“Oh, Johnny,” she said against his neck. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Sarah.”

“Where do we go?” she asked, stepping away from him. Her eyes were as dear and dark as emeralds now. “Where?”

He spread the faded army blanket, which was old but clean, on the straw of the second loft. The smell was fragrant and sweet. High above them there was the mysterious coo and flutter of the barn swallows, and then they settled down again. There was a small, dusty window which looked down on the house and porch. Sarah wiped a clean place on the glass and looked down at Denny.

“It's okay?” Johnny asked.

“Yes. Better here than in the house. That would have been like… “She shrugged.

“Making my dad a part of it?”

“Yes. This is between us.”

“Our business.”

“Our business,” she agreed. She lay on her stomach, her face turned to one side on the faded blanket, her legs bent at the knee. She pushed her shoes off, one by one. “Unzip me, Johnny.”

He knelt beside her and pulled the zipper down. The sound was loud in the stillness. Her back was the color of coffee with cream against the whiteness of her slip. He kissed her between the shoulder blades and she shivered.

“Sarah,” he murmured.

“What?”

“I have to tell you something.”

“What?”

“The doctor made a mistake during one of those operations and gelded me.”

She punched him on the shoulder. “Same old Johnny,” she said. “And you had a friend once who broke his neck on the crack-the-whip at Topsham Fair.”

“Sure,” he said.

Her hand touched him like silk, moving gently up and down.

“It doesn't feel like they did anything terminal to you,” she said. Her luminous eyes searched his. “Not at all. Shall we look and see?”

There was the sweet smell of the hay. Time spun out. There was the rough feel of the army blanket, the smooth feel of her flesh, the naked reality of her. Sinking into her was like sinking into an old dream that had never been quite forgotten.

“Oh, Johnny, my dear… “Her voice in rising excitement. Her hips moving in a quickening tempo. Her voice was far away. The touch of her hair was like fire on his shoulder and chest. He plunged his face deeply into it, losing himself in that dark-blonde darkness.

Time spinning out in the sweet smell of hay. The rough-textured blanket. The sound of the old barn creaking gently, like a ship, in the October wind. Mild white light coming in through the roof chinks, catching motes of chaff in half a hundred pencil-thin sunbeams. Motes of chaff dancing and revolving.

She cried out. At some point she cried out his name, again and again and again, like a chant. Her fingers dug into him like spurs. Rider and ridden. Old wine decanted at last, a fine vintage.

Later they sat by the window, looking out into the yard. Sarah slipped her dress on over bare flesh and left him for a little bit. He sat alone, not thinking, content to watch her reappear in the window, smaller, and cross the yard to the porch. She bent over the baby bed and readjusted the blankets. She came back, the wind blowing her hair out behind her and tugging playfully at the hem of her dress.

“He'll sleep another half hour,” she said.

“Will he?” Johnny smiled. “Maybe I will, too.”

She walked her bare toes across his belly. “You better not.”

And so again, and this time she was on top, almost in an attitude of prayer, her head bent, her hair swinging forward and obscuring her face. Slowly. And then it was over.

“Sarah…”

“No, Johnny. Better not say it. Time's up.”

“I was going to say that you're beautiful.”

“Am I?”

“You are,” he said softly. “Dear Sarah.”

“Did we put paid to everything?” she asked him.

Johnny smiled. “Sarah, we did the best we could.”

Herb didn't seem surprised to see Sarah when he got home from Westbrook. He welcomed her, made much of the baby, and then scolded Sarah for not bringing him down sooner.

“He has your color and complexion,” Herb said. “And I think he's going to have your eyes, when they get done changing.”

“if only he has his father's brains,” Sarah said. She had put an apron on over the blue wool dress. Outside, the sun was going down. Another twenty minutes and it would be dark.

“You know, the cooking is supposed to be Johnny's job,” Herb said.

“Couldn't stop her. She put a gun to my head.”

“Well, maybe it's all for the best,” Herb said. “Everything you make comes out tasting like Franco-American spaghetti.”

Johnny shied a magazine at him and Denny laughed, a high, piercing sound that seemed to fill the house.

Can he see? Johnny wondered. It feels like it's written all over my face. And then a startling thought came to him as he watched his father digging in the entryway closet for a box of Johnny's old toys that he had never let Vera give away: Maybe he understands.

They ate. Herb asked Sarah what Walt was doing in Washington and she told them about the conference he was attending, which had to do with Indian land claims. The Republican meetings were mostly wind-testing exercises, she said.

“Most of the people he's meeting with think that if Reagan is nominated over Ford next year, it's going to mean the death of the party. “Sarah said. “And if the Grand Old Party dies, that means Walt won't be able to run for Bill Cohen's seat in 1978 when Cohen goes after Bill Hathaway's Senate seat.

Herb was watching Denny eat string beans, seriously, one by one, using all six of his teeth on them. “I don't think Cohen will be able to wait until “78 to get in the Senate. He'll run against Muskie next year.”

“Walt says Bill Cohen's not that big a dope,” Sarah said. “He'll wait. Walt says his own chance is coming, and I'm starting to believe him.”

After supper they sat in the living room, and the talk turned away from politics. They watched Denny play with the old wooden cars and trucks that a much younger Herb Smith had made for his own son over a quarter of a century ago. A younger Herb Smith who had been married to a tough, good-humored woman who would sometimes drink a bottle of Black Label beer in the evening. A man with no gray in his hair and nothing but the highest hopes for his son.

He does understand, Johnny thought, sipping his coffee. Whether he knows what went on between Sarah and me this afternoon, whether or not he suspects what might have gone on, he understands the basic cheat. You can't change it or rectify it, the best you can do is try to come to terms. This afternoon she and I consummated a marriage that never was. And tonight he's playing with his grandson.

He thought of the Wheel of Fortune, slowing, stopping.

House number. Everyone loses.

Gloom was trying to creep up, a dismal sense of finality, and he pushed it away. This wasn't the time; he wouldn't let it be the time.

By eight-thirty Denny had begun to get scratchy and cross and Sarah said, “Time for us to go, folks. He can suck a bottle on our way back to Kennebunk. About three miles from here, he'll have corked off. Thanks for having us. “Her eyes, brilliant green, found Johnny's for a moment.

“Our pleasure entirely,” Herb said, standing up. “Right, Johnny?”

“Right,” he said. “Let me carry that car-bedout for you, Sarah.”

At the door. Herb kissed the top of Denny's head (and Denny grabbed Herb's nose in his chubby fist and honked it hard enough to make Herb's eyes water) and Sarah's cheek. Johnny carried the car-bed down to the red Pinto and Sarah gave him the keys so he could put everything in the back.