The House on Alexandrine 9780814338858, 0814338852

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WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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DETROIT

1990

Copyright © 1990 by Stephen Dobyns. Published by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48202. All Rights are reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dobyns, Stephen, 1941The House on Alexandrine / Stephen Dobyns. p. cm. ISBN 0-8143-2182-8(alk. paper).-ISBN 0-8143-2183-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) I. Title. PS3554.O2H68 1990 813'.54-dc20

ISBN 978-0-8143-3885-8 (e-book)

89-32237 CIP

For Pat Grant and John Klimek

IT WAS FORTUNATE that Duane met Isaac Hough panhandling for seventeen centses in front of the Penn-Central Station. Duane had just arrived in the city, having walked across the Ambassador Bridge from Canada. He had never been in Detroit before and was drawn toward the station because it was so big. The only places he knew were the small farm towns of southern Ontario. Isaac didn't realize their meeting was fortunate. He was primarily aware of the ninety-degree heat and he was wondering what he would have for dinner. Isaac was a professional panhandler. He said it was the one thing he did well, except for barbering which he learned in prison and swore never to do again. As a professional, he knew he couldn't ask for spare change and expect to be successful. Therefore, he asked for seventeen cents or twentyseven cents or even thirty-seven cents if he were feeling lucky. When asking for money, he was able to give the impression that he had a sick wife somewhere. Isaac was a tall, thin man in his late sixties. When he walked, he looked like a reed in a high wind. He had a ragged, drooping moustache, and white hair that hung a little below his collar. There was always a slightly startled expression in his blue eyes as if he had just learned about death. He had very few wrinkles. Mostly he panhandled in front of bus and train stations. People assumed the seventeen cents was the remainder he needed for a ticket. Usually they didn't have seventeen cents, so they gave him a quarter. That was what Duane did. Isaac said later that he hardly noticed Duane the first time, being only aware of a young man in blue jeans, and young men in blue jeans often gave money. It was nearly seven and the sun was going down. Isaac wanted to get

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home and take a cold shower. The heat seemed to be baking him and his shir t was stuck to his skin. "Excuse me, could you spare seventeen cents?" Duane fished around in his pockets. "I got a quarter, is that okay?" "I'm afraid I don't have change." "Take it anyway." Duane passed into that mammoth and practically empty waiting room where whole football teams could disappear without anyone noticing. He spent about fifteen minutes wandering around inside, impressed more by its size than its ghostliness. Often he would talk about it with people he met during the next few weeks. "My Dad's house can fit in it, and the barn, and the sheds, and all the machinery, and the whole lawn, and half the orchard. Maybe more." For a long time in Detroit, it was size which impressed Duane most. When Duane came back out, Isaac was still asking for seventeen-centses. "Excuse me, could you spare seventeen cents?" "I've got another quarter, will you take that?" Isaac now recognized him but he took the quarter. If the kid wanted to give it, he'd be a fool not to take it. Isaac forgot him again. Then, looking up, he saw Duane watching him from a parking meter about twenty feet away. Isaac said later: "At first I thought he might be a cop, but that was stupid. Peach fuzz on his face and he didn't look eighteen. Besides, he was carrying one of those little blue airline bags. I'm getting too jumpy for this kind of life." Duane kept watching him. A businessman came out of the station. Isaac asked him for seventeen cents and was refused. Then he saw Duane walking toward him, but he passed into the station without speaking. Isaac was just forgetting about him when Duane returned. "Here," he said. Isaac reached out his hand and Duane dropped seventeen cents into it. Then Duane walked back to his parking meter feet and stood watching. Another businessman emerged from the station. Isaac asked him for seventeen cents in a conspiratorial whisper that Duane couldn't hear. The businessman glanced at him quickly and hurried away. Turning back, Isaac found Duane standing beside him. "Here." He gave Isaac another seventeencents. Isaac took it. "I suppose you have a whole pocket full of seventeen centses." Duane dug into his jeans and pulled out another seventeen cents. "Here." Isaac looked at the seventeen cents. "I suppose you're rich. I suppose you can keep handing out seventeen-centses till Christmas."

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"I've got one hundred and fifty Canadian dollars," said Duane. Isaac realized he should walk away and not say another word. Talking about it later, he said: "I stared at him. Here was this kid, looking like he'd just come off some farm, which he had as it turned out, giving away money like a Rockefeller. He's got one hundred and fifty dollars. He's really proud of that. I want to shake him and say, 'Look, this is the city of Detroit. You don't go around passing out money. You don't say how much you got. You don't act so goddamn dumb.'" Isaac took Duane's arm and led him about a dozen feet away from the station entrance. "Why the hell you are giving me these seventeen-centses?" "Do you need more?" "No, I don't need more, dammit. What are you doing here? Waiting for a train?" "I was just walking by. I walked over the bridge. It shakes when trucks go over it. And there are holes in the sidewalk so you can look down and see the water right under your feet." Isaac decided to ignore that. "Where you from?" "Glenorchy, Ontario. My Dad's got a farm outside of town. I left this morning, and I hitchhiked over to the big highway, and a truck driver picked me up, and he said. . . ." "Why?" "Why what?" "Why Detroit? Why come here?" "I'm looking for my sister." He answered politely as if answering a teacher and he nodded his head a lot. "Where is she?" "She's in Detroit. I think she's at Wayne State University." "Don't you know?" "Well, when she left home, she said she might go there, and the truck driver thought she might go there. He gave me all sorts of good advice. He even said I could stay with him and his wife in Windsor for a day or so, but I wanted to get started. Then he wanted to give me five dollars, but I told him I already had one hundred and fifty." Isaac wiped the back of his neck with a gray handkerchief. "You been in Detroit before?" "No." "When did your sister leave home?" "In June." "Have you heard from her since then?" "No." "How old are you?" "Eighteen."

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"How old's your sister?" "Seventeen." Isaac looked at him gloomily. The kid was no business of Jiis. He had given him one dollar and one cent but that didn't mean Isaac was beholden. He thought of leaving, of saying, "So long, kid," and walking off, watching the kid standing there watching him back. "Where you plan to stay?" "Maybe a hotel. I never been to a hotel before." "What's your name?" "Duane, Duane Thrushman." "What's your sister's name?" "April Thrushman. She was born in April." Isaac said later: "I should never have asked his name. That did it. I mean, he talked so funny. He spoke right up like he mostly didn't know much of anything but he knew what I asked him and he gave his name like it was something to be proud of." Although they talked some more, Isaac knew already what he was going to do: he would take Duane back to the house on Alexandrine. But Isaac kept asking questions, hoping to learn that Duane was on drugs or enjoyed pulling the wings off flies. Nothing turned up. Duane kept giving his bright answers and Isaac's sinking feeling grew deeper. At last Isaac said, "Come on." "Where we going?" There was no surprise in Duane's voice. "I'm taking you back to my place. You can't stay in a hotel with one hundred and fifty goddamn dollars." Isaac lived in a house on the north side of Alexandrine between Second and Third. Downtown Detroit was about a mile and a half to the south. The main part of the Wayne State University campus was six blocks in the other direction, although the Department of Mortuary Science was on Alexandrine, right next to the Detroit Dry Cleaning & Laundry Institute on the corner of Second. The area between Wayne and downtown Detroit was called the Cass Corridor. It was about half a mile wide. The population included Blacks, Appalachian Whites, Mexican-Americans, students, American Indians, Iraqis and Chinese. They didn't fight much but they watched each other a lot. The Corridor was the second highest crime area in the city. The prostitutes hung out mostly on Third: women with skin the color of skim milk and dyed, shiny black hair down to their waists or dyed red hair brushed out to look like a giant helmet. They went in and out of the bars, clicking their high silver heels and wearing dresses that looked like silk

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but weren't. If they were having a hard time or were feeling particularly positive, they might stop a man on the street to see if he wanted "to do a little business." Otherwise they waited. The prostitutes were greatly outnumbered by the bums, but the bums weren't so obvious. They stood alone or in small groups drinking from bottles hidden in brown paper bags. They matched the bags: clothes, faces, hands, hair—all that pale, brown color. Sometimes one saw them going into one of the many places that bought blood or hanging around the missions or lined up in front of a day-labor office, but mostly they were just standing around with their brown paper bags. The bars on Third had such names as Anderson's Gardens, Daisy Bar, Mayfair Bar, Shooters Bar ("The Jumping-est Bar In Town"), Candy Stick Lounge, Horse Shoe Inn, King of Clubs Bar, Sweetheart Bar and the Willis Show Bar ("Les Exotics, Strip-o-rama, Girls*Girls*Girls, Welcome Delegates"). Most of the bars were one-story, cinderblock affairs with small windows in their front doors. Third's other businesses tended to be small restaurants and groceries, party stores, discount centers, laundries, stores selling old clothes and used furniture. There were a number of small apartment houses, usually brick or sandstone, and now the color of those brown paper bags. Most of the people had rooms in houses built between the 1890s and 1920s. Some were extravagant Victorian structures with turrets and Gothic arches, but the majority were shabby: asbestos siding, broken windows, broken-down porches, drunks sitting on the front steps with brown paper bags. Third was a street covered with glass. Junked cars had been abandoned on every block. The stores had bars and steel grates over windows and doors; a final piece of vanity because little was worth stealing. Third was a oneway street heading downtown. Second was more respectable, being wider and a one-way street out of town. Occasionally one saw a house with a small garden and an old man in a buttoned-up sweater trying to keep his pansies from dying. The stores were larger on Second and there weren't so many bars, junked cars, burnt-out buildings. Several Chinese restaurants could be found there and an occasional hippie boutique. The apartment buildings were bigger but had that same soot color. Of the four main streets in the Corridor, Second was the only one that a person could walk down without being regularly asked for money, offered dope, a whore, stolen watches, car tape players, rhinestone jewelry. In the spring and fall, dust blew down Second, filling one's eyes and mouth, stiffening the hair, covering the clothes with a thin layer of the city. Cass itself made small leaps at respectability, but rarely caught hold.

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The street seemed jammed with people barely getting by on unemployment or bad jobs: ADC mothers, people who washed cars or dishes, swept out offices, guarded empty lots. The Chinese section was mostly on Cass: a few restaurants, groceries and novelty stores, laundries. One of the groceries had dried shrimp and squid, rice in large burlap bags and iron pagodas. Clerks used an abacus to tally their sales. Woodward was perhaps the worst street because it was the most visible, being one of the largest coming into Detroit. In the Corridor it was full of pawn shops, novelty stores, peek shows, all night movies, stores selling pornographic books and magazines: naked cover girls lying on their backs with their knees up and wide apart, mouths half open, tongues lolling out, huge boufanted hair. The pimps stayed on Woodward, while their whores waited in nearby restaurants and bars. Pushers were there too, plus a lot of people selling anything illegal or stolen. There were six lanes of traffic. Police cruised along the parked cars. Sometimes a whore was arrested but she would be out on the street again the same day. Anything could be found between these four streets. There used to be a hotel off Cass that specialized in whores and midget wrestlers. On sunny Saturday mornings they could be seen talking to each other on the sidewalk: the wrestlers staring up at the silk covered breasts of the whores; the whores looking down at the midgets as if looking at their private definition of men. If you lived in the Corridor, then moved away, you would have a memory of dust, broken glass, the bright faces of the hustlers, the pallor of the whores, people looking like bits of cinder block, washed out blue sky, junked cars sinking into the pavement as they're stripped of every saleable part, and sirens: rescue wagons, ambulances, police cars, fire trucks—putting out the fires the rummies start, taking away the people shot up in two-bit murders. If you lived there, then moved away, you became conscious of how you arranged your life in the Corridor. What you did without being aware of it: not getting out of a car without seeing who else was on the street; always knowing who was walking behind you; always watching for the slightly unusual: the angry drunk, the small gang of black teenagers, the car slowing down beside you. You don't walk around much at night. You buy burglar proof locks and learn they can be burglarized. You find that compromise between having what you want and not having too many things that are stealable and saleable. You get used to your car being broken into until at last you leave it open with nothing inside. Then you get used to having the tires stolen, the antenna broken off, a window smashed because someone felt like it or got angry. Duane met Isaac on September 1, 1973. During that month 3,304 bur-

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glaries were reported in the city; 1,618 robberies were reported, 3,202 larcenies and 847 assaults. The police commissioner announced this as good news, saying crime had dropped about nine percent from the previous September. Car thefts, however, increased 14.8 percent to reach 2,294. There were 104 rapes, an increase of 62.5 percent, and 68 homicides, an increase of 13.3 percent. The commissioner expected homicides to run ten to twenty percent higher than the record 693 of 1972. These were not all murders, since they included justifiable homicides, such as people shot by the police. About fifty percent of the dead were killed by friends, relations or acquaintances. It was probably foolish of Isaac to take Duane back to the house on Alexandrine. Statistically, he would have been safer in a hotel. Isaac rented one of the two garret apartments in a three-story redbrick house built about 1900. Years ago it had been broken up into rooms and small apartments. Fifteen persons and three dogs lived there on that September 1st. Isaac shared his apartment with Duncan Rapp, a short, wiry man in his mid-sixties. The two had become friends while serving terms in the Rhode Island penitentiary. That had been more than twenty years before and they had remained together ever since. Isaac had been convicted for selling a phony insurance policy to a woman in Providence. Duncan had been serving a manslaughter sentence. Originally, Duncan had been a watch repairer, but after leaving prison he had refused to work at it. Instead, he earned his living as a part time locksmith and by swamping at a bar on Cass: cleaning up the glass, the puke and cigarette butts. Duncan's face was a rectangle twisted out of shape. The wrinkles on the left side of his forehead were horizontal, while those on the right went up at a forty-five degree angle. His left eye was higher than the right. He wore a cheap upper plate which twisted his small mouth. The plate was loose and every few minutes Duncan would pull his upper lip down over the plastic looking teeth and yank his jaw back in order to straighten the plate. Duncan had the small paunch of a thin man and a thin fringe of gray hair. He had the appearance of a person who gnawed at himself and he prided himself on taking no abuse from a world which he felt was constantly insulting him. Despite this, he could be friendly, even funny at times. He was protective of Isaac and carried a knife. While Isaac was walking up Third with Duane, Duncan was sitting at his kitchen table playing chess and drinking ice water with Daniel Corbin, who had the other apartment on the third floor. The previous February Corbin had burnt the five-hundred-page manuscript of a novel about his father. He considered it the smartest thing he had ever done. Corbin was thirty years

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old, a little over six feet and a little under two hundred pounds. Noticeable bits included brown hair that hung just past his collar, straight white teeth, blue eyes. His nose had been broken in college football and was a little flat and leaned to the left. The muscle developed in football was turning to fat and this depressed him. Between the ages of ten and thirteen, Corbin had spent a lot of time in front of the bathroom mirror saying, "Shazam, Shazam." Corbin wore an old white t-shirt and a pair of blue gym shorts that were too tight on him. The cotton fabric gripped his thick thighs and the seams left red marks on his skin. Duncan wore green work pants and a long sleeved green work shirt buttoned at the neck despite the heat. It was drenched with sweat. Duncan and Corbin weren't actually friends but they were friendly enough to play chess. Corbin worked part time as a bartender at the Turveydrop on Cass, which was where Duncan worked as well. In fact, Corbin had got him the job after Duncan had been fired from a bar on Third for pulling a knife on a customer. This formed their main bond and Duncan remained grateful. This embarrassed Corbin who hated people pointing their emotions at him. He liked Mallarme's phrase "the world exists to be put in a book." As far as Corbin was concerned, the sooner the world was put in a book, the sooner he could deal with it. Duncan was winning their chess game. Corbin was brooding about a short story he had been working on which he felt was awful but he didn't know why. It was about a hundred degrees on the third floor and both men were sucking ice cubes. As Corbin thought about his story, Duncan was talking about the standard of living. It was one of his topics. "Those fuckers, they spoil everything. They fix it so we live in a fucking trash heap." He pronounced it "fecking" which made it a noticeable obscenity. When he talked, his false teeth clicked as if his speech was constantly being accompanied by the sound of castanets. "Standard of living isn't having a color TV and two cars. It's having things break down or not break down. Every fecking thing breaks down. The teachers are going on strike. The Tigers are nine games behind. There's no gas. No cause for alarm, they say. Hospitals running on their generators. People throwing rotten food out of their refrigerators. Who picks it up? "Nobody. It lies in the fecking street. Paper, tin cans, glass. Garbage, that's what it is. There was a dead fecking dog lying in the fecking gutter up on Third all last week. Now it's gone. I bet someone took it home and ate it. You can't blame them. Look at the price of meat. Maybe the fecking rats carried it off. Maybe one rat with a Cocker spaniel over its shoulder, they get so big." Corbin looked again at the chess board and felt that his queen was doomed. He kept nodding as Duncan spoke. He was used to Duncan's tirades.

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It was what the older man did in order to relax. Corbin moved up his knight. Duncan shoved his castle across the board. "Check." As if in response, a dog started barking downstairs. They both recognized it as a terrier mutt named Beauty. Duncan got up and opened the door. "Isaac's back. That fecking dog, eat that dog and you'd poison yourself." With the door open, they could hear someone shouting. "You're the one that's going to be reported! Goddamn queer, coming in here with your goddamn boyfriends!" Corbin turned away from his king and saw that Duncan was gone. There was the sound of shoes clattering down the stairs. At first Corbin decided to do nothing, then he swore under his breath and hurried after him. He hated conflict and it was too hot to run around. What had happened had happened before. The dog belonged to Lloyd Mallett, a security guard who lived with his wife on the first floor. Mallett was cross when sober and angry when drunk. Now his voice was furious. The dog continued yapping. It yapped at anyone who came into the house. As Corbin ran down the stairs, he heard Isaac shouting back. "You watch your language! You touch me and you'll go to jail!" Catching up with Duncan on the second floor landing, Corbin grabbed his arm just as Duncan was trying to extricate a small knife from his pocket. The knife was caught in the fabric and Duncan was stamping his foot in frustration. Mallett was shouting something about breaking Isaac's neck, which was the sort of thing Mallett normally shouted. Just as Duncan tried to pull away, Isaac came bolting up the stairs with Duane. Mallett's door slammed shut. Seeing Duane, Duncan stopped. "Who the hell's that?" There was a pause as the three men looked at Duane who was nervously looking back down the stairs. Staring at his reddish brown hair, Corbin tried to think when he had last seen someone with a crewcut. Isaac took Duane's arm and led him along the hall to the stairs. "We'll talk about it." He was nearly a foot taller than Duncan and they looked peculiar together. A ragged, brown runner extended down the center of the hall, protecting the pale green linoleum. Since the runner was less than two feet wide and the hall more than six, walking down it always reminded Corbin of tightropes and falling. Duane was very careful to stay on the runner. Duncan watched him, then gave his teeth a jerk. Corbin wanted to slip away and get back to his apartment, maybe take a cold bath and read in the tub, but as he opened his door Isaac stopped him. "You come too, Daniel. I want to talk to you " They went through the small kitchen into the living room/bedroom. A rusty window fan whirred in one of the two high casement windows to the

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right, doing no more than angering the air and making them all aware of their different smells. It was a large, square, cluttered room. A single ski pole leaned against a gray bunkbed, and under the dormer facing the street were four stacks of National Geographic tied with white string. The walls were light blue and the ceiling sloped because of the roof. The linoleum was half covered by a brown and purple braided rug and in the middle of the rug was an ancient black typewriter that Duncan still meant to fix one day. Against the left wall was a brown couch with stuffing coming out of the armrests. Against the right wall and under the window fan was a purple armchair. It too was losing its stuffing. There were cracker crumbs on the seat and a piece of yellow cheese. Duane stared at the cheese. The others looked at Duane. Duncan, who had been muttering to himself, now said, "So who the hell is this?" Isaac avoided Duncan s eye. "I found him." "You found him? You mean like you'd find a dime in the gutter? Can he talk?" "I can talk okay," said Duane. "Jesus fecking Christ. What the hell you plan to do with him?" Isaac glanced out the window as if he found something interesting there. "He's going to stay here for a while." "Stay here! What's he going to do, hold a pot of ferns?" "Cut it out, Duncan." Isaac spoke softly. Duncan abruptly walked over to the couch and stood facing a color photograph of John F. Kennedy in a black frame. "Jesus fecking Christ," he said to Kennedy. He turned back to Duane. "What's your name?" "Duane Thrushman." "What are you doing here?" "I'm looking for April, that's my sister." "You're looking for her in this apartment?" Duncan waved his thin arms at the wall. "Maybe you want to check the closet?" Again Isaac said, "Cut it out, Duncan." Then he told Duane to sit down. Duane sat down on the couch, sitting very attentively with his back straight and his knees together. Duncan waited for an explanation. At last Isaac said, "I found him at the train station. Maybe he found me. He gave me one dollar and one cent." Corbin expected Duncan to interrupt, but Duncan waited while Isaac described his meeting with Duane, explained who Duane was and why he had come to Detroit. He ended with: "He was going to a hotel. He's got one hundred and fifty and he doesn't care who knows it. I told him to come with me."

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Duncan accepted this. Facing each other, the two men looked like a pair of friendly basilisks. Duane had taken several puzzles from his pocket. Each was made of two or three pieces of twisted metal. All his attention seemed focused on getting them apart. The puzzles made a thin clinking noise in his hands. He was the only one in the room who didn't appear to be sweating. Watching him a moment, Duncan briefly shut his eyes and turned back to Isaac. "Where's he going to sleep?" "On the couch." Duncan raised a shoulder, then dropped it. "Okay." He went into the kitchen and began putting away the chess pieces, throwing them one by one into their small wooden box. Tock, tock, tock. "You know the university," Isaac said to Corbin. "Duane thinks his sister's there. Could you take him on Tuesday and find out? Monday's Labor Day." Isaac spoke hesitantly. He knew how Corbin hated to be bothered. Corbin looked from Isaac to Duane, then wiped the sweat off his forehead with his arm. The tiny golden hairs on his forearm glistened. He didn't want to take Duane anywhere. The awful short story stacked neatly next to his typewriter kept saying, "Fix me, fix me." Duane now had a small pile of puzzles on his lap but he hadn't managed to solve any. He didn't seem so much shiny as undusty, as if he had just been taken new from his carton. He wore a red and blue plaid polyester shirt that probably looked as fresh as the day it had been purchased. Watching him Corbin experienced the same hopeless feeling he had felt while losing the chess game. "Sure," he said. Duncan abruptly reemerged from the kitchen and made a short dash at Duane. "Look, don't be so dumb." He snatched one of the puzzles. Separating the pieces with a quick twist, he tossed them back to Duane, then snatched another. He solved the second just as quickly. "See? It's simple. Don't be dumb." Duane's eyes widened as if Duncan had just walked on water. He turned back to the puzzles but still couldn't get the others apart. He was a mouth breather and his mouth was always open about half an inch. It didn't make him look bright. Isaac made another vague gesture. "He bought those at the station. He bought ten of them." "I don't care if he bought a hundred at Saks Fifth Avenue. If you had to bring someone home, why'd it have to be an idiot? How's he going to find his sister? He couldn't find his way out of the fecking room." Duane continued to work on his puzzles. Corbin couldn't tell if the boy hadn't heard or didn't care. Maybe he was used to adults being critical. "He's got a picture of his sister. Show it to him, Duane."

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Duane drew a rumpled picture from the pocket of his plaid shirt and handed it to Duncan. Staring at it, Duncan said, "Jesus fecking Christ." He handed Corbin the picture. It showed a young girl standing in front of what seemed to be a silo. The picture was blurry but Corbin could make out a smiling face, blond pigtails and a flower print dress. The girl looked about twelve. There were probably twenty million women who could have been the subject of that picture. Duncan snatched back the picture. "You call that a picture? I thought your sister was seventeen." "She is. The picture's three years old. I took it myself." Duncan stared at Duane as if he was an unpleasant trick that somebody had played on him. "The picture looks like nobody, nobody at all." As he watched them, Corbin was reminded of something which had happened when he was a graduate student at Iowa. He and his ex-wife had been living on a farm and one day a neighborhood kid had showed up at the door with a kitten. He said, "Do you want this or should I drown it? My Dad says I should drown it." Corbin had taken the kitten and his ex-wife still had it.

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DANIEL CORBIN HAD been born in Ann Arbor where his father was a molecular biologist at the university. Daniel's mother had been one of his graduate students. Daniel was their only child. He had once heard his mother say, "Danny's birth put my research back two or three years." Daniel had been in his early teens and knew she didn't mean anything personal by it. Later he realized that in itself said a lot about their relationship. High school was followed by four months in the Marines which ended in a medical discharge. He had begun having nightmares and screamed in his sleep. He could never remember the nightmares but hated the constant lack of privacy, the sense of being smothered, of never having any privacy in the bathroom. Nobody appreciated the screaming and after several weeks an agreement was reached and Corbin went home. Then he wandered for a bit before entering the University of Iowa in September 1963. When he left seven years later, he had a Master's in English plus twenty hours toward a Ph.D., the habit of writing daily and a wife: Carolyn Hoag. They were married privately on April 2, 1967. He didn't have the courage to marry her on the first. His father had died two weeks before. The death was like stripping off a shirt that is too tight and binds across the back. Corbin had the sense that he could breathe freely. At the same time, as he often told himself, he loved his father. It was his wife's idea to move to Detroit. She had a Master's in theater and a job at Macomb Community College. Corbin taught English composition at a community college in Dearborn. His job and his marriage ended one night in October 1972, when he got drunk and gave his wife a black eye. He didn't remember why he hit her, could never remember the reasons for any of their quarrels, but the marriage had been going downhill for several years. Carolyn used to tell Corbin that she forced him to treat her badly. He didn't 19

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know what she meant by that but he knew he often ignored her. He found it hard living with someone, having the person always right there, always intruding on what he thought of as his space. Sometimes he would pretend he was alone and would look right through her when she walked across the room. He was also wrapped up in an endless novel about his father. That was the book he burned in February. After burning it, he went on a two week drunk, moved into the house on Alexandrine and got a job bartending at a student hangout at Cass and Willis. He also started writing again but it was all too autobiographical and he couldn't keep his father out of it. When he read other people's books it always seemed that their faults were obvious, but he could never tell what was wrong with his own writing, or not completely. Corbin didn't see Duane on Sunday or Monday, intentionally stayed out of his way in fact. The temperature was in the mid-9Os and he was sure he could bake bread by leaving the dough beside his typewriter on the kitchen table. The short story he was working on concerned an incident which had happened at Iowa: a professor of economics, a respected scholar in his sixties, had run off with a twenty-two-year-old co-ed. They had gone to Chicago and the professor's wife had taken over his classes. Corbin typed about five thousand words but tore it up Monday evening. It was an anecdote, not a story, and it lacked an emotional center. It was just words, lots of words. Corbin's apartment was half the size of Isaac and Duncan's. The bedroom was shallow and wide, about the size of a large station wagon, with five small windows looking out onto Alexandrine. A pagoda roof gave the ceiling a variety of slopes and angles. There was a brown metal bed, a battered chest of drawers and a small desk with a white metal chair. Either the Marine Corps had made Corbin compulsively neat or he had been that way before. In any case, his apartment always looked like a motel room waiting to receive its first guest. The closet backed up against a closet in the next apartment and there was only a piece of cardboard between them. Neither closet had a door, which allowed Corbin to overhear many of Isaac and Duncan's conversations. Corbin hated that and often stuffed cotton in his ears—not because of what he heard, but because he hated the intrusion. He didn't want to hear anybody's words but his own. Because of the closet and the lack of privacy, he often worked on a large, white metal table in the kitchen. When he typed, the metal table rattled and made a terrible racket which drowned out even the noise from the street. Corbin liked that. His front door led from his kitchen to the landing. On the top half was a sheet of translucent glass with the words "Fire Escape" printed across it in red letters. The fire escape was a rusty structure running from his kitchen window to the ground. Occasionally he imagined dozens of hysterical people

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breaking down the door, trampling through his kitchen, upsetting his table and typewriter and smashing the window to the fire escape. He disliked the fact that across his own door was an invitation to violate his territorial rights. Nor would the people find safety on the fire escape. They would stand a better chance jumping. Corbin once used it, when he had forgotten his key, and found that it shook and leaned dangerously from the building. The weight of two people would send it crashing. Consequently, he kept a length of knotted rope in the bedroom with one end tied to the bed. It amused him to think that when the day of fire came, he would safely reach the street and be able to help those people who had fallen three stories due to their faith in the printed word. Almost as bad as the fire escape was the glass in the door. When anyone knocked, it rattled nervously, filling the apartment with a precarious sound. It was that rattling which woke Corbin at 8:30 Tuesday morning. As he jumped from bed, he remembered his promise to take Duane over to the university. Going to the door, he tried to invent plausible excuses. Maybe he could say he was sick or had to visit his mother. The apartment was already hot and Corbin knew the day would be another scorcher. The glass continued to rattle. Duncan stood in the hall. He looked furious. "You going to take Duane over to the university? The sooner he finds his sister and gets out of here, the better I'll like it. You talk to him. He's an idiot. You'll see he's an idiot." Duncan's voice always reminded Corbin of the sandpaper blocks he used to rub together in the kindergarten rhythm band. Duncan was squinting up at him with his head tilted to one side. "Send him along. I want some coffee first." The water had begun to boil and Corbin was measuring the coffee into the filter paper when Duane came over. "Is there really a fire escape?" Duane asked. Corbin pointed to the window. He didn't want to take Duane anywhere and was prepared to dislike him. Duane peered out. The morning sun shone on his pink face. "It would be neat to try it." Corbin imagined Duane toppling to the ground, still holding onto a rusted railing. Duane was wearing his red and blue plaid shirt which looked as fresh as ever. His crewcut had just been brushed so that it stood up and his reddish brown hair looked damp and shiny. "Do you want some coffee?" asked Corbin. "Pour yourself some." He took his cup and sat down on one of the three metal kitchen chairs. They were white and badly chipped. Duane was pouring himself coffee. He moved cautiously as if aware of some privilege. Corbin could hear Duncan telling him, "Now don't go making a fool of yourself with Daniel."

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Duane sipped his coffee. "Do you have many fires?" His tone suggested that Corbin was personally in charge of fires. He sat at the table as if afraid of touching anything and looked around the apartment as if he were in a museum. On one wall was a picture of Corbin's father lecturing from behind a podium. Duane stared at it with a mixture of interest and intense respect. "No fires," said Corbin and caught himself thinking about the rope. "I'm going to get dressed. Then we'll go, okay?" When he came back a few minutes later in his shorts, gym shoes and a red t-shirt, Duane was gone. Assuming he had returned to the next apartment, Corbin went out to the landing and knocked. There was no answer. As Corbin was wondering what to do next he heard a loud growling from the second floor as if some awful creatures had gotten loose there. He had the sense of events snowballing beyond his control and hurried down the stairs. Corbin found Duane flat on his back in the second floor hallway. Two dogs, a malamute and a German shepherd, appeared to be competing for the pleasure of ripping out his throat. Even though dogs were huge and looked dangerous, Corbin ran forward, waving his arms. "Hey, hey!" he shouted. Corbin thought of how irritated Duncan would be if he managed to get Duane eaten in their first half hour together. With a great effort, Duane pushed himself up to a sitting position, shoving the dogs away. There was no blood. The dogs began licking his face. "What the hell are you doing?" Duane stood up, laughing and holding onto the dogs for support. The malamute also seemed to be laughing, having that kind of face. It made a howling noise. The shepherd wagged its tail and jumped up, trying to lick Duane's nose. "I said what are you doing?" Corbin felt his heart pounding. He had been all set to fling himself into the carnage. Before Duane could speak, a door opened behind him and a girl appeared wearing a blue terrycloth bathrobe. Her hair was wrapped in a yellow towel and there were beads of water on her face. The dogs bounded around her, then ran into her apartment. "They're her dogs," said Duane. "One's called Gimli and the other's called Gloin. I'm not sure which is which." He paused and looked at the girl, slightly embarrassed. "I've forgotten your name." The girl smiled. She was of medium height and thin, with a thin face and large blue eyes under the yellow towel. Corbin thought she had one of the most peaceful faces he had ever seen. He recognized her as someone living in the house but had never met her. "I'm Louise," she said. Then, turning to Corbin, "Is anything wrong?" "Your dogs were trying to eat him." "Oh, I don't think so."

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Corbin was wondering what to say next when Duane said, "I'll wait for you on the porch." "You're taking him over to the university?" asked Louise. She began to rub her hair with the towel. It was blond hair and very short. Corbin felt he should say something about the dogs: You can't have dogs running wild in this house, my good woman. He was also irritated with Duane for leaving again. "We met Duane yesterday," continued Louise as if Corbin were an old friend. "Isaac said you were going to help after George offered to." "George?" "He lives here too, with the dogs and me." Corbin remembered meeting a loud-mouthed student by the name of George and felt vaguely disappointed. "I'm sorry if the dogs upset you." "Oh, that's all right," said Corbin, sounding as if dogs upset him all the time and it was something he had to get used to. He kept staring at Louise, trying to decide what he found attractive. Partly it was her sureness, not necessarily self-confidence, but the sureness of someone who knows exactly who she is. Beyond that, she was extremely pretty. "Well, let us know if you find her." "Her?" Louise smiled. It made her whole face brighten. "Duane's sister." "Oh, yeah, sure." When Corbin again located Duane, he decided he wouldn't be able to get him anywhere except on a leash. He was on the front porch wrapped in the chubby arms of Jewel Mallett. The porch was about eight by six, with four gray, wooden pillars and a gabled roof. At the moment it seemed filled with Duane and Jewel. She was a large, doughy woman of about fifty with gray hair cut in a severe Dutch boy style. Her gray bangs made it look more like a helmet than a haircut. She wore a baggy, yellow cotton dress covered with faded violets. It was torn at the right shoulder and exposed a rubbery mound of white, freckled flesh. She had on gray tennis shoes and old white socks which clung to her ankles like shipwreck victims The ankles themselves were as thick as Duane's thighs. Jewel was a drunk and often stopped Corbin to ask for money. Mostly he refused her. This time he ignored her completely, pausing only to tell Duane to hurry up. Reaching the sidewalk, Corbin glanced back and saw that Duane was still listening to Jewel, his face wrinkled with concern as if Jewel's words were fingers molding his expression to a suitable response. Slowly, Corbin walked back to the house. He imagined his whole day being wasted and disliked how Duane's business was getting him involved

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with other people in the house: people who Corbin had carefully avoided for six months. Duane was already drawing money out of his pocket. Jewel stood sweating and little droplets stood out on her forehead. Her face looked like it had been formed by a three-year-old out of a ball of moist clay. Pug nose like so. Deep set eyes here and here. Little balls of clay for the cheeks. "A gentleman," Jewel was saying. "I'm grateful and my poor legs are grateful as well. You won't tell Mallett. He's asleep." She said this as if she had put him there with a spell. "You know, I can't even walk down the street without terrible shooting pains. Maybe you could do me another favor." She nodded her head toward Corbin without looking at him. "I'd better whisper it." It didn't surprise Corbin that Duane was an easy touch. What surprised him was that he had any money left at all. After a minute, Duane trotted down the steps. "I've got to go to the store." Corbin followed him up the street toward Third. The sidewalk shimmered in the heat. A black man had his head under the hood of a beat up Ford and was hammering on the air cleaner with a wrench. Duane smiled at him. "Do you always give money to people when they ask for it?" Corbin asked, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice. "If I have it I do." "Do you do it often?" "It didn't happen much in Glenorchy, although school kids asked me a lot. And once at the fair a man asked me for money but I didn't have any. I felt bad about that and I said I'd get him some, but he said never mind. We spent a long time talking about cows. He didn't like them much. Sometimes April asked me for money when she didn't have any and wanted a movie magazine or something." It occurred to Corbin to ask what would happen if he gave all his money away, but Duane probably knew the answer to that. Instead, he found himself saying, "About that fire escape. If there's ever a fire, I've got a rope in the bedroom. Use that." Duane stopped by the curb and looked up at Corbin. "A rope?" "A rope with knots. Just throw it out the window and climb down." "What's wrong with the fire escape?" "It's broken loose from the building." Duane's smooth brow developed a wrinkle. "Do Isaac and Duncan know that?" "Just forget I said anything," said Corbin. Looking down at Duane's sneakers, Corbin saw that one had a gray lace and the other was red. He started to ask about it, then decided not to. There was a drug store on Third which sold wine. Duane spent ten

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minutes reading the labels before finding the particular cheap red wine that Jewel had told him to get. As they left Duane asked, "Why're there bars on all the windows?" "They're afraid the wine will escape," said Corbin. Jewel was waiting for them. "Gentlemen, all gentlemen " She took the bottle and held it the way young teen-age girls lovingly hold borrowed babies. Duane started down the steps. "You won't tell Mallett?" "Who's Mallett?" "He's the guy who shouted at you Saturday night," Corbin said. He had waited down on the sidewalk. His red t-shirt was already soaked with sweat. Jewel nodded, shaking her chins. "That's right. He shouts at me and he shouts at Beauty. You won't tell him?" Duane swore that he wouldn't. As they walked down toward Second, Corbin said, "If Jewel keeps asking you for money, which she'll do at least once a day, and you keep giving it to her, how long will you have any? Don't tell me, just think about it." "By the way," Corbin added, "what was Mallett shouting about?" "I don't know," said Duane. "He was shouting at someone else, then just kept shouting at us like he couldn't stop." "Who?" "A woman. He called her awful names." "What did she look like?" "Well, she was pretty and not very pretty at the same time. She was a young woman. He called her a whore—that's a woman who sells her favors. Isaac told me that." Corbin experienced a moment of bewildered thought. "That's Ruth, but she's not a whore. She lives across the hall from Mallett." Ruth Comandella was one of the few people who Corbin knew in the building. Sometimes they slept together. She was a painter who had a room in the house and studio space at a cooperative studio on Cass. Two men were paying her rent, but they didn't know about each other. Ruth was slim with a perfect figure, but her face was too masculine and the skin looked thick and the pores seemed too big or deep or craterous like a moonscape. The university registrar's office was on the other side of the Wayne campus. Although the university was between terms, Corbin hoped they could learn something. They didn't say much on the way over. Corbin actively tried to keep silent, feeling that the less he knew, the less he would be involved. Duane was impossible to walk with and stopped constantly to look at some building, car or person more closely. It was like walking a puppy. He was fascinated with the fake Tudor facade of Mario's Italian restaurant. There

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was nothing in Glenorchy like it. They stopped to watch some guys in front of a car wash snap each other with towels. Then there was a narrow, threestory, brick Victorian house near Prentis which required close inspection. Its outside trim had been painted in merry-go-round colors: a great deal of red, yellow, orange and light blue. Duane wanted to know why the same thing hadn't been done to the house on Alexandrine. He was also interested in a twenty-story building a mile and a half up Second that had a green hip roof several stories high. "That's the Fisher Building," said Corbin. "You know, 'Bodies by Fisher'?" "Bodies?" "Bodies for automobiles." "Oh." Once on the campus, Duane asked about the buildings: Old Main, the union, the library, State Hall, the Detroit Public Library, and so on. There were a few students sunbathing who required watching and a yellow Labrador paddling in the shallow moat of a small auditorium which looked like it had been taken from the top of a giant's wedding cake. It took an hour to reach the records' office. Normally it was a twenty minute walk. A blond matronly woman with too many teeth patiently asked Corbin how he could expect her to know if April was registered before registration had begun. Was she a fortune teller? Did Corbin expect miracles? No, April had not been registered during the summer. As they left, Corbin decided that maybe April had audited some classes. "What's your sister interested in?" he asked as they went back outside. The street was hotter than ever but Duane's plaid shirt still looked fresh. It occurred to Corbin that the boy didn't sweat. His own shirt was sopping. Even his shorts' were wet. "Just about everything." Further questioning narrowed the field to English, French, art and music, and so for the next few hours Corbin took Duane around to those departments and asked secretaries and stray faculty if they knew anything of April. Each time he had Duane drag out the crumpled snapshot and each time Corbin felt like a fool. A lot of people said the picture looked familiar. A secretary in the English department said it looked exactly like her daughter. They talked to about thirty people before Corbin felt he had done enough and they quit. It didn't bother Duane that they had learned nothing. "She's bound to be here somewhere. It's so big!" They were just leaving State Hall and the heat embraced them like mounds of hot towels. "Sure," said Corbin, trying to summon up some enthusiasm. "Let's go over to the union and get something to eat. Maybe you'll spot her there." The cafeteria was a long, shabby, modern room littered with crumpled

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napkins, paper plates and Styrofoam cups. About fifty students were lounging on straight chairs, no two of which were facing in the same direction. Corbin parked Duane at a table by the far wall and went to get hamburgers. When he came back, he found Duane listening intently to two young men with shaved heads and saffron robes who were telling him about the wonders of Hare Krishna. "Beat it," said Corbin, putting down the tray. "Get lost." The smaller of the two beamed at him. His bald head made his face seem pointed and he had a lot of pimples. "Your friend's coming to our joy service." "No he's not," said Corbin, still standing up. "Go away before I become violent." He growled and showed his teeth. The two men left. Duane looked after them. "It sounded interesting." "It's not," said Corbin sitting down and biting into his hamburger. "Besides that, it's been a long day. Besides that, you just can't do what everyone wants." "You mean I'm an idiot?" Corbin was afraid he had hurt Duane's feeling. Duane saw his discomfort and continued quickly. "That's what Duncan calls me. He keeps saying I'm an idiot. I don't care really." "You're not an idiot." Corbin paused. He wanted to keep their dealings impersonal and felt he was failing. "You're a foreigner. Not just a Canadian, it's more than that. I bet if it'd been Mozart who had showed up Saturday night, he'd have acted the same way." Duane seemed interested. "Who's Mozart?" "Just a guy. Do you see your sister? No? Eat your hamburger before it gets cold." They sat in the union till late afternoon. Corbin drank coffee and felt he had shot a perfectly good day. Duane drank Coke. There was no sign of April, although every half hour Duane would get up and look around. They talked about Canada and Duane's life there. Corbin kept thinking that his pink coloring made him look like someone from another race. His summer had been spent working on a farm. Compared to Duane the students nearby appeared weak and sickly. Duane had a high, wide forehead and a narrow chin giving his face a triangular shape that seemed perfectly symmetrical. Combined with the pinkness, it made him look like a mannikin or wax figure. He kept fiddling with two of the metal puzzles he had had Saturday night but he couldn't get them apart. Corbin considered helping him, then decided against it. Duane's father had been in the Essex regiment that had been badly beaten at Dieppe. Duane knew a lot about the raid and Corbin could picture his father telling him about it, talking about his wounds and showing his

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scars until it had sunk into Duane's head. Despite this Duane had no idea where Dieppe was and spoke of the War as if it were some year sandwiched in between 1955 and 1956. Duane's mother had died three years ago of leukemia, which Duane pronounced "luk-e-ma." His father had been more difficult to live with after that. "He kept watching April and saying he knew what she was up to. He even hit her. He really hit her in June when he heard she'd been going around with some American hippies. But I was with them too and they were only in town long enough to get their truck fixed. But when Dad heard about it he really lit in to April." The memory confused Duane because he couldn't understand the motivations of the people involved. He was more comfortable talking about the farm and the animals he'd raised. There were two pigs: Elizabeth, after the Queen, and Mrs. Milford, after the woman who ran the grocery in Glenorchy. Duane liked pigs. There was also a cow named Monday because it had been born on a Monday. There was little chronology in this, and Corbin found it confusing to be yanked from Monday to a Mrs. Flynn who had spent a long time teaching Duane to read. Corbin found himself sympathizing with her. He learned that Mrs. Flynn's favorite color was green and that she had once tried to take Duane and April to see King Lear at Stratford, but their father wouldn't let them go. Duane worried that not seeing the play was unpatriotic. Corbin noticed that Duane gave such words as "out" and "about" the Ontario pronunciation of "oot" and "aboot." Corbin was also struck by the importance Duane gave to numbers. When talking about his father or Mrs. Flynn, he also mentioned their Canadian social insurance numbers, then he told Corbin the numbers of their license plates. It turned out he had already learned Isaac and Duncan's social security numbers, and it wasn't long before he asked for Corbin's. Then he was pleased when Corbin had to look in his wallet as if Duane's knowledge of so many numbers gave him an advantage. It seemed that in Duane's uncertainty about the world he had at least noticed the importance of numbers and so he collected them, memorized them and waited for them to come in handy. They left at five without ever seeing April. It was a little cooler and there was a breeze blowing down Second which was jammed with rush hour traffic. As they walked, Corbin thought about his resolution to keep Duane a stranger. He had the sense that he had failed. Back at the house, they found Jewel collapsed on the front steps with her head on the porch and her small eyes focused on the cloudless sky. She was very drunk. Duane bent over her and asked if she were all right. Again one wrinkle

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crossed his smooth brow. Jewel pushed him away with a grunt and continued talking to herself. "Gentlemen uptown, gentlemen downtown, gentlemen all over God's big acre." "She's just where she wants to be," said Corbin. "That's her ambition." They discovered Isaac on the third floor landing. He was upset and almost in tears. "He's trying to kick us out. Someone's been telling him lies. I've never begged in front of the house before." Isaac's hands were shaking and Corbin had to help him unlock the door to his apartment. "Who's trying to kick you out?" Corbin asked. "Kohl, the landlord. He said I'd been begging in front of the house. Why should I? There's no money in it. Duncan will be furious. He'll want to stab him. Then where will we be?"

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WHEN DUNCAN RAPP lost his temper a blue vein would stand along his left temple like a streak of comic strip lightning. At the moment Duncan was stamping around his living room and the blue vein was throbbing. "I'll knock his teeth out. I'll knock his teeth into his mouth and kick him in the stomach so he swallows them. Just see how he likes shitting out his own teeth. What's he drive, a Mercedes? I'll smash the windows." Isaac sat next to Duane on the couch and gestured with his long hands, talking half to Duane and half to Corbin who was leaning against the kitchen door. "Kohl says complaints have been made against my moral character. He's going to put us out on the street." Duncan pointed a finger at Isaac. "He's a lawyer, isn't he? I'll get him disbarred. Kohl's going to come begging on his hands and knees. Will I forgive him? I'll kick him in the fecking teeth." It was ten o'clock Wednesday morning. Duane had appeared at Corbin's door at 9:30, asking him to do something about Isaac and Duncan. He had been more confused than frightened. Corbin had been aware of the commotion for some time, but he had put cotton in his ears and was typing as hard as he could, trying to drown out the racket from the next apartment. He had not been happy to see Duane but offered to do what he could, which turned out to be nothing. Duncan refused to be quieted and Isaac couldn't be cheered. They were now waiting for George Troshak, who lived with Louise and her dogs and who was a friend of the landlord's. Duncan continued to circle the room. He wore his green work pants and green work shirt buttoned up to his neck and his sparse gray hair stood up in little peaks. Tacked to the wall near Corbin was a reproduction of Ryder's The Race Track. It belonged to Duncan and at this moment he resembled it. The picture showed Death holding up a scythe and riding a race horse 30

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around a track. There were no stands or bleachers, and the landscape seemed to have been bombed a lot. All the colors were shades of reddish brown. "You know, Daniel," said Isaac, "in the fall of 1936 a car knocked down my Aunt Jane in Cleveland and broke her hip. She was an old women then, or at least I thought so. I guess she was no older than I am now. My Dad had to put her in a home. It was a terrible place. Every time I saw her she said they were starving her to death. Those people treated her like a stupid child. She was there three years before she died. Maybe she really was hungry, because I was one of the pallbearers and the coffin felt like it was full of feathers. My Dad ended up in the same place. Now Kohl's throwing us out for having immoral characters." Duncan paused in mid-stride. "When I'm through with his fecking character, it'll be in shreds. I'll rip it to pieces. . . . " Duncan was just building up again, when George Troshak entered with Louise behind him. "Don't you ever fecking knock?" "Knock down the walls," said George in an affected tenor, "knock down all the walls on the second floor. Make one huge room. No doors, not even to the John." Duncan stared at George and Corbin moved back toward the window. "He wants a commune on the second floor," explained Louise. "We'll start right after I see Kohl," beamed George. He stood in the center of the room with his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. Although several inches under six feet, he seemed like a much larger man. He was barrel-chested and his thick, brown hair was styled in a white man's Afro. Perhaps he was twenty-two or twenty-three. He wore a light blue t-shirt with the words "It Takes Both Hands" printed across the front. "If you rip out the walls" asked Corbin with a touch of sarcasm, "what's to keep my apartment from falling into yours?" He wondered why someone as attractive as Louise lived with a jerk like George. "That's a great idea." George took several steps toward Corbin as if he meant to hug him. "We'll knock out part of your floor and run up a spiral staircase." "But there's a perfectly good staircase right outside my door." George put both hands into his frizzy hair and appeared to pull hard, stretching the corners of his eyes and making himself look briefly oriental. "That's the trouble: doors. They keep people apart. They make them cold and hard. We'll knock out your floor, then you can be part of our commune." Corbin was about to say something rude, when Louise said, "George, he doesn't want his floor ripped out. Don't be pushy." George pursed his lips and looked doubtful. "I bet he'll change his mind after he sees how nice it is. What's this shit about Kohl?"

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Sitting on the lower bunk, Duncan was eying George as if he were some strange food which he didn't think he liked. Louise sat down on the couch between Isaac and Duane. They resembled riders on a bus. Isaac began tugging his moustache. "He wants to kick us out," he said quietly. "Why?" Isaac explained. Although George had asked the question, Isaac gave his answer to Louise, turning toward her and letting her take one of his long hands. "Do you know who complained about you?" she asked. "I think it was Mallett. He was threatening me the other day." Louise nodded slowly. Corbin couldn't get over how peaceful she looked: a thin, calm face surrounded by short, blond hair. She had on a khaki skirt and a white Indian blouse. "It probably was Mallett. He's complained about my dogs several times. Not that the dogs were doing anything, of course. He just enjoys complaining. Kohl came over, but he liked the dogs." "I gave him some of my best dope," said George, "and told him how yappy Mallett's dog is. I guess it's his wife's dog." George was leaning against the bunkbed, standing over Duncan like a bushy tree. Where Louise's face was calm, George's was always moving. It was a round, craggy face; a pug dog face. "So Kohl told Mallett about his dog," continued Louise, patting Isaac's hand. "Mallett threatened to call the police on us and Kohl suggested he might be happier living someplace else. Mallett hasn't said anything since." "If he said anything to Louise's dogs, they'd bite him," said George proudly. "Kohl'd kick him out if he could. He only wants students living here. He's afraid of becoming a slum landlord and that wouldn't fit his cityswinger image." Louise gave him a sharp look and George caught himself "Of course he doesn't mind you and Duncan. I'll talk to him. He listens to me. I mean, I'm the guy he buys his dope from." Corbin thought that watching George and Louise was like watching a complicated dance. The two seemed opposite, but no part of one intruded on the other. Duncan looked doubtful. Seeing him, Louise said, "They really are friends. Kohl comes over a lot. I don't think there'll be any more trouble once George talks to him. He's not stupid, just a little silly." She paused, then added, "Kohl, I mean." Turning to Duane, she said, "Did you learn anything at the university yesterday?" Duane gave a little jump. "No, at least I didn't see her. It was interesting though. I'm going back and look some more. Classes haven't started but I bet she's there someplace. It's just big, that's all."

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"I'll take you over there this afternoon if you like," said Louise. "I've got to go to the library." "Can we take the dogs?" "Sure." George strode back to the center of the room as if he felt more comfortable there. "You'll find her all right. My sister lives on a commune in Saline. She's the only sister I've got but I know just where she is. Now Louise doesn't have any sisters, but she has two brothers and so she's their sister. How about you, Corbin, you got a sister?" Corbin shook his head. George's jeans were old, and embroidered patches covered the knees: rainbow shapes in multicolored thread. Corbin imagined Louise patching them for him. "Brothers?" "Just lots of graduate students." "Tough luck. How about you, Duncan?" Duncan turned quickly, nearly hitting his head on the frame of the bunk above him. "Yes." "Which?" "One of each." "You keep in touch with them?" Corbin noticed the blue vein suddenly stand out on Duncan's left temple. "They're dead," said Duncan angrily. "They died when I was eight." "Oh." George started to go on, then stopped. Isaac shifted uncomfortably on the couch. "How did they die?" asked Duane. He spoke very politely. "They fell through the ice on Wanshuck Pond. Can you imagine that? Wanshuck fecking Pond in Providence fecking Rhode Island. I watched them." Duncan was talking mostly to himself. "Couldn't you do anything?" asked George. "No, you dumb bastard, I just stood there and. . . ." Isaac got to his feet and Duncan paused. Then, turning to Louise, he said, "They were too far away. I couldn't do anything. My parents. . . ," he stopped again. Corbin was struck by how little he knew about the people in the room. There was Duncan on the lower bunk, jerking his teeth and looking at his hands; then George on the rug standing still for once; and Isaac, Louise and Duane, sitting in a row: bus passengers suddenly wary of their destination. It occurred to Corbin that these people were strangers to him. Who were they? How did they get through their days? How did they make the choices in their lives? Louise stood up and smoothed down her khaki skirt. "I have to pick up some milk at the store. Anyone need anything?" "I'll come too," said George. Everyone was still uncomfortable.

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"Why don't you come down around noon," Louise told Duane. "I'll give you a sandwich and we can take the dogs over to school." Then she took Isaac's hand. "Don't worry about Kohl. We'll fix that. Goodbye, Duncan, I'm sorry we upset you." She seemed to be going around the room and patting everyone's head. Saying goodbye to Corbin, she added, "Are you sure you don't want your floor ripped out?" After they had gone, Duane said, "Maybe we'll find April today." He was staring out the window as if he might see her on the street. Duncan was still on the bed. He didn't look up. "That's right, maybe you'll find a zebra too, or a. . . ." "Course you'll find her," interrupted Isaac. "She bound to be there someplace." During the next few days, Corbin avoided Duane. He stayed in his apartment fussing with his writing, kicking the words around, and in the evening he tended bar at the Turveydrop. He was aware, however, of widening circles of activity outside his door: people coming to take Duane over to the university—George, Louise and other people he didn't know. He could hear Louise's large dogs prancing about on the landing, and restrained himself from going out and asking questions. Beyond the immediate circle of the search, he was aware of other concerns. There were a lot of kids making noise out in the street, kids who should have been in school. Only 600 of Detroit's 10,600 teachers had appeared for work on Tuesday, beginning a strike which continued through most of October. Also on Tuesday, the city's homicide count for the year reached 492 when an elderly man was stabbed in his living room by a burglar. Police blamed it on the heat, saying there had been an increase in crime during the heat wave because people left their doors open and only locked their screens. Corbin usually tended bar at the Turveydrop between 10:00 and 2:30 A.M. Wednesday through Sunday. He saw it as the therapeutic opposite of his writing. It was a fashionable university bar serving those students intent on finding themselves. The juke box featured Miles Davis and a lot of the Rolling Stones. There were fake beams, fake Tiffany lamp shades and posters showing sunny Spain, Tolkien's Middle Earth, Mick Jagger eating a microphone and Pope Paul saying, "The pill is a no-no." It was an easy job. The clientele drank beer and the usual mixed drinks. But on those nights when Corbin was avoiding Duane and thinking that the search had nothing to do with him, there was a run on a drink called a Golden Cadillac, made with Galliano, Triple-Sec, Creme de Cacao, orange juice and heavy cream. Sometimes there would be a switch to a Golden Dream in which Cointreau would be substituted for Triple-Sec. Corbin must have made

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about thirty of them and he made them sloppily, afraid to become known "as the guy who made a swell Golden Cadillac." He was making his tenth Golden Cadillac of Thursday evening when someone at the bar spoke to him. "Hey, man, what do you think of that kid?" "What kid?" Looking up he saw a young man with a Fu Manchu moustache and long black hair held in a pony tail. The moustache, hair, the narrowness of his head, even the downward droop of his dark eyes gave the man's face a sliding look: a series of curves about to slip off and make a puddle on the floor. He wore a bright, yellow shirt with baggy sleeves: the kind worn by Gypsies in movies. On the fingers and thumb of his right hand were a set of clear, plastic finger picks. Corbin recognized him as someone who lived in the house on Alexandrine. "You know, man, the kid who's looking for his sister. You're Corbin. I heard about you. You live upstairs and type a lot. I'm Gunther Nicoloff." Carefully taking off his finger picks, he stuck out his hand. Corbin reached out and took it in a conventional handshake but then Gunther twisted his hand around and grabbed Corbin's in a manner connoting brotherhood. Corbin clumsily adapted his hold. After a long moment packed with comraderie, Gunther released his hand and replaced his finger picks. "What about the kid?" Corbin hated fancy handshakes, especially those that suggested some political intimacy. Gunther drummed his picks on the bar. "He's funny, you know? I mean, he's strange." He spoke in a gravelly stage whisper that Corbin could barely hear over the bar noise. Corbin poured the Golden Cadillac from the shaker into a glass and set it on the tray for the waitress. "Because he's looking for his sister?" "Shit no, I got a sister myself. Know what I mean?" "How did you meet him?" "He came in to hear me play. I took him around some." "Play?" "Guitar, man." Gunther held up his picks. "He came in to hear me play the guitar. That's all I'm doing now. Just like you." "Me?" "Sure, man. You write. I play the guitar. It takes time, man. I hear you typing up there all day. I figure you got it all together, so I quit my job and do the guitar eight hours a day. Now I'm looking for a gig, gotta knock down some bread." Corbin had a mental image of Gunther standing under a breadfruit tree with a long stick. It amazed him that he had some responsibility for Gunther's life-style. He wanted to be left alone, to be allowed to pursue his writing, to make it less awful, and here was an absolute stranger connecting himself to him. It depressed him. He wondered if he should live in the desert like St.

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Jerome or on a flagpole like St. Simon. Maybe he should simply move. Gunther finished his beer. "Gotta get back to work, man." "Work?" "The guitar. Nice talking to you." He strolled out. At precisely ten thirty Friday morning, Corbin ripped up a short story in which his father had taken the form of a policeman. This was followed so quickly by a rapping on the glass that he first thought the destruction of the story had caused it. Opening the door, he found Duncan squinting up at him. "You seen Duane?" "Nope." Corbin began shutting the door. Duncan pushed against it and Corbin stepped back. "I'm taking Duane over to the lockshop. Damn fool still can't work those puzzles. What he needs is practical knowledge. Show him how a lock works." "Maybe he's with George." Corbin tried pushing the door again but Duncan's foot was against it, holding it open. "Maybe. You doing anything right now?" Corbin thought of the short story in the waste basket. "I was just going over to the library." "You go see if he's with George. I don't like going in there. Fecking madhouse. God knows what they do." He gave the impression that although God didn't know what they did, he, Duncan Rapp, knew very well and wanted no part of it. As it turned out, George was alone. He was doing sit-ups with his feet tucked under the couch and a dog sat on either side of him. The hair on George's chest was dark and thick and plastered to his skin, making him look rather bestial. Duncan remained behind Corbin. "Maybe he's with Kaniewski," panted George. "Who?" Corbin had the sense that he was being dragged even farther from his private tasks. "The guy in the next apartment." "Come on," said Duncan, firmly taking Corbin's arm. They went down the hall to the next apartment from which came the sound of a piano being played very quietly. Corbin knocked, heard someone say, "Come in," and they entered. Too late, it occurred to Corbin that not only answering doors was a mistake, but also knocking on them. It was a long room with white walls and two large windows looking out on Alexandrine. The windows had red curtains which reached the floor and gave the room a pinkish tint. There wasn't much furniture: a yellow couch, a desk, a kitchen table and four straight chairs. In the center of the room was an upright piano which was being played

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by a very thin and lanky young man. He had long and perfectly straight, sandy hair, thinning on top. His back was to the door and Corbin couldn't see any trace of bone under his baggy, gray sweat shirt. He was playing some modern piece: at one moment quiet and nostalgic, at the next seeming to demand a lot of random banging on the keys. Duane was straddling one of the straight chairs with his chin resting on the back. He was completely involved in the music and didn't turn to see who had come in. Duncan and Corbin stood for a moment, then sat down on the couch as the piano player gave no sign of stopping. Corbin found himself staring at the man's fingers which seemed endless and able to telescope out to reach the faraway notes. He came to another loud bit, hammered through it, then stopped. Turning around, he stared at the new arrivals and looked embarrassed. Duane turned toward Duncan. "That was dog music. I asked him if he knew any and he did." The man pushed back the piano bench and stood up. "It's a Satie piece called 'Flabby Preludes for a Dog.'" "That's right," said Duane. "Will you play it again?" The man laughed, then raised his hand, covering his mouth. On the front of his gray sweatshirt was the picture of some composer. Not Beethoven, maybe Schumann. "I've already played it three times. Maybe your friends aren't interested." When referring to Corbin and Duncan, his shyness returned. He had a long, horse face; too many teeth bunched together in front, and tremendous blue eyes as if he did most of his playing in the dark. Corbin got to his feet. "I'm Daniel Corbin. This is Duncan Rapp. We were looking for Duane." "I'm Wencel Kaniewski." They shook hands. Corbin felt his hand enveloped by Wencel's endless fingers. Duncan took a few steps toward Duane and gave him a little poke in the belly. "You coming to the lockshop with me?" Duane grinned and pretended to poke Duncan back. He wore a white shirt that was too big for him which he had probably borrowed from Isaac. "I was just waiting here. Is that the wall George's going to rip down?" Wencel looked confused. "Ah. . ." "Are you going to do it soon? George said I could help." "Ah. . ." Wencel was saved from an answer by a pounding on the door. They all turned, expecting to see George with hammers and crowbars. Then the door burst open and banged against the wall. Lloyd Mallett took a step into the room and stopped, surprised by the number of people. He was a tall and once

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muscular man in his mid-fifties with a bomb shaped head and a face that looked like it had been cut from a soft stone. He wore a dirty undershirt and gray workpants. "I told you about playing that thing in the morning," he said angrily. "I work nights. How can I sleep with you hammering away?" Wencel backed away to the piano. "I was being careful to play quietly. And you said you wouldn't be working last night." "I got a right to change my mind, don't I? If I hear you playing again, I'll bust your fingers." The ugliness of the threat startled them all. Duncan recovered first. He made a short dash at Mallett. "You son-of-a-bitch, you can't talk like that!" Mallett was staring down at Duncan with some surprise when Corbin stepped between them, pushing Duncan away. "You better go. There won't be any more playing." Mallett's face remained tense and for a moment Corbin thought Mallett was going to take a swing at him. Then he stepped back. Corbin was taller and in better condition. "I'll fix anyone who touches that piano again." He pointed a sausage finger at Duncan. "And you, you little fairy, stay away from me!" Duncan went wild. He ran to the piano and began hammering on the keys with his fists so that it made a jarring drummish noise. "Fairy you, fairy you, fairy you!" Then he took a small jackknife from his pocket, but he was twitching and jerking so much that he couldn't open the blade. Wencel had moved to the far side of the piano and stood looking over the top. Duane stood back by the far wall. His mouth was open and his eyes seemed especially large. Corbin grabbed Mallett's arm and shoved him toward the door, wondering how he had gotten involved in such a complication. Mallett could have avoided the knife but Duncan's frenzy must have unnerved him. He shook himself free and left the room. "I'll stick him! I'll stick that fecker!" Duncan still hadn't been able to open the knife and was rapidly shifting his weight from one foot to the other as if dancing. Corbin stared, then began to laugh. In his green work pants and green shirt buttoned up to the neck, Duncan looked like a furious wood elf. He gave Corbin an angry look and threw down the knife so that it bounced across the rug, then he turned away toward the windows with their red curtains. When Duncan turned back, he was calmer. "Go ahead, laugh, see if I care. I hate that son-of-a-bitch, hate his drunken wife and I hate his yappy dog. Someday he'll push me too far, calling me a fairy, and I'll stick him.

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Then Duncan grinned. "I scared the fecker though. You see his piggy face?" Corbin spent much of the afternoon in the Detroit Public Library nearly a mile up Cass, searching for some books with which to bury the weekend. He ended up with Conrad's Secret Agent and six mysteries by Margery Allingham. He felt sick of writing, sick of the way his father kept creeping onto the page. When he returned to the house around five he heard someone playing the guitar, just doing intricate bass runs over and over. It was probably Gunther and Duane was probably with him. For a moment Corbin considered joining them and was shocked at the idea, as if his own best-trusted self were trying to sabotage him. He told himself he would rather read. But he wasn't able to pass the entire evening uninterrupted. Shortly after nine as Corbin was nearing the end of Allingham's Tiger in the Smoke, Isaac burst into his kitchen shouting, "Where's Duane?" It was a tense part of the book with murder and mayhem imminently poised within the next few pages. Corbin iumped in his chair, hitting his knee against the kitchen table. "I'm not his goddamn keeper, why come to me?" Isaac stood in the doorway, tugging on his moustache and looking at Corbin with his head tilted to one side. "I didn't realize your time was so precious. Anyway, Duane's disappeared." It occurred to Corbin that Isaac was one of those people for whom reading didn't constitute doing anything. "What do you mean he's disappeared?" "He went out at five and he's not back. It's raining cats and dogs. He's probably been beaten up and robbed." Corbin became aware of a drumming on the roof. He had to be at work in forty-five minutes. "Isn't he with George?" "I just looked in there. George hasn't seen him." "But Duane said he was going to meet him." "I don't know anything about that." Corbin heard feet on the stairs and Isaac turned. It was Duane. He wore no coat, and his jeans and blue t-shirt were plastered to his skin. A small pond was forming around his dirty white and now sodden sneakers. It passed through Corbin's mind that someone had tried to drown him. "Where have you been?" said Isaac, pulling him into Corbin's apartment. There was a towel by the sink and Isaac gave it to Duane who began drying his hair. "Waiting for George." "But George is downstairs. Where were you waiting?" "At the library. Then it closed and I came home." Duane wiped the

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towel across the back of his neck, dried his arms, then he folded the towel and carefully set it on the kitchen table. "How long you been waiting?" "George said he'd meet me at six. He said he had some work to do first. Then we were going to find April." "You mean you've been waiting three hours?" Corbin asked. He took his jean jacket from a hook on the wall and tossed it to Duane who had removed his t-shirt and was wringing it out over the sink. Duane pulled on the jacket and buttoned it. "He said he'd meet me." Isaac went out on the landing, glanced down the stairs, then came back. "If Duncan were here, he'd fix George for this. I got half a mind to call him." Isaac started for the stairs again, turned back, then stopped. Each time he passed through the doorway he ducked his head. "Hell with it, I'll take care of him myself." He grabbed Duane's arm and nearly dragged him down the stairs. Corbin picked up his book, looked at it, then marked his page and hurried after Isaac. By the time Corbin reached the second floor, Isaac had burst into George's room and Corbin could hear his shrill voice. "What d'you mean keeping this boy waiting three hours? He could have caught his death. You're lucky Duncan's not here. You're lucky I didn't call him." Entering the apartment, Corbin saw George, Louise and the dogs sitting on the floor in front of a small television set. On the screen one car chased another through a dark city. The dogs got up and began licking Duane's hands. "What do you mean?" asked George. He had no idea what Isaac was shouting about. Louise flicked off the television. The two cars disappeared into a point of light. "You told Duane you'd meet him at the library at six. He's been waiting there three hours." With his white hair, Isaac looked like a mixture of Old Testament prophet and Don Quixote. Duane was sitting on the floor with the dogs. George had been prepared to get cross; now his expression changed. "Shit, it completely went out of my mind." He went over to Duane and sat down beside him, taking his hand. "I'm sorry, man. Some other stuff came up. I forgot all about it." Duane was ready to forgive him, but Isaac interrupted. "That's too easy. You said you'd be there and you weren't. When you promise Duane something, well, it's not like most promises. You've got to keep it." "Look, Isaac, it won't happen again." George stood gloomily for a few seconds, then began to brighten up. "Oh, yeah, I talked to Kohl. He's not going to kick you out." Isaac started to get angry again. "I don't care about Kohl. I care about Duane. You stood him up."

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PERHAPS CORBIN HAD grown up with too few friends. As an only child whose parents were often busy he had a lot of time for friends but not much inclination and, really, he didn't know how to go about it. His parents talked to him like a little adult, which was then how he talked to his classmates. He was too serious, too disapproving. He didn't know how to be silly in the way a child can be silly, just forgetting himself. Corbin never forgot himself. He read and was engaged in various projects meant to win his parents approval: leaf collections, stamp collections, rock collections. But he was never sufficiently successful and the company he came to trust was his own. And then there were those actions which had upset his parents. Why had he played football? He didn't like it and it led to his parents calling him a little savage. And all those girls he had chased and slept with. And why had he ever thought he would like the Marine Corps? Sometimes it amazed him that he had even lasted four months. And why had he gotten married? It seemed that for everything he had done to gain his parents approval, he had done something else to gain their disapproval. When he had moved into the house on Alexandrine the previous February, Corbin's intention had been to heal himself. He had a few friends— acquaintances really—and a few women he slept with. But mostly he felt comfortable with solitude and his own writing. Yes, the writing was terrible, but it was improving, wasn't it? Couldn't he learn by doing it, by just being stubborn, by getting rid of his ego and his psychology and just writing? He was no longer sure. Then Duane arrived. Maybe it was the fact that Duane was an outsider which interested Corbin. Maybe it was that Duane seemed untouched by the world, had no prejudices, was endlessly curious. He seemed unused. Corbin remembered himself as a child and imagined he had been the same way. 41

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Maybe everyone had an awareness of the last moments of his or her own innocence. Corbin knew a woman who had once told him of how she had looked in the mirror when she was about four and said with sudden and tragic conviction, "I'll never grow up to be a cat." And the world had become smaller. Corbin began to pay attention to Duane. He became interested in his search, although he didn't have much faith in it. He began to see himself as a witness to Duane's time in Detroit; never as a participant, that would have been too much for Corbin. Certainly he saw it all as an accident, coincidence, chance that he was there and Duane was there and that a story followed and Corbin became mixed up in it, as did others in the house. The question was always how much did Corbin see Duane as a person and how much as subject matter. But everything was subject matter. The world existed to be put in a book. Monday morning, September 10, Corbin was milling around trying to avoid his typewriter, which had been letting him down of late. He had polished his shoes. He had made his bed in such a way that when he dropped a quarter on the bedspread the quarter bounced about a foot. Then, when he ran out of coffee, he convinced himself that coffee was what he needed in order to write. Going down the stairs, he heard guitar music coming from Gunther's room. He stopped by the door and told himself he should know how well Gunther played since Gunther's playing was connected to his writing. This was an even larger procrastination, which Corbin knew perfectly well. Despite this, he knocked and went in. Duane was there with Jerry McKiddie. McKiddie and his wife were Appalachian whites who took care of the building and collected the rent. Gunther was sitting on the bed, playing the guitar. Duane sat next to him. McKiddie was on the floor holding another guitar but he wasn't playing. Both he and Duane were just watching and listening. Gunther lived in a single room, about twelve by twelve. To the right of the door was a small rust-stained sink, two gray straight chairs pushed up against a table and a large armoire with a narrow, full-length mirror in which Corbin could see Duane's reflection. The bed was opposite the door. It was a single bed with a black metal frame. Someone had once painted a large pink rose on the headboard; this was now faded and part of it had been scraped away. The bed was covered with a red corduroy bedspread. The walls were light blue and above the table was a poster of Lenin standing on a hill with his arms out-stretched. On the table were piles of library books. Corbin noticed Das Kapital and something on or about Che Guevara. The room's best feature was a large, bow window between the head of the bed and a tattered brown easy chair. It was open and kids could be heard yelling out on the street.

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Gunther was playing some folk song on a twelve-string guitar which he picked so it sounded like a harpsichord. He and McKiddie nodded to Corbin. Duane was completely absorbed. Pulling a straight chair away from the table, Corbin removed some books on the Russian revolution and sat down. Gunther sang in a high, drawling voice. The song was about someone going to Montana. He met a woman in Illinois and she wanted him to stay with her, but he had to get on to Montana, so he left. Just like Dido and Aeneas, Corbin told himself. Gunther ended the song with a complicated series of chords and looked up. His long black hair was out of its pony tail and hung forward nearly obscuring his face. "That's my song, man. I wrote it." Shining through the window, the sun reflected off the dark brown wood of the guitar. McKiddie drew his fingers across the six-string guitar, making a jarring atonal progression. "If I could do that, I wouldn't do much else. I used to play a lot before this." He raised his right hand. The first two fingers were missing. "I still fool around though." There was no self-pity in his voice. McKiddie was a tall, lanky man, slightly older than Corbin, with short red hair and blue eyes. He had a twangy accent which grew stronger if he were nervous or if someone asked him to do something like fix a leaky faucet. Mostly he was calm with gentle, quiet movements. They weren't lazy movements; it was more like water flowing. He wore brown work pants and a brown shirt with "Shell" across one pocket and "Jerry" on the other. "What happened to your hand?" asked Duane McKiddie laughed. It was a quiet sound. "That's a story, that is, though not so much the losing of them." He was pleased at the attention and Corbin guessed he had shown his stumps just so he could tell his story. But as he started to speak, the door flew open, bumping against the easy chair, and someone said, "What the hell's going on here?" This was followed by an abrupt laugh. Corbin's back was to the door and at first he thought it was Mallett until he heard the laugh. Turning, he saw a thin, young man, maybe twentythree. He laughed again. His two front top teeth were missing, making his mouth look like a red pit. He sat down in the brown easy chair and crossed his legs. "Making all that noise with your howling, maybe you'll w;ake up Mallett. Maybe he'll come up and smash those guitars of yours. Not that they're worth much." He kept grinning and it was hard to tell how serious he was. A blue X was tattooed on the back of his left hand. His accent was like McKiddie's but subtler and served to give a nasal edge to his voice. He too had a reddish face and red hair, but it was a darker red. Gunther hadn't liked the remark about the guitars. "Man, you could save all your money for two months and you still couldn't pay for one of these guitars. The cases alone are seventy bucks each."

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The young man laughed again. It sounded like crows fighting. He wore shiny, black pointed boots, faded blue jeans and a white western shirt with red trim. His red hair was slicked back in an old fashioned D.A. He leaned toward Gunther. "What's a kid like you doing with guitars like that? You steal 'em?" He reached for the twelve-string. Gunther drew it back. "It's what I do, man. What could I do with a cheap guitar?" He pointed to the six-string that McKiddie was holding. "A woman bought me that guitar. I didn't have any bread and I was playing a cheap Sears & Roebuck guitar, a Silvertone with a low E-string that could never be tuned right. And this woman, she said she couldn't stand to think of me playing a cheap guitar, so she bought me that. It's a Martin D-28. She was really lovely, man, and I wrote a song about her. Then I made some bread and bought myself this twelve-string. It's a Guild. And next I'll get myself a mandolin and that'll be a grand unless I'm lucky." The young man ignored Gunther and turned to Corbin who thought his blue eyes resembled ponds of cold water. "You live upstairs. I seen you around. You make a lot of noise with a typewriter. What're you doing?" The question was more dismissive than aggressive. "I'm writing." "You writing a dirty book?" Corbin shook his head, wondering whether to feel insulted, but the young man had already turned back to Gunther. "Let me see that guitar. I want to play something." Gunther drew it back again. "No, man." "You let McKiddie play." "He knows how." "What makes you think I don't?" Gunther looked uncertain. "Do you?" The man grinned, exposing the cavern of his mouth. "Nope." He fiddled with the red trim on his shirt pocket, then glanced at Duane who was inspecting the poster of Lenin. "You're looking for your sister, right?" Duane looked around, startled. He nodded. His mouth was open and Corbin wanted to tell him to close it. "How come?" "She's my sister." "So why look for her?" "Because I want to see her." "You got something special to tell her?" Duane rubbed his hand across his crew cut, then smiled. "No, not really. I love her." The young man stuck a finger in his ear, wiggled it, then took a look at what he had found. "What makes you think she's here?" he asked, still looking at his finger.

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"She said she was coming here." "Yeah, I heard all about that." He turned back to Corbin. "Say, you're a writer, what'd you think of those murders?" "Which murders?" "You know, last week. Those dudes that got burned at Lafayette Towers. That's funny. Those rich fuckers move there because they think it's safe. You know that guy that runs the Tigers? They shot up his wall." He stuck his finger in his ear again and wiggled it vigorously. He spoke without looking at them, spoke as if he were talking to his finger "What happened?" asked Duane. "This guy, he lives there," said the young man. "He's sitting in his apartment. He's got a couple of broads with him and he's lounging around wearing a bathrobe. All of a sudden four guys bust in with pistols. Now here's the funny part. This guy just happens to have an automatic rifle under his bathrobe. I like that. He starts blasting. Everyone starts blasting. Bullets going all over that Lafayette place. This guy, he wastes three of these dudes and wounds the fourth. Automatic rifle under his bathrobe, cut-down barrel and a handgrip. He rips off over thirty rounds. "And know what? This guy that done the shooting, he don't even have a job. Just like you, Gunther. But he don't have just one apartment in Lafayette Towers, he's got three, and he's paying $1,100 a month rent and you only pay forty. And the cops said those apartments were just stuffed with jewels and mink coats and fancy dresses. And this guy's driving a blue Cadillac Eldorado, while you're walking, Gunther. Oh, I seen some of those people around. Big Cadillacs, cut-off carbines under their bathrobes." "Where do they get the money?" asked Duane. Corbin thought that Duane asked questions more politely than anyone he had ever heard. "They just get it; they don't care how. They want something, they take it. There was another funny thing. When the shooting was going on, all these fat cats were down below swimming in a big pool, doing their forty laps so they can get into their double-breasted suits. All of a sudden these bullets are whizzing around and smacking into the water. The life guard had a shit-fit." Duane didn't understand. "Were the people that got shot swimming?" The young man gave Duane an appraising look. "No, they were just losers." He stood up, scratched his belly and yawned, again showing his missing teeth. "They probably had little rooms somewheres just like us. They weren't driving no Cadillacs. See you around, kid." He left as abruptly as he had entered. "Who was that?" asked Corbin. He was certain he hadn't seen him before. McKiddie made a drumming noise on the body of the six-string guitar. "Joe Gage. He lives down the hall and works at an auto parts place on Second.

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I don't know him. He talks about being in Vietnam. He's says he's been in jail. I don't know." "I've talked to him a couple of times," said Gunther, "but I don't know anything about him. I mean, I didn't know he was in jail." He started to say something else, then shrugged and began picking out a tune on the twelvestring. It was the song he had been playing when Corbin had come in. Duane was still confused. "Did he know those people that got killed?" "No, man," said Gunther, "it's just a story." He turned to McKiddie. "Tell us about your goddamn fingers." McKiddie gave the guitar another atonal strum. "It's not much. It don't matter much." Gunther kept pressing. "Come on, tell Duane. He's interested." But Duane was more interested in the shootings. Turning to Corbin, he asked, "Are there many murders?" "About seven hundred last year." "Shit, man, there was a whole pile. So what? You want to hear about McKiddie's fingers or don't you?" McKiddie seemed to realize that the point wasn't to begin a story about his fingers but to end the story about the murders. Getting up from the floor, he stretched and sat down in the brown easy chair. He had a narrow face with a pointed chin and high cheek bones, a little like a thin shovel or a fat trowel. He stuck out his right hand so Duane could get a better view of the stumps. "Those fingers," he said, "I lost them about seven years ago. I'd been in the Navy and after I got out, I went back home to Spruce Pine, that's in Tennessee. Now the Navy's a whole other story, but they taught me to be a mechanic, and back in Spruce Pine I worked in a garage and helped my Pa on the farm. And one day in late summer me and my little brother Andrew were out cutting wheat and we were all alone except for the dog. It was a border collie and we called it Sharpie 'cause it was a smart dog." McKiddie pronounced it "dawg." "Well, what you might think happen, happened. The thresher got clogged up and I figured I could flick the stuff out of the way, which I did and it worked, 'cause it started up again. But it started so quick that it snipped off these two fingers, snip-snip, just like that, and I didn't feel a thing, didn't even notice it except for a little tugging. "It was Andrew that saw them lying there in the stubble and he turned white, and he said, 'God, Gerald, look at that, there's been a murder.' And I looked, and I saw the fingers, and then I saw the blood on my hand and these two stumps, and then it started to hurt. Not bad, mind you, just a bad ache at first, but there was all that blood and I shouted right out, 'Those are my fingers!'"

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McKiddie began laughing his quiet laugh. Duane stared at the stumps as if he expected them to start bleeding again. "And they were my fingers, which gave me a real surprise. Well, Andrew bent down and he picked them up careful like and he looked at them, and he said, 'They been cut off so clean, I bet they could be put back with no trouble at all.' So he wrapped them up in a piece of wax paper he'd been keeping a chicken sandwich in, and he tossed the sandwich to the dog, and we started running back to the house. I didn't say much 'cause I was still awful surprised and it was beginning to hurt more. But it was a clean cut and I figured they might be able to stick them back on, 'cause in the Navy they once did that to a man. "But it was a mistake to give that chicken sandwich to the dog, 'cause when we were running back to the house, Andrew stumbled, and he fell, and he dropped the fingers, and before we could so much as shout, that dog he stooped down and gobbled them up. "I remember watching that dog munch on them, just like he done with the chicken sandwich. And I remember it were a nice day, and the sun was shining, and the hills was green, and the wheat was all yellow in the sun, and I looked back at that dog and he was still chewing on my fingers. They made a funny crunching noise. Sharpie was always a greedy dog, even though he was smart. "Well, I was upset, but Andrew took it worse. After all, he'd dropped them. I felt bad too, but I was more surprised than anything else. 'Course later on I felt bad 'cause that finished me as a mechanic, and now I can't do nothin' but pump gas. Can't do much on the guitar either." He began picking out a tune which Corbin recognized as "Skip To My Lou." He stopped and glanced over at Duane. "Never felt the same about that dog after that, which weren't fair 'cause it was a good dog." "Shit, man," said Gunther, "I think I would of killed it." McKiddie shook his head. "No, it weren't the dog's fault. He was just being a dog." Corbin's interest in Duane's search was influenced by his bedroom closet, through which he could hear much that was said in Isaac and Duncan's apartment. He heard George talk about ripping down the wall downstairs. He heard Duncan curse whatever he felt like cursing at a particular moment. He heard Duane talking about murders. Duane became fascinated with them. The shootings at Lafayette Towers had set it off, but on that same Monday there was a double murder at an auto-parts factory which upset him equally. Two brothers had driven up to the factory, went into the guard shanty by the front gate, shot and killed two guards and wounded a third. They

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hadn't known the guards. The brothers had been fired from the plant in July, and apparently were getting even. The guards turned out to be model citizens: helped old ladies with their packages and blind people crossing the street. The killings raised the murder tally to 511 for the year. From his desk Corbin heard Duane saying, "Why shoot the guards? They could of found the man that fired them. The guards didn't do anything." Duncan tried to explain. "The guards represented the fecking plant, that's all. It was the shooting that was important, not who got shot." "But they didn't know the guards." Corbin was more interested in Duane's concern than in the murders. Other deaths that September touched Corbin more powerfully. Tolkien died that month, and W.H. Auden, and Pablo Neruda. Through the closet Corbin also heard of new developments in Duane's search for his sister. Wayne State's registration was that week and Louise took Duane over to the school each day. Other people, George, Gunther, Wencel Kaniewski, took Duane over to the Free University, health food coops, various small communes. Ads had been placed in Wayne's paper, the South End, and the local underground paper, the Fifth Estate. Gunther took Duane over to the University of Detroit and others had taken him to the University of Windsor, Oakland University and some smaller schools, although never with any success. George was planning to take him to Ann Arbor. The person who Corbin heard most was Duncan and as he talked Corbin grew more interested in the apparent contradictions in Duncan's personality. There was the cynical Duncan who didn't trust anyone, and the Duncan who had practically adopted Duane. There was Duncan the chess player, and, as Corbin learned Wednesday evening, there was the Duncan who often went to the art museum. He had become interested in American art while in prison. "Halitosis of the mind, that's what I had. Know what it is? That's when every thought you think stinks." On Wednesday Duncan took Duane to the art museum, just to show it to him, just as he had shown him the locksmith shop. Duane especially liked Brueghel's Wedding Dance, because it reminded him of farmers around Glenorchy. Duncan, however, returned in a mild rage. Half the galleries had been closed because the museum didn't have the money to hire enough guards. Duncan had launched into one of his monologues. "The fecking culture is crumbling before our eyes. The goddamn pinnacle is that museum and it's not even open so people can see it. The United States is sick, the people are sick. You can see it in their faces, in the way they walk. When they breathe, they breathe sickness, they exhale sickness. Nothing can cure them. I been beat up, robbed, lots of times. I'm tired. I

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wake up in the morning and search my body and if I find no pain, then I say it's a good day. I'm fecking grateful for that day. Getting old is finding new pains, pains in places you didn't know were places, where you didn't even know you could have pains. The fecking country does it to you. It's dead, everything is dead. Nobody cares about anybody else. Look at the people, the so-called great people: they're pygmies. The so-called great artists and painters, they're pygmies, just little people. You see Copland on TV, and he's saying Beethoven wasn't so hot, and all the time you can see 'pygmy' written on his fecking forehead. And the painters. Rivers is a pygmy. And Wyeth. He's like so many. He's got talent. He's facile. But there's no man there, no imagination. George calls me bitter. I'm not bitter. There are great people. The greatest American painter, you know who he is? Ryder, Albert Pinkham Ryder. He did that picture over on the wall. He was a very gentle man. He did very few paintings, all very small, maybe one foot by two feet. He would spend years on a painting. Someone would commission a picture and he'd come back a year later and say, 'Where's my picture?' And Ryder would say, 'I'm just inching along.' He had a very small studio with paintings leaning up against the walls, everything piled together and he worked there. He was almost a hermit. And the next year the man would come back, and he'd say, 'Where's my picture?' And Ryder would say, 'I'm inching along. Like an inchworm, I'm just inching along.' He was a gentle man. And Marin, he was great: a big tall man with a small wife. But the others: pygmies. Talent is hardy. It survives; like a weed, you find it everywhere. Genius is fragile. The slightest thing can break it. You have to coax genius, be very gentle or poof, it's gone. Ryder did only a hundred and fifty small paintings. And they're cracking, they're all cracking and turning dark. Just look at that Race Track picture. See what I mean? Somebody once asked him about his pictures cracking, and Ryder said, 'God will look out for them.' Well, he fecking didn't. He fecking didn't care." Corbin found himself regretting that he hadn't been in the room, hadn't watched Duane's face and seen his reactions. He almost went next door to get Duncan talking again. Instead, he took some notes in his journal. Much later Corbin found something else in his journal from that week: on Thursday he saw Joe Gage and Mallett go into the Bronx Bar on Second. He could never remember the incident, but he must have been surprised at seeing them together. As it turned out, their being together became an important thread, something that did more to educate Duane than nearly anything else. Corbin learned more about Gage and Mallett on the following Monday. That was the seventeenth, Citizenship Day. It was cloudy and cool. On Sunday, the Detroit Storage Co. down the street on Alexandrine had burned: a huge, five-alarm fire. The street had been full of sirens and firemen. Duane spent most of the day watching. A Salvation Army truck had supplied coffee

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and doughnuts. The next day one could still smell the smoke and the sharp odor of burned wood and wet ashes. Ruth and Corbin spent the evening in bed, which was something they occasionally did. Corbin thought of their relationship as very casual. If Ruth had made any emotional demands on him, or what Corbin might have thought were demands, he would have backed away. Corbin didn't like emotions; they messed up reason and logic. In their relationship, Ruth did most of the talking, mostly about her painting and problems in general. The windows were open and they were lying naked on the top sheet. Ruth was talking about her financial arrangement with the two men who supported her. One was a car salesman in Livonia; the other was a P.R. man at Hudson's, Detroit's largest department store chain. Corbin's favorite description for Ruth was that she looked like a pretty Italian boxer. Her mouth was too large. She had a square chin, much like Corbin's, high cheekbones and a puggy little nose. She had beautiful, large brown eyes which she obscured with green eye shadow and false eyelashes. Corbin thought it wasn't a bad face, but it wasn't the right face. It was even a kind face, but it wasn't a good face for a woman. Actually, he was pleased that she had a face he didn't particularly like. It kept him from getting too attached to her. Usually she wore tight sweaters, very short skirts, black stockings and high heeled boots. In the Corridor she was often taken for a whore. She seemed to dislike that, but she wouldn't change her clothes. She was talking about this now. "What I can't stand is that just because I dress in a certain way and because they know I sleep with a couple of men, they think I'll sleep with anyone." Corbin raised himself up on his elbow and began stroking her belly. Ruth had large breasts with nipples like red silver dollars. "Who're you talking about?" he asked. It turned out she was talking about Joe Gage. "I met him about two weeks ago. He came up to me on the street as I was walking home. He was friendly. I thought he might be a nice person, although not the sort of person I'd like. He kept saying, 'a girl like you' and stuff like that. Then he asked who you were." "Me?" "I think he wanted to know if I was sleeping with you. I told him you were a writer and he said he'd have to meet you sometime because he had a lot of good stories." They were both sitting up now, leaning against the headboard. Ruth was smoking a cigarette and using an empty Budweiser can as an ashtray. "Then he began talking about those people with the dogs who live across the hall from him. He said how they had orgies and fucked the dogs.

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It was silly, but I thought even if it were true I didn't want to know it. When we reached the house, he said maybe we could get together sometime. I should have said no, but he bothered me so I smiled like a fool and didn't say anything. "Then Thursday evening he came to my room. He was quiet, almost shy, and I thought he wanted to talk about something that was bothering him. But when I asked what he wanted, all he said was, 'What do you think?' Then he took my arm and tried to pull me to him. I yanked my arm away. He had the nerve to get angry. He said something like, 'What's the big idea. I'll pay.' I told him to leave but he just stood there and grinned. He couldn't understand what I was doing. He said, 'What about tomorrow? I'll give you twenty-five dollars.' I just picked up an ashtray and told him to get out." Corbin went to the kitchen for two more beers. When he got back, Ruth was sitting at the foot of the bed, looking out the window. "And then there's Mallett. It's like he's following me. I mean, I go out to a bar with Tom or Ernie, and there's Mallett. Or we're walking down the street and Mallett comes by and he stares. It's happened four or five times, but Ernie's noticed it and I had to tell him who Mallett was. Ernie's been trying to get me to move. After I told him about Mallett, he really put on the pressure." They sat drinking their beer: Corbin at one end of the bed and Ruth at the other. She took her bag from the desk and pulled out a hairbrush, began brushing her brown, shoulder-length hair. The room was so quiet that Corbin could hear the crackle of electricity, so dark that he could see small sparks. On Tuesday Corbin heard nothing from Isaac and Duncan's apartment and when he went to work that evening, he saw that their apartment was dark. He told himself he was glad to have it quiet, but the next morning when he heard voices he went next door to see how the search was going. He found Duncan trying to teach Duane chess. Duane was trying hard, but he kept confusing the game with checkers. Corbin asked Duane how he was. Duane was fiddling with the chess pieces, making the red knights run at each other. "Lenin is relevant today," he said. Duncan pushed his chair away from the table and twitched his mouth several times to reposition his teeth. "Jesus fecking Christ, he's been talking like that since he got up. Gunther took him to some socialist meeting. What'd they put in your head, Duane?" When Duane grinned, it made small wrinkles around his blue eyes. He was wearing jeans and a white short sleeve shirt. "I'm never to forget that Lenin is revelant today and I'm never to forget about the Russian Revolution where all sorts of people fought and died."

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Corbin couldn't see why Gunther should take Duane to such meetings which were surely a waste of time. Did he really think that April would be found there? "Did you like it?" asked Corbin. It was again hot and he was wearing gym shorts and a University of Iowa t-shirt. "I learned a lot," said Duane, looking pleased with himself. "Those people can't tell you a fecking thing," said Duncan. "You want to know about the Russian Revolution, just ask me. "Who are the capitalist bosses?" asked Duane. "Jesus Christ, don't even let such talk into your head." He turned to Corbin. "What's he want to think about that shit for?" When Duncan was excited, he talked with his teeth clamped shut, probably to keep from spitting out his plate. "It's important," said Duane. "The Russian Revolution was the greatest war of the 20th century." "Will you stop that shit!" said Duncan, getting to his feet, as if he couldn't bear to hear such foolishness sitting down. "World War II, that was a war. Even World War I was a hundred times bigger than the Russian Revolution." "They talked about that too," said Duane. "They talked about Leningrad and killing Germans. My Dad killed Germans until he got shot. Did you kill Germans?" "No." "Did you kill Japs?" "No." Corbin looked at Duncan standing by the window. There was something in his voice that sounded different. "You said you were in the war," said Duane, sounding disappointed. "I was in the war. I was in the fecking South Pacific. But I didn't kill any Japs and I didn't kill any Germans." Duncan made a barking laugh. "I killed Americans. I killed more Americans than any Jap or German ever did." Corbin couldn't guess what he was talking about. Duncan sat down roughly on a kitchen chair, banging it against the table. "They said I was too old. They said typing was more important and I could type. So I got made company clerk and my captain was a drunk. They said he had battle fatigue or some such shit, but he was just crazy. He had a little black moustache just like Don Ameche. He didn't even want to know there was a war going on. Know what I got to do? I got to order the fecking replacements. I wrote 'em up and sent 'em out. And I watched 'em come in and go off and get their guts blown out. Then know what I did? I got to write home to the kids' parents, and say how their kid got killed, and how we all liked him, and how brave he was. I'd give those letters to the captain and

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he'd sign 'em but he wouldn't read 'em because he said it depressed him." Duncan paused, then lowered his voice. "I don't mean to snap at you, Duane, but things are a lot more complicated than Lenin is relevant today. You want to play checkers, I'll play checkers, but I won't waste any more time teaching you chess." Sunday afternoon Corbin was typing at the desk in his bedroom, working on a story about the first time he had gotten drunk. His father had kept him drinking to see what would happen as a sort of experiment. Corbin had been fourteen at the time. The story wasn't going well and he kept stopping, looking out on the street. It was raining. Water dripped through the leaves of the maple in front of the house. The street was deserted except for the cars parked bumper to bumper along both curbs. Corbin could see the gable roof of the porch and the sidewalk leading to the street. Then Duane appeared. He hurried down the steps, walking quickly and jumping over puddles. He wore a blue nylon jacket which was getting soaked. When he reached the street there was a whistle. Duane turned. Watching from his window, Corbin saw Joe Gage run down the steps. He was carrying a cheap, plastic raincoat. He ran up to Duane, gave him the raincoat, then waved his hand, dismissing Duane's thanks, as he ran back to the house. Duane put on the raincoat and walked off down the street. There were three killings in Detroit that day. A man named Farley was killed during an argument with a grocery clerk over the high price of sausage. A woman was killed during an argument with her boyfriend because she kept using his car to drive to church. A young man named Beasley was shot by a man who accused Beasley of getting him beat up. The homicide total went up to 542.

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APRIL HAD NOT registered at Wayne, nor at the University of Detroit, Oakland University, the University of Windsor, the University of Michigan or any other college in the Detroit area. Nor was there evidence that she was visiting classes. A number of students had found her picture familiar, but then it was familiar: it looked like anybody and nobody. During that last week in September, there was only a perfunctory searching, which consisted of Duane and others wandering around the Wayne State University campus. Looking back, Corbin saw that week as the beginning of his own involvement with Duane's search. Or maybe it was just the week when he felt he had reached an absolute deadend with his writing. It was a week of minor violence, starting with the suggestion of violence and ending with actual violence Saturday night. Monday night, Duane, Duncan and Corbin visited Wencel Kaniewski. His problems with Mallett had become a problem with Kohl, the landlord, who said if Wencel didn't stop practicing in the morning, he would be evicted. The difficulty was that Wencel's afternoons and early evenings were spent at the music department where he was a graduate student. As they went downstairs, Duane said, "Why doesn't he get George to help? George can talk to Kohl. Look how he helped Isaac and Duncan." "That's different," said Duncan. "I wouldn't mention George if I were you." "Why not?" "Because of the wall." George still wanted the wall taken out. Wencel didn't. If Wencel were evicted, George could remove the wall with no trouble. Duane said, "The wall doesn't make any difference. George would help him anyway." 54

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Wencel's wife, Helen, opened the door. She was a woman in her early twenties with a long waist and long, colorless, blond hair. She wore granny glasses that made her narrow, pointy face look like a lemur. Whenever Corbin saw her, he thought of a prim music teacher he had had in grade school who always spoke in a whisper and was accused of having perfect pitch. Helen was a graduate student in music education. Wencel was practicing. Shutting the door, Helen whispered, "Orlo is coming." Duncan and Corbin sat down on the yellow couch. Duane straddled a straight chair by the piano. Helen brought them cups of coffee. She tiptoed as if in church. Corbin wondered who Orlo was. It had been his idea to visit Wencel and he saw himself as being serious and determined, the sort of person who was good at solving problems and taking charge. Wencel was playing the end of some Beethoven sonata. Corbin thought it might have been the Passionata. On top of the piano was a small blue vase with yellow chrysanthemums which trembled when Wencel hit the bass notes. Corbin had learned that Wencel had appeared as a soloist with the university's symphony orchestra, and that one of his compositions, a cantata of some sort, was to be played at Wayne around Christmas. Wencel finished the piece with a flourish, then sat quietly for a moment as if to collect himself before pushing himself away from the piano and standing up. He had on gray sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His thin arms looked like the legs of an insect. He seemed sad. "Orlo's coming. You probably don't want to stay." "Who's Orlo?" asked Duane. "My father. He called half an hour ago so he should be here soon." Duncan lowered his voice. "What does he do?" "Nothing, really, I mean he's an electrician, but he talks a lot." After such a buildup, Corbin was expecting a demon. So when Orlo arrived ten minutes later, Corbin thought he must be somebody else. Orlo Kaniewski seemed constructed from rubber balls. His cheeks were like small balloons and he had several trembling chins. He was nearly bald. "Playing that piano again, I'll bet," he said as he came through the door. "If your fingers don't fall off someday, I'll be damned." Wencel gingerly welcomed his father and introduced him to the others. Corbin and Duncan both thought it was a good moment to leave, but Orlo stopped them. He wore a brown raincoat buttoned up to his neck and whenever he spoke he waved his arms, holding them straight out from his sides as if hoping to fly. "Don't go on account of me. I like to meet my son's friends. Helps me keep track of him." Here he glanced at Duncan who was old enough to be Orlo's father. Duncan frowned and turned away. Orlo pointed a finger at Corbin. "Now you, what do you do?"

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Wencel answered for him. "He writes books, father." "Any familiar titles?" asked Orlo. "Not yet," said Corbin, for whom this was a prickly point. "Any titles at all?" "I'm afraid not." Orlo turned away making a tsk-tsking noise and gave his daughter-inlaw a peck on the cheek. "Get me a cup of coffee, will you Helen?" he asked. Then he took off his raincoat and gave it to Wencel. Underneath was an immaculate white shirt and green polka dot bow tie. His blue, pleated trousers were kept up by a pair of black suspenders. His belly looked like half a basketball. Helen had gone into the kitchenette. Wencel backed away to the piano and sat down on the bench still holding the raincoat. He seemed to have no idea how to deal with his father. Looking at him, Orlo shook his head and sat back heavily on the couch, raising a little cloud of dust. "People come over here for a talk and all you want to do is play that thing." "You know," he said to Duane, who was sitting beside him, "you wouldn't guess the work I put into that boy to make him normal. I took him hunting. I took him to baseball and football games, real games, not sandlot stuff." He paused and peered at Duane as if seeing him for the first time. Duane blushed. "What'd you say you did?" "I'm looking for my sister." "Is that so? I've got two sisters. One's a nun and the other's in Nebraska. North Platte. I don't know which is worse. My wife's buddies with the nun. Put a piece of black cloth in front of my wife and she'll think she's looking at the Holy Ghost." Orlo grinned and looked around the room. Wencel was making apologetic expressions from the piano bench: rolling his eyes and raising his eyebrows. It made him resemble an apoplectic bug. Orlo waved an arm as if threatening to swat him. "Your mother and me have been having another one of our conversations, and I thought I'd better get out of the house and pay you a visit." He turned back to Duane. "My wife believes I snatched her from the Church and tricked her into marriage, though she snapped up the offer quick enough at the time. But ever since she's been hanging around churches apologizing to God. She even tried to give our kids to God and would have turned Wencel into a priest or faggot if it hadn't been for me. But I only won half the battle because here he is practicing the piano. Now I ask you, what kind of person spends all their time practicing the piano?" When Orlo talked his whole face shook. Corbin thought it was like watching Jello tremble in a bowl. "Wencel is an excellent pianist," said Helen who had returned with Orlo's coffee. She spoke in a tight, high voice.

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Orlo glanced at the hot cup of coffee in her hand. "I'm just glad he's not a priest or faggot." He took the coffee, set it on the floor by his feet, then turned back to Duane. "So you're looking for your sister. How come?" "Because I want to find her." "Now I never want to see my sister in Nebraska" said Orlo, "except sometimes at Christmas. As for the nun, I see entirely too much of her." He stopped again and turned uncomfortably to Wencel who had remained on the piano bench. Helen had joined him and they sat side by side looking depressed. "I don't want to insult you, son, but your mother wants to go on a two-week retreat. I don't care. I'll be glad to have her out of the house for a bit. But you know what she's like when she comes back from those things. All she does is forgive me and God knows she does enough of that already." Leaning back on the couch, Orlo undid his bow tie. Corbin couldn't decide whether Orlo had a very short neck or a very long set of chins. The ends of his tie looked like another set of suspenders designed to keep his head attached to his body. Orlo turned back to Duane. "It's not just the forgiveness," he said, "I don't care that she thinks I'm a sinful man. I've got my pleasures and I'll keep them. But it's her apologies. Whatever I do, it's her fault. If I break a dish, it's her fault. If I snore at night, it's her fault. Do you know what it's like to be deprived of your God given right to be wrong?" "It must be hard," said Duane. He looked very sympathetic and leaned toward Orlo as if to hear better. His pink face appeared to have been scrubbed only minutes before and his crew cut stood up as it was supposed to. "Hard! I tell you, it's a bitch. When I was younger, I fought it. I went out of my way to be wrong. I'd blow the rent money in a card game. I'd blow it on women. But every time I stood up to say, 'I'm guilty,' she'd rush in and say she'd driven me to it. "I can't even confess my sins. If I went to a priest, I'd find she'd been there already and poisoned his mind against me. I had to give up going to church because all those biddy nuns would come up to me and say, 'Oh, we know all about you, Mr. Kaniewski, you wife's told us all about you.' And they'd be beaming and fawning as if they wanted to touch my sleeve but couldn't get up the nerve. So I'd say, 'I can really be awful.' And they'd giggle and say, 'Oh, Mr. K., we know all about it.' And I'd say, 'I steal the kids' food.' And they'd giggle and nod at each other. And I'd say, 'I gamble away the rent money.' And they'd say, 'Oh, Mr. K., you're such a tease.' And I'd say, 'I run around with fast women.' And they'd giggle again and say, 'Oh, Mr. K., you can't fool us. We know who you are.' "So I stopped going to church. What else could I do? Last time I went I came within an ace of blackening a fat nun's eye." Orlo stopped, then tugged one of his suspenders and let it slap back

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against his white shirt. "So you're looking for your sister, are you? Where you been looking?" "Just about everywhere," said Duane. When Orlo had been talking, Duane kept nodding his head with every word. Corbin couldn't tell if Duane was agreeing or was simply an enthusiastic listener. "Everywhere, eh? If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well, as my Dad used to say. He taught himself that expression and a thousand like it just so people would think he was an American." The room had an unsettled feeling, as if something untidy had been taken out and not put back in its proper place. Only Helen remained apart from it. She had gone to a desk and now sat with her back to the others, writing something on a yellow legal-sized pad. Corbin imagined her effortlessly writing the novel that he was trying to write. A few minutes later as they were going back upstairs, Duane asked, "Do you think he really stole his kids' food?" Duncan made a hawking noise in his throat. "Some people talk too fecking much," he said. During that last week of September, Corbin kept trying to decide how much effect people like Orlo had on Duane. Basically they confused him, caused him to live in a state of constant but mild astonishment. But most of what Duane saw surprised him. Detroit was not Glenorchy and the differences between the two places tended to be dramatic differences. By the end of month, Duane was looking at the newspaper nearly every day and occasionally he would come over to Corbin's apartment to talk about a story which disturbed him. Tuesday afternoon he showed up thoroughly upset by a story he had just finished: an old woman had been shot and killed early Monday morning by someone who thought she was a burglar. The woman, Mrs. Billups, had lived by herself about half a mile away in the Jeffries Project: a complex of high-rise, low-rent apartment buildings which had become a modern slum. Neighbors told police that she had the habit of taking long walks late at night often without her shoes or a coat. Usually she carried a doll wrapped in a blanket. One neighbor said she sometimes saw Mrs. Billups through her window, sitting in her apartment and rocking her doll for hours. Mrs. Billups was in her late sixties. About four o'clock Monday morning, she had gone out for a walk with her doll. She got as far as Grand River and Sixteenth Street. There another woman, Mrs. Manning, was waked by the barking of her dog. Looking out her window, she saw someone standing in her backyard. After telephoning a neighbor to see "if anyone from the family was in the yard," she took a shotgun, went out on the porch and pulled the trigger, killing Mrs. Billups. Mrs. Manning was charged with the careless discharge of a firearm.

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The newspaper had played up the story with the headline, "Lonely Detroit Widow Slain As A Prowler." "Why was she carrying a doll?" asked Duane. He sat at Corbin's kitchen table with the newspaper spread out before him. Corbin stood behind him, reading the article over his shoulder. It was a cool breezy morning, the sort of morning that makes one realize that summer is over and autumn has begun. "I don't know, maybe she was lonely." "Didn't she have any friends?" "I guess not." Corbin felt uncomfortable talking about it. Duane wanted positive answers and Corbin could only speculate. What could he say? That she was a crazy old woman with no sense of danger? He felt some exasperation with Duane for not knowing how cities worked, then he wondered about himself and if he was treating the woman's death too lightly. "Why didn't she ask first? She didn't know it was a burglar. Will she go to jail?" "I doubt it. Most people wandering in backyards at that time of night are burglars. She didn't know." On Tuesday Isaac was robbed on the street. Isaac thought himself the victor and came home elated. He had been walking down a side street near Third and Vernor when a young black man had caught him from behind and stuck the point of a knife in his back, barely breaking the skin. The man had taken Isaac's wallet and run off. Isaac was elated because he'd only had four dollars in the wallet. His real money, as he called it, had been in a leather pouch attached to his belt and hanging inside his pants. It had contained about fifty dollars. "Smart, that's what I am. No junkie can outsmart me." Isaac stood in his living room with his khaki shirt pulled up to his armpits. Duane was behind him holding a small mirror. With his head twisted around, Isaac could just make out the mark left by the knife: a small red hole near the middle of his back. Corbin was taking the paper off a Band-Aid, then he carefully stuck the Band-Aid over the tiny wound. Isaac's skin was a grayish color, like old uncooked chicken skin, and the red mark was the one bright place. "He could have fecking killed you," said Duncan who was sitting on the couch. "For four bucks? I'm an old man. He had nothing to fear from me, I just make sure they don't get my money. Even you don't know where it is." On Thursday the violence came closer. There was a burglary in the house, one of the 3,304 reported burglaries that occurred that September. Between ten and eleven in the evening someone broke into Gunther's room and stole his twelve-string guitar. The only reason the six-string wasn't stolen

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was because Gunther had had it with him at a suburban coffee house. Wencel and Helen, who lived across the hall, had gone to the symphony as they often did on Thursdays. It was this fact that made Gunther suspect the guitar had been taken by somebody in the house. He talked to Corbin about it on Friday. Duane was with him. Gunther kept nosing around Corbin's kitchen and Corbin suspected that he wanted to check the closet and look under the bed as well. "Sure, it could have been a coincidence," said Gunther, glancing into the bathroom, "but someone must have known I wasn't there and someone must have known that Kaniewski wasn't there. Also, someone must have left the front door open." He recrossed the kitchen, leaned back against the sink and tugged at his Fu Manchu moustache. Duane never took his eyes off him. "It's often left open," said Corbin. "Yeah, man, I know that. I been talking to McKiddie. He's got to do something about that door." Duane had sat down in front of the typewriter. "Who do you think took it?" he asked. "I don't know. I guess I'd suspect Joe Gage, man, but he was downstairs drinking beer with Mallett. Maybe Gage told somebody about it. Mallett thought I suspected him and got a little pissed, kept saying he used to be a cop. As if to be a cop was to be a rose, man. Well, shit, it doesn't matter. The thing was insured. It just means getting used to a new one. I'm also going to get a couple of Yale locks. Maybe Duncan can put them on. That damn lock now can be opened with a thin piece of plastic." "Why do you think the person took it?" asked Duane. "Did he want to play it?" "Hell no, he wanted to sell it. It was worth six hundred bucks." Friday night the violence grew worse. Corbin was walking home from the library around eight when he saw Henry Oakes about thirty yards ahead of him on Alexandrine. Oakes was a black student who had a room on the second floor across from George's apartment. Sometimes Corbin saw him around the university, but never with anyone. Oakes was about twenty-five, a little chubby and kept his hair in a short Afro. Maybe he was five foot eight or nine. Corbin thought of him as the sort of person who might be painted into the background of crowd scenes. Usually he wore plain, dark clothing, almost anonymous. Louise had once said of him. "He's like a creature just outside its hole. If you say anything he doesn't like, he pops back inside. He's not afraid. He just shuts you off." Watching Oakes climb the front steps, Corbin assumed he would be gone by the time he reached the house, but when he opened the door, he

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found Oakes in the hall with Joe Gage and Mallett. Oakes stood by the stairs facing the other two who seemed to be laughing. Mallett had on his gray guard's uniform. A roll of red flesh bulged above his collar. Oakes's face had a closed expression and he was angry. "You watch that talk," he was saying. Gage pointed his thumb toward Ruth's door. "What's wrong, kid? Don't you like women?" He was wearing his white cowboy shirt with the red trim, jeans and black pointed boots. His thick red hair was perfectly combed into aD.A. Oakes took a step toward him and with an almost casual movement, Joe Gage slipped a knife from his back pocket and snapped it open. "Don't threaten me, kid, or I'll cut you." All three stood perfectly still, lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling by a wire. A draft from the open door caused the bulb to swing back and forth, so, although they were motionless, their shadows got bigger and smaller, bigger and smaller. Corbin was still behind them. They hadn't heard him come in. "Put away the knife, Gage," he said. Startled, they turned to face him. Gage seemed uncertain. Then he laughed, showing the gap in his front teeth. He folded the knife and put it in his pocket. "Just having a little fun with Henry here." "So I saw." Corbin could smell beer on their breaths. "It's true," said Gage. "Just ask Henry. Isn't it true, Henry?" Oakes had moved back to the bannister. "We got nothing to say to each other," he said. Then he continued up the stairs. Joe Gage and Mallett grinned. Corbin felt his heart beating. He hated confrontations. "What do you want to bother him for?" he asked angrily. Gage puckered his lips and made a kissing noise at Corbin. Then, laughing, he and Mallett entered Mallett's apartment. Upstairs in the hall, Corbin found Oakes unlocking his door. "Have they been bothering you much?" he asked. Oakes gave him an angry look. "Don't do me any favors. I don't want you on my side." Corbin was aware of the man's dislike but didn't see what he had done to deserve it. Before he could say anything, Oakes went into his room and shut the door. On Saturday night there was a sort of party at George's; maybe it wasn't so much a party as a complication of guests. People from the house attended, plus about ten outsiders. Corbin only knew one of them, Mike Dubanowski, a sculptor who was a friend of Ruth's and used the same cooperative studio

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she did. Dubanowski was tall and chunky with long, straggly brown hair and a straggly brown beard. He wore a tattered brown suit. There was another friend of George's: a polite, middle-aged man who spent the evening in a corner reading a tattered copy of Galaxy magazine. Corbin never knew what he did and never saw him again. Duncan was sure he had come to the wrong party. Ruth wasn't at the party, nor were the Malletts, Gunther or even Joe Gage at the beginning. Kaniewski and his wife had apparently refused the invitation which consisted of George saying, "You want to come over and drink some beer and smoke some dope, man?" Corbin wasn't sure what he was doing there himself. He had books to read, plus a new story he was working on, but he told himself he had to socialize more, to learn how people worked. And he also wanted to observe Duane, to see how he moved through the world and how it touched him. Henry Oakes was there, which surprised Corbin, especially since Oakes didn't seem to be enjoying himself. Isaac and Duncan were there to keep an eye on Duane who was sipping a Pepsi. Duane wore a light blue shirt that Isaac had bought for him at a discount store on Third. The left sleeve was about two inches longer than the right. McKiddie came with his wife Jean: a plump Southern woman with blue eyes, blond hair and a pretty face that would become doughy in a few years. The dogs, Gimli and Gloin, wandered about the apartment cadging buttered popcorn and protecting their bones, leather chew toys and balls which were scattered across the floor. Whenever a guest accidentally kicked one, the malamute or shepherd would anxiously retrieve it and carry it to another part of the room. This resulted in the dogs constantly moving back and forth between helpings of buttered popcorn. The room seemed full of dogs. The apartment was small, consisting of a living room, bedroom and kitchenette. The living room was about twelve by sixteen feet. To the left of the door was an old couch, and beyond it, against the north wall and next to the bedroom door, was an armchair. Both were covered with blue and gray striped Indian bedspreads and a great deal of dog fur. A blue rug had been rolled up and pushed out of the way. To the right of the door was a desk made from loose boards and several wooden crates. It was covered with papers, books, empty beer cans and a portable record player blaring a new Rolling Stones record: Goafs Head Soup. It seemed to be George's only record because he played it over and over. Even years later when Corbin heard "Angie" or any of the songs from that record, he thought of George's party. It was about nine when George made his announcement. He had been trying to dance with Gloin, the German shepherd. The dog was being patient, while worrying about a green ball that Duncan had kicked across the room.

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George was a little drunk and quite stoned. He let go of the dog, then turned off the record player. "I've called you together to announce the formation of the second floor commune. I've talked to Kohl. I've talked to hardware stores and lumber yards. I've decided to rip down that wall!" He reached across the desk and began hammering on the wall with his fist. As he hammered, his frizzy Afro waved back and forth. "Rip it down, rip it down. We're going to have one big room." Both dogs were barking. Louise went over and put her hand on George's arm. "We can't knock it down now, George." George stopped. "I was just practicing a few good hits." Corbin started the music again and Dubanowski began dancing with Jean McKiddie, a sort of jitterbug step. There was a knocking on the door and Wencel entered. "Is something wrong?" He had on a gray sweat shirt and sweat pants. Corbin wondered if he ever wore anything else. "How do you mean?" asked George. "I mean all that hammering on my wall." George grabbed his hand and shook it. "Your wall, my wall, it's going to be nobody's wall when I'm finished because I'm ripping it down." "I happen to live on the other side of it." "That's the whole point. We'll live together, really get into each other. We talked about it before. Remember? I just got to get the money from Kohl." Thick and barrel-chested, George exuded energetic enthusiasm as if he were heat filling the room. Thin, gray and wispy, Wencel was like ice, nervous ice. They stood facing each other by the door, almost toe to toe. George was still shaking Wencel's hand and Wencel was trying to pull himself free. "I thought you were joking," said Wencel, at last extricating his hand. "Joking? Not me. We're going to have one hell of a commune." "We'll see about that," said Wencel. Then he left, carefully shutting the door behind him. George took Corbin aside and put a hand on his shoulder. "See what he's like? All tight and drawn into himself? Just give him a couple of days in a commune and he'll open right up. We're doing that man a favor." A little later Gunther arrived with his guitar which he now carried wherever he went. He was wearing a black satin jumpsuit covered with small white stars. Accompanying him was the thinnest woman Corbin had ever seen. She had on a very short apple green dress. It, too, was thin, and it was immediately apparent that she wore nothing underneath. She asked everyone to call her Zelda. Duncan was scandalized, but Duane couldn't take his eyes off her. Louise went to meet her. Seeing Henry Oakes by himself, Corbin went over to talk to him. He had learned from Louise that Oakes was a graduate

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student in English. Maybe he also wanted to talk to him because he was still irritated by Oakes's behavior the previous night. Oakes looked ill at ease and unwilling to stay. He glanced up at Corbin but didn't speak. He wasn't drinking. "How did you happen to get into English?" asked Corbin. Even as he said it he wondered if he were trying to bait Oakes. Hardly any blacks pursued graduate degrees in English. "I just did." Oakes had turned away and spoke without looking at Corbin. He sat in a straight chair tilted back against the wall. Corbin stood above him. "That's sort of unusual, isn't it? I mean. . . ." "Man, don't give me any of that shit about what's a black fellow like you doing reading these honky books. I happen to like them." When Corbin didn't answer, Oakes continued, getting even angrier. "And don't think helping me last night gives you any privileges. As far as I'm concerned, you're as bad as that little hillbilly." Corbin couldn't see why Oakes was so angry. "Look, Oakes, all I did was make a comment to pass the time. There's no need to bite my head off." Oakes glanced at Corbin, then tilted his chair forward and stood up. He still looked upset but was trying appear as if nothing was bothering him. "Okay, man, forget what I said. I'm just sick of being taken as a not-with-it black with uppitty ways. I'm going to split. This place doesn't do me any good." He had been talking loudly and several people were watching. When Oakes left the room, Louise followed him. George came over and gave Corbin another beer. He was apologetic. "It's the goddamn city. Everyone gets separate and on edge. That's why I want a commune. You make a family. Then you make a bigger family and soon everybody's in it." When Louise came back in, Joe Gage was with her. He seemed to be teasing her about something. Louise looked cross. She left him and went over to sit with Isaac. Joe Gage stood by himself for a moment, his face still relaxed into a half grin as he looked around the room. Then he wandered over to Dubanowski who sat on the rolled up rug. Corbin drank some of his beer, then decided to join them. Dubanowski glanced up at Corbin. "What's happening, man?" Then, without waiting for an answer, he returned to Joe Gage. "She's got two for support and one for fun. I'm for fun. Maybe she's got more for fun. I don't care." With his beard and ancient brown suit, Dubanowski looked like a turn of the century anarchist. Gage had squatted down and was resting his forearms on his knees. He looked uncertain. "I still don't get it," he said. He had on a blue cowboy shirt, white pants, black pointed boots and his red hair was slicked back. He

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looked like he belonged outside a small town drug store on a Saturday night. Dubanowski sighed. "It's easy, man. She's got these two guys: Ernie Bakus and Tom Morelli. They pay her rent here and her rent for her studio. Each of them pays and neither knows about the other. This gives her enough money to paint." "So she's a whore," said Gage. "No, man, she's just practical. She wants to spend her time painting, so she's friendly with these guys." Gage didn't see the difference. "They live around here?" "Come on, Mike," said Corbin, "what do you want to tell him this stuff for?" Duane had wandered over and was lowering himself onto the rug next to Dubanowski. Although Corbin had spoken lightly, Gage grew angry. "What the hell's it to you?" "She's a friend," said Corbin. "You been pushing yourself into a lot of stuff lately, haven't you?" said Gage. Then he stood up and looked down at Corbin. After a few seconds, he walked to the other side of the room. Dubanowski had taken out a small silver comb and was combing his beard. "Ruth's been having trouble with him," said Corbin. "You shouldn't have told him anything." Dubanowski shrugged and kept combing his beard. It occurred to Corbin that Dubanowski knew he was sleeping with Ruth as well. Duane asked, "Why not?" "Because he could hurt Ruth." "Why should he? He's been nice about my sister. He said he'd help me find her." "Because he has no good reason to want to know about Ruth's friends," said Corbin. The party continued. More people came whom Corbin had never seen before, including a small oriental with a small monkey on his shoulder. The dogs had a huge desire to eat the monkey and had to be put in the other room until the man and monkey left, which was in about fifteen minutes. Ruth looked in, then left with Dubanowski. George played host, offering people beer and grass. Whenever George had to go to the John, he would announce: "I've got to go piss," as if people would suddenly get worried if he weren't in the room. Duane was interested in the dope, especially in the communal way it was passed around and the strange faces everyone made. At last he got up courage to ask George if those were regular cigarettes. George offered him one. "Here, take a puff."

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Duncan had been watching from the couch. Before he could do anything, Louise snatched the joint from George's hand. "You're impossible. What do you mean giving him grass?" Corbin had never seen Louise angry before. She had on a floor length, black velvet dress that whooshed around her when she walked. It made her look like a kindly but dangerous sorceress. George began apologizing and bobbing his Afro at Duane who didn't understand what had happened. After a minute, Louise took George by the arm and led him out to the hall. The second George was gone, McKiddie turned off the Rolling Stones. "Bang, bang, bang, what kind of music is that? Come on, Gunther, play something." Gunther tuned his guitar and began singing sad songs about country life and the wonder of the great outdoors, songs that made Corbin feel cynical and irritated. Gunther sat on the floor with Duane on one side and Zelda in her green dress on the other. She was so thin that she resembled one half of a lemon-lime Popsicle. What can I learn from the trees? What can I learn from the mountains? I learn to take you for my cup And Nature as my fountain. When George and Louise returned a little later, George was cheerful again, although he had stopped smoking and drinking. Corbin was standing by the refrigerator and George joined him. "You know, I've never seen her frightened," said George. "She's tough. I bet there's nothing she couldn't handle. Her mother split when she was a kid, and she raised her two brothers by herself. 'Course her father was there but he's not much help and she had to take care of him too. He teaches history at Western Michigan. But Louise, she knows just what she's doing and just what she wants." Louise was standing by the door with Joe Gage, who was leaving. She didn't seem sorry to see him go. "Do you know anything about Joe Gage?" Corbin asked. Gunther was still singing and about a dozen people were seated around him. The room was hot and smelled of marijuana smoke. George had been watching Louise. "Gage? Not really. Once he told me about being put in an orphanage. His mother went off one day and didn't come back. He was about nine when it happened. He got along for a while by shoplifting. Then he got caught and put in the orphanage. Then he was at that reform school at Whitmore Lake. I don't know why. Once he showed

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me a scar on his back and said someone had stabbed him." Corbin stood in the kitchenette, thinking about Duane and Joe Gage, Louise and the others. He kept looking at Duane, sitting next to Gunther by the rolled up rug. Duane's mouth was slightly open and he seemed to be humming along to himself. Corbin could make out a row of perfectly white teeth. The pinkness which he had had when he first came was beginning to fade; his crewcut was growing out. Straight nose, narrow chin, large blue eyes: his face wasn't adult enough to be handsome, nor young enough to be called cute. Isaac and Duncan were behind him. Louise sat on the floor nearby. None showed Duane's fragility. A little later, when Duane's search was being discussed, Corbin joined in. George and Louise were talking with Isaac and Duncan. Duane was still listening to Gunther. Isaac was depressed. He sat on the couch and pushed his hands through his long white hair as if looking for an idea. "This can't go on. We've searched everywhere and there've been no answers to our ads. Maybe I should have never brought him home." Louise touched his shoulder. "Of course you should have. He was lost. Now we've got to decide what to do next." "What about the Missing Parsons department?" suggested George. Duncan made a noise like someone vomiting. "I'm not going to the fecking cops. They got a way of keeping you." "I'll go," said Corbin. He was barely aware of saying the words, hardly knew he had said them until the others looked at him. "I'll go with you," said Louise. Corbin didn't say anything else, being both pleased and displeased by Louise's offer. He liked her and could imagine making a pass at her. That, however, would be a mammoth complication. "That's good of you, Corbin," said Isaac, reaching out a hand to him. "I would never. . . . " Some people were leaving and the door was open. Suddenly there was a scream from somewhere in the building, interrupting what Isaac had been about to say. It was a human scream, but it was immediately followed by the screaming of an animal, a high yelping sound. Gimli and Gloin leapt up from where they had been lying in front of Louise. George and Corbin reached the door at the same time. The screaming was louder in the hall. It was the sound someone on fire might make. Under it Corbin could hear someone shouting. "Goddamn pig, goddamn fucking pig!" It was Mallett. Corbin ran down the stairs with the others behind him. Mallett's door was open. From the doorway, Corbin saw Mallett and Jewel standing in the center of the room. They seemed to be embracing. Mallett had on his guard's

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uniform. He raised his right arm and swung it down. There was a thunking sound and Jewel spun away: arms outstretched, turning like a top in a wide arc. Mallett had hit her in the mouth. As she stumbled across the room, a spray of blood seemed to follow in the air, mimicking her arc with a small arc of its own. Jewel knocked against the television set and fell to the floor. She was gagging and spitting up blood. She wore a green quilted bathrobe. It was open at the front, exposing one large breast and a nipple like a single red eye. "What the hell are you doing?" shouted Corbin, entering the room. Mallett turned. George and Gunther had entered the room behind Corbin. Mallett's collar was undone and his fat neck and nearly bald head rose through the opening like a fist. He showed no surprise at seeing them. His face showed no emotion at all. Jewel started screaming again. "Murderer! He killed my dog. He killed Beauty." She pointed at something near her feet by the wall. It was a small black terrier dog. Its head was twisted back over its shoulder. Blood ran from its mouth. It had had a collar of colored beads but these had snapped and the red and green glass beads were now scattered around the dog's body. The dog's eyes were open, and it seemed to be looking at the beads, looking at the people crowding into the room, with vague surprise. "He threw it against the wall and killed it!" screamed Jewel. Mallett moved toward her and Corbin grabbed his arm. "Leave her alone," he said. Mallett yanked himself loose, grabbed a beer bottle from the table and smashed the end off it. Beer spattered across them. He pointed the jagged edge at Corbin who stepped back toward the door. Duane spoke from behind him. "What did he do to the dog? What did he do?" Mallett glanced at him, then moved toward the door, holding the broken bottle in front of him. "Anyone stops me, they'll get hurt," he said. Duncan, McKiddie and Louise moved away. Duane was still staring at the body of the dog. Either he was slow or he hadn't heard. In any case, Mallett thought Duane was trying to stop him. He swung at him with the bottle. But before it could hit him, Duncan jumped forward, knocking Mallett's arm aside. He couldn't do anything else. He was too small. Mallett swatted him with the back of his hand, then pushed through to the hall and out the front door. No one moved for a moment. Then Isaac and Louise helped Duncan to his feet. Duane was staring at Jewel. She had gotten the dog and sat on the floor holding it in her arms. She was surrounded by red and green glass beads. With her hand on the dog's muzzle, Jewel was trying to twist back its head and lay it against her breast. The dog was still bleeding and Jewel's hand and green bathrobe were smeared with blood.

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THIRTEEN HUNDRED BEAUBIEN was police headquarters and the home of the First Precinct. It was a blocky, gray, nine-story building built in 1922 at the corner of Beaubien and Macomb. Architecturally, the first three floors were a sort of American Indian Romanesque: high rounded arches with odd linear designs. The next four floors were Roman with long, thin pilasters separating every two sets of windows. Above the top row of windows was a small cornice, then a narrow balcony with a metal fence decorated with either "Ss" or dollar signs. Set back from the balcony was what looked like a twostory Greek temple with metal grates between the pillars. Across Beaubien was a row of small stores—bail bond agencies and stores selling uniforms—which lived off police headquarters much in the way pilot fish live off sharks. The largest, Metropolitan Uniform Co., advertised a "complete line of uniforms, accessories, caps, badges, shirts, emblems, belts, insignias, holsters, raincoats." Corbin thought that was where Mallett probably bought his uniforms. Next to police headquarters were the two buildings of Wayne County Jail. The older was seven stories and mildly classical in design. The newer was eight stories. Duane said it looked like a pile of metal ice trays. As Corbin, Louise and Duane stood across the street from the jail on Monday morning, Louise said, "That's where Mallett should be, not home sleeping." Mallett hadn't been arrested for his behavior Saturday night. McKiddie had called the police but Jewel refused to press charges. The police said it would be unwise for anyone else to press charges since they had, after all, burst into his apartment. "No," said Duane, "he was probably sad about what he did to the dog." Louise and Corbin raised their eyebrows at one another as they crossed 69

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the street. Corbin liked being with Louise. He was glad he had volunteered to lead this small expedition to police headquarters. It made him feel that he was taking part in the world, instead of being holed up in his apartment. The main corridor of 1300 Beaubien was full of policemen secure in their environment and outsiders who definitely weren't. Corbin thought it would be a difficult building to get out of, even if he had only gone in to buy cigarettes from the blind man who ran the concession in the lobby. Then he wondered if his nervousness was a sign of claustrophobia or agoraphobia. An officer in a booth gave them directions to the Missing Persons department on the fifth floor. When they got out of the elevator, they turned left down a long hall with gray walls. One light ran down the center of the ceiling. The lower part of the walls and brown wooden doors were scuffed as if people had been kicking them. Over one door was a blue sign, reading, "Checks"; over another was a blue sign, "Special Investigations"; over a third, "Credit Cards." The rooms were stuffed with desks. They weren't so much gloomy as impersonal and humorless. Corbin thought that a picture of Donald Duck would have helped a lot, even Donald Duck in chains. After turning down several corridors, they stopped at a room marked "Hotels and Stores" which held the Missing Persons unit. The door was open. It was a windowless room containing about ten desks, thirty filing cabinets and racks of city directories. The Missing Persons desk was halfway up the left side of the room, tucked behind a dozen gray steel cabinets. On the wall above it was a large illuminated clock with the words "Orange Crush" printed across its face in orange letters. The sergeant sitting at the desk was alone in the room. He was a middleaged man in a rumpled gray suit and sparse brown hair. He got up as they approached and gave Louise a very small smile. She had on a light, tan summer dress with pink hearts on the collar. It made her seem particularly innocent. She nudged Corbin who took another step forward. "We're looking for a girl who disappeared in Detroit during the past two months," he said. The sergeant stopped smiling and appeared to grow depressed. "I don't handle women," he answered. It sounded like a boast. "Who does handle women?" asked Louise. "The Women's Division. They handle women and males through the age of nine. Males ten through sixteen are handled by the Youth Division." The sergeant had the quiet voice of a man who has recently suffered some great personal loss. He kept looking at Louise as he leaned back against his desk. "How old is this girl?" "Seventeen," said Corbin.

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"That may cause problems," said the sergeant, looking more depressed. "Why?" "She's legally of age. She can go anywhere." "But what do you do here?" asked Duane. Later he said the file cabinets looked like dominoes stood on end and he had wanted to push one over to see if they would all fall. "Males," said the sergeant. "I handle all males over sixteen unless there's evidence of foul play. Then the case is handled by precinct detectives. Most of my missings turn up in the morgue. Sometimes in prison or in the hospital. Do you know what a missing is?" "What?" asked Duane. He stood a little behind Louise and seemed nervous. "A missing person," said the sergeant, "is one missing from his or her usual place of abode or work in a manner not consistent with his or her ordinary habits and who may need police assistance because of, one, age; two, infirmity, physical or mental; three, the possibility of foul play; four, accident. A person of seventeen years or over who voluntarily leaves his or her place of abode or work is not a missing person." "My sister's missing," said Duane. The sergeant glanced down at his desk which was bare except for a piece of yellow legal-sized paper with dozens of black squares drawn all over it. "She's only missing to you. Being seventeen she can go anywhere she wants. Oh, we take reports on lots of people, but they usually find themselves. These filing cases are full of people who were missing for at least twentyfour hours, but most of them found themselves." "So we should go to the Women's Division?" Corbin asked. The sergeant nodded slowly. "Yes, you could do that. You want the Investigations Department. It's on the seventh floor." Out in the hall, Duane asked, "Why does his clock say Orange Crush?" "Someone probably gave it to him as a present," said Louise. "I don't think I'd like it as a present," Duane said. The Investigations Department was in a large, well-lit room with about twelve desks and an office for the lieutenant in charge. She was a tall, pleasant woman in her forties. Corbin told her what they wanted. She didn't look enthusiastic. "You'd better talk to Sergeant Adams." The lieutenant took them over to a youngish woman sitting at a gray metal desk. She had a narrow face with a jaw only a little wider than a large thumb. Her hair was dark brown and short. Although attractive, she had the bored look of someone who couldn't be surprised ever again. "We're looking for a seventeen-year-old girl," said Corbin, after the lieutenant had left them. "She ran away from her home in Ontario several

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months ago and came to Detroit. This is her brother. He hasn't heard from her. I've got a picture but it isn't very good." Corbin gave it to her. Sergeant Adams glanced at it without expression. "She's not missing. I mean, not legally. And the best thing you can do with this picture is throw it away." She looked at her watch, then said, "Why don't you sit down." They drew up three wooden chairs. Duane straddled his. "Sure she's missing," he said. "I can't find her." The policewoman quoted the same statute they had heard from the sergeant downstairs. "You've got no evidence that she needs police assistance and no evidence that she's missing in a manner not consistent with her ordinary habits." Corbin noticed that she tapped her fingers as she spoke, giving several taps for each word as if invisibly typing out everything she said. "But we need police assistance," said Louise. The sergeant disagreed. "We get about six thousand missings a year. Most of them turn up before we can take action. But in order to close a missing, we must see the person in the flesh, even if they're already home. We spend a lot of time seeing people who are already found. "We also get missing reports from other cities, but there has to be a reason to think the missing's in Detroit. Mostly we file a report and wait and see if the person turns up. After six months the missing is marked closed." "Even if they're not found?" asked Duane. Sergeant Adams nodded, then touched her dark hair as if she might have disturbed it. "What about communes? George says they go to communes all the time." The policewoman gave Duane a long look. "They very rarely run away to communes. Also, communes don't stay in place long enough for us to check them as part of a regular routine. Even if we find that a particular girl is at a commune, there's nothing we can do unless she's a juvenile. We can't harass them. "Sometimes parents have come to us with a commitment order signed by a family doctor. They want us to extract their kid from some place and we're forced to do it just because of that order. But I always tell them they should leave a door open in case the kid wants to come back. That commitment order means closing all the doors. After that their kid really hates them." "What do you think we should do about April?" asked Louise. "Just what you've been doing, I suppose. Give me her name and description and I'll keep it on file." Duane did his best, although at first it was difficult to learn any more than that she was very nice and very pretty. Eventually Sergeant Adams learned that April was five feet six, about one hundred and ten pounds, thin

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with a good figure, waist length brown hair parted in the center and worn loose, large blue eyes like Duane's, a straight nose like Duane's, wide cheek bones, a strong chin, a high flat forehead, good teeth and a pleasant voice. "It's too bad," said Sergeant Adams, "that she's not four feet tall with a scar running diagonally across her face." "Then she wouldn't be pretty," said Duane. "No, but neither would she be lost." "Is there any other place we could look?" Corbin asked. "Sometimes summer hitchhikers show up here with no place to stay. We send them over to the Viking Motel which is the Wayne County Relief Center. It's on Grand River. I'll give you the address." She wrote it down on a piece of yellow paper. "Maybe you'll be lucky. The trouble is it's easy for a young girl to find a place to stay. I mean, almost any man will take her in." They thanked Sergeant Adams and left. When they got outside, Duane said, "You know, I couldn't tell if many people were lost or nobody at all. I kept thinking that April was the only person who was lost and that the others were just some place else." "Let's eat," said Corbin. "There's a Greek restaurant around the corner. I feel I need lots of food." The restaurant consisted of a long lunch counter and a number of green, vinyl booths. Over the booths were colored photographs of the Acropolis, various Greek temples and discus throwers. Large numbers of city officials and policemen were eating mousaka, spinach pie and lamb and rice. There was a lot of noise: talk and laughter and dishes clattering together. Corbin, Louise and Duane all ordered cumbersome shish kebob sandwiches. A previous patron had left a newspaper which Duane glanced through as they ate, looking for local murders. He found two. One was the execution slaying of a young man found in the front seat of a car parked in the lot of a suburban supermarket. The killing was apparently connected to Detroit's drug wars, which were responsible for 84 homicides in 1973, according to police. The second murder took place during a robbery when a man was shot in the chest with a .22 rifle apparently because he reached for his wallet too quickly. The paper said he was a model employee at the east side collision shop where the shooting took place. He had gotten out of the army in August and he and his wife were saving their money to buy a house. The wife was asking the thieves to return her husband's wallet which contained pictures of sentimental value. Also at lunch Duane announced that he had learned the social security numbers of everyone in the house. "You're kidding," said Corbin. Duane grinned. "Yours is 364-41-0473."

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"What about Mallett? Did you get his?" "Jewel got it for me." "What are you going to do with all those numbers?" asked Louise. "I don't know, I just like collecting things." Again it seemed to Corbin that Duane had figured out that information was power, but had no idea what kind of information, so he just gathered it at random, hoping to hit upon the right kind, the kind that would give him some control over his life. After lunch they retrieved Corbin's old yellow Volkswagen from the parking lot and drove to the Viking Motel on Grand River and Fifth. It was a faintly modern building which seemed both clean and soiled at the same time. The young man at the desk was helpful but very sleepy and he yawned a great deal. He was tall and had light, sandy hair which he was rapidly losing. He tried to conceal this by brushing his hair forward in intricate swirls. After checking the register, he told Corbin that no April Thrushman had been at the shelter in the past four months. There had only been two Canadians, both young men. "We get a number of kids during the summer," he said, "who've come to the city with no money and no place to stay. We put them up for the night and the city pays the tab. The next day they see a social worker about getting a ticket home or a job or maybe welfare or a rent slip." Corbin had noticed some older people outside and he asked who they were. "Sometimes we get referrals from Travelers' Aid. Mostly we have ADC mothers evicted for non-payment, wives who've been kicked out by their husbands, kids kicked out by their parents. We've got beds for almost sixty people." He yawned at the thought of it. "What if you get too many people?" asked Louise. "The overflow goes to the Salvation Army. I mean, they stay there." "Are there any other places?" asked Corbin. "You could try Heart Line. It's over at St. Aloysius Church. Woodward and Edsel Ford, I think. They take in women. There's also something at the Episcopal Cathedral called Crossroads. They offer help but I'm not sure what kind." After leaving the Viking Motel, Corbin called the Salvation Army shelter and several other places run by the Army, such as the Evangeline Home for Women. They knew nothing of April and could give no lead other than Heart Line. They decided to visit Heart Line the next day. Duane said he wanted to go over to the university again and Louise offered to go with him. "Can we take the dogs?"

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"Sure." Corbin had some errands so he dropped them off in front of the house. "We'll look again tomorrow," said Duane, "I mean, unless we find her today." When Corbin returned to the house late that afternoon, he was stopped by Kaniewski in the hall. Kaniewski was wearing his gray sweat suit. "I want to talk to you." He was very conspiratorial and drew Corbin into his apartment. Corbin saw that the yellow chrysanthemums on the piano were dying. Kaniewski spoke in a whisper. "I couldn't go to work today. I've called Kohl. I told him I didn't want the wall ripped down. George had told him that I did." "What happened?" "Well, I told him that I liked George and Louise and that I liked the dogs, but under no circumstances did I want to live with them. How could I get any work done? But there's another thing. Mallett stopped me from playing this morning even though he said he wouldn't be working last night, and I told Kohl, and Kohl said not to worry because he'd talked to George and George said he'd take care of it. George? Why George? What did he mean by that?" "I have no idea," said Corbin. "But you're George's friend." Corbin was struck by the word. Was George really his friend? "I still don't know," he said. Kaniewski stood by the piano nervously pulling his fingers. "I don't want George to do something that will make Mallett knock my teeth out. If it weren't for the expense of moving the piano, I'd get out of here." When Corbin got to his own apartment a few minutes later he found Duncan sitting at his kitchen table. Duncan had a key in order to save Corbin's papers in case of fire. "I ran out of coffee so I took some of yours. Even made it in your pot. Want some?" "No." Corbin was not pleased to see him. He had spent the whole day with other people and wanted to be alone for a while before he went to work. Duncan poured himself a cup of coffee. "You sure keep this place as neat as a pin. Duane told me what happened today. Think he'll find his sister?" Corbin shrugged. "What worries me," said Duncan, "is that Duane might be here for some time. I been thinking about that fecking party. Know what bothers me?" "What?" asked Corbin. He poured himself a glass of water and leaned back against the sink as he drank it. "Excess. Look at that drinking and smoking marijuana. I could have

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smacked George when he gave Duane that reefer. Good thing Louise stopped him. It never pays to hit your host. But excess always leads to problems. I know that. I spent ten years in a fecking jail. You want that to happen to Duane?" Corbin said he didn't. Duncan drank some more coffee. He wore his green work pants and work shirt buttoned up to his collar. It occurred to Corbin than perhaps everyone wore uniforms. Perhaps even his gym shorts and t-shirts were a uniform. Duncan kept fidgeting, rubbing his head and jerking his teeth. "I like Duane but I never would have brought him here. Isaac's a little soft. I'm not criticizing mind you, but now Duane's here we got to see he doesn't get hurt." "Of course," Corbin said. "And you'll help me?" "You can't treat him like a baby." "I'm not saying that. Well, shit, he is a baby. That's why I don't want him drinking and smoking reefers. If he does that, I'll cut him off. I'll cut him off completely." "We can't be watchdogs, Duncan," said Corbin, drying his water glass and putting it back on the shelf. Duncan cracked his knuckles and glared at Corbin. "Goddammit, Daniel, you can be the most unsociable person. All right, I'm going. All I'm asking is for you to keep an eye out." The next day was warm but cloudy. In the morning, Louise, Duane and Corbin drove over to Heart Line about a mile away. Louise and Corbin were quiet, but Duane was cheerful and optimistic. His reddish brown hair was neatly combed and he wore a blue work shirt and one of Isaac's black string ties. Isaac had thought Duane should look presentable when meeting church folk. Just north of the university on Woodward, St. Aloysius was a stumpy red stone building with a large golden angel on top of its short steeple. Heart Line was located in a brownstone east of the church on the Edsel Ford service drive. They talked to a priest, Father Malcolm. He was about Duane's height, but thinner. Perhaps he was in his late thirties. His hands were long, thin and looked very clean. He reminded Corbin of an efficient pharmacist. After checking his records, he said, "I'm sorry but no one by the name of April Thrushman has stayed here. What does she look like?" Corbin described her. Father Malcolm shook his head as he listened. "It doesn't ring any bells I'm afraid." They were standing in a bare, white lobby. Although polite, Father Malcolm made it clear that he had other things to attend to.

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"But you told us girls came here," said Duane. The priest nodded quickly. "They do, but not often in the manner you say. Our girls have to make a commitment to improve themselves. We have room for forty-six. Now if a girl calls from the bus station and has no place else to go we'll take her. But she can't be a juvenile and she can't be psychotic." "Are they pregnant?" asked Corbin and regretted his question when he saw how Father Malcolm looked at him. "This isn't that sort of place at all. A girl comes here because she wants to improve herself. Sometimes they've been kicked out of their homes; sometimes they've been deserted. They may even be on parole. We don't want pregnant girls but we'll take them in an emergency. A girl's average stay is four to six months. There's educational counseling, and we offer help in passing the GED. We'll also help them find a job and give temporary welfare. This isn't a flop house." Their next stop was the Episcopal Cathedral about six blocks down Woodward. It was a large, semi-Gothic structure which probably would have looked more Gothic if the church had had more funds. All its spires were very short and, instead of a steeple, there was a square, flat roof. The building was made of gray stone. Crossroads was located in the Diocesan Center next to the cathedral. It too had short spires, stubbly unicorns' horns. Inside, a number of neighborhood people were sitting around on orange vinyl chairs. There was a sense of efficiency rather than cheer. They talked to a woman social worker who turned out to be Canadian herself. She was a few years younger than Corbin and managed to appear attractive and businesslike at the same time. What always struck Corbin about the people they talked to was that no sign of their private lives ever showed through. After checking her files, she told them they had never helped an April Thrushman. They were sitting by her desk in a little cubical with chest high walls. She took off her glasses and looked at the three of them thoughtfully, staring for a moment at Duane's string tie and the silver clasp embossed with the head of a Texas longhorn. Duane had put it on upside down so he could see it better. "If a person comes here looking for a place to stay," she said, "we'll refer them to a place. The church runs Mariners' Inn which takes only men. There's also a hotel for women run by community volunteers. We also assist people in getting jobs, getting on welfare, people in need of emergency funds. Very rarely have we been involved with runaways, although occasionally the police have called looking for someone. But people can't just come here and hang out. Anyway, I don't think the girl would have come to Detroit." "Why not?" asked Louise. She had a blue bandanna around her short

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blond hair and a longish blue dress, which made her look something like a frontier woman. "I've never met any Canadians coming through here, just Americans going to Canada. I don't think a Canadian would come to Detroit. More likely they'd go to Toronto or Montreal." "My sister said she was coming here." Duane had one of his puzzles and kept fiddling with it. "Maybe so, but then she'd be the first to my knowledge." The only suggestion she could give was to check the Unitarian Church two blocks away at Cass and Forest. As they left the building, Louise put her arm around Duane's shoulder. "You shouldn't worry," she said. "We're bound to find her." "I know," said Duane. "It's just there's a lot of people needing things. All these places that would take April in, how would she find them? I mean, I found Isaac all right, but did April find someone like Isaac? I could have walked around for weeks without finding anyone and I'd of spent all my money. Maybe I'd ask a policeman. I guess I would have. But April wouldn't. She's afraid of them. What did that police lady mean when she said all sorts of men would take April in? Did she mean fucking?" "Not necessarily," said Louise. "They could just be being nice. What made you think of fucking?" "Joe Gage talks about it a lot." Duane didn't add any more. The First Unitarian Universalist Church was also a semi-Gothic, gray stone building, but being smaller than the Episcopal Cathedral it lacked the Cathedral's air of failed pretensions. The church's offices were in a red brick Victorian mansion down the street. They climbed the front steps and Corbin tried the door. It was locked. Corbin shook it to make sure. The locks were quite shiny. They were beginning to leave when Duane noticed a young woman's face peering at them from a window on their left. After a moment, she gestured toward the door. There was a long buzz as the lock clicked open. They entered quickly. Shutting the door behind them, Louise said, "The veterinarian I take the dogs to has a door like that. You've got to show your animal through the window before he opens up. Even then he's suspicious." The woman met them in the hall. Corbin thought she could have been the sister of any of the other people they had talked to: young, attractive, businesslike. Only her earrings indicated some sign of personality. They were silver and each was in the shape of a small hand. Louise told her what they wanted. "I doubt that the girl came here," she said. "We don't deal with runaways since we don't work on a twenty-four-hour basis. Primarily we're involved with the Cass Corridor community. If outsiders come looking for

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help, we'll assist them with housing and job referrals, but there's little else we can do. You wait here and I'll check our records. April Thrushman was it?" They waited. Children were shouting in the daycare downstairs, and someone was trying to play "Eleanor Rigby" on an untuned piano. On the white walls were signs about boycotting lettuce and improving talks being given all over the city. The woman returned in five minutes shaking her head. "I'm afraid there's nothing at all." "Can you think of any other places?" asked Louise. "There are quite a few crisis centers. Let me see, Holy Rosary Church works with kids, also the Man Coffee House at Six Mile and Gratiot. And there's Ozone House in Ann Arbor." "What are crisis centers?" asked Duane. He stood by the stairs to the basement and had been waving at some of the kids in daycare. Corbin wanted to tell him to stop. "Young people call with problems. It used to be drug problems; now they're either lonely or depressed. I'll make a list for you. Wait here." She went off again. The suspicion at the church made Corbin want to steal something, but there was nothing available other than a few battered folding chairs. At last he pocketed a piece of paper marked "Take One" announcing a tenants' union meeting held on the previous weekend. Duane took one too. The woman came back and gave Louise a list of eight names. "There's another place I'd forgotten about. It's called Runaway House. It's on the east side. I wrote down the address. That's probably your best bet." As they left, Corbin asked the woman, "Is that door always locked?" She nodded and the little silver hands on her ears shook. "This building and the church are kept locked at all times. Otherwise too many things are stolen. An expensive microphone was taken from the chapel. . . ." She held up her hands and tried to smile. Corbin thanked her and followed the others out the door. The lock clicked shut behind them. Corbin was depressed by the fruitlessness of their search. He had seen his involvement as leading inevitably to April's discovery, not to a series of failures. It was now mid-afternoon and he wanted to go home, maybe look at a story he was working on or jot down some notes on some of the people they had met that day. As they went down the steps, he said to Louise, "Why don't you take my car out to Runaway House. I've got to do some work at the library." She looked at him suspiciously, then said, "All right, if you're sure you don't want to come." "I'm sure."

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Around six thirty that evening Corbin went out to buy some milk. The sky was dark with thick clouds and he wanted to get to the store and back before it started to rain. Going out on the porch, he saw someone crouching on the front lawn. At first it looked like a giant toad; then he saw it was Duncan. He was bending over Jewel Mallett who lay on the ground half hidden by the bushes. Corbin went over to join them. Jewel's small blue eyes were open and staring at the sky. She was breathing heavily. "You can't just lie there," Duncan was saying. "There are laws about that. This city is bad enough without everybody lying down in the streets. What if Mallett saw you? What if you catch cold?" Duncan became aware of Corbin and hastily moved away. "She's fecking drunk," he said, "been lying there for hours. If this were a good neighborhood, she'd give it a bad name." "Is she hurt?" Corbin asked. Jewel had on a yellow cotton dress, and lay on the ground like a lump of Crisco covered with a tattered cloth. "No, she's as healthy as a full blooded cow." "Then leave her. She'll get up eventually." Corbin started walking up toward the store and Duncan came with him. "Did you hear about Ruth?" asked Duncan. "No, is anything wrong?" Duncan half grinned, half sneered. "She got her purse snatched last night. She didn't get hurt or anything, and only lost about ten bucks. Coupla kids did it. If she's going to walk around looking like she's got money, then it stands to reason that she's going to get her purse snatched. That fool Duane said she hadn't done anything wrong. I told him you don't have to. There are more fecking punishments than people." Isaac got home late that night. The Bum Squad had picked him up panhandling in front of the Greyhound bus station. They had taken him over to the First Precinct, 1300 Beaubien, but hadn't booked him. He had been picked up before and was now very worried. He sat curled up in the purple armchair, chewing one end of his moustache. His long face looked longer than ever and his hair was mussed and fell across his forehead. The window was open and the Ryder print of Death on a race horse fluttered against the wall. From somewhere far off Corbin could hear thunder. "They said if I got caught again, I'd be put in a home. Pretending it's for my own good, that's a lot of crap. They put people in those places to die. No deposit, no return. Just like my aunt. Just like my father. I'm not going to die like that." Duncan was standing by the window. "They're not going to put you in any fecking home."

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Isaac looked up at him. "What am I going to do? I've got to live, don't I. If they think I'll go back to barbering, they're crazy. I hate touching people's hair. Those cops said they'd be looking for me. I can't even go downtown anymore. Duncan talked to him for over an hour. Isaac kept shaking his head. Now and then Corbin would try to say something cheering but he couldn't think of much. He kept asking himself, what do you say to a sixty-sevenyear-old panhandler? All his cheery remarks sounded hypocritical. After a while, Isaac decided not to quit panhandling. He would avoid bus and train stations and stick to libraries. "People always think the seventeen cents is for a fine," he said.

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IN OCTOBER, the crime rate, which had been decreasing for two years, rose ten percent over the previous October. There were 15,351 crimes reported during the month: 1,508 robberies, 3,454 burglaries, 3,276 larcenies. Auto thefts increased 23.3 percent to reach 2,284. Misdemeanors were up 27.4 percent. Homicides showed a 14.5 percent drop: fifty-three as compared to sixty-two in October, 1972. Despite the drop, Detroit still had the highest homicide rate in the country. According to the FBI, Detroit's murder and manslaughter rate for 1973 was 44.5 killings for every 100,000 people, while New York was 21.5. Of nearly equal concern was the low solution rate and the proliferation of illegal handguns. The solution rate for the 693 homicides of 1972 was 68 percent. The number 693 included 145 accidental or justifiable homicides. The solution rate for the 548 actual murders was 58 percent. The solution rate for Atlanta, Washington and Kansas City was 93 percent. Dallas was 91 percent; Philadelphia, 90; Chicago, 87; Los Angeles, 80; San Francisco, 77; Boston, 70. In September Duane had thought nothing of talking to strangers on the street. In October he became more hesitant. He pulled away and began placing more trust in the people in the house. He became conscious of crime the way someone is conscious of a toothache. It was always boringly on his mind. In October, one out of one hundred Detroit residents was the victim of a reported crime. This broke down to about one out of nine in a year. Duane was unable to deal with this knowledge. "It's just numbers," said Duncan. "It doesn't mean a fecking thing." On Wednesday, October 3, George decided to do something about Weneel's problem with Mallett. The problem struck him as simple. Either Mallett 82

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was sleeping or he was not sleeping. He couldn't see why no one had thought of it before. About ten o'clock in the morning, George went down to Mallett's apartment. He took the dogs in case Mallett didn't appreciate what he was going to do. The dogs thought they were going for a walk and pranced about the hall on their leather leashes. Gimli's metal choke chain jangled against the banister. George hammered on Mallett's door with his fist. It was a brown door and it shook in its frame. McKiddie came out in the hall to watch. Suddenly Mallett flung open the door. He obviously had been woken up. He was naked except for a pair of black polka-dotted boxer shorts. "What the hell do you want?" George was very polite. He stood back from the door with a dog on either side of him. "I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Mallett, but is it all right for Wencel to play the piano or are you sleeping?" "What the fuck you think I'm doing?" George backed away but remained pleasant. The dogs wagged their tails as if they wanted to lick Mallett all over. "Okay, Mr. Mallett, we just wanted to make sure because Wencel didn't want to bother you in case you were sleeping." The next morning around ten George again went down to Mallett's apartment. The dogs were with him and pranced around. Nothing can be quite so noisy as large excited dogs. George hammered on Mallett's door. Corbin was sitting on the stairs in case there were difficulties. George looked very tidy—blue, double knit slacks, dark gray shirt—with his bulk he looked like a tidy rectangle. Mallett flung open his door and might have stormed into the hall if it weren't for the dogs. They were big healthy dogs. "What the fuck do you want?" "I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Mallett, but can Wencel play the piano or are you asleep?" "You son-of-a-bitch, I should break your neck." Mallett was again naked except for his polka-dot shorts. His stomach hung over his waistband like half a watermelon, a reddish, grayish watermelon. George beamed as if Mallett had just kissed him. "Thank you for telling me. I mean, how can Wencel know if he's disturbing you unless he knows if you're sleeping or not?" Mallett knew he was beaten but hated to show it. "I'll be working through Friday night," he said. Then he slammed the door. George smiled at Corbin and Jerry McKiddie. "You see how simple it is? A man like that must be handled delicately, but without subtlety." George went upstairs to give Wencel the message. Wencel still had his

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doubts. "The trouble is he often works an extra day, usually Saturday night. His schedule's never clear." George was a trifle condescending. "Don't worry, I'll handle that. No trouble at all." "I hope so. In any case, I'm really grateful." George patted Wencel's shoulder in a fatherly way. "What are friends for? I mean, we're a team. Just wait till I rip down that wall, then we'll really be a team." The search for April continued. Duane went out with Louise, George, Gunther, Duncan, Isaac or Wencel. They checked churches like Holy Rosary, and coffee houses like Man Coffee House. They went to various crisis centers, communes, high school groups. Each place was able to tell them about some new place, and so they went on, but they never found any trace of April. Corbin heard them coming and going and sometimes he even went with them, but the search depressed him and he tried to avoid it whenever he could. It was Duncan who first thought April might not be found, although he was willing to keep looking. He came over to Corbin's apartment one morning and fidgeted in his kitchen. "I don't believe she came to Detroit. Why should she? I mean, is she dumb? Now Isaac thinks she'll be found any day. He believes things because he wants them to be true. He doesn't care about facts. But since Isaac believes it, I'll keep looking." "If Isaac stops believing, will you kick Duane out?" asked Corbin. Duncan appeared surprised. "Kick him out? 'Course not. He's a good kid. He may be stupid but he grows on you." During the beginning of October, Corbin started writing again. Being with Duane had given him an idea which he hoped to turn into a novel. It was about a policeman who actually decided to find somebody. At first the missing man wasn't important; perhaps he had walked into the fourth dimension. But the policeman decided to find out. Corbin liked the idea of a quest and for the whole week he was busy outlining and developing character sketches. It was a part of writing which he particularly enjoyed, the part before the actual composition when there was still a chance that the book would be the best book in the world. On Friday Corbin wrote until six, then had just started heating up a can of lentil soup when there was a knock on the door. It was Wencel. His sandy hair, which was usually combed neatly back, was mussed. A single strand hung over each eyebrow, making a pair of drooping horns. "I'm afraid I have a terrible favor to ask you."

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"Oh?" Corbin had hoped to do some more work in the few hours before he had to be at the Turveydrop. Wencel stood by the door and looked nervous. "You remember you told me my father was interesting and how you wrote down a lot of what he said because you wanted to use it in a book?" "Sure, why?" Corbin turned down the flame under his soup. "Well, my father's going to come over this evening. He says he likes to keep an eye on me, but actually he only comes when he's upset. I thought you might like to come down. Duncan and Duane said they would. I've been having a bad time recently, mostly because of George. I don't want to face my father alone. He'll only tell me I should have played baseball. I hate baseball. When the Tigers dropped to third place this year, I actually cheered." "Sure, I'll come down around eight," said Corbin. "What's been going on with George?" Wencel still hadn't moved away from the door. "It's that wall. I called the landlord the other day and told him I didn't want George to touch it and he said he wouldn't give George the money. The trouble is I made the mistake of telling George. He said, 'Money? Who needs money? All I need is two hours with a rented sledge hammer.' So ever since I've come home expecting to find the wall gone and the room full of dust and plaster and all my music on the floor and those big dogs just running around and around. Helen's been thinking the same thing. We're almost afraid to go out. Whenever there's a loud noise, I'm sure it's George striking the first blow. That's what he calls it: 'Striking the first blow for freedom.' He gets all excited about it. Whenever I see him, he bounces at me and says, 'Well, when do we do it? When's the big day?' And I say, 'Not yet, no, not yet.' And he gets all disappointed and goes away. "But one of these days he's going to decide not to wait any longer and I'll come home and there will be that wall all over my apartment, and Helen will leave me, and I'll cut my throat." When Corbin, Duncan and Duane went down to Wencel's apartment around eight, they found Orlo already there. Wencel and Helen responded to their arrival as the residents of a besieged city might respond to reinforcements. Orlo became bluff and hearty, squeezing their hands and clapping Duane on the back. "How's your sister doing?" Orlo's balloon cheeks shone with kindness. "I don't know. We can't find her" "Where you been looking?" asked Orlo. He and Duane had walked over to the couch to sit down. Corbin remained by the door. "Just about everywhere," said Duane. He had taken a liking to Isaac's

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black string tie and Texas longhorn clasp which he had warn all week. He tugged at the strings when he spoke as if pumping himself for correct words. "Well, you seem to be on the right track," said Orlo. "She's bound to be somewhere and if you're looking everywhere that's where you'll find her." Orlo then turned to Corbin. "How's the writing going?" "Pretty well." Is it really going well? Corbin asked himself. "I wanted to ask what sort of books you wrote. Improving books? Not religious, of course." "I try to write novels." Orlo thoughtfully pulled one of his black suspenders and let it slap back against his white shirt. "I've never found I could learn much from a novel, though I'm not saying it can't be done." There was a pause as Helen gave them all cups of coffee. Duane put about five teaspoons of sugar in his. Orlo got up to talk to Duncan who was sitting on the piano bench. "I don't think I ever asked you what you did." "I fix locks." Duncan spoke slowly as if his mouth were full of keys. "Do you? Well, I'm glad there's an older man in the house to keep these kids in line." Orlo was still standing. He looked around at the people in the room and beamed. "Health!" he said. "That's the first commandment by which we should lead our lives. Now your grandfather, Wencel, the one you're named after, he died of a stroke when he wasn't much older than I am now. He was addressing a fund raising drive for Polish refugees just a month before Pearl Harbor, and Bang, he went off like that, right on stage." Orlo took a few steps toward Corbin and tapped his thick forefinger two or three times against Corbin's t-shirt. "Now he's someone you could write a novel about. He came over to Hamtramck from Krakow in 1912. He was a carpenter and married a Polish woman who'd been born here. But he was going to be an American, you understand? As kids, we couldn't play soccer, we had to play football. Me and my brother were both lettermen. The same was true of baseball. You know, my father practically studied Colliers and the Saturday Evening Post, trying to find American things for us to do. "But then in '39, when Poland was invaded, he suddenly became Polish again. It's a funny thing. He started raising money for Polish refugees. He got Polish soldiers to come over here and speak, led recruiting drives for the Polish army in exile. He even tried to get me and my brother to join, but we couldn't see it. I mean, we were American. Then he had that stroke. Died fighting like any soldier. "Of course, right after Pearl Harbor, my brother joined up and the next July I did the same. I thought maybe I could get into my brother's outfit. He was a tank gunner. They sent him to Africa. He wrote my mother and said it was hot. You'd think he'd find something more interesting to say than that.

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Anyway, I wasn't in the army two weeks before I heard he was dead. They never said how it happened." Orlo had stopped and was staring down at the floor. "My mother tried to get me out, saying I was the sole support of the family. But I wouldn't have any of it. I stayed in and we invaded Sicily and then there was that Anzio business. That was a stupid mess. I got shot there, put a quick end to my army career. . . . " "Where were you shot?" asked Duane very politely. Orlo was still staring at the rug. It was a sand-colored Mexican rug and had symbols of the earth, sun, rain and wind, and showed stick figures running. He looked over at Duane. "Anzio, like I say." "But where?" "I just got shot. It happens. Then I got sent home." "My Dad got shot," said Duane. "He got shot twice at Dieppe. Once in the shoulder and once in the leg. He's still got one of the bullets. He said he was running toward a little house and there was shooting all over the place and then he was lying on the ground. He was with the Second Canadian Infantry Division. They lost four thousand men and thirty tanks and my Dad got shot twice and he still limps. There were commandos there too." "None of it was healthy," said Orlo, as if he had hardly heard Duane. He turned back to his son. "But take your grandfather dying of a stroke. That's not going to happen to me. I go for walks every morning and I quit smoking years ago, although I still take an occasional cigar. Even so, Wencel, sometimes I think it'll be a stroke that brings me down. Your mother says the same thing. I bet she prays for it. You know, I've met people who've had heart attacks and cancer who've never smoked a day in their lives. Hardly seems fair, does it. Virtue is never rewarded." Sunday morning, believing that Mallett had worked the previous night, George went downstairs to find out. But he thought he might be pushing his luck so he invited Gunther, besides bringing Corbin and the dogs. Outside it was a gray rainy day. George hammered on the door, then stepped back. There was a long pause. The dogs wagged their tails. Suddenly the door opened and Mallett took a step into the hall. First he looked at George, then at the dogs, then at Corbin and Gunther, then back to the dogs. As before, he was naked except for the polka-dotted shorts. George was politer than ever. "I was just curious Mr. Mallett, if Wencel might play his piano or if you were sleeping. . . . " "You son-of-a-bitch, I warned you to leave me alone." Mallett pushed his chin forward as if it were a deadly weapon.

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"You said you wouldn't be working last night." "I got the right to change my mind, don't I?" "Certainly, certainly. I feel this is a difficulty that can be easily solved." Taking a calendar from the back pocket of his jeans, George edged around Mallett and tacked the calendar to the door. A yellow pencil hung from it by a piece of string. "Now, you see, it's quite simple. If you work on a particular day, then you mark the calendar. If you don't work, you don't mark the calendar and Wencel will know it's all right to play." Mallett looked at the calendar and looked at the small army that George had brought with him; then, muttering to himself, he went back into his apartment and slammed the door. The calendar fluttered slightly. It showed a picture of a mountain locomotive chugging across the Arizona desert. There were cacti on either side of the track. The sun had just risen and the sky was all pink and yellow. Beneath the picture were the words: "Southern Pacific, Progress through Safety." George knew that another visit might be necessary. Coming downstairs the next morning, he saw that the calendar had not been marked. He went back to collect his small army and to tell Wencel to play as loudly as possible. They all trooped down to Mallett's door to wait. Wencel began playing some wild Hungarian dance. Sitting on the stairs, Corbin pictured Wencel without shoes, leaping up and down on the keys and laughing uncontrollably. Wencel had been playing for two minutes when the door sprang open and Mallett burst into the hall. Seeing George, he stopped. His expression changed from anger to bitter understanding. With an effort, he tried to drag up a few scraps of indignation. "Get out of my way. I'm going to hit that fucker!" George made a sympathetic clucking noise. "But, Mr. Mallett, you didn't mark the calendar, so naturally Wencel assumed you weren't working. I don't see how anyone can blame him for that." The Hungarian dance was still going strong. Wencel had opened his door so it could be heard more easily. Mallett stared at them and looked down at the dogs. Abruptly he turned and marked the calendar for the next four days. "Tell him to stop playing." George went upstairs to tell Wencel. From then on, Mallett consistently marked the calendar. Corbin's new book about the policeman continued to keep him busy, but along with the novel he was paying more attention to his journal. In particular there were many journal entries about Duane. He often visited Corbin in the evening to say where he had gone and what he'd seen. Afterward, Corbin would make notes about it. Reading them much later, Corbin

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was again struck by Duane's preoccupation with homicides. Around midnight on Wednesday, October 3, police shot and killed a fourteen-year-old boy who they accused of purse snatching. They found a toy pistol stuck in the waistband of his trousers. The boy's mother filed a three million suit against the City and the three policemen involved, charging he was slain "unlawfully, without cause or justification," and that the police had kicked the boy's body after he was shot. Thursday morning a westside grocer was shot and killed in an apparent hold-up, although the robber fled empty handed. Thursday night two men broke into a home on the northwest side and beat and raped a seventy-oneyear-old woman, after knocking out her seventy-three-year-old husband with his own cane. The men then took their money and stole the couple's car. Sunday night a young man jumped from an expressway bridge a few blocks from the house on Alexandrine. He was hit by a white Cadillac. The blow knocked him back up into the air so that he struck the underside of the bridge. The Cadillac didn't stop. Saturday morning a man quarreled with his wife, beat her up and forced her and her baby into their car. The man drove to a Sears store in a neighboring suburb. Dragging his wife into the store, he bought a rifle and shells, then proceeded to chase his wife through the store with the rifle. The woman escaped and her husband was arrested. He was charged with the reckless use of firearms. Friday evening, Gunther took Duane to another radical meeting where there was a lecture on Marx and Bakunin. Because Duncan had mocked what Duane had learned from his last radical meeting ("Lenin is relevant today"), Duane went this time with pencil and paper, intending to get the story straight. The speaker meant to show Bakunin as the person whom Marx had once called "a man devoid of all theoretical knowledge." According to Gunther, Duane was very attentive, asked questions and took notes. The problem was that while Duane found Marx's theories incomprehensible, Bakunin's were simple enough to understand. The result was that Duane came home an anarchist. Bakunin saw all men as equal; their apparent differences were only caused by environment. Duane quoted him as saying, "The immense majority of men are not identical, but equivalent and consequently equal." Duane's response was, "That's just like George Washington. He said the same thing." Bakunin further believed that all men were basically good. Only established society was bad. Remove established society and man's natural goodness would assert itself. Men would thrive and live together in a free federation of independent communes. Duane said, "That's like George. He's always talking about free communes."

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Duane told Corbin this on Saturday morning, sitting in Corbin's kitchen drinking hot chocolate. Duncan and Gunther were also there. They were not happy. "And you know what else about that man Marx," said Duane, "he called Bakunin a tsarist spy. A tsar, that's the old king of Russia. He called him a spy after Bakunin had escaped from prison. Poor Bakunin, he'd been in prison for ten years, and then he escaped, and he went to Japan and the United States and Europe, and when he got there Marx didn't even say, 'I'm glad to see you,' or anything like that. He just called him a spy. He was a great big man with tousled hair, just like you, Corbin. And the people in Italy liked him so much that they named their kids Bakunin. And one man had three daughters and he named them Hunger, Poverty and Revolution, just because of Bakunin." Bakunin had another theory which interested Duane. Although he believed in complete freedom, liberty and equality, Bakunin advocated the use of violence in order to bring them about. Since man was good and the state was bad, then any method of destroying the state was justified. This worried Duane, but what worried him more were Bakunin's words on what should be done. Later, Corbin looked up the exact quotes. "The revolutionary despises and hates present-day social morality in all its forms. . . . All soft and weakening feelings of friendship, relationship, love, gratitude, even honor, must be stifled in him by a cold passion for the revolutionary cause. . . . Day and night he must have one thought, one a i m merciless destruction. "We recognize no other activity but the work of extermination, but we admit that the forms in which this activity will show itself will be extremely varied—poison, the knife, the rope, etc. In this struggle, revolution sanctifies everything alike." Duane disapproved of this, saying it was not for him, but what impressed him was Bakunin's belief that anyone who was an enemy of society was on the side of the revolutionary cause. It seemed to say something about Detroit. "Robbery," wrote Bakunin, "is one of the most honored aspects of the people's life in Russia. The robber in Russia is the true and only revolutionary, without phrase-making, without bookish rhetoric. Popular revolution is born from the merging of the revolt of the robber with that of the peasant. . . . Even today this is still the world of the Russian revolution; the world of the robber and the world of the robber alone has always been in harmony with the revolution. The men who want to make a serious conspiracy in Russia, who want a popular revolution, must turn to that world and fling themselves into it." The speaker at the meeting quoted this as an example of Bakunin's opportunism. Duane didn't understand that. What he thought he understood

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was a partial reason for crime in Detroit. These robbers and murderers were no more than deluded followers of Bakunin. In shooting a grocer or holding up a Kentucky Fried Chicken stand, they were doing no more than striking a blow for freedom. In recognition of this, Duane had shed Isaac's string tie for a red neckerchief. It was bright red silk and he had gotten it from Louise. He said, "It's to keep robbers away." By wearing a small red flag, Duane believed he could convince Detroit's criminal element of his own anarchist sympathies and escape retribution. When Duane and Gunther left, Duncan stayed behind. He was angry that Duane had gone to the meeting and angry at himself for being angry. "He doesn't know what they're talking about. He gets upset. He's such a fecking idiot that he gets the whole thing confused. You know, when he came home last night, he didn't even know Bakunin was dead. Of course Gunther had been telling him that Bakunin had been dead for a hundred years. Know what Duane said? He said, 'You're always teasing me. You think I'm funny.' I bet that sure shut Gunther up. But Duane believes me after I tell him Bakunin's dead about fifty times. Then he gets even more upset. He says they should leave him alone. They shouldn't make fun of him behind his back, especially if he's dead. What's the point of getting Duane upset about nothing? I don't want him going to those fecking meetings." Isaac didn't think the meetings would do Duane any harm. But then Isaac was preoccupied with his own problems. Panhandling was going badly. Isaac's income had been cut in half after the police had scared him away from the bus and train stations. The people using the libraries were friendly but didn't have much money. Furthermore, the library guards kept driving him off. In order to earn more money, he had begun selling his blood at a place on Woodward. They paid him twelve dollars a pint. Isaac disliked this, saying it made him feel weak. Consequently, he was depressed. "All my life, I been a seller. I was supposed to be a doctor but the Depression put an end to that. Not that I liked college much. I nearly got my bachelor's degree at Western Reserve; that was in 1930." It was another cloudy Saturday afternoon and Isaac and Corbin were sitting on the front steps. The trees were turning. Fall color was very pragmatic in Detroit. The trees turned directly from green to mustard yellow with no unnecessary stops along the way. From the open window above them, they could hear Gunther practicing some complicated run on the guitar. He would go through two thirds of a run, then stop, then go through half of it, then stop, then go through the whole thing very slowly. Isaac had drawn up his long legs and was resting his chin on his knees. He looked like a human Gordian knot. "That was the year my father lost his

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clothing store. After that I worked for a friend of my father's. He had a clothing store too. I was a clerk there till 1939. Then my father died and the owner, Herman Schmidt, fired me. He said I wasn't any good at the business. I agreed with him. I mean, I couldn't keep my mind on it. Schmidt wasn't a bad man though. He gave me a hundred bucks. That was a lot of money then. I headed out to California to see my brother who was a lawyer. It took me two years 'cause I kept wandering around and that suited my brother just fine 'cause we never did get along. "I've sold clothes. I've sold insurance in St. Louis, cars in Pittsburgh, real estate in Harrisburg, vacuum cleaners in Philadelphia, insurance again in New York, cars in Hartford and insurance again in Providence, but that time I wasn't working for any company and they put me in jail. "I even sold Rice Krispies for a while on the radio. That was in Chicago. I'd done some amateur theater and it was the acting experience that got me the job. 'Course I told them I'd done more than I had. They fired me though. I got bored one night and told the people of Chicago that Rice Krispies tasted like birdshit. "Now I'm still selling myself. That's all I'm doing when I'm panhandling. I try and make people think I really need the seventeen-cents, that I'm worthy of receiving their money. People hate to be fooled. If they thought I was a drunk, I wouldn't get a dime. You know, I brush my teeth three times a day. I'm a helluva lot cleaner than most of the people who give me money. Not that I care but I've got to make a good impression. But those damn cops, they only want me to beg on streets where no one in their right mind wants to go. And Duane, he's another mouth to feed. He gave us twenty dollars when he first came. He's got no sense of money at all. Not that we care. We'd feel like criminals taking his money. I haven't even spent that twenty."

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RUTH COMANDELLA HAD large sensitive breasts, the nipples of which would react slightly to the heavy bass of a rock band, thunder or jets screaming toward Nebraska. Corbin had a friend who used to talk of what he called playing telephone with a woman's breasts, which meant putting one in his mouth and one in his ear. Although fascinated, Corbin's goals were more limited. It was Monday evening and Ruth was sharing Corbin's day off. The weather had turned chilly and the windows were closed. They were talking quietly about the flying saucers which had been seen in Mississippi. Two men claimed to have been taken aboard a saucer by three creatures with wrinkled skin, pointed ears and crab-like claws. Ruth made a slight groan and Corbin rolled off onto his back. They pulled the covers up around them. "I wish a saucer would get Joe Gage and Mallett," she said. "Are they still bothering you?" "They stare a lot. I've got a pretty good opinion of myself, but seeing them makes me feel dirty. The other day Duane and Dubanowski and I were in my room, just talking. When we left, there was Mallett and Joe Gage. I'll bet anything they thought I'd been balling them." In the dim light from the kitchen, Corbin could see Ruth staring up at the ceiling. "What do you think of Duane?" he asked. "He's interesting. Sweet's the best word. At first I thought he was just stupid. I don't know, I'll bet anything he's a virgin." Ruth paused. "How's your writing been? You said you had a new idea for a novel?" Corbin wondered if Ruth was changing the subject for any particular reason, but then he began talking about his new book. Briefly he described the plot and told her what the characters were like. "The trouble is I spend 93

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the whole day in my head with nobody around except made-up people. Then, when I finish, the real world seems foggy, and not half so real as those madeup characters. But I think I've found a way around that." Ruth was still staring at the ceiling. "What's that?" "My journal. It's where I get back to the objective world. It makes me no more than a tape recorder." Ruth rolled over to face him, putting one hand on Corbin's bare chest. "But you select, don't you?" "I choose the words." "The moment you start choosing, you stop being objective, no matter how much you put in." Corbin didn't say anything. They lay quietly, his leg pulled up over her hip, listening to the sounds in the house. From George's apartment Corbin could hear the Rolling Stones' Goafs Head Soup album. The bass notes rumbled through the room. Someone was walking around Isaac and Duncan's apartment, rather noisily Corbin thought. A dog was barking in the street and there were distant sirens. Ruth began gently stroking Corbin's penis. As he began to get an erection, he seemed to hear less and less. As it turned out, Corbin should have paid more attention to the noise in Isaac and Duncan's apartment. Duncan had been at the Turveydrop and Isaac and Duane had gone to the movies. The footsteps had belonged to a burglar. Tuesday morning, very early, Isaac came over to Corbin's apartment to tell him about it. "They went through suitcases, drawers, closets. They even cut open the mattress. It was as if they knew something was there. They didn't find it though. They only got Duane's twenty bucks. Poor Duane, he made us take twenty more." "Was there money to be found?" asked Corbin. Isaac hesitated. "I keep some on hand." "Anyone know about it?" "I been thinking about that. Jean McKiddie came in one day when I had the money out and maybe she saw it. She wouldn't take it though." "Why don't you put it in the bank?" It didn't occur to Corbin that Isaac might have any substantial amount of money. After all, he was a panhandler. "Don't trust them. I want my money where I can get it in a hurry. Also, if something happens to me, then Duncan can get it. Jesus, first the cops drive me off my route, now someone tries to steal my savings. From now on, I'll be watching. Duncan's right, you can't trust anyone."

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That week Duane discovered two news stories that seemed to go beyond Bakunin's anarchist theories. Three men were found strangled to death in the trunk of a car in Pontiac. With them was the body of a two-year-old boy. The coroner's report showed that the boy had been alive when put into the trunk, but had suffocated in the fifteen hours before the car was discovered. Police said the killings were related to the drug war in the city. The second story concerned a suburban housewife who hired a small plane. She told the pilot that she wanted to show her children the autumn colors, adding that her two-year-old son had leukemia and she wanted to give him a last plane ride. There were also two daughters: eight and nine. The pilot took them up and flew them around for several hours, but when he announced he was going to land, the woman grabbed the stick and sent the plane into a dive, saying, "It's all over, buddy, for you and for all of us." The pilot wrestled with her while managing to control the plane. The woman took a letter opener from her purse and stabbed him. The pilot got the letter opener away from her. The woman took a butcher knife from a diaper bag and again attacked the pilot. Witnesses on the ground described the plane as erratically diving at tree tops. The woman stabbed the pilot half a dozen times before he was able to wrestle the knife away from her and land the plane. The woman was later committed. Her doctor testified that she believed she and her children were being pursued by forces of organized crime and would catch some weakening or fatal disease unless they all died first. She had chosen a plane crash as the "surest and quickest way" of dying. On Wednesday, the seventeenth, Duane was gone all day. Isaac and Duncan asked Corbin several times if he had seen him. He hadn't and neither had George, Louise, Wencel or Gunther. Nobody was really worried but they found it strange. That was the day the school strike finally ended. Duane returned about seven thirty. Corbin was with Isaac and Duncan in their kitchen where they were all drinking coffee. Duane came in looking a little sheepish. He had spent the day with Joe Gage. "We were looking for April but we didn't see her anyplace. But I saw lots of interesting things and we went into lots of bars. . . . " "Did you drink?" asked Duncan. "I had four Cokes and two hamburgers and a Coney Island hotdog, and we were going to go to the zoo on Belle Isle but it was closed so we went to some more bars and Joe Gage talked to all sorts of people but nobody knew about my sister. And Joe Gage even bought me these." Duane fished around in the pockets of his jeans and drew out two metal puzzles. Corbin,

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Duncan and Isaac were sitting at the kitchen table. Duane stood slightly behind Corbin who had to twist around. He wore a blue workshirt and the red bandanna around his neck. Duane's hair was neatly combed. It was too long now for a crew cut. "But you haven't solved the others yet," said Duncan. "No, but these look easier." Duncan jerked his teeth back into place several times. He was not pleased. "Have you solved them?" "I've come pretty close. Joe Gage said I'd get the knack soon." "What did you talk about?" asked Isaac, more gently. Duane started to speak, then looked embarrassed. "Oh, just things. He talked about lots of things. He thinks we'll find my sister for sure." They didn't press him, but later, when Duncan sent Duane to the store for some eggs, Corbin went along. It was a chilly fall evening. "Do you know they've seen those flying saucers in Indiana?" said Duane. "That's pretty close. It'd be neat to see one here. Joe Gage says he's seen lots of them." Duane was walking on the very edge of the sidewalk as if it were a tight-rope. "What else did he say?" Corbin asked. "When do you mean?" "What did you talk about today?" It took more questioning. Corbin had to push him to the point where it would be rude not to tell him. Duane was always polite. "He said funny things about people. He'd talk about them and laugh." "Did he say anything about Isaac and Duncan?" By now they had gotten the eggs and were walking back. Duane kept checking the sky for flying saucers. The sky was overcast. In the darkness, all Corbin could see was Duane's red scarf. It seemed to absorb all available light. "You won't tell?" Corbin said he wouldn't. He found himself getting angry with Joe Gage. "He kept saying they were old fairies who sucked cock." Duane paused but when Corbin didn't speak he continued. "He said the only reason they wanted me to stay with them was because they wanted to suck my cock too. But I told him that was silly. He's got lots of silly stories like that, like about people and dogs fucking." "Does it bother you when he says things like that?" asked Corbin. They had stopped under a street light. A few leaves floated out of the darkness toward them. "Not really. I mean, it's not true. I've never seen Isaac or Duncan suck cock. They're not like that. What Joe Gage says is silly but all sorts of things are silly." They started walking again. "Did he mention Ruth?"

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"No, he said she was nice. He said he wanted to fuck her." "If I were you, I'd stay away from Joe Gage." Corbin was uncertain how far to go in criticizing Gage. "We had a good time. It was interesting to see all those bars. Glenorchy only has two bars and I've never been in them." The next day Louise decided to solve the difficulties about the wall. Wencel had spoken to her and, having learned that Wencel was against it, she called a small meeting in her apartment. Corbin went because he was stalled on his police novel. Duncan went because he was sad that Gene Krupa had died. Duane went because he liked meetings. By now everyone knew the wall wouldn't be torn down. Perhaps even George. Sometimes Corbin thought he had meant the whole thing as an extended joke. In any case, Louise told him that the wall was going to stay. "Even if one person were against it, that would be enough reason not to do it. Don't you see? I mean, that's why I'm against it." There was a long silence. Wencel and Helen sat close together on the couch. Wencel looked like he had swallowed something with a hook attached. "But we still like you," he said, "there's no question about that." Helen nodded vigorously. "And we can eat together sometimes." George stood with his back to them by the window of the kitchenette. A green clay pot with a geranium in it hung from the ceiling. When Corbin squinted, it made George look as if he had two heads. George turned around. He appeared to be grieving and smiling at the same time. Corbin wasn't convinced that George was even sad. Probably he felt rejected, but knew that was stupid. "What the hell," said George, "I know what we can do. We can buy a side of beef instead. We'll all chip in and buy this old freezer for about a hundred bucks, then we'll get the beef. See? Wencel can keep it in his apartment. He's got more room. Jesus Christ, we could buy a whole fucking cow. Fifty-cents a pound, maybe less. I bet we could even steal a cow if we tried. Why not? I got a buddy who's got a truck. . . . " The burglary of Isaac and Duncan's apartment upset Isaac more than Corbin had supposed; primarily because Isaac had more money than Corbin had supposed. He had assumed that Isaac had several hundred dollars tucked away. But Duncan told Corbin it was probably several thousand and possibly more, because even Duncan had never seen it. Isaac called the money his "feet." According to Duncan, he intended to leave Detroit on his seventieth birthday and move to some small town in northern California where he would settle down and grow tomatoes. Now, added to his worries about the police, was the fear that the money

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would be stolen. Since the robbery attempt, Isaac had hidden and rehidden the money at least twenty times. Duncan talked about it as he and Corbin walked home from work early Friday morning. It was decidedly chilly and there was little traffic, just a couple of cabs and a drunk zig-zagging a big Buick up Second. "What I really mind is those fecking booby traps," said Duncan. "He's got these tin cans on wires. You open the door and the cans rattle. You walk across the room and more cans rattle. You go into the living room and you duck so you don't catch your neck on a string of tin cans. He's got ten chains hanging from the ceiling like fly paper. He's got ten more snaked across the floor. You can't even walk across the room, you got to do a little dance. Duane thinks it's great fun. He's been out with Isaac pawing through people's trash for tin cans. Twice last night I had to get up and go piss. I must of tripped over every tin can in the apartment. So I flick on the light and there's Isaac with this butcher knife. He'd feel sorry if he stabbed me. So I made him get rid of some of the cans, hang 'em up only when no one's there. "Know what else he's got? Rat traps. Every time I open a drawer or reach into a closet, I think I'm going to lose three fingers. Whenever I need something, I'll say, 'Hey, Duane, reach in and get me a pair of socks.' Then I wait for the snap. I don't want to see Duane hurt but he's got young fingers. And tomorrow night we're supposed to go down to George's for a little gettogether. It's going to take Isaac a good hour of fiddling with those chains before we can go. That stupid Duane, he told Isaac not to worry about the money. He says he's got a hundred left and Isaac can have that." George's get-together was a failure. It was limited to people living in the house and only the Malletts didn't come. Thinking back, Corbin decided that the party began to go wrong when Joe Gage arrived. He didn't stay long. Henry Oakes and Louise were talking on the couch. Henry seemed more relaxed than before. Duane was sitting near his feet, listening and scratching Gimli's ears. Gloin was trying to chew Duane's red neckerchief. The others were across the room around Gunther who was playing old labor songs that had lines like, "Homeless, homeless are we." Then Joe Gage arrived. He entered without knocking, glanced at Louise and Henry, then walked over toward Gunther. Nudging George in the ribs with his boot, Joe Gage said, "Better lock up your woman. Old Henry's on the trail again." Everything in the room stopped. Henry started to get up, but Louise whispered something to him, then got to her feet. She had on a dark green gown which reached the floor, and a string of amber beads. The gown was probably made from old curtains. She looked like a kind of beautiful plant. "What do you mean by that?" she asked.

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Joe Gage grinned, showing the gap where his front teeth were missing. He had on his white cowboy shirt with red trim. "Well, I know old Henry. The way he goes sniffing around. I'm surprised at you, George." Louise walked toward him. "Get out." "You talking to me, Miss?" Gage had expected some response from George or Henry. He hadn't thought it would come from Louise. Corbin was sitting in a corner with Ruth. It surprised him to see Louise's anger. There were white marks at her temples and her hands were pressed flat against her thighs. "Get out before I set the dogs on you." "Those dogs? They wouldn't hurt a flea. Say, George, do you always let your woman. . . . " Louise snapped her fingers twice. The dogs jumped up and trotted over. The fur stood up along their necks and shoulders. Joe Gage looked at the dogs standing in front of Louise. They had a springy quality in their back legs. Again Corbin noticed the blue X tattooed on the back of Gage's left hand. The tendons stood out around it. "Get out of here, Joe Gage." There wasn't much he could do except make a face. Without another word, he walked around the dogs and left. Louise shut the door after him. George started to say something, then stopped. After a moment, Louise returned to Henry on the couch. They talked for a while but Henry apparently wanted to leave. At last he got up, thanked George, and left. That put an end to the party atmosphere. Ruth said she had a date and went off by herself. Corbin didn't think anyone else wanted to stay but they probably thought it unfair to leave. Wencel and Helen were whispering together in a corner. Duane began fiddling with his puzzles. George stood up, obviously irritated. It occurred to Corbin that Joe Gage's words had had some effect. "I don't understand Henry. What kind of black is he anyway? You ask him about Black Power and he gets pissed. You ever see the books in his room? No Cleaver, no LeRoi Jones, no Malcolm X. Know what he's got? Charles Dickens. You think I'm kidding? Also Jane Austen. Lots of people like that." George was in the center of the room. In his green tie-dyed jersey and green fatigue pants, he looked like a weed to Louise's flower. She was on the couch, carefully not looking at him. "He's a graduate student in English," said Gunther. "He should be out on the streets. If I was black, I'd be out on the streets and I'd be fighting." Duncan began to fidget. He hated to hear people criticized unless he was the one doing the criticizing. "That's a fool thing to say and fecking racist as well!" George wilted a little. "Nah, Louise knows it's not true. I don't mean

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he has to be wildly militant. I just wish he wouldn't read Jane Austen. It makes me feel queer." The conversation was dropped. People moved around the room, reshuffling themselves. Helen started talking to Duane on the couch. Gunther began to play again, then stopped to argue about music with Wencel. McKiddie took the guitar and played some Tennessee songs for his wife who looked bored. Isaac was telling Louise about his burglar. Louise soothed him. The group around Gunther had been broken and people were slipping back into their own worlds. It was like a room full of cubicles. "Look, man," Gunther was saying, "all that shit they teach you in music school, form is completely free and any combination of notes that works is fine." Wencel kept shaking his head so that his little horns of hair kept flopping back and forth. "First you've got to know what forms exist. Otherwise you repeat what's been done." "What's wrong with that? Let people do what they want." "That doesn't mean everything has to be formless. . . ." "You can't have controlled joy, man. . . . " Helen was talking to Duane on the couch. With her thin body tucked into an angular ball, she looked more like a lemur than ever. It occurred to Corbin that, people told Duane things which they wouldn't tell anyone else. She had been talking about a composition of Wencel's to be played at the university before Christmas: a cantata for mixed voices, percussion and tape recorder. Now she switched to Wencel himself: "You don't know how hard he drives himself. He worries all the time. Once I was afraid he'd commit suicide. Deep down he's got a terrible temper but he directs it only at himself. I keep telling him he should break with his parents. They tear him apart. Neither appreciates his music. His mother hates me and his father thinks I'm too much like his mother." At the other end of the couch, Duane sat taking it in. Corbin thought it was like dripping water into a fire. He could almost hear the hiss. In the kitchenette, Duncan and George were squabbling about politics. George had recovered his good mood. His head kept bumping the pot of geraniums. "You talk about voting for Roosevelt. What good did it do? Now I'm not socialist like Gunther. All I'm saying is that we've got ten times the government that we need. We should break into large city-states like ancient Greece. We don't need any government at all. It keeps people from acting human." Duncan was hunched over and shaking his head. As usual he wore his work pants and workshirt with every button buttoned. "How're you going to stop junkies from robbing you with no government? You kids running through the streets. What did it accomplish? You're an idiot. If they gave out medals

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for all-time idiots, you'd get a fecking gold one. Not only would you get it, you'd be proud of it." After a while, people began reforming into a group; not so much a group as strangers connected by thin thread. There were eleven of them sitting on the floor, including Corbin. No one left but no one seemed to be having a good time. People began talking, going back to early memories and finding some real past to wrap themselves around. Corbin wasn't sure that anyone was really interested in anyone else's story; yet they let each other talk, no one interrupting before the other person was done. Some were more interesting than others. For instance, Jean McKiddie was a person who Corbin neither knew nor cared to know. He only talked to her when he paid his rent. But when she talked that evening, it was as if she were being covered with skin, given the necessary allotment of blood. She was a pretty woman with fine blond hair of the sort that can never be kept in place. She sat on the floor by her husband, drinking a bottle of Tab. "What I remember most is walking, walking from Treadway to Pressman's Home. That's in Tennessee. My Daddie'd get drunk and fired from his job, and me and my Ma, we'd pack a few things and walk five miles to Grandma's in Pressman's Home. She was never glad to see us. Then, maybe a week or two later, Daddie'd get another job at some new sawmill or maybe the same sawmill, and he'd come and get us and say how sorry he was. Then we'd walk back five miles up and down hill along those dirt roads. "The best time was when Daddie took me to Knoxville. I didn't dare blink, fearing it would go away. Maybe I was eight. All I knew then was Treadway and Spruce Pine and Pressman's Home and little towns like that. But when I saw Knoxville, I saw they weren't towns at all. They were just places with the same people doing the same things over and over. But in Knoxville there were store windows filled with things so pretty that your heart shook, and streets full of cars, and all kinds of people, not like Treadway where everyone looked the same. And I made up my mind right then that I wasn't going to spend my life in Treadway or any other of those mountain towns." Jean paused and pushed her hair away from her eyes. "But I knew if I was to get out, I'd half to find somebody to take me out. Then Jerry came back from the Navy. I wasn't even sixteen. I saw him strutting around talking about places like Japan and California. And I told myself I'd make him marry me 'cause there weren't any one else that looked as good. Even so it took me years to get him out of there. And know what he wants to do now?" Jerry laughed. It was a high laugh, almost a giggle. He reached for his wife's hand but she pulled it away. "He wants to go back down to Spruce Pine," Jean said, "and sit on somebody's front porch and whittle and spit. You couldn't take me there dead."

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She stopped and no one spoke for a moment. Someone had put candles on the desk. They were the only lights in the room. Their flames flickered, throwing shadows. Isaac began to talk about the death of his mother when he was seven. She had died giving birth to his sister. Gunther talked about the peace movement and an older brother who had gone to Canada to avoid the draft. George talked about his parents' divorce. As with Jean, it clarified him for Corbin, made him more visible when out of sight. George had been ten at the time of the divorce. His father was an executive with some insurance company. "They were both playing around. Dad hired detectives, trying to get out of paying alimony. He learned that Mom had been sleeping with the manager of the local A&P and he used to laugh at her for not getting Green Stamps. Me and my sister had to go to court. They both said how they wanted us. That's a joke. They got married to different people just a few months after it was finalized. . . . " George sat with Louise on one side of him and Gimli, the malamute, on the other. Whenever he spoke, his Afro quivered, as if agreeing or disagreeing with what he said. The candlelight seemed caught in it. "Ethel and me had to go out to Monroe and live with Aunt Harriet and her husband. They had three kids and none of them liked us. We were there for over a year. Then in the fall, I got put in a private school, Cranbrook, out in Bloomfield Hills. There were a bunch of kids there because their parents had split up. Ethel went to live with Mom. Can you imagine that? I got boarded at that school for four years even though my mother lived five miles away. Once she told me a lot of shit about the difficulties of a new marriage. What about my difficulties?" When he finished, someone else started talking, then someone else, Wencel talked about how he had nearly become a priest. Jerry talked about the Navy. Duane described his teacher, Mrs. Flynn, who had taught him to read. "All my other teachers said I couldn't. And Mom and Dad, they said I couldn't either. But Mrs. Flynn, she said I could and she taught me and I showed them I could. And April taught me too because she reads magazines all the time even though Dad said it'd make her eyes fall out." Duane went on to talk about the death of his mother four years before and how he had stayed after the funeral. "There was just me and some men with shovels and I watched them. They shoveled the dirt back into the hole. And I wanted to stop them but I was afraid to. And when the hole was filled up and the men went away, I looked at all that clean dirt where the hole had been. I remember it was a clear day. It was in October. There wasn't a single cloud, not one, and it made me think of a story April'd told me about how clouds were the ghosts of people that died. And I looked up, but there was

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only blue sky. And I went over to the grave and looked at that loose black dirt and I got down on my hands and knees and I began to burrow, I burrowed my arm down as far as I could reach. Then Mrs. Flynn came and she found me and took me to her house. I stayed there for days and days until my Dad came and got me." The dogs had inched into the center and George's guests had closed around them in a small circle, touching shoulders, elbows, knees. Duncan began talking. He sat next to Corbin, the light reflecting off the bald part of his head. His legs were crossed and his hands lay in his lap. They kept twitching, as if trying to catch the words that fell from his mouth. "My father was a watchmaker and when I got out of school, I became a watchmaker too because that's what I thought my father wanted, but he didn't care one way or the other. After my brother and sister drowned, he was always the same, no matter what I did. I worked with him from 1925 until 1938, though I moved away from home in 1930 because of my mother. She was always on my back. I even got married. Her name was Gertrude Muller and she never talked. She liked to knit and read bad books. Romances, that's what they were. She knitted mittens and gave them away to the neighborhood kids. They were always the same blue color. She must of got the yarn on sale. In the winter I'd see kids going to school and they'd all be wearing blue mittens. "We had one kid: Susan. She was born in 1933.1 always felt bad she got my nose, looked like a fecking button. Childbirth nearly drove Gertrude crazy. She kept telling me if she had another child she'd die. She was a Roman Catholic woman. We'd have sex about every three months and each time she'd say I was taking her life in my hands." Duncan yanked back his jaw, repositioning his teeth. He seemed to be wrapping his words in spit, then grinding them down. "Then Susan died. She got the polio. And my wife said she got the polio because I took her to the fecking beach and that's where kids got the polio. I remember her saying that. It was about a week after the funeral. It was a hot day and the sweat was pouring off both of us. I remember looking at her, then I don't know what came over me because I just drew back my fist and let her have it right in the face. She didn't say anything after that. "About a year later my father had a heart attack bad enough so he went in the hospital. Gertrude saw him there but I never did. I just kept fixing watches. The doctors told him to take a rest. They said I could run the shop for a while. He said he didn't need any rest, so he came back to the shop. Know what he named that place? The Tick Tock. He came back and he didn't talk about the heart attack and I didn't talk about nothing. But he looked sick and there was no color in his face. Then one morning, it was December 8, 1938, one morning I went to work and there was my father lying dead on

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the floor with his little tools scattered all around him. He'd been there all night. I looked down where he lay, just stared at him. He was still wearing his green visor, you know, the kind you can see through. And looking down I could see his open eyes through that visor and they looked like they were staring back at me, just like when he was alive, staring and not saying a word, and now he'd never say a word. And you know what I felt like doing? I felt like kicking him. I wanted to kick and keep kicking that cold dead body and that scared me. I couldn't see why I wanted to kick him, but at the same time it was what I wanted to do more than anything else. But instead of kicking him, I got the hell out of there. I left the fecking Tick Tock and walked over to the bus station. Walked, I nearly ran. I only had a couple of dollars but it was enough to get to New York City. I got there with two bits in my pocket. I was thirty-two-years old."

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SHORTLY PAST MIDNIGHT on Sunday, Duncan was walking to work and had just turned down Willis. The Turveydrop was a long block away. It was a cold night and Duncan wore a gray overcoat that reached his shins. On his head was a blue watch cap. He had still three quarters of a block to go when he saw five black teenagers walking toward him on the same side of the street. Because of the hour and because he felt groups weren't to be trusted, he reached in his coat pocket and put his hand on his knife. He also wanted to cross the street but he didn't wish to appear scared. The kids walked toward him, joking amongst each other. When they were about ten feet away, they stopped, blocking the sidewalk. In the darkness, they seemed more like constructions made from old clothes than people: denim jackets, jeans, sneakers, puffy knit caps. One of them spoke. "Hey, old man, give us a quarter." "Shit, he's got more'n a quarter. Give us a buck." Duncan stopped and drew out his knife, holding it folded in his hand. "I don't have a buck." "Sure you do, man." To the left of Duncan was a shoulder-high chain link fence; to his right, the curb was lined with cars. He unfolded his knife. "Get out-of my way. I've got to get to work." "Work? An old bum like you?" They began to move toward him, still close together. Duncan knew they didn't even see him as human. He was just something funny they had run into. He held out the knife and moved it back and forth so they could see the blade. It was a long thin blade. Duncan didn't say anything. He wasn't

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angry yet but he was frightened. There was a pause as the group looked at the knife. "Hey, check this old man here. He got hisself a little knife." Duncan moved to the left so his shoulder touched the fence. "You going to play with us, jive-ass?" said one of the kids. "You going to get yourself cut?" One of the five drew out a knife and took a step toward Duncan. Thinking he shouldn't hesitate, Duncan jumped forward and slashed at the boy with the knife. The boy leapt back, nearly falling. Although startled, the others laughed. "Hey, Chuck, you afraid of this little honkey? Let's teach him a lesson. Get on the other side of him. Come on, man." The group split and two went into the street around the cars. With his back to the fence, Duncan edged his way down the block. He kept moving the knife back and forth, covering the five youths. Spread out, they looked smaller. Not one was taller than he. Duncan looked around for some kind of help but the street was empty and the windows in the apartment buildings were mostly dark. He remembered reading stories about people being killed in the streets, while others, safe in their apartments, watched and didn't call the police. "We're going to cut you, man. You're going to be pleading for us to take your money. But we're just going to laugh. We don't want your money no more. We just going to cut you." Duncan stared at them, trying to make people out of them, but they remained just shapes, while their knit caps made their heads seem as large as bowling balls. Duncan decided to bluff them. He began to laugh. "Sure you're going to cut me. But you better be quick, because one of you's going to get it, and if you're not quick, I'll kill two. Who's it going to be? You, fatty? Or you with the knife? Who's going to get stuck?" The kids were quiet for a moment as if they hadn't realized Duncan could talk. Taking advantage of their uncertainty, Duncan slashed out at the youth in front of him, cutting the sleeve of his denim jacket. Then he turned to his left and slashed out again. The kids backed up a little and Duncan continued to move slowly along the fence. They began to taunt him. "You think you're quick. We're gonna cut out your eye." "Hey, Chuck, give him a little jab. Let's see him bleed." But they didn't move any closer. Duncan kept moving along the fence toward Cass and the Turveydrop. The three kids on his left backed up. "Who's going to be the one?" asked Duncan. "Who's going to get cut?" Several times the boy with the knife tried to get closer, but he didn't have the nerve to get too close. Duncan edged his way along the fence, crouched over, his gray coat surrounding him like a gunny sack.

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He was stopped at last by an alley which ran behind the buildings on Cass. The street itself was about twenty yards away. One of the kids moved into the alley, another went into the street. Duncan knew that if he crossed the mouth of the alley, they'd have him. He waited. There were two bars on the corner: the Turveydrop and Cobbs. There were other people nearby. Duncan told himself that he only had to wait until the kids were uncomfortably aware of this. The street lamp on the corner was close enough for him to see their faces. In the dark, he had imagined faces like weapons. He was surprised to see they looked like kids he passed on the street all the time. He didn't think any of them were over sixteen. A door slammed and a couple of students came out of Cobbs. They stood on the corner talking. Duncan wanted to call to them, to make a break across the mouth of the alley. The five kids looked up at the corner. The boy in the street moved to the dark shelter of a car. "Let's split. We can get this old fucker some other time." "Let's get him now." "Too many people, man." "Let's get him now." "You afraid, man?" "Come on, let's split." Duncan waited. The kids grew more nervous. At last they decided to leave. They moved around him, becoming a group again, faceless. "You wait, man. You'll see us again. Then we'll all have knives." On Saturday, the day after the dismal party, Duane, George and Louise went to Ann Arbor to see George's sister and to look for April. They returned Monday having found no trace of April, although some people thought they recognized the person in the photograph. George's sister was going to continue the search. Duncan, Gunther and Corbin met them coming in. Then they went to George's apartment to discuss what to do next. After some fruitless talk about rechecking the police department and Runaway House, Corbin said, "What about Canada? That woman at Crossroads thought she might have gone to Toronto or Montreal." Duane disagreed. "She's in Detroit." While Corbin still thought that was possible, it seemed foolish not to check other alternatives. "Gunther, you said you had a brother in Toronto. Would he help?" Gunther had been looking pessimistic. Now he cheered up. "Sure, man, he's a good guy. I'll write him. I'll even send a picture." So Gunther wrote his brother. Other than that little was decided upon except to keep up a general search. Ruth had offered to take Duane to see

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various artists and art schools later in the week. That evening Gunther and Duane were going to another radical meeting. Someone was giving a lecture on Trotsky. Duncan didn't know about it. About ten thirty that night there was a tapping on Corbin's door. Opening it, he found Gunther in the hall. Gunther was wearing what Corbin thought of as his socialist costume: a suit of blue denim. His black hair was out of its pony tail and half obscured his face. "I'm having trouble with Duane. He's in my room. Come down, will you? I can't do anything with him." "What happened?" Corbin couldn't imagine Duane giving trouble. "That lecture on Trotsky, man. It was all about how he got killed. Afterward somebody said Trotsky deserved it and Duane started shouting at him. I had to drag him out and catch a cab back here. I can't calm him down. I didn't want to tell Duncan right away. He'd crucify me." They hurried downstairs. Corbin paused only long enough to get Louise. "I think we may need you," he told her. They found Duane sitting on Gunther's bed. The blankets and red corduroy bedspread had been pushed down into a heap at the end. Duane was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He had kicked off his sneakers and they lay on the linoleum beneath him. He glanced up when the others came in. His face looked wrinkled. Then Corbin realized he was grieving. "They let him loose, Corbin. The man with many names. He killed Trotsky. He hit him on the head with an ice-axe. And the doctors took out Trotsky's brain and it weighed two pounds and thirteen ounces and his heart was very big too. The doctors said it was the biggest heart they had ever seen. And the man with many names went to prison, but they let him out again and he's still alive. He's not like Bakunin. He's alive right this second." Louise sat down next to Duane and took his hand. "Who is the man with many names?" she asked. "I wrote them down so I'd remember and I got the spelling right because I asked Gunther and he told me." He took a scrap of yellow paper out of the back pocket of his jeans. "His name was Ramon Mercade and Jacques Mornard and Frank Jacson and he never said what his real name was so maybe he had lots of others. And he pretended to be Trotsky's friend and he came to his prison and he pretended he was interested in politics and in all the stuff Trotsky taught. It wasn't really a prison, it was Trotsky's home, but Trotsky made it into a prison and he said it was like the first prison he ever lived in, because the doors were barred and there were electric wires and alarms and machine guns and lots of guards and lots of secretaries and Trotsky lived there with his wife and his grandson who was little. So it was like a prison and that's what Trotsky said and people said it was silly to live in a prison, but one night a whole bunch of painters with bombs and machine

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guns came, and a spy let them in, and they tied up the guard and they shot their machine guns into Trotsky's bedroom, they shot lots of times and later they counted seventy-three bullet holes in the walls. But Trotsky was hiding behind the bed with his wife covering him up. And his grandson, he was under his bed too and he only got his toe hurt. And the painters kept shooting for twenty minutes but they didn't get Trotsky and when they left they took one of Trotsky's secretaries, Mr. Harte. And the police said Mr. Harte was the spy but Trotsky didn't believe that. And the only time Trotsky cried was when they found Mr. Harte's body, and he cried and said that now they had killed eight of his secretaries. I don't know why painters tried to kill Trotsky. I mean, they were real painters like Ruth, and the painter that was in charge of them, he's still alive this minute just like Frank Jacson. . . ." Corbin didn't know what Duane was talking about. Later he learned that the raid on Avenida Viena, May 24, 1940, was led by David Alfaro Siqueiros, the Mexican muralist. Gunther was sitting in the tattered brown armchair and Corbin was on the floor by the desk. Gunther's right hand rested on his thigh and his fingers flicked back and forth as if practicing strums. Louise remained next to Duane. She had on a blue terry cloth robe which looked big enough to fit all four of them inside it. Duane was still talking. "And Trotsky, he joked about the raid and every morning he said to his wife, 'See, they didn't kill us last night after all.' But he didn't know that Frank Jacson was sneaking up on him. And they fixed up his house and they made it more like a prison, and they made the walls higher and they made watch towers and armored doors and Trotsky's friends gave him a bulletproof vest which made him cross because he didn't want to wear it. But Frank Jacson watched them building the walls and he said it wouldn't do any good because next time the painters would try something else. "Then one day Frank Jacson came to Trotsky with something he had written and he asked Trotsky to read it, and Trotsky said okay although he didn't want to. And they went into Trotsky's study alone. And ten minutes later Trotsky came out and told his wife he didn't want to see Frank Jacson again, because he was acting funny and kept his hat and coat on even though it was hot. And you know why he did that? Because under his coat he had an ice axe and a gun and a dagger and a letter saying Trotsky was bad. But Trotsky told Frank Jacson what was wrong with what he had written, and Frank Jacson went away because that day he was only practicing." Duane stopped to catch his breath. Louise still held his left hand. His other hand kept opening and closing like a mouth. "Then what happened?" asked Louise. "Well, three days later Frank Jacson came back, and at the meeting they talked a lot about that day. A man told how Trotsky woke up early and

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said to his wife, 'See, they didn't kill us last night.' And he said he felt good and was going to do lots of work, but first he went to play with his rabbits because he liked rabbits and he stayed with them for two hours. And then he read his mail and wrote letters and worked all day until five o'clock when he went back to play with his rabbits. And there was Frank Jacson and he was wearing an overcoat and a hat even though it was a hot day. And he wanted to talk about his article again. Mrs. Trotsky said he looked sick and asked him if he wanted something to eat, but he didn't. He only wanted a glass of water even though Trotsky said he looked sick too. And Trotsky didn't want to look at Frank Jacson's article but he took off his gloves and he told Frank Jacson, 'Okay, I'll read your article,' and they walked to his study and when they got to the door Trotsky thought, 'This man could kill me,' that's what he told his wife later. "And Trotsky sat down at his desk and started to read Frank Jacson's article. Frank Jacson waited because he was scared, then he went round behind Trotsky and he took the ice axe from under his coat, and he raised it up, and Trotsky was still reading, and he swung it down as hard as he could, and he hit Trotsky on the head just as hard as he could. And Frank Jacson thought it would kill Trotsky but it didn't, because Trotsky made a terrible scream and he jumped up even though his head was smashed and his face was all torn. And he jumped up and he started throwing things at Frank Jacson. He threw books and he threw inkpots. And then he ran at Frank Jacson even though Trotsky was an old man, and he fought with Frank Jacson and bit Frank Jacson's hand and took away the ice axe. And Frank Jacson was so scared that he didn't do anything. He didn't take out his gun and he didn't take out his dagger. "Then Trotsky staggered back and that was when all the guards and his wife rushed in, and the guards jumped on Frank Jacson and started hitting him with their guns. And Trotsky just stood in the doorway, and his head and his face were all bloody, and Mrs. Trotsky thought part of the ceiling had fallen on him, but he said very calmly, 'Jacson.' Then he fell down on the floor, and she put a cushion under his head and a piece of ice on the wound, and cleaned away the blood. And Trotsky said his grandson shouldn't come in and that he had known Frank Jacson was going to try to kill him. "Then his secretary came in and told Trotsky he'd be all right, but Trotsky said, 'No, this is the end. This time they have succeeded.' And he said, 'Take care of my wife, she's been with me many, many years.' And his wife cried and kissed his broken head. And Trotsky told the guards to stop hitting Frank Jacson and he said, 'Don't kill him. He must be made to talk.' "Then the doctor came and the ambulance and Mrs. Trotsky covered Trotsky with a white shawl and held his bleeding head in both her hands and she rode in the ambulance with him and there were policemen on motorcycles and lots of sirens. And Trotsky lay there and he said he felt better even though

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he knew he was dying. "When they got to the hospital, they cut his hair and he joked about it because he was supposed to see the barber the day before but didn't. And he talked to his secretary and told him what had happened and what he should tell the newspapers, but he talked very quietly because his head hurt. And the nurses began to undress him and they cut off his jacket with scissors, and his shirt and his vest, but then Trotsky stopped them and he said to his wife, 'I do not want them to undress me, I want you to undress me.' And she did it and she kissed him and he kissed her back, but he didn't say anything and he didn't say anything ever again. "Then the doctors operated on Trotsky and he was asleep for twentytwo hours and then he died and all the doctors were surprised by how big his brain was and how big his heart was. And three hundred thousand people came to see his body and then his body was burned and the ashes were buried in his garden and they put a red flag just like my neckerchief over his grave. And his wife lived in the house for twenty more years and Frank Jacson was in another prison for twenty years but he never said another word except to lie." Duane stopped. Louise put her arms around him, wrapping him in her blue robe and rocking him back and forth. After a while he calmed down, although he kept trying to tell them the story again and again. Louise and Corbin took him upstairs and helped Isaac put him to bed. Duncan was working that night. Corbin hoped Duane would be asleep before Duncan got home. Isaac was furious but he didn't say anything; he just kept mumbling to himself. The next morning Corbin was waked at eight by a hammering on the glass. It was Duncan. "Come with me. I don't trust myself." Reaching Gunther's door, Duncan pounded on it until it was opened. The sound echoed through the house and Corbin imagined people springing to their feet and grabbing at solid objects for protection. Gunther knew immediately what was wrong. Duncan gave him a shove, sending him toppling back onto the bed. "No more radical causes. No more fecking meetings. You want to take Duane some place, take him to a Walt Disney movie. Nothing with a lot of shouting. No fecking stimulation. All night he's tossing and turning. He wakes up yelling. Why? All because Trotsky got himself killed. I heard that story five times last night, all about the ice axe and the big brain and the big heart and the rabbits. Not to mention the painters. Jesus, Duane never wants to see a painter again. What the hell you have on your fecking mind taking him to a thing like that?" Gunther tried to look nonchalant, which was difficult, sprawled as he was sideways on an unmade bed. "I had no idea, man. He seemed to like those meetings. He got excited. . . . "

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"Sure he got excited. He's an excitable person. But if you ever take him to another, I'll excite you with a fecking frying pan. You understand me? Bakunin was bad enough." Wednesday night at work Corbin saw something which he later realized he should have paid more attention to. Around ten thirty Joe Gage came into the bar with a well-dressed man who looked familiar. Then Corbin realized it was Tom Morelli, one of Ruth's two supporters. They sat down in a back booth and stayed about an hour. Joe Gage was doing most of the talking. Morelli looked unhappy. He was a tall, big shouldered man, slightly overweight with thick curly black hair. Corbin got off early that night, leaving before Duncan arrived. Duncan had been coming in at different times, taking different routes, since his runin with those kids. After work, Corbin would often walk back with him but that night he didn't want to wait. Corbin was just falling asleep about two hours later when he heard a tremendous crashing and shouting from the next apartment. He was halfway to the door before he was fully awake. "Goddammit to fecking hell, Isaac, your fecking tin cans, they should be wrapped around your neck and the whole lot of you thrown into the river." Entering the apartment, Corbin found Duncan on the kitchen floor, entangled in chains of tin cans that were wrapped around his gray overcoat. Isaac stood above him dressed in a tattered suit of long underwear and holding a butcher knife. Duane was on his knees in the doorway laughing. "Funny, it's not funny at all. I come in here, I could be stabbed." As Corbin disentangled him, Duncan went on to curse Isaac, the tin cans, Duane, the smallness of the apartment, Isaac's money, the city of Detroit, then Corbin when he started laughing. "You want to fecking kill me? You want to give me some kind of attack? I'm just a goddamn old man. A swamper. I like to come home at night. I take off my fecking shoes and sit and think for a while. What kind of thinking can I do if I kill myself on your goddamn tin cans? You string those up one more night and I'm moving out. I'll run away with Jewel Mallett." Here Duncan began to laugh. Isaac relaxed and started to grin. Soon all three were laughing and clapping each other on the back. Corbin realized he was spending more time with them, more time with many people in the house, without even realizing it. It was as if their lives were being shuffled together. What surprised Corbin most was that he didn't care. Ruth was to go out with Duane on Thursday. There were several groups of painters living in the Wayne area, plus a number of cooperative studios. It was possible that April might have met some artist. Duane said she liked

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to draw. She drew horses and a water color of her mother which had been framed and hung in their living room. But because of David Alfaro Siqueiros's raid on the Avenida Viena thirty-three years before, Duane didn't want to meet any painters. Even Ruth was suspect. Although he had liked her before, Duane confided to Corbin that he thought she too might be a Stalinist. So Corbin told Ruth about Duane's experience with Trotsky and she was sensitive enough to see that he had been hurt. She wanted to correct Duane's ideas about painters. She had no wish to be thought a Stalinist spy. They talked in her room which was very neat and clean. On the window sill were a number of potted plants: begonias and philodendrons. "Go ask him to come down here," she said. "I'll talk to him." Whatever Ruth said to him, it was clear that Duane was won over; and later that afternoon the two of them went off to visit Ruth's artist friends, believing they might know something of April. They spent two days at it and Ruth continued to charm him. She liked Duane. She thought he was funny. Nobody anywhere knew anything about Duane's sister. Duane talked to Corbin about where they had been on Friday evening in Corbin's apartment. George had recently given Duane an old army surplus field jacket, and even though it was too large Duane had taken to wearing it indoors and out, because, as he said, he had never had an old army surplus field jacket before. He wore it as he sat on Corbin's kitchen table, swinging his legs and telling him about the Detroit art scene. "We saw lots of painters, all sorts of painters. I met a painter who painted nothing but bricks, and a painter who threw his paint on the floor and walked in it and let me walk in it too, and a painter who painted naked ladies and had a naked lady right in the room with him and she said she was cold, and a painter who cut things out and then took other things like pieces of bread and half an apple and stuck them to a board, and sculptors and all sorts of people. And I saw Mike Dubanowski and he was making a monster out of garbage cans and it had wings and he called it the Spirit of the Future. He was feeling sad because the garbage cans kept falling off, but I told him I liked it and that made him feel better. And we ate Coney Island hot dogs, and Ruth told me about her real father who was killed in Korea and how her mother got married again to a man she doesn't like. And then today we were walking home and we saw Joe Gage working at a gas station and I wanted to talk to him, but Ruth said no so I just waved but he didn't wave back." On Saturday, October 27, Duane spent another day with Joe Gage. It began late in the morning with a visit to the Gaiety Burlesk. Some women danced, took off their clothes and exchanged witty remarks with members of the audience. After the stage show, there were movies. Duane would only say that they showed two women doing something with a short stick. Although

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it embarrassed him, he said it was "really interesting." Then they went to a bar with topless dancers. Duane had a hot dog and a beer. He didn't like the beer much. Joe Gage introduced him to several women, saying they were for sale. Duane said one of them was nice. She had long brown hair like April. But he didn't want to buy her; there wouldn't be room enough in Isaac and Duncan's apartment. Besides, he said, "It would be a real responsibility. You'd have to feed her and buy her clothes." Duncan was furious. He dragged Corbin over to his apartment so he could hear the news from the prodigal's own mouth. Isaac wasn't there. Corbin was irritated with Joe Gage but found it difficult not to smile. "It's fecking serious, Daniel. I'm going to talk to that bastard. Why's he take Duane to such places? He could catch a disease. I'm going to talk to him right now." "Shout if you need help." "Up yours." Corbin continued talking to Duane who sat at the kitchen table with a large Coke and a package of Fig Newtons. The burlesque had been "fun." He had enjoyed watching the people in the bars. He had done nothing wrong. Also, Joe Gage had been good company and had bought Duane food and drink. He had told him funny stories. He had been helping Duane look for his sister. "Would your sister go to places like that?" Corbin asked. "Oh, she'd like them." Joe Gage had also kept up his slander about people in the house. Ruth was the only person he hadn't attacked, although he told Duane that he could probably buy her any time. Duane said he didn't need to buy her. "I can see her whenever I want." Joe Gage probably hadn't understood that. Duane saw nothing wrong. As long as someone wasn't accused of evil he accepted what Joe Gage said as possible. He had seen all sorts of new things in Detroit He wandered about from hour to hour in a constant state of amazement. Although what Joe Gage told him was strange, it was no stranger than many things he had already seen. They were still sitting in the kitchen when Duncan returned. He was thoughtful. "I stormed in there mad as anything. He was lying on his bed reading a girlie magazine. You know the temper he's got. I thought we'd have a fecking fight. No such thing. He said he understood perfectly the way I felt. He hadn't known Duane was so inexperienced. He was too obliging. What could I do, call him a liar?" On Saturday Detroit's homicide count reached 616. One man was killed by a shotgun blast during an argument at the end of an all night party. He was twenty-six. Another man was shot and killed when he tried to hold up a

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bar. He was twenty-three. In a third incident, two friends were walking down the street when they saw two men running toward them, one chasing the other. The man doing the chasing drew a gun and fired. The bullet missed its target and hit one of the friends in the throat. He was eighteen. In a fourth incident, a seventeen-year-old youth was accused of entering a Catholic church during a Saturday evening service, grabbing an usher and announcing a holdup. When the usher tried to get away, the youth shot him three times.

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CORBIN DIDN'T WORK Sunday night. Late in the afternoon, his boss called and asked him to work Tuesday instead. The only other person who knew this was Ruth. She knew because they spent the evening together. They even took a bath together which was particularly daring because of the smallness of Corbin's tub. The walls of the bathroom were bright yellow and made them look like children with jaundice. Above the toilet hung a photograph of Corbin's father graduating from Harvard at the age of twenty. Afterward, they got a couple of bottles of Strohs from the refrigerator and went back to bed feeling virtuously clean. "Anything new with Joe Gage or Mallett?" Corbin asked after a while. "Not really. When I was with Duane on Friday, we saw Gage working at a gas station on Third. He looked like he wanted to hit me. I'm sure he thinks Duane and I are fucking. "Are you?" It surprised Corbin how easily he could ask that question. Ruth rolled over on her back. The light from the kitchen made her profile look like a small range of hills. "Duane's sweet, but sleeping with him would mess up my life. I certainly wouldn't seduce him. Ernie and Tom have been a little chilly lately. They both want me to move. If my studio weren't four blocks away, I probably would." Corbin wanted to ask more about Duane, but Ruth turned the conversation back to Joe Gage: how she kept seeing him on the street when she was with Tom or Ernie. Corbin remembered seeing Joe Gage and Morelli together in the Turveydrop, but before he could mention it they were interrupted by someone shouting in the next apartment. "Hey, hey you!" This was followed by a banging and crashing. At first Corbin thought it was only Duncan falling into the tin cans again. Then there was more 116

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shouting. "I caught you, goddammit! Corbin! Corbin!" Corbin pulled on his jeans and stumbled to the door. Throwing it open, he was in time to see someone turn the corner at the bottom of the stairs. He called to Isaac: "Are you all right?" "Yes, dammit. Don't let him get away!" Corbin ran down the back stairs to the rear entrance of the house. The door was wide open. Running into the parking lot, he saw someone disappear into the alley. It was a white man, small and very thin. Corbin started after him but hadn't got more than ten feet before he was hopping up and down. The parking lot was covered with sharp cinders and he had no shoes. It was a chilly, rainy night. As Corbin limped back to the house, George came charging out. "Which way did he go?" "Down the alley. You won't catch him now." But George was already running. Corbin thought he looked like the sort of runner who had difficulty stopping. When Corbin got back to Isaac's apartment, he found him in the living room with Louise, Ruth, Wencel and Gunther. Isaac was on the couch. He kept pulling at his moustache and looking embarrassed. "No, he didn't get anything. I tricked him. I knew he'd try again and I've been waiting. I went out earlier, then sneaked back through the alley. How come you didn't go to work tonight, Daniel? I heard you splashing around in there." Isaac grinned. "I changed shifts with someone. Are you okay?" "He pushed me down, that's all. Too bad I couldn't get a light on him." "At least you're all right," said Louise. She picked up a chair that had been knocked over. The floor was strewn with chains of tin cans. There was one made entirely of soup cans and another made entirely of beer cans. They all kept tripping over them. "Man, you're lucky he didn't have a gun," said Gunther. Louise began picking up the tin cans. "Should we call the police?" "They'd only arrest me for something." "Where's Duncan and Duane?" "At the movies. They should be back soon. Duncan took him to see Fantasia. No, if you don't mind, I'd like to get this place cleared up. I appreciate your coming, but I'm a little shaken and. . . . "That's all right" said Louise. "We were just going." As they started to leave, George came dashing back up the stairs. He hadn't even caught a glimpse of the burglar. Naturally, he wanted to know what had happened. He wore a red t-shirt with "Keep On Truckin" printed above a couple of dudes with big feet. It was sopping wet and plastered to his chest. Louise took his arm. "I'll tell you later. Isaac's a little upset."

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Corbin was going too, when Isaac stopped him. "Wait a minute, Daniel, I'd like to talk to you." Corbin came back into the kitchen. He wondered if Ruth was still in his apartment or had gone back downstairs. He hoped she was in his apartment. "What bothers me, Daniel, was that someone didn't think I was here and that same person must have thought you were at work. At first I thought it was Joe Gage but the person was too small for Gage. I keep thinking that the only other person who knows I keep a little money on hand is Jean McKiddie. She saw it once, just like I told you. I was going to talk to her but she doesn't like me much. Would you talk to her?" "I'll do it first thing in the morning." "Did you see the person?" Isaac kept pushing one hand through his white hair, making it stand up. "Small, very thin and white. That's all I saw." "Doesn't Joe Gage have a friend that looks like that?" "I think so, but so do lots of people. It's like Duane's picture of his sister." Early Monday morning Corbin went down to talk to Jean McKiddie. Jerry was at work. He pumped gas at a filling station on Third. The apartment was a dreary little place with pale green walls. On one was a large painting on black velvet showing a stag reared up between a pair of lofty oaks, sniffing a distant forest fire. Corbin was never sure what to think of Jean. They had talked once or twice since George's party and while she was never unfriendly, neither was she particularly cordial. There was a watchfulness about her. Several times in the hall Corbin had caught her looking at him. She wouldn't turn away when he looked back but kept staring for a moment or two. On Monday morning she was almost charming. She had on a green flannel bathrobe covered with yellow daisies and purple slippers with pink puff balls on the toes. After describing Isaac's encounter with the burglar, Corbin asked Jean about seeing the money. He was very tactful, suggesting she might have mentioned it to someone. "I saw his money all right. It gave me a start, partly because I didn't know anybody was home. They'd been complaining about a leaky faucet. Some people will complain about anything. I knocked, I know I did, but there was no answer so I used my key and went in. There was Isaac standing over the kitchen table. I've never been so surprised in my life because the whole table was just covered with dollar bills. Well, Isaac, he was just as surprised as me, but then he scooped the money into a paper bag and bellowed at me to get out. Now that startled me too, because Isaac is always as mild as milk.

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He came down later and apologized, but he didn't mention the money. "I told Jerry about it, but he just laughed. He's never serious about anything. Then who else? Joe Gage, that's right. Well, he thought I was joking. I remember his saying that every old bum in the city is supposed to be a miser. That made me cross, because the whole table was covered with money and they weren't one dollar bills either, they were twenties and even more. And so I told Joe Gage and he saw I wasn't joking." "Was he interested?" "Well, sure, it was a whole fortune, and who would have thought it of old Isaac, begging all day the way he does. But if he doesn't want that money stolen he should put it in a bank. Keeping money in a paper bag, he's just luring people into temptation. Not that Joe Gage took it of course. He was out with Jerry until all hours last night celebrating his first pay check at the gas station. Jerry got him the job after Joe got fired from that auto parts place. They were both drunk as lords. I know because I put 'em to bed." Leaving Jean, Corbin went up and knocked on Joe Gage's door. There was no answer. Then he went upstairs to see Isaac and Duncan. They, too, were gone. Duane was alone in the apartment. Although the room was warm, he had on George's old field jacket. Louise's red scarf was wrapped around his neck. Duane sat at the kitchen table with twelve metal puzzles lined up in front of him. "I can solve four of them now." Four of the puzzles were to his left, the other eight, the hard ones, were to his right. "Where's Isaac and Duncan?" "Out." Duane began working on another puzzle. Corbin returned to his apartment, made himself some coffee, then sat down at his typewriter and the next installment of his police novel, which was growing increasingly imperfect every day. Around noon he heard Isaac and Duncan quarreling on the stairs. "You're not going to get a fecking gun. You even say that again and I'm moving out. Put the money in the fecking bank." By now they were arguing on the landing. Corbin opened his door and watched. Duane watched from the other doorway. Both men were completely absorbed in each other: Duncan in his gray overcoat and blue watch cap looking up, Isaac in a navy blue officer's coat looking down, like a street lamp quarreling with a parking meter. "It's no safer in the bank. Anyway, I've shot lots of guns. You think I'm a baby? I'll buy a .22 rifle." "That's the most dangerous gun you can get. It maddens them. You can't kill a person with a fecking .22 unless you're Annie Oakley." "Who's Annie Oakley?" asked Duane.

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Noticing Corbin and Duane, they looked embarrassed. Duncan showed Corbin a small box. "He won't put the money in the bank so I got three new locks. Now he wants to buy a gun." "What about a safety deposit box?" Corbin suggested. Isaac shook his hands in front of him as if drying them off. "I'd have to pay for it." "Jesus fecking Christ, I'll pay for it!" "It takes a key. What if I lost it?" "I'll make you a hundred keys," said Duncan. "I'll think about it, but I still want a gun. I swear, if someone comes after my money again, I'll buy a tank." "And won't that look fecking silly in the living room." Isaac admitted it would. They laughed about this for a while, then went inside to make lunch. Corbin returned to his typewriter. As he slid a new sheet of paper under the roller he thought that there was nothing worse than wanting to protect someone and being unable to. Corbin didn't find Joe Gage until Tuesday evening. He was in his room polishing a pair of black pointed shoes. It was a small, anonymous room with white walls and a brown metal bed. Joe Gage kept it very clean. The only evidence of human occupation was a neat pile of pornographic magazines on the bureau, a row of boots and shoes sticking out from beneath the bed and Joe Gage himself. After describing the burglary attempt, Corbin asked him if he knew about the money. Gage looked at Corbin carefully. It was what Corbin thought of as a slow look. "I don't know about any money." Corbin stood with his back to the door. When Joe Gage spoke, Corbin could see the black hole caused by his missing front teeth. It made it seem as if there were a smaller creature in Joe Gage's mouth that he let speak for him. Gage sat at a table cluttered with cans of polish, several polishing rags and brushes, the black shoes and a bright gooseneck lamp. The light glistened on one of the shoes. The other still needed brushing. "Jean McKiddie said she told you that Isaac had a lot of money." "Did she? I don't remember. It's none of my business anyway." "Maybe you mentioned it to someone." "That old man's life is no concern of mine. I've got better things to talk about." Although he spoke quietly, there was a cynical edge to his voice, making it clear that he could become angry at any moment. "I saw the burglar," said Corbin. "It looked like your friend Earl Dittmer." "Then you're all set. All you have to do is call the police." "Isn't he your friend?"

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"We had a fight. You throw him in jail. It's no concern of mine." Corbin considered calling Joe Gage a liar but he didn't see what would be gained by it. After a few more hard stares, he went back to his apartment, feeling frustrated that he had accomplished so little. As Corbin was leaving for work a little later, Duane stopped him in the hall. He was neatly dressed in a freshly ironed white shirt and clean blue jeans. His reddish brown hair, which had grown considerably in the past two months, was combed back over his head. He seemed gloomy. "Is Ruth mad at me?" "Not that I know of." "Joe Gage said she was." "Why don't you ask her yourself?" It was nearly ten and Corbin knew he would be late to work. Duane slowly nodded his head. "Tomorrow's Halloween." "So it is," said Corbin, moving toward the stairs. "Have you done any more puzzles?" "I did one more." He made it sound as if he had buried his favorite dog. "Do you think she's mad at me?" "I haven't seen her since Sunday. Go ask her. She's not going to bite you. Look, I've got to run. I'll talk to you about it tomorrow." But the next day Corbin was busy with his book, then he had to be at the Turveydrop at eight to help with the Halloween crowd. He saw Duane only as he was going to work. Duane was downstairs in the hall with George and Louise, looking gloomier than ever. George was urging him to come to a costume party and Duane was refusing. George was disguised as a vague variety of bear: a brown, one-piece jump suit made from furry cloth and leather mittens. There was also a head: a wire frame covered with the same brown material. The eyes and mouth were bright red. George held the head under his arm. Louise wore a yellow satin prom dress and carried a silver leash which was attached to George's collar. Corbin quickly said hello and hurried on his way. It was a rainy and windy night. The children who came into the Turveydrop trick-or-treating were wet and bedraggled. They were neighborhood kids and their costumes were homemade, sometimes no more than a black mask. There were ghosts in sheets and a few clowns. But mostly they came as tramps, holding out their ragged caps to students at the bar. Thinking they looked like young editions of Isaac, Corbin began to see Isaac in all of their faces. He got off work around midnight. Despite the hour, a few trick-ortreaters were still scurrying along the dark sidewalks. Although they might have been purse snatchers, the sight of them made Corbin nostalgic. He had never been one of those good children who collected for UNICEF, even

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though his parents said he should think of others. Each Halloween he begged diligently at Ann Arbor fraternities and sororities, getting enough candy to last him through Christmas. When he approached the house on Alexandrine, Corbin saw that both the porch and hall lights were out. It wasn't until he was inside that he noticed Joe Gage, who was standing next to Ruth's door listening. Corbin would have bumped into him if he hadn't been wearing a white shirt. Gage was laughing to himself. Corbin reached toward him, meaning to yank him away. Joe Gage put a finger to his lips and pointed toward the door. "Duane." Corbin felt angry but he also felt balanced between interest and jealousy. Joe Gage motioned to Corbin to listen. Putting his ear to the door, Corbin could hear Ruth talking. "Do you like that? Shh. Here, let me kiss it. . . . Isn't that nice? Give me your hand. Do you like touching my breasts? Shh. Just relax. You see how hard it is now? Lie down next to me. . . ." Glancing up, Corbin saw Joe Gage's grin and in the other man's face he seemed to see his own face. Corbin stepped back from the door and made a grab for Gage but he darted aside, again putting a finger to his lips and grinning. Corbin didn't wish to make a scene in the hall, partly because he was afraid that was the very thing he wanted. He didn't like to think of Duane and Ruth together, but he couldn't separate his disapproval from his jealousy and he knew he had no claims on Ruth. He had never wanted to have any claims but now his guts hurt and his feelings were confused. Instead of taking a swing at Joe Gage, Corbin left him and went upstairs. He wanted to talk to someone. He couldn't separate the emotional and logical reasons for his disapproval. Perhaps there were no logical reasons. When he reached the top landing, Corbin knocked on Isaac's door. Duncan was still at the Turveydrop. Opening the door, Isaac took one look at Corbin's face and asked what was wrong. "Duane's downstairs fucking Ruth. I heard them talking. Joe Gage is listening at the door and laughing like crazy." Isaac began looking for his shoes. "We've got to stop them." He found one black shoe under the bunkbed; the other had disappeared. "Come on, Daniel, help me." But by then Corbin had grown calmer. Wasn't he being foolish? Certainly it was just his jealousy that kept digging at him. "Why should we stop them?" Isaac looked at Corbin with his large blue eyes. He sat on the lower bunk with one shoe on and the other still missing. "He's a child," he said. "He's eighteen and Ruth's being very nice."

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"He's still a child. It won't do him any good. I don't mean it's immoral, it's just. . . ." He found the other shoe behind the chair and stood holding it and looking uncertain. "Ruth won't hurt him." Corbin kept remembering Joe Gage's laughing face. "I don't want him knowing that stuff, Daniel. He's not mentally equipped for it. I don't care how nice Ruth is." He sat down on the couch and began putting on his other shoe. "I don't know why I don't like it. I love Duane. I'd do anything for him. But sometimes I look at him and feel worried. You're right. It doesn't matter a damn that he's with Ruth." Isaac gave a sudden laugh. "It's so goddamn silly. Let him have some fun. What the hell's Joe Gage doing down there anyway?" Corbin was about to say he didn't know when they heard someone shouting, more like yelling. This was followed by someone running up the stairs. The door burst open. It was Duane. He was naked. His lip had been badly cut and drops of blood spotted his chest. "Someone's hurting Ruth and he hit me and hit me. Corbin, do something. . . . " As Corbin ran down the stairs he heard someone shouting, "You bitch, you bitch," over and over. Reaching Ruth's room, he saw her curled up on the floor, covering her head with her arms. She was naked. Tom Morelli stood over her and was kicking her. The plants on the window sill had been overturned and the floor was covered with dirt and leaves. Reaching forward, Corbin grabbed the shoulder of Morelli's raincoat and yanked him around. Then he hit him in the mouth. Morelli's teeth cut deep into his knuckles. Morelli staggered back, nearly falling over Ruth, then regained his balance. He was shorter than Corbin but about his weight. He dove at Corbin who twisted aside and hit him again in the face. Then Corbin grabbed him by his coat and shoved him into the hall. He bounced off Mallett's door and came back swinging, hitting Corbin's cheek and knocking him off balance. George's railway calendar fluttered to the floor. Corbin felt furious, not so much at Morelli but at everything: Isaac, Duane, Ruth, Joe Gage, the whole house, everything. Morelli swung at Corbin again who blocked the punch and drove his fist into Morelli's stomach so he grunted and fell back against Mallett's door again and slipped on the calendar. The lights in the hall were back on but all Corbin could see was Morelli's red face surrounded by black, curly hair. From somewhere other people were shouting. Morelli grabbed at Corbin's arm. He sidestepped and hit Morelli in the neck. Corbin's right hand hurt but he had the sense that for two months what he had wanted to do most was to hit someone, and now here was Tom Morelli, and Corbin wanted to hit him again and again.

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Jerry McKiddie was running toward them. As Morelli charged Corbin again, McKiddie dove, knocking him to the floor. Then Gunther and George came running down the stairs. George still had on his sick bear costume, the synthetic fur jump suit and wire frame head. He threw off the head and leapt at Morelli. The head rolled to Corbin's feet and stared up at him with its red eyes. There was a lot of noise, a lot of shouting and heavy breathing and bodies banging against the walls and the floor. Morelli struggled for another minute, then abruptly gave up. The others sat on him, holding him to the floor. "Call the police," said McKiddie. "No!" Ruth stood in her doorway. She had pulled on a long, purple Indian dress. A dark bruise shone around her left eye and her lower lip was bleeding. McKiddie was apologetic. "I got to call the police." "I said let him go. I won't press charges." McKiddie shrugged and stood up. Gunther and George let go of Morelli and jumped back. Morelli didn't move. He stared at the ceiling and didn't say anything. Corbin looked around for Joe Gage. He wasn't there, although they had now been joined by Wencel and Louise. Jewel Mallett opened her door, peeped out and shut it quickly. McKiddie prodded Morelli with his foot. "Get up and get out." Slowly, Morelli got to his feet. The right sleeve of his raincoat was nearly torn off. His shirt was ripped open showing the black, curly hair on his chest. Corbin began to feel sorry for him. Morelli didn't speak or look at anyone. Turning, he pulled open the door and left. McKiddie shut the door after him. Louise put her hand on Ruth's shoulder. "Are you all right? Here, we'll help you clean up." Ruth pulled away. She looked at Louise as if she hated her. "I can take care of myself. What're you all staring at? The show's over." Ruth went back into her room and shut the door. George picked up his railway calendar. It was torn and crumpled. He straightened it out then stuck it back on Mallett's door. His costume was ripped down the front. Louise handed him his sick bear's head. "You goon," she said kindly. No one wanted to talk about what had happened. Louise asked Corbin if he wanted a bandage for his bleeding hand. He said he had some upstairs. People began returning to their rooms. Corbin looked at Ruth's door, then tried the handle. It was open. Ruth was standing by her bed, looking at the floor, the dirt from the flower pots, the torn leaves. More bruises had begun to rise on her face which was splotched with purple and a livid pink. She didn't say anything. Corbin put his arm around her shoulders. "Come upstairs," he said. Ruth pulled away. "I don't want to see Duane."

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"You don't have to. Just come to my room." Ruth stood quietly. She had begun to shiver. "Oh, Corbin, it was terrible." He put his arms around her again, but she didn't say anything else and she didn't cry. After a few minutes, she followed him upstairs. The house was silent. Corbin considered checking on Duane, but didn't want to face him. Ruth refused to let Corbin help her wash. She stood naked in his small, yellow bathroom, bathing her face in cold water and gingerly touching her ribs. "Are they broken?" he asked. She didn't answer, just kept washing her face. Corbin cleaned the knuckles of his hand with alcohol. It was a nice sharp pain. Ruth spent the night with Corbin. They lay side by side but didn't touch except by accident. Ruth didn't say a word. Corbin lay awake a long time, listening to the silence of the house and the sound of rain on the roof. Now and then a car hissed down Alexandrine. There were occasional sirens in the distance. There was no sound from the next apartment. Corbin wondered if Duane were asleep or staring at the ceiling like the rest of them. He could tell Ruth was awake but he didn't know how to speak to her.

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NOVEMBER BEGAN. The closeness that had developed in the group surrounding Duane in October started to break up. Various incidents effected this. Later in his journal Corbin described them as being "like threads in a tapestry which lie beneath the surface then burst out in violent reds and blues." One of the strongest of these emerging threads shocked them all and may have done more than anything else to drive them back into their separate lives. It wasn't until Mallett's trial several months later that Corbin learned what appeared to be the truth. Lloyd Mallett was a private guard with Stay-Safe, one of the dozens of security agencies which had appeared in Detroit during the past ten years. It was the fifth he had worked for since 1960. He had been fired from the others because of drunkenness and a poor attendance record. One company suspected him of theft but nothing could be proven. But because of his excellent army record and his thirteen years as a policeman, he always got another job. He never rose in any of these jobs, however, and probably never earned more than $150 a week. The war appeared to be the most rewarding part of Mallett's life. Like Orlo Kaniewski, he served in Africa and Italy, but unlike Orlo, Mallett enjoyed talking about it. He had enlisted as a private and came out a sergeant first class with two purple hearts and a silver star. Two of his younger brothers had gone into the Marines and were killed within several hours of each other on I wo Jima. It was after the war that Mallett's difficulties began. He joined the Detroit police department but didn't make it through the academy. For the next thirteen years he worked for several suburban police departments and was dismissed from each position. He was lazy and suspected of taking bribes. Mallett saw nothing wrong with taking money. He claimed he'd been tricked, 126

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that all sorts of people had been taking bribes, that he'd been singled out only because he was disliked. That might have been true, but whenever something went wrong for Mallett, it was always because he had been tricked. He was not honest, but the only reason he wasn't more dishonest was probably because of a lack of opportunity, ambition and nerve. It didn't take Joe Gage long to find out what sort of person Mallett was. Gage was good at that. He discovered where Mallett worked and calculated what he could get from it. Mallett patrolled in the Boston-Chicago Boulevard area: a wealthy district two miles north of the university. The Kresge family had lived there for years. Toward the beginning of September, Joe Gage began to see more of Mallett. He would talk generally about the Chicago Boulevard area and about the expensive things to be found in the mansions. He didn't mention robbery or Mallett's access to the mansions. He was only planting the idea. The problem was that Mallett didn't like Joe Gage. Mallett had no sense of humor about himself and Joe Gage kept calling him "Rent-A-Pig." That's why Corbin was surprised to see Mallett and Joe Gage drinking together around the middle of September. Joe Gage was fairly successful in playing up to Mallett. Gage had the skill of seeing what a person wanted and supplying it. In any case, after several weeks Gage introduced the subject of a robbery. Mallett later told police that he had run into Joe Gage at a local bar. Joe bought him a beer and they talked about the army. After a while, Joe Gage started talking about the houses on Chicago Boulevard. "There must be a fortune there," Mallett quoted him as saying. "I bet a smart guy could get ten thousand easy if he knew what houses to rob." Mallett asked what he meant and Joe Gage said a little more. "A guy that knows the area would know the richest houses and when the people would be gone. Then if the guy just turned his back, he could make five thousand. Not bad for doing nothing." Joe Gage then dropped the subject. For the next two weeks, he waited. That was how long it took Mallett to make up his mind. Early in October Mallett went up to Joe Gage's room and asked to hear more about this robbery which Gage had been imagining. Gage was probably careful to do nothing to irritate Mallett. "You know the area and when those fat cats go off to New York for a weekend. Let's say you tell me about it. That's all you have to do: that and turn your back. I'll go in with a truck, stay about thirty minutes, then leave. I'll sell the stuff and we'll split the take." "What about burglar alarms?" "They can be disconnected. Right?"

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"How do you plan to get rid of the stuff?" "Just leave it to me." That was generally how Mallett described their conversation to the police. He always maintained it was Joe Gage who had pushed for the burglary. Although Mallett may have been lying, he probably didn't have the initiative to push for it himself. Joe Gage waited. Most likely he knew it wouldn't do any good to search out Mallett, that Mallett wouldn't be committed unless he made the decision freely. Gage had to wait less than three weeks. Again Mallett went up to Joe Gage's room. "I got four possible houses. The people will be gone at Thanksgiving." "Good. I'll line up a van." "You won't let this go any further?" "What's the point?" That was where matters stood at the end of October. Neither of them liked or trusted the other, but they felt they could tolerate each other for five thousand dollars. Then Joe Gage made a mistake. Thursday morning, All Saints' Day, Corbin took Ruth over to Ford Hospital. She still wouldn't tell him what had happened with Duane and Morelli. X-rays showed that two of her ribs were cracked. A Chinese doctor taped her up. Because of her bruises and Corbin's bandaged hand, the doctor assumed that Corbin had beaten her. He kept making clucking noises as if calling reluctant hens. Returning to the house, Corbin got George and they went after Joe Gage. It seemed obvious that Gage had set up the business between Ruth and Duane, and then had called Morelli. But Corbin was unsure of what to do about it. Part of him said ignore it, life would be simpler if it were forgotten. The other part said he should beat Joe Gage to a pulp. Corbin disliked both alternatives in the same way he disliked participating in the world. It only got one in trouble. Beyond that there existed his feelings about Ruth and he wondered if he wasn't a little bit glad that she had gotten beaten up. He missed her and it had begun to hurt him to think of her with other men. Of course these feelings filled him with guilt and self-loathing. They found Joe Gage on his bed reading a magazine. The bed was covered with a yellow blanket. The only window was in the wall facing the door. Through it Corbin could see the bricks of the next apartment building ten feet away. Joe Gage denied everything. "Sure, I was listening. It was a joke, man. But I never heard of this guy Morelli." George and Corbin stood by the door. "I saw you drinking with him at the Turveydrop a week ago," said Corbin.

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"Was that the guy's name? I'd just met him." He had put down the magazine and lay perfectly still. "You're a liar," said George. He kept smacking his fist into the palm of his other hand and narrowing his eyes. Gage continued to protest his innocence, and although Corbin was certain he had called Morelli, he began to question it. "Look, George, you know me. Why should I hurt Ruth?" "If you didn't do it, who did?" asked Corbin. "I don't want to get into name-calling, man. Let's just say it was someone else." "Was it Mallett?" Gage didn't answer right away. He sat up on the bed and lit a cigarette. "What the hell's it matter who it was? It's over now." "Was it Mallett?" Gage exhaled a cloud of smoke. "Yeah, it was Mallett. You happy now? But you got to understand. He's been having a bad time with Ruth. He thought she was a whore and made his offer. She started shouting at him. How was he to know? He kept talking to me about it. I mean, he wanted to get even. He talked about slugging her, then he said he thought about these guys who were taking care of her and how she was cheating on them. He told me he was going to let them know." Corbin didn't quite believe this, but it made him think twice about punishing Joe Gage. As for why Joe Gage accused Mallett, Corbin later thought that it might have been just because he had suggested Mallett's name and Gage wanted to avoid getting hit. But it may also have been that streak in him which enjoyed going into a quiet room of people and putting everyone on edge. Joe Gage liked disruption and doing people a bad turn even when it wasn't in his best interests. "Let's go see Mallett," said George. Joe Gage picked up his magazine. "I've got nothing against him," he said. George and Corbin went down to Mallett's apartment. On the way, they got Gunther for added protection. Mallett was sleeping but they woke him up. He was angry but they were angrier. They pushed their way into his apartment and George accused him of calling Morelli. Mallett was naked except for a pair of bright yellow boxer shorts. The apartment smelled of sour wine and spoiled food. "Joe Gage swears it was you," said George. "He said you wanted to get even with Ruth." Mallett had moved back to the front window. On the wall to his right was a framed photograph of Mallett in a sergeant's uniform. In the near distance were the ruins of a Roman temple. Mallett stood at parades rest. He

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was younger, thinner and had a full head of hair. He was smiling complacently as if he were personally responsible for the destruction of the temple. "Joe Gage's been lying to you. I work nights. I just heard about it from Jewel this morning. Gage was the one that found out about Morelli and Bakus. He's been talking to them. He told me they asked him to watch Ruth for them. Call Morelli. He'll tell you it was Gage. I swear he will." Corbin kept looking from the scared Mallett to the complacent Mallett in the photograph who wasn't much older than Gunther or George. He realized they had made a mistake, that Mallett was telling the truth. "I tell you, it was Joe Gage," said Mallett. "Why should I do something like that? You come in here and push me around, what the hell for?" Corbin remained silent. Who were they to punish anybody? he thought. And who could they protect? "You fucking kids," said Mallett, seeing their doubt. "Next time you come busting in here, you better have a gun, because I will and I'll blast you through the door!" George began to laugh. "Don't be an ass, Mallett." "Just come back and find out!" Corbin, George and Gunther went back up to Joe Gage's room. He was gone. Corbin felt relieved. He didn't want to punish anybody anymore. Early that afternoon Corbin went down to talk to Ruth. She was by herself. She had cleaned her room so there was no trace of the fight. There were even new plants. On the wall above her bed she had hung one of her paintings: a landscape done at Kensington Park thirty-five miles west of Detroit. It showed a lake spotted with sailboats under a bright, blue sky. No people, just boats. Ruth was folding clothes and putting them in the bureau. Corbin sat down on the bed and waited. She had combed her brown hair forward so it shadowed her face, partly hiding the bruises. "I called Ernie this morning. He didn't want to talk but I made him. He said Joe Gage telephoned last night to say some guy was fucking me. Joe told him that if he hurried he could catch us doing it, just like he must have told Tom. Anyway, he asked if it was true and I said yes. So I guess that's over too." "Do you need some money?" "No thanks, Corbin, I can get a job. There's always modeling, and maybe I can get an assistantship at school next semester." Corbin told her about his confrontations with Joe Gage and Mallett. "Sure it was Joe but I don't want you to do anything. I don't want any more trouble. Poor Duane. I wouldn't mind being beat up so much if he hadn't been there. It was his first time and I talked him into it. He came down

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about eleven. He even brought a box of Halloween candy. For some reason he thought I was mad at him and he came to make up." Corbin realized that Joe Gage had been responsible for that as well. "Joe told him you were mad at him." "Why Duane? He could have set Tom and Ernie on each other." "Maybe he liked Duane too much. Or maybe he was jealous about the way you two went around together. Maybe Duane was just convenient." It also occurred to Corbin that Gage might have been trying to punish the rest of them by hurting someone they cared about. Or, again, it might just have been Gage's passion for disruption. "I wish I could get out of here," said Ruth sitting down on the bed. "I don't want to see Duane again. I'd be too embarrassed." "I don't know," said Corbin. "I think you should." They talked about that for a while, then Corbin went up to see Isaac and Duncan. Duncan was sitting by himself at the kitchen table. Isaac was out panhandling and Duane was downstairs with Louise. While angry about the night before, Duncan felt mostly frustrated. He implied none of it would have happened if he had been there. "He needs a fecking keeper. It's like he walks around with his eyes shut: maybe he walks straight, maybe he walks into a wall. Lately he's been walking into a lot of walls." Corbin sat down at the table. "Has he said anything about last night?" "Not a word. You know Duane, mostly he'll talk about any fool thing that comes into his head. Today he's just been trying to solve those puzzles." "He should talk to Ruth." "That whore! She has enough men. What's she need an idiot like Duane for?" Corbin told Duncan how Joe Gage had set up Duane, Ruth and Tom Morelli. Then he wondered if he didn't hope that Duncan would get angry and take the punishment off his hands. But Duncan did nothing. He was holding the salt and pepper shakers and kept moving them back and forth across the table. "What can you say? We keep telling Duane about Joe Gage, but Duane just can't see it. Joe's nice to Duane so that's that. Duane says Joe needs friends. Know who I find myself getting mad at? That damn sister of his. What'd she have to go and run away for?" Corbin still thought Duane should see Ruth. If Duane felt guilty about last night, that he had been punished for being with Ruth, at least that could be straightened out. Going back down to Ruth's apartment, he explained this to her and after a while she agreed to see him. Corbin sent Ruth up to his own apartment, then went looking for Duane. He was with Louise, sitting in her blue armchair and patting the dogs.

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He was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt. There was a dark scab where his lower lip had been split. Louise was on the couch with a book. Corbin asked Duane to come with him for a moment. As they went upstairs, Corbin tried to get him to speak. "Your lip hurt much?" "It's okay." "How're you feeling?" "Fine, I guess. I'm okay." Opening his door, Corbin gave Duane a small push. When he saw Ruth, Duane froze, refused to move forward. Corbin imagined him running to the fire escape and falling. Ruth walked over to him. Her face with its bruises looked like some awful cubist painting. She put her arms around Duane. Corbin went back to join Duncan. They sat in his living room without talking. After several minutes, Corbin heard voices coming through the closet from his apartment. It was startling to learn that Isaac and Duncan could hear him as well as he could hear them. Duncan got to his feet. "Come into the kitchen. We can't hear anything there." He smiled slyly. "Sometimes we spend a lot of time in the kitchen." Corbin followed quickly, half afraid he would hear what Duane and Ruth were saying. He also still felt jealous but he couldn't do anything about that and felt it was his own fault for liking Ruth more than he had intended. They sat down at the table. "What happened about Isaac's money?" asked Corbin after a moment. "I haven't heard anyone mention it." Duncan snorted. "That's because it's a secret." "What do you mean?" "Well, Isaac did what you said and got a safety deposit box, but nobody's supposed to know. I woke up one morning and saw him hurrying out of the apartment clutching Duane's little blue bag. There's a cab honking out front. When he comes back later, the bag's empty. He pretends he hasn't been anywhere. Silly old fool, I know Isaac like the back of my hand. A few days later he starts getting nervous again and he starts talking about keys and if I can make any kind of key. I just keep watching. A few days after that, he gives me this key and asks me to copy it. 'But,' he says, 'don't ask me about it, don't say a word about it.' Name of the fecking bank's right on the key. And this key, it's not your everyday front door key. I got to go to a lot of trouble. Anyway, I copy it and I give it to him. Know what he does? He gives it back to me. He says, 'If anything happens, you know what to do.' Then he winks. Then he says, 'Take care of Duane.' Silly old fool." Duane and Ruth stayed in Corbin's apartment for several hours. Afterward Duane didn't seem so sad. He praised Ruth and praised her bravery,

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but he never talked about what had happened when Morelli broke into her room. He began to spend more time by himself. During the next few days, Duane was sometimes with Louise. She would come up and talk to him or take him out with the dogs or over to the university. Because of the size of the place, he still thought his sister must be found there. Louise never encouraged or discouraged him. She just went with him. Several times Corbin saw Duane with Henry Oakes. He thought this strange until he realized that Oakes would find Duane completely safe, someone whose every thought and action could be anticipated. Corbin suspected Louise of bringing them together. Although both were vulnerable, their soft areas didn't clash. Corbin couldn't imagine what they talked about and asked Duane when he came over Sunday morning to see the paper and have some coffee cake. This had become a weekly ritual. Duane liked rituals. "He tells me long stories," said Duane. "He told me about Oliver Twist and about David Copperfield. They both had sad lives. He tells me stories and we look at buildings." Joe Gage was gone four days. Corbin hoped he was gone for good or, if he wasn't, that he would at least stay away from Duane. He was wrong on both counts. Sunday afternoon Corbin saw them together on the street. They were walking along, not talking. Corbin watched from his window. Later when he heard Duane come in, Corbin decided to say something and asked Duane to come over. He was wearing his red scarf and George's field jacket. He knew what Corbin wanted to talk about. "Why should he telephone that person? He doesn't want to see Ruth get hurt or me neither. There's no reason for him to do it. He buys me things and we go interesting places. He wouldn't do that if he didn't like me." Corbin pushed a chair toward him and made him sit down. "Joe Gage called Morelli and told him you were with Ruth. He got Morelli to come down here and beat the two of you up. You don't believe me, ask Ruth." Duane kept tying and untying the ends of his scarf and refused to look at Corbin. "I know. I mean, she says the same thing. But why would he do it? I even asked him. I asked him over and over and he swears he didn't do it. So there must be some mistake. I don't think anybody is lying on purpose. You just don't like him because he's a hillbilly." Corbin was surprised. "What makes you think that?" "That's what he says." That evening Duane went to a rehearsal of Wencel's Cantata for Mixed Voices, Percussion and Tape Recorder. He went expecting music similar to

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Beethoven or Satie. Instead, he had been subjected to a series of what he called "squeaks, bangs and yelps." Duane stood in Corbin's kitchen later drinking a cup of hot chocolate and talking about it. "I didn't know they were playing until Helen shushed me. Then I was very quiet. They made all kinds of noises, especially the tape recorder. I don't think Wencel knows his notes very well." Duane had been afraid that Wencel would see he didn't like his music. Consequently, he told him it was wonderful. Wencel apparently believed him, although Duane wasn't a very good liar. "It's like the king who got the suit of clothes that wasn't a suit of clothes and just walked around naked. That's what Wencel's music is like, and somebody's going to be mean and tell him someday and he's going to be very sad. Maybe he already thinks that. Maybe that's why he gets sad so much." Although Joe Gage had come back to the house, he avoided everyone except Duane. But it wasn't Corbin he was afraid of, it was Mallett. He didn't want the burglary to fall through and he was waiting for Mallett to calm down. But Mallett was furious. Several times Corbin saw him hammering on Joe Gage's door. Once George went out to see what was wrong and Mallett nearly hit him. As far as Mallett was concerned, the burglary was off. Gage had accused him of calling Morelli and that was all that mattered. Tuesday morning Mallett caught Joe Gage just as he was going out. Corbin only heard the tail end of it. City elections were that day and he was coming back from voting. As Corbin turned up the sidewalk, Joe Gage came storming out of the house. Mallett was right behind him, but he stayed on the porch. Joe shouted back at him. "Big Sergeant Mallett, shit, you were never in the war, man, you're too chicken-livered!" On Wednesday, November 7, Jean McKiddie put all her clothes in two red suitcases, got into a Yellow Cab and disappeared. Jerry was broken up about this and would tell his troubles to anyone who had the patience to listen. "It's the drinking. She's always complaining about that. I don't drink much, just enough to be sociable. She's always at me to improve myself. Like she tells me to go back to school. I'm thirty-one years old, what do I want to go to school for?"

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GUNTHER TOOK DUANE to Eastern Market on Saturday morning. He had some friends living on a farm south of Flint who came to the market each Saturday to sell their produce: honey, jams and jellies, relishes and winter squash. Since they were in contact with a number of other communal farms in Michigan, Gunther suggested they mightknow something of April. Corbin doubted that Gunther really thought this, but he, too, had begun to go out of his way to help Duane for fear he would stop believing. Corbin came along to do some shopping. Isaac came because he was cheerful and George because he was gloomy. Eastern Market lay east of the downtown section on Russell north of Gratiot. Besides farmers selling their produce, there were neighboring shops where one could buy freshly killed rabbits, geese, chickens, ducks and even goat. Other shops sold cheese, dried fruit, dried mushrooms, nuts, baked flat bread, olives and spices from all over the world. The market sold everything that could be legally grown. Children roamed around chewing on stalks of sugar cane. Several years before in an attempt to calm people's fears about downtown Detroit, Eastern Market and the surrounding shops had been repainted in bright colors and murals. Shops put up multicolored striped awnings. The eighteen blue awnings on the second floor of the Rocky Peanut Co. showed pictures of lollipops, pistachios, candy canes, a whole variety of candy and nuts. Gratiot Central Market had a procession of massive apples and oranges on its white walls. On the wall of a bank was a huge steer made out of vegetables. The market itself was T-shaped. Over the main entrance was painted an orange chicken on a yellow background. One side entrance showed an orange bull with twelve-foot horns, while the other had a pink pig flanked 135

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by six piglets on a blue background. All the animals had blue eyelashes and looked like a talented adult's conception of what a talented child might paint. Corbin parked and they all climbed out of his VW. Duane looked around, impressed. "See what we've been saving for you?" said Isaac cheerfully. Panhandling had gone well that week, primarily because he had gone back downtown. He thought it would be safe as long as he didn't go near the bus or train stations. Instead, he concentrated on the big stores, working a few minutes before each. George's only comment about the murals was that he was sure some painter had fallen off a ladder and broken his neck. Louise had gone home to Kalamazoo on Friday. Without her, George acted like a lost dog on a busy street. She had made the trip because she wouldn't be going home for Thanksgiving when she and George meant to have a dinner for their friends in the house. But George couldn't stand being by himself and had been pestering one person after another. He was unshaven and his hair was matted. In contrast, Isaac looked his neatest with his white hair and moustache perfectly combed, his khaki pants and blue workshirt carefully pressed. He wore his black string tie and resembled an elderly gunfighter. Gunther had on his suit of blue denim. Duane was impressed by the live fowl in wooden cages and the dead and defeathered fowl hanging in rows by their feet. The crowded sidewalk was covered with white and gray feathers. Isaac pointed to a row of chickens. "The reason they leave the heads on," he told Duane, "is so you can see if the chicken's any good. You can tell a good chicken by its pleasant expression." "That's pretty honest," said Duane. "No, there's trickery even here." "How d'you mean?" "It's hard to make a chicken laugh when it knows you mean to cut its throat. You have to tickle them half to death." "I'll tickle you half to death," said Duane. After a while, Gunther led them into the market to search for his friends. There were crowds before each stand, poking vegetables, sniffing flowers, tasting bits of cheese, haggling over prices. It was hard not to be constantly bumping into people. Once Corbin was nearly crippled by a small black child peeling an orange. Another time Duane was almost run down by an old man with a pushcart full of apples. Corbin felt they probably would have gotten separated if it hadn't been for Isaac rising out of the crowd in front of them, his white hair like a flag of truce. Gunther's friends were a pleasant young couple who described themselves as spiritually rather than legally married. The man had a great black, bushy beard; the woman was chubby with long blond hair tied back with a

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yellow ribbon. They made their own clothes which seemed to consist of scraps of blue cloth and bits of leather. Gunther had known them in the Peace Movement. When that had started to break apart in 1971, his friends had moved north and bought a farm with several other couples. George kept telling them it must be great to get back to the land. Duane described April and showed them her picture. They found it faintly familiar, but they had never heard the name April Thrushman and knew of no young women from Canada. They apologized about this. The man, his name was Bob, stood behind the counter pulling his beard and looking concerned. "We'll keep a watch for her. She might be up there. There's a lot of traffic. Why don't you check some of the other stalls run by communes. There's always a chance. And Gunther, it's been a long time, man. Come up and visit." Gunther gave him a brotherhood handshake. "Maybe I will." They spent another hour going around and talking to young people. No one knew anything of April, although one young men said her picture looked exactly like his own sister. At last they gave up and had lunch at Samuels Brothers' Delicatessen, stuffing themselves on corned beef on black bread. Gunther had seemed melancholy ever since talking to his friends. Corbin asked him what was the matter. Gunther was bent over his empty coffee cup, his dark hair mixed with the crumbs on the table. "I was just thinking, man. Bob and I went to the same high school out in East Detroit. We all worked for McCarthy in '68, you know, leafletting. Then there was Chicago and we got more militant. Bob even spent a couple of months cutting cane in Cuba. We'd go down to Wayne to those Peace marches. Man, that was another world and it was only four years ago. I was reading Marx and Lenin. Then there was Cambodia and the kids killed at Kent State and the strike. It was a farce, man. There was a big demonstration down at Kennedy Square, one of the last ones. A bunch of kids closed off the expressway down by the river. A big Chrysler semi came up from a side street. People started yelling, 'Get the corporation.' The guy in the truck, they scared the hell out of him, smashed his windows. He just gave it the gas and barreled through. Somebody could have been killed. There was one guy in a white Cadillac. Man, he was mad. He tried to push through. Kids were hanging all over his car, smashing his windows, shouting at him. There was a little black girl in a red dress hanging onto his hood. I mean, she wasn't even fourteen. He gets away from the crowd and takes off. That little girl's still clinging to his hood and she's scared shitless because he's going about fifty. She looked like a little red flag. Shit, I gotta get out of this town." While Duane and the others had been at Eastern Market, Mallett had gone up to Joe Gage's room to tell him that no quarrel was worth five thousand. Although Joe Gage may have been suspicious, he accepted Mallett's

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apologies and the burglary was set for the weekend after Thanksgiving. Joe had arranged for a truck and said he knew someone who would buy what they stole. Maybe Mallett was too friendly or Joe Gage knew him too well. In any case, without Mallett's knowledge, he searched out his friend Earl Dittmer and enlisted his aid in the burglary. Dittmer had a record of narcotics violations and was known as a male prostitute. He had once been given a suspended sentence for selling stolen property. He was eighteen-years old. The only time Corbin ever saw him up close was one day when he was knocking on Joe Gage's door. Dittmer was short, about five feet six. His face was narrow and triangular with large blue eyes and pale blond hair. Later Corbin kept trying to picture his face, find some distinguishing feature. If anything, his face was remarkable for its emptiness. It was simply blank. Invariably he wore a brown suede jacket with a leather fringe on the sleeves. Corbin was always certain that it was he who had broken into Isaac and Duncan's apartment and who had stolen Gunther's guitar, although nothing was ever proven. Over that weekend there were nine homicides in a twenty-two-hour period, bringing the total for the year to 646. The previous year there had been 581 homicides by that date. One incident concerned Jose Lopez, thirty, who went to a party and spilled a drink on another man. The man told him to clean it up. Lopez refused. The man drew a gun and shot him. In another incident, Eddie Lemmons, twenty-seven, went to buy a bottle of whiskey from P.C. Flowers, who, police said, ran a blind pig in his basement. After buying the bottle, Lemmons began joking about Flower's fuzzy hat. Police called the hat "unusual." Flowers then said something that Lemmons didn't like and Lemmons left, only to return later with a shotgun. Flowers grabbed his own shotgun. He told police that when Lemmons raised his gun, he fired and killed him. Flowers was arrested but later released. He immediately disappeared. This murder had further consequences. The next day two of Lemmons' friends came looking for Flowers. Unable to find him, they grabbed his girlfriend and torched her. She escaped with burns on 65 percent of her body. Then, two weeks later, a man and woman kidnapped Flowers' cousin and his fifty-five-year-old wife. Police quoted the man as saying, "You have something to do with that after-hours joint, so you come on." The cousin and his wife were taken out to a field and tortured. The cousin had all his fingers and his left thumb cut off. Both were then strangled and their bodies burned. Another incident concerned a woman who had been drinking with her

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boyfriend. She was depressed and police said she had slashed her wrists the week before. Going into the bedroom, she found her boyfriend's revolver, loaded it and gave it to him, asking him to shoot her. He told the police that he tried to joke her out of it, and the two passed the gun back and forth, until he cocked it and it accidentally went off, killing her. Another incident concerned Josh Harris Jr., who police said was about fifty. Saturday night he entered the Boss Lounge on Dequindre, went to the bar and asked for change for a dollar bill. Receiving it, he bought a pack of cigarettes from the machine. Then he left. Minutes later he was found dead on the sidewalk, still holding the cigarettes in his hand. Apparently he had been stabbed before going into the bar. Police didn't know why. They described him as a drifter who only earned enough money to buy himself a bottle of wine. An autopsy showed he had epilepsy and suffered from a respiratory ailment. He carried several welfare cards listing an address on Orleans Street, but police said he hadn't been seen there for years. And so it went. There had been other killings on Friday, and more at the beginning of the week, including a police sergeant killed in a gun battle with two guys trying to swipe a rusty radiator from a junked car. These killings scared Duane. When Duncan and Corbin tried to convince him that he wasn't in any personal danger, he said the people who were killed hadn't thought themselves in danger either. If the killings had been explained, Duane might not have been as frightened. But without explanation, they seemed random. It could happen to anyone. It was as if he believed the sky was falling. People might laugh, but he was holding a small piece of sky in his hand. The others had grown used to the killings, being impressed, at this point, only by spectacle. But Duane was impressed by the act of killing. He was interested in the killings of people he might have seen on the street, who lived in houses like his own, who had been experiencing his weather, who had been watching the same television programs, who had been reading the same newspapers and raising their eyebrows about the killings which went on around them all. George, without Louise's calming influence, was a trial to everyone. He went drinking with McKiddie to consol him about Jean, discussed the art of murder with Duane and socialism with Gunther. He asked Wencel if he had changed his mind about the wall, helped Corbin with his writing, tried to go panhandling with Isaac and wanted to fix locks with Duncan. Despite the company of the dogs, he couldn't stand being by himself and was constantly inviting people in to discuss possible business ventures, play Monopoly or simply shoot the breeze, as he called it. Consequently there were always several people sitting around George's apartment, uncomfortably

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waiting for someone new to come so they could leave. It was at one of these gatherings on Monday evening that the landlord, Irving Kohl, showed up. Duane and Corbin were there, as were Gunther and Wencel. Kohl was a stout man in his mid-thirties. His black hair was conservatively long and he wore glasses with thick black frames. He entered sadly, looking like a large frog in a green, double-breasted suit. George asked if he wanted to play Monopoly or get stoned. Kohl wanted neither. He was a lawyer and often acted as if he were in court. "George, I've been robbed. Not only that, I've been robbed by a person I trusted. I'm speaking of Jean McKiddie. She took most of the rent receipts, maybe five hundred. Her books show she's been skimming off the top for months." "Did you call the police?" asked Duane who was sitting on the floor tickling the dogs' feet as they kicked at him. "Sure, but I didn't even know she was gone until today. One of you might have told me. The police talked to Jerry, but he didn't even know she was going. Why did she do it?" "Bakunin," said Duane. "Who?" "Just somebody he met on the street," said Gunther, "you know, a street freak." Kohl felt they were making fun of him. "I don't expect you to care, after all it was my money. But I at least expected some sympathy from you, George. And Corbin, you've always seemed like a trustworthy sort. I was hurt when I found Jean had gone and none of you had let me know. Life's just a joke to you people." He sat down on the couch next to Corbin. Corbin didn't think anyone was really surprised by the theft. Jean had seemed ready to leave. As for their sympathies, they weren't close to Jean, but she at least was a member of the house. Corbin went to get a Strohs. Wencel, seeing Kohl as his replacement, said something about having to practice. Then Gunther made some crack and, by the time Corbin had opened his beer, they were quarreling. "All you know is form," said Gunther. "It means nothing, man. Formal music is fascist music." Before Wencel could answer, Duane said, "You leave him alone. You've got no right to say that!" Nobody had seen Duane angry before. Quickly crossing the room, he stationed himself between Gunther and Wencel. He was several inches shorter than either of them and, as he stared up at Gunther, he kept bunching his fists in the side pockets of George's old army jacket. Gunther tried to protest, but Duane cut him off. "I don't want to hear it. You've got no right to talk to him like that."

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Gunther couldn't understand what was wrong. "Look, man, you're my friend. What's all the shouting for?" He reached out toward Duane's arm. Duane pulled away. "You've got no right to talk to Wencel like that." "Wencel's my friend too. We were just having a conversation." "I don't care about that." Duane refused to say anymore. A little later, Corbin took Duane up to his apartment. "Why did you get mad at Gunther? I thought you didn't like Wencel's music." "I don't." Duane took an apple from the refrigerator and began to cut it into quarters. He gave half to Corbin. "They why get mad?" "Maybe Gunther's right," said Duane with his mouth full of apple, "maybe Wencel's music has too much form or something, but if Wencel didn't have it, then he wouldn't have anything. And Helen's afraid for him. She told me he thinks about shooting himself sometimes. And maybe he'd do it if he didn't have his bad music." "Wencel won't kill himself just because someone dislikes his music. If you start protecting someone on that level, there's no end to it. You'd become like those Buddhist monks who go barefoot so they won't kill ants." Duane refused to be convinced. "I read the paper. People get killed for all sorts of reasons, even tiny ones. And I try not to kill ants too. That doesn't mean anything. Besides, I'm not protecting everyone. Maybe everyone's not worth it. Right now I'm just looking out for Wencel. And maybe Henry Oakes because you've got to watch what you say to him. And Ruth because she's been sad." It struck Corbin as ironic that while people were going out of their way to help Duane, he was twisting around in another direction to help them. By this time several people were becoming frightened of Duane, not specifically of him but of what would happen if he decided he wouldn't find his sister. Because of this they encouraged him beyond all reason. Ruth was one of the only ones who didn't share this fear. Corbin talked to her about it in her room on Wednesday. "I don't see why you're afraid he'll stop believing," Ruth said. "If he stops, he stops. It's not as if he'd die or anything. She was sitting on the bed. Her bruises had begun to go away, but there was still a yellow area around her left eye. "What would happen?" Corbin asked "Nothing. Duane's a good person, he can take care of himself. He might be sad, that's all." "Remember when he came?" asked Corbin, leaning against a table. "I wonder what would have happened if Isaac hadn't found him." Ruth got angry. "What makes you think we're so good. We've been

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friendly and we've taken him around. But are we particularly nice? Duane might have been safer with people he knew were bad from the start. We've got good intentions and there's nothing worse than people with good intentions." On Friday Gunther received a letter from his brother in Toronto. He came upstairs to show it to Corbin and Duncan. Both Isaac and Duane were out. They sat in Duncan's kitchen and brooded over the letter. Part of it read: "I've talked to a bunch of people about that missing girl and I've shown them her picture. Three people remember a girl about that age who fits the general description, but one said her name was Margaret and two said it was Jane. Those two were pretty certain although it's a lousy picture. They said she was a Canadian girl who had just come back from the States. Maybe she's changed her name. I asked them to see if she's still in Toronto. Don't get your friend's hopes up. There are lots of loose girls that age wandering around." "Should we tell Duane?" asked Gunther. He kept drumming on the metal table with his finger picks. It was the sound that a troop of iron-shod mice might make. Duncan glared at the finger picks. "There's no point in telling him now. Write your brother and ask him to keep looking. If he learns more, then we'll talk to Duane." Corbin found himself hoping that April would be discovered in Toronto. "Where is Duane? I haven't seen him all day." "I don't know," said Duncan. "Maybe out with Joe Gage. He's getting a little secretive about that. Must you make that fecking noise?" Duane spent the day with Joe Gage. They didn't get back until late. Duncan told Corbin about it when he arrived at the Turveydrop shortly after midnight. It was snowing slightly and there were flecks of snow on Duncan's blue watch cap. He sat at the bar and Corbin gave him a cup of coffee. He didn't think he had ever seen Duncan so depressed. Duane had been reluctant to say what he'd done with Joe Gage. Although this bothered Duncan, it didn't bother him as much as the discovery that Duane had been drinking. "I could smell it on him. I could fecking smell it. I told him, 'You been drinking.' And know what? He denied it. So I could either tell him he was a fecking liar or shut up. Can you imagine me calling Duane a liar? So I said I could smell it, and not only that he was laughing and acting dizzy. He stopped laughing quick enough when I got mad. He said he'd only been drinking Coke. So maybe he didn't know. Maybe Joe Gage put something in it. So I asked him if it tasted funny. Know what he said? 'Not too funny.' Jesus fecking Christ. So then I really got cross. I told him if he was going

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to do that, then he could do it some place else. So he starts getting cross, but then, Jesus Christ, he starts crying. And he's almost a grown man. So I said I was sorry. What else could I do? But I'm not going to have him drinking and living with me and Isaac at the same time. I can tell you that for a fecking truth."

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THE 1954 ORDINANCE concerning beggars and vagrants in the Detroit City Code, Section 39-1-3, read, "Any person who, within the city, wanders about and begs in the streets, or from house to house, or sits, stands or takes up a position in any place and begs from passersby, either by words, the exhibiting of a sign or by gestures shall be deemed a beggar. Every person who wanders about and lodges in outhouses, market places or other public buildings or places or in the open air of the city, and has no permanent place of abode or visible means of maintenance, shall be deemed a vagrant. Any person convicted of being a beggar or vagrant within the meaning of this section shall, on conviction, be punished as provided in Section 1-1-7." The author of Section 1-1-7, "General penalty; continuing violations," lacked the clear style of the author of Section 39-1-3. He was too fond of the phrase "any rule or regulation promulgated pursuant thereto." The important part read that any person convicted of "any such rule or regulation shall be punished by a fine not exceeding 500 dollars or by imprisonment in the city house of correction, not to exceed ninety days, or by both such fine and imprisonment in the discretion of the court, for each offence." Saturday morning, November 17, Isaac was panhandling in front of the downtown branch of the Detroit Public Library. That location had once been the yard of the old county jail, and it was there on September 24, 1830, that the State of Michigan held its last execution. It was a public execution. A grandstand had been built and neighboring landlords rented window space. For several hours before the hanging a fife and drum corp entertained the crowd with patriotic songs. The condemned man was Stephen G. Simmons, a Detroit tavern keeper, who had gotten drunk and murdered his wife. Following his trial, he repented

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his sins, and as he walked to the gallows, he sang a hymn. He climbed the steps and a noose was put around his neck. The fife and drum corp played a solemn march. The trap opened and Stephen G. Simmons ended his life in the City of Detroit. Sixteen years later the death penalty was abolished in the state. Isaac had once told Corbin about Simmons, and on that Saturday morning he may have been standing on the exact spot where the tavern keeper had been hung. It was a sunny morning, although chilly, and Isaac had his blue officer's coat buttoned up to the collar. He had been there half an hour, twice as long as he thought safe; but the time had been profitable and he had already made several dollars. Isaac had just received a quarter from an elderly lady in a black straw hat, when a familiar blue car turned the corner by Hudson's department store. Isaac began to walk off down Farmer as casually as possible. The police car pulled up beside him. "Hey, you, wait a minute." Trying to smile, Isaac looked at the two policemen. "Are you speaking to me?" The policeman at the wheel was scratching his chin; his partner was staring sleepily at Isaac's waist. Isaac said later that their faces reminded him of potato sculptures. The guard from the library came trotting out to the police car. "That's him, officers, he's been hanging around here begging for the past hour." One of the policemen motioned to Isaac. "Get in the back seat." Neither bothered to get out of the car. Isaac wasn't worth the trouble. For a moment, Isaac considered running. People passed on the sidewalk, giving him a wide berth. He imagined himself toddling away, getting about five feet before he was stopped and dragged back. Isaac sighed and got into the back seat. After taking the guard's name and telling him to appear in court Monday morning, the policemen drove Isaac to First Precinct headquarters at 1300 Beaubien, where they booked him and took him over to Wayne County Jail. They neither spoke nor looked at him. Isaac began to feel he wasn't there. He wanted to tap one of them on the shoulder, show him the identification in his wallet and tell him that not far away he had friends who loved him. Isaac had been picked up by the Bum Squad. Working out of the First Precinct, the Bum Squad had the almost custodial job of looking after the three-hundred-odd bums in the downtown area. Because of this, the Prosecutor's Office had waived its right to handle their cases, and the police themselves took the bums through to Misdemeanor Court. The police also put them into Wayne County Hospital when the bums were sufficiently rotted

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out to be unable to take care of themselves, or got a commitment order through Probate Court to have the bums sent to Ypsilanti State Hospital, a mental institution about forty miles from Detroit. Isaac knew he wasn't popular with the Bum Squad, whose dealings with most bums were almost cordial. Isaac was too different. He never drank, while the vast majority of bums were alcoholics. He panhandled because that was what he wanted to do. Isaac was allowed a phone call which he used to call Corbin. He described what had happened and said he would appear in court Monday morning. He sounded scared. He knew he could be sentenced to ninety days in DeHoCo, the Detroit House of Correction, or he could be shipped out to Ypsilanti. He was aware of a complete lack of power. Isaac was put into a cell with a pale, thin man in his early forties. He had a shock of unruly black hair and sat on the lower bunk pulling at his fingers as if he wanted to twist them from their sockets. He refused to acknowledge Isaac and talked to himself in a rambling mumble that Isaac couldn't understand. Isaac got onto the top bunk and sat in the corner with his knees tucked up under his chin. There was constant noise in the jail: inmates quarreling and occasionally a guard telling them to shut up. It wasn't excessive, but to Isaac it reeked of violence. He never knew what time it was. He guessed it was late afternoon when a prisoner paused at the door of his cell and motioned to him. He was a well-fed, black man with a lot of teeth. "You want to buy some smack?" Isaac assumed he was joking but was careful not to look at him. Seeing Isaac's lack of response, the man went away. Isaac found himself trying to remember all he had heard or read about Detroit jails: stories of suicides and killings, rapes, the availability of dope, prisoners throwing shit at each other. In a short time, he had worked himself up to a state of hysteria. He was an old man. He was certain he wouldn't last until Monday. Despite his four years in prison in the early 1950s there was nothing consoling he could draw from that experience. Besides, he'd been twenty years younger and Duncan had been his cellmate. At dinner time, the prisoners filed down the long hall lined with gray cells. Isaac followed his mumbling cellmate, careful to do all that he did. Reaching the dining hall, Isaac received a tray of food and took his place beside his cellmate at a long table. He kept his eyes on his food: hamburger, french fries, green beans, coffee. Around him was the clicking of plastic knives and forks. Prisoners spoke quietly. Most were black. Isaac could hardly eat. Halfway through the meal the man to Isaac's right jabbed him in the ribs: "Hey, man, you want some sex tonight?" Isaac didn't answer. He was aware of a young, black man beside him,

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a round, moon-shaped face. The face was grinning. "Hey, man, I'm talking to you, man, you want to be my honey?" Isaac kept ignoring him. He tried to eat, but the hamburger stuck in his throat and he began to choke and coughed violently. "Okay, man, wait till you're in the shower. We're going to hold you down and we're going to get you." Still grinning, the man returned to his meal. Isaac saw a guard standing by the door glancing back and forth across the prisoners with all the emotion of a television camera. He wanted to ask him for protection, but he imagined the guard's indifference as the man with the moon-shaped face dragged him away. It didn't occur to him that the man might be joking. Rape was too probable. Returning to his cell after dinner, Isaac retreated to the back of the upper bunk. He waited for Monday. He kept thinking about the showers. He kept telling himself it wasn't real, that none of it was real, but before him he could see the bars of his cell, a structure of unbreakable logic. It was still early when the prisoners lined up for their showers, but Isaac thought it must be nearly midnight. He looked around for the moonfaced man, afraid he wouldn't recognize him until too late. Undressing with the other prisoners outside the shower room, Isaac hung his clothes on a hook. He was keenly aware of his old man's paunch. His skin had the whiteness of something found under a rock and contrasted to the farmer's tan he had acquired over the summer. With his height of six feet four, he seemed to tower over the other prisoners. His penis flopped against his legs. He wanted to cover it, but was afraid of being noticed. There was still no sign of the moon-faced man. He imagined being caught in the shower, unable to keep his feet on the slippery floor. The shower room was long and held about thirty people. The walls and floor were covered with small squares of pinkish tile. Isaac grabbed a shower by the door. Around him, prisoners talked quietly, their words covered by a hiss of water. Steam began filling the room. Through the steam, Isaac watched the prisoners turning slowly under their showers. After a minute or so, he saw them turn toward the far end of the room, until they formed two lines, staring at two black men by the back wall. The men were fighting. They made no sound. They were half obscured by the steam which enveloped them like puffs of cotton. Each stood within arm's length of the other. First one would swing, then the other. Each would wait, then take his turn. They made no attempt to block each other's blows. Above the hiss of the water, the room was silent except for the dull thunk of their fists. They were about the same height and color. In their nakedness, they looked like two images of one man who kept hitting himself over and over. The other prisoners stood as if waiting in line for their turn. The two men kept hitting each other, silently, without

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moving their feet. At last one fell slowly to his knees and rolled over onto the tile floor. Isaac lost sight of him in the steam. The other moved slowly to a shower and washed the blood from his face and hands. Pink water ran off him and down the drain. Then the man on the floor got to his feet. He too went to a shower and washed off the blood. The man with the moon-shaped face never appeared. Isaac didn't know if he had been joking or just changed his mind. He never saw him again. After the shower, the prisoners lined up to return to their cells. Isaac took his place behind his cellmate. Isaac spent the remainder of the evening in the far corner of the top bunk. He wanted to draw the gray blanket over his head, pretend he was some place else, but he was afraid to take his eyes off the door of his cell. He kept thinking of the time he might have to serve in DeHoCo and didn't see how he could endure it. Worse than DeHoCo was being sent to Ypsilanti. He thought of his aunt and father dying in an old age home until he saw himself in such a place surrounded by the lost and forgotten, dying of boredom in a gray room. The lights were dimmed but Isaac couldn't sleep. He thought of the house on Alexandrine and tried to wrap his mind around some memory of Duncan and Duane but they weren't real. Reality had become the jail around him, his mumbling cellmate and the noise of the other prisoners snoring or farting or whispering. All this was solid and rock-like, while his other life had become terribly fragile. He was amazed that nothing had happened before. He had been living in a world of blown glass. Of course it had broken, it should have broken years ago. At last he fell asleep and dreamed of places without doors. It must have been very early in the morning when he was violently woken by a hand clamped on his throat. He tried to cry out, but another hand slapped down hard over his mouth and nose. "You cut out your fucking snoring, you hear me? You cut it out or I'll kill you. You fucking old piece of filth." After a moment, his cellmate let him loose and stood back. Turning his head, Isaac stared into the other man's face, seeing only a silhouette against the dim light from the hall and the man's hair standing up like blunt spikes. Neither spoke, although they were breathing heavily. After what seemed a long time, the man returned to his bunk where he began mumbling to himself again. Isaac sat up and remained that way for the rest of the night, terrified of going to sleep. There was a sour taste where the man's hand had been. Sunday passed slowly. Isaac left his top bunk only for meals. He tried to sleep but couldn't. All day his cellmate talked to himself in a dull, mumbling monotone. People passed in the corridor, both prisoners and guards. He heard two fights with a lot of shouting. Once he heard someone scream,

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"Stop it, stop it, stop it," and then fall silent. Early in the afternoon, a black man stopped by his cell and beckoned to him. Isaac didn't leave his bunk. At last the man shrugged and walked off. A little later another black prisoner paused by his door. Taking out a knife, he ran the blade back and forth across the bars several times. Each bar made a slightly different note, making a nonsensical musical phrase. The man smiled. After a moment, he walked away. They had chicken that night for dinner. It had been overcooked and fell off the bone. Several times prisoners spoke to Isaac, but he ignored them, pretending he hadn't heard. Nothing happened, but there was always the sense that something was about to happen: something violent, something that would totally violate him. He was a closed fist: not a weapon but like a child protecting a penny. That night he sat up pinching himself, afraid of going to sleep and snoring. It was very late when he finally dropped off. He woke in the morning to find a guard shouting at him. He had to get dressed. He had to appear in court. Corbin spent a long weekend with Duncan, aided by Duane and Louise. They didn't let him out of their sight for fear he would rush down to Wayne County Jail and demand to see Isaac. He would probably shout and wave his knife. George had gone to Toledo to visit his father; partly to see him, partly to get even for Louise's visit home. It was just as well. Duncan was like a person bereaved. He needed constant assurance that everything would be all right. Now and then Wencel or Gunther or Helen would come up and sit when Corbin had to go to work or Louise took the dogs out. Duncan rarely moved from the kitchen table, as if it were a small prison he had made for himself. "When I knew him in jail, he didn't know how to take care of himself," Duncan said. "He was always making mistakes, getting himself in trouble. Know what I should do? I should go down there and get myself arrested and put in the same cell with him." It occurred to Corbin that he might be able to vouch for Isaac at his trial, while assuring the judge of his own respectability. "I'll fecking vouch for him," said Duncan. "I'll vouch for him so much that the fecking judge won't dare send him to jail." Duane was mostly quiet throughout the weekend. He stayed with Duncan but rarely spoke. His drinking episode with Joe Gage had been pushed aside by Isaac's arrest. He had no understanding of why Isaac had been arrested. "I see bad people every day," he said. "Why put Isaac in jail?"

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Monday morning Louise, Duncan, Duane and Corbin climbed into Corbin's Volkswagen and drove down to the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice. Corbin was wearing a conservative tie and sport coat from his teaching days. Louise had cut his hair. She had on a plain blue dress. Duane wore a white shirt with small blue flowers that he had borrowed from Gunther. Duncan had on his usual green workclothes, saying, "This is what I am. Putting on a coat and tie would be like putting on a mask." On the way out, they met Mallett. "Going to a funeral?" he asked. The Frank Murphy Hall of Justice lay just east of Wayne County Jail. It was a new twelve-story building with dark-tinted windows and decorated with massive slabs of concrete either five or twelve stories high. They look like huge gray dominoes without the dots. Misdemeanor Court was in Room G-l in the basement. It was a long, octagonal room about forty-five by thirty feet. Seeing it as a clock face, the main entrance was at five and the judge sat at eleven o'clock on a small platform. Before him was a square area for the clerk, lawyers, witnesses and the accused. The ceiling was white tile with a large octagonal lighting area in the center. On the walls were six-foot wooden strips a little more than an inch wide and a little less than an inch apart. They looked enough like bars to make the room resemble a cage. The spectators sat in benches similar to modern church pews. To the left of the door, the pews were marked "Police Officers Only." Prisoners sat in a series of pews beyond these. Isaac's friends took their seats in a back pew to the right of the door. Court was not yet in session. Still meaning to vouch for Isaac, Corbin went up to the rail separating him from the inner square where a middle-aged policeman was reading a sheet of paper. "Excuse me, do you know when Isaac Hough is supposed to appear?" The policeman looked at the sheet of paper. "Today." "I'm a friend of his. I'd like to say something to the judge in his defense." "What's your name?" Corbin told him and the policeman wrote it down. "You'll be called." He returned to his sheet of paper. The court was beginning to fill up. There was the steady noise of people whispering, shuffling their feet. Occasionally a tall man in a brown suit would come to the rail and tell everyone to shut up. The people in the room could be divided into three groups: the police and officers of the court who gathered together and made small jokes; the witnesses, mainly sales clerks come to testify about shoplifters, who also made small jokes; and the friends and relatives of the accused. These last had dull, anxious faces. After about fifteen minutes, the prisoners were led into their pews. Most

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were black. Isaac came in last. Seeing him, Duncan started to get up, but Corbin pulled him back down. Isaac didn't look at them. He stood stooped over, his white hair tousled, his arms dangling loosely at his sides. Slowly, he lowered himself into a pew. They were all struck by his fragility. Duane said, "What's wrong with him? What have they done?" The judge entered and everyone stood up. He was a bald, middle-aged man whose red face topped his black robe like a pimple. He took his seat and began shuffling through some papers. Occasionally he would say something, and the lawyers and clerks around him would laugh. A person in the audience laughed and the man in the brown suit told him to shut up. A clerk came to the railing and called out, "55107, John Goodman." A policeman brought John Goodman from the prisoners' area. He was a stocky black man, no more than twenty. The judge glanced at him, then returned to his papers. "John Goodman, you are accused of stealing three ties from Hughes, Hatcher & Suffrin. How do you plead?" "I was just looking at the ties." "How do you plead?" Goodman glanced back at the audience. "Guilty." The judge said something to the witness from the store. The witness laughed. Then, to John Goodman, "Fifty dollars or 30 days." Goodman was taken away. Most of the cases concerned the shoplifting of semi-luxury items: sunglasses, ties, fancy shoes. "Paul Miller and Josie Hampton, you are accused of stealing four pairs of sunglasses from Hudson's department store. How do you plead?" "I only took three," said Miller. He too was a young black man. "Do you plead guilty?" "I only took three." The judge raised his eyebrows at one of the prosecutors. He never seemed to look directly at the accused. "I don't see that it matters if you took three or thirty. Did you take them?" "Yes." "Do you plead guilty?" "Yes, but I only took three." "Fifty dollars or 30 days." Josie Hampton, however, said she was innocent. She was an attractive young black woman in a tight green dress. She said she had just met Miller and didn't know he had taken anything. One of the prosecutors whispered something to the judge who then turned back to Josie Hampton. "You still on drugs?"

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"No." "When did you get off?" "'Bout a month ago." "All by yourself?" "I was on a program. "Is it true that a syringe was found in your purse?" Josie Hampton said that the syringe had been planted. She was done with drugs. She hadn't stolen any sunglasses. The judge interrupted her. "I sentence you to thirty days in DeHoCo. Then we'll see if you're on drugs or not." The morning wore on. A white man was accused of killing his neighbor's dog which he had threatened to kill in the past. He was released for lack of evidence. A young black man was charged with malicious destruction of property. His wife had left him, taking their child, and had gone to her sister's. He had followed but was told she wasn't there. He had been laid off his job and had been drinking. As he walked away, he saw his wife arrive and go into the house. The man returned and was again told his wife wasn't there. Feeling frustrated, he smashed a window. His sister-in-law was a large, respectable woman with a large, respectable Afro. "He comes trying to bogart his way into my house and he smashes two of my windows, two great big windows." "I only smashed one." The man wore a brown turtle neck sweater and brown checked pants. He stood slightly hunched over with his hands in his back pockets, not so much facing as aimed at his sister-in-law. The judge learned that the man had a history of drug addiction. The man said he was off drugs. He wasn't even interested in drugs. He was only interested in establishing that he had broken just one window. His sister-inlaw kept saying two windows. Ignoring the judge, they went back and forth. Everything came down to that, as if the man had found a symbol to represent his whole life; as if all that had happened—drugs, being laid off his job, drinking, being left by his wife—all had originated in the fact of that one window; and if he could establish that, then everything else would become understandable. The judge, however, wasn't interested. Interrupting the man and his sister-in-law, he said, "I sentence you to ninety days in DeHoCo, but I'm suspending sentence and putting you on six months probation as long as you pay this woman fifty dollars for her window within the next five days." The man was led away and another number was called. The lawyers continued their jokes. The sales clerks continued to applaud the rights of sunglasses, neckties, handkerchiefs, silk socks. Corbin was constantly struck

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by the contrast. On one hand were the people whose lives had become illegal, who saw this as a day of tremendous importance. On the other hand was the judge, the police and the lawyers who it seemed made tired little jokes to make the day bearable. During the whole morning, Isaac stared at the floor. None of this existed for him: the octagonal cage, the small tragedies of the accused, the boredom of the court officials. Shortly after eleven, the clerk called out, "55126, Isaac Hough." Isaac didn't move. A policeman took his arm and led him over to the judge. Corbin got up and went to the railing. "Isaac Hough, you are accused of begging in front of the downtown branch of the Detroit Public Library. How do you plead?" Isaac stared at the floor. "Guilty." "I can't hear you." "Guilty!" By now Corbin had reached the front. The judge sat leaning forward on his elbows, his body obscured by his black robes. Corbin tried to guess what he wore beneath them and had a sudden picture of Mallett's polka-dot boxer shorts. There was a red wart on the right side of his nose. The judge looked at Corbin sleepily. "What do you want?" "I'm a friend of the accused. I'm here to testify to his good behavior." Isaac looked up at Corbin who imagined lifting him gently in his arms and running from the court as the sales clerks booed. "Who are you?" Corbin told him, adding that he was a teacher, but not saying he hadn't taught for a year. "I live next door to Isaac Hough." The judge scratched his chin and turned away. A sergeant in the Bum Squad said that Isaac had been picked up and warned about begging several times. A middle-aged man in a tight fitting gray uniform, who turned out to be the library guard, fidgeted and looked indignant. Isaac was staring at the floor again, although he had moved over close to Corbin. The judge looked back at Isaac. "Are you an alcoholic?" "No, Sir." The sergeant agreed. "He doesn't drink, Sir. At least we've never found him drunk." The judge made a note on his pad, then looked back at Isaac. "Aren't you pretty old to be wandering the streets? What do you do it for?" Isaac didn't answer. "You know I could put you in a home?" Isaac still didn't answer. The judge stared at him thoughtfully, then turned to Corbin. "Are you willing to see he doesn't do this again?" "Yes, Sir." The judge started to speak, hesitated, then said, "$50 or 30 days."

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Corbin paid the money. In the back of the court, he could see Duncan, Louise and Duane standing up. They seemed ready to cheer. Corbin took Isaac's arm and led him out of the court room. Reaching the hall, they clustered around him but didn't speak. Duncan shook his hand. Corbin thought they were afraid of finding that he might have changed, like being afraid to move someone after an accident for fear of finding broken bones. The hall was full of people walking back and forth, carrying sheafs of papers. "Let's go home," said Isaac. Late that afternoon, Isaac came over to Corbin's apartment. He had shaved and put on a clean pair of khaki pants and a tan workshirt. It only served to make him appear more fragile. He sat at Corbin's kitchen table and didn't speak. Corbin gave him a cup of coffee in his best brown mug, then watched it grow cold five inches from his hand. Isaac must have sat silently for twenty minutes, while Corbin washed dishes, put stuff away, then sat down across from him. He still didn't speak. Corbin began counting the freckles on the backs of his hands. He had reached fifty by the time Isaac said anything. "I want to thank you, Daniel, for coming down." He took some money from his shirt pocket, counted it slowly and pushed it across the table. "That's for the fine. I want to thank you again, not just for the money but for talking to the judge." He kept expressing his thanks until Corbin felt thoroughly uncomfortable. Then Isaac went on to describe his two days in jail. He talked about the threats, the fight he had seen, his mumbling cellmate. He would tell the whole story, then go over it again, as if afraid to miss anything, getting it arranged and nailed down in his mind, giving the memory an almost physical shape: something that could be finally picked up and put aside. "But what can I do now? If they catch me again, I'm finished. And they'll be waiting, just looking for a chance to get me. I can't stop panhandling. I've got to eat. What am I supposed to do, go on welfare? I don't want their damn money. They kept calling me old. I'm not old. My mind feels the same as ever. I look out of the same eyes I've always looked out of. Am I supposed to see old, think old? I'm not going to let them be my mirrors. A person feels old when people tell him he's old and he's stupid enough to believe it. Then he dies."

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GEORGE'S TRIP TO Toledo was a disaster. He hadn't seen his father for nine years, although he talked to him on the phone at Christmas and on his birthday to thank him for the ten dollars his stepmother had sent. For years George's mother had been trying to get money from her exhusband for child support. But despite his salary as an insurance executive, Bill Troshak gave as little as possible. Their divorce had been ugly, full of accusations and private detectives. Even so George continued to have faith in his father. The stories against him had come from his mother. Nothing had been heard from his father himself. As a result, George imagined a kindly man in Toledo who loved him. Louise thought the visit was a bad idea. She knew that George's father was a Mason and an officer in the American Legion. George's Afro, his t-shirts, his old clothes covered with embroidered patches: these, she felt, would not lead George's father to sing songs of welcome. She told George to dress discreetly and made him change his shirt before he left. His first choice had been a skyblue t-shirt with the words, "You bet your sweet bippy." George liked clothes that told a story. When he at last said goodbye, he had on fairly new jeans and a wool shirt with red and black checks. He looked like a lumberjack but in his wardrobe this was his most innocuous disguise. Bill Troshak lived in a split-level house in a suburb west of Toledo. George hitchthiked down. He hadn't called first for fear of being refused. He turned up unannounced and stood on the doorstep ready to be embraced. "He thought I came to ask for money. Christ, he didn't even recognize me at first. I almost had to show him my I.D." That was what George said later when Corbin was giving him free beers at the Turveydrop. 155

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"We go into his den. He tells me how busy he is, that he's got to go out soon. He tells me I should have called. There's a big picture of General Mac Arthur on the wall and lots of golf trophies. I sit down on the couch. He makes himself a drink but he doesn't offer me one. Then he asks me why I'm there. I said I just wanted to see him, get to know him. Then he tells me again that I should have called. He never sat down the whole time. I kept looking at him, trying to see if he was different from when I knew him before. But it's the same guy. He's older and has more gray hairs, but it's the same guy. All this time he's asking questions. 'Are you in school?' he says. I tell him I've dropped out for a while. 'Do you have a job?' he says. I tell him I'm working part time at the Wayne bookstore. He asks what my major is and I say I can't make up my mind. He asks what I want to do, what I want to be, and I tell him I haven't decided, that I was thinking of living on a commune. "Every time I gave an answer, I saw him getting farther away. Man, if I'd gone down there in a threepiece suit and said I wanted to be a lawyer, that might have been all right. What could I tell him? I felt like saying that at least I'd never been arrested. "Then he says he's got to go, but he'll give me a lift somewhere, drop me off, like in a hole. I say that's okay, I like walking. Even that's a wrong answer. Maybe he doesn't want the neighbors to see me. "So he again offers the ride, but I'm not taking any favors. Shit, I wanted that man to put his arms around me. So he splits. He gets into a big Buick and drives away. I walk back to the main road, about ten blocks. He didn't say anything about seeing him again or calling or anything. I walked back through that suburb. It's a pretty warm day. I could hear the sound of football games on television. A couple of houses have bunches of Indian corn hanging on their front doors. In one yard there's a man and his kid tossing a football. The kid's about ten. A big Irish setter's running back and forth trying to get the ball. I watched them. That fucker. He wouldn't even have liked a three-piece suit." George hadn't returned to Detroit immediately. Since he had imagined spending the weekend with his father, it would have been humiliating to return after an hour's visit. Instead, he had gone into the city where he had met several kids from a local community college. He had a long story about drinking, smoking dope, getting kicked out of a Chinese restaurant, going to a party. One of the kids wanted to be a writer, specifically of song lyrics. His name was Jack. George described his jean jacket which was decorated with six hundred red, white and blue ribbons. At some point George told him about Duane and his search for his sister. It turned out that Jack had met a Canadian girl in September who was about to leave for Toronto. She was

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about April's age, although heavier. He couldn't remember her name but said it wasn't April. She had spent most of the summer in Toledo. Jack didn't know where, but said he could find out. George became enthusiastic. He returned to Detroit after telling Jack he would be back in a few days with Duane. Jack said they could stay at his place. Louise didn't have much faith in Jack's information, but she could see that George needed to be distracted from thinking about his father. Duane also needed distraction. He had been depressed since Isaac's trial, and Isaac's own depression did nothing to help this. Around that time Duane gave up wearing the red silk neckerchief. Corbin lent Louise his car and on Tuesday she drove George and Duane down to Toledo. Corbin promised to feed and walk the dogs. Each time he let the dogs drag him around the block he felt amazed at the degree to which he had gotten mixed up in the lives of people he hadn't known just six weeks earlier. Isaac had refused to leave the house since his return from court on Monday. He spent most of his time in the purple armchair under the window, while various people tried to cheer him. It reminded Corbin of those fairy tales about the sad king who all the fools in the world can't make laugh. Tuesday night Corbin made him come out for a drink, getting angry and telling Isaac he was being self-indulgent. They went to the Bronx, a yellow one-story building on the corner of Second and Prentis. For years, despite the university, it had remained a neighborhood bar. Its customers were mostly elderly local residents who drank too much and talked about how their friends had moved to the suburbs. There was a lot of Kay Starr and Johnnie Ray on the jukebox. But when the law was changed permitting 18-year-olds to drink, the neighborhood people were mostly driven off by young students who came to discuss life and play pool. Isaac and Corbin took a table along the far wall, well away from the jukebox. Corbin drank beer; Isaac drank tomato juice. Although the bar was crowded, Isaac didn't seem to notice anyone else. He sat with his elbows on the table, supporting his chin in his long hands. "I hate being like this, Daniel, but I don't know what to do. My Aunt Jane always said I'd amount to nothing. I never paid attention to it before because that's what she said about everyone. She came to take care of us after my mother died." It was difficult to hear over the noise of the bar, the jukebox and the crack of pool balls. "What was she like?" asked Corbin. "A Methodist. She married a man when she was thirty, then left him three months later saying he had 'filthy ways and desires,' I never knew what

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she meant. Sex, I guess. But she used to go to a lot of trouble making us wash every night, so I always thought she meant he didn't take baths. He joined the army right after the Maine went down and got himself killed in Cuba doing something brave. He even got a medal. Aunt Jane kept it in a bottom drawer and wouldn't show it to us. Maybe it was dirty too. But I always thought that if I didn't wash, I'd be taken to Cuba and shot. It was Aunt Jane that got put into a home after a car knocked her down. Even there she talked about 'filthy ways and desires,' and although I was grown up all I could think about was Cuba and not taking baths." Corbin let Isaac talk as much as possible, asking questions about his life, steering him away from the present. It was about eleven when Corbin noticed Joe Gage sitting across the room with Mallett. Since they had been fighting the last time he had seen them, Corbin was surprised to find them together. Isaac and Corbin left the Bronx around midnight. Isaac seemed better but still not cheerful. It was a cool starless night, about forty degrees. Corbin intended to walk the dogs, then go to bed, but when they reached the house his plans were dramatically changed. The hall was full of smoke and the hall light looked like a dull yellow eye. They stood several moments immobilized. Corbin even felt a certain indignation that the fire had caught him downstairs instead of in the preparedness of his apartment with its tottery fire escape and safe rope. Standing in the hall, he couldn't decide whether to save his manuscripts or save Jewel Mallett. It was Isaac who acted first. "The smoke's coming from McKiddie's room!" Corbin ran to McKiddie's door and knocked. There was no answer. He tried the knob; the door was locked. "For God's sake, Daniel, break it down!" Corbin ran at it tentatively. It was a stout door. He kicked at the lock. The door remained shut. "Come on, Daniel, don't just stand there!" Corbin moved back to the opposite wall, then ran at the door again, telling himself that this only worked in movies. As he hit it, there was a splintering sound and the door flew open. His momentum sent him stumbling into the smoke filled room. As he tried to regain his balance, he noticed a body on the floor. Corbin next became aware that he couldn't stop. The floor was covered with marbles, ball-bearings, round and slippery objects which he stepped on and slipped ana stepped on and slipped, so that for several seconds he was doing a frantic dance, kicking his feet and spinning around a body that appeared clothed in purple satin. Then he lost his balance for good. The

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smoke swirled up before him, his feet swirled up above the smoke, he caught a quick glimpse of Isaac's open mouth, then landed solidly on his back. The floor was covered with marbles: immies, glassies, mibs, pee-wees, caboulders. There was a yellow cat's eye about an inch from his own. Corbin's first thought was that they would have to be cleaned up before the firemen arrived. "Come on, Daniel, do something!" Isaac too was in the midst of a small dance, kicking up his legs, his white hair swirling behind him. He grabbed the door for support. Unfortunately, Corbin had broken two of its hinges. Isaac's weight snapped the last. He pulled the door to him, clutching it like a surfer of hurricanes and tornadoes. It didn't last. He crashed to the floor a few feet from Corbin, the door on top and hiding his body. Getting to his feet, Corbin grabbed the knob and lifted the door. He had an impression of bright, blue, angry eyes. "Get this thing off me!" Corbin helped him up and they clung to each other for support, coughing and their eyes tearing in the smoke. The body was still on the floor. Corbin had no desire to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a stranger. There were no flames to be seen. "Break a window!" shouted Isaac. He let go of Corbin, picked up an ashtray and hurled it through the window. The crash made a comforting sound. Isaac was again doing a little dance on the marbles. He grabbed at Corbin who joined him. Both were kicking their feet. As Corbin spun around, he told himself they had to do something about that body. He aimed a kick at its head. There was a thud and the body yelped, pulled itself into a sitting position and clutched its ear. "What the hell you doing, man?" It was Gunther. He was drunk. By now Corbin had disentangled himself from Isaac who was standing very still and looking displeased. Cold air poured through the open window. Looking around, Corbin couldn't see where the flames were coming from. "Where's McKiddie?" asked Corbin. Isaac stumbled toward the kitchen, kicking the marbles and sending them bouncing against the walls. "Here!" shouted a voice. "Where's here?" "I'm in the fucking bathroom!" The bathroom door slammed open and McKiddie stood there shirtless. He too was drunk. His red hair was wet and plastered down over his forehead. Stepping into the room, he slipped on a marble, spun twice with his arms swinging above him, then fell on top of Gunther. Gunther moaned. Along with the purple satin suit, he had on yellow platform shoes. The smoke was beginning to clear. The room was freezing. "Beans," said Isaac from the kitchen. "There isn't any fire. He burned the goddamn beans." McKiddie stumbled toward Isaac. He looked wistful. Taking a black-

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ened pot from Isaac, he stared into it. "Jean could cook up a wonderful pot of beans," he said. Gunther began coughing and crawling toward the bathroom. Corbin watched until all he could see were the soles of his yellow platform shoes. Gunther began to throw up. The sound of retching filled the room. McKiddie began flapping his hands against his shoulders. "It's freezing in here." He noticed the broken window. "Who the hell did that?" "I did," said Isaac. "I saved your life. "I'll freeze to death." Isaac had sat down on the couch. He looked stubborn. "I still saved your life. What are all those marbles for?" "Duane gave them to me. I don't know why. We spilled them." He stared unhappily down at the marbles. Gunther continued to retch in the bathroom. "I wish he'd stop that," said Jerry. Then he noticed the door lying on the linoleum. "What the hell happened to the door?" Corbin didn't answer. The sound of Gunther vomiting was adversely affecting his stomach. He imagined the four of them kneeling around the toilet bowl like some barbershop quartet of dissipation and despair. "Corbin saved your life too," said Isaac. "We thought there was a fire." Jerry pulled on a brown overcoat and continued to flap his arms. "You smash my window to save my life. You break my door to save my life. I tell you, my life's not worth that much. What're you going to do next? You want to bust the TV? Take a whack at the lamp?" Gunther was still vomiting over the toilet bowl. At each heave, his yellow platform shoes gave a little kick, making a small flash of color. Around the broken window, white curtains blew into the room. "I'm leaving," said Corbin. "I feel sick." There was still a lot of smoke in the hall. As Isaac and Corbin climbed the stairs, Isaac began to laugh. "You did a good job on that door, Daniel. Best job of door breaking I've ever seen." Corbin felt too ill to laugh. "Why did Duane give him all those marbles?" Isaac had to hold the bannister, he was laughing so hard. It was a loud guffawing noise. "To make up for his wife, of course." Corbin thought of the four hours he had spent trying to cheer Isaac up, when all he needed to do was set the house on fire. They said goodnight. There was smoke in Corbin's apartment. The smell of burned beans remained in his rooms for several days. Wednesday morning George, Louise and Duane returned from Toledo. They had not found April, but Jack had introduced them to a young man who had told them of someone fairly similar to April: a Canadian girl who had

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spent part of the summer in Toledo. She hadn't stayed long in any one place and apparently had been sleeping with a lot of men. This young man had been one of them. He said her name was Jane. She had grown up on a farm, but he didn't know where. She had left for Toronto around the beginning of September. Duane was positive it wasn't April. George wanted it to be April in order to justify his original trip to Toledo. Corbin wanted it to be April, wanted Duane's search to start moving again. He remembered Gunther's letter from his brother. The Jane in Toledo could be the girl he had mentioned, but that didn't mean it was April. Duane was depressed by the trip to Toledo. He didn't want the girl to be April. He seemed to think that if April were anywhere but Detroit, it implied an unfortunate and perhaps unforgivable change. About noon on Wednesday, Duane went off with Joe Gage. Corbin was sitting at his desk by the window and watched them leave. His novel about the policeman had come to a halt and he hadn't worked on it since Halloween. Instead, he was going over his journal, expanding it and putting down all he could remember of the past two months. It was raining and the rain was bringing down the last of the mustard colored leaves. Duane and Joe Gage hurried down the street. Detroit's 660th homicide of the year was reported that day. A man in his early thirties had been talking to four friends in his apartment. Another man had entered, shot him once and left. No reason was given. Duane spent most of the day with Joe Gage. They were having an early Thanksgiving celebration since Joe Gage hadn't been invited to George's feast. Joe kept offering Duane drinks. At first Duane had refused, then he had given in for fear of hurting Joe's feelings. Joe had said that buying drinks was what friends were for. Duane wouldn't say what they talked about except that Joe had described all the dogs he had ever owned. There was one that could count to ten. There was one that could balance on its hind legs while wearing a cowboy hat. Joe proposed toasts and they drank to each dog until Duane lost count. About eleven, Joe bought a bottle and suggested they return to his room. Duane agreed. He was cheerful and wanted to sing songs. He sang all the way back to the house on Alexandrine. Entering the house, Joe tried to quiet him but was unsuccessful. Duane was giving a vigorous rendition of "Shine on Harvest Moon," when Louise opened her door to see what all the commotion was about. Louise told Corbin about it the next morning, which was Thanksgiving morning. "The moment I saw Joe Gage I knew what was wrong. Poor Duane could hardly stand. Joe was holding his arm. I asked Duane where they were

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going. He said, 'We're going to Joe's room and toast dogs. Your dogs too.'" Louise stood by the sink, sipping a cup of coffee. She was too angry to sit down. Along with her jeans, she had on a blue work shirt of George's with the ends knotted above her waist. The morning sun coming through the window seemed to bounce off her blond hair. "Joe was angry they'd run into me. He pulled Duane's arm and told him to hurry up. I couldn't see him toasting dogs and decided Duane wasn't going with him no matter what. I told him to let Duane go. Duane was just staring at the ceiling saying, 'Dogs, dogs, dogs.' "Joe Gage told me to fuck off and pulled Duane toward his door. I took Duane's other hand and tried to pull him away. It was silly. All I could think of was pulling taffy. Then Joe let go of Duane and gave me a shove, hitting my breast. I slapped him. He didn't expect that. For a moment, he just stared, then he called me a bitch and took a swing at me. "Poor Joe, he didn't even see my dogs. Before he could do anything else, they were all over him. I found myself saying, 'Good.' He had fallen to the floor and was trying to cover his head. Then I got frightened and called them off. Duane went over and started patting them. I don't think he even noticed what had happened. "I got Duane into our apartment. George was out with Jerry McKiddie. Then Duane got sick. I managed to get him to the bathroom but that was all. He spent the night on our couch. "This morning early George and I got up to start the turkey. One look at the food and Duane got sick again. I put him in our bed. He's down there now. I can't tell if Joe Gage was getting at him or getting at us because of Thanksgiving. Duane's miserable. It's the first time I've seen him feel guilty about anything. He's supposed to go to the parade with Wencel and Helen. I told Isaac where he was last night, but I didn't say anything else. I've got to go over and tell them something. Will you come? You know what Duncan thinks about drinking." Isaac and Duncan were also going to George's feast later in the day and although it was only eight o'clock, they were already dressed in their best clothes. They weren't festive, however. "What's wrong with Duane?" asked Duncan. He had on a light brown suit, years out of date and two sizes too big. Maybe it was the suit given to him when he got out of prison. "He's downstairs," said Louise. "He's okay, just a little shaky." She went on to describe what had happened. Isaac and Duncan sat together on the couch. Isaac had on white pants, a blue shirt and a black string tie. They reminded Corbin of parents called in to hear about their delinquent child. Corbin expected Duncan to become angry, but he just looked sad. "If he's going to do that, he's got to do it some place else. I'm not going to have

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a fecking drunk in here. I can't put up with it. Neither can Isaac." "I'm sure he won't do it again," said Louise. "You can't just throw him out," said Isaac. "You love him." "I don't love a drunk." Isaac crossed and uncrossed his legs. "But he's not a drunk, he's Duane. Talk to him. He's got no place to go." "I talked to him last time." "Tell him why you feel that way. Tell him about Rhode Island." They whispered back and forth, using short phrases that hardly made sense. At last Duncan said, "All right, all right, bring him up here." Louise hurried out before Duncan could change his mind. A few minutes later Duane entered with Louise behind him. He could barely stand. It wasn't just being hung over, he acted as if someone close to him had died. Even his clothes seemed to be suffering. His white shirt was dirty and torn and George's old field jacket was slung over his shoulder. Without looking at anyone, Duane sat down on the bottom bunk. Louise sat beside him. Duncan was standing in the middle of the room. He looked at Duane, then looked away. "I'm not going to yell at you, Duane. You know how I feel about drinking but I want to tell you why I feel that way." Duncan paused, but Duane didn't say anything. Be was staring down at the braided rug. "After I've had my say," continued Duncan, "you can decide what you want to do." He glanced at Isaac, sitting on the couch, and Isaac nodded back encouragingly "I told you about the war," said Duncan. "Well, after I got out, I went back to Providence. I rented room and got a job as a locksmith, but I didn't look up any of my family." Duncan paused again, then walked back across the room and sat down on the couch next to Isaac. "I guess I was just letting time pass, thinking something would happen. I was drinking a lot and there was one bar in particular that I went to. Maybe it was called the Green Meadow, some kind of meadow anyway. A lot of exsoldiers went there. We were all having trouble getting used to civilian life again. Also, civilians, they either acted like the war never happened or they acted like they suffered most because they didn't have sugar or coffee or gasoline. Shit, I hated the war, but it was a hell of a lot realer than Providence, Rhode Island. "There was a guy that started coming in by the name of Ferdie Chalmers. He had a big mouth, but maybe he wasn't so bad. He was a tall thin guy. Most of these ex-soldiers, they wouldn't talk much about what they'd done, except for places they'd seen and stuff like that but they wouldn't talk much about fighting. But Ferdie loved to talk about fighting. To hear him tell

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it, you'd think he'd been in every big campaign. He'd been in Africa and Italy and D-Day and the Bulge, just like Patton himself. Nobody particularly wanted to hear this, but we could see he had a problem, and we were all pretty tolerant with each others' problems. "Just as much as fighting, Ferdie talked about the soldiers who hadn't fought: those guys that spent their time in safe places, getting the best food, making money off the black market. He'd call them 'goddamn rear echelon goldbrickers.' Later it turned out that Ferdie himself hadn't fought. He'd had a desk job just like me. He never got any medals unless he got one for typing forty words a minute. But in that bar you'd think he was Audie Murphy. "I pretty much stayed by myself at that place, not talking much but comfortable just being there. Everything was okay until Ferdie learned I hadn't done any fighting. I don't know who told him, some fecking friend I expect. So one night Ferdie started in on how I wasn't really a soldier at all. I guess he saw me as a little guy that he could bully. I ignored him and after a while he gave it up. "But the next night he started in again, saying how I must of made a bundle off the black market. I was at a table, and he stood there, joking at first, saying how I should buy everyone a drink with my black market money, then getting meaner when I didn't answer. He had short black hair and a long horse face. Mind you, I was furious, but I figured he was getting something out of his system and would quit soon enough. "But Ferdie didn't quit. He kept it up and every night it got a little worse. I should of stopped going to that fecking bar, but I wasn't going to let him drive me out. So I kept going there, sitting and drinking, and not saying a word, and Ferdie kept at me. Not all the time, but steady. I'd listen and I'd have these thoughts about following him home and smashing in his head with a brick. "All this lasted about four weeks. I kept going into that bar, and most nights Ferdie was there. It was like he was going there because of me. Me and him, neither of us had done any fighting, so we were going to make up for it right there in the Green Meadow. But he still hadn't touched me. Sometimes he'd taunt me about fighting him, but those were just words. "Then one night I kept drinking beer and double shots. Ferdie was also drinking a lot and kept digging at me. By now most of the guys saw it as a joke, especially since I never did anything. But that night Ferdie came on so strong that a couple of guys told him to lay off. Not that he paid any attention. He called me a coward. He called me a queer. He gets himself all worked up and he keeps getting closer until I can hardly take drink without bumping him. All of a sudden, he knocks me off my chair and says, 'We should string the little queer up.' "The moment he touched me, it was like something broke. I jumped

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up and I grabbed a beer bottle and I took a swing at him. It missed and hit a post. Glass and beer, they flew all over the place. The bartender starts shouting, but some other guys, they're laughing. Maybe there's about twenty people in the bar, mostly ex-soldiers. Well, Ferdie's looking pretty startled. He tries to take something from his pocket. I figure it's a knife. I'm still holding the neck of the beer bottle. Know what I did? I shoved the whole thing into his throat, hitting the vein right away. I never seen so much blood. It gushes. I got covered with it. Ferdie's still standing, about a foot taller than me. Surprised, I've never seen anyone so surprised. Poor bastard. I'm trying to get his blood off me, trying to wipe it off, but I'm just smearing it around. Ferdie falls down and he dies right there at my feet." Duncan stopped talking and glanced around the room which was bright and sunny. Seeing Duane, he got up and walked over to him. "Duane, if you're going to keep drinking, you're going to have to move out. I'm just telling you that." Duane sat next to Louise and didn't say anything. Then he reached out and took Duncan's hand. "I won't, Duncan. I promise." Corbin felt that everyone in the room wanted to be some place else, including himself, but his eyes seemed fastened to Duncan and Duane: Duncan standing in his prison suit; Duane holding his hand, but not looking at him; Louise sitting close to Duane but not touching him; Isaac alone on the couch not looking at anyone; morning sun all over the place, its rays looking like the roads running between them. They were interrupted by Wencel, who entered dressed in a dark suit and tie. He smiled nervously. "Are you coming to the parade, Duane? It's late. You were supposed to come downstairs." Duane let go of Duncan's hand and stood up. It was clear he didn't want to go but he was afraid of hurting Wencel's feelings. "Sure. Just let me change my clothes." Duncan had turned and was looking out one of the small front windows. Louise stood beside him, slightly behind him. Wencel looked at Duane skeptically. "You all right?" "I'm fine, just tired that's all." Louise said something to Duncan. He kept shaking his head. She went over to Isaac. "Come on downstairs. You can help with the turkey. We're going to need to use your stove later." They left the room together. Duane had gone into the John to change. Duncan remained at the window, the sunlight reflecting off his bald spot. Wencel looked at his watch, then turned to Corbin. "It was nice of George to invite my father to dinner. Sometimes I can't figure him out. George, I mean."

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"Orlo's coming?" Wencel pushed back his hair and looked embarrassed. "My mother always spends Thanksgiving with the nuns. They sing Thanksgiving songs." Duane came out of the John. He had on a clean white shirt and a thin tie with gray and purple stripes. His reddish brown hair was now long enough to be parted in the middle like Gunther's. Walking over to Duncan, he asked, "Do I look okay?" "You look fine." "You sure you don't want to come?" "I'm sure." Duncan turned back to the window. "You coming, Daniel?" "No, but I'll go out with you." There was a drug store open on Third and Corbin needed typing paper. "Let's go," said Wencel. "We've only got ten minutes." They went downstairs to pick up Helen. Wencel had caught their mood and was looking a little gloomy. But Helen was cheerful. She had on a blue Indian dress decorated with elephants and tigers. On the front steps they were stopped by Jewel. She was drunk. "Could you give me seventy-five cents?" Her gray coat was open and the top of her yellow dress was unbuttoned. "Be a Christian, Duane, seventy-five cents." Duane didn't even glance at her. "I don't want to give you anything." He continued past her down the steps. Jewel stared after him. Wencel and Helen were hurrying ahead, not wanting to miss Santa Claus. "I thought you liked Jewel," said Corbin. Duane paused for a moment before hurrying after Wencel and Helen. "I've given her lots of seventy-five-centses. I'm not giving her anymore." George's Thanksgiving dinner was a mixed success. Most of his guests went for refuge rather than dinner. Isaac had just gotten out of jail. Duane was hung over and guilt-ridden. Duncan seemed to be brooding about the dead Ferdie Chalmers. George still thought of his father. Orlo may have been thinking about his wife and her nuns. Still, they tried to be cheerful. George had never cooked a turkey before and this one was twenty-seven pounds. But he was a strong believer in cookbooks. Even more, he believed in Louise's skill at everything. She made creamed onions, sweet potatoes, spinach souffle, a wild rice casserole and two pumpkin pies. Isaac helped her. Gunther and Corbin brought wine. Orlo brought a bottle of 140 proof Polish apricot brandy. Henry Oakes had shelled chestnuts for the stuffing, but at the last minute decided not to come. Jerry McKiddie didn't show up either. George found him passed out in his apartment. No one knew where Ruth was. George and Louise had borrowed a number of small tables. They lined

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them up and covered them with sheets. No two were the same size so the final effect was of a roller coaster for cowardly toddlers. George and Louise sat at either end, while the eight guests sat four to a side. The dogs had red ribbons around their necks. They kept getting under the tables and had to be dragged out by their tails. The dinner was also a mixed success because of an announcement George made after the food had been served. He stood up and clinked his knife against his wine glass. He had on black and white striped coveralls and looked like a cabooseman. "I've got something to say. I feel bad about this. You see, I used a regular needle and thread to sew up the turkey, and, well, I lost the needle some place. Most likely it's in the stuffing." There was a long silence as the guests looked at their plates now overflowing with turkey, dressing, gravy, yams, onions, wild rice, spinach souffle, cranberry sauce and possibly a sharp needle. "I knew it," said Duncan. Orlo began poking through his food with a spoon. "My cousin May died choking on a turkey bone. She about your age, Wencel." Although George's announcement didn't stop anyone from eating, they lost their original gusto. They picked over their food and by the time it reached their mouths it was cold. They chewed slowly, taking tentative bites. No one blamed George for the needle. They saw it as one of the hazards of coming to his apartment. And even though Corbin occasionally stopped to consider the consequences of a needle lodged in his stomach, he felt basically happy. He was aware of the physical warmth of the people around him and felt closer to than he had ever felt toward anyone. He was also aware that it was Duane who had brought them together. Dessert was eaten more quickly after Duncan made sure there was no way for the needle to have gotten into the pies or ice cream. At times, however, Corbin noticed Isaac, Gunther, Wencel, any of the others, delicately prodding their stomachs as if they had suddenly found something unwelcome. Corbin stayed until it was time to go to work. Gunther got his guitar and Orlo taught him a Polish folk song about a man chasing goats in the meadow while his cottage burned down. Jerry McKiddie came up, drank two cups of coffee and passed out on the floor. The dogs licked his ears. There were only two jarring moments for Corbin, maybe three. The first was when Gunther announced his intention to move in a couple of weeks. He was going to a farm near Flint to practice his guitar in preparation for a tour of coffee houses he hoped to make in the fall. When he said this, Corbin was surprised by a feeling of bereavement. He had come to like Gunther, even though he didn't feel particularly close to him. He found himself thinking that the house was beginning to break up.

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Gunther going off to join Jean McKiddie as their second representative to the outside world. George could imagine nothing nicer than living on a farm with lots of people. "Soon as we make some bread that's what we're going to do. The dogs need more room." The second jarring note came from Orlo who had been drinking too much of his own brandy. After dinner he had retired to the one armchair and hadn't moved. The ends of his yellow bowtie hung down the front of his white shirt. He had been talking about his wife again, at first just to Isaac, then to them all. Wencel clearly wanted to ask him to be quiet but he didn't have the nerve. "My wife, she's got two ways of behaving. Either she apologizes or she never says a word. I don't know what's worse. The other day we went shopping and I notice she's walking about five feet behind me. Humble, you understand. And suddenly I thought of a wooden duck that Wencel had as a kid. You know, the kind you drag around the room on a string and it goes, 'Quack-quack, Quack-quack.' It used to drive me crazy. Anyway, that's what I suddenly thought my wife was like, a wooden duck, except in her case the Quack was broken. Then I thought how I missed some kind of Quack, even how I needed it." The third incident occurred shortly before Corbin left for work. George and Duane were talking about the homicide rate. Duane wasn't sure how high it was. Thursday's paper had reported a man found shot to death a few blocks away. "I think it's 662. It didn't say" "Okay," said George, "let's say it's 662. The big question is when is it going to hit 700. Now we've been running about two murders a day, sometimes more, sometimes less, but two murders a day means that number 700 is going to get killed around December 12. So let's have a lottery. I'll put five bucks on the twelfth. What d'you say?" He took five dollars and tossed it on the floor. People looked at the money, uncertain how to respond. Louise seemed about to speak, when Orlo said, "I'll bet ten to keep the ball rolling: five on December 11 and five on the 13th." He tossed two fives on the floor. "Come on, Wencel, where's your fighting spirit?" Wencel reluctantly put five on December 10. By now it was too late for Louise to say anything. Duane bet five on the 9th and Gunther picked the 8th. "Okay," said George, walking in a circle around the money. "We need a couple more. Let's see your cash. Somebody's going to be a big winner." Corbin picked the sixth and Duncan picked the seventh, Pearl Harbor Day. George woke up Jerry McKiddie and got five from him for the fourteenth.

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"Great," said George. "That's forty-five. Let's see five more. Can we make the big fifty? How about you, Louise? No? Okay, how 'bout Isaac?" But Isaac refused to bet. "I'm not going to make money like that. You're hoping someone's going to die."

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JOE GAGE WAS driving down Arden Park about a block south of the house he intended to burglarize. He was looking for Mallett's patrol car. Earl Dittmer was in the back of the dark blue Ford van. It was shortly after midnight, Saturday morning, November 24. The sky was cloudy and rain was expected. Seeing the patrol car, Joe slowed down. Mallett waved casually. Joe circled the block and drove to a house on East Boston. It was a red brick mansion with a two-story white portico supported by four pillars. In one of the downstair's windows was a light to keep burglars away. Switching off his headlights, Joe turned into the drive and followed it around to the back. He parked the van so it was shielded by a brick carriage house and several large oaks. The lawn led back to Cathedral Central High School on Belmont. Opening the rear door, Joe and Earl Dittmer took out wire cutters and rubber gloves, then went to the corner of the house by the driveway where the wires came in from the street. Dittmer climbed onto Joe's shoulders and cut the wires. They then went to the back entrance of the house where there was a screen door and a wooden door with four glass panes. Joe cut through the screen and unlocked the first door. Taking off his coat, he pressed it against the pane of glass nearest the knob. He hit it with his fist and the glass broke. Reaching through the hole, he unlocked the door. It was at this point that Joe Gage changed the plan he had made with Mallett. Instead of going into the house, he sent in Earl Dittmer, while he waited outside as lookout. Dittmer worked about ten minutes, bringing out a small color television, a stereo receiver and a box of silverware. He had on Joe's leather coat and in the dim light could easily be mistaken for him. Mallett drove back around to East Boston where he parked his car and 170

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got out. He had a gun, a .38 police special. Later he told police that he had noticed the downstairs light was out and had circled the mansion to investigate. When he reached the rear of the house, he saw someone come out the back door. Mallett said he called to the person to stop and put up his hands. Instead, the person dropped what he was carrying and drew a gun. Mallett claimed he was forced to shoot. He shot Earl Dittmer twice in the back and once in the face at close range. When the police arrived, Mallett still didn't know he had killed Earl Dittmer instead of Joe Gage. Nor did Mallett tell the police that he knew the dead man. Anyway, with a large hole in his face, Earl Dittmer didn't look like anybody. Police said Dittmer must have died instantly. A revolver was found by his body. It hadn't been fired. The body was photographed and removed. Mallett was taken downtown for routine questioning. When the police let him go several hours later, he still didn't know he had killed Earl Dittmer. No identification had been found on the body and the results of a fingerprint check hadn't come through. Mallett went off to a blind pig to get drunk. When he got back to the house on Alexandrine about 8:30 he could hardly stand up. Corbin and George were just taking the dogs for a walk and ran into Mallett in the downstairs hall. Corbin was struck by how he looked elated and scared at the same time. He had on his gray uniform decorated with silver chains and a silver whistle hanging from a pocket over the heart. Attached to his gun belt was an empty holster, a long night stick, handcuffs and a can of mace in a black leather pouch. Reaching out, he poked George in the chest with a fat finger. "We're going to start changing things around here, start cleaning out the trash. . . ." He stopped and stared over George's shoulder with a look so frightened that Corbin wanted to duck. "How you going to do that, Mallett, kill them?" Corbin turned and saw Joe Gage standing on the stairs. He had on his white cowboy shirt with the red trim. Except for a certain intensity, he looked the same as ever. Mallett seemed terrified. Corbin felt that if he touched him, he would fly apart. He felt he had never seen real fear before and, even without understanding, Corbin began to feel afraid. "Who are you going to kill now, Mallett?" asked Joe Gage. Mallett started shouting. "You can't say that. I haven't broken any law." Joe stood perfectly motionless on the fourth step about ten feet from Mallett. "You killed Earl Dittmer. You snuck up behind him and shot him in the back. Then you put another gun by his body. I was there. I saw you."

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Mallett shook his head as if erasing the words. The whistle swung back and forth on its silver chain. "You're a liar, a fucking liar." "I was there Mallett. I was standing right by the van. The cops will believe me." Mallett stared at Joe Gage. Then he pulled himself away and his eyes settled on Corbin, who stepped back, thinking he could do nothing to help this man. Mallett turned and hurried out of the house, leaving the door open behind him. Joe Gage laughed. His laughter had the sound of strings snapping. That afternoon George found the following article in the newspaper: An 18-year-old Detroit man was shot and killed by a private guard early today during the apparent burglary of a house at 53 East Boston. Police said Earl Dittmer, of 717 Stinson, was shot by Lloyd Mallett, 53, a guard with Stay-Safe Inc., at about 1 a.m. after Dittmer threatened Mallett with a revolver. "If I ever get murdered," said George, "I sure hope I get more than two paragraphs. You should get a paragraph for every year you been alive." There was much talk in the house about Dittmer's death, Joe's accusations and Mallett's disappearance, although no one spoke to Joe Gage about it. They had always seen Mallett and Joe as outside their world, almost outside their notice. They were like cats in a houseful of dogs. Nor did they know Earl Dittmer, except by sight. But he was realer to them than Jose Lopez who had spilled a drink on a man at a party and was shot for it. When they read on Sunday that the homicide total had reached 671, they realized they knew one of the victims and a list which they had considered as almost fictional, the subject of George's lottery, became fact. They knew nothing of Joe Gage's role, except that he claimed to have witnessed the shooting. Corbin found himself thinking about Joe Gage, who he saw more than Mallett and whose friendship with Duane affected them all. Joe was the anarchist, the disturber, the anonymous wrecker of good times. He had been in an orphanage, a reformatory, the army and in jail. He was probably the most private person in the whole house, even more private than Henry Oakes. Corbin wondered about Joe's own responsibility for the death and about his relationship with Dittmer. Were they acquaintances, friends, more than friends? And Joe Gage now seemed intent on punishing Mallett, but to what end? Sunday night someone took a brush and a can of red paint and wrote "Killer" across Mallett's door about a foot above George's Southern Pacific

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Railway calendar. Corbin saw it when he came home from work. His immediate impulse was to rub it off. The word frightened Corbin, who guessed that Joe Gage had painted it. He had come to see Joe as someone who evolved plans and lived by careful rules. There was nothing subtle about the word "Killer." It made Corbin think that Joe Gage had thrown over his rules. Perhaps the word "Killer" was partly responsible for Jewel's behavior on Monday. When Corbin left the house about ten in the morning to return some books to the library, he found Jewel lying on the sidewalk by the street. She was wearing a dirty gray cotton coat. On the pavement by her head lay a red felt hat shaped like a deep bowl. One of her tennis shoes had come off. Maybe she had never put it on, because Corbin couldn't see it. Maybe she was lying on it. She looked like an animal that had fallen from the back of a farmer's truck. Corbin wanted to walk by but felt he couldn't. "Jewel, are you all right? Come on, get up." Jewel opened a small brown eye and looked at him. "Come on, Jewel, what's wrong?" Corbin reached down to help her, but when he touched her arm, she began screaming. "Leave me alone, goddammit, leave me alone!" Corbin jumped back, then looked around, afraid someone might think him responsible for Jewel's condition. There was no one in sight. It was a raw, cloudy day, but the temperature was in the mid-forties so at least she wouldn't freeze. "Come on, Jewel, let me help you into the house." Corbin reached down and again she screamed. "Leave me alone!" "I'm only trying to help. You'll catch cold." Jewel stared and didn't move. Corbin didn't try to touch her again. There was still no one in sight. They looked at each other. Corbin felt it was like returning someone's gaze in a photograph. He continued on to the library. When he returned at noon, Corbin found Jewel still sprawled on the sidewalk in apparently the same position, although her red felt hat was now on its side. Her eyes were shut. "Hey, Jewel, come on, let's go inside." She opened that one eye and stared. "You want a doctor?" Knowing what would happen, Corbin reached down to take her arm. "Don't touch me, leave me alone!" Corbin felt people were watching him and was angry with Jewel for exposing him to ridicule. He left her and went upstairs to his room. He had meant to do some work, but from the desk in his bedroom, he

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could see Jewel on the sidewalk and every time he looked away to the blank page in his typewriter, Jewel seemed sprawled across that page. Throughout the afternoon, Jewel managed to involve everyone in the house in her refusal. Wencel and Helen went out, tried to help, were screamed at and hurried on. Louise came next. She talked to her, but Jewel didn't move. She sat down beside her and kept talking. Fat Jewel and thin Louise: they looked like a sculpture that one of Ruth's friends might make. At last Louise went inside and returned with George. George tried to move her, Jewel screamed and clawed at his face. They gave up and went back inside. Duane arrived with Henry Oakes: Duane in his field jacket, Henry in a dapper black raincoat. They stopped and talked to Jewel. She wouldn't move. They tried to lift her and she screamed. Corbin heard Duane shout back, "You can't stay there!" Henry attempted to look unconcerned. Duane picked up Jewel's red felt hat, brushed it off and tried to put it back on her head. Jewel screamed and it rolled away. They gave up. Ruth, Gunther, McKiddie, Isaac, Duncan—all stopped, all tried to help her. She refused: a gray, immovable lump on the sidewalk. If they touched her, she screamed. They gave up. Even Joe Gage said a few words to her. She didn't move. Jewel denied all movement, any kind of life. She denied Detroit, denied her fifty years, denied the weather, denied all people. She lay there in her gray coat, next to her silly red hat and said, "No." About four o'clock a motorcycle cop turned down Alexandrine. He saw Jewel and stopped. There were squawking noises coming from his two-way radio. He tried to get Jewel to move. She screamed at him. When he tried to pick her up, she clawed at him. He left her and made a call on his radio. A few minutes later a patrol car pulled up. Two officers got out. They talked to Jewel. She didn't answer. It had begun to rain very slightly, a fine mist. There was no one else on the street. The three policemen tried to pick her up and put her in the patrol car. Jewel screamed and scratched one policeman's face. Heaving herself out of their hands, she fell back onto the sidewalk and lay between her tennis shoe and red hat. The policeman with the scratched face went to his car and made a call. Five minutes later a police station wagon arrived. Two officers got out and took a stretcher from the back. They were very businesslike. All five wrestled Jewel onto the stretcher. She was a large woman, close to two hundred pounds. She screamed, fought, but couldn't get free. It was a high, monotonous scream; short bursts like a kind of siren. The five policemen tied her to the stretcher, picked it up and shoved it in the rear of the station wagon. Her scream changed until it became, "No,

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no, no, no, no. . ." They were high, tearing sounds, equally spaced; the sound of a machine whose only purpose was to make that sound. The motorcycle cop picked up the red hat and the tennis shoe and tossed them in the back with Jewel. The station wagon drove away. After a while, the street lights came on. In the rain and growing darkness, Corbin thought he could still see Jewel on the sidewalk. He wanted to run out, pick her up and carry her inside. Then the image passed from his mind and was replaced by other things. He never saw Jewel again. Mallett returned on Wednesday and immediately scraped the word "Killer" off his door. This was followed by another confrontation with Joe Gage. McKiddie saw it and told Corbin about it when he went down the next day to pay his rent. "I heard Lloyd banging around and I went over to talk to him about Jewel. The police called me after they couldn't get a hold of him. She's in the hospital. They didn't say what was wrong, only that I should get Lloyd to call them." They were sitting on a torn, gray couch. A piece of cardboard covered the window Isaac had broken. The door had been rehung and stuck in place with nails. There were dirty clothes and dishes all over the room. "Well, I went out into the hall and there was Lloyd scraping away at his door with a little knife, trying to get off that red paint. And I said, 'Lloyd, the police want you to call them.' He nearly jumped out of his skin, and he says, 'What they want me for? I ain't done nothing.' "So I told him about Jewel and how she'd been out on the sidewalk all day stuck like a piece of gum, and he said, 'They can keep her for all I care.' I told him that you don't appreciate your woman till she's gone. But he just said, 'I ain't doing nothing.' "All of a sudden there's Joe Gage standing on the stairs and he says, 'You going to kill her, Mallett? Just like you killed Earl?' "Well, Lloyd just stood there with his back to Joe Gage and after a bit he spun around and flung the knife at him, but it missed and banged off the wall. Then he slammed back into his apartment. I said to Joe, 'What'd you want to talk like that for?' But Joe, he just laughed and went back upstairs." "What did Mallett do?" asked Corbin. McKiddie was fiddling with the stumps of his missing fingers. "Nothing I know of. I heard him banging around his apartment like he was giving all the furniture a good kick, then he went out. He ain't even paid his rent." Corbin considered what McKiddie had said. He couldn't see why Gage was plaguing Mallett. Then he took seventy dollars from his wallet and gave it to McKiddie for the rent. McKiddie began to make out the receipt, then hesitated. "I don't know

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if you know this, but Kohl's got a new deal about the rent. If you pay for two months instead of one, then you only pay one twenty-five instead of one forty." "I never heard that." "Well, he just started it this month." "I don't have the extra money. Jerry seem disappointed. "I'll tell you what, you take this back and bring me the whole one twenty-five in a couple of days. That's fine with me." "Sorry, Jerry, Christmas is coming. I couldn't get though the month." It was during this week that Isaac found a partial solution to his panhandling problem. If he couldn't beg in Detroit, he would do it someplace else. Consequently, he spent the week in Windsor, taking the bus over in the morning and returning at night. This time he polished his shoes and wore a tie. Louise trimmed his moustache and long white hair. He looked like a respected professor emeritus at a respected university. Duane went to Windsor with him, ostensibly to look for his sister, but actually to see that Isaac didn't get in trouble. Isaac didn't earn as much and some money had to be spent on buses, but it was better than nothing. He talked to Corbin about it Thursday night. They were sitting in Corbin's kitchen. Isaac was sipping a cup of tea. "I figure I can spend a week in each place. There's Windsor, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Toledo, Flint, Port Huron—all kinds of towns. Duane comes with me. It takes his mind off April. He's even offered to panhandle, but I don't want him doing that kind of thing. But me, I've always liked travel. Maybe I'm not making as much, but Christmas is coming. I've always done well at Christmas." Mallett's comings and goings were erratic. Some nights he appeared to be working; other nights he must have gone to a hotel. He had completely stopped marking the calendar. Joe Gage stayed in his room, leaving the door open so he could hear Mallett come in. Corbin would see him in there polishing his black shoes or lying on his bed reading a magazine. Joe Gage never looked back. Saturday morning Mallett's boss stopped him as Mallett left work. He had received a letter describing what had happened on the night of Dittmer's death. Mallett's boss later testified that he hadn't believed the letter, but felt he should show it to Mallett. Mallett denied it and grew angry. But he also seemed frightened and this made his boss suspicious. He told Mallett that he hoped the police wouldn't hear of it. Private guards were not popular with some people downtown. Mallett left and went to a bar, staying for almost an hour. Corbin later

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kept wondering what he thought about. Although Mallett was a person for whom Corbin had little sympathy, as he imagined him in that bar, Corbin felt a kind of pity for the ex-soldier, ex-policeman, ex-private cop. Mallett had no choices which would give him control over his life. He must have believed that Joe Gage would contact the police. Inevitably this would be followed by an investigation and probably a trial. Even if he were acquitted, he would be finished as a private guard. Mallett returned to the house around 8:00 A.M. , went into his apartment and took off his guard's uniform. Carefully folding it, he put it in a trunk containing half a dozen other uniforms. It was like a scrapbook covering twenty-five years. He put on a pair of brown pants and a fresh white shirt. Then he took his .12 gauge, double-barreled shotgun, cleaned it and reloaded it. Armed with the shotgun, Mallett went upstairs. It was a sunny, Saturday morning. In the hall, he met Henry Oakes returning from the bathroom which he shared with Joe Gage. Henry said later that he first thought the gun was some sort of toy. "Hey, man, where're you going with that?" Mallett ignored him, walked by him toward Joe Gage's room. "Where're you going with that gun?" But Henry knew where he was going, he just hoped he was wrong. When Mallett continued to ignore him, Henry jumped forward and tried to grab the shotgun. Mallett spun around, shifted the gun in his hands and smashed the stock down on Henry's shoulder, knocking him to the floor. Henry began shouting, "Hey, call the police! Mallett's gone crazy!" By now Mallett had reached Joe Gage's door. He tried the knob, but the door was locked. He hit the door with his shoulder, but the lock held. Stepping back a few feet, he raised the shotgun and fired. The sound filled the house. Drinking coffee upstairs, Corbin knew exactly what it was. He dropped his cup and ran for the door. The blast knocked Joe Gage's door half off its hinges. Joe was dressed and sitting on his bed, almost in the center of his small white room. Henry heard Joe say, "Hello, killer, going to try your luck again?" There was no fear in his voice. Mallett raised the shotgun and fired. Joe Gage was picked up and hurled back against the wall like a stuffed toy made of cotton and dried peas. His whole chest was blown open. Moving to the body, Mallett raised the shotgun, holding the barrel with both hands. He smashed the stock down onto Joe Gage's face. He raised it again and smashed it down again, spattering himself with blood, destroying Joe Gage's face in that anonymous room with the girlie magazines on the

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dresser, the row of polished boots and shoes sticking out from under the bed. By this time Corbin had reached the downstairs hall where he found George holding his stomach and vomiting onto the narrow brown runner. Louise was with Henry who sat on the floor holding his shoulder. Corbin pushed past George and stopped. All he could see was Mallett's back as he raised the shotgun and smashed it down, blocking Joe Gage from his sight except for one leg dangling over the bed. But on the wall in front of Mallett, forming a circle around him was a kind of terrible red flower that ran down onto the floor behind the bed, flowed out across the linoleum, turned the black boots and shoes into small islands in a red sea. By now Corbin had been joined by Gunther and Wencel. He could still hear George vomiting. He could hear people running on the stairs. All this took seconds. Surrounded by confusion, only Mallett seemed in control as he kept smashing Joe Gage with the butt of the shotgun. Forcing himself across the room, Corbin grabbed Mallett around the waist and pulled him back. Gunther grabbed the shotgun from his hands. The floor was slippery with blood. They slipped and tried to hold their balance. Corbin's mind was suddenly full of the thing on the bed. It had no face. Bone, hair, eyes, teeth were confused into a red pulp; the chest was torn open; the wall was pitted and scarred with flesh, the remnants of Joe Gage who had become his room, who they slipped and slid upon, terrified of falling and receiving the final embrace of a man they had hated. Duncan appeared in the doorway, grabbed Mallett's collar and pulled him out. Gunther and Corbin came with him as if they were all one body. Wencel and McKiddie joined them, wrestling with him, being smeared by the blood on his face and white shirt. Corbin saw Duane running toward them. Isaac grabbed him and shoved him back against George's door. Then Mallett stopped. Corbin and Gunther held onto his arms as Mallett stared over their heads at nothing. George was still on his knees gagging. They had tracked the blood into the hall. It clung to their shoes, making dozens of red footprints. Corbin saw Duane standing by Joe Gage's door. His mouth was open as if everything he saw was being swept up and gathered inside him. "Get him away!" Corbin shouted. Duncan pulled him back and tried to shut the door, but it was half torn from its hinges. The door stayed open framing what was left of Joe Gage, a red mound on the bed. Corbin was unable to look away. Louise took his arm and turned him toward her. "I called the police. We'll need an ambulance for Henry. His shoulder is broken." "I'll telephone," said Helen. She returned to her apartment. They stood waiting for the police. No one moved or spoke. The only sound was George's gagging. Mallett stood perfectly still between Gunther and Corbin. Ruth had

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joined them. She looked in at Joe Gage, then turned to Duane. He seemed about to scream or explode. Ruth put her arms around him. Helen returned and stood by Wencel, holding his hand. As they stood in the hall, Corbin thought how they were connected. Even Mallett was part of them now. Even the dead Joe Gage. Corbin had his blood on his shirt, his shoes. After a few minutes, they heard sirens turning down Alexandrine.

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A MONTH OR so afterward Corbin wrote in his journal: "It seemed to begin with Jean McKiddie. She was the first to leave and left successfully with a purse full of money. What happened after her departure had nothing to do with her, but it was as if Jean had upset the balance. She had withdrawn her card from the card house. She left and our world began to disintegrate; slowly at first, then, after Joe Gage's death, the end came with a rush. But Jean was the beginning. Whenever I wanted someone to blame, I blamed her. She had gotten away safe." For a few days, Joe Gage's death seemed to bring the people in the house together. They met in each other's rooms. They inquired after each other's health. But their closeness was the suffocating closeness caused by self-protection and fear. As Corbin said in his journal, they were living on tiptoe. Joe Gage's death and the intrusion of a newspaper world showed them how fragile they were. They could be broken at any time. "We were like eggs," wrote Corbin. "Was I going to let George guard my back? There is nothing one Qgg can do to protect another egg." The death had other consequences. Joe Gage was gone. Mallett and his wife were gone. Without them, who could the others blame? The change which had become apparent in Duane in November—the growing coldness, the loss of belief—this could be attributed to Joe Gage's influence. But in December the coldness continued. Joe Gage had let them feel righteous. Without him, they became their own criminals. Isaac and Duncan disapproved of Ruth, who, after a month of avoiding them began seeing Duane again. Ruth, on the other hand, didn't think Duane should be living with two old men. Even Gunther thought that to some extent. Gunther also began to disapprove of Duane's friendship with Wencel and Helen. He considered Wencel an untalented machine who would destroy 180

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Duane's natural spontaneity. Henry Oakes disapproved of Gunther, saw him as superficial. Duncan felt that Duane was too easily influenced by George. Ruth thought it didn't matter if Duane believed he wouldn't find his sister and felt it wrong to encourage him in a false belief. Louise thought the act of believing was more important than the subject of the belief. Corbin wanted Duane to go but he also wanted Duane to believe that he would find his sister. Besides Duane, there was the simple fact of Joe Gage's death. He had become a number at 1300 Beaubien, a three paragraph story in the Detroit News. He was dead. Mallett had killed him with a single blast from a .12 gauge shotgun. They had been there. They had observed it. It was irrevocable. But Corbin's mind kept catching itself and repeating the fact of Joe Gage's death, and each time it was a surprise. Corbin was grimly reminded of Joe's connection to Duane on Sunday afternoon when he was coming in from the library. The brightness of the day made it difficult to see anything inside the house. As Corbin began climbing the stairs, he noticed someone coming down, but couldn't make out who it was. The first thing he was aware of was a white cowboy shirt with red trim and all the facts of Joe Gage's death seemed to surround him on the stairs. "Hello, Daniel, how are you?" It was Duane. He joined Corbin in the hall, friendly, smiling. Corbin could see nothing but that cowboy shirt. "Where'd you get that shirt?" "Joe gave it to me last week." "Why're you wearing it?" "Joe Gage was my friend." Corbin could either pursue that, try to convince Duane that Gage hadn't been worthy of his friendship, or he could drop it. "Sorry, Duane, the shirt surprised me, that's all." "That's okay." Duane fidgeted as if he wanted to leave but was too polite just to walk away. His hair was carefully slicked back. "You going out?" asked Corbin, who still couldn't take his eyes off the shirt. "Me and Ruth are going to a movie later." They stood by Mallett's door. George's Southern Pacific Railway calendar showing the freight train chugging across the Arizona desert still hung from its tack. Duane glanced at it. "D'you think Mallett's ever coming back?" "No." Duane took down the calendar, folded it and put it in the hip pocket of his jeans. "Now Wencel can play whenever he wants."

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"That's right," said Corbin. "I gotta go," said Duane. "See you later." He turned, tapped on Ruth's door and entered without waiting for a response. The few days after Joe's death were taken up with general recuperation. Much time was spent asking questions which were only answered several months later at Mallett's trial. No thought was given to Duane's sister. Kohl hired four people to completely redecorate Joe's room. They painted the bed and bureau dark brown, replaced the mattress and linoleum, patched the pellet scars in the wall and painted the white walls yellow. They even put up blue curtains. Joe's clothes, boots, shoes and pornographic magazines were packed in a trunk and taken away. The recuperation of people took longer and in two cases raised questions about their fragility. George, for instance, kept apologizing because he had been too busy throwing up to help with Mallett. He would tell long stories about the history of his weak stomach. No one had blamed George for vomiting. No one had thought about his possible bravery or cowardice. They had accepted his weak stomach as fact; that is, until his very explanations led them to doubt it. There was also Henry Oakes. Mallett had broken his collar bone and Henry had to wear a complicated figure eight bandage that went under both arms and kept his collar bone in place. Since he wore it under his clothes, there was no visible sign of damage. Henry felt guilty about not stopping Mallett. He said when he saw the gun, he knew what was going to happen. He said this too often. Corbin heard him talk about it Monday morning in George's apartment. Oakes was sitting in the armchair covered with the blue and gray Indian bedspread. "I keep thinking, would I have acted any faster if I hadn't hated Joe Gage. Man, I could have stopped Mallett, but what did I do?" "You got your collar bone broken," said Louise. "Yeah, but I keep thinking I would have moved faster if he'd been after Duane." "Could you have moved faster?" Corbin asked skeptically. Henry looked at him. They were not friends. "I don't know, man." Duane's reaction to the death was not to talk about it except to say that Joe Gage had been his friend. It was as if the murder hadn't happened. The only contradiction to this was that he kept wearing Joe's white cowboy shirt. Tuesday morning Duane came over to Corbin's apartment to show him that he had solved his tenth puzzle. Standing in the kitchen, he took it apart, put it back together, took it apart again. "I got two left. They're the ones Joe gave me.

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Corbin congratulated him and gave him a cup of coffee. It was a cloudy, rainy day. Water glistened on the fire escape. Duane sat down at the kitchen table and continued to fuss with his puzzle. "By the way," asked Corbin, "how're the social security numbers coming?" "I'm not doing that anymore. I thought I told you." "Maybe I forgot." It bothered Corbin that Duane had given up collecting social security numbers, then he thought that was foolish. "Did you see the paper?" Corbin asked. "They broke the record. A hotel guard killed a bandit over on East Grand Boulevard. That makes 694, just one more than last year" "That's not a real murder," said Duane. "If he was a bandit, then he must have deserved it." So much for Bakunin, thought Corbin. "What about Joe Gage?" asked Corbin. "Did he deserve it?" "I don't know about that." Duane had taken a pencil from a tin can full of pencils and pens and was drawing small circles on the white table top. Each was the size of a quarter. "Mallett was crazy, that's all, like when he killed his dog. It was sort of an accident." "Killing Joe Gage was an accident?" Duane began putting two round eyes in each of the circles. "Maybe." "So Joe Gage's murder was an accident and the other 693 deserved to get killed. Why weren't they accidents?" "Maybe some of them were, but I think 694 is too many accidents. Some people who get killed must deserve to get killed, otherwise it wouldn't happen." Duane turned back to the small faces. There were about fifteen of them. He drew smiles on some, frowns on the rest, about half and half. "It's more complicated than people deserving to get killed." Duane glanced at the faces, then rubbed them out with his sleeve. They left a gray mark slightly below his left wrist. "Maybe." He paused, then lowered his voice. "You think Isaac and Duncan would mind if I moved out?" Corbin wasn't sure he had heard him correctly. "Do you mean would they mind or would they forgive you?" "Would they forgive me, I guess." "They would after a while. Are you planning to move?" Duane pushed back his chair and got up. "Maybe. It's getting too crowded in there and they keep watching me and not liking what I do. I mean, I can't do anything right anymore." Wednesday afternoon Louise and Henry started the search again. Corbin put a new ad in the two daily papers, plus Wayne's paper and the underground

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paper. "Anyone having knowledge of the whereabouts of April Thrushman please call her brother at TR 4-2457. Reward." The telephone number belonged to George. Louise took Duane over to the university and Henry took him to some places in the black community. Corbin went with Louise several times, but Henry didn't want his company, saying it was hard enough going around with one white face, let alone two. Duane said they saw a lot of people, went into bars, clubs, rundown offices. They found no trace of April. Louise told Corbin later that Henry was afraid April might have taken up whoring. He came back satisfied that she hadn't. Corbin wasn't sure of the purpose of this new search. Duane went along as if he didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings by not going. He seemed interested in the people he met. He worked on his last two puzzles. Corbin kept remembering the times when Duane left the house expecting to find April within the hour, how he would urge people to hurry. Once he bought a cheap, rhinestone bracelet to give to April when he found her. The rhinestones formed her initials: A.T. After a while, he had stopped carrying it. It was as if the point of this new search was not to find April, but to give Duane something to do. His search had been the focal point of his life in Detroit. There was a fear of what would happen if that were removed. Duncan, for instance, was afraid of this, but instead of helping Duane, he either avoided him or criticized him. Duncan felt there was nothing he could do to help, that he would only make it worse. Many people began withdrawing themselves. Jerry McKiddie was drinking most of the time. Gunther was preparing to move. Isaac was out of town. Wencel and Helen were preparing for final exams and Wencel was also rehearsing his cantata. Even George, who often took Duane places, was gone for two days visiting his sister in Saline. That left four people to help Duane: Louise, Henry, Ruth and Corbin. They did not work together. Ruth didn't believe April was in Detroit and refused to encourage Duane in a search which she thought was pointless. But neither did she discourage him. Instead, she stayed with him and became, probably, the most stable thing in his life. She had begun a large portrait of Duane and he spent many evenings at her studio posing. One of the difficulties in a house full of people was that there were few isolated actions. Even private actions had public consequences. Perhaps that was why Corbin kept coming back to Jean McKiddie. Her leaving certainly had its consequences. For one thing, the halls were dustier; for another, her husband was falling apart. Jerry McKiddie was not a forceful personality. He hadn't particularly

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wanted to leave Tennessee. He hadn't particularly wanted to come to Detroit. He didn't particularly want to stay in Detroit. Those had been his wife's decisions. Now that she was gone, he didn't see why he should abide by them. For nearly a month after Jean's disappearance, Jerry had been immobilized. Then, toward the end of November, he decided to return to Tennessee. Wednesday, December 5, Jerry took about four hundred dollars in rent receipts, packed a suitcase and left. Corbin heard about it the next day when Kohl came up to tell him what had happened. Since Corbin had seen him last, Kohl had exchanged his black horn rim glasses for yellow tinted aviator glasses. He greeted Corbin with a ragged jubilance. "They caught McKiddie!" Corbin didn't know who he meant. "Jean?" Kohl saddened as he recalled past tribulations, then he cheered again. "No, no, they caught Jerry. He ran off with the rent receipts. I thought you knew. He meant to go back down south, but he only got as far as The Cozy Corner. You know, that place on Third?" Jerry had been arrested there that morning. He had been drunk and shouting that he was going back to Tennessee. He had also said he had stolen the rent receipts. In telling the story, Kohl was torn between what he saw as humor and his sorrow at the loss of the money. "Didn't you get your money back?" "The dumb hillbilly had spent it. He never could have got down south. He'd been buying drinks for the bar the whole morning. When he ran out of money, someone got pissed and called the cops. They came and picked him up. The cops said the place was just jammed. Jerry still owes the bar ten bucks." Kohl leaned back in a kitchen chair with his thumbs tucked into the pockets of his vest. "You going to press charges?" asked Corbin. "Sure. I mean, you got to teach him a lesson. I wish they'd give him ten years. As it is, he'll plead guilty to a lesser charge and be back on the streets within six months." "Tough luck," said Corbin. There were snow flurries that Thursday. Nine inches fell in northern Michigan. Detroit's 699th homicide also occurred Thursday. Two bandits broke into the house of an eighty-year-old man, taped his hands and beat him to death. The murder brought to mind George's lottery which should have a winner any day. Gunther had picked Saturday, the 8th, and hoped the city's killers could hold off since he needed the money to help him move. The

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forty-five dollars in the pot would get him out of the city, he said. Duncan had picked Friday and Duane had picked Sunday. Friday evening Corbin wrote in his journal: "Joe Gage was buried today. No one told me about it so I didn't go. The city paid for the funeral after determining he had no living relatives. Louise, Herry and Duane bought some flowers. They also attended the funeral. There was some rain and light snow. I asked Duane was it was like. He didn't want to talk about it. Louise would only say that it was dreary. I couldn't see why they were being so secretive. I tried to imagine it, but everything I thought of was like something from a movie: snow flurries and pine trees; contrasting blacks and whites; Duane, Louise and Henry walking in single file behind a black wagon; a pine coffin in the back of the wagon, and a small wreath of white flowers; no driver; an old black horse tramping through the snow; everything quiet except for the creak of leather from the horse's harness and a couple of crows calling Joe Gage to his grave." Saturday morning, Gunther got another letter from his brother in Toronto. He immediately came up and showed it to Corbin, Isaac and Duncan. Duane was out with Henry Oakes. "Dear Gun: I've got some more information about those two girls who look like your friend's sister. It's not the one called Margaret. I managed to find her. She's twenty and has a kid. But the other girl, Jane, is a real possibility. She'd been in the States and was passing through here on her way to Montreal. I talked to a guy who had been with her for a couple of days. He swore by the picture, although he said she'd put on some weight. He also said he didn't think her name was Jane. I asked him what he meant and he made some vague hints about a Quebec separatist movement. Anyway, he lives in Montreal and went back there yesterday. I asked him to look for the girl and said you would write him. His name is Jean Etinger, and his address is 17 Rue Montcalm. Despite his politics, he's a good guy and will help in any way." "Duane's got to see this," said Duncan. "I'll write this guy today." Corbin felt they had their first good lead. It seemed perfectly reasonable to tell Duane, although none of them considered the consequences. He appeared with Ruth later in the afternoon. When Corbin saw him, he thought something was wrong. He was too quiet. Corbin was pleased to see he wasn't wearing Joe Gage's cowboy shirt, but an old blue sweatshirt of his own which Duane liked even though it hung halfway down his thighs. Ruth too was quiet. She had on a short blue denim skirt, black tights and a thick black turtleneck. Duncan immediately handed Duane the letter. As he read it, Isaac and

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Duncan stood by the bunkbed waiting for his enthusiatic response. It never came. Duane gave the letter to Ruth. "It's not her. She would have told me if she had meant to go there. It's someone else." There was a few seconds of silence as they readjusted their thinking. Duncan broke it by making a short dash at Duane. He stopped and pointed his chin at him. "How d'you know it's not her? Have you seen her? Have you talked to her on the fecking phone? 'Course not. It's sure to be the same girl you heard about in Toledo. They got the same fecking name. I bet your sister came to Detroit, didn't like it, then went on to Toledo, didn't like that either, then went back to Canada just like the girl in the letter. Now she's in Montreal." Duane turned away toward Ruth. "It's not her." Duncan grabbed his arm and pulled him back. "What's this? An example of fecking telepathy? Jesus, Duane, it's the best lead we've had." Duane took Duncan's hand and gently removed it from his arm. Corbin was suddenly aware of tears in Duane's eyes and wanted to tell Duncan to leave him alone. Isaac had sat down on the lower bunk and Corbin couldn't see his face. "It may be the same girl," said Duane, "but it's not April. I talked to those people. They didn't know anything about April. Not one single thing." Duncan either didn't see the tears or chose to ignore them. "You can't know that for certain. If there's a chance it's April, then we'd be fools not to write. I'll write the fecking letter myself. What about it?" Duncan looked at Corbin for agreement, then at Ruth who now had her back to them. The afternoon sun filled their half of the room, leaving the bunkbeds and Isaac in semi-darkness. The air was filled with dust motes. "I said, what about it?" demanded Duncan. Duane turned to face him. "You want me to go that much?" "What the hell d'you mean?" The bunkbed creaked as Isaac got up. His head brushed the ceiling of the dormer. "Duncan," he said quietly. Duncan started to say something, then shrugged and shoved his hands into the pockets of his workpants. Duane glanced at Ruth, then back at Isaac and Duncan. His eyes seemed dry again. "I'm moving downstairs. I'm taking the empty room on the second floor." "Which room?" asked Isaac. He spoke softly. "You know which one. Joe's room. I'm moving down today. I can't sponge off you anymore." Duncan began to get angry. "Why can't you stay here? I thought you

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wanted to find your sister. You don't sponge off us. Jesus fecking Christ, Duane, nobody's trying to get rid of you." Duane kept his eyes on the rug. "It has nothing to do with the letter. I'd already decided." Isaac stood by the front windows, pulling at his moustache, half turned between Duane and Duncan. Duncan seemed balanced between anger and defeat. He lifted his hands, looked at them, then dropped them to his sides. "So you're leaving today?" "Yes." "There's no kitchen down there." "I'll work something out." "You're still. . ." Duncan stopped. "You're still welcome to come up here." The statement was too formal. "Okay, I'll remember that." There was a great disparity between their words and the emotion beneath them. If there had been any sign of warmth, Duncan and Duane would have probably hugged each other. But they were too unsure. The only emotions which Duncan found safe were anger and indignation. He usually left the tenderer feelings to Isaac. But Isaac stood by the window, looking out at the December weather. He felt as bad as anyone, but he wasn't going to be first to act. Corbin also wanted to break the coldness, which was getting colder by the second. He found himself growing angry with Ruth, who refused to look at them, yet who, he was certain, had urged Duane to move. Corbin missed Ruth, missed being with her. He couldn't decide if his angry feelings were due to jealousy or had any rational basis. In any case, he kept silent. At last Duncan said, "Well, then you better go." Duane went to the closet and began taking out his clothes, stuffing them into the blue airlines bag. Corbin saw Joe Gage's cowboy shirt and Bakunin's red silk scarf. The reality of his silent packing was far colder than their words could have been. Corbin wanted to ask him, "How can you move into the room where your friend was murdered?" He kept thinking of that yellow room, smelling of fresh paint and new linoleum, while behind the paint and under the linoleum were small remnants of Joe Gage. He tried to imagine Duane and Ruth making love in that room, surrounded by these reminders, still touched by Joe Gage. Duane closed the zipper on his bag and looked back at them. "I guess I'll see you later then." He stood by the door. There was still time to say something to end the coldness, although it wouldn't keep Duane from leaving. Isaac and Duncan stood together by the window. Isaac was afraid of acting,

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Duncan was afraid of showing a tender emotion. They refused to take the chance. "Okay," said Duncan, "okay." Duane turned abruptly and left. Ruth followed him, pulling the door shut behind her.

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EARLY SUNDAY EVENING, December 9, Magnolia B. McBride, fortytwo, was shot once in the chest with a .25 caliber pistol. She was pronounced dead at the scene, an apartment house she owned on the northwest side of the city. By her death she became the 700th homicide victim of 1973. The reasons for the shooting were unclear. Apparently there had been a quarrel about the possible eviction of a tenant. Witnesses told police that during the quarrel Mrs. McBride pushed her husband down a flight of stairs. Although a suspect was taken into custody, no name was released. In any case, the death of Mrs. McBride made Duane the winner of George's lottery. As winner he received forty-five dollars which was five dollars more than one month's rent for the room formerly belonging to Joe Gage. Since George was now acting caretaker, Duane gave him back the money which he otherwise would have had to borrow. If Joe Gage had not been murdered, Duane would not have won the lottery, which instead would have been won by Wencel on Monday. If Duane had not won the lottery, he might not have been able to move into Joe Gage's room. But if Joe Gage had not been murdered, there would have been no room for Duane to move into and he might have stayed with Isaac and Duncan. Monday afternoon Corbin had a disagreeable encounter with Ruth. He was walking down Second, coming home from the library, when he saw her a short distance ahead. He called and she turned and waited for him to catch up. It was five o'clock and almost dark. The four lanes of Second Avenue were crowded with rush hour traffic: a constant roaring, honking, tires squealing, the near sweet smell of exhaust. Ruth stood under a street lamp. It was snowing lightly and large flakes 190

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stuck to her pea jacket. A long red scarf was looped around her neck and over her head. Corbin kissed her cheek and she took his arm. He felt that he hadn't seen her for months. He missed her and kissing her cheek had given him a little rush of pleasure. "What've you been doing?" "I was over at the art department seeing about courses." "Want to get a beer?" "Sure." They went into the Bronx Bar which was nearly empty. A couple of students were playing pool and the only sound came from the click of the balls. They sat at the bar; Corbin ordered two drafts. In front of them were rows of bottles and behind them was a large mirror. Their reflections were broken by the bottles. Corbin watched Ruth's eye tucked behind a bottle of Jack Daniels. It was serious again. "Duane says you're writing a book about him." Corbin put his elbows on the bar. Ruth had turned to face him. "It's not really about him and it's not really a book. I told you about my journal. This is just a bigger journal and much of it takes place around Duane. Does he mind?" Ruth made a snorting noise. "No, he was proud. Is it a book or isn't it?" "It's my journal. You know the trouble I've had with my writing. Now I'm only writing about the past three months, being completely objective about it." "You can't be completely objective." Ruth drank some beer. A strand of hair fell across her eyes and she pushed it away. "You're using him," she said. "You're painting him. What's the difference? All I'm doing is recording an event." Corbin thought how a few minutes before he had been eager to be with Ruth. Their conversation depressed him. "He's posing for me and I'm paying him for it. It's not the same. You're a participant. You can't be just an observer. Duane needs friends now. The house is full of little pressure groups, each trying to get him to do something. And none of it has anything to do with Duane. They're just trying to make themselves feel better. And you, instead of helping, you're pulling back and watching. . . ." Tuesday evening there was a small meeting to decide about Duane. It took place in George's apartment. George was there with Louise and the dogs. Duncan was there, and Corbin had brought Ruth, partly because she had a legitimate interest and partly because he didn't want her to think he was affected by what she had said in the bar. Isaac was panhandling in Ypsilanti that week and hadn't gotten back

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yet. Duane was out with Henry Oakes. Gunther, Wencel and Helen hadn't been able to come. Corbin imagined the six of them off laughing and having a good time while the rest of them quarreled about Duane's future. As for the search, Corbin had had a new idea and was waiting for the proper moment to introduce it. It was an impossible meeting. Ruth looked her slinkiest in a very short green dress made out of something resembling silk. She sat in the single armchair with her legs curled under her. Across the room, Duncan straddled a straight chair by George's desk. Thin, bald, twisted, wearing green work clothes—he kept glancing angrily at Ruth, then looking away. George and Louise sat on the couch with the dogs on the blue rug at their feet. Gimli, the malamute, was thoughtfully chewing a yellow sock. It looked like a new sock. George was saying, "Remember when he first came? Like, he'd spend an hour talking about some dog he'd seen. He doesn't take pleasure in things like he used to. He spends too much time by himself." "That's not fair," said Louise. She wore a thick blue turtleneck that made her look as formless as a hand puppet. "Duane lived on a farm for eighteen years. Of course he's changed." George wasn't convinced. "Maybe he's changed too much." "What's that supposed to mean?" asked Ruth crossly. "Even if he changes, he's still Duane. He'd be Duane no matter what happened." Duncan had been watching her anger and responded with an anger of his own. "That's easy for you to say. What have you done? You got him fecking beat up." Ruth got up and walked to the door. Her expression indicated that she had thought she had been making a mistake by coming to George's and now they had proved it to her. "Can't you see how you're insulting him?" she asked. "You believe he's a cripple. Can't you see how that hurts him? He's not a baby. You're not thinking of Duane, you're thinking of yourselves. He knows you disapprove of him. How do you think it makes him feel? He feels guilty and afraid of losing his friends. Fine friends you are." Ruth turned and left the room, leaving the door open behind her. Duncan slammed it shut. "That fecking whore, what does she know? Throw five bucks in front of her and she'd change her tune fast enough." Corbin realized that if he didn't tell them his idea right away, there would be no one left in the room to hear it. "Look, I've got a friend at the newspaper. I'm going to call him about Duane. There's a chance he might do a story, a feature about a poor Canadian kid who's come to Detroit to search for his lost sister. They might print it. Christmas is coming. The paper's big enough that if April is anywhere in

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Michigan, someone might point it out to her. It's worth a try." The others were facing him. Although they weren't actually bursting with excitment, they looked faintly optimistic. "It might work," said Duncan, jerking his teeth. "If they print it, then she's sure to answer it. No matter where she is. Shit, Daniel, it's bound to work. " Corbin disagreed. "No, there's a good chance the paper won't do the story. But I'll talk to my friend and we'll see what happens." Duncan deflated a little. "Feck it, Daniel, you're right. Even that whore was partly right." He sat down on the couch and began to pull Gloin's ears. The German shepherd tried to lick his hands. "You know what kind of man I am, Daniel. I'm bitter and cynical. I can't help thinking some of it rubbed off on Duane, that I've helped contaminate him. You know, that business about the girl in Montreal? I wrote that guy. If there's the slightest chance the girl is April, then Duane should go there. It would be a hell of a lot better than seeing him rot down here." On Wednesday Corbin called his friend at the newspaper. His name was Harvey Lyle. Actually they had been friends in high school in Ann Arbor. Durin g the past thirteen years, they had seen each other about six times. Corbi n was fairly sure that Harvey would do him a favor. When Corbin got the city room, a receptionist told him to "Hold." He held for ten minutes before Harvey picked up the phone. Be said it was great to hear from Corbin, that he was in a rush, that he would get back to him, that they had to have lunch together at the Press Club soon. Then he hung up. Corbin was only slightly irritated. He knew he would reach Harvey eventually. Wednesday night, as Duncan was walking to work around eleven, he into the same five black teenagers who had stopped him before. ran After the first incident, Duncan had gone to work at different times by a variety of different routes. That had lasted a few weeks. Then he assumed they had forgotten about him and he returned to his old pattern of walking down Alexandrine to Second to Willis to Cass. He had been doing this for over a week and had nearly forgotten about them himself. "Shit, man, look who's here." Duncan looked and saw all five boys halted on the other side of the street . He was under a street lamp about half way down the block. Its light barel y reached to where the group stood in an open area around a fire hydrant. It ha d been snowing off and on for the past two days and the street was mushy. Snow glittered on the parked cars. One of them scooped up a handful of snow, formed it into a ball and

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hurled it at Duncan. It smashed against the chain-link fence behind him. Duncan began to walk quickly down the street. The sidewalk was slippery. As he walked, he took out his knife and opened it. A second snowball clipped his head, knocking off his watchcap. He stooped to pick it up and a third snowball hit his shoulder. Shaking the slush off his cap, Duncan turned toward the kids. They had crossed the street and were walking toward him, laughing and scooping up handfuls of snow. As before they were wearing blue jeans and denim jackets. One had a white scarf around his neck. Another wore a puffy knit cap of red, black and green stripes. "Hey, look, he's got his little knife again." Duncan was two thirds of the way down the block. The kids were about twenty feet behind him. Now they broke into a run, trying to surround him as before. Duncan hurried toward the alleyway, sliding his feet along the snow, keeping one hand on the fence for support. He imagined himself slipping, falling to the ground and the kids jumping on him. Just as he reached the alley, two of them got in front of him. Duncan spun back, swinging his knife in a semicircle. They laughed, but no one moved. There was no one else on the street. "Well, old man, we're going to teach you a lesson. We're going to have a little school and teach you to be respectful." The boy who was talking was the one in the knit cap. He had his hands in his back pockets and strutted back and forth in front of Duncan blocking the sidewalk to the Turveydrop. He had his head tilted up and the knit cap was pulled down to his eyebrows. He looked sly. Maybe he was fifteen. "Old man, you don't bring knives to school. You gotta be punished. Give him two." Before Duncan understood, a snowball hit the back of his head. As he turned to face his attacker, a second snowball hit his ear, knocking off his watch cap again. The kids began to laugh. Duncan left his cap on the sidewalk. The boy in the knit cap stood facing him, arms crossed, legs apart. "Has our little honkey learned to be respectful? Say thank you for the snowballs. No? Give him three. This time Duncan was able to duck. Even so one of them waited, then hit him in the face from less than ten feet. Duncan stumbled back against the fence. He was frustrated and furious. He knew he would have to make a break across the alleyway. "They hurt, honkey? Just remember it's for your own good. You say you're sorry and maybe we won't hurt you so bad. No? Give him four." Duncan twisted aside. Two snowballs hit his arm and shoulder. His face and neck burned. He had trouble getting his breath, but he refused to show he had been hurt or wipe the snow from his face.

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"You're not thanking us, honkey." The boy in the cap bent down to make a snowball. "How you gonna learn to say please and thank you if you don't try? You gotta show respect. What the fuck you think school's for? Give him five." Duncan ducked down. As they threw their snowballs, he jumped forward, half scuttling, half running through the slush toward the boy in the knit cap, ignoring the snowballs that hit his coat. The boy had waited for Duncan to straighten up. Now that he saw what was happening, he dropped the snowball and dodged backwards. Duncan slashed out with his knife, cutting into the arm that was raised in front of him. The boy shouted, slipped and fell in the slush. Duncan hurried across the mouth of the alley and down the sidewalk toward the Turveydrop. As Duncan ran, one of the boys shouted after him: "We're going to get you, man. Maybe not tomorrow, but we're going to get you. And next time, you better have a gun." He turned and rejoined his friends. The group moved off down Willis, supporting the boy whom Duncan had cut. Duncan watched them. It wasn't until he reached the Turveydrop that he began to worry about the threat. "What am I supposed to do, take a fecking cab? How can I get to work with those kids waiting for me? They stole my cap. What kind of city is this anyway? All I want to do is make a few bucks and live in peace. If those kids want to get me, they can get me anytime. I'll have to quit my fecking job." Duncan sat at the bar, bent over a cup of coffee. He was jerking his teeth so much that Corbin was afraid they would fall into the cup. It was a busy night. Duncan talked to Corbin as he passed back and forth. "Maybe you could come in early," Corbin suggested. "Thanks a lot, Daniel. Maybe I could come in at fecking five o'clock. Maybe I can just move in, bring over my fecking bunkbed and set it up right in the middle of the room. You can use it as a fecking table for midgets and basketball players. Right, Daniel? Is that what you fecking want?" "Look, you can use my car." Duncan's face twitched in three directions at once. "Fine, Daniel. I can't fecking drive. Never mind, I'll drive it anyway. If I kill myself, then those fecking kids won't chase me anymore. Thanks for the help, Daniel, you're a real fecking friend." "I'll teach you to drive. Come on, Duncan, don't be stubborn." Duncan turned away. "I'm too old." "Don't be silly. It'd only take a day or so. Anyway, you'd be driving at night and only going about four blocks." "You think I could do it?" "Sure you could."

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He gave his teeth a jerk. "Okay, but if I crash your fecking car into a fecking tree it's your own fault so don't try to get any money out of me. And if I see any of those kids when I'm driving, I'll run em' down, even if I have to chase 'em up on the fecking sidewalk." It didn't take Corbin long to realize that giving Duncan driving lessons was going to be a chore. Although Corbin didn't expect him to fawn and scrape, neither did he see any reason for Duncan to be rude. Duncan distrusted favors and hated to accept them. In order to show that this favor gave Corbin no special privileges, he remained angry and dangerous during the whole time. "Don't baby me, Daniel. That's the fecking gas, that's the fecking clutch and that's the fecking brake. I wasn't born yesterday." "You're mixing up the clutch and the brake. They're the other way around." "I know that for shit's sake. Jesus Christ, can t you take a joke? What's this?" "The emergency flasher." "Don't get all technical on me, Daniel. What's it do?" "It makes all the lights flash." "Jesus Christ, I want a car not a Christmas tree. Let's stick to the fecking essentials." They were sitting in Corbin's Volkswagen in the middle of a snowstorm in the middle of an empty parking lot near Tiger Stadium. It was Thursday afternoon. Four inches of snow fell that day. Duncan managed to imply that Corbin had caused the snowstorm in order to make the lessons more difficult. He implied that Corbin had no wish to teach him to drive, but was indulging in some private joke at his expense. He made it clear that he was aware of the joke and expected a crowd of people to leap from their hiding places and laugh and point. After an hour he had successfully learned to start the car. "Are all cars this fecking difficult or just your car? I was a fool to let you talk me into this, Daniel. Now what do I do?" "Let the clutch out easily." Duncan popped the clutch. The tires spun in the snow, making the high scream of a dentist's drill that has slipped off a tooth and is about to enter the gum. The car leapt forward sideways at twenty miles an hour. Duncan quickly turned off the ignition and put the key in his pocket. He didn't touch the brake. The car made slow and stately circles through the snow, then stopped two inches from a street light. "Jesus, Daniel, you could have killed me." "Try it again. This time very slowly." "I'm not touching that key."

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"You want those kids to get you?" "Jesus, Daniel, you really hate me, don't you?" By four o'clock, Duncan was able to make perfect circles in first gear. A crowd of ten black children and one elderly white woman in a long black coat had gathered to watch. As they slewed past them at high speeds, the children went "Oooooh " and the old woman opened her mouth wide enough to accomodate a small shoe. She had no teeth and Corbin felt that looking into her mouth was like looking into a large pink flower. She was tall and thin. Her frizzy white hair was so full of snow that it was difficult to tell which was hair and which was weather. They spun by her again and she waved. "You nearly hit that woman." "It's your car, I'm only driving. Besides, she's standing too close." "Let's go home. I think you've mastered the circle. Tomorrow, we'll try straight lines. I'll drive you to work tonight." "I don't take charity." Friday morning they spent three more hours practicing in the snow covered parking lot and by noon Corbin was ready to hand Duncan over to any group of black teenagers who asked, but by noon he was also able to drive fairly well in second gear. "What about third and fourth gear?" "You don't need those to get to work." "What if I'm chased?" By one o'clock, Duncan had mastered third gear. As a final test, Corbin let him drive back to the house on Alexandrine. Although he didn't hit anything, he managed to terrify a dozen perfectly innocent people. There was still snow and Duncan took most of the corners sideways. Whenever Corbin winced Duncan would say, "Don't be a sissy, Daniel." It took him thirty-five minutes to drive one mile. Corbin parked the car as Duncan waited on the sidewalk. When Corbin joined him, Duncan said, "It seemed to take a long time, Daniel, but I won't complain. Just let me go over to the lockshop and make my own key and I won't bother you anymore." Corbin watched Duncan walk away: a sort of jittery, rolling walk like a Japanese toy. He was not pleased with Duncan and had the impulse to throw a snowball at him. He even had a snowball and was tossing it lightly up and down when Duane came up behind him. "Hello, Daniel." He too had a snowball which he was tossing. He was wearing George's old field jacket and a tan cowboy hat that Corbin had never seen before. "Hello, Duane, did Joe give you that hat?" Duane nodded. He was looking toward the end of the block where Duncan was just turning the corner. Duane cocked his arm and threw the

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snowball at a maple about twenty feet away. It hit chest high. Corbin threw his snowball and missed the tree. "How come nobody told me that Duncan got chased by those kids again?" "I don't know. I guess you were out." "Did they hurt him?" "No, he got away, but he stabbed one of them. "Kill him?" "He cut his arm." Duane reached down for a handful of snow and formed it into another ball. "What's he going to do?" "He's going to take my car. I've been teaching him to drive." Corbin started making a snowball of his own. "I could have done that." "Done what?" "Taught him to drive. My dad's got a Volkswagen. I could of taught him easy." Corbin imagined Duncan becoming ruder and ruder to Duane. "That wouldn't have worked." Duane cocked his arm and threw his snowball at the maple. It hit two inches above the first one. "Why wouldn't it work?" "Because Duncan doesn't teach easily." "Oh," said Duane, "I thought you meant because Duncan doesn't like me anymore." "Sure he likes you. You're one of his best friends." Corbin felt he should say something else. He wasn't sure how you convinced person of someone else's love. "If he liked me so much," said Duane, "he would have told me about the kids. I'd teach him to drive and I'd go to work with him every night just to see he didn't get hurt, but he didn't say anything. And Isaac, he's not even around anymore." Duane was out the entire afternoon with Henry. Corbin didn't think they were looking for April. Later he learned that Henry was helping Duane find a job. Duane meant to stay in Detroit, keep his room and earn some money. Corbin found Duane in his room about six. He was sitting on his bed surrounded by newspapers. He looked depressed. "I just wanted to tell you," said Corbin uncomfortably, "that you're really wrong about Duncan. He thinks about you all the time." Duane didn't answer. He was barefoot and his old sneakers were steaming on the radiator.

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"Apart from Isaac, you're the person he cares most about," said Corbin. "He worries about you, that's all." Duane didn't seem convinced. "He wants me to be a different sort of person. Even Ruth says that." "Ruth's not right about everything," said Corbin, trying not to sound irritated. "Thanks anyway for telling me," said Duane. His tone was pleasant but not enthusiastic. "I guess I'm still feeling bad about Joe. By the way, I was going to show you something. Did you read about that person falling?" Corbin said no and Duane handed him the front page of the paper. At nine that morning a woman had jumped from the thirteenth floor of a Detroit office building. Instead of hitting the pavement, she had struck a man entering the building on his way to work. Both had died and both were thirty. The man, an airline executive, was known for being habitually punctual. The woman had worked in an office and her co-workers described her as "deeply troubled." One paragraph read, "Ulysses Blackman, attendant at a parking lot across Grand River, said, 'I didn't see the lady leap, but I looked across the street and I saw this man with what appeared to be a dummy on his shoulders. Then they both fell to the ground.'" Corbin gave the paper back to Duane. "What about it?" Sitting on the edge of the bed, Duane looked at the front page. There was a picture of the Book Building with an arrow pointing to the window from which the woman had jumped. Another arrow pointed down. "It was nobody's fault," said Duane. "I mean, she happened to jump from the window just when he was down below. If she'd wanted to do it on purpose, she couldn't of done it. You can't blame anybody. You can't even if you want to, unless you're dumb." "If he'd stopped to give a dime to a beggar, he wouldn't have been killed," said Corbin Duane thought about that. "Maybe he did stop. Maybe he was killed because he did give a dime to a beggar." "If he'd stopped to look at a woman's legs, he wouldn't have been killed." Duane looked at Corbin sharply. "You're not being serious. I mean, he was killed and it was no one's fault. There wasn't anybody like Mallett. What's the point of that?" Corbin didn't think he would see Duane again that day but he was mistaken. Joe Gage had a long arm. Even dead he was able to give Duane a shove. Corbin had gone down to visit George and Louise around nine to tell

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them about Duncan's driving. He had just reached the part where Duncan nearly hit the old woman when they heard an odd sort of noise, "Wooo,wooo, wooo." They went out in the hall and Louise said the noise was coming from Duane's room. His door was unlocked. They found him standing by the bed. He had on Joe Gage's white cowboy shirt and tan cowboy hat. His arms were outstretched and he turned slowly in a circle, saying, "Wooo, wooo, wooo," like a locomotive in pain. His eyes were red and he looked crazy. "What's going on?" asked Corbin. George sniffed the air. "He's stoned." Then he added, "I didn't give it to him." Louise took Duane's arm, stopping his circles. Gently, she pushed him back toward the bed and sat down beside him. "What's wrong, Duane? What's the matter?" Duane put his hand up to his forehead, pushing back the cowboy hat. "I've gone away. I've climbed out of my skin and my head keeps trying to catch up, but just when I'm almost there, I go away again." Duane spoke slowly. Louise took off his cowboy hat and set it behind her on the bed. "You're right here in the room, Duane." "I could be all kinds of places," said Duane. "It's like watching a merrygo-round, a really fast merry-go-round. And I'm riding and I'm standing on the ground beside it at the same time. And I keep passing myself. And I keep reaching out from where I'm standing, but I still keep passing myself." Duane put his hand to his head. "Where's my hat? I need it for thinking." Louise handed him the cowboy hat. He put it on and pulled it down low on his brow. "What was I saying?" asked Duane. Louise put her arm around him. "You were talking about a merry-goround." "That's right, a merry-go-round, and I keep going past myself. And Duncan's on it and Isaac's on it and Corbin's on it and Ruth's on it and George and Wencel and you and everybody's on it. Even Joe Gage is on it. Even the dogs are on it. And I'm on it, and I'm off it, and you all keep whizzing by me, and there's merry-go-round music, and I'm trying to catch hold, and just as I'm about to catch hold, I forget all about it and start back at the beginning before I knew I had to catch hold, and then I remember again, and then I reach out my hand, but it doesn't do any good, none of it does any good, and I don't know where I've gone to." Someone bumped Corbin who turned and saw Duncan standing at his shoulder. Corbin had no idea how long he'd been there. Duncan stared at Duane as if he and Duane were the only people in the room. "What's wrong with him?" he asked.

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George gave a little jump. "He's stoned. I didn't give it to him." Duncan turned back to Duane. His eyes were like dissecting tools. Duane was still talking. "And I walk down streets and I keep seeing myself turning corners ahead of me, but I can't catch up and sometimes I don't know where I am and sometimes I tell myself I'm in Joe Gage's room, but sometimes I don't know where that is." Duncan continued to stare, but he could have been staring at anything. Duane was right; he wasn't there. He had become a stranger. There was almost a click as Duncan shut himself off, as if he were a slide projector and Duane were the picture he had lingered over. Suddenly there was a blank screen. Without another word Duncan turned and left the room. Louise looked after him sadly as if she had understood all that Duncan was thinking. "I'll take care of Duane," she told the others. "You go back to the apartment." Louise returned as Corbin was about to leave for work. "He's asleep. Joe Gage gave him the grass about a month ago. Don't worry about it." George felt bad. "I'm the one who's always praising it." "There's nothing wrong with smoking it," said Louise. "It's his reasons. Joe Gage told him it would cheer him up. Three months ago he wouldn't have needed that."

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THE MORNING AFTER Duane got stoned Louise talked to Duane about his sister and about his plans. Duane said he wanted to stay in Detroit and get a job. He told her he didn't believe he would find April. Although she might have come to Detroit, he felt he hadn't followed soon enough and that she had moved on. He didn't want to continue the search. He told Louise it wasn't important to him anymore. But Duane went on to say that some of the people he liked best in the house were still convinced of his belief. He was afraid that if they thought he didn't believe, they would blame themselves, say it was a result of their own cynicism and doubts. Duane asked Louise if it would hurt them to know he had given up. She said it would. Later, when he learned of it, Corbin was furious with Louise for making Duane think he was hurting them. Even if it was true, she should have kept quiet. It made Duane lie. He began to pretend that he still thought he would find April just so the others wouldn't feel badly. At first, of course, they all saw the change as a change for the good. Corbin became aware of the change on Sunday morning. Coming in with the paper, he met Duane going out. They chatted for a bit. Corbin asked where he was going. Duane said, "Over to the university. I'm going to walk around for a while. Maybe I'll see April." "You think so?" "There's always a chance." Corbin was so pleased that he went up to tell Isaac and Duncan. He found Isaac in bed, even though it was late morning. Panhandling the cities

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of southern Michigan was tiring him out. He was excited, however, to hear about Duane. "I knew Duane hadn't given up. He's got guts. It'd take a lot to make him quit." He lay on the bottom bunk propped up by two pillows. "So when will we see your friend at the newspaper?" "I'll call him again today." Corbin had finally reached Harvey Lyle at the paper and he had been mildly enthusiastic. All that remained was to set up a date for him to meet Duane. "The sooner the better. Just don't forget, Daniel, when you see that guy, I want to go too. Okay?" "I'll call him now," said Corbin. "You going to be around, Duncan?" Duncan didn't lower the paper. Corbin stared at a headline which said the Teamsters would strike five supermarket chains at midnight. "No," said Duncan, "I got extra work at the lockshop. Also, I'd like to borrow your car and do some practicing. I saw those guys again last night. I didn't tell you." "Which guys?" asked Corbin without thinking. "Those kids that want to kill me. They're out looking for me, they're looking all the time. Jesus fecking Christ, Daniel!" Duncan lowered the paper enough to glare over the top, Ten minutes later Corbin called Harvey Lyle at home. His wife said he was working. Corbin called him at the paper. Lyle was still interested but the difficulty was that he had to be in Lansing on Monday, Flint on Tuesday, and Wednesday and Thursday were his days off. If he did a story, it probably wouldn't appear before Sunday the 23rd, which would squelch the chance of brother and long lost sister spending Christmas together. "There's no way to do it before?" Corbin asked. "I'll be driving back from Lansing late in the afternoon. Then I've got to do my story. Maybe we can meet afterward. There's a bar around the corner from the paper. The Anchor. I'll talk to the kid there, say about 8:30. Don't keep me waiting, okay?" "We'll be there." A little later Corbin was at his desk, going through his journal and arranging the entries on Duane. It was about three o'clock. The sky was overcast and it was snowing lightly. A few minutes after he sat down he noticed his Volkswagen buzz down Alexandrine toward Second. Although his windows were closed, he could hear it roar at the top of first gear. Corbin was just getting back to his journal when he again saw his car turn the corner and come down the street. Duncan was hunched over the

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wheel, opening and closing his mouth as if biting and rending the air. He still hadn't shifted and the car screamed by. A minute later, the car again turned onto Alexandrine. The gray of the Volkswagen perfectly matched the color of the sky and dirty snow. Corbin saw Duncan furiously opening and closing his mouth as the car roared past, as if the roar were the sound of Duncan's shouting. Corbin got up and took his journal into the kitchen in order not to see any more. On Monday morning a new couple moved into Mallett's apartment. George talked about how the house was being invaded by outsiders. They were graduate students. The man was burly and wore plaid flannel shirts. He kept his brown hair in a pony tail that reached halfway down his back. The woman was medium-sized, blond and wore long green dresses with padded shoulders. They seemed pleasant enough. They didn't mind Wencel playing the piano. No one made any attempt to get to know them. Monday evening Corbin drove Duane, Isaac and George down to the Anchor Bar to meet Harvey Lyle at 8:30. Isaac hadn't returned from Flint until eight. As they drove downtown, he kidded Corbin about how Flint was more dangerous than Detroit. There had been a shoot-out between two motorcycle clubs, the Fly-In Wheels and the Devil's Disciples early Sunday morning. The Wheels had thrown a party at their headquarters and invited the Disciples. After three hours of drinking, there had been an argument, then a fight, then the shooting started. Five men were killed and nine wounded. "You see, Daniel, Detroit's quieting down. We only had four killings yesterday. What's it up to now, 723?" "My Dad had a motorcycle before the war," said Duane. "He's got pictures of it and he said it was bright red and had a horn that sounded just like a cow." The Anchor was a reporters' and printers' bar in the basement of a warehouse. It was a square, dimly lit room with a pool table in the center. The bar itself was L-shaped. On the wall behind the short leg of the L was a row of eight by ten glossy photographs of dead newspapermen. They had kindly and attentive faces. The customers ranged from printers in dirty blue coveralls and paper hats to public relations men dressed like characters from The Great Gatsby. There was little mingling except at the pool table. Corbin took a booth by the door. A matronly waitress brought them two beers and two Cokes. Isaac was bothered by the noise and number of people. After a few minutes, he stopped watching the crowd and turned back to his Coke. By nine o'clock there was still no sign of Harvey. Isaac continued to stare at his hands as if the knot that his fingers made was the one which

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had troubled his whole life. In his old white shirt, khaki pants and long white hair he looked like someone from the Salvation Army home up the street. Sitting next to Corbin, George watched the pool game and tried to get up nerve to challange. Although the bar was dimly lit, he wore dark glasses in big gold frames. He had on a purple jersey with the words "Chew It" stenciled in white across the front. Duane sat across from him, carefully watching a table of four deaf and dumb compositors. They made delicate bird-like movements with their hands, then laughed silently or in high squawks. Duane listened as if trying to overhear a secret. Corbin envied their apparent freedom from words and felt deprived not to know what they were talking about: emphasis of fingers, rhetoric of wrists. Duane wore Joe Gage's cowboy shirt. His reddish brown hair was combed and, although it reached his collar, it still looked respectable. His face was smooth and pink. Corbin doubted he could grow a beard. In his hands was one of the last two puzzles. It consisted of five connected rings that had to be separated. They made a constant jingling noise as Duane tried to get them apart. Harvey arrived around 9:30 hurried and imposed upon, wearing a dark blue suit. He didn't say anything about being late. He was short and heavy set. His thin brown hair was combed forward in a ragged fringe. His usual expression was of a person attending the funeral of a stranger: sympathetic and bored. "Is this the kid with the sister? What's the story?" He pulled up a chair from a nearby table and straddled it. The matronly waitress brought him a scotch and soda without being asked. Corbin told Harvey about April while Duane listened. As Corbin talked he could hear the jingling of the puzzle; sometimes louder, sometimes softer. Corbin tried to convince Harvey that Duane's search for his sister would make a good Christmas story. Here was this young Canadian who had been in Detroit for over three months looking for his sister who was near and dear to his heart etc. "They've always been close," said Corbin. "She even taught him how to read." Corbin could see Harvey considering the possibilities. He kept looking at Duane, expecting him to say something. Duane fiddled with his puzzle and drank his Coke. At last Harvey said, "What's your sister like? I mean, what's she really like?" He had a way of talking that made each word sound terribly important. Duane glanced up at him, then returned to his puzzle. "She's pretty and she's nice."

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"Yeah, but what's she like? What sort of things does she do?" "She helped with the farm work and after my mother died she cleaned the house." "Does she have hobbies or something like that?" "She reads a lot of movie magazines, and television, she likes television." Harvey looked at Corbin and raised his eyebrows. "Where've you been looking for her?" "Almost everywhere." "How d'you know she came here?" "She said she was going to." "You think you'll find her?" "Maybe." Corbin could see Harvey's interest decrease with each answer. Duane showed none of the innocence that made him appealing. George leaned across the table and took Duane's arm. "Tell him about all that stuff April reads. Remember you said she wanted to be a singer or something?" He turned to Harvey. "Here's this young girl stifled by a small Ontario farm. She wants to express herself, to see the world. She comes to the big city, but it's so big that it just swallows her up." As George spoke his Afro bobbed back and forth at Harvey. "The farm wasn't so bad," said Duane. Harvey kept looking at them, kept looking at the "Chew It" on George's shirt. He glanced at Isaac who was hunched over and still staring into his hands. Corbin felt he could read his thoughts. He realized he had made a mistake. Getting up, he excused himself and went to get another beer. Harvey followed him to the bar. "What do you expect me to do with that?" "He's depressed. There's been a murder in the house." Corbin told him a little about Joe Gage. "Maybe we could do something on the murder." Although he was talking to Corbin, Harvey's eyes kept scanning the room. "What about his sister?" Corbin wanted to disappear. He wanted to be back in his room, but he didn't want to leave in such away that Harvey would think badly of him. "I'll work that in. Have him come to the city looking for his sister and finding violence instead. On the other hand, maybe not. We're trying to play down the Big Bad Detroit image." "I'll tell you all you need," said Corbin. "Duane's in bad shape now." He didn't know how much to say. He couldn't mention Duane getting stoned, and Duncan's coldness would mean nothing to Harvey. They were standing in the angle of the L-shaped bar. There was a lot of noise and laughter. Harvey kept looking around the room.

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"Yeah, I could do something. My editor should be in soon. We'll see what he says. Can you get rid of the rummy and the hippie-freak?" "Who?" But Corbin knew who. He found himself beginning to sweat, but whether from embarrassment or anger he wasn't sure. "The old man and the guy in the funny shirt. I got a conservative editor." "They're Duane's friends." Harvey sucked his teeth. "Yeah, we all need friends." They went back to the booth. Corbin slid in next to George, tried to cover him like a blanket. He felt foolish and ashamed. Harvey took Duane aside and began asking him about the murder. "Look, Isaac," said Corbin, "we've got to wait for Harvey's editor. Harvey says there's too many of us here and that his editor's funny, that you and George being here might affect his decision." Isaac stared at Corbin. "What d'you mean?" "Well, he says you don't really look respectable. I think that's a lot of crap, but if we want him to do the story. . . . " Corbin couldn't tell George's reaction because of the dark glasses. Isaac looked as if Corbin had punched him in the stomach. He jabbed Duane in the ribs, nearly pushing him out of the booth. "Let me out. I've got to get out." Duane jumped out. Isaac slid across the seat and began pulling on his coat. "Nice meeting you, really nice meeting you." Harvey nodded. Isaac stood swaying back and forth above him. Then he turned and left the bar. George hadn't moved. "You want me to get out?" Corbin asked. "No, I'm staying." "You sure?" "Don't push it, Daniel. I'm staying." Corbin turned back to Duane and Harvey. Duane was talking about Joe Gage's death. "Mallett shot him. They had a fight and Mallett shot him and Jewel got taken away. Now I live in Joe's room. I don't know why he got shot. It just happened." Duane was still working on the puzzle. The jingling of the rings followed his words like a musical accompaniment. "Was he a friend of yours?" asked Harvey. "Yes, he told me really interesting things. But one time he got me sick. He gave me some grass." Duane spoke without emotion. They all had to listen hard to hear him. "But he was a friend all right, a good friend." Pushing his way out of the booth, Corbin got to his feet. He realized he had hurt people he cared about for issues that didn't matter. He didn't know if he could fix it. "I'll be back in a minute," he said. Corbin caught up with Isaac at the corner of Lafayette and the Lodge

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Expressway. It was very cold. "Isaac, let me give you a ride home." "I want to walk." They stood on the overpass. Cars shot by beneath them. In his dark blue officers coat, Isaac looked like a retired traffic cop. "Let me drive you home." "No, I'll walk." Isaac moved off to the crosswalk. Corbin followed him. "Isaac, I'm sorry. Don't be mad at me." Isaac was several inches taller than Corbin and stood looking down at him from a foot away: white moustache, thin face, white hair. "Daniel, you're trying to play too many sides at once. You got to pick one side and stick to it, even if it's wrong." "Harvey'll do a story." "I don't care about that. Look at Duane, just look at him. It's over, don't you understand? I'm going home." He walked off down Lafayette. Corbin started to follow him, then changed his mind and returned to the bar. When Corbin reached the booth, he saw Harvey joking with some friends up by the cash register. George and Duane were sitting alone not talking. George had taken off his sunglasses. He anticipated Corbin's questions. "We're waiting for his editor. I didn't see any reason to leave just because that guy thinks I should. I don't care if he's a friend of yours." "He's not a friend. He's just someone I know. Anyway, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything." Harvey's editor didn't show up until after midnight. George kept dozing off; Corbin felt full of self-dislike; Duane worked on his puzzles. The editor was a bear-like man with a small moustache. He wore a trench coat buttoned up to the collar. His name was Sam and he had been a police reporter for twenty years. He had the look of a man who couldn't be fooled. Harvey made the introductions and Sam shook their hands. "What's on your mind, Harvey?" "I got a story I might try to get in for tomorrow. I wanted your opinion. This kid here's Canadian. He's been in Detroit since September looking for his sister. She's a farm girl who ran away from home, seventeen years old. The kid's never been in a big city before. Since he's been here he's been beaten up and a friend was murdered before his eyes. Maybe it's worth twelve 'graphs and some art." Sam was staring at the thumb of his right hand as if the nail were a small television on which he saw the four of them. Then he shook his head. "Maybe after Christmas. It'd be a mistake now." "That's what I figured," said Harvey. Sam got to his feet. "I'm going to get a stiff drink." "What the hell," said George suddenly. "Why can't you do something

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now? I mean, his sister's someplace in the city. He'd like to spend Christmas with her." Sam glanced at George as if he were a clever, speaking insect. "We're not a charity." He started to leave, then turned back. "I don't want to be tough on you, but we've done this kind of thing before. Someone comes from the country looking for his sister or daughter or something. We run a story and people get all worked up, maybe thinking about their own brothers or sisters they haven't seen for twenty years. We get lots of leads and finally track her down. Know what? Nine times out of ten she's whoring for some black pimp. Maybe she's on drugs. In any case, she doesn't want to see her brother. Why should she? So the brother goes back to the country. "Now people want to know what happened so we run a story. 'Course we don't say she's turning tricks but the idea comes across. Maybe we say she's a bar hostess or self-employed, or maybe we say nothing and that by itself is enough. Anyway, people feel we let them down. They got all wrapped up in this kid and his sister. Now they feel pissed off and we're the ones they're pissed off at." "It doesn't have to be like that," said George. "April's not that kind of girl." Sam bit his thumbnail, then looked at it again. "Maybe not. Maybe this time will be different. But Christmas is only a week away. If we hit 'em with it now and the sister's a whore, they'll really be pissed. So we'll wait, maybe three or four weeks. Don't get me wrong. It's possible she's married to Prince Charming and living in Bloomfield Hills, but we can't take the chance. Anything else? No? I'm going to get that drink." Sam wandered over to the bar. Corbin thought Duane might get angry, but it didn't seem he had heard. He fiddled with his puzzle. "Fuck," said George, "that really shoots it." Harvey stood up. "Give me a call in a couple of weeks, Corbin, and I'll write a story." He followed Sam to the bar. "It didn't make any difference my coming along," said George. "I mean my hair and stuff. He wouldn't have done the story anyway." He took his dark glasses from his coat pocket and put them on. Corbin felt guilty and was still waiting for a reaction from Duane. There wasn't any. "What do we do now?" asked George. "I guess we go home. Ready, Duane?" "Just a second." Duane slipped one of the rings through another and tossed them onto the table. All five came apart. George picked up the rings and tried to put them back together. He wasn't able to. Duane took them, seemed only to move his hands over them

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and they became a chain again. Corbin watched as he passed one through another and another. He tossed them back onto the table and they came apart. He picked them up and gave them to George. "Let's go," he said.

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WENCEL'S "Cantata for Mixed Voices, Tape Recorder and Percussion" was to be performed Wednesday night, December 19. Although finished the previous summer, he was still working on the tape, removing certain sounds, changing a squeak to a squawk. Since October he had been rehearsing the soprano, alto, bass and percussionist until they were probably ready to quit. Wencel wanted every sound to be exact by Tuesday night which was the last rehearsal. Helen didn't go that night. Having heard the piece often, she decided to stay home. She was looking forward to a quiet evening. But at nine o'clock the telephone rang. It was a nurse at Ford Hospital. She said that Orlo had been admitted in critical condition. Wencel and Helen should come at once. Corbin was coming up the sidewalk with Isaac and Duane, when Helen came tearing out of the house. They had been to a restaurant in Greektown which Duane liked more for the green parrot in the window than for the food. Corbin had bought them dinner in an attempt to make up for Harvey Lyle. Helen told them about Orlo. "I've got to get Wencel right away." Corbin offered to drive and Helen accepted. It was a cold night, about fifteen degrees. Helen and Duane crowded into back seat. Isaac sat in the front. They all assumed that Orlo had had a heart attack. As Corbin drove over to the music building, Duane tried to be comforting, "Mr. MacDonald, he's a farmer in Glenorchy, he had a heart attack when he was plowing and he fell off his tractor and broke his arm, but he got better and now he's farming just like always or at least he was last summer. And my Dad, he's had a couple of heart attacks but he doesn't like people to know." But Helen wasn't so worried about Orlo's health as the effect it would have on the performance of Wencel's Cantata. Corbin thought she suspected 211

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Orlo of purposefully having the attack in order to draw attention away from her husband. Reaching the music building, Corbin double-parked and Helen ran inside. They had to wait about fifteen minutes since Helen hadn't wanted to interrupt the end of the rehearsal. The heater in the Volkswagen barely worked and Corbin's feet were freezing in no time. At nine thirty Wencel came hurrying down the sidewalk. He still carried his small white baton. Helen followed carrying his overcoat. Isaac got out and Wencel and Helen climbed into the back with Duane. Wencel had to fold up like a jackknife. Helen sat on his lap. Corbin drove as fast as he could. Ford Hospital was a tall imposing building set back from Grand Boulevard and surrounded by trees and shrubbery. The emergency entrance was around to the right in a dreary, one-story annex with large windows filled in with glass brick. It looked like a Third Avenue bar. Two armed guards stood by the entrance. Corbin parked and they went inside. The lobby of the emergency room had the clean smell of tidy machines. It was packed with people who kept being told they couldn't stand in this place or that place. Wencel tried to get information from a nurse at the desk. Corbin heard him saying, "But you called me, you called me." Seeing Duane, Corbin felt it had been wrong to bring him. He was pressed back against a green wall, staring around him. Apparently there had been a traffic accident. Two women were arguing about who was at fault. It was a long room, actually a wide hallway with little rooms off to both sides. A man and two women were lying on stretchers lined up along the right wall. The man's face was covered with blood. He was an elderly man and balding. The blood made it look as if he had red hair. He kept moaning and twisting back and forth. One of the women appeared dead. Her face had that pasty quality. She was overweight and middle-aged. Her hair was dark brown and piled high on her head in little curls, hundreds of little curls. She must have spent most of the day at the beauty parlour with only Ford Hospital as her destination. The second woman was in her early thirties. She had a sheet up to her neck. She stared at the ceiling with large blue eyes, and didn't make a sound. Doctors, nurses and orderlies passed at efficient speed. Friends and relations milled around and looked confused. There was a lot of hushed talking. A guard told Corbin and Isaac they had to move. Another ambulance was coming in. He pushed them into a waiting room. Wencel and Helen were still talking to the nurse at the desk. The waiting room was small and crowded. About twenty people were sitting in chairs. Corbin, Isaac and Duane stood by the door. It had a large pane of frosted glass like the fire escape door to Corbin's apartment. He kept hearing words like, "Torn, broken, blood, surgery." The people looked shocked

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but keenly interested, as if they had just been slapped by somebody important. After a few minutes, Wencel and Helen joined them. "They brought him in an hour ago," said Wencel. "They wouldn't tell me anything except it was critical. I'm supposed to wait here for the doctor. I can't think where mother is unless she's with him." He was wearing a dark suit and a tie and Corbin hardly recognized him out of his gray sweat shirt and sweat pants. Wencel looked handsome, even distinguished. They waited an hour. More ambulances arrived, but they couldn't see anything because of the frosted glass. Corbin imagined bodies in the most hideous states of mutilation being wheeled through the crowded and clamoring halls. People left or came into the room, all wearing the same startled expression. It gave them a sort of family resemblance. A doctor came looking for Wencel. He was Indian or Pakistani, and spoke in a clipped monotone. "Wencel Kaniewski? Come with me." Wencel followed him. It was eleven o'clock. They continued to wait. Duane leafed through an old issue of Time magazine. Wencel returned in ten minutes. From his face, Corbin assumed Orlo was dead. He was mistaken. "He was poisoned. He's still unconscious but the doctor says he'll live. Jesus, he was poisoned." Wencel spoke the words as if they were lies that had crept into his mouth. At first no one said anything, then Duane asked, "Who poisoned him?" Wencel covered his mouth with one of his thin hands. After a moment, he pulled it away. "Mother did. She gave him something. She put poison in his food and he ate it, but it wasn't enough to kill him. That's all I know. I'm going to stay here. You should go home. You, too, Helen." "No, I'm staying." Wencel began to cry quietly. He turned towards the frosted glass. The shadows of people on the other side moved across it, a darker gray on gray. Helen put her arms around him. Duane started to speak, then thought better of it. Isaac and Corbin both reached out to take Wencel's arm, paused and moved back, as if to touch him like this would cause them physical pain. "We'd better go," said Isaac. Duane wanted to stay, but Corbin convinced him to come as well. They were silent driving back to Alexandrine. Although Corbin had been shocked by Joe Gage's death, he hadn't been entirely surprised. Joe Gage and Mallett exuded violence. But thinking of Orlo Kaniewski, picturing his large flabby body, bald head, fat red cheeks, there was nothing violent about him. Corbin had always imagined his wife as looking just like him, even down to the suspenders and bow tie. It was hard to inject violence into their suburban lives. It was past midnight when they got home. They found Duncan stamping

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around the downstairs hall. "I could be lying dead out in the fecking street, Daniel! You might have said something. Those fecking kids are still out there. Either let me use your car or don't let me use it, but stop playing these fecking games!" He shook his keys and hurried out. Corbin heard the car start, the gears grind and a high roar as it accelerated down Alexandrine. "He's upset," said Isaac. "So I noticed." Isaac looked embarrassed. "He's been unhappy. I'll tell him about Orlo later. He won't blame you." Late the next morning, Corbin saw Wencel again. Corbin was with Duane and Gunther in George's apartment. There was a knock and Wencel came in. He hadn't slept all night. He wore his dark suit as one might wear a paper bag. "He'll live, but he won't be the same. His stomach and liver are damaged. Helen's still at the hospital." "Is he conscious?" I asked. Wencel pushed his hair away from his eyes. "Sort of. He keeps asking to see mother. She's at another hospital. I went over there this morning but I couldn't see her. It's the state hospital in Pontiac. I don't think Orlo knows what happened. He can see people tomorrow. If some of you went, I'd appreciate it." "I'll go," said Duane. Corbin agreed to go too. "What about your concert?" Corbin asked. "There's no way to cancel it. Mom and Dad were going to come. I'll have to do it anyway." "We'll all come to that too," said Duane. He had gotten up and was standing next to Wencel. "You don't have to." Duane shook his head. "We'll all come." A little later when Corbin went back upstairs, he found a note from Ruth tacked to his door. She wanted to talk and asked if he could come over to her studio. It had been snowing all morning and the wind was making high drifts. In the next twenty-four hours more than twelve inches were to fall. This was known later when people tried to make the memory more real than the event by translating it into numbers: 172 men in 80 trucks dumped 7,000 tons of salt on Detroit streets. In any case, Corbin was out walking in it. The cooperative studio where Ruth worked was about half a block up Cass from the Turveydrop. It was an old four-story brick warehouse divided

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into a warren of small studios and open areas for welding equipment and cutting stone. Ruth's studio was on the third floor. She had been working on Duane's portrait. Seeing the portrait for Corbin was like going back three months. It was a life-sized oil and nearly finished. It showed Duane sitting in a straight chair, facing a little to the right, looking over the viewer's shoulder. He was wearing jeans, sneakers and a tattered blue t-shirt. Next to the chair was a small blue airlines bag. His reddish brown hair was short, giving him the slightly foreign look he had had at the beginning. The lines and border of his face were soft, almost smokey. He seemed about to say some inane thing like how big everything was. Looking into that smokey face, Corbin could almost see it harden into the different person he had become. "Nice picture," said Corbin. Ruth stood by a table next to her easel, cleaning half a dozen brushes in a coffee can of turpentine. She had on a pair of paint spotted coveralls that completely hid her figure. "Thanks," she said. "I really like it." "Good. Let's sit down. I want to talk about Duane." Ruth's studio was about twenty by twenty feet with high ceilings and white walls. Stapled to the walls were dozens of drawings, mostly figure studies and ideas for paintings, including a large drawing of the house on Alexandrine. Across the room from the door was a ragged green armchair and a narrow cot covered with an army blanket. Corbin sat down in the armchair. "What's on your mind?" Ruth sat on the edge of the cot. Her hair was tied back in a blue bandanna. She took it off and shook her hair free. As they talked she wrapped the bandanna around one finger and then another. "I want Duane to go to Montreal. I don't believe his sister's there, but I think he should go. He's being torn apart here. He thinks you all disapprove of him." "We don't disapprove of him." "Duncan does. He won't talk to Duane anymore. Why couldn't you let him live his own life? Duane talks about Duncan all the time. He doesn't even know what he's done wrong. I want you to talk to Duncan." "What about?" Corbin was struck by how undesirable he found Ruth in baggy clothes. It made him feel that he had an edge over her. Then he wondered what their relationship would be like if Duane went to Montreal. "I've been telling Duane he should leave. Yesterday, for the first time, he said he thought his sister might be in Montreal. But he's not going to go. Know why? Because he doesn't want to leave with Duncan disapproving of him. He wants to be forgiven. I'd like you to talk to Duncan and get him to say something to Duane. It doesn't need to be the truth."

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When Duane told Wencel they would go hear his Cantata, he meant everybody; at least everybody in the house whom he knew. He hadn't bothered to meet the people in Mallett's apartment. That afternoon he asked people to come, even Duncan. Corbin thought it was the first time he had really asked for anything. Everything else—clothes, assistance, even friendship—had been given freely. So, despite the snow, they went. Duane had reserved ten seats in the fourth row of the small auditorium. This became almost comic because Duncan wouldn't sit near Ruth or Duane, and Henry wouldn't sit near Corbin. Isaac was on the aisle because of his long legs, Duncan sat on his right, then Corbin, Louise, Helen, George, Gunther, Ruth, Duane and Henry. In front of them on the stage were three music stands, a table for the tape recorder and amplifier, and a second table covered with a piece of black velvet on which there were various objects for the percussionist to hit, including a child's snare drum decorated with red and blue clown's faces. On either side of the stage was an enormous Bozac speaker. Around them was a serious and intent audience of about one hundred persons. They, presumably, didn't have to come and had good reason to stay home during this, the worst blizzard of the century. Corbin found their presence impressive. It made him realize that Wencel had a large and complicated life outside his life in the house on Alexandrine. Sitting in front of Corbin was a very small and fragile old lady with a black net over her blue white hair and an aged fox fur around her neck. Its small black eyes stared at Corbin with placid indifference. The lights dimmed and the soprano, alto, bass and percussionist came onto the stage: the women in long black dresses, the men in tuxedos. Corbin thought there was something incongruous about wearing a black tuxedo in which to bang upon a child's snare drum. Then Wencel came on stage. He too wore a tuxedo and his long sandy hair was carefully combed back. They all applauded. George whistled. Wencel walked to the tape recorder, flicked a switch and the reels began to spin. Then he returned to the front of the stage, faced the vocalists and raised his baton. They all leaned forward in their seats. After a moment there was an explosion of sounds from the Bozac speakers. Wencel's Cantata had begun. The next morning Corbin wrote in his journal: "I'm not sure how to describe those first sounds. Let's say that each night for the past year the janitors in the music building had swept up all the notes that had fallen out during the day from various clarinets, tubas, French horns, glockenspiels, etcetera. These notes were put in large boxes and saved for Wencel. On the day of the concert, he hung the boxes upside down above the stage with strings attached to their lids. Then, when the audience was seated and every-

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thing ready, Wencel pulled the strings and all the notes came crashing down to the floor. "The singers were not actually singing. Rather they appeared to be formulating a quasimusical response to sudden death. The soprano's sounds were all short and of equal length and volume. She covered three octaves, giving each note a good vocal whack. The alto's sounds were long and slidy. The moment she settled on a particular note, she seemed to fall off it. Then she would climb back up. It reminded me of Sisyphus. The bass sounded like a pig with a tack in its hoof. As for the percussionist, apart from the child's snare drum, he mostly hit an assortment of Coke bottles, wooden blocks, strips of metal and three No. 10 tin cans. He also had a little bell." Corbin had no way to judge the music. The fact he didn't like it didn't mean it wasn't great. Wencel stood before them, waving his thin arms and Corbin suddenly felt closer to him than he cared to be. This was immediately followed by a feeling of awareness about the people on either side of him. There was Duncan whispering something to Isaac in a complaining sort of voice. To Corbin's right was a row of seven profiles ending with Henry. Corbin thought they were like one face with seven different expressions: Louise was as calm as ever; Helen looked proud; George doubtful; Gunther looked sarcastic; Ruth bored; Duane looked confused but determined; Henry seemed indifferent. Then Corbin thought of Mallett and Jewel, of Jerry and Jean McKiddie, of Joe Gage. He imagined them in the row as well and added their five expressions to the one face, the composite face that ten of them made, until Corbin saw them all together bombarded by sounds which were either the sounds of chaos, or of a beauty that none of them could appreciate, or maybe just someplace in between. The fact that one of them had arranged these sounds seemed only appropriate to Corbin. They all had such sounds. Wencel turned his into a kind of music. Ruth painted hers. Duane had brought them together. He had brought them to this place of music and the music, Corbin thought, was awful. Then it occurred to him that he might be the only one to find it awful. He nudged Duncan. "Hey, what do you think of this?" Duncan pretended to spit. He and Isaac looked like something heavy had fallen on their feet. "It's fecking terrible," he said. Although reassured, Corbin knew it didn't mean much. The main thing was the act of coming, rather than the place itself. Duane had caused that. But then what were they doing to him, this creature with sixteen faces? What responsibily did they bear for the changes in his life? The Cantata continued toward its finish. At last the vocalists gave their final yelps, the percussionist rang his little bell and the tape recorder, as

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George said later, imitated the mating call of a giant squid. Everyone stood up and applauded. Several young men near the front shouted "Bravo" several times. Corbin thought ruefully of the long quarrel with Mallett which had allowed Wencel to practice his music. Anyway, it was over. Out in the lobby was a reception with coffee and cookies. They patted Wencel on the back and were proud of him and wished they had liked his music better. George told him that the Cantata was "far out." Isaac said he would like to hear it a second time. Wencel accepted everyone's appreciation with an unsmiling face. He still hadn't slept and looked more like a victim than a hero. He told Corbin that Orlo was better and again reminded him that Orlo could have visitors tomorrow. Louise and Corbin were the last of their group to leave the building. It was still snowing. Apart from ten inches on the ground, there were six foot drifts because of the wind. It was cold and very quiet. As Corbin and Louise came down the steps, George and Gunther stood facing them. They both wore puffy down parkas. George's was red and Gunther's was orange. They looked like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. They had something large concealed behind their backs. Duane stood near them laughing. It was an odd, humorless laugh. He had on Joe Gage's cowboy hat. Isaac stood apart, watching Duane. Duncan, Henry and Ruth had disappeared. "Guess what we have?" said George. "What?" asked Louise. "A Christmas tree. We can decorate it tonight." He and Gunther moved apart to expose a small spruce which had been planted by the music building and which George had liberated. "We'll keep it in water and return it after Christmas. No one could call it stealing." "What about ornaments?" asked Louise. She was only partly amused. "That's no problem, we'll use aluminum beer cans and have a goodbye party for Gunther. You can cut up the cans with scissors and make decorations. I bet you could even sell them. I bet you could sell them and buy more beer and drink it and make more decorations and sell them and buy more beer. I bet you could do that practically forever or at least until Christmas." Corbin walked over to Duane. "Are you okay?" Duane stopped laughing. "There's nothing wrong with me. Nothing at all." George was still talking. "It'll be our last party, a Christmas tree party. Are you coming, Corbin?" "I've got to go to work." Even though it was only 9:30, Corbin had no wish to go to George's party. Everything felt wrong and he felt more and more isolated. He was

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sorry that Ruth had gone off before he had had a chance to speak to her. Saying goodbye, Corbin walked off down the street, aware that Louise and Isaac were watching him. There was hardly any traffic and the few cars were silent in the snow. The only noise was the metal blade of the plow scraping along the street. It made a booming, rasping noise. It so happened that Corbin wasn't the only one to go to work early. When he reached the Turveydrop, he saw Duncan alone in a booth in the far corner, a good three hours before he had to show up. Corbin brushed the snow off his coat and sat down across from him. "Did you drive?" Corbin asked. He hadn't seen his car. Duncan shook his head. He was reading a newspaper that he had folded into quarters. A cup of black coffee was on the table in front of him. "Why didn't you drive?" Duncan kept reading as if he hadn't heard. There were ten other people in the bar and Corbin thought they had all heard perfectly. He wanted to reach across the table, take Duncan by the shoulders and shake him. "Why didn't you drive?" Duncan slapped his paper down on the table. "I thought you might need your fecking car." He was wearing green pants, a green workshirt and a very thin black tie in honor of Wencel's Cantata. "What's the real reason?" "I didn't want to impose." Corbin knew that Duncan had heard about Orlo and how they had been at the hospital until midnight. "Look, Duncan, don't make me one of your bad guys. You can use the car whenever you want." Corbin turned away, pulling up his feet and leaning back against the wall. Duncan didn't say anything. Then he rustled his paper. "You read this here about how the city has over one and a half million unpaid parking tickets. That's worth over ten million fecking dollars." "I want to talk about Duane," said Corbin. "And here's a murder for you, Daniel. Some guy got himself beat to death on the sidewalk. That makes 726. Cops don't know who it is." "Duane's miserable." "That's no skin off my nose." "Duane thinks you hate him." "Why should I hate him?" "He sits in his room waiting for you to come down and talk to him." "He told you that? I don't believe it." Duncan put the paper down on the table. "Ruth told me." "That whore."

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Corbin shifted around to face Duncan who looked nervous and sad. "Duane's been thinking about going to Montreal, but he's not going to go while he thinks you hate him." Duncan lifted the paper again. "It's nothing to me. . . ." "You love Duane." Duncan winced as if he had been struck, then he leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table and covering his face with his hands. "Are you still mad because he smoked that grass?" Corbin asked. Duncan kept his face covered. "If we'd watched him better, none of that would have happened. It's like I gave him that shit with my own hands." His voice sounded like sticks being cracked up for kindling. "Duncan, you can't take that responsibility." "Everytime I see him, I feel terrible. You're right, he should go. Maybe we'll hear from that guy in Montreal. When Duane came here, he was perfect. We've done nothing but chip away at him." "Will you talk to him?" Duncan didn't say anything. He sat up and looked around the bar. "Duncan, you've got to talk to him. He's not going to go until you're friends." "That fecking music of Wencel's, that's just how I feel. Yeah, yeah, I'll talk to him." The next morning Corbin went to get Duane so they could go over to Ford Hospital. Because of Corbin's talk with him the previous evening, Duncan had decided to come as well. Duane was lying on his bed looking at the yellow walls. He cheered up when Corbin told him Duncan was coming, but not enough to be called cheerful. "Was it a good party last night?" asked Corbin. Duane swung himself off the bed. "It was okay. George and Gunther kept talking about that girl in Montreal. I don't think it's April. Do you?" He pulled on his field jacket, grabbed his cowboy hat and they went into the hall. "The description seems to match," said Corbin. Duane held the outside door for Corbin. "The trouble is that April looks like too many other people and not much like herself. I mean, she's got a regular face, but inside she's different. Maybe that girl in Montreal is April. George said it was. He even said he'd go up there with me, but I don't think he meant it. Gunther said he'd like to come. He said Montreal is much nicer than Detroit. I kept thinking it wasn't that they wanted me to go, they just didn't want me to stay here." "That's silly. They want you to find your sister." Duane looked at Corbin skeptically. "Maybe." Duncan was waiting outside by the Volkswagen which was buried in

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the snow. All along the street the cars looked like pillows covered by a white sheet. They spent about fifteen minutes digging out the car, then had to push it over the mound of snow left by the plows. Duncan and Duane were shy and didn't know what to say to each other. Fortunately, digging out the Volkswagen freed them from speaking. They worked side by side, staying close together. At the hospital, the seriousness of what had happened to Orlo again seemed to justify silence. They found Orlo in a small green room, propped up and staring at a large poinsettia wrapped in red foil. The poinsettia was on the night table. Wencel sat on the other side of it. He was also staring at the poinsettia. He seemed thoroughly relieved to see them. "Look who's here," he said, trying to sound jolly. He was again wearing his gray sweatshirt and sweat pants. Orlo turned from the poinsettia to his visitors. His expression didn't change. His skin was yellowish. He had on baby blue pajamas. His blanket was also blue and Orlo's hands lay on top of it. He kept turning them over palms up, then back, as if reassured by their touch. Orlo nodded to Duane. "You're the boy looking for his sister. And you're a writer. And you, I don't remember what you do." His voice was weak, as if coming from far away. "Locks," said Duncan, giving his teeth a jerk. "How're you feeling?" Orlo touched his face with two fingers as if to see how he was. "As well as can be expected, I guess." He dropped his hand back to the blue blanket. "I suppose you know what happened. I got to be careful about what I eat. My insides are all messed up. Can't eat anything with milk in it and I've got to be careful about eggs, meat and fish. But I can eat all the vegetables I want. Fruit too. . . . " He lapsed off and went back to looking at his hands. His eyes were small and dark, like prunes or dried olives. Duane stood at the foot of the bed and held onto the bars. "Fruit and vegetables. Milk will kill me. Who ever thought milk was a poison. Jesus, what a woman. It takes guts, you know, to do a thing like that. Well, they won't hurt her. I talked to my lawyer. After a while they'll send her to a nice home run by nuns. She'll like that. Fruits and vegetables. Maybe some Jello if I'm lucky." "But you're feeling better?" persisted Duane. "Well, I'm alive if that's what you mean." Duane looked back at Duncan. "Is there anything we can get you?" "Nah, maybe some magazines. Don't get me anything with pictures of food. Already I'm starving. I don't even like green beans. Can't put butter on anything either. Know what she told the neighbors? She said the Lord

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commanded her to do it. I guess He couldn't be bothered to do it himself. Apples, I've always liked apples. You wait, in two months I'll hate them." They left a few minutes later. From the news shop in the lobby, Duane sent up copies of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. They seemed safe enough. As they walked to the car, Duane said, "He reminds me of my mother when she was dying. April bought her a blue blanket out of her milk money. I keep thinking of it. It's a picture I've got stuck in my head." It was noon when they got back to the house. Isaac met them on the steps. The wind was blowing through his white hair. It made him look biblical. He seemed excited and afraid. "You got a letter from Montreal, Duncan. It came this morning." They read it in the hall. The new people in Mallett's apartment were watching television. One of Louise's dogs was barking upstairs. "Dear Mr. Rapp: I have been hunting for the girl that you call April and I call Jane. Three people have told me she is still in the city but I have not found her. That is why I took so long to answer you. I am sure she is still here and I am sure she is the girl you are looking for. The picture is just like her, although she is fatter now. She comes from southern Ontario. She told me that she grew up on a farm there. As soon as I find her I will write again. Sincerely, Jean Etinger." "That's it," said Duncan. "That's your sister." Duane looked at him carefully, then nodded. His face was red and shiny. Duncan put the letter back in the envelope and gave it to Duane. "You'll have to go up there. You can go right away." "Maybe I will," said Duane.

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CORBIN AND SOME of the others in the house told themselves that Duane's lack of enthusiasm was perfectly understandable. He had been let down too many times. But Jean Etinger's letter was solid evidence and, despite Duane's pessimism, it seemed to justify a trip Montreal. Some might be sorry he had to leave; some might prefer that he stay in Detroit; but if he wanted to find his sister, then he should go. The degree of belief was different in different people. George believed it strongly. Gunther and the Kaniewskis believed it, but they were less involved and didn't know any better. Louise and Ruth didn't believe it, but felt Duane should leave, each for different reasons. Henry didn't believe it and didn't see why Duane shouldn't stay in Detroit. Isaac and Duncan both tried to believe it. Isaac probably succeeded. Corbin often told himself he believed it, but just as often he felt he was engaged in a self-deception. They discussed the trip to Montreal Thursday evening in Isaac and Duncan's apartment. There were six of them including Corbin, Duane, George and Louise. Duane hadn't committed himself to leaving and was trying to discover how they actually felt. He sat on the couch next to Louise. He was wearing a new pair of workboots which Henry Oakes had given him, along with his jeans and a blue workshirt. Isaac sat on the lower bunkbed, half in shadow, half in light. George lay on the floor beneath the picture of Death on a race horse. The room was warm and the radiator made clanking sounds. "Isaac, do you think I should go?" asked Duane. He leaned forward in order to see Isaac better. Isaac shifted uncomfortably, making the bunkbed creak. He didn't want to think he had done Duane any harm. He kept rubbing his hands on his gray pants as if trying to polish them. "I think you should go. I don't want you 223

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to leave, but if you want to find April, I think you should go." Duncan stood in the doorway to the kitchen. "We'll give you some money," he said. "I don't need money." "But you don't have any left. We'll lend it to you and you can pay it back later." Although he was standing just a few feet from Duane, Duncan didn't look at him but watched Isaac instead. "Duncan, do you think I should go?" Duncan's teeth began to make clicking sounds. "It's not what I think or not; it's a matter of the fecking evidence. The evidence shows she's in Montreal." Duane listened. He was holding his last puzzle. It consisted of six large rings that were meant to fit together into one solid ring. He wasn't trying to solve it. "I don't think she's in Canada," he said. "I don't think I'll find her." Duncan took a few steps into the room. "How can you say that? Jesus fecking Christ, Duane, evidence is evidence. Don't you want to find her?" "Yes." "Then go to Montreal." Duane looked at Corbin who was standing by the window. "What do you think, Daniel?" "I agree with Duncan." Corbin wondered if he really did. He would look into his mind as if looking into a dark closet and wonder what was there. George couldn't stand Duane's pessimism any longer. He got to his feet and stood bouncing on his toes. "Duane, how can you talk like this? It's a great opportunity. I've always wanted to go to Montreal. If I could get away, I'd go with you in a second. Sure your sister's in Montreal. Where else would she be?" He had on a brown t-shirt with a large yellow smile across the front. Above it were the words, "Bin Gettin Any?" "You can always come back if she's not there," said Duncan. "Come back." "Sure, why not?" Duane didn't ask Louise what he should do. He already knew what she felt. She was sitting next to him on the couch and now and then she would put a hand on his shoulder or arm. "Okay," said George, "let's get out the money. We can give you thirty bucks." He took some bills from his pocket and held it up. "Who's next?" There was a nervous movement from the bunkbed. "I don't know if I have any money on hand," said Isaac. "It's all in the bank." "Goddammit, Isaac Hough," shouted Duncan, "you start digging and digging fast."

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Isaac walked slowly into the kitchen. He didn't look at anyone. They heard him rummaging around in the cupboards. He came back and handed George a thick wad of bills. "There's fifty, Duane, but it includes your Christmas present too." Duncan slapped Isaac on the back, making him stagger forward. "You may be a miser, but you're a generous miser. I'll match your fifty." He went to the bureau, took some money from a drawer and gave it to George who now had a wad of bills in each hand. It looked like a fortune. Corbin dug out his wallet. "Here's twenty-five." He wanted to say that it wasn't a bribe, that it was a gift freely given because they all loved him, but it felt like a bribe. "The others will give money too," said George. "You just wait." Duane was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and was staring at the money in George's hands. There was no expression on his face. The next day, Friday, George got twenty-five from Wencel and Helen, twenty from Ruth and ten from Gunther. No one had much except perhaps Isaac, but they gave as much as they could. Now that Duane had decided to go, they were in a hurry to see him off. Corbin felt they were afraid that if Duane didn't leave soon, he would settle down in Joe Gage's room as a reminder of what had happened. Friday morning a new couple moved into Jerry McKiddie's apartment and took over the job of caretaker. They were neighbood people, Appalachian white, bland and anonymous. They seemed nice enough. Gunther moved out Friday afternoon. They saw him off at the front door. It was a cold December day and cloudy. Many of the cars along the curb were still buried in the snow which had turned gray. Gunther wore an orange down parka and carried his guitar. He had given his poster of Lenin addressing the masses to Duane. His other belongings were in a blue backpack. Corbin wondered what he had done with his fancy clothes. When Corbin asked, Gunther said, "Clothes, man? Who needs clothes?" They exchanged addresses and promised to write. Duane, George, Louise and Corbin followed him out onto the porch. It was like a practice run for Duane's own departure and they were pleased at how well it went. "Christ, I envy you," said George. "Getting out of the city and into a rural community. That's where the real life is. Louise and me, we're moving out when the weather gets warm." Gunther took George's hand in a brotherhood handshake. "You come up for a visit, man. Just give me a call first. And, Duane, look up my brother in Toronto. He'll find you a place to crash. And make sure you write and tell me about April. Come up to the farm anytime. Duane shook his hand. "I will when I find my sister."

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Louise gave Gunther a Christmas present: a red, yellow and green woven strap for his guitar. She kissed his cheek. Everything was jolly and optimistic. At last Gunther walked off down the street. They waved and Gunther waved back. His orange parka and blue backpack stood out against the gray snow. Duane kept waving. Corbin wanted to touch Duane and say, "See how easy it is?" Henry Oakes hadn't contributed any money for Duane's trip. After Gunther left, Corbin went up to Henry's room to see if he wanted to give anything. Henry bothered Corbin. He didn't think he really disliked Henry, but he knew Henry disliked him. Consequently, he avoided him. Henry answered the door. He had on tan pants and a dark brown shirt with rows of light brown flowers that looked like pansies. "What's on your mind?" he asked. Corbin told him about the money they had collected for Duane. Without saying anything, Henry took out his wallet and gave Corbin ten dollars. He was stocky enough to almost fill the doorway and short enough for Corbin to see over his head into the room. There were piles of books on a card table. As Henry started to go back inside, Corbin said: "You have something against me?" Henry looked back over his shoulder. "Man, I just don't like parasites." "What's that supposed to mean?" asked Corbin. Henry had a little cynical smile that dug into Corbin like a pin. "All this business with you and Duane," said Henry, facing Corbin again. "You doing him all these little kindnesses. You're just using him. You're supposed to be writing a book about Duane? Shit, you don't even know him. You're just using him to get along." "My knowledge may be different from yours, but it's not less valid." As Corbin spoke, he realized he sounded like his father. Henry smiled a little more. He had a round chubby face with a straight nose. "Sure, man, that can be true. I just don't think it is. You're one of these smooth guys who thinks he knows everything. You just keep your detachment and look around. You don't feel anything. Man, how can you write a book about Duane if you don't feel anything?" "What do you want me to do, cry a lot?" "Okay, maybe I'm misjudging you. But here you are urging Duane to leave. I bet you want him to go just so you can fuck Ruth again." Corbin grabbed Henry's arm and yanked him into the hall. Then, taking hold of Henry's shirt, he shoved him against the doorframe. There was the sound of ripping fabric. Corbin pulled back his fist. "Daniel, Daniel, let go of him."

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Louise put her hand on Corbin's shoulder. She was almost whispering. Corbin hadn't heard her come up the stairs. Taking a deep breath, Corbin let go of Henry's shirt. He felt surprised by his actions, as if someone else had lost his temper and grabbed Henry and suddenly Corbin had woken up in this person's body. Leaving them, Corbin went upstairs to his apartment. It was several hours before he trusted himself to go out. Duane spent that evening and night with Ruth. Corbin had to do several errands before going to work and each time he passed her door he could hear them talking. Mostly it was Duane who was talking. Corbin slowed but didn't stop. He couldn't hear any words, just a sad muttering. He wanted to listen but he kept thinking about what Henry had said and he kept remembering Joe Gage with his ear pressed to Ruth's door. That night Louise and George and Isaac came into the bar for about an hour. Neither Louise nor Corbin mentioned his clash with Henry. Isaac looked out of place and drank tomato juice. He talked about moving to some small town north of San Francisco. It turned out that he hadn't been panhandling since Monday. "Why not?" asked George. "Just didn't feel like it, I guess." Nobody mentioned Duane. Corbin realized they had come into the bar just to check on him and to give him their support. Corbin wasn't sure how he felt about that. He wanted to tell them he was fine but he said nothing. After work Duncan drove Corbin home in the Volkswagen. He took Canfield, then turned down Third, driving slowly and looking for his delinquents. "You know, Daniel, some night they're going to get me. I see them now and then. They don't know I'm driving. But some night they're going to get me and tear me to pieces. It's going to take something like that before Isaac and me leave this town. "Why don't you leave now and avoid it?" Duncan turned down Alexandrine and began looking for a parking place. Corbin could just make out the rough lines of his silhouette. "Because things don't work like that. To make a big move, you need a big push. To make little moves, you need little pushes. That's what it fecking takes." Duane left on Saturday, December 22, the second day of winter. He spent most of the morning in Isaac and Duncan's apartment. People came in to say goodbye. Ruth had cut his hair so it was a crewcut again, just like in her painting or when Duane had first come. Everyone kept staring at it. Duane had on

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jeans, a blue workshirt and the boots that Henry had given him. His other stuff was packed in an old gray suitcase of Isaac's, since there was too much to fit in his blue airlines bag. Wencel and Helen came in. Helen brought Duane a heavy green wool scarf. She was such a shadow person that Corbin felt surprised when she cried. Duane again told Wencel how much he had liked his Cantata. Wencel said that Orlo had asked him to say goodbye. "If you're ever back in Detroit, you've got to stay with us. I'll play the piano as much as you like." They shook hands. As Wencel and Helen were leaving, George burst in. He dragged Duane up from the armchair and gave him a hug that made him yelp. In his hand was a small paper bag. "Here, I got something for you." The bag contained a silver ring with a Peace symbol the size of a quarter. Duane put it on. "Underground people made that," said George. "You let us know where you are right away. We'll come up. Maybe we can start a store or something. Nothing too flashy." Louise and Corbin were going to drive Duane across the bridge so they didn't say anything. Henry came in, said goodbye very simply and left. He was in the room about a minute. He was careful to look at no one but Duane. Ruth didn't come in. They had said goodbye earlier. At last they got up to leave. Isaac and Duncan were standing by the bunkbed; Duane was by the door to the kitchen. Isaac came and put his hands on Duane's shoulders. He had on khaki pants and a white shirt. He didn't speak. He stood there an arm's length away, started to move back, then suddenly moved forward and embraced Duane, holding him in his long arms. His eyes were shut tight. His head was bent forward over Duane's and his white hair hung along his thin cheeks like a frame. Then he turned abruptly and walked to the small windows by the bunkbed. He didn't look back. Duncan said goodbye last. They were in the kitchen now. Duncan took Duane's hand, then let it go. "Duane, I'm sorry if things didn't work out so well. If I've ever. . . ." He hesitated and continued in a lower voice. "If I've ever done anything to make you feel bad, I hope you'll forgive me. I get a little quick with my words sometimes." Duane took his hand again. "You're one of my best friends." Duncan stepped back. His whole face was moving, the wrinkles seeming to blend into each other. He too wanted to hug Duane, but he didn't have the courage. He stepped back further.

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"Well," said Corbin, trying to sound cheerful, "I guess we better go." Duane moved slowly toward the door. Corbin took the gray suitcase and followed with Louise. "Can the dogs come?" asked Duane. "Sure." They got the dogs which pranced about the hall as if expecting a wonderful journey. Their claws sounded like castanets on the linoleum. No one followed them out of the house. Gimli, the malemute, chased Gloin in small circles through the snow. Then Gloin chased Gimli. As Corbin got into the Volkswagen, he glanced back and saw Isaac and Duncan staring from their little windows at the top of the house. They didn't wave, but continued to stare down as if looking down into a hole. Corbin pulled out onto Alexandrine. Duane was crowded into the back seat with a dog on either side of him. He had on Joe Gage's tan cowboy hat. It was a bright, blue day and about twenty degrees. Corbin felt the day should be overcast to match their feelings. They went down the John Lodge Expressway, then turned onto the Chrysler. Tiger Stadium was on their left. A large green sign said it was a mile and three quarters until the bridge to Canada. They passed the mammoth and nearly empty railway station. One of the dogs began licking Corbin's neck. The Ambassador Bridge rose up in the distance, at first looking like something a spider might make, then getting larger. Corbin turned off the expressway and followed the ramp around to the entrance of the bridge. He stopped and paid the toll, then drove up the steep incline, over the tops of houses, over factories and church steeples. He slowed and they all looked left at the Detroit skyline. The jagged line of buildings looked like the wards of a lock waiting for the proper key. The sky was hazy, making the city seem illusory There were some barges on the river and a long tanker. To their right the red fireboats were drawn up along a dock. They passed the two flags at the center of the bridge. As they started down, Corbin felt he could see all of southern Ontario, white and glistening in the snow. They passed over another church steeple, then the buildings of the University of Windsor. The customs guard asked where they were going and where they had been born. He had the face of a benevolent sheep. Corbin wanted to get out of the car and tell him all that had happened since September. Instead, he told him what he wanted to hear and they drove on. Corbin had meant to take Duane out to 401: the freeway to Montreal. But half a mile from the bridge Duane told him to stop. "Let me off at that restaurant." It was a one-story, yellow brick building called the "Three Bears House."

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Hanging above it was a red sign giving directions to the Windsor Raceway. "That's where the truck let me off when I came to Detroit. I thought maybe they had bears there but they didn't." Corbin pulled into the parking lot and they all got out. Duane bent down and gave both dogs a hug. They licked his face. Louise kissed him. "You promise to let us know where you are?" Duane nodded. Corbin shook his hand, then embraced him. Duane smelled of the dogs. Corbin couldn't think of anything to say. Duane picked up his suitcase. "Keep an eye on the homicides, Daniel." "Sure. There's about 735 now. You finish that last puzzle?" "I could of. I gave it to Ruth." He was smiling slightly, but his eyes looked sad. The cowboy hat was pushed far back on his head. He had on George's field jacket and Helen's green scarf was wrapped around his neck. Corbin shook his hand again as if that would make things any better. "You take care." "Okay, you too. Bye, Louise. Bye, dogs." They left him in the parking lot of the Three Bears House and drove back to Detroit. The car felt empty, as if there weren't enough air. It made Corbin's body feel heavy and pressed down toward the earth. He wasn't sure how to explain it. When they got back, they found Isaac, Duncan, Wencel and Helen in George's apartment. They looked at Corbin and Louise, and Corbin was reminded of how people in the waiting room at Ford Hospital had looked up at doctors. "You get him off all right?" asked Duncan. Corbin said they had. "Well, shit," said George, "then everything's okay. What are we moping for?" He stood by his Christmas tree which was on the desk. Actually, it was balanced on three boards set across the mouth of a small garbage can and the can was on the desk. The tree was covered with silver circles, icicles, stars and candy canes all cut from aluminum beer cans. Instead of decorations, they looked like bits of old beer cans. There was also a small string of red and green lights. "I don't see what you were worrying about," said Wencel. "Duane's all right. I was sorry to see him go." "It would take a lot to make him quit," said Isaac. There was a knock and Ruth came in. "Is he gone?" Corbin told her he had just dropped him off. Ruth looked angry. George didn't notice her mood. "He's gone to Montreal to get his sister." He spoke a trifle smugly. Ruth stared at George as if she wanted to spit at his feet. She wore a tight black sweater, a red miniskirt and black stockings. "I doubt it," she said.

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"What d'you mean?" asked George. Ruth stood in the doorway unable to decide whether to leave or stay. "You really believe Duane thinks he'll find his sister?" said Ruth after a moment. "I bet he didn't even go to Montreal. He told me he was leaving because he said you were trying to get him to go." Isaac leaned forward on the couch. "That's not true." Ruth shook her head. "He left because he thought you'd feel terrible if he didn't. He gave up on his sister weeks ago. Ask Louise if you don't believe me. She could have stopped him." Louise spoke softly. "You could have stopped him too. He'd changed too much for any of us. Not in a bad way. He'd become his own person." Corbin didn't know if what Ruth said was true, but he thought most of it was. He felt Duane had left with the knowledge that they didn't want him to stay. Duane left because he believed it would make them feel better. Everyone was talking at once. Isaac and Duncan began quarreling with Ruth, calling her unforgivable names. George and Louise were arguing. Weneel was talking to Corbin who wasn't paying attention. They had tried to do one last good thing for Duane. No one wanted to think it was the wrong thing. That evening Corbin wrote in his journal: "I separated myself from their words and moved to the kitchen window and stared out at the next gray building. I thought of Duane, how he had looked when we had driven away from the Three Bears House, standing in the parking lot in his field jacket and green scarf, waving his cowboy hat around and around his head. I had watched him in the rear view mirror, getting smaller and smaller, as if he had been the one speeding away and not us; as if we had been stationary and Duane with his old gray suitcase had gone shooting off across the flat and snow covered fields. We were the immovable ones. We had sat and watched him go."

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w

I WENT TO high school outside of Detroit, leaving but not graduating in 1959. Then, in 1961, I enrolled in Wayne State University, graduating with a B.A. in English in 1964. After obtaining a M.F.A. in creative writing at the University of Iowa and teaching for a couple of years, I returned to Detroit in 1969 an,d worked as a general assignment reporter for the Detroit News until 1971. During high school my friends and I would think nothing of sneaking out late at night and driving into the city to go to an all-night movie or to the Gaiety Burlesk and once to a Ray Charles concert. Then, in the early sixties, there were coffee houses and movies that showed foreign films and a lot of good jazz—Cannonball Adderley came often and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Nina Simone. There were half a dozen small theaters, legitimate theater and used bookstores open till midnight. For parts of a couple of summers I worked nights at Stroh's Brewery. Walking to work down John R, I would trade jokes with the girls at the black whore houses and be struck by how pretty they looked. One felt that one could walk almost anywhere. Bit by bit drugs and racism and violence put an end to that sort of mobility. But even by the early seventies there were peculiar pockets of acceptance— a blind pig run by a huge black man named Tang near the Art Institute. Around Christmas Tang would have an aluminum Christmas tree lit by colored lights and the whores all wore plastic mistletoe in their hair. I learned a lot at the newspaper. It taught me how to write (or started me on that path) and it showed me aspects of the world that I would never have seen in any other way. I had two wonderful teachers, two assistant city editors, Wally Hushen and Phil Corner, who helped me make my work better. I was also doing my own writing and by 1970 I had completed two novels and parts of two others: four books that never went anywhere. I had also 232

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completed a book of poems, Concurring Beasts, which was published by Atheneum in 1972. In 1969 I decided I wanted to do a novel about Detroit; a novel about someone coming to the city who was, in a sense, out of his time, a foreigner not just by birth but by temperament, an Innocent; to do a novel about this Innocent coming to Detroit and being surprised by what he found there. I thought I knew a lot about Detroit and I collected many details and anecdotes and bits of description to put into this book, bits which I later discarded. But I was taking notes and as I grew enthusiastic my dissatisfaction with the newspaper increased. I also knew too many reporters who hoped, almost without hope, to write a novel someday and that frightened me. So in 1971 I left the paper, took a Yugoslavian freighter to Tangiers and wandered around Europe for about five months. When I returned I got busy on The House on Alexandrine. In the summer of 1972,1 stopped work on the novel to write another novel: A Man of Little Evils. The House on Alexandrine was going to take a few years (I thought) and I had no money, so I wrote the other novel in order to pay for the writing of the first. Well, writing The House on Alexandrine was like chewing gristle and each time I thought I had finished it, I could see it was not really done. I had put in lots of good stuff about the city (or so I thought) which I then had to take out and there were many more characters than there are now. In 1975 the novel was sent off to various publishers. Some were very positive but said Sorry. Most were negative and said Never mind. I rewrote it, shortened it, tightened it, then gave up on it in 1977. That hurt. It seemed I had put everything I knew into that book and although by that time I had published two books of poems and two other novels, I couldn't pull off the book which seemed to contain more of my life than anything else I had written. That perhaps was part of the problem. A book can't be the writer's creature, it must be its own creature. Anyway, the main reason I gave up on it in 1977 was that I didn't know what else to do to it. I went on to write other books. In 1987, after I had been in Detroit giving a poetry reading, Lee Ann Schreiner at Wayne State University Press wrote to me saying that she had heard I had an unpublished novel set in Detroit and asking to see it. I mailed it to her. It was sent out to several readers and the Press accepted it in the spring of 1988. I had not read The House on Alexandrine since 1976 but imagined it would need no more than a little trimming. Rereading the novel in early June, I felt disappointed: it was too long, the tone was wrong, some parts were undeveloped and other parts were overdeveloped and it was told in the first person for no good reason. Depressing. If there hadn't been so much in the novel that I liked, I would have withdrawn it. So I changed my

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summer plans and spent the next two and a half months rewriting it, getting it to a point where I could think of nothing else to do to it, where, in fact, it may be done. It seems that one never really knows something; one is always on the road to knowing something and perhaps I am farther along that road than I was in 1976. In many ways I like The House on Alexandrine more than anything I have written. We have spent a lot of time together. Many of the characters are based in part on people I knew, a number of the situations are situations I experienced or witnessed. The basic plot is invented but much that surrounds that plot is true or true-ish. The house, for instance, was a house I lived in on Forest Avenue, three blocks from Alexandrine, in the early 1960s. When I first wrote this book I was very much under the influence of my years at the newspaper, meaning I was committed to realism and factual reporting. The book takes place between September and December, 1973, and the weather, the events, the murders detailed in the book (with the exception of Earl Dittmer and Joe Gage) were all reported in the Detroit News and Free Press during that period. I no longer have that same faith in realism, but in rewriting the book I wanted to remain true to its original structure and intentions. That year, 1973, was an important transitional year. It was the year when the idealism and hope of the sixties was giving way to the pragmatism, dullness and cynicism of the seventies. The book tries to be about that change, using as its vehicle a none-too-bright Ontario farm kid who comes to Detroit to look for his sister. Now, in 1989, Detroit is another place altogether. This is a book that I love—that, perhaps, is my only apology. It is amazing to me that it has percolated along for twenty years before publication. At any time during that twenty year period I thought I knew how the book should work, and a few years later I would see that I was wrong. Perhaps I am still wrong but at least the book's publication allows me to let it go. The book has stopped being part of my life; now it can take on a life of its own. Stephen Dobyns

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