Hot Night in the City

Trevanian

Hot Night In The City

TO ALEXANDRA

Without whose patience, faith, and inspired insights this book could not have been written

CONTENTS

Hot Night in the City

Minutes of a Village Meeting

Snatch Off Your Cap, Kid!

The Sacking of Miss Plimsoll

How the Animals Got Their Voices

After Hours at Rick's

That Fox-of-a-Beñat

Mrs McGivney's Nickel

Sir Gervais in the Enchanted Forest

Easter Story

The Engine of Fate

The Apple Tree

Hot Night in the City II

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

HOT NIGHT IN THE CITY

There were only three passengers on the last bus from downtown: a man, a woman, and a bum. The slim young man sat alone at the back of the bus because he had an instinctive mistrust of men in uniform, even bus drivers. Unable to sleep because of the heat and a relentless gnawing in the pit of his stomach, he had left the flophouse and deposited his bindle in a bus station locker so he could wander the streets unencumbered. The young woman sat close up behind the driver clutching her handbag to her lap, her knees pressed together and her gaze fixed on the nippled rubber floormat to avoid making eye contact with the old bum who sat across from her, smelling of piss and sweat and waking up with a moist snort each time the bus hit a pothole or lurched to miss one.

An oppressive heat wave had been sapping the city for over a week. Not until after midnight was it cool enough for people to go out and stroll the streets for a breath of air. In the stifling tenements that separated air-conditioned downtown from the breezy suburbs, kids were allowed to sleep out on fire escapes, sprawled on sofa cushions. On the brownstone stoops down below, women in loose cotton house dresses gossiped drowsily while men in damp undershirts sucked beers. At the beginning of the heat wave, people had complained about the weather to total strangers with a grumpy comradeship wrought of shared distress, like during wars or floods or hurricanes. But once the city's brick and steel had absorbed all the heat it could hold and began to exhale its stored-up warmth into the night, the public mood turned sullen and resentful.

The bus crawled through tenement streets that were strangely dark because people left the lights off to keep their apartments cooler, and many streetlights had been broken by bands of kids made miserable and mutinous by the heat. But the interior of the bus was brightly lit, and it made the young man uncomfortable to be moving through dark streets in a glass specimen case with everyone looking at him from out there in the dark. All the bus windows were open to combat the heat, but the breeze was so laden with soot that it was gritty between his teeth, so he reached up and snapped shut the window in front of his seat. An advertising placard in the arch of the roof assured him that he could improve his chances of success by 25%, 50%, 75%... Even More... by Building a Powerful Vocabulary the Amazing Word-Wizard Way! Money Back If Not Totally Delighted! Let Words Unlock Your Buried Inner Potential! My inner potential must be buried pretty goddamn deep, he thought. He'd been on the drift for two years now, ever since he'd brought his participation in the Korean Police Action to an informal end.

The girl at the front tugged the slack cord, and a deformed ding brought the bus to a lurching stop. The young man slipped out through the back accordion doors as the girl thanked the driver and stepped down from the front of the bus. With a swirl of dust and litter, the bus drove off, carrying the snorting drunk into the night.

She walked towards the only unbroken streetlight on the block, tottering a little because she was unaccustomed to high heels. When her ankle buckled, she looked back at the sidewalk with an irritated, accusing frown, as though she had tripped over something. That was when she noticed him.

It occurred to the young man that she might think he was following her, and the last thing he wanted was to frighten her, so he put his hands in his pockets and began to whistle to show that he wasn't trying to sneak up on anybody or anything. It was the theme from The Third Man, a film he had seen six times in one day when he'd gone into a narrow, fleabag movie house one rainy afternoon to get some sleep but, fascinated, had stayed until the theater closed after midnight. He could recite the whole 'cuckoo clock' speech by heart, and in Welles's voice, too.

It was obvious from the rigidity of the girl's back as she increased her pace that his whistling wasn't putting her at ease. And why should it? he asked himself; she probably listened to the eerie tales of The Whistler on the radio. The boy got a real surprise when she reached the streetlight and turned on him. "You better not try anything!" Her voice was reedy with tension. "This is an Italian neighborhood!"

The boy held up his palms in surrender. "Whoa there, ma'am," he said in his moistly toothless Gabby Hayes's voice. "You ain't got no just cause to go chucking a whole passel of I-talians at me." But she didn't find that funny. The streetlight directly overhead turned her eyes into gashes of shadow beneath vivid brows; only the tips of her lashes shone, mascara'd with light. He smiled and said in his stammering Jimmy Stewart voice, "Look, I'm... I'm just terribly sorry if I frightened you, Miss. But I want you to know that I wasn't following you. Well, yes, yes, I was following you, I suppose. But not on purpose! I was just, sort of, well... walking along. Lost in daydreams. Just... just lost in daydreams, that's what I was. Look, why don't I just... just... turn around and go the other way? It's all the same to me, 'cause I'm not going anywhere special. I'm just... you know... sort of drifting along through life."

She still didn't smile, although it was a great Jimmy Stewart, if he did say so himself. She continued to stare at him, frightened, tense; so he made a comic little salute and walked up the street, away from her. Then he turned back. "Excuse me, my little chickadee, but you said something that tickled my cur-i-osity." He dragged out the syllables in the nasal, whining style of W. C. Fields. They were talking across a space of perhaps ten yards, but it was well after midnight and the background growl of downtown traffic was so distant that they could speak in normal tones. "Pray tell me, m'dear. Why did you warn me that this is an I-talian neighborhood. Just what has that—as the ancient philosophers are wont to wonder—got to do with anything?" W. C. Fields tapped the ashes from his imaginary cigar and waited politely for her answer.

She cleared her throat. "Italians aren't like most city people. They have family feelings. If a woman screams, they come running and beat up whoever's bothering her."

"I see," W. C. drawled. "A most laudable custom, I'm sure. But one that would be pretty hard on a fellow unjustly accused of being a mugger, like yours truly." She smiled at the W. C. Fields, so he kept it up. "You are, I take it, a woman of I-talian lineage?"

"No. I live here because it's safer. And cheap."

He chuckled. "You've told me more than you meant to," he said in his own voice... well, the made-up voice he used for everyday.

She frowned, and the steep-angled light filled her forehead wrinkles with shadow. "What do you mean?"

"You've told me that you live alone, and that you don't have much money. Now I wonder if you'd be kind enough to tell me one other thing?"

"What's that?" she asked suspiciously, but already the first spurt of adrenaline was draining away.

"Is there someplace around here where I could get a cup of coffee?"

"Well... there's a White Tower. Four blocks down and one over."

"Thanks." His eyes crinkled into a smile. "You know, this is a strange scene. I mean... really strange. Just picture it. Our heroine descends from a bus, right? She is followed by a young man, lost in vague daydreams. She suddenly turns on him and threatens to Italian him to death. Surprised, bewildered, dumbfounded, nonplussed, and just plain scared, he decides to flee. But curiosity (that notorious cat killer) obliges him to stop, and they chat, separated by yards of sidewalk that he hopes will make her feel safe. While they're talking, he notices how the overhead street lamp glows in her hair and drapes over her shoulders like a shawl of light. ...A shawl of light. But her eyes... her eyes are lost in shadow, so he can't tell what she's thinking, what she feels. The young hero asks directions to a coffee shop, which she obligingly gives him. Now comes the tricky bit of the scene. Does he dare to invite her to have a cup of coffee with him? They could sit in the Whitest of all possible Towers and while away a few hours of this stifling hot night, talking about... well, whatever they want to talk about. Life, for instance, or love, or maybe—I don't know—baseball? Finally the drifter summons the courage to ask her. She hesitates. (Well, come on! What young heroine wouldn't hesitate?) He smiles his most boyish smile. (I'm afraid this is my most boyish smile.) Then the girl— Well, I'm not sure what our heroine would do. What do you think she would do?"

She looked at him, mentally hefting his intent. Then she asked, "Are you an Englishman?"

He smiled at the abrupt non sequitur. "Why do you ask?"

"You sound like Englishmen in the movies."

"No, I'm not English. But then, you're not Italian. So we're even. Well... I'm even. Even-tempered, even-handed, and even given to playing with words. But you? You're not even. You're most definitely odd."

"What do you mean, odd?"

"Oh, come on! Accepting an invitation for coffee with a total stranger is pretty goshdarned odd, if you ask me."

"I didn't say I'd go for coffee with you."

"Not in words maybe, but... say, which way is this White Tower of yours, anyway?"

"Back the way we came."

"Four blocks down and one over, I believe you said."

They walked down the street side by side, but with plenty of space between them, and he kept up a light trickle of small talk, mostly questions about her. She soon warmed to his light, smiling tone because she was lonely and eager to talk to somebody. He learned that she had been in the city only six months, that she had come from a small town upstate, and that she had a job she didn't like all that much. No, she didn't wish she'd stayed in her hometown. Oh sure, she got the blues sometimes, but not bad enough to want to go back there. At the next corner, she turned unexpectedly in the direction of the all-night coffee joint, and their shoulders touched. They both said "Sorry," and they walked on, closer now, but she was careful not to let their shoulders touch again as they approached the White Tower, a block of icy white light in the hot night.

It was pretty full, considering the late hour. The air-conditioning had attracted people driven off the street by the heat. In the booth next to theirs, a young couple fussed over three kids wearing pajamas and unlaced tennis shoes. The baby slept in the woman's arms, its mouth wetly pressed against her shoulder. The other two made slurping noises with straws stuck into glasses of pale tan crushed ice from which the last bit of cola taste had long ago been sucked. Among the refugees from the heat wave, the boy recognized several night people by the way they hunched defensively over the cups of coffee that represented their right to stay there. They were his sort of people: the flotsam that collects in all-night joints; the losers and the lost; those on the drift, and those who'd been beached; nature's predators, nature's prey.

Mugs of coffee between them, the boy and the girl talked; and when their talk waned or their thoughts wandered inward, as sometimes they did, they gazed out onto the empty street lit only by the bright splash from their window. Once he caught her examining his reflection in the glass. Her eyes saw his looking back at her and they flinched away. He hadn't had a real chance to see what she looked like out in the darkness, so he made a quick appraisal of her reflection. She was young and slim, but not pretty. Her face had a bland, peeled look. But her eyes were kind and expressive, and they were set off by long, soft lashes that were her only natural ornament. He was careful not to compliment her on her eyes, however, because saying a girl has nice eyes is an admission she isn't good-looking; it's something like describing a person with no sense of humor as 'sincere', or saying a really dull girl is a 'good listener'. Her shoulder-length hair was curled in at the ends and, with her short bangs, it made a frame that emphasized the blandness of her face. She had gone out that night in a stiff cotton frock with little bows at the shoulders, a full skirt held out by a rustling crinoline, and a matching bolero jacket. There was something odd about her clothes... like she had borrowed them from someone who was not quite her size.

Then it hit him: June Allyson!

Every major film actress had her characteristic makeup, hairdo, and wardrobe that girls imitated, each following the style of her 'favorite movie star': meaning the actress she thought she most closely resembled. For girls with too much face, there was the 'Loretta Young look'; for hard-faced girls, the 'Joan Crawford look'; for skinny-faced girls, there was Ida Lupino; for chubby-faced girls, Mitzi Gaynor or Doris Day; and for terminally plain girls there was always Judy Garland, who had to rely on her cornball, moist-eyed, hitch-in-the-voice earnestness.

This girl's scanty bangs and under-roll hairdo, together with her girl-next-door cotton dress and matching jacket, told him that she had chosen June Allyson as her 'favorite'. He thought it was sad that she'd settled for June Allyson who, with her flat face, shallow eyes, and lisping overbite, was among the plainest of the popular actresses. A real girl-next-door, for crying out loud.

"That's a lovely dress," he said with gravity.

She smiled down at it. "I got all dressed up and went to the movies tonight. I don't know why. I just..." She shrugged.

"A June Allyson movie?" he asked.

"Yes. I'd been waiting to see—" Her eyes widened. "How did you know?"

He slipped into his Bela Lugosi voice. "I know many things, my dear. I have powers beyond those of your ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill, ready-to-wear, off-the-shelf human being."

"No, come on, really. How did you know I went to a June Allyson movie?"

He smiled. "Just a lucky guess." Then he popped back into the Lugosi voice, "Or maybe not! Maybe I was lurking outside the movie house, and I followed you onto the bus, stalking my prey!" He shifted to Lionel Barrymore, all wheezy and avuncular, "Now just you listen to me, young lady! You've got to be careful about letting bad boys pick you up and carry you off to well-lit dens, where they ply you with stimulants... like caffeine."

She laughed. "Well, you're right, anyway. I did go to a June Allyson movie. She's my favorite."

"No kidding?"

"It was Woman's World. Have you seen it?"

"Afraid not."

"Well, there's these three men who are after this swell job, but only one of them can have it. And their wives are trying to help them get it, and..."

"...and June Allyson is the nicest of the wives? A smalltown girl?"

"That's right, and she— Wait a minute! You said you haven't seen it."

"Another lucky guess." Then back into the Lugosi voice. "Or was it? You must never trust bad boys, my dear. They may smile and seem harmless, but underneath...? Churning cauldrons of passion!"

She waved his nonsense away with a flapping motion of her hand: an old-fashioned, small-town, June Allyson gesture. "Why do you call yourself a bad boy?"

"I never said that," he said, suddenly severe.

"Sure, you did. You said it twice."

He stared at her for a moment... then smiled. "Did I really? Well, I guess that makes us a team. I'm the bad one, and you're the odd one. Riffraff, that's what we are. Tell you what: you be riff, and I'll be raff, okay?" Then Amos of Amos 'n' Andy said, "So elucidate me, Missus Riff. What am yo' daily occupational work like?"

She described her work at a JC Penney's where Weaver Overhead Cash Carriers zinged on wires, bringing money and sales slips up to a central nest suspended from the ceiling, and the change came zinging back down to clerks whom the company didn't trust to handle money. She worked up in the cashier's cage, making change and zinging it back down. "...but most of the stores have modernized and gotten rid of their cash carriers."

"And what if your store modernizes and gives up Mr Weaver's thingamajig—"

"Overhead Cash Carrier."

"...Overhead Cash Carrier. What happens to your job then?"

"Oh, by then I'll be a qualified secretary. I'm taking shorthand two nights a week. The Gregg Method? And I'm going to take a typing course as soon as I save up enough money. You know what they say: If you can type and take shorthand, you'll never be out of a job."

"Yeah, they just keep on saying that and saying that. Sometimes I get tired of hearing it. So, I suppose that what with your job and your shorthand classes and all, you don't get out much."

"No, not much. I don't know all that many people. ...No one, really."

"You must miss your folks."

"No."

"Not at all?"

"They're religious and awful strict. With them, everything is sin, sin, sin."

He smiled. "They do a lot of sinning, do they?"

"No, they never sin. Never. But they... I don't know how to describe it. They're always thinking about sin. Always cleansing themselves of it, or strengthening themselves to resist it. I guess you could say they spend all their time not sinning. Sort of like... well, do you remember when we were walking here and I bumped into you and we touched shoulders, then we walked on making sure not to touch again but thinking about it every step of the way? Well, with them it's sort of like that with sinning, if you know what I mean."

"I know exactly what you mean." Actually, he hadn't once thought about their shoulders touching, but to admit that would be unkind. And he admired her simple frankness where other girls would have been coy.

They fell silent for a time, then she emerged from her reverie with a quick breath and said, "What about you?"

"How do I feel about sin?"

"No, I mean, tell me about yourself and your job and all."

"Well... let's see. First off, I have to confess that I don't work in a JC Penney's, and I've never taken a shorthand course in my life. I haven't the time. I'm too busy lurking around movie houses and following girls on buses."

"No, come on! How come you talk with an English accent if you're not English?"

"It's not an English accent. It's what they call 'mid-Atlantic'. And it's totally phony. When I was a drama major in college, I—"

"You've been to college?"

"Only a couple of years. Then the Korean Police Action came along and I—" He shrugged all that away. "No, I'm not English. I just decided to change my voice because I hated it. It was so... New York. Flat, metallic, adenoidal, too little resonance, too much urgency. I wanted to sound like the actors I admired. Welles, Olivier, Maurice Evans. So I took courses in theater speech and I practiced hours and hours in my room, listening to records and imitating them. But it turned out to be a waste of time."

"No it wasn't! I like the way you talk. It's so... cultured. Sort of like Claude Rains or James Mason."

"Oh yes, my dear," he said as Rains, "the phony speech eventually became habitual." He shifted to Mason, which was only a matter of bringing Rains a little further forward into the mask, dropping the note, and adding a touch of aspirate huskiness. "But even with a new voice, I was still the person I was trying not to be. Damned nuisance!" Then he returned to the voice he used for everyday. "For all my correctly placed vowels and sounded terminal consonants, I was still a bad boy running away from... whatever it is we're all supposed to be running away from."

"So you left college to join the army?"

"That's right. But the army... well, they decided to let me out early."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I guess I'm just not the soldier type. Not aggressive enough. Are you cold?" She had been sitting with her arms crossed over her breasts, holding her upper arms in her hands. He reached across the table and touched her arm above the elbow. "You are cold."

"It's this air-conditioning. I don't know why they turn it up so high."

The refugees had been steadily thinning out, and now the family in the booth behind them left, the mother with the wet-mouthed baby in her arms, the father carrying one child and pulling a sleep-dazed little girl along by the hand, her untied shoes clopping on the floor. Soon the place would be empty, except for the night people.

She looked up at the clock above the counter. "Gee, it's after two. I've got work tomorrow." But she didn't rise to leave. He drew a deep sigh and stretched, and his foot touched hers beneath the table. He said, "Excuse me," and she said, "That's all right," and they both looked out the window at the empty street. He watched her eyes refocus to his reflection on the surface of the glass, and he smiled at her.

"What about you?" she asked. "Don't you have to be at work early?"

"No. I don't have what you'd call a steady job. I just drift from city to city. When I need money, I go to the public market before dawn and stand around with the rest of the drifters and winos. Job brokers come in trucks and pick out the youngest and strongest for a day's stoop labor. I almost always get picked, even though I'm not all that hefty. I give the foremen one of my boyish smiles, and they always pick me."

"It's true, you do have a boyish smile."

"And when the boyish smile doesn't work, I fall back on my 'look of intense sincerity'. That's a sure winner. Stoop labor only pays a buck or a buck ten an hour. But still, one thirteen- or fourteen-hour day gives me enough for a couple of days of freedom."

"But there's no future in that."

"What? No future? I've been tricked! They assured me that stoop labor was a sure path to riches, fame, success with the women, and a closer relationship with my personal savior. Gosh, maybe I'd better give it up and take a course in shorthand. The Gregg Method."

He meant to be amusing, but the smile he evoked was so faint and fugitive that he said, "I'm sorry. Look, I wasn't poking fun at you. If I was poking fun at anybody, it was myself. You are absolutely right! There's no future in stoop labor. I've got to start taking life seriously!" He made his eyes crinkle into a smile. "Maybe I'll start next Thursday. How would that be?"

She didn't answer for a time, then said she really had to be getting home.

He nodded. "You want me to walk you? Or do you feel pretty safe in your Italian neighborhood?"

"What about you? Don't you have to get some sleep?"

"They won't let me in. It's too late. So I'll just roam the streets. Cities are interesting just before dawn when everything is quiet, except for the occasional distant siren announcing a fire, or a crime, or a birth—which is a sort of crime, considering the state of the world. There's something haunting about a distant siren. Like when you hear the whistle of a freight train at night, far off down in the valley, and you'd give anything in the world not to be the kind of..." He stopped speaking and his attention turned inward. He seemed to be listening to a distant freight train in his memory.

She cleared her throat softly. "Gee, it must be interesting to travel around on freight trains and see things. Lonely, I suppose. But interesting."

"Yup!" he said in Gary Cooper's lockjaw way. "Real interesting, ma'am. But real lonely, too."

She pushed her coffee mug aside. "I've really got to get some sleep." But she still didn't rise to go. "You said something about not being able to go to bed because they wouldn't let you in. Who won't let you in? Why not?"

"Obviously, you're not au fait with the protocol of your friendly neighborhood flophouse. They're all pretty much the same. You sleep in wire cages that you can lock from the inside to protect your bindle from thieves and your body from men who— They're not exactly homosexuals. Most of them would rather have a woman. Most of them fantasize about women. But..." He shrugged and glanced at her to see if this was embarrassing her. But no. She was listening with a frown of concern, trying to understand with a total absence of coyness that he admired. "The flophouse routine is simple and rigid. You aren't allowed in until ten at night, and by eleven the lights are turned off. Early in the morning, usually five-thirty or six, the alarms go off and you've got half an hour to get out before they clean the place with a fire hose, shooting it through the wire cages. The mattresses are covered with waterproof plastic so they don't get soaked, but they always feel clammy, and the place always smells of urine and Lysol. But the price is right! Four bits a night. A dime extra if you want a shower. Tonight I took a long cold shower, then I lay on my cot, reading a paperback until the lights went out. But it was so hot! The rubberized mattress stuck to my back and made a sort of ripping sound every time I rolled over. And the sweat was stinging my eyes. So finally I decided to get out and wander the streets. But then..." he shifted to a Peter Lorre voice, nasal and lateral with dentalized consonants "...what should I see but June Allyson coming out of a June Allyson movie, so naturally I followed her. You think that was evil of me, don't you, Rick. You don't like me much, do you, Rick." He smiled and returned to his street voice. "And now here I am, talking to a very, very sleepy girl in an almost empty White Tower. Ain't life a gas?"

She shook her head sadly. "Gosh, what a terrible way to live. And for a person who went to college, too."

He let W. C. Fields respond. "That's the way it is out there, my little chickadee. It's not a fit life for man nor beast!"

"You must be lonely."

"Yup," he said. "Sometimes a fella gets lonelier than one of those lonely things you see out there being lonely." Then he suddenly stopped clowning around. "I guess I'm nearly as lonely as a girl who gets all dressed up on the hottest night of the year and goes out to see a movie... all alone."

"Well I... I don't know many people here. And what with my night classes and all..." She shrugged. "Gee, I've really got to get home."

"Right. Let's go."

She glanced again at the clock. "And you're going to walk around until dawn?"

"Yup."

She frowned down into her lap, and her throat mottled with a blush. "You could..." She cleared her throat. "You could stay with me if you want. Just until it gets light, I mean."

He nodded, more to himself than to her.

They stepped out of the cool White Tower into the humid heat of the street. At first, the warmth felt good on their cold skin, but it soon became heavy and sapping. They walked without speaking. By inviting him to her room, she had made a daring and desperate leap into the unknown, and now she was tense and breathless with the danger of it... and the thrill of it.

He looked at her with feeling. 'This is it,' he said to himself. 'She's the one,' and he felt a thrill akin to hers. When he smiled at her, she returned an uncertain, fluttering smile that was both vulnerable and hopeful. There was something coltish in her awkward gait on those high heels, something little-girlish in the sibilant whisper of her stiff crinoline. He drew a long slow breath.

He followed her up three flights of dark, narrow stairs, both of them trying to make their bodies as light as possible because the stairs creaked and they didn't want to wake her landlady. She turned her key in the slack lock, opened the door, and made a gesture for him to go in first. After the dark of the stairwell, the room dazzled and deluded him. The streetlight under which they had first met was just beneath her window, and it cast trapezoidal distortions of the window panes up onto the ceiling, filling the room with slabs of bright light separated by patches of impenetrable shadow. His eyes had difficulty adapting to this disorienting play of dazzle and darkness because the brightness kept his irises too dilated to see into the shadows. The oilcloth cover of a small table was slathered with light, while the iron bed in the corner was bisected diagonally by the shadow of an oversized old wardrobe that consumed too much of the meager space. The only door was the one they had entered through, so he assumed the toilet must be down the hall. The room was an attic that had been converted at minimal cost, and the metal roof above the low ceiling pumped the sun's heat into the small space all day long.

"It's awful hot, I know," she whispered apologetically. Standing there with her back to the window, she was faceless within a dazzling halo of hair, while the light was so strong on his face that it burned out any expression; she wore a mask of shadow; he wore a mask of light.

"I'll open the window so we can get a little breeze," he whispered.

"You can't. It's stuck."

"Jesus."

"Sorry. Would you like a glass of water? If I run it a long time, it gets cold. Well... cool, anyway."

"Do we have to whisper?"

"No, but I..."

"But you don't want your neighbors to know you have someone up here?"

She nodded. "You see, I've never..." She swallowed noisily.

"I understand," He didn't whisper, but he spoke very softly. "Yes, I would like a glass of water, thank you." He sat on the edge of the bed, sunk up to his chest in shadow.

She turned the single tap above a chipped sink and let the water overflow the glass onto her wrist until it got cool. He could tell she was glad to have something to do—or, more exactly, to have something to delay what they were going to do.

The harsh streetlight picked out a two-ring hot plate on the table. Its cord ran up to a dangling overhead light. The bulb had been taken out and replaced by a screw-in socket. He deduced that cooking in the room was forbidden, but she did it anyway to save money. She probably unplugged the hot plate and hid it when she left for work. There was an open workbook and a pad of paper beside the hot plate: the Gregg Method. These everyday objects were abstracted, caricatured, by the brittle streetlight that set their edges aglow but coated them with thick shadow. The room had a shrill, unreal quality that put him in mind of a bright but deserted carnival lot, and something about it made him think of a kid jolting awake from a terrible nightmare to see the shadow of a tree branch dancing insanely on a window shade.

She brought him the glass of water; he thanked her and drank it down; she asked if he would like another; he said he wouldn't, thank you; she told him it wouldn't be any trouble; he said no thanks, and she stood there awkwardly.

"Hey, what's this?" he asked, holding up a glass sphere that his fingers had discovered beneath her pillow where they had been unconsciously searching for that coolness that children seek by turning pillows over and putting their cheek on them.

"That's my snowstorm."

He shook the heavy glass paperweight and held it up into the band of light across the bed to watch the snow swirl around a carrot-nosed snowman. "Your own private snowstorm. A handy thing on a hot night like this!"

"I won it at the county fair when I was a kid. I used my ride money to buy a raffle ticket, and I won third prize. I told my folks I found it at the fairground because they're dead against raffles and bingo games and all kinds of gambling. My snowstorm's the only thing I took with me when I left home. Except my clothes, of course."

"So your snowstorm's your friend, eh? A trusted companion through the trials and tribulations of life."

"I keep it under my pillow, and sometimes at night when I'm feeling real blue I shake it and watch the snow whirl, and it makes me feel safer and more... oh, I don't know." She shrugged.

"Back to your sentry post, loyal snowstorm." He returned the paperweight to beneath her pillow and patted it into place; then he reached up, took her hands, and drew her down to sit beside him.

"Please..." she said in a thin voice. "I'm scared. I really shouldn't of... I mean, I've never..."

He pressed her hands, clammy with fear. "Listen. If you want me to go, I'll just tiptoe down the stairs and slip out. Is that what you want?"

"...No, but... Couldn't we just..."

"You know what I think? I think I'd better go. You're scared, and I wouldn't want to talk you into anything you don't want to do." He rose from the bed.

"No, don't go!" Her voice was tight with the effort to speak softly.

He sat down again, but left a distance between their hips.

For a moment she didn't say anything, just sat there kneading the fingers of her left hand with her right. Then she squeezed them hard. She had come to a decision. She began speaking in a flat tone. "I was sitting at the table, like I do every night. Practicing my shorthand by the light of the street lamp because it's too hot to put on the light. And suddenly I was crying. I just felt so empty and lonely and blue! I wasn't sobbing or anything. The tears just poured out and poured out. I didn't think I had so many tears in me. I was so lonely." Her voice squeaked on the word. "I don't know a soul here in the city. Don't have any friends. Even back home, I never went on a date. My folks wouldn't let me. They said that one thing leads to another. They said boys only want one thing. And I suppose they're right."

"Yes, they are," he said sincerely.

"After a while I stopped crying." She smiled feebly. "I guess I just ran out of tears. I splashed cool water on my face and tried to work at my shorthand some more, but then I just closed the book and said, no! No, I won't just sit here and mope! I'll dress up in my best and go out and find someone. Someone to talk to. Someone to care about me and hold me when I'm feeling blue."

"You decided to go out and just... let yourself be picked up?"

"I didn't think about it that way, but... Yes, I guess so."

"You wanted to make love with a total stranger?"

"No, no. Well... not exactly. You see, I've never..."

She shook her head.

"Shall I tell you something? I knew you were a virgin when I first saw you. Yes, I did. You had that Good Girl look. Like June Allyson. But somehow—don't ask me how—I could tell that the good girl was looking for a bad boy to make love to her. Funny, how I could tell that, eh?"

"But you're wrong. I was just looking for someone to talk to. Someone who might care about me."

"Oh. So you didn't want to make love, is that it?"

"I don't know. Maybe I did. Sort of, anyway. I didn't think it out or anything, I just took my towel and went down to the bathroom and had a long cool bath, then I put on my good dress, and out I went. Just like that."

"...Just like that."

"I took the bus downtown, and I walked around. Boys on street corners looked at me. You know, the way they look at any woman. But none of them... I guess I'm not... I know I'm not pretty or anything..." She paused, half hoping for a contradiction. Then she went on. "They looked at me, but nobody said hello or anything, so..." She shrugged.

"So you decided to go to the movies. Woman's World."

"Yes." Her voice had a minor key fade of failure.

"But hey, wait a minute! You did meet someone! Not much of a someone, maybe. Just your common garden variety drifter. But you talked to him for hours over coffee. And now... here we are."

"Yes, here we are," she echoed. "And I'm afraid."

"Of course you're afraid. That's only natural. It isn't every day that a virgin sits in the dark with a bad boy she hardly knows." She didn't respond, so he pursued. "Even though you're a virgin, I suppose you know about how two people... love, and all?"

"Yes. Well, sort of. Girls used to giggle about it in the school locker room. They talked about how people... did it. I didn't believe them at first."

"I know just what you mean. To a kid, it seems such a silly thing to do. Putting your peeing equipment together. How could that be fun? And when you think of your own folks doing it...! It's enough to gag a maggot, as a folksy old tramp might say."

"The girls at school used to make up terrible stories about... it. Just to see me blush. I was easy to tease because I was shy, and I didn't know anything. My mother never told me anything. Once the girls played this joke on me? They gave me a folded piece of paper and asked me to write down my favorite number, then on the next line my favorite color, then my second favorite color, then—oh, I don't remember all the things; but the last question was whether I bit ice cream cones or licked them. Then they unfolded the paper and read it out loud. And there in my own handwriting I had written how many times a day my boyfriend and I did it, and what the color of his... thing... was when we started and what color it was when we ended, and stuff like that."

"And finally, your confession that you licked it."

She nodded miserably. "I didn't go back to school for the rest of that week, I was so embarrassed. I pretended I was sick. And then I really did get sick. I mean... that's when my periods started."

"But, of course, that couldn't have had anything to do with the girls' teasing."

"Oh, I know that, but still... coming right after and all..."

"Yeah, I understand. Kids can be rotten to one another."

"That was years ago, but I still get tears in my eyes when I think about it."

"Yeah... tears of rage. I have that sometimes. The rage just wells up in me and I blub like a kid."

"You do? Really?"

"Sure. So you saw all those embarrassing things written in your own handwriting, and now you're learning to write in a different way. In shorthand."

She frowned. "That's not why I'm taking shorthand."

"Could be part of it. Psychology is a screwy business. Like me playing all sorts of roles because I don't want to be—" He shrugged. "So you've never made love. Gee. Still, I suppose you've necked with boys. Been caressed and... you know... touched."

"No, never. I've never had a... boyfriend." She said the word in a tone of gentle awe. "Boys never found me attractive in that way." She made a dismissive half-chuckle. "Or in any other way, really. My mom used to say it was a blessing, me being plain. At least my looks wouldn't get me into trouble."

"But you've had dreams about lovemaking. That's only normal."

She didn't answer.

"And I suppose you've made love to yourself."

She didn't speak.

"I mean, you've... you know... played with yourself and caressed yourself. There's nothing more natural."

"My folks wouldn't think it's natural. They'd say it was a sin."

"Well, of course they would. But do you think it's a sin?"

After a moment she said, softly, "...yes."

"But you do it anyway?"

"...yes..."

"Hm-m. Well, that's mostly what our making love would be like. Only I'd be doing... you know... what you do for yourself. I'd be touching you and caressing you and bringing you pleasure. Unless, of course, you don't want me to."

She concentrated on the fingers she was twisting in her lap.

He took her hands and kissed them. They were rough and cold. He lifted her face by her chin and gently kissed her closed lips. They were thin and dry and tasted of cheap lipstick. When he drew back he saw that her eyes were closed, and there was a teardrop in the corner of one, so he shifted to his W. C. Fields voice. "The hardest part, my chickadee, is getting started. If we were already in bed and I was holding your dee-lightful chassis in my vee-rile arms, everything would just happen naturally." Then he changed to a gentle, understanding voice with a smile in it. "I know exactly how you feel. Even with us worldly bad boys it's always awkward. In the beginning."

"It is?"

"Yup. Look, I'll tell you what. Why don't I go stand out in the hall for a few minutes while you slip into bed. Then I'll come back and look around." He donned his Lionel Barrymore voice. "Great land o' Goshen, who's that under those blankets, Dr Kildare? Why, I do believe it's June Allyson. I'd better just slip in and keep her warm. It's my medical duty."

She sniffed the tear back and waved away his nonsense with that flapping gesture of hers.

"I'll be back in a couple of minutes." He made a broad burlesque of shushing her with his finger to his lips as he tiptoed across the room and eased the door open. Out in the dark hall, he took long, slow breaths while he listened at the door. At first he heard nothing. Then there was a sigh. Anticipation? Resignation? The springs of the iron bed twanged softly as she rose. He heard the faucet run. Then there was the rustling of her crinoline underskirt as she stepped out of it. Another silence. Then the soft twang of the bedsprings again.

"This is so..." she sought just the right word to describe the beautiful moment, "...so nice. Lying here like this... talking... being close." He had guided her hand to his soft penis, and she was holding it tentatively, dutifully ('politely' might be more exact) while her mind fondled the words: 'boyfriend... my first boyfriend'. Her hand on his penis was the only place their bodies were in contact because it was so hot. After bringing her to climax first with his hand, then with his tongue, he had lifted his head to find her belly wet with sweat, so he had blown across it gently to cool her. And now they lay side by side, looking up at the splayed shadow of windowpanes cast onto the ceiling by the streetlight.

"That was just wonderful," she said dreamily.

"Hm-m, I could tell it was from the way you moved. And the sounds you made."

"Gosh, I hope the neighbors didn't hear." She pulled her shoulders in and laughed silently into her hand.

"How many times have you...?" She didn't know how to put it.

"Have I what?"

"How many women have you... you know?"

"You really want to know?"

"No, don't tell me!" Then, after a moment, "Yes, tell me. How many?"

"You're my fifth."

"The fifth time you've made love? Or your fifth woman?"

"Both."

"Both? You mean you've made love only five times and each time with a different girl?"

"Exactly, Watson," he said in Basil Rathbone's arch drawl. "Five girls... five times. Curious business, what?"

"Were they like me, your other girlfri— These women?"

He squeezed his temples between his thumb and middle finger to ease the pressure. "No, nothing like you. The first one was when I was in college. She was old. About as old as my mother. I met her in a bar that was off limits to college kids. She was always there, sitting at the end of the bar, drinking gin. Her thick makeup and fake, ritzy voice were sort of a joke. People called her 'the Countess'. We drank and she talked about when she was a young woman in high society, and how all the men used to be crazy about her, but they were not of her social standing—crap like that. The bar closed, and we went walking down along the railroad tracks. I was pretty drunk. I suppose I thought we were going to her place. She had trouble keeping her balance because the ground was rough and broken. She fell against me, and I caught her, and she kissed me, a big wet kiss, and I laid her back on a muddy bank. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my introduction to the splendors of romance! That night I quit college and joined the army to defend American Democracy and apple pie against the menace of International Communism and borscht. After basic training, I was given leave before being shipped over to Korea. It was Christmas, and I took a bus to Flagstaff, Arizona. Why Flagstaff? I had to go somewhere, and Flagstaff counts as somewhere... well, nearly. Not far from the bus station, I saw a girl in this all-night coffee joint, and from all the way across the street I could tell she was lonely. I have an instinct for loneliness."

"Like you could tell I was lonely?" she said softly into the dark.

He was silent for a moment. "Yeah, like I could tell you were lonely. Well, I joked with this girl, talking in one actor's voice after another, and the next thing you know we were walking towards her place. She was an Indian, and an orphan, and lonely, and just about as far as you can get from pretty, and... Well, anyway." He pressed his thumb into his temple, hard. "I decided not to return to the army. That meant I had to go on the drift. Casual pick-up jobs here and there, following the fruit crops north, flophouses, stoop labor, freight trains. Then there was this woman in Waco, a born-again fanatic who wanted to save me. And later a black hooker in Cleveland who'd been beaten up by her pimp. I couldn't kiss her while we made love because she had a split lip. And that's it. My total love life. Not much of a Romeo. But then, people don't like to get mixed up with someone like me. Damaged boys end up damaging other people. You understand what I'm saying?"

"Sort of. Well... no, not really."

They were silent for a time, then she said, "I thought it was going to hurt, but it didn't."

He tugged himself from his tangled thoughts. "What?"

"When we... you know. The girls at school said it hurts the first time, and you bleed."

"Well, we didn't do the part that hurts."

"Yes, I know. Didn't you... don't you want to?"

"Do you want me to hurt you?"

"No. No, of course not, but, I want you to have... you know... pleasure. I wish I knew how to..." She shrugged. "I'll do whatever you want." She snuggled her hot body to his and whispered into his ear. "How can I make you feel good? Tell me. Please."

He was silent.

"I'll do anything."

He chuckled. "Lick me like an ice cream cone?"

He felt her tense up, so he quickly said, "I'm sorry, I was just joking. No, there's nothing I want you to do. There's nothing you can do."

"What do you mean?"

"I suppose you've seen drawings on bathroom walls in school. Do you remember what the men's penises looked like?"

She shook her head.

"Oh, come on now. Of course you remember. Describe them to me."

"Well... in the drawings they're always huge. As big as arms. And sometimes there are drops of sap squirting out of them."

"Sap?" He laughed. "Sap?"

"Well, whatever it is. The stuff that makes— Oh, I see! You were afraid I'd have a baby. That was why you didn't..." She hugged him.

"No, that wasn't why. I didn't do the part that might hurt you because I... can't."

"You can't?"

"My penis can't get erect."

"Oh." Then, after a longish silence: "Were you hurt? Wounded or something?"

"No, I wasn't wounded." Then, after a moment: "But yes, I was hurt."

"I don't understand."

He drew a sigh. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go.

"When I was a kid (actually, it started when I was a baby) my mother used to... she used to play with me. Mostly with her mouth. That's the earliest thing in my memory, her playing with me. Of course I didn't know there was anything wrong with it. I thought it was just the way things are with mothers and their little boys... Kissing and cuddling and all that. Then one night she told me that I must never, never tell anyone what she did, because if I told, then mean people would come and spank me hard and put me into a deep, dark hole forever and ever. That's when I realized that we were doing something wrong. And being a kid, I naturally thought that it was my fault somehow. I used to have nightmares about being thrown into that deep, dark hole, and I..." He stopped short and shook his head.

"You don't have to tell me about it if you don't want to," she whispered.

"No, I want to. In fact, I have to, because that's the only way..." He shrugged, then he took several calming breaths before telling the shared darkness above them the things he needed her to know. "While my mother licked and sucked me, she would play with herself, and after a while she'd moan and squirm, and she'd suck faster and harder, and sometimes it would hurt, and I'd whine and tell her that it hurt, but she'd keep on until she was gasping and crying out! Then she'd lie back on the bed panting, and I'd be cold down there where I was all spitty with her licking and sucking. And sometimes it hurt real bad. Inside."

"Your mother...! She was crazy."

"Yup. She was always drunk when she did it. To this day, the smell of gin reminds me of being a little kid, and I can feel the pain inside, behind my penis."

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry." She slipped her hand away from his soft penis, as though to avoid hurting him more.

"Then, when I was about five or six—I don't know exactly how old, but I hadn't started school yet—she was playing with me this night, tickling and sucking, and suddenly she lifted her head and smirked—I can still see the smirk—and she said, 'Well, well! Aren't you the naughty little boy! You want it, don't you, you bad, bad boy?' You see, my penis had got stiff. That can happen, even when a boy is too young to... well, too young to know what's happening. And from that night on, for the next couple of years, she'd make me stiff, and that would drive her wild, and she'd suck me hard while she played with herself, and she'd say I was a bad boy because I wanted it. I wouldn't get stiff if I didn't want it, she'd say, and she'd suck me until it hurt down in my testicles. Then this one night... this one night the hurt didn't go away after she stopped. It got worse and worse. And the next morning I couldn't go to school because it hurt so bad. She told me it was nothing. The pain would go away pretty soon. But I could tell she was scared. She said that if anyone found out what we did, they'd put me in that deep black hole and leave me there forever and ever. And everyone would know it was all my fault, because I got stiff, and that meant I wanted it, and they'd know I was a naughty, bad boy. By the time night came, my side was swollen and I had a fever. All night long I tossed in my bed with pain. The next morning, I found myself all alone in the house. My mother had gone. I had to pee real bad, but I couldn't because it hurt too much. I was afraid I was going to die. So I called the emergency number I found on the back of the phone book. It was the first time I ever used a phone. An ambulance came and took me to the hospital. I had ruptures. Two ruptures. There was an operation, and they kept me in the hospital for a long time. When I was feeling better, a social worker visited me in the children's ward. They couldn't find my mother anywhere. She'd run away. Abandoned me."

She turned onto her side and looked at his profile. He could feel her eyes on him, could feel the weight of her pity, and it felt good. "What about your father?" she asked. "Why didn't he stop your mother from... Why didn't he do something?"

"There was no father."

"Oh." After a silence, she asked, "Did you tell the doctors what your mother had done to you?"

He shook his head.

"Why not?"

"Because I didn't want to get her into trouble. After all... she was my mom." His jaw muscles worked, and she could hear the grinding of his teeth.

"It isn't fair!" she said.

"No, ma'am, it's not," his Gary Cooper voice agreed. "Not even a little bit fair." Then his own voice continued, "The doctor told the social worker that I had damaged myself by masturbating, and she told me I'd done a terrible thing and I would hurt myself badly if I didn't stop."

"So... what happened then?"

"They put me into an orphanage run by Catholic brothers. I got long lectures about how sinful masturbation was, and my earlobes would burn with embarrassment... and rage... at the injustice of it. Kids have a painfully keen sense of injustice. The brothers made me take cold showers, even in winter. They said it would keep me from abusing myself. The cold showers gave me an ear infection that put me back in the hospital, and that was the end of the cold showers. But not of the lectures." He fell silent, and he lightly rubbed his stomach to quell the gnawing. Then he used his Bela Lugosi voice. "And there you have it, my dear. The bloodcurdling tale of... The Limp Penis!"

"I'm awful sorry."

Something in the depth of the silence outside told him they had reached that last dead hour before dawn. He'd have to leave soon.

"You must have been a real smart kid. I mean, you got into college and all." She was determined to find a silver lining in all his troubles: a Hollywood happy ending.

"Yes, I was smart. A bad boy, but a smart one. But I quit college and joined the army. Then I quit the army to become a full-time drifter."

"But a person can't just quit the army, can they?"

"Oh, the army wasn't all that happy about my taking off. They're out there looking for me even as we lie here, sharing secrets."

"Aren't you afraid they'll catch you?"

"I'm afraid of all sorts of things."

She drew a sympathetic sigh and said, "Gosh."

"Gosh, indeed. While I was in the army, I sort of went wild this one night. I ended up sobbing and screaming and beating up this Coke machine. I might have gotten away with it if it had been a Pepsi machine, but Coca-Cola is America, and beating one up is a matter for the UnAmerican Activities Committee, so they put me in the hospital. The loony bin. This doctor told me..." he slipped into his Groucho Marx voice "...Your problem isn't physical, son. It's psychological. That'll be ten million dollars. Cash. We don't take checks. For that matter, we don't take Poles or Yugoslavs either."

"And now you can't feel any pleasure? Like the kind you made me feel?"

"Yes, I can feel pleasure. And sometimes I need it very badly. But it's not easy for me to get pleasure. It's difficult and... sort of complicated."

"Is there anything I can do? To help you, I mean?" Her voice was thin and so sincere.

"Do you really want to help me?"

"I do. Honest and truly, I do."

"Cross your heart and hope to die?" He sighed and closed his eyes. "All right." He sat up on the edge of the bed. "You scoot over here and turn your back to me. And I'll bring myself pleasure. Is that all right?"

She slid over to the edge of the bed, awkward and uncertain. "Will it hurt me?"

"Yes," he told her softly. "But not for long."

She was silent.

"Is that all right? The hurt and all?" he asked. "I won't do it, if you don't want me to."

She swallowed and answered in a small voice, "No, it's all right."

He reached down and trickled his fingers up her spine to the nape of her neck and up into her hair. She hummed, and he felt her skin get goose-bumpy with thrill. His hands slipped under her hair and he stroked the sides of her neck up to the ears, then he reached around and gently cradled her throat between his hands. She swallowed, and he felt the cartilage of her windpipe ripple beneath his fingers. He bared his teeth and he closed his eyes and squeezed, and pleasure overwhelmed him.

After covering her with the sheet carefully, tenderly, he sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at the distorted trapezoid of bright light on the ceiling. In her struggle, she had clawed her pillow away, revealing her snowstorm paperweight. He held it up to the light and shook it, and the snow swirled around the carrot-nosed snowman... black snow in silhouette, and a black snowman. When his breathing returned to normal, he went to the sink and washed himself off. He looked back at the bed and was overwhelmed with pity for her. She had been so trusting... so vulnerable. The gnawing within him was gone, maybe forever. Maybe he'd never again have to...

But he knew better. It had eventually come back after each of the others, and it would come back after June Allyson.

He dressed and tiptoed down the creaking stairs and out into the empty street where the predawn air was damp and almost cool. He walked slowly back towards downtown, hands in pockets. He would go to the public market and pick up a day's stoop labor, then he'd get his bindle from the bus station and hit the freight yards to catch a boxcar. Maybe the West Coast this time.

Over the city, the first milky tints of dawn began to thin the sky, and the morning air already felt stale and dusty in his nostrils.

It was going to be another scorcher.

MINUTES OF A VILLAGE MEETING

Ours is a small village in the Basque province of Xiberoa perched on a hillside above the sparkling Uhaitz-handia, which floods the low pastures each spring, making the earth rich again. We are neither rich nor poor; God provides enough for those who work hard and tend their flocks closely, but He protects us from the temptations of wealth by giving us land that is not excessively bountiful.

Without meaning to brag, I can say that we celebrate three traditional Basque festivals each year, while our neighboring village of Licq celebrates only one, and that only because they want to attract people to their cheese fair run by greedy merchants in direct competition to our own cheese fair, which offers far better—but enough! This is neither the time nor the place to reveal the low greed of those grasping Licquois, nor do I intend to condemn them for letting their ancient Basque traditions wither and drop away, for I understand that the old ways are easily forgotten by those who cozy up to tourists from Paris and Bordeaux, and listen to the outlander's French-speaking radio, and end up desiring his modern machines and his comforts. But the people of my upland village are sustained by those ancient fêtes and customs that have marked the joys and tragedies of Basque life since before Roland broke the mountain with his sword not so many kilometers from this very spot. (It was we Basques, you know, who thrashed that proud Roland at Roncesvalles—ancestors of mine, perhaps.)

We of Xiberoa are considered to be backwards and old-fashioned by those coastal Basque who live in the shadow of the outlander. Our accent is imitated to make jokes funnier, and occasionally people come from as far away as Paris to photograph our lera carts yoked to the horns of the russet oxen of Urt and piled high with the dried fern we harvest from the hillsides for animal bedding. Because we are the last people in all of France to use wooden wheels, outsiders smile on us and say that we are charming and quaint, but they shake their heads and tell us that we must inevitably change with the changing world and march to the ragtime rhythms of Paris. And perhaps this is so. Surely things are changing, even here. We are slowly becoming a village of children and old people, as our young women go to work in the espadrille manufactories of Mauléon, or go off to Paris to become maids, and our young men go to the New World to tend rich men's flocks; and they come back only at feast times, the young men riding automobiles that have radios inside of them, and the young women wearing skirts that show the bottom half of their legs.

Well, enough about the village. Perhaps it is old-fashioned, as they say, but any chance for rapid change is ruled out by our cumbersome old Basque style of government: village meetings in which every person may say his piece before he votes, even those who have only a light vote. Not all people have the same vote in our village meetings: some have heavier votes and some lighter; it depends on how much land you have inherited and how well you have done with it. We are told that in the lowlands all people are equal under the law. This seems very foolish, for any man with eyes in his head can see that men are not equal. The role of the law should be to assure equality amongst equals, and to make it possible for someone to become more equal if he works hard and has God's luck with him. Perhaps our way of seeing things is flawed, but we like it because it is our own way and, as the old saying has it, txori bak-hoitzari eder bere ohantzea.* And as the wise old Basque saying tells us: Old sayings are wise.

*Each bird finds his own nest beautiful.

We don't exactly 'make laws' at our village meetings; what we do is come to understandings that are written up in the minutes. And these minutes are sometimes very complicated, because we take every consideration into account and leave no loopholes that might tempt men to do things for which the village would have to ostracize them. Ostracism is a powerful penalty here, for it extends to the offender's wife, who will not be allowed to share the succulent bits of gossip that are exchanged every Tuesday down at the village lavoir where the women laugh and chat to the rhythmic splat of their wooden paddles spanking the laundry clean. A wife thus deprived of the sauce and spice of village life will make a many-faceted hell of the life of the offending husband. In this way, the wife becomes the stick for beating the man; but ancient Basque justice does not allow the ostracism to be extended to the children, for that would be unfair. Wives select their husbands, but children do not choose their parents.

What I want to tell you about is the minutes of a village meeting we held a few years ago, just before the Great War took seven of our young men away to the army, three of whom went on to God, while one came back strange in his head from the gas, and one who left as Zabala-the-Handsome came back as Zabala-One-Leg. I want to show you how careful and clever is our thinking about things—not from pride, which is a sin, but to make a record of ourselves, because I am beginning to accept that the old way of things must pass and, without a record, our grandchildren are doomed to slip into the world of the outlander where, as you know, all people are exactly alike.

But you could not understand the minutes of this meeting unless you knew something about the Widow Jaureguiberry, now gone to God, but at that time still amongst us. So first I will tell you about the Widow Jaureguiberry.

Each day the Widow Jaureguiberry would drive her small flock of sheep from our village to Etchebar, the next village up. And each evening she would drive them back. Now, tradition requires that the shepherd lead the flock so that the beasts will not stray into other people's fields. He is not permitted to follow the flock and allow it to blunder into other people's fields and fatten on their grass. Exception is made in the case of a sudden storm catching the shepherd out, and obliging him to drive his sheep into a field to keep them from wandering. This exception is not easily abused, for everyone knows if the bad weather could have been anticipated by looking for the signs in the sky. All mountain Basques are born with the ability to read the sky, although some are beginning to lose it by listening to forecasts on the radio.

The Widow Jaureguiberry always followed her flock, and her sheep were forever straying into the fields of others and eating their grass, while the widow limped after them shouting and seeming to be at her wits' end, as she managed to scatter the sheep from one pasture to the next. And she would visit each house in turn to chant her prolonged, whining apologies to the owner of the field, complaining about how hard it was to have her house in our village but to have to drive her sheep back and forth each day, because her pasture was up in Etchebar. And all the time the old woman was explaining this, her sheep were eating your grass!

Of course, God makes fools only in the Béarn, and everybody in our village knew that the Widow Jaureguiberry had no fields of her own, neither in our commune nor up in Etchebar. Her husband had not been a good peasant; he had been a dreamer and a drinker, and he had lost all his land before God invited him into His fold by letting a thunderbolt hit him during a storm in the high mountain pastures. His childless wife was left with nothing but the good will of old Aramburu, the wine merchant who had taken their land, one glassful at a time. And so it came to pass that the Widow Jaureguiberry was obliged to sustain herself by allowing her few sheep to feed on the grass of others. But she was fair about it; she let her sheep stray longer into the pastures of the richer peasants, and controlled them so that they bypassed the land of the poor. (Which proves that, in reality, she was as good a shepherd as you or I.)

You see, the Widow Jaureguiberry was a proud Basque woman who could not humble herself to request assistance from the commune. To do so would be to admit that her husband had not been a good provider—which, of course, he had not, but that was her own business, and not the world's. Also there was the matter of shaming her dead father, who had made the unfortunate match for her. She had found a way to live off the commune without appearing to do so. We all knew what she was doing, and everyone was a little proud of her Basque ingenuity. Everybody, that is, except the Colonel, who had fought the Prussians in '70, and who was the richest man in our village and therefore the stingiest, for God punishes the stingy by exposing them to the temptations of wealth, just as He protects the generous by keeping them in the safe haven of poverty—as the ancient Basque saying assures us.

All right then, that is all you need to know about Widow Jaureguiberry to understand the minutes of our village meeting. More would be prying.

The men of the village met at old Aramburu's, the wine merchant, who received us because wine is drunk at these affairs, to strengthen the wit and liberate the tongue. The problem before us was this: it was necessary to put a new roof on the infant-school, for the rain leaked through, and the teacher who came up from Licq three days each week said she would no longer come if the roof was not repaired. Of course, the men of the village would do the work themselves. We would make a fête of it and have a good time. But the tiles must be bought with money, so we decided to levy a small tax on ourselves for the purpose. It would be so many francs per hectare of land owned.

Fine. It would not cost too much, and we could never have lived down the shame of losing our infant-school, particularly as we had recently witnessed the humiliation of the people of Etchebar, who had been forced to close down their church because the priest said he could no longer come and say an additional mass every week for a mere handful of communicants. It was a sad day when two of their young men scaled the church tower to take the hands off the clock that would no longer be running. But this was necessary. They could not allow God's clock to deceive by giving the wrong time.

After this, the pious of Etchebar were obliged to trudge all the way down to our church each Sunday, and over little glasses after mass, some of us tended to commiserate with them rather more than was necessary about how humiliating it must be to live in a village so pitiable and insignificant that it didn't even have a church. So the closure of our school would mean a painful loss of face for us and a cheap laugh for them, for their infant-school, although sparsely attended, was at least watertight.

So the agreement to do the work ourselves and to purchase the tiles by levying a small tax on our land was easily arrived at... perhaps three glasses around, with old Aramburu keeping tab on his slate. Of course there were complaints from the Colonel, who was rich and stingy and who had no children and was unlikely ever to have, as he was no longer strong with women. And there was some grumbling about the Ibar family, which had very little land to tax, but which nevertheless gave God a baby every year, and the village had to school them. But such complications are to be expected. As the old saying has it: Nothing is completely fair but the Last Judgement... so much the worse for us.

It all seemed sufficiently clear-cut that we could draw up the ruling minutes in just a few hours of close reasoning and arguing.

But then someone thought of the Widow Jaureguiberry! "But wait! The widow will either have to pay her share, or she will have to admit publicly that she has no land of her own. And that would shame her!"

"But she is too poor to pay! She lives on nothing but cheese and prayer!"

"Bof!" said the Colonel. "What shame will there be? She knows that we know that she has no land!" The Colonel was bitter about the Widow Jaureguiberry because she always allowed her sheep to linger longest in his fields, as he was the richest of us all.

"Of course she knows that we know. That is not the point! The point is that no one has ever said it aloud! The shame of such things comes with admitting them, as any fool would know, if he were not so stingy that he pisses vinegar—no offence intended to anyone here, ex-army officer or otherwise."

"Oh my, oh my, oh my," said old Aramburu, rubbing his palms together. "I'm afraid this is a puzzle that will have to be untangled over several little glasses, if we are to get the wording of the minutes just right."

And so, for the next three hours, there was sharp and probing debate in the home of the wine merchant. Although as a creator of pastorales I am known to have a great fondness for words, and perhaps even a certain gift in that direction (I do not brag of this, lest God numb my tongue and dry up my mind), it was the oldest man of the village who was chosen to take down the minutes. It made my hands itch to see how he constantly wet the lead of his stubby pencil with his tongue as he labored clumsily over his smudged sheet, his body hunched over the table, his face not twenty centimeters from the paper, scratching out and rephrasing, scratching out and rephrasing, while the rest of us took turns speaking our minds and offering new and more precise wording.

And this is how the minutes finally read:

MINUTES OF THE MEETING ABOUT THE NEW ROOF ON THE ECOLE MATERNELLE

It is resolved and agreed that from each farm—or from each man if there are two or more adult men living on one farm (and by 'adult' is meant over eighteen years of age, or already married, or both) but exception is made for anyone who is hoping to be admitted to study medicine at the university next year and who needs every centime his family can save for that purpose—but not excepting him if it turns out that he is not received at the university because sometimes he plays pelote against the church wall when he should be cudgeling his brains over his books—and also excepting any man who became one of God's 'innocents' when he was struck in the head by a ball in 1881, after crushing all opposition for eight straight years at the annual jai alai competitions in Mauléon, bringing great glory to our village (should there be such a person); and also excepting any old tramp who lives in the loft of someone's barn and eats only bread and onions, and who wanders about the roads in all weather, muttering to himself (and this is definitely not a reference to anyone named Beñat, no matter how much it might seem to be)—but each and every other farm will contribute twenty-three francs per hectare (or part thereof). And the number of hectares owned by a person will not be based on what he or she claims for the purpose of his or her taxes, but rather upon his or her estimate of his land the last time he or she tried to borrow against it, and in one case upon how much land he told the potential father-in-law he had when he was trying to marry off his daughter to this trusting man's son—if any such person there be. (Note: it is understood that the Eliçabe family takes exception to this last part because they consider it to be dangerously close to slander and will fight anyone who intended it to be so, particularly Bernard Irouleguy, who proposed the phrasing in the first place.)

However, if any person happens to own fields in some other village (such as Etchebar, to cite but one example), then that person (or these persons, whoever they might be) will not have to pay the general levy, because this council cannot find a way to make them (or her) pay without incurring the shame of seeming to ask Etchebar to contribute to our infant-school. And anyway, such persons probably do not have any children in school because of her (or his) age.

But if any person (ex-officer or other) decides to buy a bit of land in Etchebar to escape paying his share, then this exception does not apply to him, so he might as well forget it.

Signed by the Undersigned 11th day of March, 1911

SNATCH OFF YOUR CAP, KID!

When did I get started with the carnivals?

Well, it was the summer of 1934, and down in the Kansas/Oklahoma dust bowl it was hotter than a Methodist's vision of hell, almost as dry as one of their sermons. The dust rising off those dirt farm roads would make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth till you couldn't work up enough mouth water to swallow, let alone spit.

The Great Depression had America by the throat and it was squeezing. Everywhere up and down this blessed republic you could see men plodding along dirt farm roads, the heel-chewed cuffs of their overalls dragging up little dust eddies. It sometimes seemed that the whole country was on the move. Some were looking for work—any kind of work—but most had been on the road for months and no longer hoped to find work; they were just looking for a new place to be miserable in. Sort of like the way you toss and turn on a hot mattress.

Earlier on, back in '30 or '31, when people still had reserves of spunk left over from the good old days, local wiseacres down at the feed store would plunge their fists into the pockets of their overalls until their elbows were straight and say, "You mark my words, boys, this fine young country of ours is going to lick this depression. Yessir! It'll kick Mr Depression in the ass so hard he'll have to eat his dinner standing up at the sideboard! Pretty soon, all the Gloomy Guses who run around bitching about not being able to find work will be busier'n the official fart-catcher at a Baptist baked bean social!"

But months stretched into years, and still there was no work. Dust storms came and blew farms away; and a man's kids would look up at him with big eyes when there wasn't enough to eat; and most people couldn't remember the last time they'd laughed.

Early in the depression, carnivals and circuses and medicine shows had done lively business for the same reasons that movies showing slick-talking rich people with white telephones and tuxedos were popular: because the people were hungry for dreams. They wanted to be told that the best things in life were free, and that you could find million-dollar babies in five-and-ten-cent stores; they needed to believe that you could get something for nothing, because nothing was how much they had in their jeans. Every hayseed from Rubeville to Hicksburg wanted to forget his troubles for a while and lose himself in the blare and glare of the midway, in the oom-pah-pah of the jenny organ and the mind-numbing gabble of the pitchmen. He wanted to show off his skill to the little lady by spilling wooden milk bottles and winning a ten-cent Kewpie doll with a buck's worth of battered baseballs. But as the months and years passed without things getting any better, it was no good telling the rubes that the only thing they had to fear was fear itself, because they were scared stiff. Fear was sucking their hopes dry, leaving their spirits too brittle to bounce back. Pretty soon pickings got so slim that even rinky-dink three-truck carnivals began to offer free entrance to the shows. The rubes would shuffle around the midway, licking the rides and games with their eyes, but holding on to their nickels so tight that little drops of piss ran down the buffalo's leg. The wheels and the jennies would turn all day long under the hot sun, empty, and the guy ballyhooing the girlie show would find himself talking to a handful of kids and a couple of old geezers who'd ask wise-assed questions, then cackle and nudge one another as though they'd been around and there was no fooling them.

But no matter how bad things got, the true carnie never lost his inborn sense of superiority to any mark: the gullible local townspeople whom he viewed as an undifferentiated wad of humanity whose only purpose in Life's Great Plan was to ride the rides, gawk at the shows, lose money at the games, and gobble down cotton candy, candied apples, and all the rest of the punk junk. Oh, sure, a carnie might be down on his luck; he might not have had a square meal for three days or a bath for a week; and he might be forced to play in a stubble field to a thin trickle of rubes from East Yokelburg; but he was still a carnie, and he knew that the lowest carnie was the superior of the richest, most successful mark. Well just consider: Did you ever see a carnie play a bucket game? Or bet on a G'd wheel? Or go double-or-nothing on a roll-down? Or lose his last five-spot on three-card monty? Of course not! But marks do it all the time. All the time! What was the Crash of '29 but a bunch of marks losing their asses on some fancy-assed version of the bucket game? Eh? Well, there you are.

The difference between the mark and the carnie is as simple as it is profound. No matter how bad things get, the carnie is 'with it'. While, no matter how rich or famous or powerful the mark may become, he isn't 'with it', and couldn't be, and will never be. End of story.

I first learned about the essential superiority of the carnie over the mark from an old-timer who called himself Dirty-Shirt Red—not that he was redheaded or that his shirt was more than ordinarily dirty. I was thirteen, and I'd run away from a correctional home they'd put me into as punishment for running away from the foster home they'd put me into for running away from home. I was walking the railroad ties north when I overtook Dirty-Shirt Red, who had left the Bumpkinburg where he'd wintered over, pearl-diving in a greasy spoon, and was planning to snag the Jonah J. Jones Greater Shows as it made its swing west from the red dirt country of western Tennessee. As I overtook him, I put my head down and picked up my pace so as to pass him with no more than a grunt and a quick nod because kids on the drift soon learn to give wide berth to old men. But he laughed and said something funny, and I could tell right off that he wasn't that kind, so we fell into step and started talking. He told me he knew the country we were passing through like the palm of his hand because he'd played it with carnivals more times than a tall yellow sow's got teats. I asked him what he did in the carnival.

"Everything and anything, kid, and a bunch of other stuff, too. In my golden youth, I was a ten-in-one. You know what that is?"

I didn't.

"A ten-in-one is a one-man sideshow, a real boon for a small carnival trying to make believe it's worth going to. Oh, I could do it all. I could eat a little fire, swallow some sword, walk barefoot up your ladder of razor-sharp Cossack sabres, and juggle flaming torches while recounting the shocking mating rituals of the Fiji Islanders in word and gesture (men only, and not until midnight, to avoid inflaming young imaginations—I'm sure you understand, gentlemen). I could do magic, sleight of hand, and prestidigitation while reading the Declaration of Independence off a pinhead where it was engraved in letters so small that the marks I sold the pins to couldn't even see it—but I assured them they they'd be able to read it word for word when they got home and put the pin under a magnifying glass. (That's a last-night-in-town sort of sting, kid. You want to give them a whole year to cool off before they see you again.) Oh yeah, I did the whole scam. 'Course, I'm a little old for all that now, but I'm still worth my bed, brew, and beans. I can run a jenny, front a bottle shop, tell fortunes, belly a wheel, and sell my share of candy-candy-apple with your caramel-caramel-corn. I am what you call your genuine all-round carnie, born and bred, taught and trained, guaranteed not to rust, bust, corrode, or explode. The only original patented version. Beware of imitations."

Well, one thing was sure: he could talk. And, impressionable kid that I was, I'd have given anything to have that swinging, chanting, gabble of his: talk that was meant, not to inform, but to numb and mystify. I didn't know it, but from that moment on, I was a carnie at heart. And maybe Dirty-Shirt Red recognized this because when we had gone on for a couple of hours with that tiring not-quite-a-full-stride pace of men walking on railroad ties, he turned to me and said, "Jeet?"

"What?"

" 'Jeet' is Carnie for, have you eaten. It's the way carnies greet one another, because the state of your stomach is what matters most when you've been on the drift. So one carnie says to another, Jeet? And the other says, no or yes, whichever's the case, then he goes on with his meeting-people patter, too proud to make a point of being hungry and broke, but knowing that if he says, no, the other carnie'll rustle him up some grub first thing. So, Jeet, kid?"

"Not today, no, sir."

"That's not what you say! Don't you listen when I talk? Am I just farting into the wind, here? You got to blend that no in and slide smoothly on: something like no, but Lord-love-a-duck, it sure is hot. Why, a man could fry an egg on the sidewalk... and you go on with your meeting-folks patter. Just to say a naked no, then stand there with your teeth in your mouth would be too humbling for a carnie. Get it? So let's try again: Jeet?"

"No, and I sure could use a couple of those eggs you're frying on that sidewalk."

Dirty-Shirt Red laughed. "You're all right, kid. You got some sass in your ass, and that's what it takes in this world, where there're only two kinds of people, the carnies and the marks: them that takes, and them that gets took. Well, you'll be glad to hear that there's an easy mark of a widow lady at a farm up the line a bit. She ought to be good for a meal, if she hasn't curled up and died, or been dragged off to the loony bin, or done some other thing that would render her unheedful of the needs of her fellowman."

After about an hour, a dirt road bent in from the east and ran alongside the railroad until it came to the gate of a small farm: just an unpainted house and barn and a couple of sagging outbuildings. Dirty-Shirt Red stopped and wiped out the sweat band of his battered old hat. Then he pointed at one of the creosote-smelling telegraph poles that followed the tracks. "See there?"

Someone had scratched the pole with a big X and put a small x between the top arms of the big one. "Know what that means, kid?"

I didn't.

"That's a 'bo sign meaning this place is a soft touch. The little x at the top says you can get grub here. If it'd been at the bottom, that woulda meant you could sleep in the barn or somewhere. You're going to have to learn a little 'bo, if you want to follow the carnivals, 'cause life ain't always cherries and cream. Sometimes it's just the pits and the curds, and that's when you might have to live like a 'bo for a little while."

"A 'bo?"

"A hobo."

"Oh."

"So!" He took up a sharp piece of crushed stone from the ballast and gouged three deep lines through the X, then underneath he scratched what looked like a stubby arrowhead. "There! Now let's go see what the widow's got for us, kid!"

As we walked up the dusty road to the gate, I asked what his scratching on the pole was all about.

"Those lines passing through the X tell passing 'bo's that things have changed and this is no longer an easy touch. The blast sign—the thing that looks sort of like a backwards arrowhead?—that means that someone here has a shotgun and uses it."

I stopped in my tracks.

"No sweat, kid! This widow lady is a born-again, lifelong do-gooder from deepest Dogoodville. She wouldn't know one end of a shotgun from the other."

"Yeah, but—"

"I scratched that stuff over the 'bo sign to put them off the track. This great republic of ours is in a depression, in case you hadn't noticed, kid. The last thing a fella needs is competition for handouts."

"Yeah, but—"

"Yeah but's ass. Now you and me know about a soft touch that others don't know about. That puts us one up. A good carnie is always one up, 'cause if you ain't one up, kid, you're one down. Now when we get there, you just smile. Don't say a word. I'll size things up and play our cards; you just follow suit. And above all, don't help me! Last thing I need is some kid trumping my aces. You got a hat in your bindle?"

"I got an old cap."

"Put it on."

"But it's hot!"

"I ain't running no debating society here. Just do what I say."

I pulled my cap out of my bindle and crammed it onto my head, muttering, "I don't see why I gotta put my cap on."

"You gotta put it on so's you can take it off!" he told me, stressing each word like he was talking to a dimwit. "Women like kids who are nice and polite. Especially widow ladies. Now, let's go."

A big yellow-fanged dog came running out to bark and scratch at the gate and snarl through its slats, making my stomach tingle the way it does when you look down from a high place. Dirty-Shirt Red stayed on our side of the fence, but he smiled and talked to the dog in a cooing voice, calling it nice fella, nice fella and saying, "You really know how to bark, don't you, old fella?" then saying under his breath, "I'd like to kick his hairy ass into next Wednesday for him." Then aloud, "There's a nice fella! Yes, there's a nice fella!"

A gray-haired woman came around the side of the house and shouted, "Hugo?" and instantly the dog's menace dissolved into a slack, moist grin with a slippery tongue hanging out the side of its mouth and lots of whimpering and whining for attention. "No need to get scared," the old woman said when she got to the gate. "There ain't a peck of mischief in a bushel of him."

"I could tell that right off, ma'am," Dirty-Shirt said, peeling off his battered hat and elbowing me in the same motion. "But you mustn't scold him for barking, ma'am, because that's his job, and he's only doing it to protect his mistress. Ain't you, big fella? Yes, you are. Yes, you are! Fact is, ma'am, I just love dogs. It may be a weakness in my makeup, but there it is." He elbowed me again, hard, and I dragged my cap off. "Yessireebob, I've had dogs since I was knee-high to a grass snake, and I'd have one still if I wasn't on the road and didn't have any proper way to care for it."

"Say, wait a minute," the lady asked. "Don't I recognize you? Haven't you been at my gate before?"

"Gosh, I'm afraid I haven't, ma'am. This is the first time me and my boy's been in this neck of the woods."

"This your boy?" She looked at me, and I just smiled.

"Yes, ma'am," Dirty-Shirt said. "He ain't much, but he's mine."

"Looking for work, are you?" Her voice still had a certain measuring tone to it.

"That's right, ma'am. Back home, there's no work to be had for love nor money. We're hoping to find something up North."

"Just the two of you, is it?"

Dirty-Shirt's smile suddenly collapsed. He looked down at his shoes and in a thin, dry voice he said, "Yes, ma'am, there's just the two of us now. After the drought and the dust had done their worst, then the fever come along and..." But he couldn't go on. He covered his face with his hand, pushing his finger and thumb into his eye sockets until there were tears. Then he sniffed and wiped them away. "My woman was always sort of frail, and I guess she just didn't have the strength to go on, so she..." He didn't have the strength to go on, either. But he sniffed and made a brave, if pale, smile. "I'm hoping to make a new start up North. For the boy's sake."

The woman looked down at me with compassion melting in her eyes. I frowned and looked at the ground.

"Fact is, ma'am," Dirty-Shirt continued, "I was hoping your husband might have some work I could do to earn dinner for the boy and me. Now, before you say anything, I want you to know that if you don't have any honest work that needs being done, or if things are so hard that you really can't spare a couple of meals, I'd understand completely because that's just how things was with me and Maudie before she..." He couldn't go on.

"I'm a widow woman," she told us. "So of course there's always plenty of man's work that wants being done."

"True. I noticed there's a pile of wood yonder that needs stacking."

"That's right. A couple of tramps came by yesterday, and I give them each a po'boy to split that wood for me. But they left without stacking it."

"Those tramps are all the same, ain't they? We was forever being pestered by them back on the farm before..." He stopped again, but pulled himself together with a shake. "Now, I know as well as you do that most of these 'Knights of the Road' are nothing but bums looking for handouts, and trying to avoid honest work. But nevertheless I always used to give them whatever I could spare because, like our parson once said, you never know but what one of them might be honest-to-God down on his luck, and it would be a crying shame to turn that one hungry man away, even if all the rest of them is just no account bums. I've never forgotten those words of wisdom and guidance."

"Well, you might as well come into the yard. Today's baking day, so there's fresh bread. I can make you a couple of po'boys out of cold chicken and whatever else I find. I hope that'll do you."

"That'll do us just fine, ma'am. Down, Hugo! Ain't it cute the way he sticks his nose just about everywhere, the little... rascal?"

The widow led us to the pile of split wood and left us there while she went into the house to make the sandwiches. As soon as she was out of earshot, Dirty-Shirt told me in a quick whisper, "Now you just sit over there by the pump and press your hand to the middle of your chest, like this. See? When she comes back, you smile and smile, but don't you say a word."

"But why—"

"Why's ass. Just do what I say."

I perched on the edge of a wooden watering trough next to the pump, feeling stupid with my hand pressed against my chest like that, while Dirty-Shirt selected a small stick of wood from the stack and brought it over to the woodpile, walking slowly and stopping a couple of times to suck air in with long, painful inhalations, then push it out with breaths that puffed his cheeks.

He had managed to move three pieces to the woodpile, and he was resting, cradling the fourth in his arms like a baby, when the widow came out with a short plank on which there were two half-loaf po'boys, chock-full of chicken and tomatoes and greens, and two big glasses of milk, cool and frothy from the spring house. She gave one of each to me, and I smiled at her without a word, just like I'd been told.

"Didn't your ma teach you to say 'thank you', boy?" she asked in a tone more joshing than pestering.

I smiled even broader.

"He's a good boy," Dirty-Shirt called from the woodpile as he hoisted the split piece up onto the top with some effort, then stood leaning on the pile to catch his breath. "Yes, ma'am, he's a good boy, and a kind-hearted one, but he's a little..." He made a vague gesture towards his head and shrugged.

"O-oh," the widow said in a melting voice. "Well, that's all right, then. You just sit there and enjoy your sandwich. And when you're done, you can help your pa."

I was so embarrassed I could have kicked Dirty-Shirt in the shins. Instead, I smiled even more broadly—just like an idiot should—and I took a huge bite from my po'boy that squirted stuff out the back, and that made me even more embarrassed.

"I'm afraid I can't let the boy help me," Dirty-Shirt said as he came over to take his sandwich and glass of milk. "But don't you worry none. I'll do work enough for the two of us... soon as I finish this dee-lish-ious feast you've prepared with your own two—Get down, Hugo!—God bless it! Sure is a healthy, active dog you've got there, ma'am."

"I was watching you out the window while I was making the po'boys," the widow told him.

"That was very neighbourly of you, ma'am."

"Didn't seem to me you was moving around any too frisky. I think your boy'd better give you a hand."

"I just can't let him do that, ma'am," he muffled through a mouthful of bread and chicken and greens. "It's his heart, you see."

I set my glass down and pressed my hand against my chest.

"But don't you worry," Dirty-Shirt continued. "I'll do the work of two men."

"It ain't often you hear tell of a child with a weak heart," the widow said.

"That is so true, ma'am. So true. It's a rare congenital form of subacute bacterial endocarditis. But please don't let my doctor talk bamboozle you. The only reason I know the medical term is because... well, I suffer from the malady myself. Have ever since I was a kid. It's hereditary. Thankfully, it ain't a quick killer... so long as you don't tax yourself none."

"But... how on earth did you ever run a farm with your subacute bactra—what it is?"

"Slowly, ma'am. Real slowly. And maybe that's why there wasn't enough put aside to care for my Maudie when the fever came and she..." He couldn't finish. I mean he couldn't finish what he was saying. He finished his po'boy and milk just fine. And seconds on the milk. But the widow wouldn't let him finish stacking the wood, no matter how much he begged her not to shame him by treating him like some shiftless bum because he was eager to give a fair day's work for a fair day's— "Is that apple pie I smell?"

"Happens it is. Like I said, this is baking day."

"Now you listen to me, ma'am, and don't you dare argue with me!" he said, shaking his finger at her. "There is nothing in this world that could make me accept a slice of that apple pie; not after eating your delicious sandwiches without properly earning them. But there is something I would accept, but only after telling you that here comes what you might call the sting. What I will accept—and the only thing I'll accept—is your permission for me to stand here for a minute and get my fill of that splendid aroma of cinnamon and apple all steaming and fresh from the oven. There is nothing in this whole wide world that so brings back memories of my beloved Maudie." And he leaned towards the smell coming from the open kitchen window, his eyes closed and a sweet smile on his lips as he sort of hung on the air by his nose.

Unwilling to intrude upon his silent memories, the widow turned her pitying eyes towards me, so I set my milk down again, put my hand to my chest, and smiled sort of thinly.

Ten minutes later, we were walking up the tracks, Dirty-Shirt Red carefully carrying half a pie wrapped in a newspaper, and the dog following along, criss-crossing close behind our heels. "You trip me and make me smash this pie, Hugo," Dirty-Shirt warned him, "and you'll get my boot so far up your ass you'll be able to taste the leather!"

As soon as we were out of sight of the widow's farm, Dirty-Shirt shied the dog back home with chucks of ballast, then we continued along, quickly falling into the not-quite-a-full-step gait of the tie walker.

I could tell he was pretty pleased with himself. Me, I felt ashamed, and I told him so. "It wouldn't of done us any harm to stack that lady's wood for her."

"Harm's ass. Harm don't come into it. It's a matter of principle. The dumbest mark in the world can earn a sandwich. But to score one without working... that takes a carnie. And the sign of your top-flight carnie was the way I scored those toppings."

"Toppings?"

"That's 'Bo for desserts and sweet things, the stuff you top up on. Your ordinary run-of-the-mill carnie would of been content with just the sandwiches, particularly as she'd just about recognized me from the last time I came through and scored off'n her. I hope you noticed how when I conned that old mark out of the apple pie, I had the sass and grit to advertise the sting right out front, telling her I was about to do her down. Now that's as sweet as it gets, kid. That's the juiciest part of any scam."

"I don't see that it takes all that much grit to tell her you're stinging her when she doesn't even know what a sting is."

"There's no end of things you don't see, kid."

"Maybe so, but it seems real low to do down a nice old lady like that."

He stopped in his tracks and looked down at me with a deep frown. "That wasn't a nice old lady. That was a mark. And marks aren't old or young, or nice or nasty, or male or female. They're just marks, and they've got to be treated like marks. If you can't manage that, then there's no hope of you ever becoming a true carnie."

"But I admire her kindness to strangers."

"You what?"

"I admire it," I repeated, sort of pugnaciously because I'd just learned the real meaning of 'admire' and I wasn't completely sure I had it right. Where I'd come from, people said 'admire' to mean 'like', as in: I'd sure admire to go to the movies tonight, Ma.

"You admire a dumb mark? And yet you're thinking about becoming a carnie?

"Yeah, but—"

"Yeah but's ass! If you're so cut up about scoring off that mark, then you don't have to eat your share of these toppings." He scrambled down from the raised track and sat in the shade of a tree, where he opened his newspaper bundle.

Between us, we got that pie down pretty quickly, then we continued along the tracks for a couple of hours before we came to a little tank town that I thought was called Marksville until I realized that carnies call all towns Bumpkinburg or Hicksville or Rubetown, or some such. We left the tracks and took the road because anyone seen walking the tracks was assumed to be a hobo, and in some towns you'd do ten days or two weeks in the local hoosegow on a vag charge, and they'd work you as free labor, digging drainage ditches or patching up roads from dawn to dark. When things got real bad, especially in winter, men would sometimes walk right into town along the tracks, and even do a little panhandling on the main street, hoping to get picked up by the local badges so they'd have something to eat and somewhere warm to stay, even if it was only for two weeks. But lots of times, the law would be on to that scam, and they'd just run you out of town after giving you a going over with an ax handle to make sure you didn't come back any too soon.

Dirty-Shirt Red and I were sauntering down the main street, still heading north, when this big shiny black Packard passed us and pulled up in front of the town bank. The driver jumped out and opened the back door, and this real well-dressed man stepped out and went into the bank, after saying a word or two to people who took off their hats and smiled and bobbed with pleasure at his attention.

"Man, look at that," I said. "Owning a bankful of money, and having everybody sniffing up to you? I do believe I could get used to that sort of life."

"Not me," snapped Dirty-Shirt.

"You're telling me you wouldn't change places with that man and his fancy suit and big car and everybody bobbing and grinning at you like that? Get out of here."

"Not for anything in the world. Why, I'd sooner look down and discover I was pissing blood than be that man. And you know why?"

"No, why?"

"Because for all his high-toned ways, he ain't nothing but a mark."

"Oh, come on!"

"I'm not shitting ya, kid. He's a mark. I've played this town, and I've scored on him."

"You scored on him?"

"You better believe it. Seven, maybe eight years ago, David Meeker's United International Shows played through this rinky-dink, one-dog town. I was running a merchandise wheel with a painted G that prevented the marks from winning more'n the odd Genuine 100% Celluloid Betty Boop Kewpie doll or one of those Original Beeno-Bingo Lap Blankets made from half a yard of gaudy material that stretched like toffee and would explode into flame if you set a match to it. Well, your high-and-mighty banker comes along with a couple of other yokel dignitaries, sort of slumming with the trash to show he was a regular guy, and he sees that I'm flashing hams. Southern Delight Honey Cured Slo-Smoked Virginia Hams, they were, wrapped up in fancy gold paper. 'I think our cook could do wonders with one of those hams,' he says to one of his ritzy pals. Now of course, there wasn't really any ham inside that wrapping, because we'd been flashing those same hams for half a dozen years and they'd long ago gone all green and slippery from the heat and been replaced with sawdust wrapped up in ham-shaped packages, but that didn't matter because the mark didn't have a snowball in hell's chance of winning enough points to buy one. (We didn't give money because gambling's illegal almost everywhere down here in Dixieville. We only gave out U-Redeem-M High-Value Premium Purchase Points the mark could use to 'buy' whatever it was your game was flashing. Well, your spiffy banker slaps his dime down on the counter and I give him a spin. And what do you know? He immediately racks up almost enough Premium Purchase Points to win his ham... almost, but not quite. So I explained to him how all he needed was to hit a five and a nine, or any product or multiple thereof, but not exceeding the optimal total, nor totally discounting the cube roots and the more significant fractional variations. Well, he stares at me for a minute, then he draws himself up and says, 'I'm a banker. Numbers are my business, and I'm not one bit bamboozled by your claptrap about cube roots and fractions.' Well, I smiles at him and says, 'You know, sir, as soon as you stepped up to my wheel I could tell that you were a man of mathematical inclinations and arithmetical propensities, so there's no use my trying to pull the wool over your baby blues. Let me be straight with you because in the long run honesty is the best policy. I use that patter—which mathematicians like you and me know perfectly well is nothing but a narcotic tangle of mystifying sounds—in order to tempt the passerby to stay with the game until he wins himself a ham, as the law of averages insists that he must, sooner or later. And why do I do that? Because, sir, I want him to win. I want him to win because I want other people on the midway to see him walking along with one of my Southern Delight Honey Cured Slo-Smoked Virginia Hams under his arm and a self-satisfied smile on his face, and that'll make them envious and bring them running to my place of business to plop down their dimes and win themselves a ham. And that's how I make my living. As you see, sir, there are a total of thirty-six numbers painted on the wheel before you. Now, with a full tip ("tip" being what people in my profession call the crowd standing in front of a game or a wheel) I would have thirty-six dimes—one per each number—riding on every turn of the wheel. And that, if I am not mistaken, would be a total of three dollars and sixty cents. It would be three dollars and sixty cents, wouldn't it, sir? Please feel free to test my contentions and verify my estimates. Now, I can purchase these fine hams wholesale for three dollars and forty cents each. Thus, if I manage to keep my tip full and enthusiastic, then somebody wins a ham with every spin, and I make twenty cents, clear profit. That may not seem like much to a rich man like you, but you take twenty cents and multiply it by a whole bunch, and you'd be surprised how soon it mounts up! Now, I am not going to stand here and ask you to cover every single number on the wheel just to make sure you win your ham. And why? Because you'd refuse to do it. And why would an intelligent man pay three dollars and sixty cents for a three-forty ham? That'd be bad business, and any fool can see that you have the clear eye, the quick mind, and the sharp appetite for a good deal that marks the American businessman (I say "marks" in the sense of "characterizes") and as Cal Coolidge said, "What's good for business is good for America." Here's what I suggest, sir. I suggest you put one dollar—one dollar—on either number nine or number seven, the choice is yours, freely offered and freely taken. Then I want you to come up here and spin the wheel with your own hands because this is a game of chance and we don't want skill to play any unjust role. If your number comes up within twelve spins—twelve spins!—then I'll hand over to you, free and clear and as an unencumbered gift of the establishment one of these Southern Delight Honey Cured Slo-Smoked Virginia Hams. Now, let's you and me walk through the percentages and probabilities of this offer. The chance of your number coming up in one spin would be one in thirty-six. Have I got that right? So with twelve spins, your chance of winning becomes... what would that become?' And the banker says, 'One in three,' and I frowned and struggled with the figures for a second, before I says with surprise, "That's right! One in three! And I'm offering a prize that has a wholesale market value, not of three dollars, but of three dollars and forty cents, which gives you an indisputable advantage without making me seem like the fool who is soon parted from his money. Have I made any oversights or errors in working out the odds, sir?' Well, this banker ran over the figures in his head and guess what? I was right: he did have the mathematical advantage. So he narrowed his eyes and asked how come I was willing to give him the better part of the odds, and I wagged my finger at him and said, 'You see right through me, don't you, sir? You recognize that I stand to win either way. If you fail to hit your number in twelve (twelve!) spins, then I pocket your dollar. But if the international law of averages brings one of these fine hams into your possession, then every citizen of this town will see a leader of the community walking around with one of my hams under his arm, and the next thing you know, my poor wheel will be flooded with customers, and I'll be making a steady twenty cents with each spin. Like I said, I win either way. Oh, by the way, sir? You don't have to baby this wheel. You can spin 'er as hard as you want because she's been carefully and thoroughly G'd.'

"Well, the mark plunks his dollar down on the nine, and he climbs up and spins the wheel. Then he spins it again. And again. And pretty soon he attracts a tip of local gawkers, wondering what their town banker is doing, sweating in the sun, spinning that big wheel. Well, he kept on spinning, although I could see he was embarrassed by the crowd watching him. Finally his twelve spins were over without him hitting his nine, and he was a little huffy about the way the crowd was laughing and giving him free advice about how to spin a wheel; so, of course, I give him an additional five spins out of the goodness of my heart, telling him that I really wanted him to win his ham and bring me in rafts of customers. So he grunts out another five spins, but that darned nine just refused to come up. I pocketed his buck and shook my head and said, 'Ain't that the ornery way of mathematics for you? Sometimes the law of averages just doesn't work out in the short term. Say, you wouldn't want to risk another dollar, would you, sir?' He grumbles and walks away with his pals laughing and kidding him. So you see, kid. Your Mr Small-Town-Lord-It-Over-the-Little-Guy Banker turned out to be nothing but a mark after all."

"Yeah, but what if he'd hit the nine and won the ham?"

"If he'd of hit the nine, I'd of been so surprised I wouldn't of known whether to shit or go blind. Chances are I'd of compromised by closing one eye and farting. There was no way he could of hit the nine. Like I told you, that wheel had a painted G. I even flashed the G to your banker friend when I told him he could spin 'er as hard as he wanted because it was well and truly G'd."

"What's a painted G?"

"A G-wheel is a fixed wheel. Sometimes with elaborate brakes that let the practiced carnie stop on an empty number, sometimes with a slide that lets him skip a number with a lot of money on it. But the best G is the one painted right on the wheel, where the numbers are written on little triangles, half with their broad ends towards the nails around the edge, and half with their points. On that wheel, all the odd numbers had their points coming to a nail, so, of course, the flapper couldn't possibly stop on an odd number. A painted G is always better than any mechanical G, even a high-class belly-buff, because it's right out there in front of the mark's face, but he can't see it because he's concentrating so hard on complicated scams and devices. Of course, a painted G requires a word-weaver to fog their minds, which is why yours truly is one of the finest wheelman in this republic, from sea to shining sea."

I turned around and looked back down the street to the big shiny Packard parked outside the bank, and I shook my head. "Yeah, but all the same I admire the way—"

"Admire's ass, kid. He's nothing but a mark. Not worth thinking about."

When we reached the edge of town where the houses began to thin out, we climbed back up onto the tracks and walked on northward. The sun was settling into the horizon, growing big and dusty red where it had got snagged in a clump of trees that threw their long shadows across the darkening flatlands. I heard singing off to our left, where a little white clapboard church was standing next to its burying ground, its windows already lit for evening worship. On the front steps was this preacher dressed in black, and some parishioners were standing around, looking up at him with respect and admiration.

I stopped and looked down on the scene, and I felt a sort of tug in my chest. "Man, wouldn't I give a lot to be in that man's shoes," I said. "I can just see myself standing there and being admired and respected by everybody, and nothing to do but get up in the pulpit and lay into folks, telling them how low-down and vile and sinful they are, and how they'll sure as hell roast in eternal fire, if they don't shape up pretty goddamned soon."

Dirty-shirt nodded. "Yeah, I gotta admit that preaching's a pretty soft scam. Any fair-to-middlin' carnie could make a bindle out of, if he was willing to sacrifice his freedom and settle down in some Boobville Corners. And quite a few of them have done just that. But believe me, kid, you wouldn't want to be that particular shame merchant."

"Why not?"

" 'Cause he's the biggest goddam fool of a mark I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot."

"You know him?"

"I recognize him." Dirty-Shirt started to walk on, and I followed. "In my line of business you learn to recognize people before they recognize you and go after the law. Or their shotguns. Yeah, I recognize him from some twenty-five years ago when I played through here with Happy Elmer Holliday's Great Eastern Amalgamated Shows. He was lots younger then—but then, who wasn't? Except for you, of course. You were still part of some angel's nightmare."

"What makes him the biggest mark you ever saw?"

Dirty-Shirt shook his head. "That man...! That man threw away what most men would have given their front seat in hell to have. He passed up Loving Grace Appleby. Can you believe it?"

I could believe it because I didn't have the slightest idea who Loving Grace Appleby was, and I said so.

"Loving Grace Appleby was the best piece of ass that ever drew breath on God's good green earth. You can't compare her to other women, no more'n you can compare a ten-car, high-ball railroad carnival manned by top-drawer scam-mavins to a broken-down three-truck punk show run by a handful of forty-mile stumble bums."

I wasn't with the carnivals yet, so I didn't know about highballs and scam mavins and forty-milers and punk shows, but I got the idea that this Grace Appleby was something special.

He sighed and said in a voice soft with memories, "...Loving Grace Appleby... Oh, my, my, my! She danced the hoochie coochie with Happy Elmer's show, and believe-you-me, kid, when, she did her little appetizer in front of the show tent, those rubes would crowd around and stare up at her, their mouths open, their eyes bugging, and their imaginations chugging full steam ahead, while their wives either huffed off in disgust, or stood there stiff as stone, staring daggers towards Grace, their lips pressed together so tight they almost bit 'em off. Grace was the highest paid hoochie-coochie girl in the game because Happy Elmer made every flatman and wheel spinner on the midway give her a cut, and the scam mavins were willing to pay it because of the way she drew in the marks and left them stunned and ready to be plucked. Grace Appleby was prime stuff. And I am talking prime here!"

"What happened to her?"

"Oh, she went the way of all flesh, kid. She got old and sick and fat and her face got bottle cut in a fight over loving rights. But in her prime, there wasn't a red-blooded carnie who wouldn't have given his gift of gab for half an hour with Grace. I remember one man declaring that he'd willingly eat a mile of her shit just to see where it come from... and there ain't no higher praise nor loftier sentiment than that. I'm telling you, boy, Grace was amazing! Matter of fact, they wrote a spiritual hymn about her.

"But I don't want you to think she was a loose woman or anything like that. Nosiree, Robert. Her hoochie coochie was full of promissory notes, but she never paid off on them. Oh, sure, on the carnival's last night in town she'd do her famous Midnight Double Blow-Off Special that cost the mark a whole dollar to watch (adult males only, please, to protect women from damaging thoughts and youngsters from draining habits). And she'd flash a boob at 'em just before the lights went off and she disappeared behind the curtains, but that's the closest she ever got to Hookerville. No, Loving Grace Appleby never sold her body. But every once in a while she'd give it away. Some lucky carnie would catch her fancy, and she'd invite him to her wagon and we wouldn't see him again until the next morning, when he'd be found walking around the midway, dazed, his eyes glassy, and a vague little smile on his lips. We'd all gather around and ask him how it'd been, but the lucky guy'd never tell us, not because he was prudish and sin-whipped like some mark might be, but because he just couldn't find the words to do the experience justice."

"Did she ever choose you?"

"No, son, she didn't. And that's my greatest regret in life. I'd of given her my fullest attention and eager cooperation, believe-you-me, but she never chose to bestow her amazing gifts on me. But she did choose that stupid mark of a preacher!"

"What?"

"That's right! This one night after the show, Grace was having a laugh and a beer with a bunch of us in the cook tent, and in walks this Bible-pounder and says he wants to see her privately. Well, we all hooted and said sure, and the people in hell want ice water, too! He explained that several women of his parish had complained about the corruption of morals caused by this Whore of Babylon, who— We all stood up and tightened our belts and got ready to kick a little pious butt, but he lifted his hand and explained that he was just quoting the women and not making any accusations off'n his own bat. And we told him he'd better not be, and we sniffed and flexed our shoulders and settled down again, each hoping that Grace had noticed how he'd jumped to her defense—you know how men do. Then this preacher explained that he hadn't come to drive Grace out of town, like his parishioners wanted him to. Instead, he'd come to save her. Well, we all hooted again, but Grace stood up and said she thought it was very kind and neighborly of him to concern himself with the well-being of her soul, and she'd be pleased to hear what he had to say. And off they went to her wagon, leaving the rest of us staring and shaking our heads and saying that there's no accounting for taste.

"Well, I guess this preacher didn't have the slightest idea of what Grace had in mind because when she made her intentions clear, he came backing out of her tent, stammering and gulping and begging her not to misunderstand his mission. Then he turned and ran, and the last we saw of him he was disappearing down the midway, all elbows and heels and flapping coattails.

"Would you believe it? That butt-stupid guilt peddler had a chance to experience heaven right here on earth, but he ran off and left poor Loving Grace Appleby as frustrated as a one-armed paperhanger in a roomful of electric fans! And you've got the brass to tell me you admire this man? Back off and give me breathing space, will you?"

I thought about all this for a while, then I said that it probably took a whole lot of willpower for him to run away, but it was the right and proper thing for a preacher to do.

Dirty-Shirt Red stopped short and turned to me. "Kid? I'm beginning to think that maybe you ain't got the makings of a carnie in you, after all."

"Well, maybe not. But I admire that widow's kind nature, the way she gave us those po'boys and pie and—"

"An easy mark. Hell, even 'bo's can score off her!"

"—and I admire a man like that banker who managed to put together enough money for a big car and fine clothes and servants and—"

"Just another mark. I told you how I scored a buck off'n him on a ham wheel, for Christ's sake!"

"—and I'd just love to be looked up to and admired, like those churchgoers were admiring that preacher and hanging on his words."

"The dumbest mark of them all! Threw away a chance with Loving Grace Appleby! Look at you, standing there with your face hanging out, telling me how you admire all those marks. What you don't seem to be able to get into your thick head, kid, is that the lowest, most down-on-his-luck carnie in the world is worth more than the kindest hearted, or the richest, or the most pious mark that ever stumbled onto a midway. That's how it is, and that's how it will always—" He stopped short.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

He was staring down the track into the evening gloom. "I'll be damned," he whispered. "I'll be god-good'n-damned if it ain't... How about that?"

I followed his stare, and there approaching us down the tracks was this... floppy thing. That's the only way I can describe this apparition. It was a man. But he didn't walk like a man. With each step, he'd lift his knee high and flop his foot out like he couldn't feel anything from his hips down. His elbows would jerk out to both sides at once, and he kept shrugging so hard I thought his shoulders would pinch his head off. He was dressed in stuff that looked like he'd robbed a scarecrow, and the way his rags were flopping and fluttering all around him didn't calm the general effect at all. His white hair was straggly and tangled, and as he approached I could hear that he was carrying on an animated conversation with someone he was plenty mad at.

Dirty-Shirt Red pulled me over to the side of the track to make room, and this apparition passed us by, jabbering and jerking, and winking and jabbing whoever he was talking to in the ribs with his elbow, and never even noticing us.

"Snatch off your cap, kid!" Dirty-Shirt told me. "If you're so hot to admire somebody, start admiring! That there is Carl 'Friendly Fingers' Boyd. He used to be the best three-card monty dealer in the game!"

THE SACKING OF MISS PLIMSOLL

Miss Plimsoll was plain.

Oh, she was loyal; you had to give her that. Totally, relentlessly, oppressively loyal. But this canine virtue was not sufficient to alter his determination to be rid of her, because, to be frank, her plainness was an embarrassment to him. Almost a personal affront.

Not only the reading public, but also the lemming swarm of academic critics proclaimed Matthew Griswald to be the Last of the Disenchanted Generation; the archetype of the moody, creative loner; a tough word merchant whose crisp, minimalist style concealed profound depths of sensitivity. And over the years he had come to share this perception of him. A snotty novelist of the New York gosh-it's-tough-to-be-me-and-misunderstood school went so far as to describe him as 'head priest of his own cult, forever burning incense at the altar of Matthew Griswald.' This was envious nonsense, of course, but, yes, Matthew did see himself as tough, heroic, virile, yet through it all deeply sensitive. And no sensitive man would fire the woman who had stood by him through the years of his Great Drought, when he couldn't write anything worthwhile, just because she wasn't a pretty little bit of sexy fluff.

But consider the way Plimsoll dealt with his guests!

She didn't openly disapprove of the cinema idols, the meteors of the jet set, and the rest of the social leeches and cultural sponges who sought to affirm their importance by casually letting it drop that they had been invited to one of Matthew's famous parties, but she was annoyingly unimpressed when he mentioned one of these beautiful people, and she would communicate this apathy by a dry, "Oh, really?" or a yet more deflating, "Is she someone I should know, sir?"

Not only was she unimpressed by those who flocked to praise him and to be seen doing so, she wasn't all that impressed by the Grand Old Man of American Letters himself. Of course, he didn't expect her to fall into ecstasies of adulation. By no means! But his four decades of literary prominence merited a certain deference, a certain...

And then there was the way she would arrive at his flat each day so businesslike and full of solemn purpose that he never dared to tell her that he had decided not to work that day because he was tired, or had a nasty hangover, or was just feeling lazy. Her busy, puritan presence forced him to grind out his daily quota of words, whether he wanted to or not.

But while these irritations of long standing constituted the background climate for his decision to give her the sack, there was no denying that the basic reason was the fact that Plimsoll was plain. Remorselessly, unrepentantly plain. Christ, she even lacked the intriguing ugliness of the jolie laide. Her plainness had a negative, draining weight. Her entry into a room had the same effect as three pretty girls suddenly leaving. (He liked that line. He had used it before. Several times, in fact.)

While he denied having manufactured his public image as a gruff, macho man of action, Matthew recognized its commercial advantages, and there was no denying that his he-man persona would benefit from his having a secretary others would envy: the sort they would assume he slept with when he was too busy to shop around the sexual meat market that was bohemian London of the No-Longer-Swinging Seventies. What his image needed was a secretary who would stir envy in his guests: a lissom, haughty Black, maybe, or an exotic Oriental, or better yet a cute Cockney in a miniskirt. No one could accuse Plimsoll of being exotic or cute. In fact 'cute' was the kind of word one avoided in her presence, lest the clear intelligent eyes behind her round steel-rimmed glasses rake one with icy scorn.

Griswald scrubbed his white whisker stubble with his knuckles as he padded barefoot into his living room to survey the wreckage of last night's bash. A hybrid between a sigh and a groan escaped him. He hadn't intended to throw a party; it had just happened; and before he knew it the place was full of smoke and chatter, and everybody was drinking his booze and stroking one another's egos, and butts. And now the place smelled like a Catalonian bordello, and the jagged edges of a hangover lacerated the backs of his eyes when he moved his head.

He sloughed off his thick terry bathrobe and stood in his shorts, his breasts and stomach flaccid beneath the purplish varnish of sunlamp tan that leathered his skin. To think that this sagging gut had once absorbed body blows in the ring! With a sigh, he began the torture of his morning exercises, despite the sour taste in his mouth and the shards of pain behind his eyes. The first sit-up brought a thud of blood to his head, and he lay back with a martyred moan.

"Oh, God." He covered his face with his hands. Why did he subject himself to this daily hell? Was it his fault that the reading public insisted on identifying him with the athletes, warriors, and white hunters he wrote about?

Of course it was his fault. He had milked those roles for all they were worth.

Well, let's get on with it. Thirty-five of the best!

One.... uh... two... uh... three... oh, God... four... uh... five... uh...

By the time his third novel appeared—all solid adventure tales told with journalistic economy and garnished with a trick of repetition he had gleaned from an expatriate American poetess who theorized that readers felt impelled to fill perplexing repetitions with layers of subtle significance— Matthew found himself lifted into cult status by critics who praised his deceptively simple style and devoted paragraphs to his deceptively two-dimensional characters with their deceptively juvenile values and their deceptively selfish goals. This rush into fame almost cost Matthew his career—indeed, his life. He made the understandable, if lethal, mistake of believing what they wrote about him, and for the next eleven years he tried to write in the style of Matthew Griswald. And failed, of course.

Fourteen... uh... fifteen... Oh, Christ! Now I've lost count. Well, twenty-one... uh... twenty-two... uh...

Fortunately for his finances, if not his art, the critical and academic communities had invested too much of their reputations in him to permit him to fail; so his Pulitzer Prize came during the years when he was constipated with efforts to write like himself.

...Thirty-four... uh-h-h... thirty-five... uh-h-h. Oh, to hell with it! Enough!

Matthew had never trusted intellectuals, being himself more a man of the senses than of the mind, more a man of experiences than of experience. His male characters were all creatures of action, not of reflection; and his female characters were the stakes for which the men played, not players in the great game. In short, Matthew gave voice to the infantile ideals of the masculine America of his era. But for all his intellectual and philosophical shallowness, he had an original temperament, an eye for evocative detail, a good ear for dialogue; and he was always a stern critic of his own work. It was this critical gift that was his undoing. Late one afternoon at the height of his popularity, he stood at his writing easel, reading for a third time that day's output of self-emulation. He ended up staring through the pages, his eyes defocused, until the room darkened into evening. With no histrionics, he took the nearly-finished manuscript and dropped it into the wastepaper basket. Somewhat more theatrically, he drank a bottle of whiskey in two hours and got so sick he had to spend four days in a hospital, after an undignified session with a stomach pump. For more than two years after that he suffered what he called the Great Drought, during which he didn't write a word. Lost and scared, he made an ass of himself with drinking and scrapping and women, all to the delight of the journalists. In the end, it was fear that saved him. It was either get back to writing, or suicide.

Funny how life turns on little things: when he put the barrel of the newly cleaned and oiled shotgun into his mouth, he was nauseated by the cod-liver-oil taste of it, a taste that suddenly carried him back to a childhood dominated by a cold, demanding father whom he had spent the rest of his life 'showing'. He shuddered and gagged and put the gun aside.

As a palpable symbol of making a fresh start, he left New York for London, where he took a flat and began working. He cut down on his drinking by staying dry until dark, and he began a routine of regular meals and exercise. And every day, every day, every day, he ground out a self-imposed number of pages in which he tried to free himself from the old, monosyllabic, staccato style and the worn-out idiom of the Tough Hero with Hidden Pain. At first, things went very badly. Like the circus performer who lets go of one trapeze bar before the other is within reach, he abandoned one style before he developed another, and he fell into the void. In seeking to avoid the trivial, he found himself creating the tedious. He had never had much to say, and now he had lost the ability to say it in the old crisp yet evocative way.

But with strength of will born of desperation, he forced himself to pour out the words, turning out pages of flaccid sentences, stupid characters, and ridiculous stories—most of it going directly from typewriter to wastepaper basket, rejected by his unforgiving critical sense, the one talent that did not wither during the Great Drought. His money ran thin, and he survived on little checks his agent sent from reprint and residual rights. Fortunately, his foreign sales remained strong because the monosyllabic simplicity of his style and the transparency of his characters' motives made him easy to translate without significant loss, and easily understood by non-English speakers with fifteen hundred word vocabularies. Although his ability to write fiction had diminished, he could still sell articles on hunting and fishing and Spanish blood sports.

But the time came when he knew he must start producing fiction, if he were to prolong his fame and fashion. He decided to hire a literary secretary to free himself from the time-consuming, patience-fraying business of cleaning up copy. Someone—he no longer remembered who—recommended a copy editor at his British publishing house, a woman who had a fascination with his writing and who might, therefore, be willing to work cheap.

And that was how he began working with Miss Plimsoll, who was everything a secretary should be—everything, that is, except pretty enough to contribute to the Griswald image. Efficient and unobtrusive, it wasn't long before she was handling his correspondence with his useless agent and with those readers who still sent letters—mostly ploys to get his autograph, which still had some value in the collector's market. She also managed his flimsy finances and kept his ever-shrinking social calendar. She even did minor editorial work, cleaning up fuzzy passages, deleting inadvertent repetitions, patching up little lapses in logic and sequence, all of which freed his time and energies as he entered the most frantic phase of the Great Drought. He inflicted a yet more grueling work rate on himself which, even when it failed to recapture success, at least dulled his panic with the anodyne of fatigue.

Little by little, a new style began to coalesce. Occasionally a page would not be dropped into the waste-paper basket. His characters were still men of flesh and appetite rather than spirit and mind, more moody than deep, more hesitant than reflective, but they became a little older, a little kinder, and hitherto unknown elements began to play a part in their actions: compassion and regret, for instance... even remorse. A short story was offered and published; then another. He won a minor award for a piece about the Paris of his youth, the self-lacerating jealousies and self-inflicted anguishes of his 'lost generation' of self-imposed exiles. He started a novel. And when he went dry, the encouragement he received from his agent, together with gloomy financial prognostications from Plimsoll, made him keep working, flogging out the words, despite his grumpy complaints that nothing flowed naturally and easily, as it had done in the old days. As he licked the drafts into shape, his critical sense told him the writing was not bad, and was getting better.

The book gave the critics a chance to fill their columns with comparisons between his earlier style and this new one, and The Graying of Matthew Griswald became a fashionable topic at literary cocktail parties. The book never breached the top half of the best-seller charts, the first of his novels not to do so; but the fact was, the heroic era of American letters was passing, soon to be replaced by moist, adjective-strewn, soap-opera novels written about and by ambitious women seeking fulfillment and self-discovery through commercial success and musical beds.

An honest and therefore only moderately successful film was made from his novel; then another novel followed; and soon his stories were in demand everywhere, despite the collapse of the short fiction market in America, where the reading classes were more interested in articles on self-assertiveness, advancing one's career, getting in touch with one's inner self, and skillful money management. The Great Drought was broken, and his life routine slowly returned to its old rhythms. His flat became a meeting place for the literary luminaries of London: young talents on their way up, writers scratching to maintain their place in the public eye although they produced little beyond reviews of other people's work, society drones who viewed idleness as a sign of breeding, media creatures who, lacking any talent other than their ability to thrust themselves forward aggressively, became talk show hosts and television panelists—in fact, all the social perennials: the climbers, the succulents, the epiphytes and parasites, the delicate blossoms that flourish best in reflected light. Parties sprang up of their own volition, always at his expense, and more often than not he ended up drunk in bed with one of the literary ladies or one of the cute young things who gravitate to such gatherings. He found that he could reduce his work rate to only three or four hours a day, easily half of which was dictating answers to letters and requests into his tape recorder, while Plimsoll cleaned up the latest pages of whatever tale he was working on.

Over the next four years of relative success, his waist and eyebrows thickened, his hair thinned, his beard whitened. But Plimsoll never altered in energy, attitude, or appearance. Always crisp, always exact, always pushing him to deadlines and duties; she was a dour presence in tweed skirt and white, high-necked blouse, sensible shoes, and long, meatless legs. Her expression seemed to blend strained patience with mute rebuke, particularly when she arrived, as she would this morning, to find the flat strewn with the litter of a party. And her attitude towards the women who sometimes lingered into the morning was a politely arctic version of the reaction one might have at finding something alive in the bottom of one's soup bowl.

Naturally Matthew resented this, just as he resented Plimsoll's busy, productive proximity as a silent recrimination to his laziness. But above all he resented her being so remorselessly, so unrepentantly plain! He sometimes felt she did it on purpose.

Just last night during the party he had been stung by the persistent ribbing of one of those people who feel they must pay their way by being unceasingly clever. He had contended that all writers sleep with their secretaries (or, if not exactly 'sleep with', at least use them occasionally to relax from work tensions). Many of his guests had met the cool and proper Miss Plimsoll in passing, and they found hilarious the image of Matthew Griswald, Iron Man of Letters, reduced in his waning years to grinding away on the razor-sharp pelvis of Miss Plimsoll.

That was the last straw. It was time to be rid of Plimsoll. He could easily manage his own revisions and corrections... or whatever the hell it was Plimsoll did. All he really needed was someone to juggle his calendar and respond to earnest letters from readers, using the standard forms he had worked up to save time and thought. Any good typist could do that, even a cute young thing with no more brains than a racehorse. Yes, his mind was made up. This morning he would find an opportunity, and the courage, to interrupt their iron-clad routine and inform her that her services would no longer be required. That was it. Settled.

...Or maybe it would be better to write her a letter. Just to keep the whole thing from becoming tacky and... well, personal. No fair-minded person could call that cowardice. No, it was simply handling a nasty chore in the most dignified way.... For everyone concerned.

Yes, but what reason would the letter cite for sacking her? The problem, Plimsoll, is that you have a sharp pelvis? Sorry, kid, but the roundness of your glasses and your lack of chin are beginning to affect your typing speed?

No, the letter idea was stupid! After all, he'd have to dictate it to her, and that would lose him the advantage of emotional distance. The best way to play this would be to find fault with everything she did for a couple of weeks so she wouldn't be surprised when he finally said that all this arguing and bickering was making it impossible for him to work! Hey, maybe if he found fault persistently enough, she'd quit of her own volition. He'd be surprised and hurt by her decision to leave him, but he'd try to understand her feelings, and he would be—

He heard her key in the door, which then closed with a precise click. She had an irritating way of pressing a door closed behind her, rather than just shutting the goddamned thing. Like any normal person would! Christ, she even closed doors tidily!

"Mr Griswald?" she said, as she entered, crossed to the little table that served as her desk, and dropped off the letters she had collected at his door. She greeted him exactly that way every morning, the slight interrogative lift at the end of his name serving in place of 'good morning'. She glanced at the debris of the party with infuriating expressionlessness.

"Damn it, Plimsoll..." he began. But although his irritation was genuine enough, he couldn't think of anything specific to complain about.

"Sir?" she asked, as she opened the oversized new attaché case she had begun to affect lately, drew out the retyped pages of yesterday's output, and tapped them on his desk to make the edges perfectly smooth before setting them on his desk for his pencil corrections... if any. "Sir?" she asked again. "Is something wrong?"

"Damn it, Plimsoll! I was thinking my way through a problem and almost had the solution, when you came bursting in and drove it out of my mind!"

She measured him with her frank, intelligent eyes. Then she smiled faintly and began collecting the messy pages he had ground out yesterday between her departure and the arrival of his unexpected guests. "I'm sure it will come back to you, sir," she said over her shoulder as she brought the work to her own table.

" '...sure it will come back to you, sir,' " he iterated in a singsong chant that he instantly regretted as infantile. "It frigging well won't come back! It's lost now!"

From her straight-backed chair she looked at him, her eyes slightly narrowed, as though she were hefting his mood. "Are you feeling ill, Mr Griswald?"

'Feeling ill' was her euphemism for hungover, and Matthew answered that he was not 'feeling ill'!

Her smile thinned. "Perhaps not, sir. But you are a little tetchy this morning." She dropped the junk mail into her wastepaper basket and began opening the other letters, reading them with her rapid, vertical scan and setting them on her desk in order of urgency. "Oh, here's a letter from Mr Gold. Details of the MCA option with which you should familiarize yourself. He'll be telephoning from New York at..." she tipped up the pendant watch that was her chest's only ornament "...at one o'clock our time."

"Yes, yes, I remember," he growled. "The bloodsucking bastard."

"That's hardly fair, sir. Mr Gold stuck by us through our difficult times."

"There's no such thing as an honest agent. Certain people have a warp in their DNA spirals that cripples their consciences and lets them become drug dealers or child rapists or tobacco company executives or literary agents. And what's all this about our difficult times?"

"Just a manner of speaking, sir. Shall we go over your calendar?"

"No," he growled. "Where in hell is Mrs What's-her-name? This place looks like a pigsty!"

"Yes, it does, rather," Miss Plimsoll said, in a tone so expressionless that Matthew could take it for arch. "But I'm afraid Mrs O'Neil won't be in. She telephoned me this morning to say she was feeling a little off."

"Off what?"

"Off color, presumably. And off the wagon as well, I suspect."

"You disapprove of drinking, don't you, Plimsoll."

"I disapprove of anything that prevents a person from doing his work, sir."

"But particularly the vices, eh?" He was becoming frustrated with Plimsoll's disinclination to rise to his ill-humor and his taunts.

She looked at him from behind her steel-rimmed glasses and smiled with a hint of weariness. "To which vices are you referring, sir?"

"Just the usual lot. The Big Seven. Sloth, Greed, Envy, and the rest of the gang. And their insidious cousins, the Seven Deadly Virtues: Moderation, Probity, Sincerity, Thrift, Chastity, and the rest of them. How do you stand on the deadly virtue of Chastity, Plimsoll?"

Her lips compressed slightly as she returned to making notes in the margins of the letters she would answer on his behalf. "If chastity is indeed a vice, sir, one can take comfort in the knowledge that it's the one vice modern society is struggling to stamp out, and quite successful—Ah!" She held up an envelope. "We have an invitation from Somerville, my college at Oxford. You are invited to deliver a lecture next term."

"On what?" He sat at his desk with a heavy grunt.

"Let me see... There is to be a colloquy on 'the Antihero in Literature and Society'."

"The antihero exists only in literature. The same person in society is either ridiculed or crucified. ...Or both. And anyway, academics don't know the difference between an antihero, an unlikely hero, and an attractive villain. What are they offering?"

"It appears that they offer expenses and a banquet in your honour."

"A banquet in my honor, eh? Well, screw 'em, the tight-fisted bastards."

"May I paraphrase that in my reply?"

Was she was trying to be amusing, or was she was being snide? "I never got a college degree. In fact, I was kicked out of two colleges."

"Wisconsin and Northwestern."

"Right! And I never majored in literature!"

"I am aware of that, sir." She smiled. "I recall a letter to an American academic in which you expressed your view that studying literature is, for a real writer, what analysing horse droppings would be to a stallion."

"I never said droppings! No, I never studied literature, but you did."

"Yes, sir. In fact, I published a stylistic analysis of your early work which, if I say so myself, was widely praised as a—"

"But for all your literary study and insight, you ended up a typist. There you are, Plimsoll. Some people lay the eggs; others just nibble at the omelets."

She lowered her eyes. "Well... I'll confess to nibbling my share of omelets, sir, if you'll confess to laying your share of eggs."

With a grunt and a frown he buried himself in Plimsoll's neatly typed transcript of yesterday's output, while she dashed off answers to the morning mail. She was able to type replies in so close an imitation of his style that he could get away with just signing or, in rare instances, adding a P.S. in his own scrawl.

"Well, what about you, Plimsoll?" he asked out of a long silence.

"Sir?" Her tone was distant, her attention on the letter she was typing.

"We were talking about the deadly virtue of chastity."

She was used to the non sequitur vectors his thoughts often took when he was working. "Are you asking what I think of chastity, sir?"

"I'm asking if you're guilty of it."

She was silent for a moment before pointedly changing the subject. "Have you decided what you're going to say to Mr Gold when he calls?"

"Bloodsucking ten percenter!"

"Mr Gold has proved himself a devoted friend."

"Devoted to profit. Let's get back to your chastity. What shape is it in, Plimsoll? Unassailed? Assailed but well-defended? Assailed but not within the last decade?"

"I see no reason to discuss my chastity, sir." There was an edge to her voice.

Ah! A chink in her frosty armor. At last.

"Don't think I'm asking on behalf of my own inquisitive libido. I'm working up a character not unlike you, and I was wondering how she would respond to a sexual advance."

She turned from her work and looked directly at him. "Why on earth would you want to introduce a character like me, Mr Griswald? You usually populate your novels with women of a more obvious and functional sort."

"Contrast, Plimsoll. I want to establish a character alongside whom the ordinary woman would seem to be a passionate houri."

"...I see."

"Well?"

She drew a sigh and folded her long, thin hands over her lap. "Very well. To begin with, I believe that chastity—which in my view flows from a sense of self-worth—is a most desirable quality in any person. It has been my observation that the promiscuous are either seeking to deny an unstated accusation of sexual inadequacy or attempting to find companionship at its most biological and least compassionate level. One might say that for them coitus is a prelude to handholding; fornication, an avenue to conversation. But I do not equate chastity with sexual abstinence. I see nothing unchaste in making love when one loves... even when that love is only an ephemeral flood of feeling, and neither the product nor the precursor of an enduring relationship. Have I responded adequately to your question, sir?"

"My frigging cup runneth over!" He returned to scanning yesterday's work. But after a minute he lifted his head. "How old are you, Plimsoll?"

She emitted a slight sigh that seemed to ask if she were ever to be allowed to get on with her work. "I am forty-six years old, sir."

"Forty-six. Fifteen years younger than I am. And already you're standing aside from life. You've become an observer rather than a competitor."

"I have never wanted to be a competitor, sir. Which is not to say that I don't want to be a participant."

"You can't participate unless you're willing to compete. Life is a contact sport." He liked that, so he scribbled it into in the little notebook he kept for collecting orts of colorful or apt phrasing. When he looked up, he found Plimsoll watching him.

"May I ask what is wrong, Mr Griswald?"

"Wrong? In what way wrong?"

For a moment her gaze remained on him, unblinking. Then she lowered her eyes. "You seem to be bristling with antagonism this morning, sir. And I find it difficult to ignore the feeling that you're intent upon embarrassing me... even hurting me."

"Nonsense! That's one of your problems, Plimsoll. You're hypersensitive." He sensed this was the moment to list her other flaws and faults, and to tell her he had decided to give her the sack. But he recoiled from the unpleasant task.

"Is it really nonsense, sir?" She lifted her eyes and measured him for a moment, then, with a slight lift of her shoulders, she returned to annotating the day's mail.

Shit, he thought. His chance to get this business over with was slipping away. "Ah... actually, Plimsoll, there is something on my mind."

"Really?" Her eyes remained on her work, but not her attention.

"Yes, I... well, to tell the truth, I've decided to..." He knew he was going to lie, as he usually did in awkward social circumstances. More for the sake of the other person's feelings than for his own comfort, of course.

She left her finger on the paper to mark her place and looked up at him, her eyebrows raised. "You've decided what, sir?"

He cleared his throat. "Look here, Plimsoll. This routine of work, work, work is beginning to burn me out. I'm sick of cranking out a couple of thousand words every day, every day, every day. I need a break. And I've been thinking about the south of France."

"What a splendid idea, sir! And perhaps you're right. A change of scene might do you a world of good. But, of course, you mustn't stop writing altogether. We both know the danger in that. The juices stop flowing and your style becomes heavy, and—"

"Never mind my goddamned juices!"

"The season's already begun, so I'll have to get cracking to find us someplace pleasant but not overrun with tourists." She smiled self-deprecatingly. "I'm afraid I have only schoolgirl French: accurate enough in grammar, frightful in accent. But still—"

"Hold it! I didn't say we were taking a vacation. I said I was."

"Oh," she said, with a soft catch. "Oh, I see." A slight flush reddened her long throat. "I didn't mean to... But I naturally assumed that..." She smiled bravely, but Matthew could have sworn her eyes were damp. Then she took a quick nasal breath and continued in a businesslike tone. "And what do you have in mind for me to do while you're en vacance, sir?" The bit of French just slipped out. "I assume I shall act as a letter drop, unless you want to deal personally with all the trivia of—"

"Listen, Plimsoll, the fact is... Well, I'm not absolutely sure I will be coming back to Britain. This damned weather and... everything. And even if I do return to London, it won't be the same as before. I plan to reduce my work rate permanently. I can afford a little more leisure. I mean... well, goddamnit, I've earned it. In any case I won't be needing a... well, it would be a waste of talent to use a person like you just to answer a few letters and... that sort of thing."

As he spoke, her eyes slowly widened, her spine straightened, and she seemed to grow taller in her chair. "Are you letting me go, Mr Griswald?"

"I wouldn't put it that way."

"How would you put it, sir?"

"Well, it's not as though... You know, funnily enough, just the other day I was talking to someone from Piper and Hathaway, and he said they were dying to have you back," he lied with his usual glibness. "In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they gave you a—"

"I am not interested in returning to copyediting, sir," she said firmly.

"Oh? Well, that's your business, of course. I just thought you might—"

"Excuse me for interrupting, but would you mind terribly if we didn't discuss this further just now? I have a lot of work to get out this morning. And I confess that I find this subject rather... unsettling."

He shrugged. "Whatever you say. But it's something we have to face sooner or later."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before returning to the task of responding to a devoted fan from Seattle who suggested, not at all obliquely, that if the Great Man ever found himself in the Pacific Northwest, she would be delighted to be of service.

An hour passed in taut silence broken only by the staccato click of Plimsoll's typewriter in counterpoint to the loose clatter of his old portable, which he loathed because it was forever breaking down, but it had become so much a part of the Griswald mystique that every visitor wanted to have a look at it. Another sacrifice he made to his image. He kept his head down, pretending to be absorbed in work. He couldn't understand why she was reacting in this childish way. This unexpressed resentment! This accusing efficiency! This hysterical silence!

"I need a drink," he grumbled, as he rose to get himself a glass of burgundy. He didn't really feel the need for a drink, but he wanted to let her know that this wasn't easy for him, either. "Look at this place! I don't know why that goddamned Mrs What's-her-name can't manage to get here and clean up. God knows I pay her enough!"

Plimsoll did not respond. She rolled the last of the morning's letters from her typewriter and added it to the stack for his signature. Then she turned her chair towards Matthew's desk and folded her hands in her lap. "There are one or two things I should like to say to you, sir."

Here it comes, he said to himself. "All right, let's have it." He was glad she wasn't going to accept being fired without complaint, because exposing himself to her angry vitriol would diminish any sense of guilt he might feel over this business. He carried his glass to the desk and sat down heavily. "Fire away, Plimsoll," he said with a martyred sigh.

"Before I 'fire away', sir, I should like to remind you again that Mr Gold will be calling from New York in..." She tipped up her pendant watch, "...in approximately two hours."

"Forewarned is forearmed... the frigging bloodsucker."

"Your unjust evaluation of Mr Gold provides us with a useful starting point for what I have to say."

"Just so the starting point isn't too far from the finish line."

"I'll do my best to be succinct, sir." She composed herself for what he feared would be a lengthy tirade. "I should begin by telling you that I have always considered you to be one of the most gifted writers of our age."

"I have seldom heard a set-up line more pregnant with its 'however'."

She smiled. "However... I also find you to be the most self-centered and ungrateful man I have ever met. Mrs O'Neil serves as a case in point. She has cleaned up after your silly, profligate parties for six years and you've never even bothered to learn her name. Mr Gold carried you through your most difficult period, and yet you constantly refer to him as a parasite. And I, who have worked with you and supported you for these many years... Tell me, Mr Griswald, do you even know my first name?"

"Your first name?"

"My first name."

"Well, it's... All right, so I don't recall it at this moment! But I'm sure you have one. Coming, as you do, from generations of C of E freeloaders, I have no doubt that your bishop father lavished every inexpensive luxury on you, including a first name. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if, in an orgy of nomenclatural prodigality, he didn't bestow a middle name on you as well! He might even have— What are you smiling at?!"

"Nothing important, sir. I've always been amused by your habit of retreating behind barriers of 'sesquipedalian obfuscation' when you're stung with a sense that you're in the wrong. It's a charming tic, really. Particularly in a man noted for the leanness of his style. Don't you agree?"

"No, I do not!" He bit off each word.

"Pity. One of your saving graces has always been your sense of humor. Without that, you would often have been... well, frankly insufferable."

He stared at her. "You're certainly making it easier for me to give you the sack without remorse. What did you mean when you said that Gold carried me through the Great Drought?... If anything."

"Mr Gold would never tell you himself, but I think you should know. Do you recall how you managed to survive the lean years when you were unable to produce material you considered—and quite rightly—worthy of your name?"

"Of course I do. I lived on a trickle of residuals, foreign rights, reprints—that sort of thing. A trickle from which Gold wrung his percentage, you can be sure. So what?"

"There were no residuals."

"What? What the hell are you talking about?"

"No residuals, no foreign rights, no reprints. You were, not to put too fine a point on it, a drug on the market."

Matthew was silent for a long minute. "Are you trying to tell me Gold sent that money out of the goodness of his heart?"

"He sent it because he had faith in your talent. And because he was sorry for you."

"Sorry for me?" He stood up, and thick hangover blood thudded painfully behind his eyes. "That presumptuous son of a bitch was sorry for me? Well, I'll give him something to be sorry about. When he calls this afternoon, I'll fire his ass!"

Miss Plimsoll tilted her head to the side. "No... I don't... think so."

Matthew's face stretched with mock wonder. "I beg your pardon?"

"I don't think you're going to give Mr Gold the sack, sir." A ghost of a smile creased the corners of her eyes. "Any more than you are going to give it to me." She rose and opened her oversized attaché case. As she drew out a large stack of manuscript, some rumpled and old, she said, "Perhaps you have wondered why I began carrying about so cumbersome a case a couple of months ago."

"Frankly, I hadn't spent much time worrying about it."

"No, I suppose not. To do so would imply an interest in others."

"If you're accusing me of not staying awake nights, pondering the hidden implications of the weight and size of your attaché case, then I plead guilty. And I assure you that— O-oh! Wait a minute! I get it. You've written a novel! And you want me to help you get it published, as conscience money for giving you the sack. Don't believe that crap about everybody having a novel somewhere inside them, Plimsoll. There are two kinds of people in the world: the storytellers and the audience members. And you, Plimsoll? You're an audience member. You are, in fact, the prototypic audience member. No, I don't want to read your manuscript. I'm not interested in the refined wordsmithery of someone who, has never lived, never sinned, never loved!"

"Oh, I have loved, sir," she said, as she carefully evened the pages of the manuscript by tapping them on her desk.

"No! Don't tell me! Plimsoll in love? It's an image as arousing as a hip bath in ice water. And what poor bastard was the recipient of this uniquely modest gift?"

"You, sir."

"Me?"

She drew a shallow breath. "But that's neither here nor there. What I want you to do now is to read at random from this material. I think you'll find it very—"

"Me? You've been in love with...?" His eye fell on the top sheet of the manuscript. "Wait a minute! What's going on here? This is my work!" It was indeed two drafts of his latest novel: his own, full of X-ings-out and penciled marginalia, and Plimsoll's neatly typed copy. She had evidently disobeyed his instructions to burn his originals after copying them, to protect his reputation as a natural stylist whose first draft was practically galley perfect—a facet of the Griswald myth that he had not originated, but one he perpetuated.

"Now, Matthew, why don't you sit down and read through some of this manuscript while I make us—"

"Matthew?"

"—while I make us a nice pot of tea."

"I don't drink tea!"

"Well, I'll make some for myself, then. No, on second thought I'll have a glass of your excellent burgundy."

"My burgundy?"

"Just read the manuscript, Matthew. Whatever limitations you may have as a man of compassion, I have complete faith in you as a critic."

While Plimsoll sat at her desk, sipping the wine, her long legs crossed at the ankle, Matthew read, scanning at first with impatient irritation; but his frown deepened as he read with growing—and chilling—fascination. She had made many small deletions and adjustments, an adjective pruned here, a more precise verb substituted there, no one change significant in isolation, but in the mass they made a lean paragraph out of one that had been merely thin, or converted a redundancy into evocative foreshadowing, or transformed the obscure into the ambiguous. He could not quite put his finger on the overall change brought about by her culling and honing, but it had to do with increased celerity. If a minute spent reading his original draft were taken as a norm, compared, for instance, to a heavy, eighty-second minute spent wading through Faulkner's glutinous word-bogs, or stumbling through Henry James's involute parentheticals, then Plimsoll's revision could be said to have swift, light, forty-second minutes. In sum, what the world recognized as the Griswald style existed in Plimsoll's copy and was absent from his original.

He set the manuscript down and stared out the window, his eyes defocused, his stomach cold. For years he had half-known, if never really faced, the fact that he lacked most of the qualities he admired in his characters. He had never really been devoted to the political causes he so pugnaciously espoused, he was too wrapped up in self to care about the anonymous Wad; even his love-making was based more on tactic than emotion; and as for his much-vaunted physical courage? He had climbed those mountains with the aid of guides; he had shot those lions with a backup man covering him with a Holland and Holland; he had made sure he was often photographed, rough and unshaven, with guerrilla fighters, but he had written his famous war coverage at secondhand, closer to hotel comforts than to battlefield dangers. For years he had admitted to himself that if he were not a good writer, he was nothing at all. And now...

"I think I know what you're feeling, Matthew," Miss Plimsoll said softly.

"Do you? Do you really? What a consolation it is to realize that Plimsoll knows how I feel."

"This is something you must understand. I could not have written those novels and stories alone. It's you who have the creative imagination, the experience, the sense of pain and laughter, the pantheon of unique and fascinating characters."

"I'm delighted to have contributed a little something."

"Yours is the voice. I am merely the interpreter. What you lost during the Great Drought was merely... style. And that's the only thing I have provided: just style. Please don't feel miserable, Matthew. We have been a team for some years now, a belle équipe, but it's always been you who possessed the inspiration and the dynamic energy, and I've admired those things in you... loved them, actually."

"I don't want to hear about it," he said wretchedly.

"I know this is unpleasant for you. You've never been exactly avid to face the truth about yourself. So it's inevitable that this truth comes with pain... as it comes to the heroes of our novels."

He reached forward and rubbed his palms along the sides of his battered old typewriter in a kind of tactile farewell.

"I was content with my invisible role," she continued. "I even cherished helping you the more for the knowledge that you were unaware of it, and happy to be so. And I had every intention of going on like that forever. But I have seen something growing in your attitude towards me for the past month or so." She smiled thinly. "You're nothing if not transparent, Matthew."

"Please don't call me by my first name."

"But I've always called you Matthew... to myself. I've known for some time that you were steeling yourself to be rid of me. At first I was sorely stung by the unfairness of it. But then I realized that you were as helpless in this as you are in other things. You've been a slave to your image for years now, and getting rid of me would have been yet another service demanded by that image. So I decided to take matters into my own hands, for your good as well as mine."

"I don't want to hear about any of this. Nothing matters anymore. It's all over. I suppose you intend to do an exposé? 'Matthew Griswald's Secret Collaborator'? You'll make a bundle with it. It's the kind of scandal the journalists salivate over."

"Nothing could be further from my mind, Matthew."

"What is on your mind, then?"

"I propose that we continue our association."

He looked at her out of the corners of his eyes, with chary mistrust. "You're saying that you're willing to go on just like before?"

"Well... not just like before."

"Ah! I knew it. What is it you want?"

"I have reached an age when one must consider one's future."

"So it's money."

"Security rather than money. Our mutual security. Which I believe would best be assured if we were to marry."

His eyes widened. "Marry? You and me?"

"Your shock is not terribly chivalrous, Matthew. It's a solution I've considered in moments of reverie for many years."

An almost unthinkable possibility grew in Matthew's mind. "You are speaking of a marriage of convenience, aren't you? A marriage that ensures your financial future and gives you the social advantages, the parties, the media events, and all?"

"Actually, I don't foresee all that many parties. They're not good for your health, to say nothing of your work habits. And I must tell you that I have no intention of entering into un mariage blanc, a sham union confected for purely financial reasons."

"Whoa. Let me get this straight. Are you saying that we—that you and I would...?"

"I foresee us working together, tackling problems, and reaping successes together. We shall cherish one another, and we shall... satisfy one another."

"...Satisfy. And I suppose this relationship is to be monogamous?"

"Oh yes, indeed, Matthew. Most strictly monogamous. You will never know how I have been hurt by the mindless women I've found here in the mornings, all rumpled and smelling of sleep."

He nodded slowly, still dazed. "So... if I want your help, I have to buy the whole package. Brains, crotch, and all. That's the deal, is it?"

"That is the deal."

He turned again to the stack of manuscript on his desk. He reread two pages of his first-draft work, then the same passage in her revision. Then he tossed the papers aside and looked again at Miss Plimsoll in frank appraisal. Well, she has a nice complexion. And her hands aren't all that bad...

"It's true, isn't it, what you said about the characters and the situations being mine and mine only. All you do is tighten and polish a little. What you might call 'stylistic packaging'."

She smiled faintly. "That's all I do, Matthew. Just packaging."

He puffed out a long sigh and shook his head as though to clear it. "Tell me, Plimsoll. Are you... well, are you any good in the sack?"

Miss Plimsoll glanced down and smiled into her eyelashes. "I take it you use the word 'sack' in a sense different from the sack you were intending to give me?"

"Ghm-m!" he growled. "Well, are you? Good in the sack?"

A slight flush blossomed on her throat. She tipped up her pendant watch and glanced at it. "We have an hour and twenty minutes before Mr Gold calls. That gives us sufficient time to investigate the matter, I should imagine."

HOW THE ANIMALS GOT THEIR VOICES

AN ONONDAGAN PRIMAL TALE

Europeans moving westward across America collided with Iroquois pressing eastward to maintain contact with the Algonquin tribes that they followed as a shepherd follows his flocks, for raiding was an important part of their economy. The Europeans found the Five Nations to be the most advanced tribes in North America, both culturally and politically. They also found them to be fierce and ruthless fighters of a caliber they would not meet again until, a hundred years and half a continent later, they encountered the Sioux and the Apache.

Occupying the center of the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, the Onondagas were neither so warlike as the Senecas nor such crafty traders as the Mohawks, but their role was essential to the union, for they were the conveners of inter-tribal meetings, and they acted as moderators in disputes, as befitted the tribe of Hiawatha who, with Dekana-widah, had molded the warring tribes into a peaceful league centuries earlier.

In addition, the Onondagas were custodians of tribal memory, guardians of tradition, and tellers of the ancient tales until, most of their warriors fallen in battle against land-hungry Europeans, the women, children, and old men were driven north to the haven of New France, where they settled on poor, stony farms. Lacking young men, they interbred with the French who had left their women behind in their pursuit of riches. My grandfather was a child of Onondaga/French parents.

In the early years of this century, the Onondaga gift for story-weaving was still alive here and there in pockets of their diaspora. It was from her formidable aunts that my mother learned tales of the sort ethnologists call primal myths. All the stories began by describing the creation of the world by Crayfish, Buzzard, and Wind working to the plan of She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name: always the same words spoken in the same rhythm... those repetitions that children find so enchanting and reassuring. After being attached to the origin of things, each tale would go its own way, each carrying a moral message meant to elevate and to guide.

When I was very young, my mother put me to bed with these stories, told in the harsh, old-fashioned French patois of her aunts, a sound that I associated with the stern-voiced chants of the Onondagan storytellers who used similar cautionary tales when they sought to persuade recalcitrant rebels to bend their will to that of the Confederacy. I remember only three of those stories: one that explains why maples lose their beautiful leaves in autumn and is a warning against pride, another that tells how North Star volunteered to remain in the cold northern sky to direct lost people and is about the virtues of service, and the story I'm going to tell you now, my childhood favorite because it involved many animals acting badly. Its message is obvious, but it was one the Indians failed to heed.

In the beginning, and for more than half of the Allotted Time there was no dry land, only sky and water and a thin mist where they met. Then She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name asked, "Who will make Earth for me?" Now Crayfish was bored, so she said, "I will make Earth for you." And Crayfish went down to the bottom of the water and rolled balls of mud with her tail and piled them up, one upon the other, one upon the other, until the mud rose higher than the water.

Then She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name said, "Yes, but this Earth is all flat and dull to the eye. Who will make it lively and diverse for me?" And Buzzard, who was bored, said, "I will make it lively and diverse for you." She flew over the vast expanse of soft mud, and when she flapped her mighty wings down, valleys were pressed into the land, and when she drew her mighty wings up, mountains were lifted from the land, and when she soared and glided, the great plains and plateaux were left flat.

Then She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name said, "Yes, but this Earth is all soft and wet. Who will make it dry for me?" And Wind, who was bored, said, "I will make it dry for you." And she breathed over the hills and valleys and plains for a very long time until they were dry and hard. The fish of the sea wondered what possible use this dry hard place could have, for fish have no understanding of dry places, just as they have no experience of rain.

Then She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name spoke out the names of all the plants and all the animals, and each appeared as its name was spoken. Some went to live in the valleys, some in the mountains, some on the plains. And when Crayfish and Buzzard and Wind saw all this, they were very proud of themselves, believing that these plants and animals had been wrought from their own imaginations, for the power of She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name is not perceived as a waterfall is perceived; rather, it is perceived from within, as a dream is perceived. In their pride, Crayfish and Buzzard and Wind strutted and swaggered and sang of their wisdom and skill. And this is why old men dance the comic dance of Crayfish, Wind, and Buzzard to this day, strutting and swaggering and chanting those bragging songs that make children laugh at their foolishness.

Yet for all their strutting and bragging, in their hearts Crayfish and Buzzard and Wind were vexed because their fine work could not be seen and admired, for the world was wrapped in eternal darkness, as it shall be again at the end of the Allotted Time.

Now, Coyote, the most guileful of the animals, took up the cause of Crayfish and Buzzard and Wind, saying it was a shame that no one could see to admire their fine creation, but in fact Coyote's reason for despising the darkness was that she was a daylight hunter. Hearing Coyote's complaint, She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name whispered into the darkness, saying, "Who will make light for me?" And Star whispered back, "I shall make light for you." And she turned and shone upon the land with all her might, but her glow was feeble, so Coyote still complained that it was not light enough, although Rabbit and Prairie Dog thought things were just fine as they were, for they are daylight prey. Coyote pouted and sulked and wheedled and whined until she got her way, so Star made children upon herself until they were many and many in the sky, and they all shone down with all their might, glittering and twinkling with the effort, but still Coyote grumbled that it was not light enough. So Moon said, "I will help you, Star," and she turned and shone upon the world. But Moon is fickle and inconstant by nature: sometimes only half of her shines, and sometimes only a quarter, and sometimes no part at all, so Coyote pouted and sulked until She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name went to the cave of Sun and begged her to go up into the sky. But Sun loved her splendid pink-and-gold cave and was loathe to leave it, so She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name bargained with Sun, saying that she would not have to shine all the time; she could return to her cave when she was tired of shining, and the darkness she left behind her would be called Night. But still Sun was reluctant to leave her cave, so She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name bargained further, promising Sun that after the Allotted Time was spent, she could return to her cave and leave the land in darkness forever. Finally Sun agreed to go into the sky for half of each day, leaving at dawn and returning at sunset. The growing pink-and-gold you see at dawn is Sun slowly rolling the stone away from the mouth of her glittering cave, and the pink-and-gold of evening fades as Sun slowly pulls the stone back in behind her. But although she had allowed herself to be persuaded to shine on the land, Sun was sad to leave her splendid cave and bitter that Coyote's pouting and sulking had forced her to do it, so she wept sad tears and bitter tears on the morning of that first day, and where her sad tears fell upon the ground they became women and her bitter tears became men, and thus humans became the eternal enemies of Coyote, and sought forever to thwart and destroy her; but, alas, Coyote is too clever. Now the women and men of the tears made children together, and some of these children went to live on the mountains, and some in the valleys, and some on the prairies, but the bravest and the truest of them came to live in the woodlands, and these called themselves the People, but the pale-eyed ones who came to buy furs and steal land called them the Iroquois.

As you have seen, in the Early Time all things—stars, wind, buzzards, animals—spoke the language of She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name, a language that was called the Tongue. Well, so did all the women and men born of Sun's tears. But in punishment for misdeeds too vile to be told, most humans were made to forget the Tongue and were obliged to speak instead many nasty babbles. But the Iroquois people had not indulged in these misdeeds, so they were allowed to continue to speak the ancient and beautiful language of animals and stars and wind and of She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name. In time all the animals, one by one, lost their ability to speak the Tongue, some out of foolishness, some out of naughtiness, and some just from bad luck. There was a story about how each animal lost the Tongue, and these were useful stories meant to teach us the dangers of Carelessness and Greed and Rage and Disobedience and such things, but, alas, these stories have fallen from the tribal memory and now we must learn the harm of Carelessness and Greed and Rage and Disobedience the hard way, by suffering their effects.

Thus did the People come to be the only creatures who could understand She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name and speak to stars and winds and storms and ghosts. And among the People, the tribe that used the Tongue to greatest effect was your own Onondagas, the children of Hiawatha, for we wove the Tongue into tales meant to amuse on top and to teach underneath. Like this one, for instance:

One day, She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name was gazing back across time, reflecting upon the glories of the People, when out of the corner of her eye she saw something in the other direction, towards the future, that made her gasp in dismay. She saw that all living things would soon be threatened by pale-eyed enemies from across the sea. Dispatching Turtle to watch for the invaders' arrival on the shore of the eastward sea, she commanded all the animals to meet for seven days in a great lodge, there to discuss ways of dealing with this menace.

But how, you ask, could all the animals meet together if Turtle was absent? Well, at that distant time, Turtle was not counted among the animals because of her shell's resemblance to a rock.

To avoid the chaos of all the earth's animals meeting in one lodge, She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name ordained that each clan send one representative of its essential nature. Dog would represent all vulgar things, for instance, and Crow all complaining things; and there was greedy Bobcat, and slippery Otter, and sly Coyote, and ill-tempered Bear, and nervous Ground Hog, and haughty Frog, and bewildered Mole, and placid Tree, and many, many others. But why, you ask, was Tree invited to a meeting of the animals? Well, at that distant time, Tree was accepted as one of the animals for a very good reason which, alas, has fallen from the memory of man. Without offense, let me say that we shall move more quickly if you keep your questions to yourself.

At first, no humans were invited to sit in the Great Meeting, for She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name felt that the animals represented the various elements of human nature adequately, be it vulgarity or greed or guile or ill-temper or pride or stubbornness or any other thing. But a senior storyteller of the Onondaga, a man who was called Old because of his age, was commanded to preside over this gathering because he possessed three necessary skills: first, being of the People, he still spoke the Tongue, so he could interpret She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name's will; second, the Onondaga were experienced at smoothing out quarrels and settling disputes; and third, Old understood the many voices of the animals, for he used them in telling stories to the children of his tribe. The first thing Old did was to ask She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name to allow the animals to understand one another, just for the time of the Great Meeting; and so She visited each animal's ear as a soft-voice-that-tickles, and lo, they could understand one another.

Now you should know that the seven days of the Great Meeting lasted for many, many years, for in those distant times a day was as long as it needed to be, and thus many generations of the People were born, grew up, found mates, became old and feeble, and returned to enrich the earth while the Great Meeting was still going on. Late in the first day of the meeting—a day devoted to greetings and to exchanged hopes for the triple blessing of luck in mating, brave death in battle, and immortality in the songs of one's descendants— Turtle, who had been sent to keep watch on the distant shore of the Great Water, opened her sleepy eyelids and was startled to see a huge war canoe bearing down on the shore, its vast oar-cloths filled with wind. Now, Turtle's heart was not a bold one, for stones do not strengthen their spirits through battle, yet she resisted her impulse to flee until she had watched warriors wade ashore from the vast war canoe and thrust their spears into the sand, claiming the land as their own. Peeking out from beneath a bush, Turtle saw that these men had the pale eyes of bloodless ghosts. At the sight of them Turtle swallowed hard and was sore afraid, yet still she stood her ground while the pale-eyed ones celebrated by pointing their long firesticks into the air and making them roar and belch out smoke and flame. Then one of them pointed his firestick at a deer who was standing at the edge of the forest, frozen by curiosity. The firestick shouted its smoke and flame at the deer, and the deer fell, an invisible arrow through its heart. At this, Turtle turned and rushed back towards the meeting lodge, eager to tell She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name of the frightening wonders she had seen; but rushing for a turtle is not what rushing is for other creatures, so twice ten times ten summers would pass before Turtle came panting and gasping to the lodge of the Great Meeting...

...where, alas, nothing had yet been decided because the assembled animals were squabbling over matters of precedent and ancient privilege, and many used this occasion to air old disputes, rake up old wrongs, and exchange new insults, all the animals shouting at the top of their voices... voices very different from those they use today, as you will see. Old pleaded for calm, but he failed to quell the deafening babble.

"I have the right to sit closest to the fire," yapped haughty Frog, "for I am distantly related to Crayfish who made the land."

"I refuse to accept the pipe of reconciliation after vulgar Dog has soiled it with his spittle!" growled fastidious Snake.

"What compensation will I get if I surrender my rightful place to Beaver?" purred litigious Turkey.

"When do we eat?" gobbled vulgar Dog.

"I refuse to share anything with anybody!" croaked greedy Bobcat.

"Who said she would not share with anybody?" asked bewildered Mole, who was almost blind. "Who? Who?" And her neighbour whispered that greedy Bobcat had said that.

All the animals cried out either for preference, or against old wrongs, or for advantage, or in simple ill-temper, each louder than the others, until the din and confusion was more than Old could stand.

"Please be quiet," he begged. "I must have silence if I am to hear within me the soft voice of She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name and pass her message on to you!"

But the angry clamor increased until evening, and thus passed the first day of many, many years, and still Turtle was desperately rushing towards the meeting place at her slow pace.

When Old arrived at the meeting lodge on the morning of the second day, he found the animals already entangled in argument with Crow hissing at full voice, and Tree barking away, and greedy Bobcat croaking her head off, and Dog gobbling loudly into the ear of Frog, who yapped her annoyance to squeaking Bear and purring Turkey. Try though he did, Old was unable to bring order out of the chaos. And in like manner did the third day pass. And the fourth. And the fifth. And thus was the time for deliberation and preparation squandered in squabbles and petty pride.

On the night of the fifth day, Old began a fast to make himself calm in his deepest parts, so that he might hear the silent voice of She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name. He continued his fast through the night to weaken his body so that wisdom could slip past the barriers of knowledge and enter him, but he heard no voice. All the next day he chanted until his words lost all their common meanings and were free to take on universal meanings, but still no voice came. So he commanded the young men of his clan to prepare the sweat lodge with two fires, and he sat alone in the heat and smoke of the sweat lodge, fasting and chanting and sipping a wooden cup of the juice of the mushroom-that-pours-light-into-your-mind until he suddenly felt the presence of She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name growing within him. He asked her how he could hush the blustering delegates so that they might receive her warnings and her advice. And her silent voice whispered into his bones, telling him how to silence them with a woven basket, and he smiled at her crafty ruse.

And while all this was going on, Turtle continued to dash towards the meeting lodge, as she had for scores of years. But now her neck was stretched far out from her shell in an effort for speed, because Pale-eyes had followed her towards the setting sun and was gaining on her every day.

The animals were in full babble that morning of the seventh and last day of the Great Meeting when Old entered carrying a woven basket which he placed near the entrance. He then walked slowly to the center of the circle and sat on the ground, while all around him swirled snarls and banter and taunting and boasting. But the talk staggered and faltered, first here, then there, as one by one the delegates noticed the elsewhere stare in Old's eyes and his deathly pallor caused by long hours of fasting and by sipping the juice of the dangerous mushroom. They could all see that his spirit was with She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name.

Speaking through Old's hollow, eerie voice, She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name told the gathering of the menace of Pale-eyes, who would chop down the forest (Tree winced), and foul the swamps (Beaver blanched), and slay the game (many gasped), but who would do his greatest harm to the People, against whose arrows he would turn his firestick, and the People would fall in vast numbers. But his firestick was not Pale-eyes' most dreadful weapon. He would also cough upon the People and they would suffer fever and pain and whole families would die, whole clans, whole villages, and few would be left to chant of their ancestors' glorious deeds. But illness was not Pale-eyes' most dreadful weapon. He would also give the People dreamwater, which would daze them and make them believe they could hear the silence and see the invisible, and this was most alluring for from the moment they were wept upon the soil the People have yearned to hear the silence and see the invisible. They have sought it through taking strong tobacco water into themselves, through drinking the juice of magic plants, through fasting until the body is too weak to imprison the imagination, through dancing until the spirit is spun off from the body—anything to bring themselves to that dream place where silence speaks and the invisible reveals itself. Pale-eyes' dreamwater would steal the dignity of the People and make them fools and braggarts. But even his dreamwater was not the most dreadful of Pale-eyes' weapons. He would also give the People his Book, which would teach them to be meek, to accept insults, and to wait for justice after death. And the bringers of the Book would ridicule the teachings of She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name and mock the ancient truths and ways. Our fierce courage would be sapped, our inner voices would be silenced, and we would become pliant, obedient, and foolish.

"But why does Pale-eyes hate the People so?" Coyote cawed in mock sympathy, secretly pleased that his eternal enemies would be made to suffer.

"Who asked why Pale-eyes hates the People?" wondered bewildered Mole, "Who? Who?" And four or five of her annoyed neighbours spoke harshly, saying, "Coyote asked it. Now be quiet!"

Speaking through Old, She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name answered Coyote's question. "Pale-eyes hates the People because he has in his belly a terrible hunger to own their land."

"Own land?" gobbled vulgar Dog. "But how can one own land?"

"Absurd!" scoffed Tree in an outraged bark. "Whoever heard of owning land!"

"One cannot own land," growled Snake. "You might as well say that one can own the air, or the waters, or the clouds! Such things cannot be owned. They can be enjoyed, or used, or sung about, but they cannot be owned."

Bobcat croaked in agreement, but deep in her greedy heart she could understand the sinful pleasure Pale-eyes must feel at having something for himself alone and not having to share it with anybody.

Each tried to out-scoff the other at the silly idea of owning land or air or clouds or water, and it wasn't long before everyone was purring and barking and hissing and meowing and croaking and gobbling and snarling until none could hear Old's soft voice; so he rose up and stared at them with terrible eyes, and ordered them to be still! Be still!

And there was a sudden silence in the meeting lodge.

"There now," growled Snake softly. "You must all be silent. Serves you right."

"Oh, shut up!" cawed Coyote.

"You shut up!" snarled Owl.

"Everybody shut up!" commanded Bear in her thin, high squeak.

"Don't you dare tell me to shut up!" yapped haughty Frog.

And again the Great Meeting was a-roar with the noise of everyone silencing everyone else, while bewildered Mole turned around and around, asking, "Who said we must be quiet? Who? Who?" Exasperated by her constant confusion, everyone in the meeting turned and shouted at Mole, "Old said it! Old said it!" And Mole sat down, blinking and chastened.

Then Old rose up and glared about him with a terrible wrath. "You petty things!" he roared. "You small-hearted things! You have no command over your passions! We shall never learn how to stand against Pale-eyes with all your babbling and spatting. Therefore, I command you to take the voices out of your mouths and put them into yonder woven basket until the meeting is over. Do as I say, and do it now!"

And meekly did all the animals, even ill-tempered Bear and haughty Frog, pluck the voices from their mouths and drop them into the woven basket. Crow dropped in her hiss, and greedy Bobcat her croak; Dog put in her gobble, and haughty Frog her yap; Coyote gave up her caw, and placid Tree her bark; Bear surrendered her thin, high squeak, and Turkey her purr, and Owl her snarl.

Then they all sat humbled before Old, who quelled his rage with long slow breaths before saying to She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name, "It is clear that the People must fight Pale-eyes and drive him away."

Speaking within his heart, She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name said, "You will fight Pale-eyes, but you will not have victory. The People are brave and resourceful, but they are few, for all the Five Nations are but two thousand warriors, while Pale-eyes is ten thousand, and again ten thousand, and ten thousand more and more and more, all flowing across the Great Water without end."

Old sighed deeply. "Then we have no choice but to learn to live beside him," said Old.

"You cannot live beside him," responded She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name, "for he will destroy the land. The People are few and they tread the land lightly, staying at one place only until Earth is weary, then moving on so that she can rest and recover. But Pale-eyes is many and he will tread the land heavily, forcing Earth to bear until she is so warn and fatigued that she crumbles into the streams and is swept away forever."

"Is there nothing we can do?" cried Old.

"There is a way to save yourselves," answered She-Who-Creates-by-Speaking-Its-Name. "You can—"

But if there was an answer it was never heard, for at this moment Turtle stumbled into the meeting lodge, out of breath and panting from her centuries-long dash to bring the terrible news. "Pale-eyes is coming!" she cried. "Pale-eyes is coming! He is right behind me!"

All the animals jumped up in alarm and opened their mouths to cry out in terror... but no sound came. They looked like ghosts in horrid nightmares, with their wild eyes and their mouths open, screaming in silent panic. They rushed to the woven basket, pushing and shoving to get at their voices, and in their frenzied haste they snatched out whatever voice came to hand, clapped it into their mouth, and ran off into the forest crying, "Pale-eyes is coming!" Pale-eyes is coming!" Crow took the caw of Coyote; Dog grabbed the bark of Tree; Frog snapped up Bobcat's croak; Bear hooked out Snake's growl; Owl seized the Who? Who? of bewildered Mole, who took Bear's thin, high squeak, while Coyote snatched out Frog's yap and Turkey popped Dog's gobble into its mouth. Snake was beginning to swallow Crow's hiss when greedy Bobcat snatched most of it away, leaving Snake with only a little hiss, while Bobcat has a lot. Not content with most of Crow's hiss, greedy Bobcat also took Owl's snarl and Turkey's purr and ran out with all three in her mouth. Tree was last to get to the woven basket for, then as now, trees moved more slowly than other animals, and when she felt around the bottom of the basket there was no voice left for her, because greedy Bobcat had taken so many. So vexed was Tree that she swore to have nothing further to do with the animals and she became a member of the plant family, where she remains to this day.

Old went forth to face Pale-eyes and fell before his firestick.