"Hush up and bow that head, Papadaddy," said Zoo. "We gonna end this meetin proper-like. We gonna tell Him our prayers. Joel, honey, bow that head."

The trio on the porch were figures in a woodcut engraving: the Ancient on his throne of splendid pillows, a yellow pet relaxed in his lap gazing gravely in the drowning light at the small servant bowed at its master's feet, and the arms of the black arrow-like daughter lifted above them all, as if in benediction.

But there was no prayer in Joel's mind; rather, nothing a net of words could capture, for, with one exception, all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved.

"Amen," whispered Zoo.

And in this moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came.

4

"Can't we be more specific?" said Randolph, languidly pouring a glass of sherry. "Was she fat, tall, lean?"

"It was hard to tell," said Joel.

Outside in the night, rain washed the roof with close slanted sounds, but here kerosene lamps spun webs of mellow light in the darkest corner, and the kitchen-window mirrored the scene like a golden looking glass. So far Joel's first supper at the Landing had gone along well enough. He felt very much at ease with Randolph, who, at each conversational lag, introduced topics which might interest and flatter a boy of thirteen: Joel found himself holding forth exceedingly well (he thought) on Do Human Beings Inhabit Mars? How Do You Suppose Egyptians Really Mummified Folks? Are Head-hunters Still Active? and other conversational subjects. It was due more or less to an overdose of sherry (disliking the taste, but goaded by the hope of getting sure enough drunk… now wouldn't he have something to write Sammy Silverstein!… three thimble glasses had been drained) that Joel mentioned the Lady.

"Heat," said Randolph. "Exposing one's bare head to the sun occasionally results in minor hallucinations. Dear me, yes. Once, some years ago, while airing in the garden, I seemed quite distinctly to see a sunflower transformed into a man's face, the face of a scrappy little boxer I admired at one point, a Mexican named Pepe Alvarez." He fondled his chin reflectively, and wrinkled his nose, as if to convey that this name had for him particular implications. "Stunning experience, so impressive I cut the flower, and pressed it in a book; even now, if I come across it I fancy… but that is neither here nor there. It was the sun, I'm sure. Amy dearest, what do you think?"

Amy, who was brooding over her food, glanced up, rather startled. "No more for me, thank you," she said.

Randolph frowned in mock annoyance. "As usual, out picking the little blue flower of forgetfulness."

Her narrow face softened with pleasure. "Silvertongued devil," she said, unreserved adoration brightening her sharp little eyes, and making them, for an instant, almost beautiful.

"To begin at the beginning, then," he said, and burped("Excusez-moi, s'il vous plaоt. Blackeyed peas, you understand; most indigestible"). He patted his lips daintily. "Now where was I, oh yes… Joel refuses to be persuaded we at the Landing aren't harboring spirits."

"That isn't what I said," Joel protested.

"Some of Missouri's chatter," was Amy's calm opinion. "Just a hotbed of crazy nigger-notions, that girl. Remember when she wrung the neck off every chicken on the place? Oh, it isn't funny, don't laugh. I've sometimes wondered what would happen if it got into her headhis soul inhabited one of us."

"Keg?" said Joel. "You mean Keg's soul?"

"Don't tell me!" cried Randolph, and giggled in the prim, suffocated manner of an old maid. "Already?"

"I didn't think it was so funny," said Joel resentfully. "He did a bad thing to her."

Amy said: "Randolph's only cutting up."

"You malign me, angel."

"It wasn't funny," said Joel.

Squinting one eye, Randolph studied the spokes of amber light whirling out from the sherry as he raised and revolved his glass. "Not funny, dear me, no. But the story has a certain bizarre interest: would you care to hear it?"

"How unnecessary," said Amy. "The child's morbid enough."

"All children are morbid: it's their one saving grace," said Randolph and went right ahead. "This happened more than a decade ago, and in a cold, very cold November. There was working for me at the time a strapping young buck, splendidly proportioned, and with skin the color of swamp honey." A curious quality about Randolph's voice had worried Joel from the first, but not till now could he put a finger on it: Randolph spoke without an accent of any kind: his weary voice was free of regional defects, yet there was an emotional undercurrent, a caustic lilt of sarcasm which gave it a rather emphatic personality.

"He was, however, a little feeble-minded. The feeble-minded, the neurotic, the criminal, perhaps, also, the artist, have unpredictablility and perverted innocence in common." His expression became smugly remote, as though, having made an observation he thought superior, he must pause and listen admiringly while it reverberated in his head. "Let's compare them to a Chinese chest: the sort, you remember, that opens into a second box, another, still another, until at length you come upon the last… the latch is touched, the lid springs open to reveal… what unsuspected cache?" He smiled wanly, and tasted the sherry. Then, from the breastpocket of the taffy-silk pyjama top that he wore, he extracted a cigarette, and struck a match. The cigarette had a strange, medicinal odor, as though the tobacco had been long soaked in the juice of acid herbs: it was the smell that identifies a house where asthma reigns. As he puckered his lips to blow a smoke ring, the pattern of his talcumed face was suddenly complete: it seemed composed now of nothing but circles: though not fat, it was round as a coin, smooth and hairless; two discs of rough pink colored his cheeks, and his nose had a broken look, as if once punched by a strong angry fist; curly, very blond, his fine hair fell in childish yellow ringlets across his forehead, and his wide-set, womanly eyes were like sky-blue marbles.

"So they were in love, Keg and Missouri, and we had the wedding here, the bride all clothed in family lace…"

"Nice as any white girl, I'll tell you," said Amy. "Pretty as a picture."

Joel said: "But if he was crazy…"

"She was never one for reasoning," sighed Randolph. "Only fourteen, of course, a child, but decidedly stubborn: she wanted to marry, and so she did. We lent them a room here in the house the week of their honeymoon, and let them use the yard to have a fishfry for their friends."

"And my dad… was he at the wedding?"

Randolph, looking blank, tapped ash onto the floor. "But then one night, very late…" lowering his eyelids sleepily, he drew a finger round the rim of his glass. "Does Amy, by chance, recall the veryoriginal thing I did when we heard Missouri scream?"

Amy couldn't make up her mind whether she did or not. Ten years, after all, was a long time.

"We were sitting like this in the parlor, doesn't that come back? And I said: it's the wind. Of course I knew it wasn't." He paused, and sucked in his cheeks, as though the memory proved too exquisitely humorous for him to maintain a straight face. He aimed a gun-like finger at Joel, and cocked his thumb: "So I put a roller in the pianola, and it played the Indian Love Call."

"Such a sweet song," said Amy. "So sad. I don't know why you never let me play the pianola any more."

"Keg cut her throat," said Joel, a mood of panic bubbling up, for he couldn't follow the peculiar turn Randolph's talk had taken; it was like trying to decipher some tale being told in a senseless foreign language, and he despised this left-out feeling, just when he'd begun to feel close to Randolph. "I saw her scar," he said, and all but shouted for attention, "that's what Keg did."