I would blame my sad beginnings on no fiend but my own. Live and let live. Forgive me as I forgive my debtors. The man who seeks revenge digs two graves. “So all right.” Careless with victory, the moon leaned too far and fell into the cream. It swam there like half a golden macaroon, tempting me until I brought it to my lips. I opened my body to that fabled milk and that enchanted cooky. Like Alice I would expand, my life would now be changed. All those years barking various Shazams up the wrong tree—you’d think a foxy kid like me woulda known better. Magic words are too hard to come by, too tricky to pronounce, too unpredictable. Steady proper diet is the secret to growth. It has to be. I should have learned long ago. A sweet disposition, easy-going digestion, the proper diet, and love thy neighbor as thy brother and thy brother as thyself. “I’ll do it!” I decided—“Love him as myself!”—and maybe that was where I made my mistake, right then and right there; for if thee is fashioning all love after that thee holds for thine own self, then thee had best make a damnably thorough inspection of thy model . . . Lee, in his cold room, smokes and writes; after he completes a paragraph he waits a long motionless moment before beginning the next: I have a difficult time knowing where to begin, Peters; so much has happened since I’ve been here, and so little...it all started so many years ago, and yet seems as though it only started this afternoon as I fetched a fatal flagon of cream for the baked apples. Never trust a baked apple, dear friend...but I suppose I should bring you more up to date before imposing any morals . . . By the time I got back the kitchen was impatient with the smell of baked apple and cinnamon, and Hank was just lacing on his boots to come look for me. “Damn anyhow, boy; we decided you’d got et by the skeeters or something out there.” My throat was so choked with the heady effect of that milk and that moon that I could only respond by holding out the bowl of cream. “Oh, look,” squeaked Squeaky, Joe’s five-yearold, “mus-tash! Mus-tash! Uncle Lee has been into the cream. Mm-mm, Uncle Lee, mm-mmm on you”—and stroked her pink finger at me, shaming me into a blush that I am sure must have seemed far out of proportion to my crime. “We ’uz just about to send the dogs out after you,” Joe said. I wiped my mouth with the dishtowel to hide the blush. “I just heard the old man sending the clarion call from across the bank,” I offered as an explanation. “He’s waiting over there now.” “And what do ya bet?” Hank said. “Oiled to the gills again.” Joe Ben rolled his eyes and wrinkled his nose in a gnome’s grin. “Old Henry is big stuff in town these days,” he said, as though personally responsible. “Oh yeah. They say the girls aren’t nowheres safe near him an’ that cane. But didn’t I tell you, Hank? That there’s to be trial and tribulation and suffering but, man, didn’t I tell you? There is balm in Gilead. Oh yeah!” “No fool like an old one.” Viv dipped a finger into the cream and touched it to her tongue. “Don’t you start on my old hero now. I think that he has plenty of balm coming. He’s worked, golly, how many years building up this business?” “Fifty, sixty,” Hank said. “Who knows? The old coon never lets on to anybody how old he is. Well, I bet he’s over there crappin’ bricks.” He dabbed at his mouth with the sleeve of his sweat shirt and pushed back his chair. “No, Hank, wait . . .” I heard myself saying. “Please. I’d like to do it”—surprising god knows which of us the most. Hank stopped, half up from his chair, and gawked at me, and I averted my face and went after my cream mustache with the dishtowel again. “I’ll ...I mean, it’s just that I haven’t had a chance to drive the boat since the day I arrived so I was thinking . . .” I trailed off to an embarrassed dishtowel-muffled mumble under the glare of Hank’s spreading grin. He let himself back down in the chair and tipped it back to look across the table at Joe. “Well by god, Joby, what do you think of that? First the cream, now the boat—” “Oh yeah! An’ don’t forget findin’ choker holes underneath all the logs, don’t forget that!” “—and this was the nigger we was scared to write ’cause he wouldn’t never fit in with our illiterate make-do way of living.” “All right,” I said, trying to shroud my pleasure in petulance, “if I’d known it was going to perpetrate such a stupid fuss—” “No! No!” Joe shouted, scrambling up from his chair. “Here; I’ll even go out with you and show you how to start the motor....” “Joby?” Hank stopped him, then coughed a clever cough into his smile hand. “I believe Lee can handle it on his own. . . .” “Oh yeah, but Hank, it’s night out there, with stumps big as elephants floating around—” “I believe he can handle it,” Hank repeated with bored nonchalance; he fished the key from his pocket and tossed it to me and tipped the chair forward again to his plate. I told him thanks, and outside on the docks silently thanked him again for understanding, and for having faith enough in his literate little brother’s illiterate make-do to back up that understanding. Dancing light in my stocking feet, I whizzed across the grass to the ringing reassurance of a full house of stars and down the plank in two springing leaps as the moon gave a bracing nod of encouragement—they were rooting for me all the way. I hadn’t touched the boat’s controls since my first bumbling attempt, but I had watched. I had taken notes. Stiff-lipped and set-jawed, grim and gritty as they come, I was ready for another go at making-do. And the boat started with the first yank—as fir trees leaped cheering and stood waving madly with the warm chinook wind. And the moon beamed like a junior-high-school coach. I guided the boat skillfully across the spangled water, never brushing any of the mammoth-sized stumps the whole trip, aware of my audience, pleased with my performance under pressure, and proud of myself. How rare and beautiful in this day and age, I thought, is that simple combination of words— proud of myself . . . In a pool of frozen gold Molly the dog recalls through a haze the scaling excitement she felt hours earlier when she first realized that the only voice baying was her own, and the............