“So do you see, Viv? It’s been like that all my life. Smothered. Until I finally could see no reason to—to keep trying to breathe. Not that he was entirely to blame by any means, but I felt that unless I was just once able to have something over him, to beat him out of something, that I could never breathe. And that’s when I decided—” Lee ceased abruptly. He saw that she was not even listening— maybe had never been listening!—but was staring off into the dark as though in a trance. —what’s happened? Does he really need? Oh, it’s the dog (. . . Molly opened her mouth to bay but her tongue stuck hot to her teeth, and she fell back again); she’s stopped—Not listening at all! She hadn’t heard a word! In anger and humiliation he jerked his hand from her throat where she—where he had thought she had encouraged him by allowing the fingers to slip far into the neck of the shirt . . . just to let him make a fool of himself! Startled by the abruptness of his action, Viv turned toward him questioningly, just as old Henry came back into the ring of firelight. “Listen: that Molly dog, you notice? She’s hushed. I ain’t heard her call in a good while now.” He was quiet a moment to let them listen, not quite trusting his own ears. (The bear’s shiny black eyes appeared in the moonlight over the rock, his face quizzical, almost regretful as he watched the dog. Fired by a thirst near to panic, she fled back down the ridge, seeking the wash she remembered.) Convinced that they were hearing nothing he wasn’t, Henry cast an expert’s eye down the slope and decided, “That bear, he either lost her or he run her off, one of the two.” He pulled his watch from his pocket, tipped it toward the fire, and made believe he could read it. “Well, that’s the show as far as this nigger is concerned. I ain’t about to sit up here and listen to them other dirteaters carry on about a little ol’ fox. Sounds like they just about got him, anyhow. I’m gonna head on back is what. You kids suppose you’ll come or stay a while?” “We’ll stay a while longer,” Lee supposed for both of them, and added, “To wait for Hank and Joe Ben.” “Suit yourself.” He took up his cane. “But they’re liable to be a good stretch yet an’ then some. G’night.” He faded from the light, stiff and weaving, like an old ghost of a tree haunting the midnight forest in search of his stump. Watching him leave, Lee chewed nervously at his glasses— good; now there would be no more reason for this spy-movie dialogue; they could just talk . . . God, when he’s gone, I’ll have to talk!—and waited for the sounds of his departure to cease. . . . Molly half ran, half rolled back down the ridge. By the time she found the wash again her hide was haired in flame, her tongue melting—HOT HOT MOON HOT—and the thing hooked to her hind leg as big as leg itself now. Bigger. Bigger than her whole burning body. —As soon as the old man’s crashing and cursing disappears down the dark hillside, Viv turns back sometimes a great notion to Lee, still with that startled, uncomprehending expression, waiting for an explanation of his violent withdrawal. And an explanation for the touch in the first place. His face is rigid. He has stopped chewing on the eyeglasses and he’s taken a twig from the fire and is blowing on the end of it. His face. The cupping shield of his hand hides a glowing ember, but still ...each time he blows his features are lighted from within by something a whole lot hotter than a spark on a twig. Like something inside there burning to get out, something burning, it needs so bad to get out. “What is it?” She reaches to touch his arm; he gives a short, bitter laugh and tosses the twig back into the fire. “It’s nothing. I’m sorry. For the way I acted. Forget what I was saying. I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, ‘The fit is momentary.’ Regard me not. It’s not your fault.” “But what’s not my fault? Lee, what were you trying to tell me, before old Henry left? I don’t understand...” At her question he turns and regards her with amused wonder, smiling at his own thoughts. “Of course. I don’t know what I was thinking of. Of course it isn’t your fault.” (Yet, as it turned out, it was very much her fault—) Tenderly, he touches her cheek, her neck where his fingers had rested, reaffirming something. ...“You didn’t know; how could you know?” (—though I had no way of knowing this at the time.) “But didn’t know what?” She feels she should be angry for the way he speaks to her and for—for the other things. . . . But that awful burning hunger behind his eyes! “Lee, please explain—” Don’t explain! Leave me alone; I can’t be everybody’s something! “What was it you started to confess?” Lee walked back to sit by the fire. . . . Molly dragged her body into the crackling water. She tried to drink and vomited again. Finally she stretched out on her belly, only her eyes and gasping muzzle above the surface: HOT HOT COLD cold moon MOONS HOT HOT HOT HOT . . . He situated himself on the sack so he was facing her and took her hands between his. “Viv, I’ll try to explain; I need to explain to somebody.” He spoke slowly, watching her face. “When I lived here, as a child, I thought Hank was the biggest thing created. I thought he knew everything, was everything, had everything in this whole waterlogged world ...except one particular thing that was mine. What this one thing is, was, doesn’t matter—think of it as an abstract thing, like a feeling of importance, or sense of self—it only matters that I needed it, as any kid needs something all his own, all, and I thought I had it, forever, never to be taken from me...and then I thought he took it away. Do you follow me?” He waited until she nodded that she understood—his eyes softer now, tender, the way his hands were; but still the burning—then went on. “So I tried to get it back—this thing. I mean I needed it more than he did, Viv. But I found...even after I had it ...that he was too much for me. It was never mine again, never all mine. Because I couldn’t ...ever take his place. See? I wasn’t big enough to take his place.” He released her hands and removed his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose with thumb and finger (my failure to Come Clean that evening I blamed, of course, on Hank—) sitting in silence for a long moment before he continued. (—though I know now that she was as much at fault as my brother, or as myself, or as any of the other half-dozen principals in the plot, dead and alive. But at the time I was capable of no such painful insights, and quickly blamed the about-face I made in my march toward Brotherly Love on the brother I was marching to love, on my brother and on the Tin Pan Alley moon and his old hack magic . . .) “And never being big enough to take his place left me no place of my own, left me no one to be. I wanted to be someone, Viv, and there seemed only one way to do it—” “Why are you telling me this, Lee?” Viv asked suddenly, in a fearful voice barely louder than the breeze rustling the dry flowers behind her. Her voice seemed to come from a great, empty cavern. She was reminded of the hollow weight that had grown inside her when she had tried to ............