The flame of madness leapt between them. Hazel feared that the child would catch it from her, he would be uncontrollable for hours. Zack slipped from Hazel’s grasp, to prowl about the downstairs of the lodge. There was so much to see, with Gallagher not present. Hazel was most interested in a wall of framed photographs of which Gallagher had spoken slightingly, the day before. Clearly, the Gallagher family thought highly of themselves. Hazel supposed it was a sign of wealth: naturally you would think highly of yourself, and wish to display that thought to others.

Amid the faces of strangers she sought Gallagher’s familiar face. Suddenly, she was eager to see him as a Gallagher, a younger son. There: a photograph of Chet Gallagher with his family, taken when Gallagher was in his mid-twenties, with a startlingly full head of dark hair, a squinting, somewhat abashed smile. There was Gallagher a skinny boy of about twelve, in white T-shirt and swim trunks, squatting awkwardly on the deck of a sailboat; there was Gallagher a few years older, muscled in shoulders and upper arms, gripping a tennis racquet. And Gallagher in his mid-twenties in a light-colored sport coat, surprised in the midst of laughter, both arms flung around the bare shoulders of two young women in summer dresses and high-heeled sandals. This photograph had been taken on the lawn outside the lodge, in summer.

Beautiful women! Far more beautiful than Hazel Jones could ever make herself.

Hazel wondered: was one of the women Gallagher’s former wife? Veronica, her name was. Gallagher rarely spoke of his former wife except to remark it was damned good luck they hadn’t had children.

Hazel knew, Gallagher had to believe this. He was a man who told himself things to believe, in the presence of witnesses.

In many of the Gallagher photographs there was a broad-chested man with a large, solid head, a blunt handsome face like something hacked out of stone. This man was stocky, self-confident. Always in the photographs he was seated at the center, hands on his knees. In photographs taken when he appeared older, he was gripping a cane in a rakish gesture. His face resembled Gallagher’s only around the eyes, that were heavy-lidded, jovial and malicious. He was of moderate height with legs that appeared foreshortened. There was something stubby about him as if a part of his body were missing but you could not see what.

This had to be the father, Thaddeus.

In a cluster of photographs, Thaddeus was seated with a mannequin figure that looked familiar to Hazel: ex-Governor Dewey? A short man with sleekly black hair, prim little mustache like something pasted on his upper lip, shiny protuberant black eyes. In those photographs in which others appeared, Thaddeus Gallagher and Dewey were seated together at the very center, glancing toward the camera as if interrupted in conversation.

These were summer photos of years ago, judging from the men’s attire. Thomas E. Dewey a dapper little mannequin in sports clothes, very stiff in his posture, purposeful.

Those others. Who surround us. Our enemies.

The flat of his hand striking the newspaper’s front page, on the oilcloth covering of the kitchen table. His rage spilled out suddenly, you could not predict.

Except she’d come to know: all politicians, public figures were objects of his hatred. All figures of wealth. Enemies.

“It’s another time now, Pa. History has changed, now.”

Strange, Hazel had spoken aloud. She was not one to speak aloud even when safely alone.

Seeing then another photo of Gallagher as a boy: looking about sixteen, long-faced, somber, with a mildly blemished skin, posed in a suit and tie in front of a small grand piano, on what appeared to be a stage. Beside him stood an older man in formal clothes, regarding the camera sternly: Hans Zimmerman.

“Zack! Come look.”

Hazel smiled, Gallagher was so young. Yet unmistakably himself as Zimmerman, though much younger, in his early forties perhaps, was unmistakably himself. You could see that the piano instructor took a certain pride in his pupil. Hazel felt a curious sensation, almost of pain, dismay.

“I don’t love him. Do I?”

It came over her then, she would never fully know him. The previous night in bed in these unfamiliar surroundings she had thought of Gallagher close by, she’d known he was thinking of her, hoping that she would come to him; she had felt a stab of panic, in her dread of knowing him. Since Tignor, she had not wanted to make love with any man. She did not trust any man, not to enter her body in that way.

Yet now it seemed obvious, she could not know Chet Gallagher even if she became his lover. Even if she lived with him. Even if he became a father to Zack, as he wished. So much of the man’s soul had been squandered, lost.

“Zack? Honey? Come see what I found.”

But Zack was preoccupied, elsewhere. Hazel went to find him, hoping he wasn’t being destructive.

There he was standing on one of the leather sofas, peering at the “trophy” mounted over the fireplace mantel. The air here smelled of woodsmoke. How like her son, drawn to morbid things!

“Oh, honey. Come down from there.”

In daylight the buck was more visible, exposed. A large, handsome head. And the antlers remarkable. You knew this was merely an object, lifeless, stuffed and mounted, eyes shining with ironic knowledge but in fact mere glass. The heraldic antlers were foolish, comical. The deer’s silvery brown hair was matted and marred and Hazel saw numerous wisps of cobwebs on them. Yet the trophy was strangely imposing, unnerving. Somehow, you believed it might still be alive. Hazel understood why her son was drawn to stare at it in fascination and revulsion.

Hazel came up quietly behind him, to nudge him in the ribs.

Saying, in her playful Hazel Jones voice, “Somebody ”married‘ him.“

By the time Gallagher came downstairs, in the late morning, Hazel and Zack had had breakfast. Hazel had cleaned the kitchen: the stove top, and oven; the counters, that were mysteriously sticky; the cupboards that required fresh paper liners, and which Hazel neatly arranged, turning the labels of cans to face out. She’d opened windows to air out the woodsmoke and musty odors. She’d straightened stacks of back issues of Life, Collier’s, Time, Fortune, Reader’s Digest. Dragging a chair to stand on, she’d dusted each of the “trophies,” taking most care with the buck’s antlers. When Gallagher saw her Hazel was sitting in a patch of sunshine leafing through My Thousand Islands: From the Time of Revolution to Now. Close by, Zack was practicing one of his Kabalevsky studies.

“My little family! Good morning.”

Gallagher meant to be jokey, jocular, waking so much later than his guests, but his quivering red-rimmed eyes swam with tears, Hazel glanced up involuntarily to see.