It had not occurred to Homer to offer this or any other suggestion to Melony; he kept silent.

'If you tell me we've got your favorite Doctor Larch, or this whole place,' she said-stamping her foot through a floorboard, trying to pry the floorboard loose with both hands-'if you tell me that, I'll torture you before I kill you.'

'Right,' said Homer Wells.

With the floorboard in both hands, Melony attacked the banister of the main staircase; the banister was knocked apart easily, but the banister post, which anchored the whole railing in the downstairs hall, remained upright. Melony dropped the floorboard and seized the banister post in a bear hug.

'Goddamn you!' she screamed-at Dr. Larch, at her mother, at St. Cloud's, at the world. She wrestled the post to the floor; it was still attached to a main support beam, under the floorboards, but Melony swung a piece of the banister railing like a club until she was able to knock the post free. When she tried to lift the post, and couldn't, she turned to Homer Wells.

'Can't you see I need help?' she said to him.

Together, they lifted the post; using it as a battering ram, they knocked down the kitchen wall.

'Why aren't you angry?' she asked Homer. 'What's wrong with you? You're never going to find out who did this to you! Don't you care?'

'I don't know,' said Homer Wells. Together, they ran the post head-on into what appeared to be a fairly major beam; maybe it supports the second floor, thought Homer Wells. They hit the beam three blows, bouncing off in a different direction each time; with the fourth try, they cracked it. Something in the building above them appeared to shift. Melony dropped her share of the banister post and bear-hugged the cracked beam; she tried to {131} run with the beam, her momentum carrying her over the doorsill, out onto the porch. One of the upstairs' bunkrooms fell downstairs, into the kitchen; when that happened, the porch roof partially collapsed, and what remained of the porch railing was launched into the river. Even Melony seemed impressed with this much destruction; she took Homer Wells by the hand and almost gently led him upstairs-more than half the upstairs was still upstairs, including the bunkroom where the pony and the woman had entertained a former woodsman of St. Cloud's.

'Help me,' Melony said softly to Homer Wells. They went to the window and together managed to wrest the shutter free of the one hinge that held it; they watched it fall straight through the porch roof and pass even more easily through the porch floorboards before it splashed in the river. 'Neat, huh?' Melony asked dully.

She sat on the mattress where they'd been kneeling when the snake hit the roof. 'Help me,' Melony said again; she indicated to Homer that he should sit beside her.

'Help me, or I'm going to run away,' she told him, 'help me, or I'm going to kill someone.' These notions seemed vaguely parallel if not equal to her. Homer realized that it was not easy for him, in the case of Melony, 'to be of use,' but he tried.

'Don't kill anyone,' he said. 'Don't run away.'

'Why stay?' she countered. 'You're not staying-I don't mean you'll run away, I mean someone will adopt you.'

'No, they won't,' Homer said. 'Besides, I wouldn't go.'

'You'll go,' Melony said.

'I won't,' Homer said. 'Please, don't run away-please don't kill anyone.'

'If I stay, you'll stay-is that: what you're saying?' Melony asked him. Is that what I mean? thought Homer Wells. But Melony, as usual, gave him no time to think. 'Promise me you'll stay as long as I stay, Sunshine,' {132} Melony said. She moved closer to him; she took his hand and opened his fingers and put his index finger in her mouth. 'Lucky pony,' Melony whispered, but Homer Wells wasn't sure if the pony had been so lucky. The old building gave a groan. Melony slid his index finger in and out of her mouth. 'Promise me you'll stay as long as I stay, Sunshine,' she said.

'Right,' said Homer Wells. She bit him. 'I promise,' Homer said. More of the upstairs fell into the kitchen; there was a sympathetic shriek from the twisted beams that still supported what was left of the porch roof.

What was it that distracted him-when Melony, finally, found his tiny penis and put it into her mouth? He was not afraid that the old building would collapse and kill them both; this would have been a reasonable fear. He was not thinking about the history of the mattress they were lying on; its history was violent-even by Melony's standards. He was not thinking of his own lost history, and he wasn't thinking that his being with Melony was or wasn't a betrayal of Dr. Larch. In part, the noise distracted Homer; there was the noise that Melony made with her mouth-and her breathing-and then there was his own breathing. The racket of this passion reminded him of little Fuzzy Stone and the energy of those mechanisms that struggled to keep Fuzzy alive. That such wet, breathy effort was made in Fuzzy's behalf seemed to emphasize how fragile his life was.

Homer grew only a little bigger in Melony's mouth; when he started to grow smaller, Melony increased her efforts. Homer's major distraction was the photograph itself, which he saw very clearly. He could even see the dust-free rectangle on the wall where the photograph had been. If the photograph had, at first, inspired him to imagine this act with Melony, now the photograph directly blocked his ability to perform at all. If the woman in the photograph had, at first, encouraged him to think of Melony, now the woman, and Melony, seemed only abused. The pony's brute insensitivity 133 remained the same: the dumb beast's inappropriate passivity. Homer felt himself grow tinier than he felt he'd ever been.

Melony was humiliated; she shoved him away, 'Goddamn you!' she screamed at him. 'What's wrong with you, anyway? And don't you tell me there's anything wrong with me!'

'Right,' Homer said, 'there isn't.'

'You bet there isn't!' Melony cried, but her lips looked sore-even bruised-and he saw tears in the anger in her eyes. She yanked the mattress out from under him; then she folded it in half and threw it out the window. The mattress fell on the roof and stuck half through the hole the shutter had made. This seemed to enrage Melony: that the mattress hadn't passed cleanly through to the river. She began to dismantle the bunk bed nearest her, crying while she worked. Homer Wells, as he had retreated from her outrage at the 'gleams of sunshine,' retreated from her now. He sneaked down the weakened stairs; when he stepped on the porch, it gave a short creak and slumped in the direction of the river, momentarily throwing him off-balance. He heard what sounded like several bunk beds, or a part of a wall, landing on the roof above him. He fled for open ground. Melony must have seen him through the upstairs window.

'You promised me, Sunshine!' she screamed at him. 'You promised you wouldn't leave me! As long as I stay, you stay!'

'I promise!' he called to her, but he turned away and started down the river, along the bank, heading back to the occupied buildings of St. Cloud's and to the orphanage on the hill above the river. He was still on the riverbank, near the water's edge, when Melony managed to dislodge the overhanging porch (the porch roof went with it); he stood and watched what looked like half the building float downstream. Homer imagined that Melony-given time enough-could possibly rid the landscape of the entire town. But he didn't stay to watch {134} her ongoing efforts at destruction. He went directly to his bed in the sleeping room of the boys' division. He lifted his mattress; he intended to throw the photograph away, but it was gone.

'It wasn't me,' said Fuzzy Stone. Although it was midday, Fuzzy was still in the sleeping room, imprisoned in his humidified tent. That meant, Homer knew, that Fuzzy was having a kind of relapse. The tent, at night, was Fuzzy's home, but when Fuzzy spent the day in the tent, the tent was referred to as his 'treatment.' He had to have what Dr. Larch called 'tests' all the time, too, and every day, everyone knew, he had to have a shot. Homer stood next to the flapping, breathing, gasping contraption and asked Fuzzy Stone where the photograph was. Homer was informed that John Wilbur had wet his bed so thoroughly that Nurse Angela had told him to lie down on Homer's bed while she replaced the ruined mattress. John Wilbur had found the photograph; he showed it to Fuzzy and to a few of the other boys who were around -among them, Wilbur Walsh and Snowy Meadows; Snowy had thrown up.