many a man's sanity, Robie. Saved mine when Clara died."

He hulked to the cluttered table, picked up the bottle and sloshed bright brown whisky into the glass. He thrust the glass into Robie's hand, who stood just inside the screen door, dumb and stiff with shock, mud on his shoes from the wet farmyard, the morning sun an unwanted caress on his back. He put the glass to his mouth and drank deep and long.

He sat wordless on the chair, facing his uncle's broad, leathery, beard-stubbled face, and drank till the face became that of a dying lion before him, and the kind, gruff voice became the sick roar of a lion, and then Robie went outside and was very sick off the broken porch in a stunning blaze of sunlight, and then he was in his Uncle Clyde's arms and laid on a bed and undressed and left senseless in the day-dark, to back slowly out of pain into pain that must be killed again with whisky, killed and killed and, like a snake, not dying.

come

Days passed. He lay on the bed where his Aunt Clara had coughed out her gentle life, a cheap, iron bedstead, its white paint long ago turned yellow. To try to keep out the fury of the sun, he had pulled down the limp green roller shade. But light leaked in at its frayed edges and he could see himself dimly reflected in the wavy glass of the oval dresser mirror. He lay listless, clad only in shorts, and he looked to himself small, pallid, somebody else, somebody he vaguely remembered, somebody about ten years old.

He turned his eyes from the glass to count and recount the cabbage roses of the weary wallpaper, once red, now pale brown. He raised his eyes to study for the hundredth time the yellow patterns made by rain leaks on the ceiling. He rolled on to

his shrunken belly to stare over the edge of the thin mattress at the faded rag rug. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the bright tumble of his clothes, brought sometime by somebody, and dumped in the corner of the room. He rolled away from the sight, faced the wall. What had become of his want to die? Hadn't he enough will left even for that?

A car drove into the yard. He heard it with dull indifference. Its motor was small and fierce sounding. The chickens squawked and flapped. The dog barked. Someone spoke to the dog. The car door slammed. There was the loose flap of the kitchen screen, his Uncle Clyde's voice. Then Clyde was standing in the bedroom doorway.

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"Get dressed. Young Jimmy Mohr's here, and he's got a little girl friend with him. Wants to talk to you. Robie said, "I don't want to talk to anybody."

"It's time you did. You know I was already an old man when Clara went. My life was over anyway. Hell, you're not twenty yet. I know you're half girl, but you're not all that dainty. Get up. Maybe his old man's had a change of conscience. Maybe the kid's brought some money."

"Clyde, I've told you I don't care about the money."

"Get up anyway. It's time you did. Put on your clothes. Here." He stooped over the heap of color and tossed a shirt and a pair of chinos on to the bed. "Shake a leg." And Clyde stood stubborn till Robie obeyed, took a feeble first step back toward living.

He didn't put on shoes. He stood on the baked porch boards and stared at Jimmy Mohr, who was like his father, square-built, blond, scrubbed looking, with straight blue eyes. In his hand was an envelope. Beyond him, in the jaunty red MG, a pretty,

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