She could not mistake the implication in that.

“You love her?”

“Nancy … I can’t say” “You love me?”

He gazed at the bright slash of the railway tracks cutting the horizon.

Even this was not as painful as she might have expected. She believed in free love, yes, love given freely and perhaps as freely taken away. But it was not that: the thing was, curiously, she did understand it… understood, at least, that what had drawn Travis to Anna Blaise was not sex or love in any ordinary sense, was not something she could hope to compete with.

She loved Travis. She had admitted that to herself weeks ago. But he was more than that: he was her freight train, she thought grimly, the vehicle of her destiny. There was little enough in him of pleasure or of happiness,- she had learned that. But for better or worse she was bound to him. She had to hang on.

“So how do we help her?”

He looked giddy with gratitude.

“Talk to her,” he said. “We talk to her.”

Now, Nancy thought. Now it begins.

He started the engine.

“Travis!” Aunt Liza exclaimed. “Thank God you’re safe!”

She stood in the dim light of the parlor, dusting, wearing an old housecoat, her hair pinned up. Travis regarded her with a mixture of wariness and compassion.

“We’re going up to see Anna, Aunt Liza.” He felt Nancy clutch his hand.

“Travis?” She frowned. “Why aren’t you at work? Are you ill?”

“We can talk later, Aunt Liza.”

Her expression hardened. “It’s that thing upstairs, isn’t it? That female thing.” She blinked. “You stay away from her.”

“Later, Aunt Liza.” They moved past her and up the stairs, and Travis wondered briefly whether he might not be insane—whether he had allowed an hallucination to drive him to this extremity. He squeezed Nancy’s hand and pushed through the door to the attic room.

He thought at first it was empty. The single brass bed was carefully made-up, the rose-patterned bedspread folded at the foot of it. The window shades were down,- the yellow light swam with dust motes. Anna, he saw then, was sitting primly in one corner, in a straight-backed cane chair, her hands folded in her lap_; She looked up at Travis and then at Nancy. Her face was expressionless; when she spoke the words were precise and clipped. “Close the door.”

Mute, Travis obeyed.

Anna drew in a deep breath, sighed.

“Help me,” she said. “I need your help.” Gazing at Nancy: “Both of you.”

Nancy stepped forward—bravely, Travis thought; though surely there was nothing here to be frightened of?

“You’re sick,” Nancy said, “is that it?”

“That’s one way of thinking of it. Though not exactly correct.” Anna tilted her head. “I can’t explain everything at once. I’m sorry.”

Travis nodded. He was transfixed once more by the perfection of her. Her skin was terribly pale but seemed almost luminous—smooth as jade, alabaster-white. Even her smallest motions were fluid and deliberate. She stood in wild contrast to the barren room, the black Singer sewing machine hunched over the floorboards like an insect.

He hated himself for the thought, but next to her Nancy was gross, plain, thickly ordinary.

“All I need,” Anna Blaise went on, “is time. I’m not certain how much. A few weeks … a month, maybe. I need time and I need privacy. It’s not precisely an illness, but I’ll be helpless. And I’ll change.

I apologize for not being more exact.” She stood up. “If I stay here I could be in danger. You understand? That’s why I need your help. The Buracks—” “I know,” Travis said.

He told her about his fight with Creath, about losing his job.

“Then we have very little time,” Anna said. “Is there somewhere I can go?”

“The shack,” Nancy said. “The old switchman’s shack out by the railroad. Travis? We could fix it up for her. If it’s only for a couple of weeks, I mean, while the weather’s warm.”

“It’s private?” Anna asked.

“It’s that, yes.”

“Then it will do. Travis, can you take me there?”

“Now?”

“Now would be best. While I’m still in control.”

The implications of that disturbed him, but she seemed very sure of herself, so he said, yes, the truck was just outside; but then the front door slammed, an echo that resounded through the old house. Creath was home.

Chapter Seven

They squared off in the second-story hallway. Creath, obstructing the stairs, wore a deeply aggrieved scowl. He looked at Travis steadily, appraising him. “You have a lot to answer for,” he said slowly, “you sorry son of a bitch.”

Travis told Nancy to wait for him outside. She shied past Creath, who allowed her to go, all his attention fixed on Travis. Anna was still upstairs, hidden.

“I’m taking her out of here,” Travis said.

“You have more gall than I expected,” Creath pronounced. “You! What would you do with her— pissant farmboy like you?”

“You’re using her,” Travis said.

“Shut up. Shut your dirty mouth. Your aunt’s down these stairs.”

Travis felt his own outrage well up. “You think she doesn’t know! Doesn’t know you sneak up here to rape the girl these nights—?”

“Rape!” Creath laughed, his eyes rolling. “Rape, you call it? What are you, her white knight?” He advanced, his fists clenched, his thick arms showing swarms of muscle under the layered fat. Sweat showered off him. “She wants it, boy-o. Don’t kid yourself. She wants it, or else why would you be chasing her all over town these nights? Sure, I’ve been up there… and maybe Liza knows as much about me as that Wilcox girl knows about you, you think perhaps? Oh, we are that much the same. The difference, boy-o, is that I own this house, and this house is where she lives, and I decide who’s putting it to her—you understand? I decide.”

“I’m taking her out of here.”

“You poor dumb shit,” Creath said, and struck him.

Travis fell back through the door of the second-story bathroom. His hand caught on the medicine cabinet and a shelf of Aunt Liza’s specifics came tumbling out: Cuticura, Bromo Quinine, Winter Pep cough syrup in an opaque blue bottle. He steadied himself on the edge of the sink, blind with pain. The mirror was broken.

He will beat her, Travis thought. If I fail at this he will beat her, maybe kill her. The instinct that had drawn Creath to her had turned terribly ugly. There was nothing protective in it now, only a huge injured pride and the formless desire to hurt. He forced himself back into the hallway.

Creath had already started up the steps. Travis leaped forward and drove his fist into the small of the man’s back.

Creath whirled, enraged. “You cheap little bastard, ” he began. But then Travis hit him hard in the mouth, wanting desperately to silence him, hit him again when the older man dropped his guard and staggered back, and then again and again, until his fists seemed to acquire an energy and a rhythm of their own. Travis made himself stop when he realized that Creath was not even trying to defend himself: he was prostrate on the stairway, his eyes gone wide with pain and disbelief.

Suddenly ashamed, Travis stood up straight.

“Don’t take her,” Creath said. It came out a whisper from his bloodied mouth. “Goddamn you. Don’t take her. She is my—I—”

“Stop,” Aunt Liza said. Travis turned.

She had been watching from behind. There was a terrible, sullen calm in her voice. “You’ve hurt him enough. Get the girl and get out.”

Travis looked down at his own bruised and bloodied fists.

“Aunt Liza—”

“Do it. Do it quickly.”

Dazed, he moved up the stairs.

“I hope you rot,” Aunt Liza said placidly. “I hope she eats you alive.”

They broke the rusted lock on the door of the switchman’s shack and helped Anna inside. She seemed already weak, unsteady on her feet. She is ill, Travis thought.