“Looks like, don’t it? Joe and his are in the kitchen where I run ’em so I could get some peace. Viv, I think, is out to the barn. . . .” “And the kid?” “He drag-assed right on upstairs; you musta worked him some.” “A little,” Hank answers, hanging his coat. “I’ll go tell Viv we’re back . . .” (Puzzling over things the rest of the day didn’t get me nowhere; by the time we got home the kid and I was just as hung with each other as ever, I hadn’t come up with a thing to say to Viv, and I still had that feeling of exasperation. It looked like it was gonna be another long night. . . .) In my sanctuary of a room I sprawled myself on the bed, just as I had twenty-four hours earlier—too shot down to even bother removing my shoes—but this time the innocent sleep would not come to knit up my ravel’d sleeve of care . . . Hank walks across the straw-carpeted floor of the barn and finds Viv lost in thought at the back door, a lithe silhouette against the blue-black sky, her hand resting on the door’s big wooden pull-handle as she looks after the cow trudging darkly back out to pasture. (Viv was in the barn when I got home; I was glad for that . . .) He walks to her and wraps his arms about her waist from behind. “Hi, honey,” she says and leans her head back against his lips. (Because we get along better out there, it seems, like a couple barn animals. I go up to her and give her a little hug and see that she’s come out of her sulk pretty much, and’s just a little blue is all . . .) I lay there in the dark—wide-eyed and ache-headed, more than slightly delirious from exhaustion—recalling familiar demons that used to creep from the knotholes on the dingy ceiling above me. I had no wish to watch their activities, but neither did I have the energy to do anything about them. They wandered wild across the ceiling—wolves and bears stalking among sheep, while the poor shepherd watches, watches helplessly, fagged and flaked and wanting nothing more than sleep ...unable to let the marauders out of his sight for fear of his flock, unable also to rouse himself to its defense. I tried to force myself to the more pressing problems. Like: “Okay, now that you have decided it’s no use trying to measure up to Brother Hank, just how do you go about pulling him down?” And like: “Why did you want to measure up to him anyway?” And: “Why is any of this crap necessary?” Viv turns inside the circle of his arms to press her cheek against his chest. “I’m sorry, hon, I was so ornery this morning—” “I’m sorry I was so ornery last night, chicken.” “And as soon as the boat pulled out I ran out to wave, but you’d gone.” He rolls a lock of her hair between his fingers. “It’s just . . .” she went on, “that Dolly McKeever was one of the best friends I had in high school, and when she moved out from Colorado I was so looking forward to . . . having somebody to kind of chat with.” “I know, chicken; I’m sorry. I shoulda told you about the WP deal right off, I suppose. I don’t know why I never.” He takes her hand. “C’mon now, let’s go on in for some supper . . .” And on the walk to the house asks, “You got Jan, though; to talk with—how come you can’t get anything goin’ with ol’ Janny lamb?” She laughs sadly. “Old Janny lamb is real nice, Hank, but did you ever sit down and try to talk to her? About just little things, say, like a movie you saw or a book you read?” Hank stopped walking. “Hey, just a minute. You know ...?” (And seeing how blue she is is what gives me the notion. By god, I say to myself, by god, you got the answer to both your hassles. By god if you don’t!) “You know? I just thought of somethin’: I think I know somebody you can chat with till the world turns blue, somebody you can really get things going with . . .” (I’ll just knock off trying to play diplomat with the two sensitives, I said to myself, and let them entertain each other.) As I lay there pondering these whys and wherefores concerning myself and Brother Hank, Goya’s painting “Kronos Devouring His Children” flashed across my ceiling along with all the obvious oedipal implications; but I was somehow unable to placate myself with second-rate psychological symbolism. Oh no you don’t, Lee baby, not this time. Certainly there were all the run-of-the-mill Freudian reasons beneath my animosity toward my dear brother, all the castration-complex reasons, all the mother-son-father reasons—and all especially deep-seated and strong within me because the usual abysmal longing of the sulky son wishing to do in the guy who had been diddling Mom were in me compounded by the malevolent memories of a psychotic sibling . . . oh yes, I had numerous scenes working on these multi-faceted levels—and any one of these note-pad facts would have constituted reason enough to provoke vengeance in the heart of any loyal neurotic—but this wasn’t the Whole Truth. Also reason enough in my dislike for all he represented. It took no more than that first day to bring back all his faults; sparse though our communication had been it had taken only a few seconds at each exchange of words to convince me that he was crass, bigoted, wrongheaded, hypocritica............