My father was an enlisted man in World War Two. On the living room wall we have a map of France and Western Germany showing his unit's movements, in dotted red ink, a Third Army patch and his unit insignia superimposed, and a photograph of him in summer khakis and garrison cap.

He told me this story about the war, just after I turned sixteen. He had me learning to drive; he took me down the road a ways and made me keep at it until the gears stopped grinding and I got the hang of it. Then we went to the Dairy Delight in town and he bought me a banana split. I saw him filling up his side of the booth and remembered the photograph of him in the living room, a skinny kid like myself then, and that made me ask him about the war. He said you wouldn't want to know about it. Then he said--here's something I think you should know about--and lit up a Camel and started in.

He had a buddy, Denny Maxwell. He told me what had happened to Denny Maxwell. That was in November of 1944, in the fighting in the Hurtgen Forest. It was cold in the Hurtgen Forest. In the mornings they'd have to thaw out their socks, try doing that in a foxhole. He and Denny were on patrol one morning and up ahead they saw a farm house. There weren't any Germans around. Denny Maxwell was freezing his tail off so he decided he was going to go to that farm house and get warm no matter what. The farm house sat in an open field edged with woods, but that didn't bother Denny Maxwell. "He told me the bullet that had his name on it hadn't been made yet." Denny Maxwell wanted my father to go with him, but my father wasn't about to do that. He said he didn't want to be a target. So Denny Maxwell went out there himself and the Germans opened up on him from the woods. He must have had a dozen bullets in him and every one had his name on it.

"You remember Denny Maxwell, Wayne," my father said to me, grinding his Camel out in a Dairy Delight ashtray, "when you're about to do something stupid."

I've been married to Sandy for seventeen years. We've had a pretty good life together. We have a teen-age son, Wayne Jr., who so far has stayed out of trouble. We have good jobs, a good income between us. I'm still parts manager at Fuller Ford and Sandy's still teaching English at Beauregard High.

My father worked at Uniroyal for thirty years. Before that he worked at the mill hauling cotton bales on a fork lift. He got laid off when the mill closed down, but lucky for him--lucky for me he'd say--he got on at Uniroyal. At Uniroyal, he had job security, and benefits, a pension, a group medical plan, the only bad thing about his job was, toward the end anyway, before he retired, they kept changing shifts on him. He'd work day shift part of the week, then they'd switch him over to the swing shift. That, he used to tell us, can get old pretty quick. He'd tell Mama he ought to quit, take a little less in his retirement package.

I remember him in his blue suit, Mama unfolding her napkin, laying it primly in her lap, her hair gray even then. There'd be this silence when my father said he wanted to quit, fried chicken, fried catfish in front of us, yams, black eyed peas put on hold while my father studied Mama's dubious face, knowing always what answer he was going to get yet acting as if he didn't. As soon as Mama got her napkin arranged, stirred sugar into her iced tea, she'd say "I hear what you're saying, Pauley, but what would you do if you did retire?" And my father would say "I'd go fishing."


After church my father used to tell Marleah Willis how much he enjoyed her hymn singing. Marleah was married to Buddy Willis at the time. Buddy used to sell Chevrolets, but after the two of them split up he moved to Columbus and started his own used car business.

Marleah Willis could really sing high and sweet, and when she did a solo for the congregation, my father would lift his head up and close his eyes, her voice taking him where he wanted to go. He'd sit on the end of the pew so he could get out quick when Marleah came our way. When he complimented Marleah on her singing, heads turned, people noticed it. He wasn't tall but he was broad in the shoulders He had a gut on him then. He could put away steak and potatoes and corn on the cob, fried okra, a dozen catfish, so he took up a lot of space in the aisle. He'd be pointed one way, toward the altar, and Marleah she was on her way out of the church, the traffic backed up behind her, Marleah trying to get past him, knowing she had to say something back. She’d say, “It's sweet of you to say that, Mr. Creel.”

Every Sunday it's sweet of him, Sandy would say, and Mama she'd snap her pocket book shut and shove her hymnal back in the rack.

Mama had talked to Marleah after church because my father, he wanted Marleah to sing a hymn for him, and Marleah said she would come over in the afternoon. She didn't want to, that was clear. Marleah scooted the piano bench under the piano, closed up the hymnal, and looked the other way from Mama. She looked at me once, me with Sandy, like I’d better be just another married man. Then she went over to Reverend Hatcher. Smoothing out the lumps out in her sky blue dress, Mama headed up the aisle toward the pulpit.

That Sunday Mama talked to Marleah in church, I was still thinking about what had happened at Jack Lazenby's annual Fourth of July barbecue. Jack held it behind his house, which was half a mile down the road from the convenience store he owned and ran, The Lazy Bee--Lay-Z and a striped bumblebee Sandy tells me is called a rebus.

We were sitting around Jack's barbecue pit, the chigger patch Sandy called it, digesting barbecued pork--y'all come but bring your own lawn chairs and Chigger-Red--that was Sandy's view of Lazenby hospitality. Marleah was sitting next to me. She was telling me about life without Buddy. They'd been divorced for nearly a year now. She’d had to haul the garbage to the garbage pit down the road, wasn't that fun, and keep the lawn mowed. Buddy wasn't making cigarette runs for her Winston One Hundred Lights and his Marlboro One Hundreds.

Big Jack was shooting off bottle rockets. Fire one, he'd boom out, fire two! I heard them whooshing out in the dark, popping over the pines. Marleah shook her last cigarette out and crumpled the pack. "I'm thinking that's my last Winston, Wayne.”

I'd smoked my last panatela, but I wasn't about to be her errand boy. I said I wasn't used to making cigarette runs. She tweaked my shirt below the elbow and said she would go with me. Sandy had gone to the bathroom. We might be back before she missed us.

I decided to stop at the Lazy Bee. Marleah went in with me. We both used the restrooms. Then Marleah bought two packs of Winston One Hundred Lights. I bought a five-pack of Phillies Panatelas.

After I parked at Big Jack's place, Marleah said she didn't want to go back to the party right away. We could hear fire crackers popping and crackling down the road. Marleah moved closer to me, and I heard her catch her breath. I put my arm around her, stroked the back of her neck. She leaned over and kissed me on the mouth, and then she put her head on my shoulder. Having her close to me, I wanted that to last.

We kissed again, this time tonguing, then I was biting her lower lip. She pulled away from me, I knew I’d gone too far. I hadn’t known when to put the brakes on. She smoothed her skirt out. “I hope you didn’t get the wrong idea."

I pitched my voice into casual. “Far as I’m concerned, nothing happened.”

Marleah said, “Something did happen, Wayne. You got carried away. So let’s get back to the party.”

Once we got back Marleah went right over to Dottie Lazenby. She listened to Dottie talk about their trip to Disney world and Epcott Center. Sandy said to me, "You missed the bottle rockets."


A week went by. I couldn’t get Marleah out of my mind. I even called her house from the parts department, but all I got was her voice on the answering machine. That same day after I got off work Sandy told me she couldn’t sit with my father this evening. She asked me if I would sit with him. She was taking Mama to Wal-mart to stock up on trash and garbage bags, laundry and dishwashing detergent, a long list of household items substantially cheaper at Wal-mart than they are at Winn-Dixie, Sandy said, when I asked her why go across town to Wal-mart when Winn-Dixie was two miles down the road. I was wishing Sandy didn't have the summer off from teaching, that way Sandy would have been been at Beauregard High, not here asking me to sit with my father while she took Mama shopping on her day to sit with him. I took six garbage bags out to the car and opened the trunk and stashed them.

I brought the radio to the bedroom and plugged it in. We got a rundown on the ball games that afternoon and some stuff on the Braves game coming up, then some call-ins, then gospel. It wasn't long before we were playing the leg game. My father’s left leg would fall off the bed. I'd intercept his foot, taking care to avoid his toenails, catch his ankle, and hoist the leg back up onto the bed. He would lower it and I would raise it again. Through the bedroom window, across the road, I saw Wyatt Kirkpatrick's wife, Stephanie, come around their house driving a lawn tractor. She was wearing a halter and loose fitting shorts. She raised her hand once and patted her hair. The next time I tried to lift up my father’s leg he wouldn't let me. "Leave it be. Wayne." So I let it be.

On Saturday I drove by Marleah's house. She was outside moving a lawn sprinkler away from the mailbox. She gave me a fluttery hand wave and smiled. I waved back but I didn't stop. I drove on over to the Lazy Bee and picked up a six pack of Diet Coke. There was a telephone outside the Lazy Bee. I thought of calling up Marleah then and there, why not, hey Marleah it's Wayne, I'm down here at the Lazy Bee and thought you might be out of Winston One Hundred Lights. On another Saturday, I might have done it. But on this one I was scheduled to sit with my father.

Mama was outside weeding her marigold bed, and she looked up when I came up the front steps, my feet crunching down on the welcome mat, and she said Wayne Junior's in there with him, Wayne.

My father was sitting on the side of the bed. He had Wayne Junior's Walk-Man on. He had his legs spread and his hands on his butt, tapping one foot on the carpet. When Wayne Jr. saw me coming, he slipped the earphones off my father’s ears, trying not to upset him too much. Wayne Jr. put the earphones over his own tender ears, waiting for me to start in on him.

His voice was going, “Gimmee that, Wayne.” Wayne Jr. looked at me for direction and I told him to turn the damn thing off.

My father’s hands weren't on his hips anymore, he was on his feet, he was doing this ballerina twinkle toe step across the bedroom and out the door. We caught up with him in front of the TV set, channel surfing with the remote.

After Mama talked to Marleah after church, Marleah came over to do what she promised she would do, sing a hymn for my father, whatever hymn he wanted to hear. My father wasn’t wearing a diaper. He had a T-shirt on, khaki pants. Mama had cut his toenails.

While Mama went on back to the bedroom, to tell my father Marleah was here, I was talking to Mama, in my head--why does this have to happen, how sad can this get? Don't you understand, Mama came back in my head, he just wants to hear her sing.

Marleah was standing in front of my father's unit map. It was just us, in the living room. "I'm really not sure I should do this."

"Do what?” I chanced it. "See me again?"

"I told your mama I'd sing for your daddy. I didn't think you'd be here, Wayne."

Marleah was smoothing her skirt out again. The skinny soldier my father used to be was where he usually was, tacked to the unit map. Then Mama was back. She said we could see him now.

Mama went in first, Marleah next. My father was sitting up in the bed. His hands were folded over his belly. Mama sat near the foot of the bed, Marleah stood next to the dresser. When Mama called her over, she came. She let herself down in the ladder back like my father was holding the chair for her. Leaning forward inches away from him, she took his right hand in one of hers. "How you feelin', Mister Creel?"

"He's doing real well,” I had to say. Paul Creel in his blue suit, the man in the photograph, what if he were here in his in his Sunday suit, would his left hand be flopping like a fish? But he couldn’t fit into that suit anymore.

"Mister Creel?" Marleah raised her voice. "Mister Creel, I came here to sing a hymn for you. What hymn would you like me to sing, Mister Creel?"

"You sing whatever you feel like singing,” Mama said.

My father’s left hand flopped like a fish. I couldn't allow him to go on this way. I grabbed his left hand and stopped it. I dragged his right hand loose from Marleah's. My father gave me a look I’ll never forget. He yanked his hands away like I was contaminated. “Leave, Wayne! You hear me? Leave!”

The air came on with a rush. Nobody said anything. Finally Mama signaled us to leave the room. We left my father glaring out the window at the front yard, the mimosa out by the mailbox, the bird bath, Marleah's white Honda Civic, Wyatt Kirkpatrick's place across the road. He had his chin in his hand, his feet stretched out like he wanted to float away somewhere with Marleah floating with him. But she was walking out with me. We walked on out to Mama's marigold bed. It was hot outside. Marleah's frilly white blouse was damp. Sweat streaked her layer of face powder. A butterfly flickered behind her. I heard a mocking bird going--joodeejoodeejoodee. I heard a car down the road somewhere. Marleah looked at me hard when we got to her car.

"I only came because your mother asked me to. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

"Next time you come I'll make sure I'm somewhere else."

“There won’t be a next time,” Marleah said.

Marleah got in her Honda and drove away. Across the road Wyatt Kirkpatrick's underground lawn sprinklers poked their heads up into Wyatt’s front yard, hissing, squirting out water. I could cross the road, keep going, get wet, plant my feet in Wyatt’s water soaked grass. If I did that, would my father be watching me through the window he had on the world? What would he say if I trekked past Wyatt’s barbecue pit, the swing set for Wyatt’s two sons, if I kept on going, the hissing sprinklers behind me now, along with Wyatt, and Stephanie Kirkpatrick, Mama too, Sandy, Wayne Junior, if I climbed over Wyatt’s chicken wire back fence, on my way to the woods, the deep woods, the tall pines that would grow taller as more years ticked off my short life. If I were to do that, and, I told myself, I still might, would I be doing what Denny Maxwell had done, would I, in my father’s view, be doing something stupid? Or would I be doing what would please him most?

It’s just a truck trailer on wheels, the kind that can be pulled behind a big rig. But then the two ends fold out to make an entrance and exit, and vents in the roof slide open. Set up the plywood stand for the talker out front and you’re all set to start bringing in the marks. The metal skin of the trailer is painted in bright colors, all yellows and reds. SEE THE AMAZING BEASTMAN, it says in big red letters, and there’s a painting on the side that looks kind of like Lon Chaney crossed with a Sasquatch. The flesh tones are way off, the facial structure is all wrong, and it doesn’t really look like me at all. Speakers mounted on the corners of the trailer sound the spiel in a continuous tape loop, so Dr. Vanderheiden doesn’t have to squawk all day.

“Found wandering in the aftermath of the tsunami! His brain turned off by drugs! Turned into an animal by science! The Beastman! You won’t believe it! Exclusive showing for a short time only!”

The spiel doesn’t make any sense, but that’s OK. People know there’s not really a half-man-half-beast on display inside the trailer, but that doesn’t stop them from tearing off five tickets to see what’s inside. Some of the posing shows are for real; Little Nell really is a little tiny woman; she’s nice but doesn’t say much. The World’s Smallest Horse (Alive and Real) maybe isn’t actually the smallest horse in the world, but it neighs and smells like a horse and craps the world’s smallest road-apples in little piles in its pen. Dr. Vanderheiden said the show once had an honest-to-god Alligator Man until he got sick and had to quit traveling. The Alligator Lady we have now is a gaff, with fake rubber scales and spots drawn on with a Sharpie. But the marks really don’t care if the show is gaffed—they’re in on the joke now and just want to see how it’s done, to have a good laugh, to see what’s inside.

Inside The Beastman’s Lair it doesn’t look too different from an animal’s trailer from a circus. Judging by the smell, it might have been one at one time. There’s hay everywhere on the floor, and floor-to-ceiling bars separating me from the marks. In one corner there’s a stack of hay bales with a piss bucket stashed behind. It’s a fully-functional piss bucket and it stinks. Sometimes I like to think it adds to the Beastman ambiance, but usually I just think it stinks. One time I tossed one of those urinal cakes in there, but it didn’t really help the smell. Besides the pissbucket and old animal smell there’s also the smell of the midway, which I kinda like. It’s a combination of diesel exhaust, frying food, and dumpsters. It’s pretty pungent but it smells like good times.

There’s a door in the side of the trailer, which I use when I need to run to the shitter or take a break. The air in here gets so humid sometimes, on days when it’s hot and crowded, that I open it up when there aren’t any marks coming through. Depending on the way we’re set up on the lot, sometimes I can watch people go by on the Wheel of Death or the Tilt-a-Whirl. I dig just watching the people, people I don’t even know, pretty girls, kids laughing, teenagers trying to be cool. It’s what makes this gig bearable.

Dr. Vanderheiden keeps the lights dim and pushes the marks through pretty quick so no one really gets a good look at me. There’s a low-wattage light bulb at the entrance and exit, but mostly I stay out of the pool of light. On bright days outside there’s some indirect light from the roof vents; on rainy days it can get pretty dark, and when the rain comes hard it makes a helluva racket on the roof. I don’t mind though—it’s kinda soothing and plus the rain keeps the crowds down. On quiet days like that I can stash a book behind the bales by the piss bucket, and read a few pages in the dim light between marks. I just have to be ready when I hear Dr. Vanderheiden launch into his come-along spiel, so I can jump up and slam into the bars and howl and try to grab at the marks. But mostly Dr. Vanderheiden stands under the In-door awning cursing at the rain, counting the day’s few tickets over and over, as if that extra miscounted ticket will make his lot payment for the week.

The Beastman and The Lady.

It’s one of those days, somewhere in Tidewater Virginia in a town where something happened once back in the Civil War, and a forecast for rain has kept the people away, but the rain that falls is half-assed and hardly even muddies the unpaved parts of the midway. Dr. Vanderheiden has switched off the tape loop and is doing all the spieling himself, which he says he does “just to keep in practice,” as if the day will come again when a carny talker with the skill to steer marks into a gaffed show or ten-in-one will be afforded wealth and status like in the old days. I hear him go into “just-five-small-tickets, thank-you-very-much-young-lady, now-prePARE-yourself, for-the-SPECtacle…” and I put my book down by the piss bucket and pick some loose straw out of my fur. I hear footsteps on the stoop and I know before the curtains part that it’s just one person—maximal effort for minimal return.

I let out a yowl that’s part Chewbacca, part Tasmanian Devil and strike a Who-Dares-Awaken-Mighty-Kong pose with my back to the door. As soon as I hear the footsteps come close, I whirl around and charge the bars, slamming into them and reaching and pawing through them at the mark, who jumps about a foot straight up and retreats against the wall, laughing. She’s a woman alone, which almost certainly means she has friends waiting outside for her to report back before they spend their five tickets. Cheapskates.

I turn my face to the light and bare my prosthetic fangs, letting out the gurgling howl that is my tribute to both Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Mushmouth from Fat Albert. The mark is gaping now, entranced. Hopefully she’ll bring her friends in as well.

“My God… Gordon? Is that you?”

I haven’t heard my real name since the day I walked on the show, and it stops me dead. For a second I don’t recognize her. She’s put on a bit of weight; I used to tease her that she’d hit thirty like a brick wall, and apparently she has. Her hips have gotten big just like her mother’s, and in her rain jacket and fleece sweatshirt she looks like she’s just back from Junior’s soccer practice.

“Oh. Hey. Hey, how are you?” I try to say, but it comes out Urharhharrrarugh. I spit out my fangs into my hand and try again. “How are you doing?”

“Good, good… I can’t believe it’s you.”

“I know. How weird is that? Do you live around here now?”

“Yeah, down the river near Williamsburg. We’ve been here three or four years now.”

“We? You’re married?”

“Yeah.” She still had that smile, the one that had turned my bones into cream cheese all those years ago. “He’s a nice guy. You’d like him.”

“He didn’t want to come in?”

“He sent me in to check it out first. We got burned on the Giant Man-Eating Chicken.” We hit that point in the conversation when you have to decide if it’s going to be a real conversation or just an exchange of pleasantries. She forged ahead. “Have you been doing…this…long?”

“No, this is my first season with the show. And I was doing caricatures on the midway until a couple months ago.”

“So you’re still painting?”

“Not really, no.” I leaned on the bars. “It’s hard to find time, and I don’t really have the space, either. Plus at the end of a long day, you know…”

“Yeah, I know. My life’s pretty different now, too.”

Dr. Vanderheiden’s voice is suddenly loud outside: Are-you-prePARed, for-the-unbeLIEveable-SPECtacle, the-mighty-BEASTman-in-his-LAIR…

“Hey, I gotta work.”

“Oh, OK. Listen, it was good seeing you.”

“Yeah, I know.” I jam my fangs back in my mouth.

“Really. You take care of yourself, Gordon.”

“Ur ruggh. Yur turghh.”

Then she’s gone and the next batch of marks is in the door. They’re mostly kids, and they scream and holler and run around so much it makes my job easy. When they’re gone, I go straight to the back door, open it a crack, and listen for her voice. She’s got to be telling her husband You will NOT believe who I just saw in there. But there are only the screams from the Tilt-A-Whirl, the shouts from the midway, and the slow drumming of rain on the aluminum roof of the trailer.

All day I read the marks that come in. Which one is he? I look for wedding bands on the men who come in alone, and reject those who are not her type. She has to have told him to come in and look at me. Gaze upon the spectacle! The former love of her life, covered in fake hair and tattered clothes. Still life with piss bucket. She has to have told him so many things. There were so many stories, ones I still tell. Backpacking in Italy. The tornado on the night of our Senior Prom. Her weird uncle with the herd of goats grazing among the junk cars in his yard. Stories she can tell the kids we’ll never have. We had even picked out their names. I can’t believe I’m even thinking like this after all this time. Loser.

The Beastman in Repose.

The lights finally go out on the Wheel. Dr. Vanderheiden comes in, rubbing his eye. His monocle bounces on its gold chain against his satin vest. Pawing through the day’s take in his ticket poke, he shakes his head. “Not too good. This damned rain.” He sighs. “We’ll do a lot better next week down in Fayetteville.” His German accent seems to disappear every night as soon as the Wheel goes dark.

I reach through the bars and let myself out. “Don’t forget your bucket,” he says. “I’ll close up tonight, but remember we’ve got tear-down tomorrow night. So get some sleep.”

“OK, thanks.” I pick up the bucket gingerly, being careful not to slosh. The night is cool as I step down to the midway, and the grass is wet under my bare feet. I keep forgetting to bring sandals for the walk back at night. Around me the other showmen, ride jocks, gamesmen, geeks, and grifters walk in silence, heads down, reading the midway for ground score--dropped change, tickets, jewelry, cell phones, cigarettes. The Giant Man Eating Chicken lopes by, at over seven feet unmistakable even in the dim light from the chow wagons. He balls up the day’s KFC bucket in one massive hand and stuffs it in an overflowing trash can. I reach the porta-jons and open one with my elbow, keeping my bare feet outside while I tip in the contents of the bucket at arm’s length to avoid backsplash.

“What up, Beast?” It’s Tree, the cherry of his cigarette reflecting off the dark shades he never takes off, even at night.

“Hey, Tree, how ya livin’?” I slap him a low five with my non-bucket hand.

“Large and in charge, like El De Barge.” He grins the grin of someone who’s lost a lot of teeth and doesn’t care a bit.

“Good day at the Pirate Ship?”

“Kinda slow, Beast, kinda slow. Had to make for some bumpy rides to pick up a little extra something.” He pulls a digital camera from the pocket of his fatigue jacket. “Check it: S-O-N-Y. The flash got broke when it hit the ground, but it’s all good.” We walk together down the midway toward the back lot.

“It’ll pick up. I hear it’s military payday down in Fayetteville where we’re going.”

“Awww, shit, Beast, you know it. We fixin’ to get paid in the Escalade.” Military paydays mean huge crowds of drunk soldiers with pockets full of extra cash who don’t care where it goes. The local five-o are too busy breaking up fights to notice if Madame Crumpet The Midget Strumpet’s hoochie show is working blue, or if the ticket men aren’t tearing straight, or if the Hoop-It-Up basketball hoops aren’t quite circular.

“Hey, Tree. You ever see anybody you knew from outside come on your ride?”

“All the time, baby. Everybody knows the Tree. Everybody.”

“No, really.”

Tree stops walking and looks over his shades at me. “You ain’t down by law, are you? Tree can’t help you with that, my brother.”

“Naw, Tree, it’s not that. It’s a girl.”

“I feel ya.” He drags on his cigarette. “And she’s not down with you being a showman?”

“You got it. But I don’t know why I even care. She’s an ex. From a long time ago.”

“Listen, Beast. Everybody with the show, they’re either running from something, or waiting to get to something. You got to figure out which one of those you are. Then you got to figure out if the show’s helping you with that. Some people ain’t meant to be travelers, Beast. Ain’t meant to be. But I think you got it in you.”

“I hear ya, Tree.” We stop outside the bunkhouse, the long trailer where newcomers and first-of-Mays rent a few square feet of sleeping space before they get enough money for a trailer of their own. A row of doors on each side conceal tiny cabins with little more than a fold-down cot, a chest of drawers, and a hot plate. I count four doors from the front and unlock my door.

“Hey, Beast, you got what you need?” I think that’s a pretty heavy question, and I’m pondering it when I realize he’s asking if I want to buy any dope.

“Naw, Tree. I’m good. But thanks.” Tree’s Mexican ditch weed always gives me a headache. “Thanks a lot.”

“A’ight, Beast. And if that girl needs some straightening out, tell her come see the Tree. I’ll set her right, for a fact.” He ambles off into the darkness of the back lot. A knot of ride jocks call out to him, and fives are slapped, and a bottle goes round. I let the door bang shut and sit on my cot. The bunkhouse vibrates gently with the thrum of the massive diesel generators on the genny truck next door. The tiny cabin fills with the sharp smell of spirit gum remover as I pull the hair off my face, clump by clump.

The Lady Touched by the Beastman’s Plight.

The knock against the window set in the bunkhouse cabin door stirs me from half-sleep. I know before I even look at the shape though the milky glass that it must be her. This has happened before, except in a dream. I let her in, and as she steps into the tiny space the smell of her is so instantly familiar that my head spins. But I have learned to both hate and pity her over these years, I remind myself.

“Sit down. How did you find me?”

“It wasn’t too hard,” she says, sitting on the edge of the cot, her knees almost touching the front of the dresser. “A nice midget lady helped me out.”

“Madame Crumpet? You’re lucky she didn’t offer you a job.”

“Actually, I think she did. Something about thousands of dollars to work in Fayetteville next week.” She glances around the cabin, probably wondering where my thousands of dollars are going. A few paperbacks, a cheap transistor radio, a NASCAR ashtray, a half-drained jug of red wine, a battery-powered lamp.

“Did your husband know you were coming here?” Suddenly I fear her motive. I know that if she so much as puts a hand on my knee I will burst into flames. The shape of her face is different now, rounder; the mouth fuller. But the eyes are the same.

“Actually, yes. We discussed it. At some length.”

“I see.” I don’t. If she’s not here for hot ex-sex, then why? Surely not to taunt me. She was never cruel, only misguided.

“Gordon, I came here because I’m worried about you. I wanted to make sure you’re OK.”

“Of course I’m OK. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Look, I know you took things pretty hard…”

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself.”

“Seriously, Gordon. I know I did. I know I thought you were the one. You probably did, too. We had it all planned out, remember?” I couldn’t have forgotten. We’d talked about it a hundred times—the wedding in the old church at St. Andrew’s, the house in the country, the two kids, the retirement, even. It seems even more ridiculous now than then.

“Sure. But you moved on. So did I.”

“Moved on? Gordon, look at you. You’re a carny, for chrissake.”

“Showman.”

“Excuse me?”

“Showman. ‘Carny’ is an outdated pejorative.”

“Whatever. The point is, you work in a freak show, you live in a damn horse trailer, and you dress up in some kind of monkey suit for a living. In spite of everything that happened between us, maybe because of everything that happened between us, I still think you’re better than that.”

I look at the floor and say nothing. The diesel thrum from the genny truck abruptly stops, and the silence is sudden. The single light fixture dims, then dies. I reach over and snap on the battery-powered lantern. “Sorry. Eleven o’clock. They shut down the generators to save money.” Outside, the backlot and the midway fade into darkness.

Johnny Cash Beset By Darkness.

We talk for a while. Some about old times, some catching up to today. About her husband and about where I’ve been. About people we knew and where they are now. She bums a smoke even though she says she quit. I pour her some jug wine into a coffee cup, and it’s almost like old times. Almost.

I show her the last thing I painted. It was a long time ago, years ago even, not long after the breakup, but I don’t tell her that. She’d get the wrong impression, because the piece is really dark. In fact I haven’t shown it to many people, because everyone gets the wrong impression, and I got tired of explaining it. It’s a pretty small canvas, about 20 by 30, and it’s all in shades of black, with some gloss, some flat, a little more texture here and there. It’s oppressive and heavy, or at least that was what I was going for. I call it “Johnny Cash Beset By Darkness,” and that’s where everybody gets it wrong. Oh I get it. The Man in Black, ha-ha. But that’s not it at all.

In 1967, Johnny Cash, strung out on pills, in trouble with the law, and troubled by the dissolution of his marriage, climbed into Nickajack Cave to die. He walked straight back into that cave, through untold passageways and twists and turns, for hours, until his flashlight batteries gave out. Then, hopelessly lost, in a darkness that must have been overwhelming, with a million billion tons of rock over his head, he just lay down and waited to die. But something made him get up and start walking again, in darkness, hands out in front of him. Hours later, amazingly, he felt a breeze across his face, and followed it out of the cave and into the sunlight. That story’s in his book Cash: The Autobiography of Johnny Cash, by Johnny Cash, and when I read it, it stuck with me. I understand that a lot of Christians like to point to that as an instance of God speaking to somebody, but Johnny himself said he knew it wasn’t God talking to him. He said he just suddenly knew that life wasn’t his to just throw away.

“I want to buy this from you,” she says, holding the canvas by the wood framing and tilting it so the gloss-black streaks catch the dim light from the lantern. “I came here with some money. I was going to offer it to you so you could get out of here, get out of this life. But I was also pretty sure you wouldn’t take it.”

“You’re damned straight. But the painting’s not for sale, either.”

She nods. “I understand. But if you change your mind…here’s my number. And if you need a job, my husband is friends with a guy who owns a tavern in Williamsburg, and he can give you a job waiting tables or something. You’d have to wear a costume, but I guess…” She starts to laugh.

“Yeah, I’m used to that,” I say. “I won’t be calling you for a job, but thanks anyway. I appreciate the offer.” And I do. But I don’t want to be a charity case for my ex-girl and her new man. There must be a limit to how much accumulated humiliation one can bear in a lifetime. “But hey, if you want a job, I’m sure I could get you on the show.”

“Oh my God.”

“We could use a new Spiderella The Arachno-Girl.”

“How about the Fat Lady? That’s what I feel like I’m turning into sometimes.”

“Gabba gabba, we accept you! One of us! One of us!”

“Stop it. You know that movie gave me nightmares.” There is a kiss on the cheek, fraught with peril and drenched in memory, and then she’s gone, picking her way across the dark backlot in the direction of town, a glow on the edge of the dark sky.

The Beastman Afoot.

Morning comes early to the carnival, and I awaken to the sound of a ride jock puking outside the bunkhouse. The sky has cleared, and the golden dawn illuminates the top of the Wheel, its reflectors shining in gold and purple. My shoes leave trails in the dewy grass. Dr. Vanderheiden is startled to see me without my makeup and costume, but when I give him the news he doesn’t seem all that surprised, and he offers me a raise only half-heartedly. I know he’ll probably have another Beastman by the time the state Ride Inspectors show up in Fayetteville.

Tree only nods sagely. “Beastman’s gotta do what a Beastman’s gotta do.” Then he gives me the one-sided man-hug so as not to knock the ash off his cigarette. “You know you got family on the show, Beast. Any old time.” He swings himself up into the control seat of the Pirate Ship to run through his morning checklist.

“It’s Gordon.”

“What say, dog?” He peers over his shades at me.

“My name’s Gordon.”

He looks off into the distance and nods. “Gordon. All right now. All right.”

It’s a long hike to the bus station in town, but my backpack is light, with only my few things and a rolled-up canvas. The traffic begins to stream out to the fairgrounds, and the passing cars throw a nice breeze in my face.

He parked his SUV at the end of the road next to a wooden barrier where a greenbrier vine wrapped its naked limbs around the planks. A gravel driveway led to the house on 720 Mimosa, a white 1950’s bungalow. He had learned not to judge a man’s collection of arms by the size of his house. Thomas, an appraiser and buyer for Mitchum’s Antiquity Gallery in Richmond, Virginia, made his living deciding the value of things. Many of his best pieces were found in unassuming homes of hard working American men. Still, with all of his experience and all of his contacts and all of his research, he never knew how he would be received by the widow. Often, he felt like a personal injury lawyer chasing ambulances, or, in his case, hearses, obituaries, tips from gun clubs and other collectors, and, as always, he hoped his services were welcomed.

A petite, twenty-something woman opened the door and ushered him inside.

“My mom’s sleeping,” she said. He followed her through the living room where the remnants of Christmas lingered. Removing his gloves, he handed the woman his business card.

“It’s all in here,” she said, opening the closet door in one of the bedrooms. “Mr. Gorham said you’d be fair.”

“I am fair,” he said, and then, immediately spotting a replica field offer’s sword leaned against a suitcase, its shinny newness so apparent it could have been purchased from a catalogue last week, he added, “but I can’t promise anything until I examine the collection.”

“Have at it, Mr. Askin,” she said and left him alone in the room.

He moved the collection from the closet to the bed. The various weapons included: pistols, rifles, three swords, and a few daggers. Most of the collection was not all Civil War era, as he had been told, and only two infantry rifles interested him. He examined another sword, and, seeing that it had a replacement blade and two dings in the grip, he put it back on the bed. It was then that his cell phone began to vibrate. He reached for the phone clamped to his belt but stopped. He knew who was calling—his wife—and he knew what she wanted—sex.

He and Heather were trying to have a baby. He and Heather had been trying to get pregnant for over a year. He and Heather were going at it day and night until Heather put a stop to their sex-fest and decided to take a more scientific approach to copulation. So, for the last six months, she limited their intercourse to key conception periods, which he soon realized were a few days a month. This meant saving his sperm for just the right moment; it meant little green pills and ovulation tests and basal thermometers, fertility pillows, herbal rubs, non-toxic lube, boxers not briefs, and fertility tracking software. It also meant urgent calls to his cell phone demanding sex. Sex on demand wasn’t such a bad thing, at first.

“Who are you?”

He turned to find an elderly woman standing in the doorway. She wore a white, cotton nighty and a terry-cloth robe.

“I’m Mr. Askin.”

“You’re here to buy Walter’s things, aren’t you?”

“Is that okay?” he asked, dreading the answer.

“Well, that’s a bunch of crap.”

“Ma’am, I think you should talk to your daughter.”

“No,” she said, “I mean the stuff on the bed. It’s all crap.”

He paused, and then said, “It’s not all bad.”

“Yes, it is. But do you want to see something special?”

“Like what?” he asked.

“Look under there.” She pointed to the bed.

He pulled up the bedspread—a pair of old leather slippers sat on the floor.

“Under the mattress,” she instructed him.

He lifted the mattress and reached underneath and pulled out a sword—a sword with a brass lion’s head on the butt of a spiral grip and a long flat, double edge blade. It was not from the Civil War.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked. “This is English, 1770’s.” But he knew he wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know.

“It was his pride and joy,” she said. “He slept with it under he’s bed for over twenty years.”

Her distant gaze cautioned him against asking why.

“Let me show you something else,” she said.

He followed her into her bedroom, a smaller room with vibrant colored curtains, teal blankets, and a fuchsia boa tossed over the bedpost, which further complicated his image of her. She went to her nightstand and took out a knife.

“It’s a dagger. Double edge, spear point,” he said.

“Oh, I know it’s not worth much. But it was Walter’s first. Do you remember your first?”

“Sure,” he said.

She clutched the dagger in a semi-threatening way, pointed at him. “We moved into this house in the sixties. It was supposed to be temporary. Walter promised a bigger house as soon as . . . well, I don’t remember the why of things. But, after my youngest was born, she’s the one that let you in, Walter added two bedrooms to this place. Anyway, he found this in the dirt out back and was hooked.”

He moved closer to the door, acting casual, but wished for a polite way to end their conversation. He had seen everything he needed to see and expected his cell phone to begin vibrating again. His attention narrowed to the perfume on her dresser, and he picked up a glass bottle.

“What hooked you, Mr. Askin?”

“This is crystal, Czech, 1930’s or 40’s.” He picked up an atomizer with silver filigree and squeezed the bulb. “Honeysuckle,” he said as he evaluated the sweet fragrance.

“Well, for a man who deals in guns and knives, you know a lot about perfume.”

“I like, I mean, I buy…” He hunted for the right words as he set the atomizer back on the dresser. “I collect antique perfume bottles for my wife. My mother had ones like these,” he finally said. He expected her to say something. He sensed a question forming in her mind, but he changed the subject to money and made her an offer for the two guns and the sword. She seemed pleased, even surprised at the amount. He was being generous, but the daughter thought otherwise.

The daughter tried to convince him to take everything, saying the rest must be worth something. He explained she would get more if she sold them individually, saying the pieces were marginal. This angered her, and he might have walked away from the deal if not for the sword. The mother interrupted them by reminding her daughter about manners and scolding her for not offering him a drink, saying something about “guests in her house”. That quieted the daughter, and he wrote the check, thinking he was done, but just as he began to leave, the woman invited him to stay for lunch. An exchange of polite insistences followed as she would say, “It’s the least we can do,” and he would reply, “I really couldn’t,” until he accepted a sandwich and a thermos of coffee for the road.

By the time Thomas Askin reached I-81, his phone was pulsing in short vibrations, reminding him of the missed call. He removed the phone from his belt and put it in the center console along with the sandwich and thermos of coffee. He’d met Heather six years ago. She cashiered in the gift shop at the Confederacy Museum where he worked and even though she wasn’t the type of woman he dated, they went out for drinks. He tried not to reveal his true intentions and, for the first few dates, let her talk about life, her dreams, or anything she wanted to talk about as long as she kept stroking her hair in a flirtatious manner and wore low-cut blouses. He could appreciate the big tease, the tension; it kept him coming back.

Then, after five years of marriage, they began trying to have a baby and it was then that Heather revealed an aggressive side he did not know existed. She would meet him at the door, grab his hand, and, if they made it to the bedroom, she would strip him and use him for her own pleasure, demanding he make his deposit. It felt good to be desired, and this forceful play went on for some time, until their failure to produce could not be ignored, and then she became passive, lying in bed, waiting for him to perform the act that would return meaning to her life.

As he drove, he thought about the sword and how pleased Mr. Mitchum would be with the find because a Revolutionary era officer’s sword was highly prized among collectors. He would have to thank Mr. Gorham, a local gun dealer, with a finder’s fee. And without being too aware, his thoughts wandered back to the question the old woman had asked; “What hooked you?” He thought about his father, a history professor, and his mother, a housewife, and their many trips to battlefields and historical sights. Then, he pulled off the interstate and on to one of the secondary roads that branched like veins through Virginia’s heartland. He had just added an hour to his trip. A surge of freedom hit him as he crossed the Blue Ridge Parkway and took a road to Lynchburg where, as a boy, he’d held his mother’s hand as they watched a battle reenactment. He passed through the rolling greenery of the Shenandoah Valley, through small towns unchanged through the years. He drove past Appomattox, remembering how he had stood in the courthouse where Lee surrendered to Grant. And when he reached Farmville, near the last major battle of the war, he turned north and followed a country road to a village lost to tourists and known only to serious historians like his father.

The General Store was located on a dusty street between other merchant buildings. The red letters on the store’s window were hand-painted, a loopy script, and had flaked from years of neglect. The front door seemed smaller than he remembered, but as he pulled it open, he imagined entering a time when the world seemed greater than he was, and the motto was “if it feels good, do it.” The jingling of sleigh bells rang out from behind the door and announced his arrival to a teenage boy who sat behind the counter reading a comic book. The teen looked at him and returned to his comic. Thomas walked down an aisle of canned food to the back of the store. There, the ceiling lowered and the light dimmed as he stepped into an old storage room. Two tables divided the space, and they were littered with junk. Boxes of odds-and-ends sat on the floor. He picked through the first table. Most items were marked with an orange circular sticker and the price written in black ink—some written in the same loopy handwriting as on the window. The second table had china and various kitchen items spread across its surface, and the boxes below housed a collection of musty books—page worn romances. As a child, this had been a treasure trove; but now, it created an empty feeling in his gut. He tried to remember what she had said, but he could only bring to mind an image—a slender figure walking away, down the aisle, her blue tunic catching the breeze, her skirt rubbing the back of her legs, her clogs slapping the bottom of her feet. That’s what hooked him. After his father had found a collection of Civil War photographs, Thomas found a bottle of perfume on the table. The bottle, half full, had a black t-shaped stopper and a golden label with a picture of a mother and child. He dug through his pockets and counted his change at the counter. He was nine pennies short, but the owner sold him the bottle. That was the beginning of his collection; he would buy the bottles for her birthday, for Mother’s Day, and for Christmas.

The room felt hot. He removed his gloves, stuffing them in his coat pocket. It was then he noticed the box on the floor near the doorway; a soft fragrance came from inside. He dug through it and found two pink atomizers, but they did not match the powdery floral scent. He dug deeper and tipped the box on its side until he found the glass bottle with the black stopper. He held it up; a small amount of yellow liquid splashed inside, and he tried to find the light to read the label—Spanish Geranium. He laughed realizing it had been the perfume, her smell, which had triggered the memory of his mother.

He set the bottle on the counter. The teen hardly looked at Thomas as he continued to read.

“I’m buying this,” Thomas said.

“You can’t,” the teen said.

“Why not?”

“No sticker.”

“It probably fell off in the box,” he said.

“No,” the teen replied. “That’s from Miss Kelly’s box and Miss Kelly comes in and sells on Monday, so none of that stuff is marked yet.”

Thomas remained in front of the counter, tapping his foot, until he pulled out a business card.

“The bottle’s not worth more than thirty dollars,” he said with authority.

The teen used Thomas’s business card as a bookmarker and closed the comic. He handed Thomas a business card for The General Store as if he were following some rule that he didn’t fully understand. “Any thing else?” the teen asked.

“I want the bottle.”

“No.”

“Fifty dollars,” Thomas said. “That’s more than fair.”

“Look, Mister, I don’t care about your money or your fancy business card. You don’t pay me, so I don’t listen to you.”

“Then who’s in charge?”

“My grandfather.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“No.”

“And why not?”

“He won’t come in until four o’clock.”

“One hundred. That’s my last offer. You’re grandfather will be proud.”

The teen looked away for a moment, as if he were considering what Thomas had said, but when he turned back, he said, “I’m not going to chance it.”

“But I can’t wait.”

“Well, I can’t sell it without a sticker.” He moved the perfume bottle from the counter to the shelf behind him. “I’ll keep it there for you,” he said and returned to his comic.

Thomas left the store and sat in his SUV. He wasn’t leaving. He figured he had an hour and forty minutes until the grandfather showed up. He could wait. He’d tell her that he got stuck in traffic, there was a bad accident. He couldn’t get home. Still, he would not call her and force the issue, preferring the one lie to several exchanges for the next few hours, giving her time to check the road reports.

“I need you,” he could imagine her saying. She would have taken her temperature just after he left, recording it on her graph with a black dot. Then, she would study the dots on the graph, most of them plotted along the 98 degrees line until that morning when she would plot a higher temperature. She would compare it with her past charts and log the information in the computer, and if those results were promising, she would break open an ovulation test. She would spend the day cleaning the house with a nervous energy so focused that, in the end, every corner would be dusted, the furniture show-room arranged, and a plate of cookies waiting for him. She had become the perfect wife, and he loved her. He loved her in ways he could not express. She took care of him, created a home for him, and, someday, would give him children. However, it was her domestic perfection that made him aware of his failings as a man.

He grabbed the sandwich and thermos and left his SUV. The chilly air felt good against his face. He walked along a path that led to a small campsite. He sat at a picnic table and poured coffee in the thermos lid. The campsite had changed, fewer trees, thinner brush, but the quiet remained. Long ago, the land served both Union and Confederate troops. When he was a child, his father told stories in front of a camp fire about how they were following the steps of men who sacrificed everything for their beliefs. During the day, his mother would take him on nature walks where they studied trees and birds and collected leaves—leaves that he imagined had once been stained with the blood of the fallen men. A half-mile west, a creek became their private water park; his mother and father swam naked in the rushing water while he tried to catch fish with a make-shift stick and string pole. She wore his perfume everyday.

As Thomas peeled the cellophane from the sandwich, mayo stuck to his fingers. He wiped them on the top of the white bread and then took a bite of the sandwich. He chewed a thick-cut piece of ham. The old woman probably made it extra thick, thinking she was being generous. But as he looked for another bite, he saw how uneven the slice was and sunk his teeth into the thinner section. He knew he needed to eat, and he wondered if he might have dealt differently with the teen if his blood sugar wasn’t so low. Then, just as he was about to swallow, the thought occurred to him—this was Christmas ham, leftovers from Walter’s last meal. He instantly spat the chewed wad of meat to the ground and reached for the coffee but stopped when he saw the monogrammed WJM carved on the face of the thermos. He shuddered and lost control for a moment as he dry-heaved. He stumbled down the path towards the main street and hurried back to the warmth of his SUV. With shaky hands, he searched the glove compartment for gum, a mint, or anything to counter the taste of the death pork. There were no mints; she kept them in her purse. He stared at The General Store for several minutes, and then he made his move.

He burst through the door, knocking the sleigh bells to the floor. He walked up to the counter and said, “I need to see the bottle.”

The teen seemed uneasy as he stood behind the counter, refusing to let Thomas have the bottle.

“Let me see it.”

Thomas paced twice and then came around to the other side of the counter.

“Hey, you can’t come back here.”

Thomas dug through his wallet and pulled out several bills and waved them around, saying, “This is more than fair.” He tossed the money at the teen and snatched the bottle off the shelf. The teen seemed frozen, as if he had no rule for what Thomas was doing. As Thomas headed out the door, he stopped at a candy display and took several packs of cinnamon gum.

He sped away in his SUV, chewing as many pieces of gum as he could fit in his mouth. He followed the country road back to the secondary and half expected a cop to be waiting at the crossroad, but there was no one to stop him. After traveling awhile, he merged on to a main artery of Richmond, and then he found his way to his street, his driveway, his home.

The lights were off in the living room and, in the fading daylight, colors waned and gray transfused the space. He found her in the kitchen. There were no cookies. Her graphs were arranged on the table: the days plotted, the weeks a collection of dots that formed the shape of their lives. She looked disappointed. He was prepared to answer her questions, but she asked none. He knew it was down-hill-dots from that moment on. She told him to meet her in the bedroom but before she could leave, he took the perfume bottle from his pocket and offered it to her as an apology. She took the bottle and examined its simple form. As she removed the stopper, he thought she might dab her finger in the lip of the bottle and rub the perfume on her skin. That thought both frightened and excited him. But when the heady mix of Aldehydic and Bergamot reached her nose, she winced and said, “That’s foul.” She immediately turned to the sink and poured out the yellow liquid.

“What are you doing?” He reached for the bottle, grabbing it from her, but it was too late.

“It’s awful, Tom.”

“You didn’t give it a chance,” he said, trying to stop his feelings of contempt, but it was too late for that, too.

In bed, they both stared at the ceiling, the covers pulled over their naked bodies.

“You know what to do,” Heather said.

He reached his hand under the sheet.

The only light in the room came from the green glow of the digital alarm clock. Soon, he would have to go back to his position at the museum, to stay close to home. The road would become a part of some other life, and then he understood why Walter kept the sword between the mattress and box spring. He imagined it was under his bed, the metal blade lying flat, suffocating under his weight.

“Deeper,” she said.

He smelled her scent on his fingers as he gripped her shoulder.

“You know what to do,” she said.

He closed his eyes.

“There’s no blood in the forest,” she said.

His eyes opened, but he could not see.

“Deeper,” she said.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“That’s why I’m telling you.”

“I can’t.”

“But no one will love you like I do.”

It looked to Vernon like a win-win proposition, this community theatre thing, his part in it. Not at first, not back in May when Conway LaRue, Jr., the show's director and an Associate Professor of Communication at Piney Woods C.C. first clapped him on the shoulder in the faculty processional and asked whether he'd be around to do Shakespeare this summer. Back then, in May, broiling under his academic gown and with his whole summer stretching before him, unparceled, uncommitted, Vernon had tried to appear polite but disinterested, and Conway LaRue, Jr. had not pushed. That was mid-May.

The first Monday after Memorial Day, Vernon was scheduled for his end-of-year interview with Dr. Costello, his Dean. Mrs. Quigly, the Dean's secretary, greeted him by name, taking off her glasses. "I'll just see if Dean Costello's ready." She buzzed him. Smiled again at Vernon. "Yes, go right in. Can I get you coffee?"

Costello, Vernon noticed, was dressed in shorts and polo shirt. Vernon was sorry now he'd worn a tie, thankful that he hadn't put his sports coat on. "Good morning, Dr. B!" Dean Costello was a small, square, bespectacled man with a booming voice, a business management professor who had risen through the ranks. "How're you today? Becky offer you a cuppa joe? All righty then." Dean Costello typically opened these annual meetings by reviewing his evaluation check-list, ranking the probational faculty member one-to-five in various areas. Over the years, Vernon had become comfortable both with these chat-sessions and his own reliable "fours." Vernon took a seat on the paisley couch that matched Costello's wingback chair. Some papers and folders lay on the coffee table between them. Vernon had already read his student course evaluations for the year. A kind teacher. . . I like it when he reads aloud. . . He showed us how to write proffesionally. Now he primed his ears for Dean Costello's numbers. "Well, Vern. Here we are. It's been quite a year, I reckon. And I just want to say I'm sorry. For all of it, I'm sorry." (Why, Vernon wondered, thrown off-course. It wasn’t Dean Costello’s fault.) "To lose your Mom over Christmas Break… Then, well, Lydia… You know, research shows divorce is harder--I'm speaking psychically--on husbands than on wives. So how you doin', buddy?"

"Okay, Charles. Thanks. Neither was, you know, much of a shock." He had a quick and painful mental glimpse of Mama, long months dying, fettered to a respirator. Another quick and painful glimpse of Lydia as she must have looked while posing for Buck Arnold's night class in "Life Studies." He'd seen a sample in the student exhibition: Lydia, nude, staring at him from across the college cafeteria. This was in April, two months after she'd moved out. Struck nearly faint and nauseous, Vernon had to leave the lunch line.

"Well, Vernon, I must say you kept your head up through it all. Teaching classes, grading all those goddamn papers--I swear I don't know how you English people do it. Plus you proofed the college catalogue. And I just want to say we're grateful here. You're a real survivor."

Had there been a choice? Living alone now in a two-bedroom apartment, a few worn pieces of his mother's furniture for company; finding himself an object of embarrassment and pity, somehow, to those few couples he and Lydia once socialized with, what did he have to occupy his time but work?

Dean Costello raised his coffee cup. "Here's hoping next year's much, much better for you, Vern."

"Yessir. I'll drink to that."

Costello took a sip. "All right." He traded his coffee cup for the folder lying between them on the coffee table. "Let's talk about this tenure thing."

The world has come alive once more and waits for Caliban to enter. "Ban, Ban, Cal-i-ban," he chants sotto voce. He's beyond the edge of the parking lot now, where a pair of bats swoop for night bugs, and coming through the trees into the meadow where cast and crew park their cars and pickup trucks. He does a kind of dance-in-place, hunched over, shaking both his hairy wrists down at the level of his knees. He raises his brown-stained throat up to the moon. "There's wood enough within, " he rasps. "There's wood enough within." He rolls his head from side to side. The moon rattles across the sky, sinking into a purple cloud, and the gristle in his neck cracks softly. Then Caliban goes limp, falling forward until he feels his chin touch down upon his necklace of bone, and his fingers dangle at his ankles. He hangs there motionless, as Ariel must have hung while trapped in that enchanted pine. Relaxed, he is working once more to shuck his old life, its sorrows and its fetters: Lydia's betrayal, the close of show, the summer's end, rain in the immediate forecast, Miranda's disregard, the extra weight he's picked up somewhere in his thirties, the death of Sycorax his mother. He is falling into character now. Caliban breathes deeply, in through the nostrils and out through the mouth, getting the kind of deep chest and diaphragm action that makes his director, Conway LaRue, Jr., a satisfied man. The air tastes of August heat, of woods and wet.

By now, he knows, the old man and his daughter will be on stage, expositing their royal woe. "There's wood enough within." One-handed, Caliban snatches a firefly from the air before his face. He shakes his hairy fist at the hide-and-seek full moon, then liberates the bug into the dark, pats his snout's green scales, and slinks back to the island, where he slips into his stony lair. Stageside, a burlap curtain hides him from the audience. He peeks through its rough weave, squinting at the circle of light that defines this island world. What he sees, unseen, is like a warm, recurring dream. Winged Ariel bobs and genuflects to Prospero's hoary threats. Miranda sleeps downstage, pillowed by her arm. The gentle curve her rump makes through her russet island shift, the way the grains of sand glint back at Caliban from the bottom of her ivory foot-- his rocky lair must surely be the best seat in the house. This vision soothes his jitters every night. Crouched inside his chicken-wire monster's den he flexes all his fingers. He wets his lips, coughs clear his throat, sets himself to answer Prospero's call for firewood.

Tenure. Yes, why not. Because they had a way of sneaking up on him, fait accompli, Vernon was accustomed to rolling with the punches, acquiescing to the major milestones in his life: his parents' divorce when he was fourteen, his various matriculations and birthdays, his courtship and marriage to Lydia, bagging (on the advice of his advisor) Herman Melville for a specialty in technical rhetoric, snagging the job at Piney Woods--just twenty miles from Mama's nursing home--his mother's death last winter, Lydia's new passion for the arts. Vernon liked to think himself unselfish. A team player. As teams go, Piney Woods C.C. was triple-A, but over six years Vernon had grown used to being on the roster.

"Are you sure you'd want it, Son?" Costello asked, fixing Vernon with his owlish eyes. "I'd understand completely if you want to look around. The four-year colleges pay more, of course. I don't see much chance P.W.C.C. will grow its offerings in your field, Vernon--not when the Trustees get their rocks off with new programs in truck driving and--what's that other thing?--nurse-midwifery. Man-to-man, would you be comfortable teaching on this campus? Buck Arnold's tenured, Son. So long as we've got FTE's in fashion merchandising--and we got 'em--I can't touch those long-hairs in the art department."

"I can live with that. I appreciate your shooting straight with me. But overall, you know, I'm happy here."

Dean Costello sighed. "Okay then. Had to ask. Let's see how things stack up." Flipping now through Vernon's annual reports. Murmuring. "Can't predict, you understand, how the tenure and review committee's going to act in any given year… Criteria-wise, looks like your major ducks are in a row…" In a nutshell, Dean Costello's favorite mode of discourse, Vernon's course evaluations, syllabi, grading distributions looked okay. His annotations for the teacher's copy of Business Writing for the New Millennium, his freelance authorship of J. J. Wilfong Sawmill's human resource manual should count as scholarship. "Hell, this isn't Vanderbilt," Costello chuckled. Plus editing the college catalogue, three years running. Though that might count for College Service. Positive rec's from his colleagues in the Language Arts.

Community Service. Here Costello frowned, studying Vernon's most recent report and tapping his mechanical pencil against the page. Yes, there might be some question of that. Not that it was an emphasis, of course. Not here, where one taught four to five courses a semester. Plus a night course here and there. The occasional faculty workshop and in-service gig. Still, just playing devil's advocate, Costello mused, abiding by the criteria as they're listed in the faculty handbook, had Vernon anything to show by way of community involvement? Surely he could dig up something. Any number of things in Vernon's life might qualify: activities and associations he probably took for granted. He might be a Lion or an Elk. A walk or run-a-thoner. A volunteer for Meals on Wheels. "Give this some thought," Costello urged. "Look at your kitchen calendar, remind yourself of where you spend your evenings. Make sure the t & e committee gets a sense of where your passion lies, extra-curricularly speaking. Because you have the summer off, you should use this time to strengthen your tenure case, criteria-wise. Update the vita. Let's see," Costello counseled, "what you can dig up."

And for a week or two, Vernon dug. He re-enrolled in a couple of professional associations whose memberships he'd let lapse after getting the job at Piney Woods. He wandered through his files until he'd found a copy of his three-page "Guidelines for Effective Memoranda," commissioned by the local city council via MarJane Goss, who was a councilwoman besides being a financial aid director at P.W.C.C. Vernon found a copy of the talk he gave his mother's chapter of the Association of University Women, three years back: sexism in language. And then, browsing through the two tech writing journals in the college library, looking for a "Call for Papers," he'd run into a former student, Brandi Lockhart. Brandi was perched on a stool behind the desk in Periodicals, her long hair clipped behind her head the way young mothers wore theirs lounging poolside outside the window of his bachelor's apartment. She hailed him first ("Hey! Dr. B!"). She asked if he was coming to auditions for Conway's summer show.

"Hmmm? Say what?"

"The Tempest? I thought you knew. Not the Piney Woods Playhouse but The Allegheny Players? Their fourth and final show? LaRue's directing? I could have sworn he said you were a faculty recruit." She smiled at him. "It might be cool to do another play together, don't you think?"

Vernon had carried small parts in campus productions over the last couple of years, is what she meant. Howie Newsom in Our Town. A telephone repairman in Barefoot in the Park. Something to get him out of the house nights after Lydia started taking art classes. Cameos, really, that Vernon took as favors to Conway, who had trouble scrounging male actors on a campus where business courses and a truck-driving academy held the highest enrollment and many of the students worked full-time jobs. Brandi, he recalled, was a communication major with a theatre emphasis.

"I guess he did say something about it," Vernon said. "A possible part. You gonna be there?"

"Well, yeah," she said, dropping her gaze, touching the pages of her open novel with just her fingertips, spinning it in lazy circles on the counter. "Mostly just to see who all comes out. To read with different, you know, Ferdinands. I probably shouldn't tell," she said. And although the PWCC periodicals room was empty but for them, she cupped her hands around her mouth and converted her voice into a stage whisper. "I'm kind of, you know, pre-cast. Don't tell I told you, Vernon."

So he'd gone to the audition. By close of June it looked to be a win-win proposition. Because a role in summer theatre ought to count for something tenure-wise. Not just as community service, but because Conway LaRue, Jr. himself served on the faculty tenure committee. And it was Shakespeare--didn't he teach English, after all, even if it was tech writing? And finally because by conversation's end the black-haired library girl had called him Vernon, and not Dr. B.

During Intermission, Prospero lies rigid on a bench, his magic cape draped across his face. Trinculo and Stephano sit cross-legged on a picnic bench, playing poker. Conway LaRue, Jr. (even though it's August, he wears his signature fedora and a scarf) appears to be in heavy conference with the kid who runs the light board, Artie Lester. And where's Miranda? Dressed in white for her next entrance, in ACT III, she smokes a cigarette and laughs at Ariel, who cuts a caper, mincing air with someone's sword. Ariel's a travel agent in real life. During read-through, four weeks back at Conway's house, he'd draped an arm 'round Caliban and offered his interpretation of their characters. "We're kinda brothers, don't you think? Slave and spirit, frick and frack. Twin freaks of man's oppression, see?" Vernon can't tell whether Ariel is gay or merely artsy.

The other spirits form their own society. They squeal and hop in place around the Coke machine. Two of the older kids live in his same apartment complex. They think it's funny Vernon's in the show. Now when they see him at the pool they call him "Mr. Mooncalf." He tries hard to avoid them. They break his concentration; they blunt his sense of sexiness and danger.

Conway's coming over. He lays an arm across Cal's furry shoulder. "Monster lad! Great show so far! Let's keep the pace way up tonight, okay?" He points his showman's finger skyward. Caliban's already felt the cooling of the air, the shift in wind. "It's already pouring down to Stoneypike. Second half will be a race against the rain. So tempo up. Better spread the word."

He'd like to wish Miranda luck, tell her how much he likes the way she says, "O brave new world" in that last scene, as if she really feels it. But he can see she's busy, holding hands with Ferdinand, that high school boy. They're practicing the dance they do together in Act IV. (The dance is Conway's substitute for all that junk with Juno and the other gods, come down to bless the royal kids.) Watching, Caliban recalls the way her fingers felt upon his neck, behind his ears, an hour and a half ago when she was rubbing in his monster's stain. And at the party after Friday's show, she offered him a bite of her roast beef. For maybe half an hour she sat close to him on Conway's couch, soliciting his thoughts about her future major as a transfer student (journalism, theatre, or pre-law?). She asked him if he ever played b-ball in college. The women in the cast, she whispered in his ear, have voted. Ariel and Caliban have tied for cutest buns. In what way should he build upon these small flirtations, these intimacies? Tonight's the final show. This fall she'll be a junior at Virginia Wesleyan.

Vernon had stood with others in the high school gym, reading bits of dialogue for Prospero and Caliban, Antonio, Francisco and the Boatswain. Conway LaRue seemed friendlier than usual. When she wasn't reading for Miranda, Brandi Lockhart sometimes perched beside him on the bleacher, sharing inside info. Her long black hair was like a curtain or a cave, her animated face--uncovered when she flopped her tresses to the side--a sort of shining, hidden hearth. "LaRue's a little worried about making cast," she whispered. "His is, you know, the last show of the season and Oklahoma's snatched a lot of regulars. The musicals are like that."

No wonder then it seemed a little strange how Conway tried to "sell" Vernon the part the night he called. "Your height, your husky voice. I need you for the monster, man. I've got a high school kid for Ferdinand, Marv Johnson makes a great Antonio. So how about it? Caliban! A few less lines than Prospero, but what a kick. You get to be a wild man, Vern. You get to beat your chest and howl. Cuss other folks in perfect meter. Just between the two of us, Prospero comes off as a tight-ass, right? Look how poor Gonzalo's made to suffer with the rest. Prospero's just, deep down, this vengeance-happy despot. Then it's like, who knows, he gets Alzheimer's at the end, forgiving all the shit that's gone before. At any rate, Bill Shiflett's got the perfect beard for Prospero. You see him last year in The Man Who Came? Okay then, Vernon. Vern my man. How about it? Caliban!"

Ironically, for all the win-win look of it, he almost didn't want the part once he'd heard Conway's pep talk. Conway made the monster out to be a clown, some kind of hairy jungle dork. Was that the sort of role he fit? Could it be possible that this is how the other teachers, his Dean, his ex, maybe even students, think of him? Nonetheless. He said okay. A part of him just feared he might look foolish backing out. After all, he had auditioned. He is thirty-nine years old, newly divorced. It's summer time. He's been invited to portray a would-be rapist, a Renaissance Neanderthal. Picked specially by Conway and--it even seems--by Brandi Lockhart. It's not that theatre folk are libertines, Vernon knows that in his heart. But between his Mama's death, the break-up of his marriage, and now his tenure application, part of him is crusting over. He needs somebody who will grab and shake him, help him feel joy's pain in hidden places. He's taken on a couple roles successfully: Howie Newsom, that unremarkable milkman of Our Town, the college show in which Brandi played the lead. He'd pull an invisible horse behind him, what the hell. He'd even paste fake fur upon his hands and feet. Good sport, team player, he'd pay whatever dues love might demand.

And in just a couple weeks he'd grown much closer to the part, to Caliban, the moon calf. Stretched out beside the pool at his apartment complex, sipping beer and studying his lines, he tried to get a fix on Caliban's true character, his motivation and his geist. Conway LaRue was right, he figured. Caliban would be the perfect part. The ultimate lone wolf. A mean and dangerous dude. (At random moments, guilty in his leisure, he practiced framing catchy titles for the summer monograph he hoped to somehow find the time to pen and tuck away among his tenure stuff: Caliban: Insult as Topos . . . "This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine": Tech Writing as the Bastard Child of Language Arts. ) And so what if Piney Woods chose to reject him, after all? He'd kept his light--the one his mother praised him for, the one his dissertation doc fanned forth--under a basket here so long it had, he reckoned, almost flickered out. Maybe it was time he looked for greener pastures anyway.

By mid-July, rehearsing nightly, Vernon felt the part speak out to him in unexpected ways. It sucked from buried reservoirs of randiness, of bitterness and ire, called forth a love of language that he'd managed to repress those long, dry years of teaching precis-writing, business English. Plus Conway wanted him to grow his whiskers out. Vernon's stubble had a reddish tint. Rubbing it, he kind of liked the scratchy feel. Vernon thought he might just grow it out for fall, a full-fledged beard. Let Dean Costello and his colleagues in the Language Arts do double-takes, maybe he'll send Lydia and Buck Arnold his own comp tickets to the show, there's sides to him folks haven't seen before. Vernon thought he might be going through a metamorphosis. Caliban, he came to see, was Esau tricked of his birthright. He was Grendel, he was Kong, one of the mighty losers who leave a strong impression; a tragic hunk who--on any island Vernon knew--would mist the ladies' eyes. As opening night approached, he sometimes fantasized how Lydia, his ex, sans her sandal-wearing beau Buck Arnold, would sit enraptured through the play. Then afterwards, her wet eyes gazing up at him, she’d stutter her apology. Vern, I didn’t know how much. . . I never recognized . . . I wish. . . I mean I’m sorry . . . Besides, just look how willing Brandi Lockhart was to lead him down the secret, pine needled path that led the actors exiting SR through groves of trees, out along a farmer's fence line, then back to stage, SL. Early on, she'd shared with him some warm-ups and tongue-twisters that she'd learned in Conway's oral interp classes. "Tin-tops-and-tent-tops-and-ten-dented-tent-tops," they had chanted together, their lips exaggerating the words' precise articulation. That first muggy night of tech rehearsal, he'd let her use his own insect repellent on her neck and arms. And opening night, backstage, when all the hugs, the break-a-legs were getting passed around, she'd stood on tip-toe to embrace him, gingerly, so's not to muss his monster garb.

The lights have flashed. The intermission's over. Trinculo gives Caliban a victory sign. "Beach-ward ho, my hairy fish!"

"You betcha," Vernon says, and lumbers on alone into the trees, waiting for II.ii where he will play the fool and plot his master's murder. The frogs are singing loud tonight. They help to mask his footfall. Crossing near the parking lot he hears a woman's quiet laugh, so close it startles him. And for a second, he enjoys a fantasy of run-away: loping like some strong, dark spirit through the woods, away from stage, away from school and town. Lydia, Buck Arnold, Mama, Dean Costello, his shabby bachelor's den, secret disappointments and ambitions reduced to shades of memory. Ban, ban, Ca-Caliban, has a new master. Get a new man. For the first time this summer he feels a hint of autumn's presence just a couple weeks away.

On stage, beneath the burlap sack, cringing from the drunken clowns, he tries to separate the tape-recorded thunder from the real. There's never been a problem with his lines, but still, tonight, somehow distracted, Caliban drops comic bits with Trinculo. Stephano's wine, which trickles down his bare brown chest, feels icier than usual. Thankfully, he's back in character again, able to lose himself in servitude when he delivers his "I-prithee let-me-bring-thee-where-crabs-grow,-and-I-with-my-long-nails-will-dig-thee-pignuts" speech. But then he feels a couple drops of moisture on his head, and as he starts his freedom chant to lead the actors off, his voice takes on a strain and ratchet in his throat.

By the middle of Act III the rain pours down in earnest. Although some members of the audience have brought umbrellas, the house has been reduced by half. Gonzalo stumbles on the rain-slicked stage. From where he huddles in the woods (it's really not so wet beneath the pines), Caliban hears raindrops bullet the tin roof over the actors’ green room. Artie Lester in the treehouse light booth overhead is hissing through his headset, "Conway, would you please for christ's sake call the show?" So this is how it ends. Without the drama's denouement, there's no forgiveness, no reconciliation between Duke and brother. There won't be any curtain call, no post-show kiss from Brandi Lockhart in the woods. They'll even come to strike the set another night, half-force and in civilian dress.

Where is Miranda now? He crouches, squints against the rain, tries hard to pick her out among the scurrying, bent figures. Although he hasn't changed his clothes, he trots out to the meadow where the cast and crew are asked to park. He lopes along the line of cars. Some honk, some blind him as they switch their headlights on. He sees Miranda's Cougar there, but empty. So he crouches down beside his own Plymouth Reliant (locked), and waits for her. He runs whatever lines remain to him, the ones he'll never get to say. “Do that good mischief which will make this island thine own forever, and I, thy Caliban, for aye thy foot-licker," and "We shall lose our time and all be turned to barnacles, or to apes with foreheads villainous low." Hopelessly he conjures her. Her, or is it Lydia? Which woman does he picture in his rocky lair, her island shift stuck wet against her body, her hair a long black cord that chokes his heart? He feels his scaly snout collapse upon his face.

"Hey Vernon, you okay?" It's Stephano, dressed in jeans and shirt. He holds a dripping program up against his forehead, tries to keep his glasses somewhat clear. "You better change your clothes!"

"Yeah, right," he answers. "Anybody left?"

"A few. Art and Brian. Jill, Delores. . . Hey, Mrs. Arbogast, the makeup lady, she was hoping you could give two little nymphs a lift. Dude, are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah. You seen Miranda?" He tries to ask it calmly, even though he almost has to shout, even though the wind is rattling the bones against his chest.

"Who, Brandi? She and Conway they flew off together, right quick soon as the rain got bad. Shit, it's wet!" Stephano gives a final wave and puddle jumps to his Ford pickup some yards down. Vernon's skimpy costume is soaked through. Struck suddenly by someone's headlight, Vernon wonders how he looks to this new audience. And in those seconds that he contemplates the picture he must make, it suddenly occurs to him-- ex machina, like Prospero's own thunderbolt--his tenure's in the bag. He feels some of the same calm certainty about his future stretch of bachelorhood, his lack of real advancement much beyond the life he's living now. He'll never be a Prospero, he'll never see the big design or know the magic words but plug along regardless, win-win in his own way. Is this what Lydia rejected? Are these the very qualities that Conway recognized in him? And Dean Costello, too? A passion for mere competence? A secret comfort with factotumship and mediocrity?

The play is over, time to flee the forest and the storm. His hair lies thin and flat against his monster skull. (At least the play's lush poetry is safe inside.) A line of cars that wait to leave the meadow wash him in their light. A droopy mess of feather, flesh, and bone, he shakes an angry fist and scowls. Then before he turns and slips and lurches back toward the shelter where those kiddies wait for him, their ride to town, Vernon shuts his eyes against the rain and howls.

“I want to taste black pork again,” Big Pop said. “Congo cut. Nigger meat. I want to feel big.” Big Pop’s mouth slid down his grandson’s ear and he kissed the boy deep on his neck, on the trail of hair the barber shaved every other Thursday. Branch nudged the old man away. Then he reached down and squeezed his grandfather’s hand.

“What you whispering, Big Pop?” Ruby-Anne asked. She sat in the backseat, working her needles through a baby sweater. The piece had just taken the shape of an arm, and she knitted it steady, nodding her head as she counted stitches, only looking down when it was time to cross over. She was fifteen years old.

Branch squeezed his grandfather’s hand tighter, warning him. “Nothing,” Branch said. “Big Pop ain’t saying nothing.”

“You telling him something about me, Big Pop?” she asked.

“Just the truth,” Big Pop said. “Better not let a girl like you slip away. Not many can knit and throw a baseball, both.”

Branch turned the ignition, steered the car onto 34, toward Faircloth.

“That doctor give you some kind of medicine?” Branch said. “You’re talking crazy, Big Pop.”

Ruby-Anne glanced down, checked her needles, then looked up at the white men in the seat in front of her.

“He’s worried about my feelings, Big Pop. He thinks he’s protecting me.”

“Protecting hisself,” Big Pop said. “You’re the one who’s the kid, Branch.”

“I know what I am,” Branch said. “And I know what she is. I know both of those things.”

Three times in the week previous, Branch found notes in his mailbox. They were written on the stationery of a local college. The notes all said about the same thing. “Those days are history, asshole. No more white men chasing down black girls just because they can. There are laws now, and there are people who will make sure those laws get enforced, until assholes and statutory rapists like you are history.”

Three letters, on the cream-colored college stationery, written in purple ink with a woman’s careful hand. No signature, but he knew they were from Lanie Laurence, the woman professor who’d bought the Meyers place up the hill. She was the owner, also, of the two old sharecropper cabins down the hill, the one that Big Pop and Branch rented, and the one that Ruby-Anne and her mother Marie Claire lived in. Nobody knew where the professor was from, so people said she was from New York City. Branch didn’t touch Ruby-Anne, of course, but not because of the notes. He had other reasons for that.

Six months ago, when he came home from that one awful season in Davenport, Iowa, Branch was ashamed to face Big Pop and Marie Claire. He drove up to the cabins, and he sat in the driver’s seat of his Ford Tempo, listening to the Mellencamp song on the radio. Marie Claire was over to his left, drinking lemonade at the picnic table behind her cabin. And Big Pop was to his right, chewing on a sandwich. After a while, Marie Claire got up from her table and walked over to Big Pop and gave him her hand. Big Pop took it, and the old white man and the middle-aged black woman walked over together toward him. Branch rolled down his window. He knew he had disappointed them twice, by not being a better pitcher than he was, and by not taking the team’s offer to bring him the next year. They had hopes for him, Marie Claire and Big Pop, both, and Branch had broken those hopes. Big Pop surprised him by leaning through the window and kissing him on the lips, something Big Pop had never done before.

“It’s my boy,” Big Pop said. “Couldn’t stay away from home cooking for long.”

“Look at you,” Marie Claire said. “You grew up and got sad on us.” She kissed him on the cheek, then led Big Pop back to his picnic table. Branch was so relieved that he didn’t even notice how slowly Big Pop was walking. He got his suitcases from the trunk.

Ruby-Anne pretended to be mad at him.

“And who are you supposed to be?” she said. Ruby-Anne was taller, up to his chin. That was the first thing that told him she had changed.

“Well, I ain’t Nolan Ryan.”

“Don’t you leave me no more. I don’t like it one bit.”

Branch used to hug her every night, before bed, the way a brother would. But now he was frightened to touch her. He looked down at the glove in her hand.

“Want to throw?” he said.

“Think you can still catch me? After all that time sitting on the bench in Davenport, Iowa?” Ruby-Anne could throw much harder now than she could four months earlier. That was another difference.

On Tuesday, Big Pop wanted to go out to eat after his doctor visit. But he couldn’t keep anything down, just brushed his food across the plate. The waitress wrapped his steak in aluminum foil.

“You don’t usually leave anything for the dogs, Mr. Russell,” she said.

Big Pop looked toward the women’s bathroom. Ruby-Anne was in there, washing up.

“I ain’t hungry for this white food,” he whispered. “I’m hungry for black pork. Nigger meat.”

The waitress dropped the bag on the table. “I don’t think that’s on our menu.”

Branch gave money to the waitress, so she’d go away.

“Stop that big talking,” Branch said. “Before you hurt somebody, saying something you don’t mean.”

Big Pop drew his tongue across his lip. “But I want to feel big,” he said.

The whole drive home, Branch talked, to keep Big Pop quiet, to protect Ruby-Anne from hearing something she shouldn’t have to hear.

Big Pop was born across the river, in Kentucky. His parents died from the flu when he was four years old, both of them, and his uncle and aunt took him in. They lived in a few cabins on one side of a tobacco plantation, with some other white hands. The colored lived on the other side of the fields. Though they all worked the same damn tobacco plants, they kept to themselves, the white and the colored. One spring when he was a teenager, Big Pop’s uncle got tired of feeding him, drove him across the river to Faircloth, Ohio, and got him a job sweeping floors at the sporting goods store, the same one where Branch worked now, selling equipment to high school teams.

That wasn’t the story Big Pop told, though. This was the story he told. The Christmas he was fifteen, just before his family sent him to Ohio, the colored families dug a big pit and dropped rocks in boiling water and lifted them out with tongs and carried them to the pit. Then they piled wood and set it to fire. When it was burned to ashes, the colored lay the pork shoulder on top and then they buried the whole mess. Two of the men standing guard over it, and the smoke rising up through the fissures in the ground. When they dug it up, late the next day, a woman and a girl carried over a plateful to Big Pop’s uncle.

“For the holiday,” the mother said. Big Pop pinched off a piece and stuck it in his mouth. The grease coated his tongue. It was like eating oil and smoke.

But his uncle gave the colored the back of his hand, told them to stay where they belonged. “We folks can provide for ourselves,” he said.

As the woman and her daughter walked away, Big Pop’s uncle said, “Damn niggers. Let their toe in, and they’ll stick their whole damn foot. But you didn’t say no, did you, boy?”

The taste in his mouth, the sight of them walking away, those were things Big Pop talked about. But only late at night, after Ruby-Anne had gone back to her mother’s house.

Tuesday evening, Ruby-Anne came over to watch the television with Big Pop. Big Pop was just like ever, whistling at the pretty girls on the television, sassing back to the “boss men.” But Branch couldn’t relax around his grandfather. He got his glove, went outside to the backstop he and Big Pop put up years ago. They painted the strike zone with yellow road paint they got from the state highway crew. Nailed sponges to the front, in the strike zone, so a strike sounded different than a ball. Branch took a ball from the bucket, threw it, waited for the wood to tell him what he had thrown. A strike made a soft thump.

Marie Claire carried her pitcher of lemonade out from her house to the picnic table. “Kick high,” she hollered, her voice hoarse from screaming. After a few weeks of softball, she’d be reduced to whispering. Even in the dark, Marie Claire could tell when Branch threw lazy. He went over, sat down across the table from her. Marie Claire poured lemonade into the glass she brought out for him. “It’s strong tonight,” she said. “Had to be, the way those damn fool girls practiced.”

The lemonade was spiked, always had been, though Branch did not know it when he was in high school. Marie Claire liked to talk about her people, who worked the shipyards in Chester, Pennsylvania. She went through the college here on softball scholarship and then she got pregnant with Ruby-Anne and took a job coaching softball at Faircloth High, and she had never left. “Which is all right,” she’d say. “Cause Chester, Pennsylvania, sounds better in pictures than it does in living color. I’ll tell you that.”

“Season starts Saturday,” Branch said.

“Not that we’re ready for it.” Marie Claire tapped a cigarette from her pack and lit it. “Least I got Ruby-Anne. She’ll be ready. Those other girls nothing but fools. Children.”

“Ruby-Anne’s arm is livelier than a fucking firecracker,” Branch said. “She’s going to make them little high school girls look stupid.”

“A fucking firecracker.” She smiled around her cigarette. “Didn’t talk that way before you went to Davenport, Iowa.”

Liquor, yes, but she wouldn’t let him touch her cigarettes.

“It was Ruby-Anne’s father got me started, and look now, he ain’t around but the Marlboros still are.” She puffed, the red ring at the tip flickering and then quieting down.

“He was a fast-foot man. In your door and then out the window. He probably don’t even smoke Marlboros no more. He probably isn’t even faithful to his habits.” She poured him another class of lemonade. Before, in high school, she used to lecture him at night, but now she talked story to him, like he was her friend.

“Me,” she said. “I’ve always been a faithful one. Fall in love once and stick with it.” She stubbed out her cigarette on the wooden table. “And Ruby-Anne’s the same way. Any fool can see that.”

The lemonade caught deep in Branch’s throat and started him coughing. Marie Claire slapped him on the back. Ruby-Anne came out of Big Pop’s house to check on the noise.

“He need mouth to mouth?” she said.

“I know you need to give it to him.” Marie Claire slapped Branch’s wrist. “Look, you’re making him blush, and you just a little girl.”

Ruby-Anne went back inside Big Pop’s house to watch the television. Branch stayed outside with Marie Claire. The kids passed back and forth between the two homes all the time, but Big Pop and Marie Claire only went inside each other’s house twice a year, to Marie Claire’s at Thanksgiving and to Big Pop’s at Christmas.

On Wednesday, Marie Claire kicked the varsity out of practice, and hollered at the jayvee, who at least would listen. Ruby-Anne called Branch at the sporting goods store, and he drove over to pick her up as soon as he finished. The other varsity girls were standing on the sidewalk, giggling. “That’s Ruby-Anne’s boyfriend,” one of the girls said. “He’s got a car.”

Big Pop was asleep, so the two of them were alone, unless that professor Laurence was staring down the hill at them. From the second-floor windows, that professor could probably see the whole compound, their little lives opened before her like one of her books.

Ruby-Anne waited for him to open her door. That was something else that had changed when he came back from Davenport, Iowa. She expected to be treated like a lady.

“Let’s go for a stroll,” Branch said. Being alone with her made him nervous, these days.

They walked the old furrow, left over from the corn days. Now that the lady professor didn’t farm it, the land was mostly heather and ragweed. They went far into the fields, all the way to Red Creek. There, Branch stepped onto the flat rock in the middle of the stream and turned back and gave her his hand. Ruby-Anne didn’t let go, even when they reached the other side. Her fingers were strong, from all the baseball they had thrown. In season, he made her stick to softball, since there wasn’t any baseball for girls, once you got to high school.

“You worried about falling?” he said. “That why you holding so tight?”

“Maybe I already fell.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that.”

“You should let me kiss you, Branch. It wouldn’t hurt you none. You should want to make other people happy.”

“I ain’t going to make you happy. I’m going make you sad, Ruby-Anne.”

“You’re just making yourself sad right now, Branch. Not letting yourself kiss this black woman who loves you.”

“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to shake your hand loose.”

“I’ll just catch hold again. You know I got strong fingers.”

But she stopped talking about kissing him. On their way back, Ruby-Anne described the game coming up against Consolidated. The way she would pitch the first inning.

“Think, don’t just throw,” he said. “That was my problem. I was an arm, not a head.”

“You ain’t going to have no problems, Branch.” She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed his index finger once, quickly.

“Be careful but don’t walk nobody. Throw strikes but not too good ones.”

He let her hold his hand the rest of the way home. The truth was he didn’t mind holding hands with her. The truth was he didn’t mind anything he did with her. It was just that she had become pushy, these last few months, and he feared the next things coming, when they might do something he couldn’t ever take back. He had come home from that Iowa baseball team because he liked his old life, not so he could mess it up. Didn’t he have enough to worry about, with Big Pop acting so strange? As they came out from the fields, Branch shook her hand free, and this time she didn’t fight him.

Wednesday night, Branch found a new note in the mailbox. An article about Neanderthals copied from the Encyclopedia Britannica. The professor Lanie Laurence had written two sentences across the bottom, with her purple pen.

“See any creatures like that anymore? They’re extinct, and you will be too if you don’t keep your hands off that poor girl.”

The picture showed a hunched-over man with a scraggly beard. Branch had seen a hundred men who looked like that in the stands of his baseball games, here and in Iowa, both. He threw the paper into the trash can.

Big Pop could snore like a champ. He’d lie on his back, twitching his head as the breath tore through his throat and the back of his mouth. Sometimes it got so bad that Branch would walk out to the couch, where Big Pop slept, and punch him on the arm to quiet him. Big Pop never got angry. He’d rub his arm and apologize. “I’ll stop it, I promise.” Of course he didn’t. But Branch was used to it. Most days it didn’t bother him.

Late Wednesday night, Branch woke up to silence. No snoring. He jumped out of bed naked and ran to the living room. He was scared without admitting why. But the couch was empty, the blankets in a heap on the carpet. The bathroom was empty, and the kitchen, too. He put on his shorts and walked outside.

“Big Pop?” The night was dark and he walked to the edge of the yard, up past the pitcher’s mound, and he called again. Marie Claire came out from her house.

“Is Big Pop over with you?” Branch asked.

“Course he isn’t.”

“Ruby-Anne sleep?”

“She ain’t on the telephone, and she ain’t throwing softball, and she ain’t chasing you, apparently, so sleep must be about the only option left.” Marie Claire turned on the light. She was wearing her shimmering green sweat suit, the one she wore all day at school. “Let’s go find him.” Marie Claire zipped up her jacket.

They walked up the road toward the Meyers house, where Big Pop was standing on the porch, pounding on the door. Big Pop had been friendly with Mrs. Meyers, before she died, but he had not been up to the house since that professor Lanie Laurence bought it.

“I just want some black pork, Mrs. Meyers,” he said. “Nigger meat. I remember you used to get some.”

From inside, a woman’s voice, Professor Laurence, called out to him. “You go away, right now. I won’t have any man talking that way around me. You understand?”

Branch hollered his grandfather’s name. Big Pop didn’t seem surprised to see him.

“Sometimes Mrs. Meyers used to come back from her cousins in Kentucky and bring some with them,” Big Pop said to Branch. “Mrs. Meyers would always save me a little, but now she won’t give me none.”

“Miss Marie Claire’s with me,” he said.

Big Pop slouched down, stuffed his hands into his pockets.

“Hi, there, honey,” he said. Marie Claire slid her hand through his elbow, leading him to the steps.

“Why don’t we take you home?” she said.

“Mrs. Turner?” It was Professor Laurence, from inside. “You alright out there? I’m already calling the police. There are laws against racism in this country.”

“I don’t need no protection from Russell here,” she said. “He’s just confused.”

“I’d call it bigotry.” Professor Laurence opened the door. She was a thin, dark-haired woman with nervous eyes and the most enormous red-framed glasses. “Mrs. Turner, I need to tell the police about the way his grandson is chasing your daughter. I saw him kissing her down in the field today.”

“I bet she was kissing him back,” Marie Claire said. “If I know my daughter.”

Marie Claire steered Big Pop down the steps. The old man had been thinking deeply, and finally he said, “That Mrs. Meyers ain’t look the same, is she?”

“No, she doesn’t,” Marie Claire said.

“I didn’t never kiss her,” Branch said to Marie Claire. “I did hold her hand a little, cause she wanted to, but I didn’t let her kiss me.”

“You say it like it makes a difference,” Marie Claire said. She led Big Pop down the steps, and they walked down the hillside to their cabins.

Thursday evening, Big Pop forked the roast beef into the trash. He hadn’t eaten anything solid since his appointment at the clinic.

“You got to eat,” Branch said. “You were the one said you wanted to be big.”

“Whyn’t you throw the ball again?” Big Pop said. “It’d make me feel a little lighter, watching you.”

Branch took the plate from his grandfather and ran it under the faucet. He waited for the water to take the last of the gravy, and then he wiped the plate with the sponge.

“I’m a catcher, these days,” Branch said. “It’s Ruby-Anne who’s got the games ahead of her.”

“I been knowing that. I just know I want to see you again. You threw the ball so beautiful. Like it sprouted from your fingers.”

“They didn’t think so in Davenport, Iowa.” His first two weeks there, Branch started three times. Lost all three. And then didn’t pitch again for two months. No one would tell him why he was stuck on the bench. At the end of the season, they offered him another year, since he was a lefty, to see if he could fill out, grow into his arm. But he didn’t want to go back. He wanted to be nowhere near that life again.

“They don’t know shit in Davenport, Iowa,” Big Pop said. “I know what I saw.”

So Branch got the glove from the hook by the door and walked out to the mound. There was a bucket of balls in the kitchen, lumpy and scuffed from use. Why warm up? No reason to save his arm. He kicked his leg high, Dizzy Dean-style, the way Big Pop taught him and then he let himself fall into the pitch, his toe diving toward the plate. The coaches at Davenport wanted to shorten his motion, take a little off the fastball, gain some on the control. Be a pitcher, not a thrower. But he loved to throw. He threw fastball, fastball, fastball. Who needed a curve in the dark? Who needed anything except the thump of the ball striking the sponges? Sometimes he missed low, just so he could hear the crack when it landed outside the strike zone, ball on wood.

“Look at my boy,” Big Pop said. “Better than any symphony I ever heard.”

Big Pop was sitting on the picnic table in back of their house, resting his hands on his belly. Across the driveway, Marie Claire was watching from her table. Ruby-Anne looked out from her window; she was talking on the telephone, nodding her head as she watched Branch throw. He leaned back again, hesitating the way Luis Tiant used to do in the Saturday afternoon games they showed on the television. He held himself, his knee tucked against his stomach, waiting until he felt like pitching. No umps here, no coaches, nothing but his world. Then he kicked his leg up high and began to fall forward. The ball thumped against the backstop.

“Beautiful,” Big Pop said.

“Kick high,” Marie Claire said. “An inch up there makes the whole difference.”

“He looked good to me, honey.”

“He did look good. I’m just saying he needs to look great. Cause he can, when he remembers.”

Big Pop loving Branch the way he was, Marie Claire pushing him to be better. The same as it had been before, when he was still in high school and had the draft ahead of him and didn’t know anything at all about Davenport, Iowa. After a while, Ruby-Anne came out, and she turned on the headlights of the cars so they could see, and squatted to catch for him.

“Unhittable is what that is,” Ruby-Anne said.

“Oh, it’s hittable,” he said. “Those bastards from Cedar Rapids hit it like it was on a tee.”

“I don’t care nothing about Cedar Rapids,” she said. “That is a first-class fastball.”

After a few pitches, he got a softball, and he warmed her up slow. Tossing from close in, backing her off as her arm woke. Twenty, thirty minutes of soft tossing before he let her unleash. She had the game in two days, and he didn’t intend to interfere with that. She was the best softball pitcher anybody in the county had ever seen, dismissing batters like insults.

“Ain’t nobody in Davenport or Cedar Rapids, either one, can hit that ball,” he said. “I’ll tell you that.”

“That’s cause softball’s for girls.”

“And you’re a girl. Perfect fit.”

Ruby-Anne whipped her arm and fired. The pitch rode a little high, and Branch was slow raising his glove. The ball tipped off the glove’s edge and smacked him on the forehead. Actually, it didn’t hurt; it just made him feel funny. Branch rolled backward onto the dirt and lay flat, the sky dark and open above him, until Ruby-Anne’s face filled it. She knelt over him, running her fingers across his cheek.

“I killed him,” she said. “I can’t believe it.”

He blinked his eyes. “No, you didn’t. Not yet.”

Ruby-Anne bent down to kiss him. Branch felt it without feeling like it was happening to him. He lay there and let it happen. She held her tongue on his lip, then she pulled away.

“I was just checking his breath,” she said. “He ain’t dead, yet.”

“That goes for all of us,” Marie Claire said, and Big Pop laughed. If they saw the kiss, they didn’t say anything.

Friday morning, Branch found a folded sheet of paper under his windshield wiper. A pen-and-ink drawing of a bird and above it the words “Carolina Parakeet.” The professor—he recognized the tight curves of her vowels—wrote beneath it, “They used to be everywhere, and they used to think they were beautiful, and now they’re gone. Good-looking things go away, and so will you if you keep climbing on top of that girl. You’re history.”

Branch crumpled the paper into his pocket. He never thought of himself as good-looking, particularly. When he was pitching on the mound, maybe, but not just standing around in his T-shirt and his Wranglers. In regular clothes, he looked just like everybody else.

Friday night, Ruby-Anne tossed a few slow ones to Branch, just to calm herself. Then she said she needed to rest up for the next day. Branch placed her glove in the passenger seat of his car, so she wouldn’t leave it behind in the morning. Game days, Ruby-Anne was so nervous she’d forget anything. Ruby-Anne followed him to the car. When he turned around, she was so close he could smell her, swampy from sweat. A year ago, her sweat didn’t stink. She was changing.

“Give me a kiss for luck?” she said.

“I can’t.” He could feel Professor Laurence’s crazy, nervous eyes reading him the way a psychic read a palm. Seeing his little acts and predicting his future. He hadn’t told anybody about those notes.

“I know you want to.”

“Once you can’t, you don’t even ask if you want to.”

Ruby-Anne bit her bottom lip under her teeth. A year ago, before he left for Iowa, all her facial expressions had been big. Happiness and fury and hurt and curiosity and confusion. But now, she had a whole slew of stifled looks, masking her feelings. Like she had gone from comedy to drama in just those few months he was gone. During the months he was in Davenport, Iowa, Ruby-Anne wrote him a postcard almost every day. The cards didn’t say much, but beneath her signature she’d draw a circle and write there the number of days left until he came home. Branch wrote her back, every Sunday, and he signed his letters “love,” even though that wasn’t exactly what he meant.

“I’ve got to have my luck,” Ruby-Anne said. “So you’re either going to have to kiss me now or in the morning, at the ball field, in front of everybody. If that’s what you’d rather, that’s your choice, though.”

Her forehead was even to his chin, a final growth spurt that happened while he was gone, and that warned of what came next, her body swelling and thickening and curving out of its childhood. He bent down to kiss her on the forehead. She tilted her head into him, met his lips with her own.

“Good luck,” he said.

“I don’t need luck, you big dummy.”

After Branch put Big Pop to bed, he sat down with Marie Claire at her picnic table. Behind her, the house was dark. Right now, Ruby-Anne was knitting in her room, waiting for the sleep to take her. Marie Claire poured a glass of lemonade for him. The first sip made him wince. Even stronger than usual.

“You nervous about tomorrow?” he said. Sometimes, Marie Claire walked the fields before games, blowing her whistle at the birds, trying to calm herself.

“It’s not like she’s going to lose,” she said. “I mean, let’s talk straight here. No girl can hit Ruby-Anne from forty-five feet. It’s a travesty.”

Branch drank from the lemonade. When he coughed, she reached over and slapped his back. Her polyester warm-up suit whistled as she swung her arm.

“Russell looks bad,” she said. He coughed again. “You going to tell your mother?”

“Why?”

“It’s her father.”

“She’ll find out someday,” he said. “I wouldn’t even know where to start looking, anymore.”

“You got that Christmas card.”

“Two years ago, now.”

Marie Claire drummed her fingers against the picnic table. Branch watched them, and then, without knowing exactly why, he reached out and put his hand over hers. She slipped her hand over the top of his. Squeezed once and let go.

“When I was your age, I used to feel like the only thing that could happen to the world was for it to get better,” she said. “Not the globe world, the one on the news, but my world. Like if I threw everything up in the air, it’d come down in the right order. In a perfect row. Better than it had been before. Then she happened.” She pointed her thumb behind her, at the house, at Ruby-Anne’s room.

“Now I sit out here, and I just thank God that things haven’t got any worse.” She lifted the cup and drank from it. “You know what I mean. Now, you do. A year ago, before Iowa, you didn’t.”

Branch was proud to be talked to this way, by Marie Claire. He didn’t feel like she’d rejected him; he felt like she’d understood what he really wanted.

“The world can break,” she said. “It can land on the ground and bust into a million pieces. Maybe all we can do is cradle it in our arms and try not to drop it. Is that so bad?”

“I don’t think so.”

She pointed her thumb behind her, again.

“And, Branch, what if that girl’s love for you is big as she thinks it is?”

“It’s a crush, is all.”

“She’s a mix of girl and woman. The phone calls and the stupid torn blue jeans, those are girl things, right? And the knitting and the serious way she takes to the pitching now, like it’s a duty, those are woman things, aren’t they? What if her love for you isn’t a girl thing at all? What if it’s the first rock of her woman, cracking through the little surface of her girl? What if it’s the most real and lasting thing about her?”

“Then it’s too bad she got it too young to do anything about.”

“The hell with everybody else,” she said.

Across the driveway, they heard a cough, a weak, giving sound, and then the back door opened, and Big Pop walked out. He was wearing an old porkpie hat, a white undershirt, and some blue gym shorts he must have found in Branch’s dresser.

“You best go inside, Marie Claire. Big Pop’s not right. He’s talking crazy.”

This time, she reached out to squeeze his hand. “Branch,” she said. “You don’t have to worry none about protecting me.”

Big Pop walked slowly across the driveway, bracing his fingers on the hoods of their cars. “Oh, me,” he said. “Oh, me.”

“You alright?” Branch said. Big Pop didn’t answer. He was staring at Marie Claire with an intensity that Branch had never seen in the old man. His mouth was raised to a pained smile, his eyes narrow and hard.

“I want black pork,” he said. “I want to go back to Kentucky and get me some of that nigger meat.”

“Big Pop,” Branch said. “Don’t say that to her. You love Miss Marie Claire.”

“But I want to feel big.” He coughed, and the force of it shook his cheeks and closed his eyes. He sat down at the picnic table.

“Russell?” Marie Claire said. “You alright in there? You recognize me? You