I held my breath and waited. The door closed and I heard Hank’s pleading whisper. “I’m sorry, kitten. Please, I was just hacked off at McKeever. Not you. C’mon to bed and we’ll see about it in the morning. I’ll talk to the old man about it in the morning. C’mon, Viv, kitten, please. ...Please...?” As quietly as possible I climbed back into bed and covered up, and lay for a long time before I fell asleep, listening to Hank beg in a tired, irritated, and most unheroic whisper from next door. (He closes his eyes, smiling slightly. “I used to think in his comic-book domain there could be no equals: There was but one Captain Marvel and little Billy was his prophet . . .”) And I thought again of the limp I had noticed earlier that afternoon in Hank’s swimming stride. A limp and a whine: these were the first of much evidence I would try to amass to convince myself that this man wasn’t really so much; he wasn’t really going to be so hard to measure up to or pull down when the time came. (“I used to try. Eyes clenched prayerfully I used to exhaust every possible pronunciation of that magic Shazam before resigning myself that no one, especially me, could ever hope to contest that mighty Orange Giant of the cleft chin and codpiece . . .”) And that it wasn’t going to be really so hard finding—this time, this second try—(“I used to try . . .”) finding my magic word. (“But it didn’t occur to me until now . . . that I might not only have been saying the wrong Shazam, but that I must also have been seeking lightning from the wrong source . . .”) And fell asleep to dream of flying instead of falling . . . Next door to Lee, alone in her room, Viv broods as she combs out her hair for bed: maybe she should have said something to Hank before letting him storm off to bed; something to let him know she doesn’t really care what Dolly McKeever says—or her pimply old man either ...but ... why can’t he see it my way just once? Then scolds herself for her self-indulgence and rises to turn out the light. In Wakonda the Real Estate Man finishes his carving and places it alongside the others: well, the face doesn’t resemble that general this time, by gosh—although, there is something kind of familiar about the features, ridiculously familiar, frighteningly familiar—and feels the carving knife go sweaty in his palm. And in Portland, Floyd Evenwrite turns his practiced cursing on the union flunky who has not made a duplicate and won’t be able to compile a report in less than two weeks because he is going to the hospital in the morning to have a hernia tucked ...the damn little snake! And Simone falls asleep before her candlelit Virgin, certain that the little wooden figure is convinced of her purity, but more than ever tangled in her own doubts. And Jenny rises from bed with a pain in her stomach, throws the leftovers of her boiled tree toads into the slop jar, and burns her illustrated copy of Macbeth in the stove. And the old boltcutter, having shouted so long across the river and drunk so much thunderbird, begins to forget that the voice calling to him is his own. And the vines and tides climb; and mildew stalks the front-room rug where Hank left wet footprints; and the river roams the fields like a glistening bird of prey. To know a thing you have to trust what you know, and all that you know, and as far as you know in whatever direction your knowing drags you. I once had a pet pine squirrel named Omar who lived in the cotton secret and springy dark of our old green davenport; Omar knew that davenport; he knew from the Inside what I only sat on from the Out, and trusted his knowledge to keep him from being squashed by my ignorance. He survived until a red plaid blanket—spread to camouflage the worn-out Outside— confused him so he lost his faith in his familiarity with the In. Instead of trying to incorporate a plaid exterior into the scheme of his world he moved to the rainspout at the back of the house and was drowned in the first fall shower, probably still blaming that blanket: damn this world that just won’t hold still for us! Damn it anyway! Of Hank’s wife the loungers lounging outside the union office or sitting in the Snag know this: “She come from outa state. She reads books but’s no back-East big-city bluenose like old Henry’s second woman. And she’s mighty nice, to my thinking.” “Maybe so, but—” “Oh, she’s a dust-bowl girl. And skinny as second-growth pine. But I wouldn’t kick her from between the sheets.” “No; neither would I but—” “She’s a very sweet kid, Viv is. Always friendly when you run into her . . .” “Yeah, I know all that, but ...there’s something peculiar about her, you know?” “Well, hell, remember where she’s living at; the fact that any woman survives over in that snake pit is a case for Ripley. And bound to make her a little ding-y . . .” “I don’t mean that. I mean—well, say, how come Hank don’t ever bring her around town?” “Same reason nobody brings in his old woman, Mel, you dumb cluck: cause she’d cramp his style if he wante............