didn't do no good. He must have pulled it out of the water. Couldn't never find it buried in all that underbrush."

Moments later the men started off into the woods. Frank watched them disappear and then turned slowly toward the cabin. David crawled quickly across the floor, then dove onto his cot.

As Frank Perkins entered he found his son staring serenely at the ceiling. "Who were those men, Pa?" David asked, sitting up.

Frank walked to the wood-burning stove and poured himself a cup of stale coffee. "Ain't none of your concern," he growled. "By the way, where the hell you been all morning?" he bellowed.

"Fishing, Pa."

"Yore jus' miserable good-for-nothin!" David heard the angry words and the guilt filled him. Just standing beside the powerful man made him feel small and inadequate. Frank Perkins was tall and strong like the woodland trees, a barrel-chested mountain of taut muscles. Strength to heave huge boulders from desired farmland, strength to work at top speed from dawn 'til dark in the steaming Arkansas summer heat, strength to lift David high above his head and send the child crashing against the cabin wall. David still limped slightly from the incident.

"Ah been a-working all mornin cuttin weeds. Where the hell you been? Fishin! Yous the laziest no-account boy I ever seen."

"Ma back hurts, Pa," David said. "I worked too hard yesterday."

"Yore a puny runt, and I'm a-goin to make a man outta you—I swear to God-if it's the last thing ah do!"

David saw the beating coming. It always started like this. His father would turn red and then spout statements about his son's physical lacking. And the anger would mount, ending finally with crashing fists. The most recent evidence of Frank's wrath was a black-and-blue welt on David's arm.

Occasionally, he could head off the beating by changing the subject. Anything was worth a try. "Pa," he began, "I found something down by the river today."

"So what," the father growled, swigging from a tin cup.

"I don't know what it is," David said. "Maybe you could tell me." He crossed the room and picked up the kreel. Never before had he shown Pa the things found in Dream-Town. But he had to stop the beating and this might do it. Nervously he opened the kreel and extracted the soggy piece of cloth. He extended it to its full length, holding an end in each hand. "It sorta looks like a sock, but I swear, Pa, it's the funiest lookin sock I ever seen. So long, and flimsy; you can see right through it."

Then David looked up and saw his father turn pale. It was something new, an appearance of what almost seemed fear. Then the whiteness was gone and Frank turned red with anger. "Where you find that?" he snarled, snatching it away.

Fear grasped David suddenly. The fear of realizing he had committed some great wrong, yet not knowing what. "Down in the river by the little waterfall," he lied, knowing he must not mention Dream-Town. David began to cry in terror. "What is it, Pa? What is that thing?"

His father became as a madman. Yet, somehow David was not afraid this time, the wild anger being directed at the piece of cloth. "It's evil," the man snarled. "A thing of the devil himself." Frank crushed the material into a small ball, the tendons of his arm standing out rigidly. "It's part of a woman. That's what it is, part of a woman!"

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