Only the boy’s head comes around with a jerk, swinging the pale brown cowlick. Only the boy seems to hear Hank speak. He leans toward his big brother, glasses flashing the spring sun. “Just a minute...” “What?” the boy whispers. “. . . I guess I’ll ride along, if it’s no skin offn nobody.” “You?” the boy says. “You guess you’ll—” “Yeah, bub, I just guess I’ll ride on along to town with you instead of comin’ in later. My bike ain’t runnin’ to form anyhow—that sound all right, Henry?” The hounds, suddenly aware of the activity on the dock, come pouring from beneath the house and charge barking down the plank walk. “Fine with me,” the old man says and steps into the boat. The woman follows, her face lowered. Hank pushes the hounds away and steps in, almost overloading the boat. The boy still stands, with a look of disbelief, surrounded by dogs. “Well, sonny?” Henry looks up, squinting against the sun behind the boy. “You comin’ along or not? Dang that glare. Where the hell’s that hat?” The boy gets in and sits on a trunk near his mother. “Yonder I see it, under that box. D’ya mind, Myra?” The woman proffers the hat. Joe Ben brings out the folded gray square of canvas, and Hank takes it from him. “What you say, Henry?” Hank asks, reaching for the oars. “You want me to take it across?” The old man shakes his head and takes up the oars himself. Joe Ben unties the rope and, bracing himself against a piling, shoves the boat away from him into the current. “See you people later. G’by, Myra. G’by, Lee, hang tough.” Henry cranes his head around for a sight on the landing at the garage across and commences to pull with a steady, measured strength, green eyes shaded beneath the brim of the tin hat. The blossom-covered surface of the river is smooth, stretched taut from bank to bank like a polka-dotted fabric. The prow of the boat rips a passage through with a sizzling hiss. The woman keeps her eyes closed, withdrawn into some vague half-sleep, as though fighting the pain of a headache. Henry rows steadily. Hank looks off down river where fishducks are slapping the water with beaded wings. Little Lee squirms nervously atop his perch on the trunk at the back of the boat. “Well now,”—old Henry spaces his words between oar strokes. “Well now, Leland”—in a detached, remote, inviolable voice—“I’m sorry you think you need”—cords snapping in his neck as he leans backward with the pull—“need a back East schooling ...but that’s the long and short of it, I reckon . . . this ain’t no easy row to hoe out here ...specially if you ain’t allus feeling up to snuff ...and some just ain’t equal to it. . . . But it’s okeedoke ...I want you to do proud back there...” A litany spoken over me, Lee thinks later, listened to only for the rhythm, a chant in a primitive dialect, an incantation perpetrating a spell; anesthetized time; nothing moves and everything is at once. He thinks one time, years later. “. . . yes, do yourself and all of us proud . . .” (Now it’s done, Hank thought. Then. Taking them across to the train. Now it’s finished, and I won’t ever see no more of her again.) “. . . an’, well, when you get stronger . . .” (I was right about not seeing her no more . . .) A litany, chanted over me ...(I was right about that much—) They row through the glittering water. And reflections swirling gently among the flower petals. Jonas rows alongside, muffled from the neck down in green fog: You have to know. Lee meets himself coming back across twelve years after with twelve years of decay penciled on his pale face, and translucent hands cupping a vial of poison for Brother Hank. . . . or, more aptly, like a spell....(But I was wrong about it being finished. Dead wrong.) You have to know there is no profit and all our labor avoideth naught. Jonas pulls, straining at the fog. Joe Ben goes into a state park with a brush knife and an angel’s face, seeking freedom. Hank crawls through a tunnel of blackberry vines, seeking thorny imprisonment. The arm twists and slowly untwists. The logger sitting in the mud calls curses across the water. “I’m hollowed out with loneliness,” the woman cries. The water moves. The boat moves with measured heaves. Rain begins to fall suddenly; the wink of a million white eyes on the water. Hank looks up, intending to offer the woman his hat to protect her, but she has drawn a quilt over her dark hair against the rain. The red and yellow and blue patchwork shape heaves softly up and down, tossed by waves the boat does not feel. Hank shrugs and closes his mouth. He spreads out the tarp and turns to look down river again, but his eyes connect with the boy’s, locking there finally. For long seconds the two stare at each other. Hank is the first to break the painful current of the stare. Dropping his eyes, he grins warmly and attempts to pass off the tension by reachin............