was drawn, and he kept putting his calloused hands into his pockets and taking them out again. He said once:

"Look, Aggie, honey, try to take it easy."

"Easy! That's the trouble with him. You've taken it easy with him all his life. Made a little girl out of him, protecting him."

Bob mumbled, "It's not Dad's fault."

The back of her hand slashed across his face. "Don't you say anything, not one word-pansy!"

“Hey, Aggie,” Jack said, "what good does that do?"

She whirled on him. "I don't know. I'm humiliated and disgusted and I don't know. You seem to take it all right. You do something." She stamped across the worn rug and plunked herself down in a chair.

With jerky, quick motions, Jack took a cigarette out of his pocket and set it between his brown lips. He stared at his son, hunched over on the sofa. He lighted a wooden match with his grease-blackened thumbnail and touched the flame to the tobacco. He cleared his throat and scowled.

"Listen, Bob, is it true? What that little painted up woman said, Zoe Kemper -and the kid in the mailman's rig?"

Bob whispered without looking up, "I guess it's true."

"He guesses it's true!" Aggie hooted. "He guesses!"

Jack said to her, "Wait a second, will you?" He bent over the boy, reached out, and drew back. "All right then. Why? Where'd you ever get the idea from. Hell, that's just little kid dirty. Aren't you kinda old for that?"

"Yes." Bob tried to stop it, but he choked and covered his face with his hands. His whole body shook with sobbing and he couldn't make it stop. First he tried sitting straight and gripping the pudgy sofa arm and looking at their creased faces. But what was happening to him was like throwing up. The sounds ripped up out of his belly and tore out of his mouth hoarse and horrible, and there was no holding them. He had to hide, push his face into the musty-smelling corner of the sofa. He wanted somebody to hang onto. But there was only this old fat sofa that didn't even belong to them.

"Oh, shut up. Shut up and sit up and try to act like a man." Aggie rushed at him, grabbed his jacket shoulder, tugged at it. The old material ripped. She took hold of his hair and jerked him around to face them. "It's those rich kids and that broken-down so-called actress. It's that whole bunch." Her voice went acrid, mimicking: "The Highschool Players of the Sierra Grove Department of Recreation proudly present-" She laughed sharply. "The scandal in the boys' toilet. Some show! Rehearsals? Fooling around drinking cokes at that ex-whore's place, when you ought to be outside in the fresh air and sunshine. Moping around that library with that old music and those books you can't even understand"I can understand them."

"Well, that's finished, over with, do you hear? You're going to find work gardening, that's what you're going to do. You're not turning into any faggot. Not if I can help it. You'll take good, healthy outdoor work. And in your spare time you'll play baseball and you'll swim. And you'll do it with healthy, normal men and boys, hear me? No more play acting and soft music and reading till you squint. You're marching straight over to the YMCA with me tomorrow. Exercise and clean living. So you'll sleep at night, instead of lying awake making the bed jump-"

"Aggie," Jack Nickerson said.

"Well, let's face it. God knows we've faced every other dirty fact tonight." She

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