It had jumped all customary postal tracks, of course, to travel through dark time zones and bleak wastelands of yore, accompanied by the eerie wailing note of an oscilloscope and other science-fiction movie background music ...speeding through nimbus shadows and along the undulating mist of bubbling dry ice ...then we cut to close-up: ah. A solitary crystal hand appearing at my mail slot . . . floating there for an instant, like chemical statuary designed to immediately dissolve as soon as it deposits the invitation that requests my humble presence at a gathering being held twelve (twelve? that long ago? Jesus . . .) twelve years previous to the day of its delivery! Whew! Any wonder it left me a little ringy?” I didn’t wait for an answer, or pause when the voice at the other end attempted to interrupt my manic monologue. As the loudspeaker announced departures and the pinball scoreboard outside the booth clattered and clashed and ran its meaningless numbers upwards in maddened acceleration, I kept talking, compulsively filling the phone with words in order not to leave an opening of silence for Peters to speak into. Or, more accurately, to question into. I think I must have phoned Peters, not so much out of thoughtfulness for an old friend as out of a need to verbalize my reasons, and a desperate wish to logically explain my actions—but I wanted to explain without anyone questioning my explanations. I must have suspected that any extensive probing would surely reveal—to Peters, to myself— that I really had no logical explanation, either for my abortive attempt at suicide or for my impulsive decision to return home. “. . . so the card convinced me, among other things, that I am still much more at the mercy of my past than I ever imagined. You wait; the same thing will happen to you: you’ll get a call from Georgia one of these days and realize that you’ve many a score to settle back home before you can get on with your business.” “I doubt that I could settle that many scores,” Peters said. “True; your scene is different. But with me it’s just one score. And one man. It was amazing the number of pictures of him that card conjured up: booted feet, with spikes no less. Muddy sweatshirt. Gloved hands forever scratching scratching scratching at a navel or an ear. Raspberry-red lips draped in a drunken grin. A lot of other equally ridiculous pictures to choose from, but the picture that came on the clearest was of his long, sinewy body diving into the river, naked and white and hard as a peeled tree ...this was the predominant image. You see, Brother Hank used to spend hours swimming steadily into the river’s current as he trained for a swimming meet. Hours and hours, swimming steadily, doggedly, and remaining in exactly the same place a few feet from the dock. Like a man swimming a liquid treadmill. The training must have paid off because by the time I was ten he had a shelf simply gleaming with trophies and cups; I think even held for a time a national swimming record in one of the events. Lord God! All this brought back by that one tiny postcard; and with such astonishing clarity. Lord. Just a card. I dread to imagine what a complete letter might have produced.” “Okay. But just what in the shit do you hope to accomplish going home? Even, say, you do settle some funny score—” “Don’t you see? It’s even in the card: ‘You think you’re big enough now?’ It was that way all my time at home—Brother Hank always held up to me as the man to measure up to—and it’s been that way ever since. In a psychologically symbolic way, of course.” “Oh, of course.” “So I’m going home.” “To measure up to this psychological symbol?” “Or pull him down. No, don’t laugh; it’s become ridiculously clear: until I have settled my score with this shadow from my past—” “Crap.” “—I’ll go on feeling inferior and inadequate.” “Crap, Lee. Everybody has a shadow like that, their old man or somebody—” “Not even able to get on with the business of gassing myself.” “—but they don’t go running home to even things, for shit-sakes—” “No, I’m serious, Peters. I’ve thought it all out. Now listen, I hate to leave you with the hassle of the place and all, but I’ve............