No child. He had no child. If you have lost your way it is best to have no child.

It was then that Gallagher began to speak haphazardly. He heard himself tell Hazel Jones how as a boy he’d camped in the woods on summer nights, alone. Not with his brothers but alone. He had a “pup” tent with mosquito netting. The guest cabins hadn’t been built yet. Noises in the woods had frightened him, he’d hardly slept at all, but the experiences had been profound, somehow. He wondered if all profound experiences occur when you’re alone, and frightened.

It was like wartime in a way, sleeping outdoors, in tents. Except in wartime you are so exhausted you have no trouble sleeping.

He told Hazel that his father had built most of the cabins after the war. Thaddeus had expanded the lodge, bought more land along the river. In fact, the Gallaghers owned property elsewhere in the Thousand Islands which was being developed, very profitably. Thaddeus Gallagher had made money during wartime and he’d made a lot more money, after: tax laws highly favorable to the Gallagher Media Group had been passed by the Republican-dominated New York State Legislature in the early 1950s.

(Why was Gallagher telling this to Hazel Jones? Did he want to impress her? Did he want her to know that he was a rich man’s son, yet innocent of acquiring riches, himself? Hazel could have no way of knowing if Gallagher shared in any of his family money or if-just maybe!-he’d been disinherited.)

Hazel had never asked Gallagher about his family, no more than she would have asked him about his former marriage. Hazel Jones was not one to ask personal questions. Yet now she asked him, with a startling bluntness, if he’d been in the war?

“The war? Oh, Hazel.”

Gallagher’s wartime experience was not a subject he spoke of easily. His brash swaggering jocular manner could not accommodate it. His eyes snatched at Hazel Jones’s eyes, that were so glistening, intense. Just inside the cabin door they stood close together yet not touching. They were very aware of each other. In this small space their intimacy was unnerving to Gallagher.

“Did you see the death camps?”

“No.”

“You didn’t see the death camps?”

“I was in northern Italy. I was hospitalized there.”

“There were no death camps in Italy?”

It seemed to be a question. Gallagher was uncertain how to answer. While he’d been overseas, at first in France and then in the Italian countryside north of Brescia, he had known nothing about the infamous Nazi death camps. He had not really known much about his own experience. Twenty-three days after landing in Europe he’d been struck by shrapnel in his back, knees. Around his neck he’d worn a collar thick as a horse collar and he’d gotten very sick with infections, and later with morphine. He understood that he’d witnessed ugly things but he had no access to them, directly. It was as if a scrim had grown across his vision, like a membrane.

Now Hazel Jones was regarding him with a curious avid hunger. Gallagher could smell the fever-heat of the woman’s body, that was new to him, very arousing.

“Why did the Nazis want to kill so many people? What does it mean, some people are ”unclean‘-“impure’-”life unworthy life‘?“

“Hazel, the Nazis were madmen. It doesn’t matter what they meant.”

“The Nazis were madmen?”

Again it seemed to be a question. Hazel spoke with a peculiar vehemence, as if Gallagher had said something meant to be funny.

“Certainly. They were madmen, and murderers.”

“But when Jews came to the United States, the ships carrying them were turned away. The Americans didn’t want them, no more than the Nazis wanted them.”

“Hazel, no. I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No. I don’t.”

Gallagher had removed his dark glasses. He fumbled to slip them into his jacket pocket, but they slipped from his fingers to the floor. He was startled and somewhat repelled by Hazel’s intensity, her voice that was strident, uncanny. This was not Hazel Jones’s melodic female voice but another’s, Gallagher had never heard before.

“No, Hazel. I’m sure that wasn’t the case, what you’re saying.”

“It wasn’t?”

“It was a diplomatic issue. If we’re talking about the same thing.”

Gallagher spoke uncertainly. He wasn’t sure of his information, the subject was vague to him, distasteful. He was trying to remember but could not. His breathing was coming quickly as if he were still hiking uphill.

“The ships docked in New York harbor but immigration officials wouldn’t let the refugees in. There were children, babies. There were hundreds of people. They were sent back to Europe, to die.”

“But why did they return to Europe?” Gallagher asked. He had a flash of insight: he could debate this. “Why, if they might have gone elsewhere? Anywhere?”

“They couldn’t go anywhere else. They had to return to Europe, to die.”

“There were refugees who went to Haiti, I think. South America. Some refugees went as far away as Singapore.”

Gallagher spoke uncertainly. He really didn’t know. Vaguely he recalled the editorials in the Gallagher newspapers, as in many American newspapers, in the years before Pearl Harbor, arguing against American intervention in Europe. The Gallagher newspapers were very much opposed to F.D.R., in editorials F.D.R. was charged with being susceptible to Jewish influences, bribery. In the columns of certain commentators F.D.R. was identified as a Jew, like his Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. For a confused moment the scrim shifted in Gallagher’s memory and he saw with a child’s curious eyes, a sign in the lobby of a dazzling Miami Beach hotel jewish persons are asked not to frequent these premises. When had that been, in the early 1930s? Before the Gallaghers acquired their private Palm Beach residence on the ocean.

Gallagher said, faltering, “Much of this has been exaggerated, Hazel. And it wasn’t only Jews who died, it was all sorts of people including Germans. Many millions. And more millions would die under Stalin. Children, yes. Babies. Upheavals of madness like volcanos spewing lava…You understood, if you were a soldier, how impersonal it is. ”History.“”

“You’re defending them, then. ”Much has been exaggerated.“”

Gallagher stared at Hazel, perplexed. He felt an undercurrent of revulsion for the woman, almost a fear of her, she seemed so different to him, suddenly. He touched her shoulders. “Hazel? What is it?”

“”Much has been exaggerated.“ You said.”

Hazel laughed. She was blinking rapidly, not looking at him.

“Hazel, I’m so sorry. I’ve been saying stupid things. You lost someone in the war?”

“No. I lost no one in the war.”

Hazel spoke harshly, half-jeering. Gallagher made a move to embrace her. For a moment she held herself rigid against him, then seemed to melt, to press herself against him, with a shudder. A wave of sexual desire struck Gallagher like a fist.

“Hazel! Dear, darling Hazel…”

Gallagher framed the woman’s face in his hands and kissed her, and she startled him with the vehemence of her response. They stood in a patch of blinding sunshine. Beyond the cabin, air shimmered with sunshine, there was a glare like fire. Hazel Jones’s mouth was cold, yet seemed to suck at Gallagher’s mouth. Awkwardly, like one unaccustomed to intimacy, with a kind of desperation she pressed against him, her arms around him tightening. There was something fierce and terrible in the woman’s sudden need. Gallagher murmured, “Hazel, dear Hazel. My dear one,” in a rapt, crooning voice, a voice distinct from his own. He drew her into the cabin, stumbling with her, their breaths steamed, nervously they laughed together, kissing, trying to kiss, fumbling to embrace in their heavy outdoor clothing. Gallagher drew Hazel to one of the twin beds. Beneath the loose, discolored sheet the mattress was bare. A smell of skunk, bestial, intimate, lifted through the floorboards. It was a strangely attractive odor, not so very strong. Fumbling, laughing, yet without mirth, for she seemed very frightened, Hazel was pulling at Gallagher’s jacket, and at the belt of his trousers. Her fingers were clumsy, deliberate. Gallagher thought As she has undressed the child, the mother undressing the child. He was astonished by her. He was utterly captivated by her. So long had Hazel Jones resisted him, and now! In a swath of blinding sunshine they lay on the mattress, kissing, straining to kiss, continuing to fumble with their clothing. Gallagher had long advised himself She is not a virgin, Hazel Jones is not a virgin, I will not be forcing myself upon a virgin, Hazel Jones has a child and has been with a man but now, this Hazel Jones was astonishing to him, gripping him tightly, drawing him to her, deeply into her. In a frenzy the woman’s mouth sucked at his, he was losing consciousness of himself, in a delirium of animal urgency and submission. In the woman’s arms he would be obliterated, this was not natural to Gallagher, had not been his experience, not for many years. Not since late adolescence, when Gallagher’s sexual life had begun. Now, he was not the stronger of the two. His will was not stronger than Hazel Jones’s will. He would succumb to the woman, not once but many times for this was the first of many times, Gallagher understood.