult but there was that something some echo in the way she spoke she was watching me intently a funny little half smile on her lips surprised baby guess i ve changed haven t i but you haven t changed much joe i knew then knew with a heart stopping shock alice i stammered through dry lips alice for goodness sake alice she echoed mockingly what s the matter joe you scared of me think i m going to make you introduce a drunk as your wife well don t worry just let me outta here but why did you come back i d found my voice where have you been all these years she shrugged here and there as for coming back here well i ll tell you the truth i didn t even know where i was when i came to the last thing i remember is a bar in san diego the way she spoke her flat acceptance of her alcoholic blackout made me shudder and this was gladdy s mother i never asked you for any favors joe she went on but i m asking one now let me outta here you doctors are all alike all you want is to cut up people and what s the good no i want out joe i looked at the pathetic wreck of a woman before me let her out let her out that would be the solution wouldn t it what she d said was true in all these years she d never asked for anything from me if i let her go she d disappear once more and gladdy would be safe i was slowly swimming down to the bottom of the sea she made me welcome her dark cool caresses were sweeter than any woman s the many little tricks she knew made her embrace the ultimate one the ever more fantastic pressures deeper in her body squeezed not me but the air i breathed into a nitrogen anesthetic yielding mediterranian woman she soothed me and drew me deeper into her i no longer knew how deep i was somewhere under feet getting drunker happier and more contented by the second the reasons for this dive seemed foolish now only the dive itself had any meaning the metal tasting nitrogen made me wonder if i should remove the mouthpiece and suck in the sweet water perhaps if i took off the aqua lung i could swim better love my woman better i chuckled aloud and the mouthpiece fell out while a hazy part of my mind concentrated on swimming down a clear part sorted over recent events among them my only positive act in a long time it was when i packed up what duds i had and went to paris it was no vacation just me getting out after a bellyfull i knew it wouldn t be the same wild kicks never are but i hoped to dig up a better frame of mind once before i had been to paris long before i married valery that first time was good and it stuck with me i was twenty one back then in the army and fog put our plane down at orly instead of rhine main it was a saturday evening in april with a mist like rain and i was a little high on the good taste of life i had a pocketful of money which was unusual when i was in the army and the plane would be grounded all night in less than an hour i had gotten a hotel showered shaved and was out on the champs elysees in a fresh uniform i felt like a hun in rome all the women were beautiful and the men were equal to them everything was glamorous to my dazzled eyes there were some sweet machines other than women an old bugatti a lean farina coachwork on an american chassis a swallow a type a ajk mercedes and lots more there was the arc de triomphe and the tour d eiffel i was no yokel but i was young and this was paris i had champagne at maxim s then went into a cafe called the jour et nuit to ask the way to montmartre i never got there i met claire which was better she was eating bread and cheese just as fast as she possibly could and washing it down with red wine i stared i didn t know a human could feed so fast and still be beautiful she was blonde and young and nice and round in a tight white dress maybe her ravenous eating wasn t grotesque because she was so positive about it when she had drained the last of the bottle and paid her bill she came directly to my table and said handsome soldier i have assuaged one hunger with food i feel another of terrible urgency is your evening free madame i said with noblesse oblige because of the handsome yeah and so off we went to her apartment she was a nymphomaniac of course the poor girl toward the break of day i waxed philosophical and drew analogies about her way of eating bread and cheese now it was nine years later and it wasn t spring but winter when i returned i got there on a saturday evening i made the mistake of going to the jour et nuit the place was busy but i didn t feel like a hun i sat waiting for life to come along and sweep me up i had part of a bottle of french beer called panther pils so help me then switched to tuborg after a few hours life hadn t showed and i was crocked i went to my hotel and slept the next morning a little cognac made me feel better but what can you do in paris on sunday morning so i drank more cognac all that day and monday i drank just enough to orbit but not make deep space i read the tropic of capricorn and the tropic of cancer elemental but sex that s what was on my mind i was turning over the idea of a good debauchery when i dozed off i felt better tuesday evening when i woke up my head was clear my thinking sober and i was reconciled to this paris idea as a flop on top of all my others a good binge has that kind of therapeutic value sometime earlier the weather had turned cold and it was snowing i went out into it i walked around breathing the cold wine of the air until i found a park and i sat down on a snowy bench where the light was dim and came from the sky there was dignity and beauty in the little white flakes falling through the blue night i had on only a topcoat but i wasn t cold i was just miserable pretty soon a woman came along carrying a folded umbrella as a walking stick she saw me and sat down beside me three feet away suddenly i understood why she had the umbrella it gave her poise and posture without it she would have been drab and limp it gave her propriety it gave her the right to sit down beside me back straight one hand out on the handle i couldn t imagine her without it i knew all about her she was another human being and happened to be a hustler i didn t much care if she were there or not after a while she said with sort of an unuttered laugh you have snow in your hair and ears i didn t have on a hat hardly glancing at her i smiled a bleak one which said thanks baby but i d rather be alone she was silent for a while then said why are you so unhappy i m not unhappy i lied staring at the snow she was trying to make a hole in my armor and i didn t want it is it a woman she asked gently she must have seen the ring on my left hand well women and unhappiness go together i observed profoundly adding you can wager your derriere on that ah monsieur it is not my business to wager it this took me so funny i had to look at her i felt my frozen sad face crumble and i grinned a silly one i couldn t have helped i even snorted a chuckle she smiled at me but it was an awfully sad smile she was even more miserable than me her eyes were smiling too but so sadly and there was tiredness and infinite wisdom in them now isn t it better to smile she asked because i liked this sad person so much i said will you have a drink with me i could see the ancient cynicism reinforce itself in her eyes and i wondered how many men she had picked up with this same gambit anyway i pulled a bottle of remy martin out of my topcoat drew the cork and passed it to her i could see she was shocked i m sorry i haven t got a glass i said non non she said taking the bottle not for that be sorry she tilted up and drank and then i drank it s really rotten to drink good cognac like that but i hadn t cared before i wasn t going to lug around a glass there wasn t much light in the blue dark but i could see her well no child this tart she must have been thirty five or even forty i couldn t be sure somehow she was attractive not good looking but self confident and wise so that it made her attractive i liked her and all at once i was glad she was there we finished the bottle i hadn t had a lot out of it earlier not speaking much to each other and we stayed sober i suppose we were cold but we didn t feel it we seemed to be drowsing sadly soberly in the cold cold air while the snow fell then she said allons and we got up and went to my hotel without another word i sensed no stranger in her we undressed and made love with the comfortable acceptance i had once known with valery i decided thirty five was the best estimate of her age she had a funny little scar on her stomach on the left side i think we were very tired for we awoke at the same moment deeply rested surprised to see the late morning sun on the windows which were wet where the rime had melted i felt wonderful the absolute opposite of last night s melancholy my head was clear i was hungry as a wolf and my body felt lean and vital bon jour i said brightly sitting up which pulled the covers to her hips she looked good with her short tousled hair and no make up maybe closer to thirty i thought bon jour she exclaimed smiling j ai faim yeah but breakfast first with a laugh she beat me to the bathroom i called downstairs for food and a toothbrush for her she came out pink from a hot bath and i gave her my robe i had brushed my teeth showered shaved and dressed by the time a waiter wheeled in breakfast the toothbrush monsieur he said presenting it i gave it to the woman what is this for she asked innocently why to brush your teeth but i already have i used yours oh i said with round eyes i wondered if i ought to go use the new one myself but i smelled the coffee and thinking what the hell live dangerously i decided i would scald my worries away the coffee wasn t very hot though made in a filter pot but it was good we sent the waiter away and ate a tremendous amount of cold ham hot hard boiled eggs and hot garlic bread as we ate we talked her name was suzanne and mine stephen we sat back comfortably on the bed with our last cups of coffee you are very tactful do you know stephen she remarked um i grunted sipping yes because you didn t run off to use that new toothbrush i raised my eyes to look at her in the mirror i didn t really use yours she went on i carry one in my purse i know men never kiss les putains to my immense relief she changed the subject in the next sentence shall we go to the louvre today all right i said with enthusiasm at the idea but not immediately i put aside my empty cup she smiled all the way to her wise sad eyes and drained her own we were not rushed what is this from i asked touching the scar on her stomach it was like a long thin line drawn through a pink circle a bullet she answered the cynicism was back in her eyes a bitter wisdom and i wondered if forty were not so far wrong after all she understood sex anyway and played at it well we went to the louvre for a few hours then by metro to a cabaret in montmartre it was a nice place not filled with smoke we had champagne and steamed mussels the sommelier brought the wine first a magnum instead of the bottle i had ordered he must have thought i was a tourist i fixed him with a steely eye and said what s this for i didn t ask for a jeroboam of champagne i thought that was pretty humorous but i didn t laugh two letters had arrived for miss theresa stubblefield she put them in her bag she would not stop to read them in american express as many were doing sitting on benches or leaning against the walls but pushed her way out into the street this was her first day in rome and it was june an enormous sky of the most delicate blue arched overhead in her mind s eye her imagination responding fully almost exhaustingly to these shores peculiar powers of stimulation she saw the city as from above telescoped on its great bare plains that the ruins marked aqueducts and tombs here a cypress there a pine and all around the low blue hills pictures in old latin books returned to her the appian way today the colosseum the arch of constantine she would see them looking just as they had in the books and this would make up a part of her delight moreover nursing various stubblefields her aunt then her mother then her father through their lengthy illnesses everybody could tell you the stubblefields were always sick theresa had had a chance to read quite a lot england france germany switzerland and italy had all been rendered for her time and again and between the prescribed hours of pills and tonics she had conceived a dreamy passion by lamplight to see all these places with her own eyes the very night after her father s funeral she had thought though never admitted to a soul now i can go there s nothing to stop me now so here it was here was italy anyway and terribly noisy in the street the traffic was really frightening cars taxis buses and motorscooters all went plunging at once down the narrow length of it or swerving perilously around a fountain shoals of tourists went by her in national groups english school girls in blue uniforms german boys with cameras attached smartly dressed americans looking in shop windows glad to be alone theresa climbed the splendid outdoor staircase that opened to her left the spanish steps something special was going on here just now the annual display of azalea plants she had heard about it the night before at her hotel it was not yet complete workmen were unloading the potted plants from a truck and placing them in banked rows on the steps above the azaleas were as large as shrubs and their myriad blooms many still tight in the bud ranged in color from purple through fuchsia and rose to the palest pink along with many white ones too marvelous thought theresa climbing in her portly well bred way for she was someone who had learned that if you only move slowly enough you have time to notice everything in rome all over europe she intended to move very slowly indeed halfway up the staircase she stopped and sat down other people were doing it too sitting all along the wide banisters and leaning over the parapets above watching the azaleas mass or just enjoying the sun theresa sat with her letters in her lap breathing mediterranean air the sun warmed her as it seemed to be warming everything perhaps even the underside of stones or the chill insides of churches she loosened her tweed jacket and smoked a cigarette content excited how could you be both at once strange but she was presently she picked up the first of the letters a few moments later her hands were trembling and her brow had contracted with anxiety and dismay of course one of them would have to go and do this poor cousin elec she thought tears rising to sting in the sun but why couldn t he have arranged to live through the summer and how on earth did i ever get this letter anyway she had reason indeed to wonder how the letter had managed to find her her cousin emma carraway had written it in her loose high old lady s script t s carefully crossed but l s inclined to wobble like an old car on the downward slope cousin emma had simply put miss theresa stubblefield rome italy on the envelope had walked up to the post office in tuxapoka alabama and mailed it with as much confidence as if it had been a birthday card to her next door neighbor no return address whatsoever somebody had scrawled american express piazza di spagna across the envelope and now theresa had it all as easily as if she had been the president of the republic or the pope inside were all the things they thought she ought to know concerning the last illness death and burial of cousin alexander carraway cousin emma and cousin elec brother and sister unmarried devoted aging had lived next door to the stubblefields in tuxapoka from time immemorial until the stubblefields had moved to montgomery fifteen years ago two days before he was taken sick cousin elec was out worrying about what too much rain might do to his sweetpeas and cousin elec had always preserved in the top drawer of his secretary a mother of pearl paper knife which theresa had coveted as a child and which he had promised she could have when he died i m supposed to care as much now as then as much here as there she realized with a sigh this letter would have got to me if she hadn t even put rome italy on it she refolded the letter replaced it in its envelope and turned with relief to one from her brother george but alas george when he had written had only just returned from going to tuxapoka to cousin elec s funeral he was full of heavy family reminiscence all the fine old stock was dying out look at the world today his own children had suffered from the weakening of those values which he and theresa had always taken for granted and as for his grandchildren he had one so far still in diapers he shuddered to think that the true meaning of character might never dawn on them at all a life of gentility and principle such as cousin elec had lived had to be known at first hand poor george the only boy the family darling together with her mother both of them tense with worry lest things should somehow go wrong theresa had seen him through the right college into the right fraternity and though pursued by various girls and various mammas of girls safely married to the right sort however much in the early years of that match his wife anne had not seemed to understand poor george could it just be theresa wondered that anne had understood only too well and that george all along was extraordinary only in the degree to which he was dull as for cousin alexander carraway the only thing theresa could remember at the moment about him except his paper knife was that he had had exceptionally long hands and feet and one night about one o clock in the morning the whole stubblefield family had been aroused to go next door at cousin emma s call first papa then mother then theresa and george there they all did their uttermost to help cousin elec get a cramp out of his foot he had hobbled downstairs into the parlor in his agony and was sitting wrapped in his bathrobe on a footstool he held his long clenched foot in both hands and this and his contorted face he was trying heroically not to cry out made him look like a large skinny old monkey they all surrounded him the family circle theresa and george as solemn as if they were watching the cat have kittens and cousin emma running back and forth with a kettle of hot water which she poured steaming into a white enamelled pan can you think of anything to do she kept repeating i hate to call the doctor but if this keeps up i ll just have to can you think of anything to do you might treat it like the hiccups said papa drop a cold key down his back i just hope this happens to you someday said cousin elec who was not at his best poor cousin elec george said he was younger than theresa she remembered looking down and seeing his great round eyes while at the same time she was dimly aware that her mother and father were not unamused poor cousin elec now here they both were still the same george full of round eyed woe and cousin emma in despair theresa shifted to a new page of course george s letter continued there are practical problems to be considered cousin emma is alone in that big old house and won t hear to parting from it robbie and beryl tried their best to persuade her to come and stay with them and anne and i have told her she s more than welcome here but i think she feels that she might be an imposition especially as long as our rosie is still in high school the other possibility is to make arrangements for her to let out one or two of the rooms to some teacher of good family or one of those solitary old ladies that tuxapoka is populated with miss edna whittaker for example but there is more in this than meets the eye a new bathroom would certainly have to be put in the wallpaper in the back bedroom is literally crumbling off theresa skipped a page of details about the house i hope if you have any ideas along these lines you will write me about them i may settle on some makeshift arrangements for the summer and wait until you return in the fall so we can work out together the best i really shouldn t have smoked a cigarette so early in the day thought theresa it always makes me sick i ll start sneezing in a minute sitting on these cold steps she got up standing uncertainly for a moment then moving aside to let go past her talking a group of young men they wore shoes with pointed toes odd to american eyes and narrow trousers and their hair looked unnaturally black and slick yet here they were obviously thought to be handsome and felt themselves to be so just then a man approached her with a tray of cheap cameos parker fountain pens rosaries papal portraits no said theresa no no she said the man did not wish to leave he knew how to spread himself against the borders of the space that had to separate them carrozza rides in the park the colosseum by moonlight he specialized theresa turned away to escape and climbed to a higher landing where the steps divided in two there she walked to the far left and leaned on a vacant section of banister while the vendor picked himself another well dressed american lady carrying a camera and a handsome alligator bag ascending the steps alone was he ever successful theresa wondered the lady with the alligator bag registered interest doubt then indignation at last alarm she cast about as though looking for a policeman this really shouldn t be allowed finally she scurried away up the steps theresa stubblefield still holding the family letters in one hand realized that her whole trip to europe was viewed in family circles as an interlude between cousin elec s death and doing something about cousin emma they were even anne and george probably thinking themselves very considerate in not hinting that she really should cut out one or two countries and come home in august to get cousin emma s house ready before the teachers came to tuxapoka in september of course it wasn t anne and george s fault that one family crisis seemed to follow another and weren t they always emphasizing that they really didn t know what they would do without theresa the trouble is theresa thought that while everything that happens there is supposed to matter supremely nothing here is supposed even to exist they would not care if all of europe were to sink into the ocean tomorrow it never registered with them that i had time to read all of balzac dickens and stendhal while papa was dying not to mention everything in the city library after mother s operation it would have been exactly the same to them if i had read through all twenty six volumes of elsie dinsmore she arranged the letters carefully one on top of the other then with a motion so suddenly violent that she amazed herself she tore them in two signora she became aware that two italian workmen carrying a large azalea pot were standing before her and wanted her to move so that they could begin arranging a new row of the display mi diapiace signora ma insomma oh put it there she indicated a spot a little distance away i knew it as surely as everybody in westfield that lucille was a husband stealer you can t keep that kind of information quiet in a town of only plus and i ve been told that just about every town no matter what its size has its lucille warren just as it has its susan dolan though nobody d ever bothered to tell me that susan dolan that s me they even talked about lucille down at the young christians league where i spent a lot of time in bible classes and helping out with the office work for our foreign mission i never heard my folks talk about her though they were good living religious people and i can truthfully say i never heard them spread any gossip about anybody even if they ever did say anything about people like lucille warren i know they wouldn t have dreamed of saying it in front of me my folks and my faith protected me from things like that and so i was really upset the first time i discovered that my boy friend johnnie was seeing mrs warren i asked him about it one night while we were sitting in his truck i asked him if it was true he gave me a straight honest answer look sue baby he d said much as i love you well a guy s a guy and lucille s willing to to come across honest kitten that s all it is i don t even like lucille much i guess it was at that moment that i realized what i was up against in the person of lucille warren but it didn t seem fair my love for johnnie was young and clean how could i possibly compete with a woman like that who didn t hesitate to use her sex johnnie was a trucker with a small lumber outfit in a town about twenty miles away and he was also pretty good at anything in the carpentry line it was a vivid sharp february morning that johnnie first made his appearance in my back yard bringing some stuff dad had ordered i wasn t in the habit of batting my eyes at delivery men but the moment i saw johnnie i knew he was different he wasn t only different he was it he had an easy masculine grace about him the kind that kids don t have but that i had sometimes admired in other older men his smile was quick and his eyes held some promised secret that made my knees go limp the most unbelievable thing about the chance meeting was that he seemed interested in me too i could hardly believe such good luck was mine and now lucille warren had gotten a look at him i guess she was between affairs or something but anyway she had set her sights on johnnie my johnnie i didn t like it one bit but what could i do a man had to have his release at least that s what the boys used to say in high school and i wasn t providing it for johnnie neither was his wife she wouldn t have even if he d asked her but he wouldn t ask her he wasn t the kind of man who would force his wife to submit to him against her will and he wouldn t leave her either he d told me that he was too honorable to leave his wife penniless and leave those helpless children without their daddy johnnie loved me and wanted me but the only love i was giving him was the pure kind it was weeks before we even kissed for the first time against my folks wishes we d been seeing each other for short rides in the truck the rides were tame enough mostly we talked but by the time the first crackling of spring came around we both knew we were hopelessly in love yet even then we did nothing much but talk and maybe neck a little it s so crazy i told him once i always imagined i would probably end up marrying a minister or somebody like that somebody with no vices you know and you fall for a lumber jockey who drinks far too much and smokes too much and i was ticking off the items on my fingers swears too much and goes out with the boys whoever they are too much and who ever goes to church and won t even listen when i try to persuade him to come back to the fold he examined his nails carefully i could walk out the door don t you dare and never show my face or my truck around here again he still wasn t looking at me you wouldn t or i could visit lucille warren you wouldn t please you wouldn t he shrugged noncommittally i might and now he was seeing her he d just admitted it to me i huddled miserably beside him in the truck it was all my doing his seeing her johnnie and i had been innocent in our love and that was the way i wanted to keep it at first johnnie hadn t understood how could he not being a religious person like me but then he had said all right kid if that s how you want it that s how it ll be but what had i done trying to keep us pure i had driven him into the arms of that scheming woman i had just the same as delivered him into the hands of the devil so one week later i surrendered to him in the little motel on route my very first time i was desperate to hold him to give him whatever in this world he wanted or needed and to keep him from the clutches of lucille warren and though at the time i blushed to admit it even to myself there was in me a growing desire a sexual awareness that johnnie had set in motion an awareness that no other man had ever triggered i wanted him with a terrifying fierceness astonishingly enough it was my own voice i heard there in the darkness begging this man to make love to me love me johnnie i will kitten outside in the summertime fields behind the motel a thousand crickets serenaded us will you always love me this way uh huh always mmm and i snuggled closer to the man i loved it was as blissful and fulfilling a night as any bride ever experienced i had had no wedding ceremony no witnesses no certificate of marriage but i had all the joy that goes with them johnnie it can t be wrong can it not really johnnie rose on one elbow stop worrying it s never wrong if love is real i took great comfort from his words and smiled to myself in the darkness infinite peace complete contentment idiot s delight i later discovered i felt no conflict between what i was doing and my strict religious upbringing i had always resisted the passes made at me by other kids and many times i had thought about my love for johnnie who being thirty brought a maturity to love that the kids around town could know nothing about i had also thought a lot about how god must look on true love and so in a way i was keeping my promise to god my promise to remain pure until i was married i was practically a bride after all there would have been a ceremony if it had been possible of this i had no doubt wouldn t johnnie do practically anything in the world to insure my happiness of course he would he d not only told me so he d proved it it wasn t johnnie s fault that he was hopelessly tied down to that frightful woman who did her best to make his life unbearable just because he was honorable enough to want to continue supporting his two children as any decent man would that was no reason he should be denied his own small share of happiness too and if i could contribute to that i d do it the cost didn t matter no price is too high when true love is at stake and i had no doubts about how true this love was i d never even petted with a boy and after i met johnnie he never touched me for the longest while not until i all but threw myself at him he was plenty attentive all right but he behaved like a gentleman and i figured that emotionally i was closer to his age than to my own eighteen and a half what could a mere twelve years matter it wasn t i was sure a difference in age that came between people but a difference in maturity and hadn t i rescued him from lucille warren she d have gotten him if i hadn t stopped her after all lucille warren was a husband stealer from way back but i d been a good girl and now god was blessing me with the gift of this magnificent man and the wondrous love we shared it was only fitting that we seek out whatever joy our union might bring love me uh huh love you always and always johnnie always mmm convention time in boston a chill wind in the air and the narrow streets packed with snow from the entire eastern half of the nation they d be coming members of the young christians league and i d been chosen to represent our chapter i had mixed emotions about going i d been seeing johnnie almost a year now but i still didn t want to leave him for five whole days but i had looked forward so much to being with this church group i hadn t been doing as much work as i used to in westfield and i felt funny about that and wanted to work harder than ever i wanted to just throw myself into the good works of this fine group so i went to boston the first meeting was held in faneuil hall a great big place where we were able to meet members from all the other states my cousin alma at whose home i was staying during the convention introduced me to a group of young people from rhode island one of them was a very friendly lovely fellow named ronald a boy about my age with slick blond hair and dancing blue eyes he looked very different from johnnie in fact he looked sort of like me i thought so and he mentioned it and alma said so too after the meeting there was going to be a party at someone s house i assumed alma would get me there but in the confusion of the meeting breaking up we were separated outside the hall i anxiously looked around for her then all at once there was a hand on my elbow hey there beautiful twin of mine ronald said need a pumpkin to get to the party i couldn t help laughing with him well i should find alma i began alma schmalma come along with me i went by the time we arrived the party was already going strong a couple of the girls were laughing rather shrilly and i realized they were drinking my folks wouldn t dream of having alcohol in the house so my first taste of it had been of course with johnnie i hadn t liked it at first it was bitter and burning but when johnnie disguised the taste with ginger ale i enjoyed it of course i enjoyed most anything if i did it with johnnie johnnie i suddenly realized he d been totally out of my thoughts all evening but that was only natural i decided surely he was still resting snugly in my heart i don t see alma anywhere i said she s invisible tonight c mon let s find out where they re keeping the glasses i drew back i i don t think so ronald not for me aw come on no really he shrugged okay but at least come along while i get lubricated the kitchen was jammed strange faces most of them and i wasn t even sure all of them had come from the league meeting under normal circumstances he had a certain bright eyed all american boy charm with great appeal for young ladies old ladies and dogs today he looked like an astronaut who had left his vitamin pills on the bureau and spent six months in space hollow eyes hollow cheeks hollow stomach breakfast he thought a shot of orange juice would make everything seem better he looked around his little eden bureau bed table chair two burner stove then he remembered you share a refrigerator mrs kirby had said and somehow at midnight after the long drive from new york in pelting rain that had sounded reasonable in the cold light of day it seemed a lunatic arrangement share bath maybe but share refrigerator she had explained it something about summer people s eating out and not enough space in the units and where was the thing he remembered seeing it last night when he put away his small store of bachelor type eatables ah yes his half of a refrigerator stood outside on the curving veranda between unit number three and unit number four it was still raining and mrs kirby s cottages bloomed through the gray haze like the names they bore vivid blue and green and magenta charlie downed his orange juice and one of the long skinny green pills his spirits as damp as the day this vacation had seemed like a good idea last week when his doctor had prescribed it take a full month the doctor had said lots of sun lots of rest the red pills are a vitamin and iron compound this is a sleeping capsule the others will make you a little more comfortable until you get it licked you young men get to be my age you won t take flu so lightly charlie had accepted the diagnosis without comment the doctor could call it anything from flu to beriberi but charlie knew what was wrong with him and knew too that there was no pill to cure it he had loved and lost vivian wayne to somebody else had watched her marry the somebody else and had caught a bear of a cold by kissing the bride good by forever which was really piling it on he had caught too like an ailment a confirmed distrust of women once burned scalded really because vivian had given him every encouragement forever shy from now on his was going to be a man s world the north woods duck blinds at dawning beer and poker and male secretaries meanwhile he had this miserable cold and as he leaned against the refrigerator watching the rain make sandy puddles at his feet the doctor s prescription for lots of sun seemed like a hollow mockery in these damp circumstances he was an odds on bet to develop pneumonia he looked up to see mrs kirby awesome in a black and yellow polka dotted slicker bearing down on him three day blow she bellowed triumphantly he had noticed before that the natives seemed to regard really filthy weather as a kind of pyhrric victory over the tourists fine day after tomorrow she added i hope so he said i ve got this cold thought i d bake it out in the sun ah she studied him briefly you ve got a peaked look better get in out of the wet charlie forbore to mention that the wet was somewhat universal peony being less than weatherproof as for its being fine day after tomorrow he had the unhappy conviction that it would never be fine again with vivian lost to him forever he could imagine her at this minute honeymooning in nassau with what s his name lounging on golden sands looking forward to a life of unalloyed bliss all charlie could look forward to was a yellow pill at noon a salami sandwich for lunch and a lonely old age if he lived that long he leafed through the light reading provided by mrs kirby for her guests four separate adventures of the bobbsey twins at the seashore at the mountains on the farm and in danger and several agricultural bulletins on the treatment of hoof and mouth disease in cattle hideously illustrated he dozed only to dream of vivian and woke only to crash into the night table bruising his other shin he took a yellow pill only to choke on it and went for the salami only to find something alive in the refrigerator something pink and fuzzy his first thought was that mrs kirby in her mania for color had dyed a cat and that cat had somehow managed to open the refrigerator door and climb in but on further investigation the thing proved to be a sweater of the long hair variety that sheds onto men s jackets pale pale pink and according to the label size thirty four he thought about it for a minute could find no reasonable explanation for the presence of a sweater in the refrigerator got the salami bread and a bermuda onion and put the whole thing out of his mind next morning he found a note in the refrigerator would you mind wrapping your onion said this note the smell permeates everything everything being the sweater a lipstick case and a squirt bottle of kissin kare pink hand lotion the note paper was pink too and the handwriting small and dainty and utterly feminine not that he had supposed considering the evidence that he was sharing this refrigerator with a member of the beach patrol he scrawled sorry across the bottom of the note and then against his better judgment added don t you eat he didn t want to encourage anything here but on the other hand he didn t want her swiping his salami not onions came the answer the following day ugh must have really smelled up her sweater he thought and wondered idly just why she kept the sweater fast frozen but then as he well knew women are not guided by logic or common sense take vivian yes take vivian somebody had now if this were vivian next door to him and if for some obscure female reason she kept her clothes in the refrigerator they would not be pink they would be black or white or horse blanket plaid chic and splashy like vivian herself pink vivian once had told him was for baby girls and grown up girls who wore pink were subconsciously clinging to their infancy why does this girl keep a sweater in the refrigerator he mused aloud eh it was mrs kirby making her toilsome way along the veranda laden with a clattery collection of mops brushes and pails what s that you say oh nothing just glad the rain s stopped oh yes just look at that sky be a scorcher by afternoon i hope so i ve got this cold so you said she scrutinized him my you re peaked you want to watch out that you don t get burned to an ash first sunny day i must remember to warn the girl next to you in larkspur that pale kind s the worst that pale kind charlie thought hardly an inviting description but then neither was peaked he could hear mrs kirby now warning her pale guest against sunburn i spoke to the fellow next door too she might say he s that peaked kind surely there was a better word charlie looked in the mirror run down iron poor he looked more closely frail feeble peaked clearly two damp days with the bobbsey twins had done him no good the sun blazing hot as prophesied was far from kind to mrs kirby s varicolored properties when charlie came up from the beach for his four o clock pill the whole establishment gaudy enough when seen through mist and fog looked like a floodlit modern painting great blocks of dizzy color punctuated at regular intervals by the glaring white of five community refrigerators this weekend he thought he would look around for some more subdued retreat with cape roses maybe at the door he could not imagine a flower s being brave enough to grow beside peony larkspur and the rest the sweater was gone from the refrigerator and in its place was a large plastic bag full of wet pink clothes no wonder she was so pale wearing all those cold clothes he got a red pill and a beer and then on impulse transferred the rest of his salami to her side of the refrigerator and scrawled be my guest on the wrapping it gave him a good feeling m m m thanks was her answer the next day the note was propped against his pill bottles and bore a postscript you re not at all well are you i ve got this cold he wrote not that it was any of her business it s none of my business said the next note but my aunt elsie used to take lemon juice and honey in hot water for a cold and she lived to be ninety six i mean she s still living and she s ninety six why don t you try that i don t have a lemon he had to write very small to get it on the bottom of the scrap of paper by the next morning she had turned the paper over gee neither do i charlie grinned she didn t sound like a pale girl she sounded a little like a redhead but then redheads are often pale he stuck his head in mrs kirby s little rental office i guess that redhead next to me took your advice i haven t seen her on the beach you won t if you re looking for a redhead she s got browny hair he spent that afternoon on the beach looking for a pale browny haired girl in a pink bathing suit there were pink bathing suits on blondes and browny haired girls in red or black or green bathing suits there were a sprinkling of daring bikinis and a preponderance of glorified tank suits up on a dune he saw a girl all by herself sitting on a camp stool before an easel and absorbed in her painting he paid little attention to her because she was a redhead and because she was wearing white one of those bulky turtle neck sweaters on the beach there were pale girls and not so pale girls and he saw them all as he walked up and down at two that morning he was still walking up and down peony up and down the veranda up and down the silent moonlit beach finally in desperation he opened the refrigerator filched her hand lotion and left a note i ve got this sunburn said the note and i used some of your hand lotion hope you don t mind of course i don t mind she answered you re having a miserable time aren t you use all the lotion you want and for goodness sake stay in out of the sun for a couple of days this was a very warm sympathetic girl he decided sympathy is a fine quality in a woman now vivian for instance was not too long on sympathy she felt and said that sympathy only made people feel sorry for themselves it was a tough world and you had to be tough to hold your own he didn t know what was so tough about vivian s world slopping around nassau with what s his name suppose what s his name got a sunburn charlie couldn t see vivian offering any hand lotion she might peel him once the worst of the agony was over charlie spent the next two days in his pajama bottoms waiting for the fire in his back to subside and used generous quantities of the hand lotion correspondence passed back and forth how s your sunburn now the only thing this lotion has glycerin in it and that whitens the skin so if you re so anxious to get a tan you may not want to use it i m not that anxious but maybe that s why you re so fair that mrs kirby i ll bet she told you i was puny too how s your cold broiled out she didn t say you were puny are you what s puny puny goes with pale and peaked do you have anything to read while you re shut up there are two things here about surviving in the wilderness and a book called tom swift and his speedy canoe but the picture of tom swift is pretty sinister also the canoe there was a crowd in the stands for a change and the sun was hot the new riverside pitcher turned out to have an overhand fast ball that took a hop for a few innings the anniston team couldn t figure him out then in the fifth anniston s kid catcher caught onto a curve and smacked the ball into left center field eddie lee riverside s redheaded playing manager ran after the ball but it rolled past him phil rossoff cut over to center from left field to get the relay eddie caught up with the ball near the fence and threw it to phil third third base eddie shouted phil spun around and made an accurate throw into mike deegan s hands on third base mike caught the ball just as the catcher slid into the bag but the anniston boy had begun his slide too late he came into the bag with his body and mike deegan brought the ball down full in his face you bastard the anniston catcher screamed he jumped to his feet and started to throw punches mike deegan tossed his glove away and began to swing at the catcher this brought in everybody from both sides while the spectators stood up and added to the uproar the fighters were separated in a few minutes the game was resumed but mike deegan was boiling mad now when the inning was over he cursed the anniston catcher all the way into the dugout phil rossoff coming in from left field stopped at the water fountain for a drink mike deegan was standing beside it facing the field he was eyeing the anniston catcher warming up his pitcher before the inning began keep your eyes open sonny mike yelled to the catcher you re in for trouble the anniston catcher did not reply with words he simply turned to mike and smiled this so infuriated deegan that he spun around and said i ll get that little bastard so help me god i ll get him phil rossoff said why don t you leave him alone mind your own goddamn business mike deegan said phil shrugged he stepped into the dugout wondering why deegan was always looking for trouble maybe the answer was in his eyes when deegan smiled his eyes never fit in with his lips in the last of the sixth inning mike deegan got up to bat and hit a fast ball over the left fielder s head by the time the fielder got his hands on the ball deegan was rounding third base and heading for home the left fielder threw and it was a good one but mike had no chance of being tagged the anniston catcher was straddling home plate all deegan had to do was slide fall away but instead he rammed into the catcher both fell heavily to the ground only mike got to his feet he went back to touch home plate turned and walked to the dugout without looking back the anniston players and their manager ran out on the field they poured water over their catcher s face he did not move then the manager called for a doctor the riverside physician came down to look over the injured ballplayer then quickly and a little nervously the doctor ordered a couple of ballplayers to carry the catcher into the dressing room mike deegan was sitting on the bench watching when the ballplayers started to carry the catcher off the field he said that ought to teach the sonofabitch phil rossoff seated next to deegan got up and moved to the other end of the bench the anniston manager was coming over to the riverside dugout he was followed by four of his men it began to look as if something was going to happen mike sat quietly watching the manager come nearer eddie lee moved over to mike deegan s side no one said a word the anniston manager came right up to the dugout in front of mike his face was flushed deegan the manager said his voice pitched low quivering that was a rotten thing to do for god s sake mike said waving the manager away stop it will you tell your guys not to block the plate you didn t have to ram him that s what you say the anniston manager looked at eddie lee it was a cold and calculated look he turned and went back across the field to his dugout he called in the pitcher who had been pitching and a big heavy powerfully built right hander moved out to the mound for anniston the game started again and in the eighth inning mike deegan came up to bat everyone in the ball park seemed to be standing and shouting the first ball the hefty pitcher threw came in for mike s head deegan fell into the dirt the ball going over him he arose slowly and brushed himself off he got back into the batter s box and on the next pitch dropped into the dirt again hit the bum somebody yelled from the anniston bench in the riverside dugout frankie ricco shortstop whispered into phil s ear there s gonna be a fight look at those bastards charlie haydon a pitcher said they re looking for trouble mike was slow getting into the box this time when he finally did he had to duck his head quickly away as the pitch came in listen he shouted to the pitcher one more and i m coming out there i ll be waiting the pitcher yelled back mike deegan pounded the rubber plate with the end of his bat he stood flat footed in the box but not very close to the plate now the pitcher wound up and the ball came in straight for mike s head deegan dropped got up turned and holding the bat with both hands up against his chest began to walk slowly out to the mound the pitcher tossed his glove away and came towards mike deegan they were both walking towards each other unhurried riverside and anniston players rushed out on the field in the next moment it seemed the infield was crowded with spectators ballplayers cops kids and a dog there was much shouting and screaming fights sprang up and were quickly squelched mike and the anniston pitcher were pulled away before they even came together phil rossoff and two other riverside players did not go out on the field when the fighting started after the game phil was taking off his sweatshirt in the dressing room when mike deegan came in it s a helluva thing mike said looking at phil when a guy s own team mate won t come out and help him in a fight phil sighed and pulled the wet sweatshirt over his head frankie ricco sat down on the bench near phil the other players were undressing quietly eddie lee had not come in yet mike went over to phil and stood over him why the hell didn t you come out when you saw them gang up on me i didn t think it was necessary well now that s just fine you didn t think it was necessary mike placed both his hands on his hips he pushed his jaw forward listen wise guy if you think i m gonna do all the fighting for this ball club you re crazy mike had a good two inches over phil and phil had to look up into mike s face i didn t ask you to fight for the ball club phil said slowly nobody else did either you trying to say i started the fight i m not trying to say anything phil turned away and opened his locker and then he heard mike deegan say you re yellow rossoff and phil banged his locker door shut and spun around but before anything could happen frankie ricco was between them and eddie lee had come into the dressing room phil come into my office eddie said phil followed eddie into the office and shut the door he sat down before eddie s desk i m doing you a favor eddie said quickly you get your unconditional release as of today phil s eyes widened just a trifle the best thing for you to do eddie said is go home you don t belong in professional baseball phil had to clear his throat is this because of what happened out there no eddie said but it does confirm what i ve suspected all along phil stood up listen this is the second time sit down sit down eddie said i m not saying you re yellow i am saying you re not a professional ballplayer eddie lee leaned forward over the desk now listen to me phil i m not steering you wrong you haven t got the heart for baseball phil shook his head and eddie frowned suddenly his voice grew hard what the hell do you think baseball is you re not in the big leagues but if you can t give and take down here what the hell do you think it ll be like up there phil started to say something but eddie cut him short now don t tell me what a good ball player you are i know you ve got talent but what you haven t got is the heart to back up that talent with the heart phil you just haven t got the heart for pro ball and that s it dazed phil said i don t get it my batting average eddie stood up abruptly then sat down just as abruptly what difference does your batting average make or your fielding average or even the way you run bases i tell you when it s necessary to hurt in order to win you won t do it that s what i mean by no heart for the game baseball s no cinch deegan had no business ramming into that kid out there he did it because he knows for each guy he puts out of commission that s one less who might take his job away later on what the hell do you think baseball is a sport it s a way of life goddamit and you ve got to be ready to cut to ribbons anybody who wants to take your way of life away from you he s wrong phil thought it s only his opinion there were other clubs in this league he stood up slowly he was a little pale and shaky his lips felt glued together i think you re wrong eddie he said finally eddie nodded okay you ll get your pay in the morning phil turned and left the room hearing eddie say someday you ll see i was right phil shut the door behind him outside in the dressing room frankie ricco sat on the bench dressed in his street clothes what happened frankie asked phil said i got my release you crazy phil shrugged what for phil sighed frankie shook his head i don t get it i don t know phil said they were silent for a few moments then frankie said what are you gonna do phil started to take his clothes off and frankie sat down on the bench again phil took off one shoe and stared at it don t take it like this frankie said hell plenty of guys get let out and come back later the leagues are full of guys like that phil was very quiet what are you gonna do phil phil did not answer why not try another club phil looked up what the hell right did eddie have saying a thing like that springfield s in tomorrow frankie said talk to whitey jackson he just didn t know what he was talking about saying a thing like that will you do it phil do what ask whitey for a job phil nodded sure he said springfield come in tomorrow frankie nodded i ll speak to whitey atta boy i ll talk to him all right don t worry frankie said you ll get a job there he needs outfielders bad i m not worried about it phil said that s the way to talk what else did eddie have to say nothing phil said richard s next interest seemed the product of his insularity his broad reading took him into certain by ways of religion and the subject of religion began to fascinate him when he was twelve he took to reading st augustine and aquinas then lao tse confucius mencius suzuki hindu tomes by endless krishnaists and numerous socio archaeological papers for his birthday because richard had seen them in a store and asked for them his mother bought him the zend avesta and a little image of the indian god acala and one day on her own his mother came home with a present entitled the book of the dead which she suspected richard would enjoy he was enormously happy with her gift and smiled then went to his room to read at dinner one night when he was fourteen richard announced there is only one god did you think there were two grinned his father you don t understand richard said gloomily through quiet laughter his mother said don t speak to your father like that richard richard seldom spoke anyhow and he didn t speak to his parents about religion again his interest in the formal study of religion waned when he was sixteen and he substituted for it an interest in asian affairs although he still didn t speak to anyone he grew fond of saying the future lies in asia when the opportunity arose and when he graduated from high school his parents sent him to new york to give him a foundation they said for his life in asian studies richard was a solitary student in new york and acquired in his remoteness a thorough if bookish knowledge of asian lore literature life politics and history he was awarded a fellowship to continue his studies in tokyo and he packed up his clothes the biwa upon which he had been practicing and his image of acala and left to spend a week at home before leaving the country the week at home was not comfortable his mother who had seen little of him for four years appeared worried about his sailing off by himself for an orient which she herself having slight knowledge of it had to be distrusted she seemed to work to grow close to her son in the few days he spent at home talking to him about some of the more pleasant moments of his childhood and then trying to talk to him about those things in which he alone was interested do you still have the book of the dead she asked him and laughing she added i was nervous about buying a book with a title like that but i knew you d like it yes he lied to shorten the conversation i still have it he was no longer able to relax in the presence of his parents and found it difficult to keep up a conversation with his mother or father no matter the subject as for the book of the dead it along with his other books on religion had been incarcerated in a furnace in the basement of the building in which he had lived in new york he had dusted each of the books carefully and carried them all to the basement and trembling at having to open the big furnace given them up to the flames then he sped from the dark basement and returned to his room and cried richard left america with his clothes his biwa and his image of acala and on the freighter which took him to japan he plucked at the biwa trying to make the sounds he wrought resemble an ancient japanese tune he had once heard during his second week at sea he brought the curious melody out of the instrument and suddenly wanted to force the biwa to remain at just that moment in its history when it had given him pleasure he stole from his cabin late that night and crept out into a gusty north pacific wind and dropped the biwa into the water it was so dark that he didn t see it hit the water and the noisy rush of the ocean kept him from hearing it it was as though the biwa had been eaten up by the wind in tokyo richard took up a life similar to that which he had lived in new york except that he had replaced his biwa with a friend an american student named charlotte adams had refused to take notice of his evident aversion to people and had at last succeeded in getting him to talk to her he had nothing much to say to her but that he said anything seemed to please her and he accompanied her on some of her unusually searching tours of tokyo in charlotte richard saw a frankness and a zest for doing things which after a fashion he envied in time he grew to depend upon her occasional company and she at length was able to encourage him to participate in more social activity she convinced him that he ought to be a member of some of the small tea drinking parties she held at her rooms and in the end he complied with her wishes although it was only rarely that he added anything to the random conversations at one such gathering charlotte announced i was at ryusenji today have you ever been to ryusenji no one had well it s at fudomae and there was a tan young man quite naked taking a shower in the pool i was thoroughly startled richard thought it a more promising remark than any made during the last conversation but charlotte s manner during the gatherings was more flippant and superficial than when she was alone with him and he was sure her remark would lead to nothing much better than the pointless words which had preceded it three of the four persons present all foreign students in tokyo had been playing a game of judging popular japanese foods by the in and out system an equation in which zen philosophy was used as the modifier soba udon and tea were in because they could be taken noisily sushi was out because it was pretentious sashimi was in samuel burns had suggested because it was too far out to stay out even if it was a little pretentious richard had kept his eyes down throughout the game the very sound of the chatter nearly painful to his ears he wasn t the least bit disturbed by my watching him said charlotte did you watch him asked a red haired girl named ceecee witter i shouldn t have been able to do that well i was able to do it charlotte said with no sign of irritation for a minute anyhow i m surprised no one has been there i ve been there a number of times sam i thought you knew everything about tokyo you ve never been to ryusenji i ve heard about it samuel burns said there s a little place there called lovers mound dedicated to gompachi and komurasaki yes a little parkish place charlotte said and concluded anyhow it s all very nice and the man who brought sweet potatoes into kanto is buried there next to a beautiful seated statue of fudo oh that s what i meant to tell you this is the interesting part richard she had a bothersome habit of trying to pull him into the talking there was that fellow out there in the bitter cold my god it was cold today said samuel burns twenty two or twenty three and the water would be still colder ceecee seemed to shiver at the thought of it and your golden god said samuel burns probably went right home and poured himself into a boiling bath it would kill one of us but the point is charlotte said there he was freezing naked in a little stream of water at ryusenji all in worship of fudo the god of fire richard s dark eyes came up and seemed for the tiniest moment to reflect sharp light it was true fudo the god of wisdom was also thought of as the japanese version of acala the conversation went on but richard stopped listening he found himself trying to remember something but he couldn t decide even the nature of what it was he worked to recall he had almost given up when he realized that the dropping of his biwa into the icy jowls of the black pacific was the memory for which he had been searching perhaps he sensed some connection between the incident on the freighter and the ascetic at ryusenji he was unable to put it together that night after leaving charlotte s apartment richard walked about for a time before returning to his room when he at last did go to his room he couldn t sleep and instead paced up and down before his little image of acala thinking first of charlotte s tale of the man at ryusenji then of his biwa and the invisible pacific waters and the next morning not sure of why he went he took the train to fudomae and walked to ryusenji he was surprised by the sharp sensation he experienced as he approached the pool which charlotte had mentioned he went through a gate to stand at the edge of the water and gazed at the two thin falls which dropped from large spigots high at the back of the pool on the hillside above was caged what might have been an incarnation of fudo or perhaps a demon the strange creature housed in wire made him shudder the sensation he so overwhelmingly realized was one which told him he had been there before but he knew he had not and could not recall any place he had visited to be likened to the limpid green water or the little fountain falls or the green demon imprisoned beyond his reach he left the pool and climbed the steep stone stairs to the temple and the sense of familiarity with the place would not leave him into a little well before the temple he dropped a hundred yen coin and then he had an urge to sound the bell before the temple to take hold of the rope and crash it against the circle of bronze but the spirit he wished to call out would not he knew come in the person of the temple priest instead he walked around the temple and mounted still another flight of stairs and stood before the seated fudo at their head the black fudo seemed to stare rigidly back at him and richard s eyes were caught by the fudo s in fascination and then richard was shocked as all at once flames shot out from the sharp features of fudo s face and there was a terrible metallic scraping sound as if the large statue were about to burst from some pressure within it then the flames were gone the stillness fell upon the severe black face and richard began to tremble violently suddenly he emptied his pockets of all his coins and dropped them into the box before the seated fudo and hurried back down both stairways and away from the temple never looking back he walked all the miles back to his room he seemed to have picked up a virus that day because the next morning he had a small cough and felt a bit hot he stayed home reading and refusing to think about his frightening experience at ryusenji but the process of refusing to think about it was an active reminder in itself and he couldn t rid himself of a consciousness of it throughout the day the cold lingered making sleep difficult that night and he remained in bed still the next morning now unable to keep from thinking about the inexplicable sight of burning metal the wretched sound the unbearable feeling of having been to a remote tokyo temple at some earlier time in his life all of the elements of the experience were impossible and yet the reality of them was heavy upon him and he resolved never again to visit the temple at fudomae i was thinking of the heat and of water that morning when i was plowing the stubble field far across the hill from the farm buildings it had grown hot early that day and i hoped that the boy my brother s son would soon come across the broad black area of plowed ground carrying the jar of cool water the boy usually was sent out at about that time with the water and he always dragged an old snow fence lath or a stick along to play with he pretended that the lath was a tractor and he would drag it through the dirt and make buzzing tractor sounds with his lips i almost ran over the snake before i could stop the tractor in time i had turned at the corner of the field and i had to look back to raise the plow and then to drop it again into the earth and i was thinking of the boy and the water anyway and when i looked again down the furrow the snake was there it lay half in the furrow and half out and the front wheels had rolled nearly up to it when i put in the clutch the tractor was heavily loaded with the weight of the plow turning the earth and the tractor stopped instantly the snake slid slowly and with great care from the new ridge the plow had made into the furrow and did not go any further i had never liked snakes much i still had that kind of quick panic that i d had as a child whenever i saw one but this snake was clean and bright and very beautiful he was multi colored and graceful and he lay in the furrow and moved his arched and tapered head only so slightly go out of the furrow snake i said but it did not move at all i pulled the throttle of the tractor in and out hoping to frighten him with the noise but the snake only flicked its black forked tongue and faced the huge tractor wheel without fright or concern i let the engine idle then and i got down and went around the wheel and stood beside it my movement did frighten the snake and it raised its head and trailed delicately a couple of feet and stopped again and its tongue was working very rapidly i followed it looking at the brilliant colors on its tubular back the colors clear and sharp and perfect in orange and green and brown diamonds the size of a baby s fist down its back and the diamonds were set one within the other and interlaced with glistening jet black the colors were astonishing clear and bright and it was as if the body held a fire of its own and the colors came through that transparent flesh and skin vivid and alive and warm the eyes were clear and black and the slender body was arched slightly his flat and gracefully tapered head lifted as i looked at him and the black tongue slipped in and out of that solemn mouth you beauty i said i couldn t kill you you are much too beautiful i had killed snakes before when i was younger but there had been no animal like this one and i knew it was unthinkable that an animal such as that should die i picked him up and the length of him arched very carefully and gracefully and only a little wildly and i could feel the coolness of that radiant fire colored body like splendid ice and i knew that he had eaten only recently because there were two whole and solid little lumps in the forepart of him like fieldmice swallowed whole might make the body caressed through my hands like cool satin and my hands usually tanned and dark were pale beside it and i asked it where the fire colors could come from the coolness of that body i lowered him so he would not fall and his body slid out onto the cool newly plowed earth from between my pale hands the snake worked away very slowly and delicately and with a gorgeous kind of dignity and beauty and he carried his head a little above the rolled clods the sharp burning colors of his body stood brilliant and plain against the black soil like a target i felt good and satisfied looking at the snake it shone in its bright diamond color against the sun burned stubble and the crumbled black clods of soil and against the paleness of myself the color and beauty of it were strange and wonderful and somehow alien too in that dry and dusty and uncolored field i got on the tractor again and i had to watch the plow closely because the field was drawn across the long hillside and even in that good soil there was a danger of rocks i had my back to the corner of the triangular field that pointed towards the house the earth was a little heavy and i had to stop once and clean the plowshares because they were not scouring properly and i did not look back towards the place until i had turned the corner and was plowing across the upper line of the large field a long way from where i had stopped because of the snake i saw it all at a glance the boy was there at the lower corner of the field and he was in the plowed earth stamping with ferocity and a kind of frenzied impatience even at that distance with no sound but the sound of the tractor i could tell the fierce mark of brutality on the boy i could see the hunched up shoulders the savage determination the dance of his feet as he ground the snake with his heels and the pirouette of his arms as he whipped at it with the stick stop it i shouted but the lumbering and mighty tractor roared on above anything i could say i stopped the tractor and i shouted down to the boy and i knew he could hear me for the morning was clear and still but he did not even hesitate in that brutal murdering dance it was no use i felt myself tremble thinking of the diamond light of that beauty i had held a few moments before and i wanted to run down there and halt if i could that frenetic pirouette catch the boy in the moment of his savagery and save a glimmer a remnant of that which i remembered but i knew it was already too late i drove the tractor on not looking down there i was afraid to look for fear the evil might still be going on my head began to ache and the fumes of the tractor began to bother my eyes and i hated the job suddenly and i thought there are only moments when one sees beautiful things and these are soon crushed or they vanish i felt the anger mount within me the boy waited at the corner with the jar of water held up to me in his hands and the water had grown bubbly in the heat of the morning i knew the boy well he was eleven and we had done many things together he was a beautiful boy really with finely spun blonde hair and a smooth and still effeminate face and his eyelashes were long and dark and brushlike and his eyes were blue he waited there and he smiled as the tractor came up as he would smile on any other day he was my nephew my brother s son handsome and warm and newly scrubbed with happiness upon his face and his face resembled my brother s and mine as well i saw then too the stake driven straight and hard into the plowed soil through something there where i had been not long before i stopped the tractor and climbed down and the boy came eagerly up to me can i ride around with you he asked as he often did and i had as often let him be on the tractor beside me i looked closely at his eyes and he was already innocent the killing was already forgotten in that clear mind of his no you cannot i said pushing aside the water jar he offered to me i pointed to the splintered upright stake did you do that i asked yes he said eagerly beginning a kind of dance of excitement i killed a snake it was a big one he tried to take my hand to show me why did you kill it snakes are ugly and bad this snake was very beautiful didn t you see how beautiful it was snakes are ugly he said again you saw the colors of it didn t you have you ever seen anything like it around here snakes are ugly and bad and it might have bitten somebody and they would have died you know there are no poisonous snakes in this area this snake could not harm anything they eat chickens sometimes the boy said they are ugly and they eat chickens and i hate snakes you are talking foolishly i said you killed it because you wanted to kill it for no other reason they re ugly and i hate them the boy insisted nobody likes snakes it was beautiful i said half to myself the boy skipped along beside me and he was contented with what he had done the fire of the colors was gone there was a contorted ugliness now the colors of its back were dull and gray looking torn and smashed in and dirty from the boy s shoes the beautifully tapered head so delicate and so cool had been flattened as if in a vise and the forked tongue splayed out of the twisted torn mouth the snake was hideous and i remembered even then the cool bright fire of it only a little while before and i thought perhaps the boy had always seen it dead and hideous like that and had not even stopped to see the beauty of it in its life i wrenched the stake out that the boy had driven through it in the thickest part of its body between the colored diamond crystals i touched it and the coolness the ice feeling was gone and even then it moved a little perhaps a tiny spasm of the dead muscles and i hoped that it was truly dead so that i would not have to kill it and then it moved a little more and i knew the snake was dying and i would have to kill it there the boy stood off a few feet and he had the stake again and he was racing innocently in circles making the buzzing tractor sound with his lips i m sorry i thought to the snake for you were beautiful i took the broken length of it around the tractor and i took one of the wrenches from the tool kit and i struck its head not looking at it to kill it at last for it could never live the boy came around behind me dragging the stake it s a big snake isn t it he said i m going to tell everybody how big a snake i killed don t you see what you have done i said don t you see the difference now it s an ugly terrible snake he said he came up and was going to push at it with his heavy shoes i could see the happiness in the boy s eyes the gleeful brutality don t i said i could have slapped the boy he looked up at me puzzled and he swayed his head from side to side i thought you little brute you nasty selfish little beast with brutality already developed within that brain and in those eyes i wanted to slap his face to wipe forever the insolence and brutal glee from his mouth and i decided then very suddenly what i would do cady didn t come unglued easily but this had not been a day of glad tidings tax worries production worries personnel worries and the letter from hanford college his own alma mater a real snapper hanford realized he had enrolled his son four years ago yes the boy s credentials were in order scholastic transcript character references picture health record successful college boards but due to the many applicants on file would he co operate and write a personal letter giving them his son s motivation interests and his qualifications for leadership cady partlow lit his pipe with no comfort this was it this was the letter which would or would not enroll his son david in hanford his son who had never held an office in any organization in the eighteen years of his life his son who did not know whether he wanted to be doctor lawyer merchant or chief he wondered if he had played it wrong maybe he should have kept in touch gone back for reunions but he had been busy building a business being a big man in his own town just as he had been a big man at hanford class of besides cady partlow knew he wasn t the old grad type it wouldn t help anyway look at pete alcorn who hadn t missed a hanford ball game in fifteen years pete s son was rejected hanford college little ivy league had no room for football players with low grades cady looked at his own son s scholastic record with pride good solid b average with a sprinkling of a s in math and science imagine his son being that good in science mr partlow could still feel a cold sweat on his slightly gray temples as he remembered what a near thing chemistry had been for him at hanford but then he hadn t studied very hard getting elected president of the student body took a lot of time and politicking he put down his pipe and started to type in response to your letter i can in good conscience recommend my son david in the field of leadership he stopped and looked at the picture of his son the picture on his desk which had changed with the years from a laughing baby to a candidate for hanford college he didn t have to be told his son looked like him david had the same gray eyes high cheekbones dark hair and a certain rugged ugliness height weight health excellent he turned back to the typewriter with a little more confidence his interests range from astronomy and geology to electronics tennis and swimming his chief motivation for enrolling at hanford is the desire to mr partlow banged his fist on the keyboard ruining the letter he paced to the window and looked at the city he had helped to build how do you tell a college president that your son doesn t know what he wants to do that you have refused to drive him into the family business or push him into a profession so you can say at the club of course david has known since he was twelve he wanted to be an engineer or a lawyer or an editor how do you tell a college like hanford that your son has a vast potential that he will find himself just give him time give him a chance cady snapped the venetian blind shut and slammed himself down before the typewriter rolled in a fresh sheet and gave his letter the same savage attention he bestowed on a salesman who needed to have the bucket taken off his thick head what a production to make of a letter commending your own son his eyebrow went up in amusement at his soul searching panic he told hanford his son wanted to go into the field of electronics he told hanford his son had participated in numerous high school activities he belonged to a social club a civic group little theater swimming team and had been president of the student forum as well as treasurer of the science club he finished with a flurry of good wishes to hanford college and signed the letter there that did it then he met the grave eyes of his wife anne from the photograph next to david s he shoved the unsealed letter into his coat pocket better show it to anne and see if he had omitted anything after all his wife had written most of his letters for him in those first lean days of partlow products anne had a way with words half of it was natural half was smith college yet the whole of anne was something she had never learned in any college a woman had it or she didn t anne had it she said what she meant and let it be she never got on his back he could take the advice or leave it he whistled as he locked the office and grinned as he got on the elevator you look like you just heard a real gasser mr partlow cady looked at tom who had taken him up and down for fifteen years i was just thinking how things have changed when i went to college they begged you to come be our guest it s our pleasure now you have to be well rounded firm in motivation and pre packed with knowledge tom slid open the door to the lobby that s a fact mr partlow my john applied to six colleges before he got in going to state no he s president of the rocket club here you know always messing around with science stuff real bright along those lines you might say he got a science scholarship to yale oh said mr partlow that s fine tom just fine as he drove home through the thinning traffic cady felt the unease growing he hadn t told anyone but he too had applied to five colleges for david they had all turned down his son weakness in leadership so sorry limited interests so sorry no clear motivation so sorry he suddenly realized when he walked into his own pretty darned expensive house that he needed the martini anne had waiting for him but tonight his drink tasted like branch water and even his favorite meal of steak and tossed salad gave no surcease from the growing weight of the letter in his pocket nor did looking at anne ease the tension as it usually did he liked looking at anne most people did he liked her blond hair and the sprinkle of freckles across her nose from those navy blue eyes she saw things as clearly and honestly as david did she always could sense the shag end of a woolly day board meeting tonight cady no i begged off work to do can i have the car dad why not let him take it cady i know it is midweek but it s only eight days before commencement let s forget the rules cady deep in thought neither heard nor answered david grinned carefully he put down his steak knife and said loudly mr chairman cady partlow s head came up like that of the proverbial fire horse i m sorry dave the car of course you can have it dave ate two pieces of pie as he did everything else slowly methodically and with interest hear anything from hanford yet dad cady begged the question don t worry about it dave your acceptance will come through dave shrugged on his sports coat and picked up the car keys don t be too sure dad charles burke got turned down by dartmouth and he is a straight a student anne said it wasn t surprising because charles was antisocial a lone wolf and completely one sided i can hardly say the same about you dave dave kissed her lightly girls my dear parent are here to stay get my old man to bed early he looks a little bit frayed anne waited until the door had slammed and picked up the coffeepot let s go into the library you do seem somewhat tattered cady trailed her with the coffee cups and settled into his favorite chair in the comfortable book lined room i didn t know i looked so dilapidated wrong word darling your fur has been rubbed the wrong way and you show it need any help in a way yes hanford college hasn t decided on dave s application yet they want a letter from me on his motives interests and leadership here s what i wrote cady handed her the letter drank his coffee and waited with what he suddenly realized was belligerence already he could feel anne s questioning eyes i know you wrote this in a hurry but cady dave was only acting president of the student forum for a few days that was when half the school was down with flu but he was president and he wasn t really elected treasurer of the science club he just took over the week bill daley was in the state basketball play off cady stuck his jaw out the fact remains he was treasurer and the swimming team no cady he made second team just missed the first a team is a team insisted cady anything else yes she said quietly i don t think you ve been quite honest cady it isn t like you david s interests astronomy he was mad about stars at the age of nine geology you and dave used his rock collection for the bottom of the fishpond six years ago those aren t his interests now what do you suggest just say he likes swimming tennis chess and music music he hasn t been to a symphony concert all season anne smiled but he plays bass with chief crazy horse and his five colts you mean that rock and roll combo even in that he never solos like jack on guitar or rich on sax he s he s just there that s all yes he s just there he keeps the beat going he likes to play bass because he doesn t have to solo he doesn t like to rise and shine don t worry cady he ll be back in the beethoven fold by next year cady appeared slightly mollified all right but i refuse to be brutally honest and mention chief crazy horse and his five colts anne laughed and cady felt the tension loosen its grip on the back of his neck maybe i am padding it a bit anne he said but you know how hard it is to get a boy into a good college he has to have leadership as well as grades anne folded the worrisome document did you know he is advertising his ham radio equipment for sale this weekend he hasn t used it now for several years can you really say his motivation for college is electronics cady felt the jolt as though he had stepped off the curb on his heel and what would you say he wants to do just what it s dave who is applying to hanford college why don t you ask him for once cady partlow wished anne would yell at him so he could yell back i have talked to him but you know i ve never tried to push him into any profession i won t be guilty of trying to run his life anne picked up the towel she was hemming for the hospital guild just because your father tried to make a banker out of you you ve leaned over backward to keep your hands off but subconsciously you ve wanted him to conform to your mold you want him to be a leader of men like you cady put the well worn chip back on his shoulder dave has qualities of leadership he just hasn t developed them yet give him time he never will cady not the kind of leadership you mean working with lots of people all your wishful thinking won t change that remember what you used to say in the army you can t run a war with ninety nine generals and one private cady walked the block to the mailbox almost ashamed of himself for arguing with anne martin felt it was incredible that the situation had come to exist at all and once begun had grown to such monstrous proportions the pair of white cotton shorts ruled his life lying awake at night he could see them laid out on the floor of his mind when he rose in the morning the image was still there he had always been a messy and negligent man in his bachelor days his bedroom had been strewn with clothes which his mother or later the hotel maid generally saw fit to put in order no doubt dolores resented following in their footsteps but it was fun those first days kidding about the trail of garments he left littered across the rug there was an assertive maleness in his grinning refusal to pick them up half slyly he enjoyed seeing her stoop to lift the things he remembered the first time he saw her standing across the room at a party the smooth curve of her neck very white against hair which curled against it like petals her hair was the color of those blooms which in seed catalogues are referred to as black but since no flower is actually without color contain always a hint of grape or purple or blue he wanted to draw the broad patina of hair through his fingers searching it slowly for a trace of veining which might reveal its true shade beneath the darkness so he sought her out and spoke to her and thought of his hand in her hair or against her back pressed on the column of vertebrae which held her so magnificently straight and unyielding until the segments of bone made tiny sharp cracking noises like the snapped stem of a tulip but to put it bluntly nothing snapped yet that had not seriously troubled him not then they married more he could take at leisure all martin thought he needed was time to what better use could time be put he saw later that they had made their marriage too quickly there was too little occasion beforehand for resistance the brave strong delights of emotional clash and meeting they had left themselves too much to discover but at the start his new life felt invigorating good it was on the tenth day after the wedding how could it have been so soon that he dropped the shorts on the floor now i m not going to pick up those shorts martin gave her a teasing pat i think you ll get tired of them there in the morning the shorts were where he had left them he smiled to himself and decided not to mention them till dolores did it was almost too easy for he had just remembered tonight they were having their first guests the shorts would not be on the floor when he came home that evening he was wrong the rest of the bedroom had been groomed to a superhuman neatness but in the middle of the carpet lay the disheveled shorts they gave the room a strange note of incongruity like a mole on a beautiful face he saw that dolores intended to wait until the last minute thinking he would get nervous quietly he determined to foil her i can be as stubborn as she can he thought my nerves are as strong she ll rush to the bedroom when the doorbell rings it rang ten minutes early martin was standing a few feet from the front door he swung around eyes toward the bedroom some fifteen feet away dolores stood motionless in the doorway he could not cross the living room brush past her and bend down to retrieve the shorts martin turned his back he strode to answer the bell bill s hat was deposited in the hall closet with the most casual and relaxed manner in the world dolores led anthea to the bedroom martin strained his ears at first he could not be sure then he caught just enough to know that the shorts were still there a glissade of giggles slid over their voices all evening anthea favored him with odd coy looks clearly she had been instructed not to say a word for some reason this ellipsis in the conversation spread until it swallowed up every other topic at last there was a void no one could fill the brainards went home early martin realized later on that he should have had it out with dolores that night as violently as possible but he was so taken aback he could not believe any rage of his would make her give in on the contrary it would only weaken his position if he fumed while she stayed calm and adamant and if he surrendered after raving at her he shivered suppose he ran up the white flag altogether at once he considered the sober possibility in his head was the echo of those titters with anthea there was something about private feminine whisperings which always made him feel scabrous and unclean he remembered his mother gossiping with her neighborhood women friends lowering her voice to a penetrating hoarseness which might be trusted to carry to the head of the stairs where he crouched listening he could even recall the last time he sat there she was talking about him that time because he had done some bad thing something she disliked but afterwards martin said he was sorry he apologized so sweetly i couldn t keep being annoyed with him it wasn t even true that he d said he was sorry that time he had in fact said simply that he wished the thing hadn t happened which was as honest as he could put it but his mother told the story over and over till her martin said he was sorry was as much a part of her as the shape of her thin pallid ears the battle had to be fought let the best sex win but his resolution hardly seemed to help if the situation had been bad it now got worse about this time people began dropping in considering that the newly married had been left alone long enough angrily martin wished they had delayed the wedding and gone on a trip preferably one that lasted months instead of deciding not to postpone the date until he could get away here they were at the mercy of anyone who chose to come by these stray people nearly always insisted on dolores showing them around the apartment of course the tours of inspection included the ever present shorts it was curious how the different visitors took this some tried to ignore the blot on the bedroom s countenance others asked quite a few laughed to them all dolores told a lighthearted and witty tale it s a little contest martin and i have she would begin gaily carrying the anecdote through a frothy and deceptive course while he waited in the living room once martin went along they entered the bedroom and dolores said nothing then one of the guests showed his merriment you were in a hurry weren t you martin would have liked to break the man s neck dolores smiled she let the interpretation stand now martin heard himself give a snort of mock good nature with her eyes dolores dared him for the truth ready to begin it s a little contest never again did he enter into the ritual of showing the apartment they kept up a rigid pretense of speaking relations but martin seldom felt the impulse to talk about anything what to talk about dolores kept picking up any of his clothes except the fatal shorts which he left about but he had been robbed of pleasure in scattering his possessions he fell into the habit of putting his clothes in drawers and closets so his life might impinge as little as possible on hers the shorts alone remained in his moments of worst agony martin imagined what his friends were saying the sound of their amazement bizarre he could hear the word the most bizarre situation we were up to visit them and he had thought her exactly what he wanted six weeks of marriage and i m using the past tense he told himself furiously pursuing his idea he saw that it would be impossible to leave her now everyone would know why he would cut a supremely ridiculous figure he was trapped day and night martin could not drag his mind from the dilemma he had made for himself his mind scurried frantically seeking an exit alternately he had periods of hostile defeatism in which he determined sullenly morosely to live out his life in this fashion nothing would change nothing would ever change when the solution finally came to him one night while he was in bed he was so shaken by its simplicity that he could only wonder why it had not occurred to him before in a frenzy of excitement he considered his plan beside his shorts he would place something of hers instantaneously he would have won an immeasurable moral victory for if she picked up say a pair of her panties she might just as well lift his shorts lying alongside the expenditure of energy was almost the same he felt that it would be a particular humiliation to dolores to pick up her own underwear which he had laid on the floor furthermore he could go on repeating the maneuver endlessly every time he went in the bedroom he could drop a slip or a brassiere or maybe a girdle next to his shorts sooner or later dolores would crack on the other hand if she didn t remove her own things it would be difficult to explain to the parade of guests which traversed the apartment martin guessed that dolores would not be so eager to tell the next installment of her story the tale he thought would become less gay she had used his rumpled shorts as the very image of his childishness his lack of control his general male looseness while she remained cool airy and untouched the charming teacher who disciplined an unruly body to have her underclothes linked with his on the floor would draw her visibly into a struggle both bitter and absurd something in the back of his mind was aware that the magnificence of the plan lay in his faith that the idea would work because he believed in it since his courage and virility were involved because it was truly his the knowledge kept him from analyzing his scheme to death and took him through the last hours of that night in a peace of exalted fanaticism the next morning while dolores was out of the room he went to her bureau drawer took out a pair of nylon lace pants and tenderly dropped them next to his shorts he sat down on the bed in a surprisingly short time dolores appeared to his delight her eyes focused at once upon the two garments slowly and deliberately she reached down and touched the lace with her fingers then hesitated for about a second ah he thought she s going through the chain of reasoning which says she might really just as well pick up my shorts too he saw that in a moment she had grasped all the implications of a plot which had been weeks in occurring to him extending her fingers another inch she caught up the shorts and swiftly left the room she did not look at him but he noticed that her face was flushed and her eyes unsteady they breakfasted together but martin did not refer to his triumph and dolores found a great deal to do in the kitchen bobbing up and down from the table so that talk was impossible well martin thought that ll save he left for work in high spirits as he relaxed that day martin realized how tense he had been these past weeks he found that he no longer hated dolores he knew how much he had hated her and he was surprised at a resurgence of an affectionate feeling good old a z cap said you know i ve got one of your cars at home as a prominent industrialist you ought to be interested in his nibs support group isn t his racket down your alley once it was william thought but not any more a rush of memory swept him back and he forgot cap how did he start on such a ride to brief glory simply enough through the inadvertent agency of his brother in law general hershey s draft and doc eddyman and cap were responsible for his first eminence but fearless freddy bryan could take credit if he cared to and he did for the second time freddy needed a job having been detached from a rather dangerous career in real estate and skyscraper financing by gerry and it was up to arthur willis to provide him with one mr willis bought zenith plastic products a skeleton corporation of sorts which had undergone many vicissitudes and whose principal assets were a couple of electronics plants on long island engaged in working out government contracts and installed freddy in an executive position shortly after freddy had his usual proliferation of bold ideas willis listened patiently and once in a while william was exposed to them at a family gathering he generally heard freddy s suggestions without interest being absorbed by his own prospering concerns probably mr willis was influenced toward deeper involvement by familial loyalty and a concern for his grandchildren gerry began to aid freddy with her father prodded no doubt by joan s open contempt for freddy and william s irritating competency another factor must have been the eventual disposal of willis fortune she unquestionably assumed that the more he was entwined with freddy the more likely he was to reward freddy richly upon his death whatever the reasons willis and bryan started expanding zenith they acquired another electronics factory a specialized ceramics company an organization that built very experimentally high speed research calculators since they were hunting for national defense contracts adam herberet a man of surprising resources entered the combination as a silent partner because of his political connections feeling his power freddy looked for additional worlds to conquer heavy industry slanted toward inexhaustible government coffers attracted him the allstates auto company a medium sized firm which manufactured four wheel drive vehicles and other off road equipment had recently constructed an over large modern plant in a burst of misguided optimism cursed with a shaky management and dissatisfied stockholders it was ripe for amalgamation and freddy s instinct was to keep growing by stock mergers and small expenditure of cash and never mind inevitable consequences with herberet s blessing he was convinced that allstates wisconsin folly would be ideal for conversion to airplane sub assembly tanks missiles or ordnance of some kind at that point william came into the picture although not much desiring the account he had been appointed advertising head of zenith freed of routine by having his own firm and a complaisant partner his work in new york had given him a broader overall knowledge of business administration and corporate structure and if he wasn t entirely committed to what he did he was at least fascinated by the chance of wider opportunities mr willis eager to have him allied with the family wanted advice beyond the confines of his field and william set out on a serious study of the situation including trips to wisconsin and washington in the end he said i m not enchanted by the proposition sir i know a guy named jack hamrick a very bright young engineer who was with chrysler and i took him with me to allstates it s his expert opinion that the plant isn t well suited to what you have in mind the conversion will cost a fortune besides that i m acquainted more or less with the defense hardware situation through my contacts in the air force i think adam herberet is guilty of being too hopeful and better informed on defense financing than on the technical side missiles have thrown everything up for grabs and nobody seems to be sure where we go from here the future of manned aircraft is in doubt which affects government procurement and jet transports have revolutionized the airline trade one jet can take the place of three compound engine planes this means the aircraft companies are going to tear into the government market looking for anything they can get and making the competition tough here are a few facts and figures i ve assembled can t you stay with what you have and wait till the dust settles willis glanced at the bound pages given him and shrugged well he said there is freddy you know and gerry freddy is deeply committed to our plans already he assures me he has people to handle the money raising and ham richert my lawyer says the legal aspects of the wedding of zenith and allstates are no problem i don t like to exhibit the deadly dampening effect of an elderly man s caution yes i appreciate that i wish you wouldn t tell freddy i m lukewarm i ve caused him trouble before and he s beginning to resent me if we don t take care the sisters will be entering the fray on opposite sides brandishing their cudgels which is a frightful prospect bill willis laughed one shouldn t mix commercial affairs with patriarchy but in this case i have no choice let me think about it i m most grateful to you so grateful i wish you were my principal aide instead of freddy not to william s surprise freddy adam and hamilton richert prevailed allied to them was gerry devoting much time to swaying her father and joan dismissed all thought of the project and william was unwilling to interfere further zenith absorbed allstates stock transfers were arranged and freddy became president of the hyphenated combination through jack hamrick william fell into the world of automobile promotion and got several accounts for shoals and clay he forgot about a z till unhappily he and hamrick were proved correct freddy s backing dropped away from him and mr willis was forced to make up the deficit adam beset by changing defense conditions and the open secret that he was part of the new corporation couldn t deliver from his end the wisconsin plant turned out to be a white elephant stock willis held in abundance fell sharply in value confronted by a grim future freddy lost his nerve and plumped for a drastic liquidation once more willis summoned william you were right he said you and your engineer and i m in something of a bind freddy s solution doesn t appeal to me in addition to other defects i m a stubborn man and hate to admit to the common garden variety of bad judgment will you see if you can help me william spent a long week end closeted with hamrick his recent experience in motor car advertising a love for cars of themselves the existence of a z s useless wisconsin set up exposure to exciting conceptions of hamrick s that nobody would buy and the coincidental recent failure of a respected but out dated small car manufacturer called ticonderoga motors had given him an idea of such dimensions he was almost afraid to broach it initially hamrick s reaction to a z going into the passenger car market was discouraging he thought the financing the advertising the production of new models the founding of a nationwide chain of dealerships was simply too difficult then he caught fire if a z could buy ticonderoga cheaply and use their presses and dies and other equipment if william could hit precisely the right promotion note if the money hurdle was not insurmountable they took nearly a month to investigate marshal statistics and put their arguments down in black and white taking hamrick with him william went to mr willis he was surprised and dubious but impressed by the engineer and the report your alternative is breathtaking he said and i m frank in saying a bit mad i wish i was younger and less timid well i can t resolve this myself i ll have to call in the brain trust are you willing to run the gantlet i can t guarantee you a sympathetic audience we ll be in there swinging william said but in a way sir you ve got to decide it yourself you have the controlling interest and the principal expenditure is yours and besides nobody else is going to have the courage if they follow anyone it ll have to be you he paused i should explain there s more here for me than advocating my little dream there s you you mustn t take a fall or publicly back away i hate that you re you re arthur willis forgive the hearts and flowers theme i rather like the music willis replied quietly thank you at the meeting attended by freddy richert herberet and the a z executive staff with mr willis presiding william and hamrick did indeed run the gantlet from shock and incredulity most of the listeners went on to open resistance and animosity oh my god ham richert said a little child shall lead them move over general motors it s absurd bill freddy said from a pale face you re leading dad down the garden path your garden god damn it william said i don t enjoy family quarrels adam said nor crazy relatives we re here to transact business can t we put an end to this arthur hear me out please william begged i m an advertising hustler i admit but i have to get hot once in a larger sphere sure ticonderoga went broke in the low priced market bucking the big three their cars weren t small enough they didn t have the power they were old fashioned they tried to sell em on economy and simple merit we ve arrived at an age for romance and snobbery we ve all been rich and spoiled long enough to hate the machine age look what those little european jobs are doing we ll woo the consumer with a product not bludgeon him with chromed excess length and weight let s make it moonlight and the call of far places and a seduction at reasonable rates ticonderoga folded a few minutes too soon before the tide changed still honest and stupid and the network of dealers the company had is around waiting to be signed up again waiting for us ready made we ve got rid of the steam yachts and georgian houses and the bloated too expensive automobile is next why not come down smartly in the world in a chic fashion with an allstates zenith he swayed them somewhat but the debate raged on financing emerged as the main obstacle mr willis made it evident that he had contributed his maximum nobody will underwrite it i m telling you freddy said i know what i m talking about in that department there s plenty of risk money ham richert added but not for anything this risky all right william said we ll try to swing the deal on that basis if we can t raise the capital we re through nothing has been lost you re up against it anyhow why won t you give me a chance a silence fell heads instinctively turned in willis direction he smiled at william and slowly rubbed his hands together i feel i must answer the question he said since the onus later if any should fall on me i don t relish recriminations spread broadcast outside my family i m not giving you a chance bill but availing myself of your generous offer of assistance good luck to you all the in laws have got to have their day adam said and glared at william and freddy in turn sweat started out on william s forehead whether from relief or disquietude he could not tell across the table hamrick saluted him jubilantly with an encircled thumb and forefinger nobody else showed pleasure spike haired burly red faced decked with horn rimmed glasses and an ivy league suit jack hamrick awaited william at the officers club hello boss he said and grinned i suppose i can never expect to call you general after that washington episode i m afraid not