When he woke in the morning he looked out and saw the boats were fine and the river wasn’t much higher than usual. He hurried through breakfast, then took the box he had prepared and ran out toward the cage. He went first to the barn to pick up some burlap sacks to put in the bottom of the box. The morning was cold; a light frost was sifted into all the shadows and the cow breath was like skim milk in the air. Hank pulled some sacks from the pile in the feed room, scattering mice, and ran on out through the back door. The chill air in his lungs made him feel light and silly. He turned the corner and stopped: the bank! (About the time I went to nodding into my dream about the cats, Floyd and old man Syverson who used to run the little mill at Myrtleville had really got into it about something; they snapped me out of it, hollering back and forth at each other to beat hell.) . . . The whole bank where the cage stood is gone; the new bank shines bright and clean, as though a quick slice had been made into the earth last night with the edge of a huge moon-stropped razor. (“Syverson,” Evenwrite yells, “don’t be so dunderheaded; I’m talkin’ sense!” And Syverson says, “Bull. What you mean, sense!” “Sense! I’m talking sense!” “Bull. You talkin’ sign over t’ you all the say-so I got of my business is what you talkin’!”) At the bottom of this slice, in the mud and roots, the corner of the cage protrudes above the turgid surface of the river. Floating in the corner behind the wire mesh are the contents of the cage—the rubber balls, the torn cloth Teddy bear, the wicker basket and sodden bedding, and the shrunken bodies of the three cats. (“How much’s it want,” Syverson yells, “how much, this organization you tell us about?” “Dang it, Syve, all it wants is what’s fair—” “Fair! It wants advantage is what.”) Looking so very small with their wet fur plastered against their bodies, so small and wet and ugly. (“Okay! okay!” Floyd hollered, getting rattled, “but all it wants is its fair advantage!”) He doesn’t want to cry; he hasn’t allowed himself to cry in years. And to stop that old scalding memory mounting in his nose and throat he forces himself to imagine exactly what it must have been like—the crumbling, the cage rocking, then falling with the slice of earth into the water, the three cats thrown from their warm bed and submerged in straggling icy death, caged and unable to swim to the surface. He visualizes every detail with painful care and then runs the scene over and over through his mind until it is grooved into him, until a call from the house puts a stop to his torture. . . . (Everybody laughed when Floyd made that slip, even old Floyd himself. And for some time after folks kidded him about it. “All it wants is its fair advantage.” But me, not paying attention, nodding on and off; thinking about my drowned cats and my new Johnson outboard at the bottom of the drink, I kind of switched what he said to something else.) Until the pain and guilt and loss are replaced by something different, something larger . . . After putting the box and gunny sacks down I went back into the house and got my lunch along with that bony little peck the old lady laid on my cheek every morning. Then I went out to where old Henry was readying the boat to ferry me and Joe Ben across to wait for the school bus. I kept still, hoping neither of them’d notice me not having the box of cats like I’d planned. ( ...replaced for good by something far stronger than guilt or loss.) And they might not of, because the motorboat wouldn’t start, it being so cold, and after Henry had jerked and kicked and cussed and raved at it for about ten minutes he finally barked the hide off his knuckles and then he wasn’t in any shape to notice anything. We all got into the row boat and I thought I was gonna make it, but on the way across old bright-eyed Joe Ben gave a yell and pointed at the bank. “The cat cage! Hank, the cat cage!” I didn’t say anything. The old man stopped rowing and looked, then turned to me. I frigged around, acting like I was all wrapped up tying my shoe or something. But pretty quick I saw they weren’t gonna let me off the hook without I said something or other. So I just shrugged and told them, cool and matter-of-fact, “It’s a dirty deal, is all. Nothing but just a crappy deal.” “Sure,” the old man said. “The way the football bounces.” “Sure,” Joe Ben said. “Just a tough break,” I said. “Sure,” they said. “But boy, I’ll tell ya I’ll tell—you . . .” I could feel that cool, matter-of-fact tone slipping away, but couldn’t do diddle about it. “If I ever—ever, I don’t care when—get me any more of them bobcats—oh, Christ, Henry, that crappy river, I should, I should of—” And when I couldn’t go on I went to beating at the side of the boat until the old man took me by the fist and stopped me. And after that the whole thing was done and shut and forgot. None of the family ever mentioned it. For a while kids at school asked me how about them bobcats I was always blowing about, how come I hadn’t brought ............