Massachusetts; I didn't really know what I wanted to study, I didn't even know if I wanted to rent a room or an apartment in Amherst, but I was scheduled to be a full-time graduate student there. I never thought about it. So that I could carry the fullest possible course load, I wasn't planning to teach for at least a year-not even part-time, not even one course. Naturally, Grandmother was bankrolling my studies, and that further contributed to my sense of myself as a doorstep-sitter. I wasn't doing anything; there wasn't anything I had to do. Hester was in the same boat. That Fourth of July night, we sat on the grass border of the Swasey Parkway and watched the fireworks display over the Squamscott-Gravesend maintained a Town Fireworks Board, and every Fourth of July the members who knew their rocketry and bombs set up the fireworks on the docks of the academy boathouse. The townspeople lined the Swasey Parkway, all along the grassy riverbank, and the bombs burst in the air, and the rockets flared-they hissed when they fell into the dirty river. There had been a small, ecological protest lately; someone said that the fireworks disturbed the birds that nested in the tidal marsh on the riverbank opposite the Swasey Parkway. But in a dispute between herons and patriots, the herons are not generally favored to win; the bombardment proceeded, as planned-the night sky was brilliantly set afire, and the explosions gratified us all. An occasional white light spread like a newly invented liquid across the dark surface of the Squamscott, reflecting there so brightly that the darkened stores and offices of the town, and the huge building that housed the town's foul textile mills, sprang up in silhouette-a town created instantly by the explosions. The many empty windows of the textile mills bounced back this light-the building's vast size and emptiness suggested an industry so self-possessed that it functioned completely without a human labor force.
'If Owen won't marry me, I'll never marry anyone,' Hester told me between flashes and blasts. 'If he won't give me babies, no one's ever gonna give me babies.'
One of the demolition experts on the dock was none other than that old dynamiter Mr. Meany. Something like an exploding star showered over the black river.
' 'That one looks like sperm,'' Hester said sullenly. I was not expert enough on sperm to challenge Hester's imagery; fireworks that looked 'like sperm' seemed highly unlikely if not farfetched to me-but what did / know? Hester was so morose, I didn't want to spend the night in Durham with her. It was a not-quite-comfortable summer night, but there was a breeze. I drove to Front Street and watched the eleven o'clock news with Grandmother; she had lately taken an interest in a terrible local channel on which the news detailed the grim statistics of a few highway fatalities and made no mention of the war in Vietnam; and there was a ' 'human interest'' story about a bad child who'd blinded a poor dog with a firecracker.
'Merciful Heavens!' Grandmother said. When she went to bed, I tuned in to The Late Show-one channel was showing a so-called Creature Feature, The Beast from , Fathoms, an old favorite of Owen's; another channel featured Mother Is a Freshman, in which Loretta Young is a widow attending college with her teenage daughter; but my favorite, An American in Paris, was on a third channel. I could watch Gene Kelly dance all night; in between the songs and dances, I switched back to the channel where the prehistoric monster was mashing Manhattan, or I wandered out to the kitchen to get myself another beer. I was in the kitchen when the phone rang; it was after midnight, and Owen was so respectful of my grandmother's sleep that he never called Front Street at an hour when he might awaken her. At first I thought that the different time zone-in Arizona-had confused him; but I knew he would have called Hester in Durham and Dan in Waterhouse Hall before he found me at my grandmother's, and I was sure that Hester or Dan, or both of them, would have told him how late it was.
'I HOPE I DIDN'T WAKE UP YOUR GRANDMOTHER!' he said.
'The phone only rang once-I'm in the kitchen,' I told him. 'What's up?'
'YOU MUST APOLOGIZE TO HER FOR ME-IN THE MORNING,' Owen said. 'BE SURE TO TELL HER I'M VERY SORRY-BUT IT'S A KIND OF EMERGENCY.'
'What's up?' I asked him.
'THERE'S BEEN A BODY MISPLACED IN CALIFORNIA-THEY THOUGHT FT GOT LOST IN VIETNAM, BUT IT JUST TURNED UP IN OAKLAND. IT HAPPENS EVERY TIME THERE'S A HOLIDAY-SOMEONE GOES TO SLEEP AT THE SWITCH. IT'S STANDARD ARMY- THEY GIVE ME TWO HOURS TO PACK A BAG AND
THE NEXT THING I KNOW, I'M IN CALIFORNIA. I'M SUPPOSED TO TAKE A COMMUTER PLANE TO TUC-SON, I'VE GOT A CONNECTION WITH A COMMERCIAL FLIGHT TO OAKLAND-FIRST THING TOMORROW MORNING. THEY'VE GOT ME BOOKED ON A FLIGHT FROM SAN FRANCISCO BACK TO PHOENIX THE NEXT DAY. THE BODY BELONGS IN PHOENIX-THE GUY WAS A WARRANT OFFICER, A HELICOPTER PILOT. THAT USUALLY MEANS HE CRASHED AND BURNED UP-YOU HEAR 'HELICOPTER,' YOU CAN COUNT ON A CLOSED CASKET.
'CAN YOU MEET ME IN PHOENIX?' he asked me.
'Can I meet you in Phoenix? Why?' I asked him.
'WHY NOT!' Owen said. 'YOU DON'T HAVE ANY PLANS, DO YOU?'
'Well, no,' I admitted.
'YOU CAN AFFORD THE FLIGHT, CAN'T YOU?' he asked me.
'Well, yes,' I admitted. Then he told me the flight
