The insects up from the river to look over Teddy’s collection of neons pop and sizzle against the charged screen. The theater marquee switches on, and a frightened-looking little man with a green eyeshade on his bald head hurries next door from the laundry to answer the phone ringing in the ticket booth: high-school kids calling from Waldport to see what’s showing tonight. “Paul Newman and Geraldine Page in Williams’ drama Summer and Smoke to be shown once starting at eight o’clock and sleeping bags cleaned this week only one dollar.” Keep the morale up and the overhead down. He’ll make it yet. In his room at the Wakonda Arms Del Mar, Jonathan B. Draeger chews a Rollaid and rubs a salve into his chronic eczema, which has appeared this time on his neck. Last time the rash was on his chest and the time before on his stomach. Standing before the mirror, looking at his virile, masculine features topped by the close-cropped gray hair, he wonders if the next place it’ll strike will be his face. “It’s this coast climate. Everytime I come back I get it again. I rot like a dead dog.” Out in the bay the whistle buoy bobs moaning among the gentle swells, advising the fishing boats about the condition of the bar, and the tower on Wakonda Head lifts its four arms of light and begins flailing the rocks as darkness falls. In her room next to the clamflats Jenny stands motionless at the window, watching the out-of-work loggers searching the low tide with flashlights. “I bet they wouldn’t even come in for a bowl of chowder. I won’t even ask. But maybe I don’t keep my place clean enough, huh?”—and sets about scrubbing her two sheets in the sink. In his bathroom, face contorted in an all-out effort to overcome his constipation, Floyd Evenwrite curses Jonathan B. Draeger: The big-ass, he didn’t hardly look at the report! An’ it covered the logging history of this area all the way back to the middle fifties! If that don’t impress him, what will? In his tar-paper shack the Mad Scandinavian, having boiled the trilobite and eaten its meat, now makes an ashtray of its shell. In the kitchen Hank hushes the kids again to listen for the honk he thought he heard. In the Snag old Henry buys a bottle of illegal bourbon from Teddy and wraps it in yesterday’s Portland Oregonian. He bids the few stragglers who haven’t left for supper a grandiose good-by, then lurches out of the bar, rumbling his cast on the wooden walk, belching and cursing as he climbs into the mud-spattered pick-up and drives back up the river. “We whupped it, we did. You damn right.” Then: “I sure hope somebody’s there to hear me honk for a boat; I hurt too much to stand around waiting.” He drives very slowly, leaned toward the headlighted pavement. ...His false teeth making wet bite-marks on the seatcover beside him. And Molly’s panting grows slower and weaker . . . It was Lee who finally heard the old man’s honking plea drift from across the river. Lee had gone to the milkhouse for cream and was standing lost in thought at the river’s dark edge. He had just finished the meal Viv and Jan had cooked; deer liver and heart fried in onions, and gravy made from the drippings . . . boiled potatoes and fresh green beans and homemade bread, and for dessert baked apples were waiting. Viv had prepared the apples by coring them and filling the holes with brown sugar and cinnamon redhots, then topping each apple with a slice of butter before she put them in to bake. During the meal the kitchen had been filled with the spicy smell of their cooking, and all the kids had squealed delightedly when she brought the square Pyrex dish from the oven. “Hot, now, hot, watch it.” The apples sizzled in thick caramel-colored syrup. Lee had stared at the plate, feeling the heat of the open oven burn his forehead. “Hank,” Viv asked, “or Joe Ben, would one of you mind running out to the milkhouse and skim off some cream?” Hank had wiped his mouth and, grumbling, was pushing back his chair to stand, but Lee reached to take the tin spoon and bowl from Viv. “I’ll get it,” he had heard himself saying. “Hank killed our meat. Joe cleaned it. You and Jan cooked it—” “I salted it,” Johnny offered, grinning. “—and even the apples, Squeaky went to the orchard for the apples. So I—” He faltered, feeling suddenly very foolish as he stood at the back door, spoon in one hand, bowl in the other, and everyone turned waiting toward him. “So I just thought—” “That’s the boy!” Joe Ben saved him. “Root hog or die. Cutbaitorfish.Didn’tI tell you, Hank? Didn’t I say so about ol’ Lee?” “Bull,” Hank scoffed, “all he wants is a chance to get outa this madhouse.” “No sir! No sir! I told you. He’s shapin’ up, he’s comin’ around!” Hank shook his head, laughing. Joe Ben charged into a spontaneous theory equating muscle tone with divine intervention. And in the cool, dim concrete milkhouse, with antiseptic still standing............