Thomas in Elysium

A Horn Blew outside the garage and Tom climbed out from under the Ford on which he was working in the grease pit and, wiping his hands on a rag, went out to where the Oldsmobile was standing, next to one of the pumps.

"Fill 'er up," Mr. Herbert said. He was a steady customer, a real-estate man who had taken options on outlying properties near the garage at low, wartime prices, lying in wait for the post-War boom. Now that the Japanese had surrendered, his car passed the garage frequently. He bought all his gas at the Jordache station, using the black-market ration stamps Harold Jordache sold to the more discreet among his customers.

Thomas unscrewed the tank cap and ran the gasoline in, holding onto the trigger of the hose nozzle. It was a hot afternoon and the fumes from the flowing gasoline rose in visible waves from the tank. Thomas turned his head, trying to avoid breathing in the vapor. He had a headache every night from this job. The Germans are using chemical warfare on me, he thought, now that the War is over. He thought of his uncle as German in a way that he didn't think of his father as German. There was the accent, of course, and the two pale-blonde daughters who were dressed in vaguely Bavarian fashion on holidays, and the heavy meals of sausage and smoked pork and kraut, and the constant sound of people singing Wagner and Schubert lieder on the phonograph in the house, because Mrs. Jordache loved music. Tante Elsa, she asked Thomas to call her.

Thomas was alone in the garage. Coyne, the mechanic, was sick this week and the second man was out on a call. It was two o'clock in the afternoon and Harold Jordache was still home at lunch. Sauerbraten mit Spätzle and three bottles of Miller High Life and a nice snooze on the big bed upstairs with his fat wife, to make sure they didn't overwork and have premature heart attacks. Thomas was just as glad that the maid gave him two sandwiches and some fruit in a bag for his lunch to eat at the garage. The less he saw of his uncle and his family, the better he liked it. It was enough he had to live in the house, in the minuscule room in the attic, where he lay sweating all night in the heat that had collected there under the roof in the summer sun during the day. Fifteen dollars a week. His uncle Harold had made a good thing out of the fact that Thomas had been exiled from home and Port Philip.

The tank overflowed a little and Thomas hung up the hose and put on the cap and wiped away the splash of gasoline on the rear fender. He washed the windshield down and collected $4.30 and the black-market stamps from Mr. Herbert, who gave him a dime tip.

"Thanks," Thomas said, with a good facsimile of gratitude, and watched the Oldsmobile drive off into town. The Jordache garage was on the outskirts of town, so they got a lot of transient traffic, too. Thomas went into the office and charged up the sale on the register and put the money into the till and threw the ration tickets into the carton on the desk. He had finished the grease job on the Ford and, for the moment, he had nothing to do, although if his uncle were there, he would have no trouble finding work for him. Probably cleaning out the toilets or polishing the chrome of the shining hulks in the used-car lot. Thomas thought idly of cleaning out the cash register, instead, and taking off somewhere. He rang the No Sale key and looked in. With Mr. Herbert's $4.30, there was exactly $10.30 in the drawer. Uncle Harold had lifted the morning's receipts when he went home for lunch, just leaving five one-dollar bills and a dollar in silver, in case somebody had to have change. Uncle Harold hadn't become the owner of a garage and a used-car lot and a filling station and an automobile agency in town by being careless with his money.

Thomas hadn't eaten yet, so he picked up his lunch bag and went out of the office and sat tilted on the cracked wooden chair against the wall of the garage, in the shade, watching the traffic go by. The view was not unpleasant. There was something nautical and regattalike about the cars in diagonal lines in the lot, with gaily colored banners overhead, announcing bargains. There was a lumberyard diagonally across the road, but there was the ocher and green of patches of farmland all around and a roadhouse that was closed now but advertised dancing on Saturday nights. If you sat still, the heat wasn't too bad and just the absence of Uncle Harold gave Thomas a sense of well-being.

He dug into the bag and pulled out a sandwich. It was wrapped neatly in waxed paper. It was a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, with a lot of mayonnaise, on fresh, thinly cut rye bread. Recently, Clothilde, the Jordaches' maid, had begun to give him fancy sandwiches, different ones every day, instead of the unrelieved diet of baloney on thick hunks of bread that he had had to make do with the first few weeks. Tom was a little ashamed, seeing his grease-stained hands with the black nails on the elaborate, tea-shoppe sandwich. It was just as well that Clothilde couldn't see him as he ate her offerings. She was nice, Clothilde, a quiet French-Canadian woman of about 25, who worked from seven in the morning until nine at night, with every other Sunday afternoon off. She had sad dark eyes and black hair and this uniform somberness of coloring set her off as being ineluctably lower in the social scale than the aggressively blonde Jordaches, as though she had been born and marked specifically to be their servant.

She had taken to leaving a piece of pie out on the kitchen table for him, too, at night, when he left the house after dinner to wander around the town. Uncle Harold and Tante Elsa couldn't keep him in the house at night any more than his own parents used to. He had to wander. Nighttime made him restless. He didn't do much--sometimes he'd play in a pickup softball game under the lights in the town park or he'd go to a movie and have a soda afterward and he'd found some girls. He had made no friends who might ask embarrassing questions about Port Philip and he'd been careful to be civil to everyone and he hadn't had a fight since he'd come to town. He'd had enough trouble for the time being. Actually, he wasn't unhappy. Being out from under his mother and father was a blessing and not living in the same house and sharing the same bed with his brother Rudolph was soothing to the nerves. And not having to go to school was a big improvement. He didn't mind the work at the garage, although Uncle Harold was a nuisance, always fussing and worrying. Tante Elsa clucked over him and kept giving him glasses of orange juice under the impression that his lean fitness was a sign of malnutrition. They meant well enough, even if they were slobs. The two little girls stayed out of his way.

Neither of the senior Jordaches knew why he had been sent away from home. Uncle Harold had pried, but Thomas had been vague and had merely said that he was doing badly at school, which was true enough, and that his father had thought it would be good for his character to get away from home and earn some money on his own. Uncle Harold was not one to underestimate the moral beauties of sending a boy out to earn money on his own. He was surprised, though, that Thomas never got any mail from his family and that after that first Sunday-afternoon telephone call from Axel, telling him that Thomas was on his way, there had been no further communication from Port Philip. Harold Jordache was a family man himself, extravagantly affectionate with his two daughters and lavish with gifts for his wife, whose money it had been in the first place that had enabled him to take his comfortable place in Elysium. In talking about Axel Jordache to Tom, Uncle Harold had sighed over the differences in temperament between the brothers. "I think, Tom," Uncle Harold had said, "it was because of his war wound. He took it very hard, your father. It brought out the dark side in him. As though nobody ever was wounded before."

Harold shared one conception with Axel Jordache. The German people, he believed, had a streak of childishness in them, which, drove them into waging war. "Play a band and they march. What's so attractive about it?" he said. "Clumping around in the rain, with a sergeant yelling at you, sleeping in the mud, instead of in a nice warm bed with your wife, being shot at by people you don't know, and then, if you're lucky, winding up in an old uniform without a pot to piss in. It's all right for a big industrialist, the Krupps, making cannons and battleships, but for the small man"--he shrugged. "Stalingrad--who needs it?" With all his Germanness, he had kept clear of all German-American movements. He liked where he was and what he was and he was not to be lured into any associations that might compromise him. "I got nothing against anybody," was one of the foundations of his policy. "Not against the Poles, or the French, or the English, or the Jews or anybody. Not even the Russians. Anybody who wants can come in and buy a car or ten gallons of gas from me and if he pays in good American money, he's my friend."

Thomas lived placidly enough in Uncle Harold's house, observing the rules, going his own way, occasionally annoyed at his uncle's reluctance to see him sitting down for a few minutes during the working day but, by and large, more grateful than not for the sanctuary that was being offered him. It was only temporary. Sooner or later, he knew he was going to break away. But there was no hurry.

He was just about to dig into the bag for the second sandwich when he saw the twins' 1938 Chevy approaching. It curved in toward the filling station and Tom saw that there was only one of the twins in it. He didn't know which one it was, Ethel or Edna. He had screwed them both, as had most of the boys in town, but he couldn't tell them apart.

The Chevy stopped, gurgling and creaking. The twins' parents were loaded with money, but they said the old Chevy was good enough for two 16-year-old girls who had never earned a cent in their lives.

"Hi, twin," Tom said, to be on the safe side.

"Hi, Tom." The twins were nice-looking girls, well tanned, with straight brown hair and skin that always looked as if they had just come out of a mountain spring, and plump little tight asses. If you didn't know that they had laid every boy in town, you'd be pleased to be seen with them anywhere.

"Tell me my name," the twin said.

"Aw, come on," Tom said.

"If you don't tell me my name," the twin said, "I'll buy my gas somewhere else."

"Go ahead," Tom said. "It's my uncle's money."

"I was going to invite you to a party," the twin said. "We're cooking some hot dogs down at the lake tonight and we have three cases of beer. I won't invite you if you don't tell me my name."

Tom grinned at her, stalling for time. He looked into the open Chevy. The twin was going swimming. She had a white bathing suit on the seat beside her. "I was only kidding you, Ethel," he said. Ethel had a white bathing suit and Edna had a blue one. "I knew it was you all the time."

"Give me three gallons," Ethel said. "For guessing right."

"I wasn't guessing," he said, taking down the hose. "You're printed on my memory."

"I bet," Ethel said. She looked around at the garage and wrinkled her nose. "This is a dumb old place to work. I bet a fellow like you could get something a lot better if he looked around. At least in an office."

He had told her, as he had told others in Elysium, that he was 19 years old and graduated from high school. She had come over to talk to him after he had spent 15 minutes one Saturday afternoon down at the lake, showing off on the diving board. "I like it here," he said. "I'm an outdoor man."

"Don't I know," she said, chuckling. They had screwed out in the woods on a blanket that she kept in the rumble seat of the car. He had screwed her sister Edna in the same place on the same blanket, although on different nights. The twins had an easygoing family spirit of share and share alike. The twins did a lot toward making Tom willing to stay in Elysium and work in his uncle's garage. He didn't know what he was going to do in the winter, though, when the woods were covered with snow.

He put the cap back on the tank and racked up the hose. Ethel gave him a dollar bill but no ration coupons. "Hey," he said, "where're the tickets?"

"Surprise, surprise," she said, smiling. "I'm all out."

"You got to have 'em."

She pouted. "After everything you and I are to each other. Do you think Antony asked Cleopatra for ration tickets?"

"She didn't have to buy gas from him," Tom said.

"What's the difference?" Ethel said. "My old man buys the coupons from your uncle. In one pocket and out the other. There's a war on."

"It's over."

"Only just."

"OK," Tom said. "Just because you're beautiful."

"Do you think I'm prettier than Edna?" she asked.

"One hundred percent."

"I'll tell her you said that."

"What for?" Tom said. "There's no sense in making people unhappy." He didn't relish the idea of cutting his harem down by half by any unnecessary exchange of information.

Ethel peered into the empty garage. "Do you think people ever do it in a garage?"

"Save it for tonight, Cleopatra," Tom said.

She giggled. "It's nice to try everything once. Do you have the key?"

"I'll get it sometime." Now he knew what to do in the winter.

"Why don't you just leave this dump and come on down to the lake with me? I know a place we can go skinny-bathing." She wriggled desirably on the cracked leather of the front seat. It was funny how two girls in the same family could be such hot numbers. Tom wondered what their father and mother thought when they started out to church with their daughters on Sunday morning.

"I'm a workingman," Tom said. "I'm essential to industry. That's why I'm not in the Army."

"I wish you were a captain," Ethel said. "I'd love to undress a captain. One brass button after another. I'd unbuckle your sword."

"Get out of here," Tom said, "before my uncle comes back and asks me if I collected your ration tickets."

"Where should I meet you tonight?" she asked, starting the motor.

"In front of the library. Eight-thirty OK?"

"Eight-thirty, lover boy," she said. "I'll lay out in the sun and think about you all afternoon and pant." She waved and went off.

Tom sat down in the shade on the broken chair. He reached into the lunch bag and took out the second sandwich and unwrapped it. There was a piece of paper, folded in two, on the sandwich. He opened up the paper. There was writing on it in pencil. "I love you," in careful, schoolgirlish script. Tom squinted at the message. He recognized the handwriting. Clothilde wrote out the list of things she had to phone the market for every day and the list was always in the same place on a shelf in the kitchen.

Tom whistled softly. He read aloud. "I love you." His voice was still adolescently high, nearly soprano. A 25-year-old woman to whom he'd hardly ever spoken more than two words. He folded the paper carefully and put it in his pocket and stared out at the traffic sweeping along the road toward Cleveland for a long time before he began eating the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, soaked in mayonnaise.

He knew he wasn't going out to the lake tonight for any old wienie roast.

• • •

He sat in Uncle Harold and Tante Elsa's big bathtub, steaming in the hot water, his eyes closed, drowsing, like an animal sunning himself on a rock, as Clothilde washed his hair. Uncle Harold and Tante Elsa and the two girls were at Saratoga for their annual two-week holiday and Tom and Clothilde had the house to themselves. It was Sunday and the garage was closed and in the distance, a church bell was ringing.

The deft fingers massaged his scalp, caressed the back of his neck through foaming perfumed suds. Clothilde had bought a special soap for him in the drugstore with her own money. Sandalwood. When Uncle Harold came back, he'd have to go back to good old Ivory, eight cents a cake. Uncle Harold would suspect something was up if he smelled the sandalwood. Caught by a nose. 99 and 44/100ths percent pure.

Tom lay back in the water and stayed under as her fingers worked vigorously through his hair, rinsing out the suds. He came up blowing.

"Now your nails," Clothilde said. She kneeled beside the tub and scrubbed with the nailbrush at the black grease ground into the skin of his hands and under his nails. Clothilde was naked and her dark hair was down, falling in a cascade over her low, full breasts. Even humbly kneeling, she didn't look like anybody's servant with her hair down.

His hands were pink, his nails rosy, as Clothilde scrubbed away. He looked down at her wedding ring, glistening in foam.

Clothilde put the brush on the rim of the tub, after a last meticulous examination. "Now the rest," she said.

He stood up in the bath. She got off her knees and began to soap him down. She had wide firm hips and strong legs. Her skin was dark and with her flattish nose and wide cheekbones and long straight hair, she looked like pictures he had seen in history books of Indian girls greeting the first white settlers in the forests. There was a scar on her right arm, a jagged crescent of white. Her husband had hit her with a piece of kindling. Long ago, she said. In Canada. She didn't want to talk about her husband. When he looked at her, something funny happened in his throat and he didn't know whether he wanted to laugh or cry.

Motherly hands touched him lightly, lovingly, doing unmotherly things. Between his buttocks, slipperiness of scented soap; between his thighs, promises. An orchestra in his balls. Woodwinds and flutes. Hearing Tante Elsa's phonograph blaring all the time, he had come to love Wagner. "We are finally civilizing the little fox," Tante Elsa had said, proud of her unexpected cultural influence.

"Now the feet," Clothilde said.

He obediently put a foot up on the rim of the tub, like a horse being shod. Bending, careless of her hair, she soaped between his toes and used a washcloth devotedly, as though she were burnishing church silver. He learned that even his toes could give him pleasure.

She finished with his other foot and he stood there, glistening in the steam. She looked at him, studying him. "A boy's body," she said. "You look like Saint Sebastian. Without the arrows." She wasn't joking. She never joked. It was the first intimation of his life that his body might have a value beyond its functions. He knew that he was strong and quick and that his body was good for games and fighting, but it had never occurred to him that it would delight anybody just to look at it. He wouldn't know what the word aesthetic meant if he came across it in a book. He was a little ashamed that he had no hair yet on (continued on page 100)Thomas in Elysium (continued from page 96) his chest and that it was so sparse down below.

With a quick motion of her hands, she did her hair up in a knot on top of her head. Then she stepped into the bathtub, too. She took the bar of soap and the suds began to glisten on her skin. She soaped herself all over methodically, without coquetry. Then they slid down into the tub together and lay quietly, with their arms around each other.

If Uncle Harold and Tante Elsa and the two girls fell sick and died in Saratoga, he would stay in this house in Elysium forever.

When the water began to cool, they got out of the tub and Clothilde took one of the big special towels of Tante Elsa and dried him off. While she was scrubbing out the tub, most excellent housewife, he went into the Jordaches' bedroom and lay down on the freshly made crisp bed. This was a lot better than the hard pallet in the little maid's room behind the kitchen that he had to sneak into late at night, when the family was home.

Bees buzzed outside the screened windows, green shades against the sun made a grotto of the bedroom, the bureau against the wall was a ship on a green sea.

She came padding in, her hair down now, for another occasion. On her face the soft, distant, darkly concentrated expression he had come to look for, yearn for.

She lay down beside him. Wave of sandalwood. Her hand reached out for him, carefully. The touch of love, cherishing him, an act apart from all other acts, profoundly apart from the giggly high school lust of the twins and the professional excitement of the woman on McKinley Street back in Port Philip. It was incredible to him that anyone could want to touch him like that.

Sweetly, gently, he took her, while the bees foraged the window boxes outside the screens. He waited for her, adept now, taught, well and quickly taught, by that wide Indian body; and when it was over and they lay back side by side, he knew that he would do anything for her, anything, any time she asked.

She slipped out of the bed and he heard her in the bathroom, dressing, then going softly down the stairs toward the kitchen. He lay there, staring up at the ceiling, all gratitude, and all bitterness. He hated being 16 years old. He could do nothing for her. He could accept her rich offering of herself, he could sneak into her room at night, but he couldn't even take her for a walk in the park or give her a scarf as a gift, because a tongue might wag, or Tante Elsa's sharp eye might search out the new color in the warped bureau drawer in the room behind the kitchen. He couldn't take her away from this grinding house in which she slaved. If only he were 20....

She came silently into the room. "Come eat," she said.

He spoke from the bed. "When I'm twenty," he said, "I'm coming here and taking you away."

She smiled. "My man," she said. She fingered her wedding ring absently. "Don't take long. The food is hot."

He went into the bathroom and dressed and went on down to the kitchen.

There were flowers on the kitchen table, between the two places laid out there. Phlox. Deep blue. She did the gardening, too. She had a knowing hand with flowers. "She's a pearl, my Clothilde," he had heard Tante Elsa say. "The roses're twice as big this year."

"You should have your own garden," Tom said, as he sat before his place. What he could not give her in reality he offered in intention. He was barefooted and the linoleum felt cool and smooth against his soles. His hair, still damp, was neatly combed, the blond tight curls glistening darkly. She liked everything neat and shining clean, pots and pans, mahogany, front halls, boys. It was the least he could do for her.

She put a bowl of fish chowder in front of him.

"I said you should have your own garden," he repeated.

"Drink your soup," she said, and sat down at her own place across from him.

A leg of lamb, small, tender and rare, came next, served with parsleyed new potatoes, roasted in the same pan with the lamb. There was a heaped bowl of buttered young string beans and a salad of crisp romaine and tomatoes. A plate of fresh hot biscuits stood to one side and a big slab of sweet butter, next to a frosted pitcher of milk.

Gravely, she watched him eat, smiled when he offered his plate again. During the family's holiday, she got on the bus every morning to go to the next town to do her shopping, using her own money. The shopkeepers of Elysium would have been sure to report back to Mrs. Jordache about the fine meats and carefully chosen first fruits for the feasts prepared in her kitchen in her absence.

For dessert, there was vanilla ice cream that Clothilde had made that morning, and hot chocolate sauce. She knew her lover's appetites. She had announced her love with two bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. Its consummation demanded richer fare.

"Clothilde," Tom said, "why do you work here?"

"Where should I work?" She was surprised. She spoke in a low voice, always, without inflection. There was a hint of something a little foreign in her speech. She almost said V for W. French Canada.

"Anyplace. In a store. In a factory. Not as a servant."

"I like being in a house. Cooking meals," she said. "It is not so bad. Your aunt is proper with me. She appreciates me. It was kind of her to take me in. I came here, two years ago, I didn't know a soul, I didn't have a penny. I like the little girls very much. They are always so clean. What could I do in a store or a factory? I am very slow at adding and subtracting, I am frightened of machines. I like being in a house."

"Somebody else's house," Tom said. It was intolerable that those two fat slobs could order Clothilde around.

"This week," she said, touching his hand on the table, "it is our house."

"We can never go out with each other."

"So?" She shrugged. "What are we missing?"

"We have to sneak around," he cried. He was growing angry with her.

"So?" She shrugged again. "There are many things worth sneaking around for. Not everything good is out in the open. Maybe I like secrets." Her face gleamed with one of her rare soft smiles.

"This afternoon ..." he said stubbornly, trying to plant the seed of revolt, arouse that placid peasant docility. "After a ... a banquet like this...." He waved his hand over the table. "It's not right. We should go out, do something, not just sit around."

"What is there to do?" she asked seriously.

"There's a band concert in the park," he said. "A baseball game."

"I get enough music from Tante Elsa's phonograph," she said. "You go to the baseball game for me and tell me who won. I will be very happy here, cleaning up and waiting for you to come home. As long as you come home, I do not want anything else, Tommy."

"I'm not going anywhere without you today," he said, giving up. He stood up. "I'll wipe the dishes."

"There's no need," she said.

"I'll wipe the dishes," he said with great authority.

"My man," she said. She smiled again, beyond ambition, confident in her simplicities.

• • •

The next evening after work, on his way home from the garage on his wobbly Ivar Johnson, he was passing the town library. On a sudden impulse, he stopped, leaned the bike against a railing and went in. He hardly read anything at all, not even the sports pages of the newspapers, and he was not a frequenter of libraries. Perhaps in reaction to his brother and his sister, always with their noses in books, and full of fancy sneering ideas.

The hush of the library and the unwelcoming examination of his grease-stained clothes by the lady librarian (continued on page 244)Thomas in Elysium(continued from page 100) made him ill at ease, and he wandered around among the shelves, not knowing which book of all these thousands held the information he was looking for. Finally, he had to go to the desk and ask the lady.

"Excuse me," he said. She was stamping cards with a little mean snapping motion of her wrist, prison sentences for books.

"Yes?" She looked up, unfriendly. She could tell a nonbooklover at a glance.

"I want to find out something about Saint Sebastian, ma'am," he said.

"What do you want to find out about him?"

"Just anything," he said, sorry he had come in now.

"Try the Encyclopaedia Britannica, " the lady said. "In the reference room. SARS to SORC." She knew her library, the lady.

"Thank you very much, ma'am." He decided that from now on, he would change his clothes at the garage and use Coyne's sand soap to get out the top layer of grease from his skin, at least. Clothilde would like that better, too. No use being treated like a dog when you could avoid it.

He went uncertainly into the reference room. It took him ten minutes to find the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He pulled out SARS to SORC and took it over to a table and sat down with the book. SEA-URCHIN--SEA-WOLF, SEA-WRACK--SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO. The things that some people fooled with!

There it was, "SEBASTIAN, SAINT, a Christian martyr whose festival is celebrated on Jan. 20." Just one paragraph. He couldn't have been so damned important.

Tom read rapidly. "After the archers had left him for dead, a devout woman, Irene, came by night to take his body away for burial, but finding him still alive, carried him to her house, where his wounds were dressed. No sooner had he wholly recovered than he hastened to confront the emperor, who ordered him to be instantly carried off and beaten to death with rods."

Twice, for Christ's sake, Tom thought. Catholics were nuts. But he still didn't know why Clothilde had said Saint Sebastian when she had looked at him naked in the bathtub.

He read on. "Saint Sebastian is specially invoked against the plague. As a young and beautiful soldier, he is a favorite subject of sacred art, being most generally represented undraped, and severely though not mortally wounded with arrows."

Tom closed the book thoughtfully. "A young and beautiful soldier, being most generally represented undraped...." Now he knew. Clothilde. Wonderful Clothilde. Loving him without words, but saying it with her religion, with her food, her body, everything.

Until today, he had thought he was kind of funny-looking, a snotty kid with a flat face and a sassy expression. Saint Sebastian. The next time he saw those two beauties, Rudolph and Gretchen, he could look them straight in the eye. I have been compared by an older, experienced woman with Saint Sebastian, a young and beautiful soldier. For the first time since he had left home, he was sorry he wasn't going to see his brother and sister that night.

He got up and put the book away. He was about to leave the reference room when it occurred to him that Clothilde was a saint's name, too. He searched through the volumes and took out CASTIR to COLE.

Practiced now, he found what he was looking for quickly, although it wasn't Clothilde, but "CLOTILDA, SAINT (d. 544), daughter of the Burgundian king Chilperic, and wife of Clovis, king of the Franks."

Tom thought of Clothilde, sweating over the stove in the Jordache kitchen and washing Uncle Harold's underwear, and was saddened. "Daughter of the Burgundian king Chilperic, and wife of Clovis, king of the Franks." People didn't think of the future when they named babies.

He read the rest of the paragraph, but Clotilda didn't seem to have done all that much, converting her husband and building churches and stuff like that, and getting into trouble with her family. The book didn't say what entrance requirements she had met to be made a saint.

Tom put the book away, eager to get home to Clothilde. But he stopped at the desk to say, "Thank you, ma'am," to the lady. He was conscious of a sweet smell. There was a bowl of narcissus on the desk, spears of green, with white flowers, out of a bed of multicolored pebbles. Then, speaking without thinking, he said, "Can I take out a card, please?"

The lady looked at him, surprised. "Have you ever had a card anywhere before?" she asked.

"No, ma'am. I never had the time to read before."

The lady gave him a queer look but pulled out a blank card and asked him his name and age and address and printed it in a funny backward way on the card and stamped the date. She handed the card to him.

"Can I take out a book right away?" he asked.

"If you want," she said.

He went back to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and took out SARS to SORC. He wanted to have a good look at that paragraph and try to memorize it. But when he stood at the desk to have it stamped, the lady shook her head impatiently. "Put that right back," she said. "That's not supposed to leave the reference room."

•• •

There was fried chicken and mashed potatoes and applesauce for dinner and blueberry pie. He and Clothilde ate in the kitchen, not saying much, just doing justice to the food.

When they had finished and Clothilde was clearing off the dishes, he went over to her and held her in his arms and said, "Clotilda, daughter of the Burgundian king Chilperic, and wife of Clovis, king of the Franks."

She looked at him, wide-eyed. "What's that?"

"I wanted to find out where your name came from," he said. "I went to the library. You're a king's daughter and a king's wife."

She looked at him a long time, her arms around his waist. Then she kissed him on the forehead, gratefully, as if he had brought home a present for her.

• • •

Clothilde was lying under the covers, with her hair spread on the pillow. She had turned on the lamp, so that he could find his way out without bumping into anything. There was the soft glow of a smile as she touched his cheek. He opened the door without a sound and closed it behind him. The crack of light under the door disappeared as Clothilde switched off the lamp.

He went through the kitchen and out into the hallway and mounted the dark steps carefully, carrying his sweater. There was no sound from Uncle Harold and Tante Elsa's bedroom. Usually, there was snoring that shook the house. Uncle Harold must be sleeping on his side tonight. Nobody had died in Saratoga. Uncle Harold had lost three pounds, drinking the waters.

Thomas climbed the narrow steps to the attic and opened the door to his room and put on the light. Uncle Harold was sitting there in striped pajamas, on the bed.

Uncle Harold smiled at him peculiarly, blinking in the light. Four of his front upper teeth were missing. He had a bridge that he took out at night.

"Good evening, Tommy," Uncle Harold said. His speech was gappy without the bridge.

"Hi, Uncle Harold," Thomas said. He was conscious that his hair was mussed and that he smelled of Clothilde. He didn't know what Uncle Harold was doing there. It was the first time he had come to the room. Thomas knew he had to be careful about what he said and how he said it.

"It is quite late, isn't it, Tommy?" Uncle Harold said. He was keeping his voice down.

"Is it?" Thomas said. "I haven't looked at a clock." He stood near the door, away from Uncle Harold. The room was bare. He had few possessions. A book from the library lay on the dresser. Riders of the Purple Sage. The lady at the library had said he would like it. Uncle Harold filled the little room in his striped pajamas, making the bed sag in the middle, where he sat on it. Big fat ass.

"It is nearly one o'clock," Uncle Harold said. He sprayed because of the missing teeth. "For a growing boy who has to get up early and do a day's work. A glowing boy needs his sleep. Tommy."

"I didn't realize how late it was," Thomas said.

"What amusements have you found to keep a young boy out till one o'clock in the morning, Tommy?"

"I was just wandering around town."

"The bright lights," Uncle Harold said. "The bright lights of Elysium, Ohio."

Thomas faked a yawn and stretched. He threw his sweater over the one chair in the room. "I'm sleepy now," he said. "I better get to bed fast."

"Tommy," Uncle Harold said in that wet whisper, "you have a good home here, hey?"

"Sure."

"You eat good here, just like the family, hey?"

"I eat all right."

"You have a good home, a good roof over your head." The "roof" came out "woof" through the gap.

"I'm not complaining." Thomas kept his voice low. No sense in waking Tante Elsa and getting her in on the conference.

"You live in a nice clean house," Uncle Harold persisted. "Everybody treats you like a member of the family. You have your own personal bicycle."

"I'm not complaining."

"You have a good job. You are paid a man's wages. You are learning a trade. There will be unemployment now, millions of men coming home, but for the mechanic, there is always a job. Am I mistaken?"

"I can take care of myself," Thomas said.

"You can take care of yourself," Uncle Harold said. "I hope so. You are my flesh and blood. I took you in without a question, didn't I, when your father called? You were in trouble, Tommy, in Port Philip, weren't you? And Uncle Harold asked no questions; he and Tante Elsa took you in."

"There was a little fuss back home," Thomas said. "Nothing serious. "

"I ask no questions." Magnanimously, Uncle Harold waved away all thought of interrogation. His pajamas opened. There was a view of plump pink rolls of beer-and-sausage belly over the drawstrings of the pajama pants. "In return for this, what do I ask? Impossibilities? Gratitude? No. A little thing. That a young boy should behave himself properly, that he should be in bed at a reasonable hour. His own bed, Tommy."

Oh, that's it, Thomas thought. The son of a bitch knows. He didn't say anything.

"This is a clean house, Tommy," Uncle Harold said. "The family is respected. Your aunt is received in the best homes. You would be surprised if I told you what my credit is at the bank. I have been approached to run for the state legislature in Columbus on the Republican ticket, even though I have not been born in this country. My two daughters have clothes.... I challenge any two young ladies to dress better. They are model students. Ask me one day to show you their report cards, what their teachers say about them. They go to Sunday school every Sunday. I drive them myself. Pure young souls, sleeping like angels, right under this very room, Tommy."

"I get the picture," Thomas said. Let the old idiot get it over with.

"You were not wandering around town tonight till one o'clock, Tommy," Uncle Harold said sorrowfully. "I know where you were. I was thirsty. I wanted a bottle of beer from the Frigidaire. I heard noises. Tommy, I am ashamed even to mention it. A boy your age, in the same house with my two daughters."

"So what?" Thomas said sullenly. The idea of Uncle Harold outside Clothilde's door nauseated him. A ball of vomit rose in his throat. He tasted it, swallowed it.

"So what? Is that all you have to say, Tommy? So what?"

"What do you want me to say?" He would have liked to be able to say that he loved Clothilde, that it was the best thing that had ever happened to him in his whole rotten life, that she loved him, that if he were older, he would take her away from Uncle Harold's clean, goddamn house, from his respected family, from his model pale-blonde daughters. But, of course, he couldn't say it. He couldn't say anything. His tongue strangled him.

"I want you to say that you are sorry for the filthy thing that ignorant, scheming peasant has done to you," Uncle Harold whispered, his eyes shining hotly. "I want you to promise you will never touch her again. In this house or anywhere else."

"I'm not promising anything," Thomas said.

"I am being kind," Uncle Harold said. "I am being delicate. I am speaking quietly, like a reasonable and forgiving man, Tommy. I do not want to make a scandal. I don't want your Aunt Elsa to know her house has been dirtied, that her children have been exposed to.... Ach, I can't find the words, Tommy."

"I'm not promising anything," Thomas said.

"OK. You are not promising anything," Uncle Harold said. "You don't have to promise anything. When I leave this room, I am going down to the room behind the kitchen. She will promise plenty, I assure you."

"That's what you think." Even to his own ears, it sounded hollow, childish.

"That's what I know, Tommy," Uncle Harold whispered. "She will promise anything. She's in trouble. If I fire her, where will she go? Back to her drunken husband in Canada, who's been looking for her for two years so he can beat her to death?"

"There're plenty of jobs. She doesn't have to go to Canada."

"You think so. The authority on international law," Uncle Harold said. "You think it's as easy as that. You think I won't go to the police."

"What've the police got to do with it?"

"You are a child, Tommy," Uncle Harold said. "You put it up in between a married woman's legs like a grown man, but you have the mind of a child. She has corrupted the morals of a minor, Tommy. You are the minor. Sixteen years old. That is a crime, Tommy. A serious crime. This is a civilized country. Children are protected in this country. Even if they didn't put her in jail, they would deport her, an undesirable alien who corrupts the morals of minors. She is not a citizen. Back to Canada she would go. It would be in the papers. Her husband would be waiting for her. Oh, yes," Uncle Harold said. "She will promise." He stood up. "I am sorry for you, Tommy. It is not your fault. It is in your blood. Your father was a whoremaster. I was ashamed to say hello to him in the street. And your mother, for your information, was a bastard. She was raised by the nuns. Ask her someday who her lather was. Or even her mother. Get some sleep, Tommy." He patted him comfortingly on the shoulder. "I like you. I would like to see you grow up into a good man. A credit to the family. I am doing what is best for you. Go--get some sleep."

Uncle Harold padded out of the room, barefooted, beery mastodon in the shapeless striped pajamas, all weapons on his side.

Thomas put out the light. He lay face down on the bed. The tears came, then huge, racking sobs.

• • •

The next morning, he went down early, to try to talk to Clothilde before breakfast. But Uncle Harold was there, at the dining-room table, reading the newspaper.

"Good morning, Tommy," he said, looking up briefly. His teeth were back in. He sipped noisily at his coffee.

Clothilde came in with Thomas' orange juice. She didn't look at him. Her face was dark and closed. Uncle Harold didn't look at Clothilde. "It is terrible what is happening in Germany," he said. "They are raping women in Berlin. The Russians. They have been waiting for this for a hundred years. People are living in cellars. If I didn't come to this country when I was a young man, God knows where I would be now."

Clothilde came in with Thomas' bacon and eggs. He searched her face for a sign. There was no sign.

When he finished breakfast, Thomas stood up. He would have to get back later in the day, when the house was empty. Uncle Harold looked up from his paper. "Tell Coyne I'll be in at nine-thirty." he said. "I have to go to the bank. And tell him I promised Mr. Duncan's car by noon, washed."

Thomas nodded and went out of the room as the two daughters came down, fat and pale. "My angels," he heard Uncle Harold say as they went into the dining room and kissed him good morning.

• • •

He had his chance at four o'clock that afternoon. It was the daughters' dentist day for their braces and Tante Elsa always took them, in the second car. Uncle Harold, he knew, was down at the showroom. Clothilde should be alone.

"I'll be back in a half hour," he told Coyne. "I got to see somebody."

Coyne wasn't pleased, but screw him.

Clothilde was watering the lawn when he pedaled up. It was a sunny day and rainbows shimmered in the spray from the hose. The lawn wasn't a big one and was shadowed by a linden tree. Clothilde was in a white uniform. Tante Elsa liked her maids to look like nurses. It was an advertisement of cleanliness. You could eat off the floor in my house.

Clothilde looked at Thomas once, as he got off his bicycle, then continued watering the lawn.

"Clothilde," Thomas said, "come inside. I have to talk to you."

"I'm watering the lawn." She turned the nozzle and the spray concentrated down to a stream, with which she soaked a bed of petunias along the front of the house.

"Look at me," he said.

"Aren't you supposed to be at work?" She kept turned away from him.

"Did he come down to your room last night?" Thomas said. "My uncle?"

"So?"

"Did you let him in?"

"It's his house," Clothilde said. Her voice was sullen.

"Did you promise him anything?" He knew he sounded shrill, but he couldn't help himself.

"What difference does it make? Go back to work. People will see us."

"Did you promise him anything?"

"I said I wouldn't see you alone anymore," she said flatly.

"You didn't mean it, though," Thomas pleaded.

"I meant it." She fiddled with the nozzle again. The wedding ring on her finger gleamed. "We are over."

"No, we're not!" He wanted to grab her and shake her. "Get the hell out of this house. Get another job. I'll move away and--"

"Don't talk nonsense," she said sharply. "He told you about my crime." She mocked the word. "He will have me deported. We are not Romeo and Juliet. We are a schoolboy and a cook. Go back to work."

"Couldn't you say anything to him?" Thomas was desperate. He was afraid he was going to break down and cry, right there on the lawn, right in front of Clothilde, like a baby, like last night in bed.

"There is nothing to say. He is a wild man," Clothilde said. "He is jealous. When a man is jealous, you might as well talk to a wall, a tree."

"Jealous?" Thomas said. "What do you mean?"

"He has been trying to get into my bed for two years." Clothilde said calmly. "He comes down at night when his wife is asleep and scratches on the door like a kitten."

"That fat bastard," Thomas said. "I'll be there waiting for him the next time."

"No, you won't," Clothilde said. "He is going to come in the next time. You might as well know."

"You're going to let him?"

"I'm a servant," she said. "I lead the life of a servant. I do not want to lose my job or go to jail or go back to Canada. Forget it," she said. "Alles kaput. It was nice for two weeks. You're a nice boy. I'm sorry I got you into trouble."

"All right, all right," he shouted. "I'm never going to touch another woman again as long as--"

He was too choked to say anything more and ran over to his bicycle and rode blindly away, leaving Clothilde calmly watering the roses.

Saint Sebastian, well supplied with arrows, he headed for the garage. The rods would come later.

• • •

Thomas was wiping the gravy of the hamburger off his plate with a piece of bread when Joe Kuntz, the cop, came into the diner. It was ten to two and the diner was almost empty, just a couple of the hands from the lumberyard finishing up their lunch, and Elias, the counterman, swabbing off the grill.

Kuntz came up to where Thomas was sitting at the counter and said, "Thomas Jordache?"

"Hi, Joe," Thomas said. Kuntz stopped in at the garage a couple of times a week to shoot the breeze. He was always threatening to leave the force, because the pay was so bad.

"You acknowledge that you are Thomas Jordache?" Kuntz said in his cop voice.

"What's going on, Joe?" Thomas asked.

"I asked you a question, son," Kuntz said, bulging out of his uniform.

"You know my name," Thomas said. "What's the joke?"

"You better come with me, son," Kuntz said. "I have a warrant for your arrest." And he clamped Thomas' arm above the elbow. Elias stopped scrubbing the grill and the guys from the lumberyard stopped eating and it was absolutely quiet in the diner.

"I ordered a piece of pie and a cup of coffee," Thomas said. "Take your meat-hooks off me, Joe."

"What's he owe you, Elias?" Kuntz asked, his fingers tight on Thomas' arm.

"With the coffee and pie or without the coffee and pie?" Elias said.

"Without."

"Seventy-five cents," Elias said.

"Pay up, son, and come along quiet," Kuntz said. He didn't make more than 20 arrests a year and he was getting mileage out of this one.

"OK, OK," Thomas said. He put down 85 cents. "Christ, Joe," he said, "you're breaking my arm."

Kuntz walked him quickly out of the diner. Pete Spinelli, Joe's partner, was sitting at the wheel of the prowl car, with the motor running.

"Pete," Thomas said, "will you tell Joe to let go of me?"

"Shut up, kid," Spinelli said.

Kuntz shoved him into the back seat and got in beside him and the prowl car started toward town.

• • •

"The charge is statutory rape," Sergeant Horvath said. "There is a sworn complaint. I'll notify your uncle and he can get a lawyer for you. Take him away, boys."

Thomas was standing between Kuntz and Spinelli. They each had an arm now. They hustled him off and put him in the lockup. Thomas looked at his watch. It was 20 past two.

There was one other prisoner in the single cell of the jail, a ragged, skinny man of about 50, with a week's growth of beard on his face. He was in for poaching deer. This was the 23rd time he had been booked for poaching deer, he told Thomas.

• • •

Harold Jordache paced nervously up and clown the platform. Just tonight the train had to be late. He had heartburn and he pushed anxiously at his stomach with his hand. When there was trouble, the trouble went right to his stomach. And ever since 2:30 yesterday afternoon, when Horvath had called him from the jail, it had been nothing but trouble. He hadn't slept a wink, because Elsa had cried all night, in between bouts of telling him that they were disgraced for life, that she could never show her face in town again and what a fool he had been to take a wild animal like that into the house. She was right, he had to admit it, he had been an idiot, his heart was too big. Family or no family, that afternoon when Axel called him from Port Philip, he should have said no.

He thought of Thomas down in the jail, talking his head off like a lunatic, admitting everything, not showing any shame or remorse, naming names. Who could tell what he would say, once he started talking like that? He knew the little monster hated him. What was to stop him from telling about the black-market ration tickets, the faked-up secondhand cars with gearboxes that wouldn't last for more than 100 miles, the under-the-counter markups on new cars to get around the price control, the valve and piston jobs on cars that had nothing more wrong with them than a clogged fuel line? Even about Clothilde. You let a boy like that into your house and you became his prisoner. The heartburn stabbed at Harold like a knife. He began to sweat, even though it was cold on the platform, with the wind blowing.

He hoped Axel was bringing plenty of money along with him.

He heard the train coming around the curve toward the station and stepped back nervously from the edge of the platform. In his state, he wouldn't be surprised if he had a heart attack and fell down right where he stood.

The train slowed to a halt and a few people got off and hurried away in the wind. He had a moment of panic. He didn't see Axel. It would be just like Axel to leave him alone with the problem. Axel was an unnatural father, he hadn't written once to either Thomas or himself, all the time that Thomas had been in Elysium. Neither had the mother, that skinny hoity-toity whore's daughter. Or the two other kids. What could you expect from a family like that?

Then he saw a big man in a workman's cap and a mackinaw, limping slowly toward him on the platform. What a way to dress. Harold was glad it was dark and there were so few people around. He must have been crazy that time in Port Philip when he'd invited Axel to come in with him.

"All right, I'm here," Axel said. He didn't shake hands.

"Hello, Axel," Harold said. "I was beginning to worry you wouldn't come. How much money you bring with you?"

"Five thousand dollars," Axel said.

"I hope it's enough," Harold said.

"It better be enough," Axel said flatly. "There ain't any more." He looked old, Harold thought, and sick. His limp was worse than Harold remembered.

They walked together through the station toward Harold's car.

"If you want to see Tommy," Harold said, "you'll have to wait till tomorrow. They don't let anybody in after six o'clock.''

"I don't want to see the son of a bitch," Axel said. Harold couldn't help feeling that it was wrong to call your own child a son of a bitch, even under the circumstances, but he didn't say anything.

"You have your dinner, Axel?" he asked. "Elsa can find something in the icebox."

"Let's not waste time," Axel said. "Who do I have to pay off?"

"The father, Abraham Chase. He's one of the biggest men in town. Your son had to pick somebody like that," Harold said aggrievedly. "A girl in a factory wasn't good enough for him."

"Is he Jewish?" Axel asked as they got into the car.

"What?" Harold asked, irritatedly. That would be great, that would help a lot, if Axel turned out to be a Nazi, along with everything else.

"Why should he be Jewish?"

"Abraham," Axel said.

"No. It's one of the oldest families in town. They own practically everything. You'll be lucky if he takes your money."

"Yeah," Axel said. "Lucky."

Harold backed out of the parking lot and started toward the Chase house. It was in the good section of town, near the Jordache house. "I talked to him on the phone," Harold said. "I told him you were coming. He sounded out of his mind. I don't blame him. It's bad enough to come home and find one daughter pregnant. But both of them! And they're twins, besides. If it happened to me, I wouldn't put that kid of yours in jail, I'd shoot him."

"They can get a wholesale rate on baby clothes." Axel laughed. The laughter sounded like a tin pitcher rattling against a sink. "Twins. He had a busy season, didn't he, Thomas?"

"You don't know the half of it," Harold said. "He's beat up a dozen people since he came here, besides." The stories that had reached Harold's ears had been exaggerated as they passed along the town's chain of gossip. "It's a wonder he hasn't been in jail before this. Everybody's scared of him. It's the most natural thing in the world that something like this comes up, they pin it on him. But who suffers? Me. And Elsa."

Axel ignored his brother's suffering and the suffering of his brother's wife. "How do they know it was my kid?"

"The twins told their father." Harold slowed the car down. He was in no hurry to confront Abraham Chase. "They've done it with every boy in town, the twins, and plenty of the men, too, everybody knows that; but when it comes to naming names, naturally, the first name anybody'd pick would be your Tommy. They're not going to say it was the nice boy next door or Joe Kuntz, the policeman, or the boy from Harvard, whose parents play bridge with the Chases twice a week. They pick the black sheep. Those two little bitches're smart. And don't think Tommy is making it any easier for himself, telling the cops he knows twenty fellows personally who've been in there with those girls and giving a list of names. It just makes everybody sorer, that's all. It gives the whole town a bad name and they'll make him pay for it. And me and Elsa. That's my shop," he said automatically. They were passing the showroom. "I'll be lucky if they don't put a brick through the window."

"You friendly with Abraham?"

"I do some business with Mr. Chase," Harold said. "I sold him a Lincoln. I can't say we move in the same circles. He's on the waiting list for a new Mercury. I could sell a hundred cars tomorrow if I could get delivery. The goddamn War. You don't know what I've been going through for four years, just to keep my head above water. And now, just when I begin to see a little daylight, this has to come along."

"You don't seem to be doing so bad," Axel said mildly.

"You have to keep up appearances." One thing was sure. If Axel thought for a minute that he was going to borrow any money, he was barking up the wrong tree.

"How do I know Abraham won't take my money and the kid'll go to jail just the same?"

"Mr. Chase is a man of his word," Harold said. He had a sudden horrible fear that Axel was going to call Mr. Chase Abraham in his own house. "He's got this town in his pocket. The cops, the judge, the mayor, the party organization. If he tells you the case'll be dropped, it'll be dropped."

"It better be." Axel said. There was a threat in his voice and Harold remembered what a rough boy his brother had been when they had both been young, back home in Germany. Axel had gone off to war and had killed people. He was not a civilized man, with that harsh, sick face and that hatred of everybody and everything, including his own flesh and blood. Harold wondered if maybe he hadn't made a mistake calling his brother and telling him to come to Elysium. Maybe it would have been better if he had just tried to handle it himself. But he had known it was going to cost money and he'd panicked. The heartburn gripped him again as they drove up to the white house, with big pillars, where the Chase family lived.

The two men went up the walk to the front door and Harold rang the bell. He took off his hat and held it across his chest, almost as if he were saluting the flag. Axel kept his cap on.

The door opened and a maid stood there. Mr. Chase was expecting them, she said.

• • •

"They take millions of clean-limbed young boys," the poacher was chewing on a wad of tobacco and spitting into a tin can on the floor beside him. as he talked, "clean-limbed boys and send them off to kill and maim each other with inhuman instruments of destruction and they congratulate themselves and hang their chests with medals and parade down the main thoroughfares of the city and they put me in jail and mark me as an enemy of society because, every once in a while, I drift out into the woodlands of America and shoot myself a choice buck with an old 1910 Winchester." The poacher originally had come from the Ozarks and he spoke like a country preacher. There were four bunks in the cell, two on one side and two on the other. The poacher, whose name was Dave, was lying in his bunk and Thomas was lying in the lower bunk on the other side of the cell. Dave smelled rather ripe and Thomas preferred to keep some space between them. It was two days now that they had been in the cell together and Thomas knew quite a bit about Dave, who lived alone in a shack near the lake and appreciated a permanent audience. Dave had come down from the Ozarks to work in the automobile industry in Detroit and after 15 years of it, had had enough. "I was in there in the paint department," Dave said, "in the stink of chemical and the heat of a furnace, devoting my numbered days on this earth to spraying paint on cars for people who didn't mean a fart in hell to me to ride around in and the spring came and the leaves burgeoned and the summer came and the crops were taken in and the autumn came and cityfolk in funny caps with hunting licenses and fancy guns were out in the woods, shooting the deer, and I might just as well have been down in the blackest pit, chained to a post, for all the difference the seasons meant to me. I'm a mountain man and I pined away and one day I saw where my path laid straight before me and I took to the woods. A man has to be careful with his numbered days on this earth, son. There is a conspiracy to chain every living child of man to an iron post in a black pit, and you mustn't be fooled because they paint it all the bright colors of the rainbow and pull all sorts of devilish tricks to make you think that it isn't a pit, it isn't an iron post, it isn't a chain. The president of General Motors, up high in his glorious office, was just as much chained, just as deep down in the pit as me, coughing up violet in the paint shop." Dave spat tobacco juice into the tin can on the floor next to his bunk. The gob of juice made a musical sound against the side of the can.

"I don't ask for much," Dave said, "just an occasional buck and the smell of woodsy air in my nostrils. I don't blame nobody for putting me in jail from time to time; that's their profession, just like hunting is my profession, and I don't begrudge 'em the coupla months here and there I spend behind bars. Somehow, they always seem to catch me just as the winter months're drawing on, so it's really no hardship. But nothing they say can make me feel like a criminal, no, sir. I'm an American out in the American forest, livin' off American deer. They want to make all sorts of rules and regulations for those cityfolk in the gun clubs, that's all right by me. They don't apply, they just don't apply." He spat again. "There's just one thing that makes me a mite forlorn--and that's the hypocrisy. Why, once, the very judge that condemned me had eaten venison I shot just the week before and ate it right at the dining-room table in his own house and it was bought with his own money by his own cook. The hypocrisy is the canker in the soul of the American people. Why, just look at your case, son. What did you do? You did what everybody knows he'd do if he got the chance--you were offered a nice bit of juicy tail and you took it. At your age, son, the loins're raging, and all the rules in the book don't make a never-no-mind. I bet that the very judge who is going to put you away for years of your young life, if he got the offer from those two little plump-assed young girls you told me about, if that same judge got the offer and he was certain sure nobody was around to see him, he'd go cavorting with those plump-assed young girls like a crazy goat. Like the judge who ate my venison. Statutory rape." Dave spat in disgust. "Old man's rules. What does a little twitching young tail know about statutory? It's the hypocrisy, son, the hypocrisy everywhere."

Joe Kuntz appeared at the cell door and opened it. "Come on out, Jordache," Kuntz said. Ever since Thomas had told the lawyer Uncle Harold had got for him that Joe Kuntz had been in there with the twins, too, Kuntz had not been markedly friendly. He was married, with three kids.

Axel Jordache was waiting in Horvath's office with Uncle Harold and the lawyer. The lawyer was a worried-looking young man with a bad complexion and thick glasses. Thomas had never seen his father looking so bad, not even the day he hit him.

He waited for his father to say hello, but Axel kept quiet, so he kept quiet, too.

"Thomas," the lawyer said, "I am happy to say that everything has been arranged to everybody's satisfaction."

"Yeah," Horvath said behind the desk. He didn't sound terribly satisfied.

"You're a free man, Thomas," the lawyer said.

Thomas looked doubtfully at the five men in the room. There were no signs of celebration on any of the faces. "You mean I can just walk out of this joint?" Thomas asked.

"Exactly," the lawyer said.

"Let's go," Axel Jordache said. "I wasted enough time in this goddamn town as it is." He turned abruptly and limped out.

Thomas had to make himself walk slowly after his father. He wanted to cut and run for it, before anybody changed his mind.

Outside, it was sunny late afternoon. There were no windows in the cell and you couldn't tell what the weather was from in there. Uncle Harold walked on one side of Thomas and his father on the other. It was another kind of arrest.

They got into Uncle Harold's car. Axel sat up in front and Thomas had the back seat all to himself. He didn't ask any questions.

"I bought your way out, in case you're curious," his father said. His father didn't turn in the seat but talked straight ahead, at the windshield. "Five thousand dollars to that Shylock for his pound of flesh. I guess you got the highest-priced lay in history. I hope it was worth it."

Thomas wanted to say he was sorry, that somehow, someday, he'd make it up to his father. But the words wouldn't come out.

"Don't think I did it for you." his father said, "or for Harold here--"

"Now, Axel," Harold began.

"You could both die tonight and it wouldn't spoil my appetite," his father said. "I did it for the only member of the family that's worth a damn--your brother Rudolph. I'm not going to have him start out in life with a convict brother hanging around his neck. But this is the last time I ever want to see you or hear from you. I'm taking the train home now and that's the end of you and me. Do you get that?"

"I get it," Thomas said flatly.

"You're getting out of town, too," Uncle Harold said to Thomas. His voice was quivering. "That's the condition Mr. Chase made and I couldn't agree with him more. I'll take you home and you pack your things and you don't sleep another night in my house. Do you get that, too?"

"Yeah, yeah," Thomas said wearily. They could have the town. Who needed it?

There was no more talking. When Uncle Harold stopped the car at the station, his father got out without a word and limped away, leaving the door of the car open. Uncle Harold had to reach over and slam it shut.

• • •

In the bare room under the roof, there was a small cardboardish valise on his bed. Thomas recognized it. It belonged to Clothilde. The bed was stripped down and the mattress was rolled up, as though Tante Elsa were afraid that he might sneak in a few minutes' sleep on it. Tante Elsa and the girls were not in the house. To avoid contamination, Tante Elsa had taken the girls to the movies for the afternoon.

Thomas threw his things into the bag quickly. There wasn't much. A few shirts and underwear and socks, an extra pair of shoes and a sweater. He took off the garage uniform that he had been arrested in and put on the suit he had been wearing when he came from Port Philip and that was just about that.

He looked around the room. The book from the library, Riders of the Purple Sage, was lying on a table. They kept sending him postcards, saying he was overdue and they were charging him two cents a day. He must owe them a good ten bucks by now. He threw the book into the valise. Remember Elysium, Ohio.

He closed the valise and went downstairs and into the kitchen. He wanted to thank Clothilde for the valise. But she wasn't in the kitchen.

He went out through the hallway. Uncle Harold was eating a big piece of apple pie in the dining room, standing up. His hands were trembling as he picked up the pie. Uncle Harold always ate when he was nervous. "If you're looking for Clothilde," Uncle Harold said, "save your energy. I sent her to the movies with Tante Elsa and the girls."

Well, Thomas thought, at least she got a movie out of me. One good thing.

"You got any money?" Uncle Harold asked. "I don't want you to be picked up for vagrancy and go through the whole thing again." He wolfed at his apple pie.

"I have money," Thomas said. He had $21 and change.

"Good. Give me your key."

Thomas took the key out of his pocket and put it on the table. He had an impulse to push the rest of the pie in Uncle Harold's face, but what good would that do?

They stared at each other. A piece of pie dribbled down Uncle Harold's chin.

"Kiss Clothilde for me," Thomas said, and went out the door, carrying Clothilde's valise.

He walked to the station and bought $20 worth of transportation away from Elysium, Ohio.