Papa and Ben hoorawed him about it all the way to the house and back. And you know, when we get back, what do you think? Down at the bottom of that hole there’s this old blind horse, sure enough, dead as hell.” When I finished telling little Lee that tale about the horse I had expected him to laugh, or call me a liar, or something. But he didn’t twitch a muscle. And I’d expected him to be scared stiff when I got him out of that dune hole, but he’d fooled me there too. He didn’t act scared at all. He was limp and relaxed—peaceful, kind of. ...I would ask him if he was okay and he’d say he was fine. I asked him if he was scared down there and he said for a while, and then he wasn’t. I asked him how come? I said, “Boy, I was scared from the second I went down that hole on that pine ladder to the second I come out.” And he thought for a while and said, “That canary I had? I was always scared somebody would leave a window open and a cold wind would kill it. And then the wind did kill it and I wasn’t scared any more of that.” And he sounded darn near happy about it. And now, when I ask him if he wasn’t scared of them punks that was giving him a hard time there on the beach, he acts the same way, giddy, like he’d been drinking. I ask him, “Didn’t them fool kids know that car could roll on you out in the surf that way?” “I don’t know. Perhaps. They weren’t exactly worried about it.” “Well, weren’t you?” I ask him. “Not as much as you were,” he says and sits there grinning with his teeth rattling together from the cold while I drive to Joe’s place; he looks pretty pleased about something. But for all his grins and good humor I can’t shake this nagging notion that he’d come to the ocean for the same reason he was headed across them dunes as a kid, and that I maybe had something to do with it this time too. Maybe the fuss I had with him last night after the hunt, maybe something else. Lord knows. I fill him in a little on what’s happened since this morning, how Evenwrite has come back with another report, so that people all know where the bone is buried now. “That’s probably one of the reasons them punks was giving you a tough time.” “And that explains their change of attitude,” he says. “They gave me a ride earlier this afternoon and they weren’t exactly pleasant, but neither were they trying to drown me—they must have heard the news at the root-beer dive. Maybe that’s even why they came driving down on the beach, to find me.” I tell him that could well be. “We’re none too popular around town right now. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised but what somebody on Main Street starts taking pot shots at us just for general purposes,” I say, only half kidding. “So naturally that’s right where we are going: to Main Street.” “That’s right,” I tell him. “To Main Street quick as we finish over at Joe Ben’s.” “May I ask why?” “Why? Because I’m goddamned if I’m gonna let a bunch of niggers tell me whether I can come into town or not, I don’t care how hacked they are at me—tell me whether I can have a Saturday-night drink in a public bar.” “Even if you weren’t planning to have that Saturday-night drink in the first place?” “Yeah,” I tell him; I can tell by the way he starts using his prissy tone that he can’t see my real thinking on it, no more than I can see his thinking on wanting to take a long swim in the cold ocean “—that is right.” “Curious,” he says. “And is that why Joe Ben called you? Because he knew you wouldn’t want to miss a chance to come into town and take advantage of the public hostility?” “That’s right,” I tell him, getting a little hacked. “There ain’t nothin’ I like better than walkin’ into a room knowin’ everybody there would like to take a pot shot at me. You bet. I like to take advantage is exactly right,” I tell him, knowing he ain’t going to see it anyhow. “I understand perfectly; it’s like the madman who goes over Niagara Falls in a coffee can because that’s as good a way as any to get dead.” “That’s right,” I tell him, knowing he don’t understand it at all—that it’s more because it’s as good a way as any to stay alive. . . . And as they hurry across the dunes toward town, matching steps in their haste—Hank in front with Lee close behind (and silent lightning fluttering softly out ahead of both of them)— the first drops of rain, like a thousand eyeholes opening on the white mask of sand, come winking down, and the eelgrass sways to a soundless tune.... Which brings to mind one more notion to add to the bit about Singers of echoes and Echoers of songs: the notion of Dance. Not the weekend dance in the Saturday-night sense, where you two-step to music you’ve heard before and always know—even if only in a cellular way—just about where your two-step is headed . . . but the Daily Dance with the wilder step, to a tune as soundless as the eelgrass tune, to an echo of a song or a song still unechoed. A dance where you can never really have much notion where you are headed. You can trip off to places so wild and so wiggy that you don’t know where you are until you get back. And sometimes not even know you tripped off at all because you never get back to know that you’ve left . . . And when Brother Walker had unplugged the organ and turned off the current of his wife’s electric guitar and finally brought his roaring sermon to a sweaty stop, all the dancing tripped-out congregation blinked and sighed and ruefully returned to the world of their weekday selves . . . except Joe Ben, wild-stepping and still sky-bound, with eyes that showed white all the way around the green iris and a soul that soared to a currentless music Sunday through Saturday. And never knew he was tripped-off at all. When he left the tent with his family in tow he walked to the pick-up and found Lee’s note, but before he had time to decide what to think about it one of the fellow followers of the faith had been so swept up by the services that he had felt called upon to put aside his natural antagonism toward the Stampers and bring it to Brother Joe Ben’s attention that a certain meeting was to be held shortly at the grange hall: “A meetin’ I bet is due to really affect you sonofabitching Stampers, too...this afternoon, with Evenwrite an’ the Strike Committee an’ Mr. Jonathan  B. Draeger hisself!” he wanted Joe to know. “An’ if what comes to light in the course of this meeting is what we all expeck to come to light, Brother Stamper, then you heartless sonofabitches better be prepared to suffer the conch-aquences!” After the man stalked off, Joe stood for a time considering the information. If the conch-aquences of what come to light in that grange-hall meeting could affect him and the family so, well then maybe he just should observe that meeting person-ally....It seemed the least he could do, after that church brother’d had the common decency to tell him about it. He looked about briefly for Lee, then piled Jan and the kids into the pick-up and drove them out to the new house, where he left them with instructions for painting, then headed back to town. He returned to Wakonda by a wonderfully devious and roundabout route, angling closer and closer with meticulous caution until he had slipped up on the bayward side of Main Street without a soul the wiser. He parked the pick-up in the great banks of seeding Scotch broom behind the ............