Ralph stood looking up at McGovern with his hands jammed deep into his pockets and clenched into fists so hard and tight they felt like rocks.

He could feel the muscles in his arms thrumming.

McGovern came down the porch steps and took him by the arm, gently, just above the elbow. “I only think-” Ralph pulled his arm away so sharply that McGovern grunted with surprise and stumbled a little on his feet. “I know what you think.”

“You’re not hearing what I-”

“Oh, I’ve heard plenty. More than enough. Believe me. And excuse me-I think I’m going for another walk.

I need to clear my head.” He could feel dull hot blood pounding away in his cheeks and brow. He tried to throw his brain into some forward gear that would allow it to leave this senseless, impotent rage behind, and couldn’t do it. He felt a lot as he had when he had awakened from the dream of Carolyn; his thoughts roared with terror and confusion, and as he started his legs moving, the sense he got was not one of walking but of falling, as he had fallen out of bed yesterday morning.

Still, he kept going. Sometimes that was all you could do.

“Ralph, you need to see a doctor!” McGovern called after him, and Ralph could no longer tell himself that he didn’t hear a weird, shrewish pleasure in McGovern’s voice. The concern which overlaid it was probably genuine enough but it was like sweet icing on a sour cake.

“Not a pharmacist, not a hypnotist, not an acupuncturist! You need to see your own family doctor!”

Yeah, the guy who buried my wife below the high-tide line he thought in a kind of mental scream. The guy who stuck her in sand up to her neck and then told her she didn’t have to worry about drowning as long as she kept taking her Valium and Tylenol-3.

Aloud he said, “I need to take a walk! That’s what I need and that’s all I need.” His heartbeat was now slamming into his temples like the short, hard blows of a sledgehammer, and it occurred to him that this was how strokes must happen; if he didn’t control himself soon, he was apt to fall down with what his father had called a bad-temper apoplexy.”

He could hear McGovern coming down the walk after him. Don’t touch me, Bill, Ralph thought. Don’t even put your hand on my shoulder, because I’m probably going to turn around and slug you if you do.

“I’m trying to help you, don’t you see that?” McGovern shouted.

The mailman on the other side of the street had stopped again to watch them, and outside the Red Apple, Karl, the guy who worked mornings, and Sue, the young woman who worked afternoons, were gawking frankly across the street at them. Karl, he saw, had a bag of hamburger buns in one hand. It was really sort of amazing, the things you saw at a time like this… although not as amazing as some of the things he had already seen that morning.

The things -you thought you saw, Ralph, a traitor voice whispered softly from deep inside his head.

“Walk,” Ralph muttered desperately. “Just a damn alkA mind-movie had begun to play in his head. It was an unpleasant one, the sort of film he rarely went to see even if he had seen everything else that was playing at the Cinema Center. The soundtrack to this mental horror flick seemed to be “Pop Goes the Weasel,” of all things.

“Let me tell you something, Ralph-at our age, mental illness is common! At our age it’s common as hell, So GO SEE YOUR DOCTOR.I” Mrs. Bennigan was now standing on her stoop, her walker abandoned at the foot of the front steps. She was still wearing her bright red fall coat, and her mouth appeared to be hanging open as she stared down the street at them.

“Do you hear me, Ralph? I hope you do l just hope you do.” Ralph walked faster, hunching his shoulders as if against a cold wind.

Suppose he just keeps on yelling, louder and louder? Suppose he follows me right up the street?

if he does that, people will think he’s the one who’s gone crazy, he told himself, but this idea had no power to soothe him. In his mind he continued to hear a piano playing a children’s tune-no, not really playiing,-picking it out in nursery-school punks and plonks: All around the mulberry bush The monkey chased the weasel, The monkey thought ’twas all in fun, POP. Goes the weasel!

And now Ralph began to see the old people of Harris Avenue, the ones who bought their insurance from companies that advertised on cable TV, the ones with the gallstones and the skin tumors, the ones whose memories were diminishing even as their prostates enlarged, the ones who were living on Social Security and peering at the world through thickening cataracts instead of rose-colored glasses. These were the people who now read all the mail which came addressed to Occupant and scanned the supermarket advertising circulars for specials on canned goods and generic frozen dinners. He saw them dressed in grotesque short pants and fluffy short skirts, saw them wearing beanies and tee-shirts which showcased such characters as Beavis and Butt-head and Rude Dog. He saw them, in short, as the world’s oldest pre-schoolers.

They were marching around a double row of chairs as a small bald man in a white smock played “Pop Goes the Weasel” on the piano.

Another baldy filched the chairs one by one, and when the music stopped and everyone sat down, one person-this time it had been May Locher, next time it would probably be McGovern’s old department headwas left standing.

That person would have to leave the room, of course. And Ralph heard McGovern laughing. Laughing because he’d found a seat again.

Maybe May Locher was dead, Bob Polhurst dying, Ralph Roberts losing his marbles, but he was still all right, William D.

McGovern, Esq was still fine, still dandy, still vertical and taking nourishment, still able to find a chair when the music stopped.

Ralph walked faster still, shoulders hunched even higher, anticipating another fusillade of advice and admonition. He thought it unlikely that McGovern would actually follow him up the street, but not entirely out of the question. If McGovern was angry enough he might do just that-remonstrating, telling Ralph to stop fooling around and go to the doctor, reminding him that the piano could stop anytime, any old time at all, and if he didn’t find a chair while the finding was good, he might be out of luck forever.

No more shouts came, however. He thought of looking back to see where McGovern was, then thought better of it. If he saw Ralph looking back, it might set him off all over again. Best to just keep going, So Ralph lengthened his stride, heading back in the direction of the airport again without even thinking about it, walking with his head down, trying not to hear the relentless piano, trying not to seeing not to see the old children marching around the chars, try’ the terrified eyes above their make-believe smiles.

It came to him as he walked that his hopes had been denied. He had been pushed into the tunnel after all, and the dark was all around him.