64

bit dif'f* It ge’^re al« py«;3*nt, fa®

ar»i •Ttrjr Tfaldid ■ t o UP r»wl5 -1'^■ryfa toT yeftr®

Efyon Jones was Welsh. He was pale and tensely

and carefully awkward with none of the extravagancies of
feature or feeling that Is so characteristic of the Welsh.
He felt that he had suffered enough as a child to free him .
from emotion as a young man even though the emptiness and
rejection of the early years seemed huge only upon reflexion.
At the time all had seemed Just and acceptable and unhappi
ness had not been unreasonable. It had merely been complete.
He thought of his birthplace often, even though
his childhood In that wet and excessive land was distant and
sad and seemed more likely to have been read about than
lived through. He was pleased that he had not been born In
America, In a town called Quincy or Scranton or Hartford,
all of which sounded vaguely distasteful and common, remind
ing him and (he was sure) other people, of beer, sour kit
chens and dusty winter heat. His thoughts of Wales had the
dull and erratic pain of a scarless wound and though he set
the land and his time there aside, currying his past like a
fine and Invisible horse, depending upon It In some strange
and beseeching way as some men would a suit of clothes of
an attractive mannerism, though he used the land for the
 65

small bit of difference it gave his present, he loathed it

and everything he did was in somber retaliation for years
gone.
The house where he was born was atone and he had
his own room with windows that opened out onto the sea.
It was a lonely efficient life with parents that clattered
stiff and unspeaklng about the cold rooms like someone else's
belongings. Efyon sometimes lay awake and shivering in his
bed in the middle of the night because he could not remember
what they looked like. Though he saw them every day, though
his father's hand touched his every morning when they prayed
at table and his mother had been very close to him once when
he was ill -- her face hovering dry and broad above him,
her fingers wiping the sweat from his forehead, the vomit
from his shaking lips-- though they existed in the house
as surely as he, he sometimes could not see them in his mind
at all. It was as though their faces were dippers of cloudy

water and this bothered Efyon because they were all he had.
His ropm was thin, low-ceilllnged, aid as the years
passed and the boy grew larger, he sensed that he was being
pressed closer and closer to the windows -- the homely bed
a.nd wooden chair shrinking in size upon the scs.tter rug
until they seemed toy furnishings, leaving only the window
to be of any importance •— the edges caulked with thick
bubbles of oalnt, containing the imperfections of glass
within the pane like a flat, white marble, reflecting slow
and magic-clear, other children's lives. Outside they played,
their aark, large-eyed Island faces slashing like unkept
promises across the grey and sand^ moss that was the soil,
across the scrub pine and the beach and the sea, whipped and
windy, running green to no land.
He watched them from behind his glass. Their
rage against him was irrational and unending. He had been
tried once in a childish court and found lacking, obtrusive,
dull. His teeth were small and rather pointed, his lips thin.
He was fesrful of the water and the salt hurt his eyes when he
swam. His presence seemed too large even for himself, though
he was slender and his features delicate. His hair was damp
and kinky and lay close to his skull as if it wanted to take
up as little apace as possible. It did not fly with long and
thick abandon like the other boys'. Efyon had no wildness or
disorder about his face at all. His eyes and mouth lay quiet
and vaguely waiting like rabbits in brush, not knowing which

sound will be the gun.

He remained on the warm and windless side of the
window, playing with sheila or plucking at his eyelashes
short and pale at the roots. They felt fat and starchy be
tween his fingers and he was alsmayed when he could not pluck
at least one out. In the mornings he would sit in a pale
 6?

at a lump of stale ^?nd lint-dusted

Bool Of sunllgbt, nlWllng at a xu p
. ^ a with needless and lonelj seereoj,
biscuit that he had, wltn ne
1 thp night before and Jammed into the
hoarded from the mesl
He lacked the imagination that
■Docket of his courderoys.
nn tnaelc in the grain of the wood.
tricks solitude. He saw
* before the mirror and looked
He did not dream. He stood ber ,, ,,,
VI n His Chest was blotched with
at hie smooth and dusky skin.
a=d Dressed strong fingers on once
white, as If someone had P
sir. nart of hls trunk having the
sunburnt flesh -- the upp * iiv bleached
^ ..ae which had been unsucesefully bleached,
anpearance of suede w , t fim rich
he said cautiously, and I am rich.
They are like „.e always to

, ,bat even hls own friendly windows

agony and he believe refused to mirror his attempts
turned In upon the others, hie thin arms
St play. He. Efyon,

fluttering like flags, ^ ^,paiess parody of childishness,

wish for acceptance, see eleven,
on Valentine s ^ distance they looked
the beacn.
ther were horses o on the sand stood a little
stii:j. and small and the -trio of cloth. As Efyon
^ .3^g^ok Jtnot on a Bi.
to one side like a larger like a dark and
d larg®’^ large I
approached, all loome , « moment before he Joined
hesitat®*^ tor
virile dream, and he named Elizabethwhom he
XI bpalde a
the others. He stoo

adored.
 68

^ n o-irla then with a constancy and a

He loved all
. all to do with their bodies or
fervor , that had nothing at -.ms,
ond full of secrets and he felt
beauty. They were soft ana.iux
vnne With them, there was none of
suspended in their presence.
competition that existed among
the constant and impossible of
.^ao-lned that if he could only get close
the boys, and Efyon imaginea
^ the ffenerosity of their silence
to one of them, be receivea i
..cape from the terrible lock of hlm-
ana softness, he pouia es f
, ot waglne anything positive. He rather sa«
self. He could not loeg
s xTv and without demand or question,
himself accepted quietly
. n vpd and excused like the stone of a ring
carried about and loved .. n,. nn-hn oc
P .nine world was as close to his limbo as
or a doll. The feminine
. „ solution of his failure as any
any other, as promising ^ him
^ distressed when they ignored him.
other and he was not di
disregard in the same manner
He was even encouraged y - an
in the dearth of mail.
that one might find hop ^ nv> nnt pnv
u nizabeth'', he would say or n. t say,
“Elizabeth, El •'
,bllltles real. “I you a great
his shyness making poee ^^^^.i^tters in the cap of

deal", and he would s - as the others would scatter

ino- recess, as
ber fountain pen during softlv to her
h,rooms, he would pad softly to her
to playgrounds of luno ^ of his lunch in her pencil-

Seek, concealing notes Outside the pines

tray, bet»esn the pago* ^ school's big
flapped black as crows an
 69

u there Inerasable, always. _

clock made each action tner
^
In the empty ^ipasroom,
classroom,
he sat crouching and tense
The desk belonged to Collwyn Thomas,
at the desk beside hers.
on his cheek and a reputation
a leggy, loud boy «ltb a oole on
and ball player in the town.
for being the best young sailor
ran happily around him where-
He owned two huge spitz S u 4-u «
, Tfyon would approach them, they would
ever he went. Wheneve 4. .t
H to consume him, and then veer away, tails
uneb oven ee bbouSb
Mg. .etueen bheln

om their mou behind their paws, deny-

ground and grinned distantly

ing friendship. oeii«yn. Collie, and Efyon sat

TLlItrated and vatchful, as though. Should

at the boy's desk, be tantamount to stealing or

he be caught, the a trousers. He laid his face on
stroking the front ^

the gouged desk-top as thought about ^

transfer of personality become confused
her because
Elizabeth. He love ■brilliance. She had
somehow in his mind with rocks flew through the

become good swimming, ® rightness in the numbers

air hissing like kettles, gweot out of flesh
.h« blackboard. Sh
he chalked upon tn images of loneliness had
into abstraction - wonder his ears felt when
become, almost but not ^ni
 70

by being herself unattainable,

she laughed. She offered al ,
herself and the society of boy-
She was an Invitation both

men. ...
^ he collie much as he wanted to be
He wanted to oe
«.ht of eliminating the boy in some
handsome. He often thought
of hurling the bodj down a well or ^
Vague and awful manner,
_ between curtains and picture
into a deep and m^^ldy
in snow so deep that the spring would
puzzles, of burying him hia onat
^fvon would then put on his coat
bring forth only bones. ,,a+.K
» his aesh and dogs, and, armed with
hnd cap. appropriate

externals. ,hs tired odor of his

him as he orouo e unwashed and yellow bedclothes,
own defeats clinging 6 r^ EU.absth so that he

He desire existing then not U necessity

could deny both, hie ao somehow glorious.

bat by design, ,Hs year that he was

On the valen

eleven, there were inevitable In the air.

with unborn enow hsngl g ^ ^eep-ohested and they raised
They were good ponies, har trotters and that

their hoves high ana gorrel with legs strong as

finest of ^ ^jjousand dollars running at the
tree roots, had won two owner bragged,
,id gait on a com,
Bangor fair. He oou
 71

and, never even ma.r the mimiagB.

mintflffe. Foam
r quivered on the edge
b

of^ the shore like Tletters

++ snd
anu eometlmes
«. a chunk of It would
I-break away and, skimming
, ^ nvftr
over theuixc sand,> break against
e the
u
borse'g legs. .-4-
Theirmonpfl
maneswere
weielong eand they drifted lei-
4«^ nicp hsir in water. The carts they
surely back in the wind liJce
^»,iahpd red. It was like a basketball
drew were squat and varnl
I 4^-h o medicine ball, the men explained.
Player practicing with a meaxo
. light rig, they would go fast as
When they returned to the &

the wind.
The children listened, blowing out their cheeks
^ waiting impatiently for their turn
and nodding their heads, wa &
, i„PPd in the cart beside the driver,
to be scooped up and pla
4 4-u/Mii' fla sound,
to fi, aown the beach without sou , without a tic of a
ejL. They would grin soundlessly
shoe or the grind of a
the race began and the horses sxmng
and wriggle in delight as
* would seem as if flight was static,
into a motion so exact
^ hunching his shoulders in the wind
Efyon smiled,
4 4-^no• to be recognized only so that
like the other boys, wait g ^
_eg lept forward, Elizabeth would
he could obey. When the ^
n 4-ph her handful of cardboard adora-
click her teeth and clutch i t u u ♦
u and torn paper lace to her chest,
tlons, red hearts and rhymes
dates there too, Efyon knew.
There was a small box o u v,
with unknown centres ana he had
They were wrapped 1 . brought them home, carefully as
bought them in the store and
 72

eggs in his cap, and he had sat in his room a long time,
marveling at the way the light sparkled off the wrappings,
his mind vacant but for the glitter and the hope, grown now
with the shimmering foil into a certainty, that the candy
would make all the difference...•••
.... and he could feel the sweets slide darkly

along her tongue.

He had put the chocolates at last into an empty
box of Pilot biscuits and crayoning it red with a white and
fatal arrow, had placed it in her desk.
«Collie'', she cried, running across the beach to
where the C8.rts had stopped. “Wasn't it grand! Aren t they
Just fine! I think I'd rather have a horse than anything

else in the world. *'

The boy Jumped down and the driver, slackening the
reins, cupped his hands to light a cigarette. The other two
horses trotted up seconds later. "We won". Collie shouted.
"He let me hold the reins and if you hold them lightly enough
and rightly, you can feel the horse's mouth light as cream.
You can feel him right through the straps."
He took off his glove and touched the horse lightly
on the lean, warm Jaw. "Here", he said, "here now", his
voice as calm and sure as his hand stroking the fine flesh
of the great deep heart. The horse thrust his muzzle Int
 73

V • . ■ . -

the pocket of Collwyn's Jacket, the lower lip wagging and

stretching until it found the sugar the boy had put there.
“Ho”, he laughed^ pressing his face against the churning
Jowl. “It sounds as if someone's eating carrots right in

my brain.“
Efyon stood smiling, biting his lip, his eyes
clutching Elizabeth, Collie, the trotter, the approving child
ren. They stood as though in tableau, artfully arranged,

fathomless....and then the sorrel moved his foreleg, as

gently and gracefully as a woman bending to be kissed....
an extension of breeding and awareness of beauty, a gesture,
a word, an invitation. He flicked the leg out and down a
yard before him, leaving only a hoof mark on the sand so cold

it was hard and wet as clay. Only that to show that the

Instant had changed, that the stillness was not the same
as it had been before. Efyon moved then too, hurling him
self through the children towards the horse as though he had
been beckoned. He saw Elizabeth, holding the hearts, fall

away from sight and Collie fled from vision too, his grin

hanging disembodied in the air.

I am a man, Efyon thought. The horse will prove
me a man and he felt strong and right as he ran to the wine-

red head, the velvet Jaw, until he remembered with horror

that he had no sugar or grain in his coat -- only shells
 74

grey from the sea, broken rigid and dull. But the horse
did not come near his pockets at all. He reared backwards,
straining his head high against the martingale, his eyes
lost in white, his hooves frantically striking out at sur
prise, Ignorance, the pleading boy.
"No”, Efyon cried. ”0h no"......... his eyes too rol
ling with fright as the horse rose and fell like a great
wave and the cart bounced and lurched, its traces cutting
into the tight flanks.
"Please", he muttered, still trying to touch and
befriend the tossing head. "I didn't mean to scare you."
The driver had almost been thrown from his seat and now,
stumbling from the cart, he grasped the snaffle and flung
his free arm round the horse's neck. He spoke soothingly
to him, but his words to Efyon were soft and angry.
"Be gentle 'round a good horse boy. You should ^
know that. I thought all you children would know that."
The horse was steady now, though still quivering.
The mouth foamed white over the bit and the wind froze
three tiny droplets of blood on the smooth side.
"I only wanted to pat him", Efyon said. , .i,
"Toup", a child taunted, shoving his face inches
before Efyon's. "Toup..Stupid..... can't do anything right.

Can't do anything at all.........toup....toup

 75

collie shouted, shoving Efyon

MYou Bia^e ffi© I-l-*- »
Til ill. m---- everybody
.«u.on his knees,
own *
ck Whv don't you go away?"
^ .It on the tend as If In prajsr and felt
Efyon knelt on *
thlghe and pants becoming uncontroll-
LS bovele move,
Jly, unetoppably warm
i saw Elizabeth fling
^ rha air towards the water.
Lying through the a „.heart» she screamed at him.
aAlly sweetheari. ,
mnh that I would ever want your awful
roup, toup...to tn J,„ugh the air hurting hie eyes
alentlne." The foil sand.
, and lower onto the sanu.
nd he crouched lowe giience, they drove him back

o the house---- splintered side in the hall,

acking case that ley ^ which continued to promise
■fnr years, y®
hat had lain there
ntic departure.
ome instant and roras thumping his
n„ the edge of his
Efyon sat ^,ntll the
Ist against his ribs a ,„„„r hear their voices.
Quld no J-ongcu.
iky grew dark and he c vones beneath his eyes with
A struck tne
[e sat on the bed an ^ ^ ^elts there---- bruises. He
ila knuckles, trying rubbed charcoal
A trfOC)^ oni j_ a
look a piece of dea snowing then that he wanted,
. wanting.
ground his eyes,
 76

not ever knowing in the years ahead, this to make his soul

too dark and stony.

At dinner that evening, he ate his food seperately,
methodical as breath, making the plate into compartments.
There was a stain of red — the color of berries - on the
tablecloth and he could not remember when they had eaten
anything red. He sat there and thought of beets and rare
meat. There was yellow smeared on the cloth too ancle ,
hard and scablike, and he could peel it away with his finger-
nail. He could remember the eggs however and he lifted the

yellbw from the cloth as though it were a door.

•'Mother«, he chattered, "aren't you glad we're
alive'. Isn't it nice to be alive because if you weren
alive you'd be dead and aren't you glad you're alive?"
She looked at him peevishly, twisting the cross on
her nek so that the lock would be hidden on her nape, under

her long and greying hair.

"Did I ever say I wasn't", she said.
Efyon was sent to America that summer with an *
unole had lived there for yeare and »ho had come baoh
to Wales to visit and to make even more decisive his
separation from them. Every night on the voyage, he slept
on a bed that disappeared during the day Into a couch that
When he woke u p , he could not tell 1
strangers sat upon.
 77

the ship had moved at all. He walked stiffly around the ^

decks In a brown suit, spitting into the sea, watching the ^
spit hesitate and dip, pulling past him to fall Into the heav
ing wake, Efyon could tell that the ship was speeding then.
His uncle was stout and spent the trip in a clutter
of cheese sandwiches and cans of peanuts. His rump dripped
over the confines of the deck chairs and he embarassed Efyon
because he sometimes spilled his wine and flirted loudly with
homely, slim-Jawed women who wrote postcards with dogs in
their laps. He owned a white house in a tight short street
of white houses and worked in the section of a plant which
printed books and the rotogravure of a Sunday newspaper.
Efyon spat into the sea and thought that on all forms and
blanks he would have to say that his guardian was a funny-
book maker.
His uncle had educated him. He had gone to a city
college, taking his lunch and his gym shorts with him every
day in a shopping bag, sitting in huge classes and walking
home by himself every night, through leaves and past deli
catessens. He could go for days without talking to anyone
except his uncle, crouched before the television set, suf
fused in grey light. Efyon would go to his room and type
long sections out of magazines. Every six months he would
have his typewriter cleaned and oiled and he spent hours in
 78

stores gazing at bond paper, erasers and multi-colored ribbon.

He reproduced everything he saw printed. His room was filled
with the words of others. He became a very fast and fault
less typist.
On graduation day, they mispronounced his name and
the uncle took a picture of him in a black robe before the
library. Pale and serious as a choir boy, he pulled in his
cheeks by biting the inside of his mouth and tried to look
gaunt.
He did not leave his uncle as much as he fled from
him. He was twenty-two years old now and he ran away like
a cub scout to a cardboard lair — leaving no note or sign
for the sleeping guardian, no reason as to why he had gone
other than he had no need to stay. He left the typewriter
on a dustless desk and went to live by himself in a northern
city. He had two rooms in a brick complex of apartment build
ings. The windows looked out upon a boulevard where cars
rushed by, going to the moutalns, and at night, he could see
the lights leap up between the pines of the median strip.
The trees blinked and grew dark again. Beyond the road was
the bay where the tides ran bleak and radically and beyond

that, the city, the buildings rearing their backs to Efyod»

facing away towards Boston the invisible, two hundred miles
desirable and distant -- yearning like concrete, hopeful
 79

flowers towards the light. Many people would travel down

early on Saturday mornings. They would eat eggs in highway
restaurants and spin into the city via a bridge that was
so contained and congested that water was not even visible.
They would go to a play or a bookstore or a gaslight bar
where they served crackers in huge bean pots. They would
bviy nylons and furniture on charge accounts and walk through
the park where, in winter, reindeers roamed in pens and in
summer, children fed ice-cream to swans. At night they would
return, breaking the frosted bakery cake with their fingers
because they were to hungry to wait until they got home and

put the packages on the bed and set the table.

Efyon had never seen Boston. When the fog rolled
in, he could barely see the buildings of his own city, their
outlines hanging disembodied far away, like nail scratches

on frosted glass.
The winter was bitterly cold and the sky was white
and dense like a Welsh sky. He was hired by an advertising
agency to create images for hotels, public buildings, unknown
musicians and cocktail organists and each morning he rode
into the city on a yellow bus. When his efforts would appear
in newpapers or on the backs of menus, he would cut them out
and put them in a scrapbook. He would do this on his lunch
hour and his hands smelled of paste and the mayonnaise of his
 80

sandwiches. There was only one other person in the office,

the man who had given Efyon the Job, and he was old and Ill-
tempered, preoccupied with a pain In his back and the meeting
of deadlines. When he did speak, it was always about the
flawless functioning of his Volkswagen.
•'Starts right up, no matter how cold it gets.
Never gets stuck. Those big cars slide and spin and I Just
drive right by."
He spoke of the car as though it lived and Efyon
could imagine it sitting blanketed and grinning in garages,
while its owner applied lotions and creams to it fenders and
headlights, bought suede seatcovers as though they were
bracelets for some pretty girl.
At dusk, Efyon would come put of the building and
down onto the street. On the way to the bus stop there were
many stores and manneciuins modeled slips and lingerie in the
windows. Efyon looked at their smooth and.shiny limbs and
grew cold, both for himself and them-- lonely both for
himself and for them and he wondered, with neither grief or
desire, how long it would be until he would have a woman.
Before he went back to his rooms, he would walk along the
bay. Huge segments of ice littered the shore like broken
platters. There were no horses there and tankers rode f®
out on the water instead of fishing smacks, and yet it stl
 81

reminded Efyon of Wales and he was oppressed by the sameness

of It all. He absorbed only .the slmilai’lties and dreamed
only of escape, transport from a world of snow. He thought
himself to be the only man alive who was simply a present.
A newness of slow and awful moments measured by his sleepy ,^
and sullen lack of lust, the amount of coffee in a tin, the
change felt and counted blind In his pockets. Only a present
hanging high and alien In the dark like one of those little
fluorescent cubes one hangs on string which glows and hovers
and points the way to either light or an empty socket.
2fyon‘s first assignment was to do a human interest
article on the food service of a hospital. He followed the
nurses through the green halls as they brought the fo
the rooms. People turned from magazines or space or the
vague stroking of the pillow, their limbs angular as folded
rulers under the sheets, and watched the chops and creamed
vegetables swing towards them. The pitchers of Ice water
the night table sweated cold and the nurses took them away
and refilled them. Some patients would receive only glasses

filled with malty lipulds.

The rooms were filled with devices. Metal clamps
and pulleys -- tents that arched high and white as a cake
over frail chests. All the eyes were cheerless, some were
closed and the people accepted the food as they did the waras
 82

darkened at nine o’clock, the glistening needles, the pills

in the paper cup, as though it was the substance by which
they would be swiftly and irrevocably saved. The time had
long past when they had strangely enjoyed the pain, when
they had giggllngly flushed the pills down the toilet and had

exulted in their fever, thinness and delusions.

Efyon obtained the week's menu from the cook and
wrote and article entitled Trays which praised the hospital's

abundance of fine meats and fruit.

The assignments were dull and Efyon felt that he

was living many lives, all of them mute. The weather was
too cold and he discovered that there were roaches in his
apartment. Table tops and cupboards shivered into motion

while his shoes and hands crashed Ineffectual.

He was surprised when the Americans drafted him,
but pleased that they deemed him fit and brave. He could now
pack all of his belongings in one suitcase and he left for
training, once again abondonlng a wilderness untouched. With

the police action rattling far away across the grey sea, he
remained on the packed mud of a western army base, the back

of his shirt dark with the heat, perspiration rimming his

lip as he drank tonic from tall white machines. Rocking on
his heels, listening to a radio placed somewhere on a window

sill, he hesitated with his dime, feeling British, rolling

 83

hl8 accent around on his tongue..... lemon or lime or lemon

and lime and settled for something that Jetted into a dropped

cup, colorless and flat.

He taped symbols on bottles, recorded deaths in
blue ink. A soldier drowned and his body wasn't recovered
for nine days. Efyon touched his grey arm and the flesh
crumbled like biscuit, and he lipped the boy's body up in
a bag, feeling it all decompose and shudder as he hefted it.

Yet life was usually dull -- he slept well and the sun
early. The blanket lay tight on his bed and he sat and
polished his boots until there was no more room for gloss.
The days slipped over him like a lake. He was a medio
knew nothing of bandages, who would have to confess forever
more that he had never killed a man, had never Indeed even
carried a gun, but rather priest-like, walking with hands
huge and void, holding neither steel nor flag, he roamed
. foreign to the fighting-- roamed in a Jeep with pain-
killing tablets in his pocket, a colored helmet clapped on

his head.
•"S' Just as well", the soldiers said. "There's
really no war. Not even the books will say there*s been a
,car, so we might as well be here. Huh, EEfle..... "
The peace was easy and sometimes he would be called
away from the clatter of glasses and cue balls, and walking
 84

away In his black boots into the plash of heat, he would treat
men for vertigo or dysentery— a dispenser of pills and
damp touches.V“ and here.... does it hurt here......"
Popularity ceases to have meaning after the escape
from adolescence. Men are accepted among themselves ----
there is no need for close alliances. Lack of soul is not
condemned but merely Ignored; the quiet deserts of no thought
are unobtrusive and unnoticed over bourbon and lazy talk of
women and good steaks. One can be undead with a certain
calm arrogance and Efyon was listened to, if not quoted,
accepted if not particularly remembered in the later years
of other kitchens, other bars......... in the accounts of nights
on the army post when the miller moths struck the screens
like white thumbs, of the boy whose neck one morning felt
hard and heavy and who died of meningitis, of the theft of
alcohol from the medical dispensary ---- "There were four of
us that night.... four or five and the medic had the key, and
it was easy as lying to get that stuffouta there. I can't
remember his name but we all got tighter than fleas and he
most of all...."
And that night too was warm and cheap dresses
clung electric to the backs of women's legs. The streets
of the hilly city lay flat before him, leading nowhere,
scotch-taped by a child on a piece of dusky paper. A
 85

building sprinkled out headlines in neon and as he v?alked,

laughing and choking, the taste of the liquor hanging far
back in his throat like a piece of gristle, he gripped
their shoulders and was cheerfully, gurgllngly content, his
belly filled, not so much with liquid as with love.
and then gone and the wet dizzy haze rose up to
meet him like a friend and the whore was tall and slim, ,
her knuckles large as rings. She closed the door with one ^

hand and unbuttoned her blouse with the other, exposing

breasts large and peaked with hair around th nipples.
There was an old bruise on her neck-- brown flesh spiral

ing out into a dull yellow the color of a rheumy eye, ana
Efyon thought of the bathroom had had seen at the ena of the

hall, the door half-opened with the bare bulb hanging from
the celling and the bathtub lifted from the floor by cast-

iron ball and claw supports. He thought of the bathroom

dreamily and wanted to run there and hang his head over the
b asln, but instead he turned thickly sway from that and
nakedness and sat down on the bed. On the night stand was
a bar of chocolate and a nylon. Efyon clutched his head in
his hands, trying to catch the dizziness there as he would

a dropped brick, and he watched the things he could not

even see now through the laced fingers, rush up to meet him

Oh yes, he thought. Yes, yes. Holding her now.

 86

opening and closing hla eyes as if he had wakened from dream

to hallucination^ and seen an axman, an executioner, a vision

of his own mortality, standing above him.

g^cL", she said. “I didn't know there was any
more. I thought all you soldier Johnneys were born screwing."
She touched him laughing, but then, trying to be
kind -- trying awkwardly and Impossibly to conceal the gross
ness of her femininity, to transform It Into something sleek

and exciting because, for the first time she could ever

remember, her body was new-- she soothed him.

"Here, I*m sorry baby. Now here, that's fine,
baby", and Efyon, fumbling for her, could not move without

her and concentrating on the very process of it, graceless

and quick, he hardly noticed the moment when his loins

shuddered and the heat came.

The next day he found that the truce had been
signed and three and one half months later, he was discharged.

He had served,... and he went forth into the new country,

assured that he had won at least one war, though the terrain

it had been waged upon was vague, the terms uncertain and
the future assured, only because it contained a past.

It was in Florida that he met Nancy. J^fter he had

been discharged, he travelled down there with a plump and

happy young man in an old Chevrolet with a shiny dashboard.
 87

As they hurtled along the highway, past pecan stands and

shacks and crocodile zoos, the young man would pat the
dashboard w-ith his handkerchief and refer to Efyon as his .
«soldiering buddy". They had not been good friends there. ,
Efyon had accepted the ride, paid for every other toll and
every other meal, sat in the wicker chairs of cheap motels
and listened to the air conditioner, the young man brushing
his teeth, because he did not want to return to the north .
of cold or the midwest of colleges and sad uncles. In the
west, he would be continually reminded that he had not fought
in Korea, so he went to the south, to Florida, so he cou
warm and tanned and have time to think about what had happened
to him. He felt that things had happened to him and he was
ama.zed, now that it was all over, that he had accomplished
so much. He felt a past taking hold, descending upon him
like the hot air did when the car stopped. He felt that he
ecu Id use and shuffle the gone things and deal them like
cards. And too, he was Welsh -- which made him slightly

different.
In a land of constant sun, one can only relive the
days of light over and over again. He bought light shirts
and a seersucker suit and walked along the beach, eating
bags Of french fries, followed by gulls. The young man was
going into real estate and wanted Efyon to help him.
 88

" "Be smooth", he had said. "Be friendly. Make your

hands float around when you show them the stove, the box

spring, the simple yet elegant drapes. You'll be a big hit,"

"No", Efyon said. "I don't believe I'd want that.

I don't want to be hemmed In by a nine to five, don't you

know. "
"A swinger", the young man said, and Efyon went to

work as a waiter in a hotel with a swimming pool In the Ibbby.

His shirt bloused over a blue cummerbund and he trotted

through the maze of tables with a round, tray perched on his

fingertips. Dressed crabs and crystal tumblers, filets

and black russlans. Chowders and slim green bottles of wine..

At first, when he was not busy, Efyon would clear

off the tables of other servers, but they would become angry

with him, thinking he had pocketed part of their tips, and

the young busboys with their long bleached hair would shoul

der him aside. Then he would sit In an alcove, his tie loose

at his throat, eating crackers dipped In chedse, thinking of

eating and watching the sea. In the mornings he lay on the

beach In front of the hotel, his fingers scuttling like

beetles through the sand. A vein throbbed in his temple

warm from the sun and the hair close to his ears grew blon

Back before a lather-specked mirror, he saw the grey hairs

entangled in the comb. He shook himself like a dog and

 89

under the palm trees, the planes tugging signs —• to the

hotel.
That was where he met the girl, Nancy. He stood

hy the bar, rubbing a cocktail pic between his palms, watch

ing the waitresses in their short skirts. She hurried up to

him, the warm water of the fingerbowls she was csrrying

spattering her arms. Neither pretty nor homely, she was

exceptional as rain. She carried herself carefully inside

her uniform, as if her body were a separate thing from

herself, and against the white of her collar, her neck was

bright red. She had a sheaf of black hair, slender fingers,

and she put her fingers on Efyon's arm,

“That woman over there. She's the one. It's just

awful.“
“The one what“, Efyon whispered back in the same

frantic tones. He shifted his eyes to the couple at the

table to which she was pointing.

“They're the parents of that girl who was killed in

the car .wreck. Don't you remember the pictures in the paper

those two cars all crunched up? They're the parents and

they're flying back tomorrow and they want me to fill their

thermos Jug up with coffee. With a little bit of cream ,

she walled. “It's Just awful. The mother keeps patting my arm

awl ia I aiift I * i* r/'ttln^ tight,"

 90

and looking at me and saving what a sweet girl I am."

She thrust her fingers deeper into Efyon's arm, staring

hard and unwaveringly into his eyes as though solace and

comprehension would be emitted there, flashing across the

retina like words on a movie screen. "It must be torture

for them to have me wait on them,“

"Oh", Efyon said. "Oh my, I‘ll go over and see."

The woman wore a black cotton dress and was drink

ing a double martini, wrinkling her mouth after each gulp.

"It‘s a game", her husband was saying. "I'll give

you the answer and you have to guess the question. Sampan.

Kow that's the answer. Sampan." The man was balding and

polite and his suit was Just a bit out of fashion.

"I dunno", she said, "I don't think I know quite

what you're doing."

"Come now dear. A puffin. Try a puffin."

"For god's sakes", the woman shouted. "Cut it

out! "
Then her eyes blinked and grew wide and she fumbled

for her husband's knee and patted it.

"Could you get me a cracker? I'm getting tight

and I'd like to have a few crackers. When I was her mother

and she was little and siclj:, I'd give her crackers to take

away the taste of the castor oil. I feel awful, awful,

awful and I'm getting tight."

 91

' Nancy was still standing by the bar, biting her

fist. A broad, sad face, a collector of corsages and key

chains of seahorses, enclosed in glass, of poetry and ticket

stubs, she was a faithful and sentimental preserver of life.

One stimmer when she was very young, a boy who had taken

her to a junior high-school outing, had kissed her on the

beach at Nantasket, Massachusetts, and as he bent towards

her, she saw the merry-go-round, the endless airy looping

of the roller coaster, the wooden pier of gypsies and skeet

balls and souvenler tee-shirts striding out into the sea.

She smelled taffy and clams and the salt on the boy • s

shoulders and closing her eyes, she was sure she would die.

She felt that this had been her first real kiss, though there

had been other kisses from other boys, shorter than she,

straining upwards in their white buck shoes, and that all

kisses forever more would have to be compared to that one.

Early the next morning, she had returned, and alone with

sandpipers and a truck clearing the beach, she had stuffed

some of the magic sand into an empty pop bottle.

■When her aunt had died of a stroke in their beach

house that same summer, Nancy had hoarded a pink napkin

stained with the crumbs of date-nut bread which had been

on the woman's night table --- this more real than the

kisses and gifts, the picture of the aunt standing iii ^

 92

flowered raincoat before the Cape Ood Music Tent. Nano, had
«t on the bed, looking Into the wood that had witnessed It
«Ti a aeero-r flttd ovBT uHtil it was small
folding the napkin over ana ove
no raToPinc it in her Sunday pocketbook,
a calling card, and plao g
a -1/ath cross, had carried it with
slong with pennies and a o
, hod dissolved and her aunt, at last,
for years, until it had aisa

'^Ith It.
o-entle life, approached with mirrors
It had been a geni.x
^s/ioiitv and Nancy, assembler of incidents
and a disquieting fideli y n.
«aw Efyon approach and nibbled on her
she sought to adore, saw

flat.
"It'S too bad but you
*-u Efyon saia.
r. j-k »
”1 saw that", " ^
„f..t even think about It, because
»ustn.t get upset, .ou »us^^^

ll Would be Impossihl®
^ tbs bartenders, polishing the

»Hey kid",
nlckle ribbing with a » remember to put the
'>ehln4 the bar last nigh loe-box

oherrles away. Put the® 1„ the dish.

w 1th the beer. They g®* olives, wise guy, because

And don't put them on top

they'll flatten 'em." Mftncy sal^* "Promise me you

-,a sakes ,
Tor heaven ^ ^j^ink

’*°n't mind things

 93

about how trival and cross people can be. ” , ,.

I »' ■

"My friends call me Collie", Efyon said softly,

looking at the girl pink and white as carnati^’ns-- thinking

now not of forgiveness but of opportunity, plunging ahead

then like a pony through a deep creek. "When I was a kid

in Wales, I owned a lot of dogs. Nice purebred dogs....

and still, even over here, everyone calls me Collie."

"Wales", Nancy said, smiling, taking his memories

as her own and falling in love with them. "I've always

wanted to go over there and see a castle -- and London.

I suppose you've been there many times." Her hand fluttered

delightedly to her cheek. "Driving in a black car through

the rain to polo matches where all the ponies have white

stockings." She laughed. "I've always been such a romantic

over anything that happens over there"-- the words them

selves recalling all the things tiiat could never be remembered

because the land had been private and full of waiting.

They went on as lovers do, unaware that others do

not find them different, and saw their bodies as marvelous

because once they had been caressed and would be caressed

again. Efyon sat on the beach, wearing socks to keep his

ankles from sunburn---making his life a work of art, weav

Ing the truth and the falsehood so closely even he could no

longer remember what had been or what had not been, who it

was that had lived the events he had seen.

 94

. He took her out on a rented sailboat with a hired

skipper one morning when the sea was green and the sky grey

as squirrels. The skipper wore tight faded jeans and a

sweatshirt cut off Jaggedly at the shoulders. His head »

dozed on his chest and he seemed to be sleeping as the

boat slipped out of the deep sheltered cove, past the Jetty,

neat and man-made, into the open sea.

"I’ve been many things", Efyon said to her,"...

seen many places." They ate sandwiches flattened and damp

from the sun. By midmorning the painted seats were so hot

they had to fold towels beneath their bare legs and sit with

their chins on their hunched knees. The breeze was cool and

southerly and the sails reached out full, catching speed in

the tight folds.

"Every day my father went to the pit and my brothers

too__William and Huw and Jones-Jansen. At night they’d

come back, the lanterns and lunch buckets banging 'gainst

their knees and their knees and faces black with coal. I

worked in the mines too but in one of the cave-ins I was

caught and injured and after that my chest wasn't strong

enough to take the closeness of the pit. I was young then

and the young can take pain..... "

"You have a lovely chest", Nancy said, brushing

her fingers across the white stain of his shin, "fou look.
 95

quite able," ‘
"They decided to educate me and I read a great deal

and wrote verse and trained the collies."

"You've probably been loved by a great many girls,"

She liked the feel of the words she spoke. She scattered

them like coins and felt herself glorious as well as he.

"Come about", the boy at the tiller shouted,

shifting his body and sweeping the slender Jointed arm of the

tiller over his head and to the left while the sails whist

led and luffed and the polished keel of the boat struck the

water, even and tart as a handclap, before she tipped slightly

and cut away again, her boom steady and her sails taut. The

buoy bobbed redly in the ripples of the tack and Nancy gaily

threw a sandwich up to a gull,

"I have so much more to tell you", Efyon said,

impatient at the shift of the boat, his legs smarting when

he moved. "All those years with the hot summers of different

cities and the hundreds of people whose names I could never

forget."
"I have an awful time with names", she said,

hurling more Jam to the gull. "I Just have no knack for

them. 'Buty she said, her Infant heart sure of final discov

ery, "I remember moments.... and days,"

"I told you I've done many things, Nancy", he said.
 96

I know a great deal about people and my own mind, and I've

never allowed myself to become involved or need anyone"....

"but I think I need you a great deal."

She turned from him, her lips trembling, her

fingers trailing in the cool water.

They lay on the beach and all the days were the

same. He would call on her, dally at noon, at the little

house which she shared with two girls and a bird who had

enormous and bulbous sick eyes and made disconsolate drop

pings on the strips of Diok Tracy which lined his cage.

They found the bird one morning with his shiny green head

Jajnmed crookedly between the bars of the cage, his talons

hanging limp and dismayed in the air. Nancy wept and Efyon

sat with her stiffly and stoically, looking over her shoul

ders at the empty cagetrembling in the air of the open win

dow, and thinking that at last had come the time when a

woman cried and caine to him to hold her.

"You did Just the right thing", she said later.

"You didn't say a word or do anything at all and that was

Just exactly what I needed then. Exactly."

She was young and tanned and not pretty and her

hips were slim in her uniform. At the hotel they would

work and eet supper quietly by themeelvea at a table beside

a stove where the cooks baked the lobsters stuffed with

 97

clam meat, bedded in seaweed. They ate, knocking their

silverware against the plates, their limbs turning to wax

as Efyon touched and stroked her thigh with fingers blunt

and adequate in the knowledge of what he knew she thought

him to be. In a bar afterwards, she would become flushed,

her hands grazing slowly across the table towards him, her

head wagging slowly, calf-like.

"Now tell me about the war", and Efyon remembered

the hair in the comb, the thin lines sprawling down from

his eyes along the wings of his nose and thought that though

this was error and he was still young, he would be younger

still because he had become a man adored.

"I received the Silver Star", he said, "but that

was in a time when all men who were competent at all received

silver stars. It boosted morale, you see, to have trinkets

and ribbons."
"Why now", she said, pursing her lips, blinking

her eyes, achieving daily the inclusion of more and more of

his mannerisms into herself, "You're much too modest. Really

I'm so impressed with you. You're marvelous and much too

modest."
Nibbling on an ice-cube, nodding and smiling to the

girl who brought them fresh drinks, happy now because she

had scrubbed the tired stale food smell of her own waitress

Job off her hands and had put on perfume end a soft, loose
 98

shift, and her body felt hard and strong and desirable.

Proud now too as she settled back in her chair, feeling the

smoothness of the scotch in her throat, the light night

wind brushing the hair across her forehead. She was with a

fine and fascinating man, quiet and shy with experience,

solemn and gentle in the face of it. He took her not where

the pack of people went, but where they could be alone,

solitary and complete, at a small table in a dim bar. Her

heart was full of love and longing and she thought of his

body and the way it might be when he touched her.

"Darling", Nancy said, pressing herself up close

to the table again, the glass waving forgotten in her hand.

"Please darling, take me some place. We'll have all of to

night and tomorrow until six. Take me some place and love

me. I want very much for you to love me."

She chose the hotel. It was not among the more

elegant hotels along the ocean strip of the city. The

complex of marinas and seafront restaurants and shops scat

tered gradually out along the miles of shore until there were

only Isolated hotels and dance halls. The beach in front

of the main entrance was pebbly and not wide and the surf

was rougher there. They entered by revolving doors and found

the lobby deserted and quiet except for an electric fan

whirring thickly. Then came a high whistling groan, menacing
 99

and aourceless and Efyon hesitated, his hands hanging

hesitant, holding ten one dollar bills and a small suitcase

which contained nothing at all. The groan cornered like

wind and then died away, leaving In Its place the chuckles

of old men.
«I‘m telling you", the night clerk said, "that

engine's a fine little thing. How many yards of track you

say are colled right here?"

'"Bout five, though I got additions In the box."

The two men crouched behind the desk, examining

the small train track that weaved under the mail slots and

rate signs, the silent black telephone that serviced the rooms.

One of the men, tall and chocolate, dressed In a gold uniform

with raised blue thread arabesqulng the pockets and button

holes, the garb of the porter, elevator operater and waiter

who lingers late In the one evening of the year when few

leave home to sleep in the foreign room of a poor though

dignified hotel.... the dark man scooped up the toy and

said,
"He's sure gonna like it. That whistle and that

light what sways back and forth 'cross the floor..... "
and Efyon then realized, without ever being unaware of it s

that this was Christmas Eve, blasphemous In a city of warmth

and trees with slippery leaves and cabin cruisers, that this
 100

was Christmas Ere ana men were playing with the presents

of their children and mistletoe hung over the elevator

door and a girl was touching his arm possessively as she

waited for him to take her to a room.

"A single room, if you please, with a bath,
a tee-vee" --- helllgerently now, staring wildly Into their

innocent eyes, gaining courage as he set down the suitcase,

carefully piled the bills on the blotter before him, gaining ■.

a sense of control and cautious Intrigue -- "and a telephone",

choosing the latter because there was simply no one anywhere

he could possibly call, no chanoe whatsoever that the phone

could ever ring for him. Let Its mute promise stand for the

man he had eeoaoed to become, let It stand as a little clever

ness on Efyon's part, a nicely polished touch. He thought

again. In the moment that he was handed the hey, the tissue

wrapped Christmas gift compliments of the management —

a small date-booh filled with blank times and numbered days,

a plastic plaid with a silver pencil the length of a cigar

ette dangling from a string — he remembered again, Wales,

the time of cold and failure, of the girls who thought him

foolish and the boys who found him weak, of the beaches and

valleys that never sang for him — and the hatred and desire

came back,
stronger than still strong even when they were
 101

the room and the soft closing of the door by the tall and

chocolate man was the sign by which they were all alone.

He pulled the blinds and turned off the lights.

only the Jagged scratches of the unfocused television gave

light to the room. Nancy's hands, swimming towards the
adjustment knobs looked dim and dying, floating in a foggy
glare. Then the picture leaped forward, showing a band,
the far-away ca^nera panning in on a trio of sa^aphone players,
faces puffed, eyes oggling the keys. There was no sound and

the drummer beat with merciless futility.

"I have some donuts and a pint of bourbon in my

pursed, Nancy said, with a woman's Innate acceptance and

preparation for their own seduction. "I thought this might

happen and I brought some breakfast for us."

Stripped to his shorts, he padded to the bathroom
for glasses but could find nothing but packaged slivers of
soap, a paper cloth for shining his shoes, and he returned,
shrugging his shoulders, to drink wincing from the bottle,

hesitant to demand any thing more from the hotel than the
gift of beds. He lay on the sheets, drinking and eating
the donuts, the powdered sugar drifting whitely onto his
chest and watched Nancy slowly undress before him. She stood

giggling, her breasts email and tight, her legs clothed in

tan, her eyes loving and shy in their wantonness.

 102

'•Darling'', she said, slipping beside him, "you

wonderful wonderful darling"----her face broad and Intent

as she ran her fingers heavily across his shoulders, the

liquor creeping up on her consciousness now, imperturbably

as rivers. "I need you too, darling. I don't think you'll

ever find anyone who would need you more than I. I ve

truly never ever met a oan like you."

She slurred her love as he mounted her and then

lay still beneath him, waiting for wonder, her face averted,

her eyes closed as he drove hard, without rhythm. Fine,

she said, her eyes opening suddenly as a window shade snap

ping around a roller. Yes, she said, tangling her fingers

in his short wavy hair. Yes, you're awfully good

and Efyon flung himself sway from her to drink

and drowse and feeling the sweat dry on his body, hearing

the words that made him large, to mount her again.

The next afternoon he stood before the mirror,

hi a hands on his hips, running them downmards to feel the

smoothness of his buttocks. He slapped his belly, posed

«lth his Jaw. AS the television droned soundlessly on and

the girl slept curled beneath a thin blanket. Efyon shows

and dressed.
•come, my dear*, he said, shaking her shoulder.

She woke, her hand across her breast. He kissed her.

 103

forcing his tongue into her dry mouth. "Merry Christmas",

he said and kissed her again.

The water was smooth and silver in the late after

noon, the sand crumpled with the imprint of bodies and

feet. The smell of salt and heat filled the air like birds,

a.nd after the false coolness of the hotel, he could feel

the sweat trickle down his side and turn the underarms of

his shirt dark. Behind them, the hotel rose yellow and

dishevelled, and he decided that by now, the chambermaid

was putting clean sheets on the bed and removing the quarter

from the ashtray. On the walk back, Nancy put her hand on

his shoulder and chattered happily. He saw the gleam of

sun tan oil on her knuckles. I like the smell, she said.

I kind of use it like perfume. I love you, she said, holding

him, shaking his arm like a paw, I love you

"Thank you", he said, "my dear", patting her arm

against him --- the gesture of the very knowing man or the

very old one.

There was no longer need for impressions. They

workdd and slept in the sun, futureless, lacking both plans

and promlsses --- the one growing by the other's dlminishment

___ a game again played behind glass, an error of Judgement,

a perversion of view — unnoticed by the outside world, the

deception complete because both were deceived......

w 1 ti
 104

She loved him completely. It was no longer neces

sary for him to see her always. He spent the mornings alone

in a coffee shop, eating waffles, the brown disc of his cof

fee cup staining the papers on which he wrote her marvelous

letters, littered with quotations of reference books, scraps

of poetry. He never used her name and never sent the

letters.

He looked into the lather specked mirror, the blood

specked glass and saw his face ruddy and full, his quiet

eyes blinking with cool sophistication. He raised his smooth

muzzle to the tireless sun... a new linen shirt hung in his

closet.
In the afternoons, he often drank tall glasses of

rum and lime in an open bar---his head protected by

coconut bark roofing, his vision cluttered with the gleam

ing and promising midriffs of the girls sunning themselves

beside the pool. He walked past them on shower clogs ---

the fine animal in him smiling behind the sunglasses. He

felt that he could love and desert them all, and he was pre

pared when the time came for him to be prepared ---

slipping into his favorite bar that afternoon,

disposing of Nancy the night before with a kiss, a press of

the hand and no word, he saw her there in a- short blue dress,

a white bleach stain sprawling along the yolk like spilled

milk. She tapped her foot and watched a boy with a small
 105

white cross on the pocket of his trunks and a silver medal

hanging close and collarlike to his neck, Jacknife neatly

from the webhed matting of the board. He flew slim into the

pool, the painted race lines on the bottom shaking and then

emerging full again as the water calmed and the boy sur-

faced, Nancy sipped an iced tea with a sprig of green,

"Darling", she said to Efyon. "I was asking the

boy about diving lessons. It's important to enter the water

properly, don't you think?" Beside him, all men were boys,

older versions of the child who had kissed her on that long

ago beach at Nantasket."

"You dressed for him", he said. You wear Jeans

in the afternoon. You always told me you quite preferred

them,"
"I was hoping that I might see you here. I dres

sed for you and because I was tired,.... that's all*

"No", he went on as if she had never spoken.

"No?. He wore orange yachting pants and a polo shirt.

He saw water running from polished bodies, the bartender

shake and pour a daquerl with a flourish, the marvelous

brightness over all things. Isn't it slick, he thought.

"I can't have this, you know", he said, "I saw

him kneeling by your table before. Perhaps we should sep

arate for a bit, give both of us a chance."

 106

Her face flapped wildly as she tried to weigh the

words. “Walt", she said. "Walt now. I don't know what's

happening. It's a pretty day and I love you and we've come

onto each other by surprise and we should be happy." -

"I'm Just not sure any more, Nancy. You flirt,

you seem to manage quite well when I'm not around, we don't

seem to have too much to talk about anymore. It's just a

feeling, I suppose, but then. It was all Just feeling,

wasn't it?"
"Please", she said, chance becoming an avalanche

of finality. "Please no.... I don't see what you're doing."

"You're a dear girl", he said, watching others

turn to hear her, crying softly now, clutching a napkin to

her eyes. "But I'm not certain of you anymore." He took

a sip of rum, a swallow of ice water. "You can use this

time wisely too, now, if you're careful."

She shook her head. "What are you saying?", she ,

Whispered.
"I don't think it's going to work. It Just came

to me. I think we should stop."

He felt reborn. Justified, powerful. He had bal

anced the scales, exacted retribution for the scrawny,

torturous, unloved years. Like a scrap of pacifying meat,

he had hurled Nancy to the beast of Wales and time gone.

I

107

Memory had received the offering, consuramed It, found it

not enough and memory remained. Insatiable remembrance which

needed far more than a girl with small breasts and tremulous

eyes who had been loved and sent away and who made for Efyon

great moments when he closed his eyes, touched the flesh,

spoke the words. G-reat moments when he had closed his eyes

and thought yes, yes, I too and the girl is beautiful and

the night Just for me and never will I have to think of

what might have been because it is all happening now.

And now he watched her go away, her bloated face

hanging like a balloon in the hot air, her face large and

hard with tears. Already, behind the eyes, he saw that she

would forget and endure, that the tears were a woman's tears,

signifying not grief so much as its eventual cessation.

A woman's tears which come free and thoughtless as morning

and which can be shed for many men, many loves and moments.

The joy and release for only a moment and then forever after,

the knowledge of the forgetfullness behind her eyes. For

a moment he had seen her defeated, himself saved and then,

gone. Nancy in all her homeliness, commonness-- even she

had escaped........
....and the music goes around and around, a juke

box screamed, A man lit s- cigarette for a woman. She Ignored

the flame which died and burnt his fingers and slowly, sbe
 108

accepted the second match..Pound and around the striped plas

tic stick in the pale drink. Round and around the music

through the ice-cubes, memory, the most recent of his losses.

“Toup", he said sprawling back in the chair, his

flanks bunching thickly in his trousers. “Toup", he said

while the ice melted in the glass. If he stayed in the sun

much longer, he was sure he would melt.

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