He rowed, bending forward and rocking back. That cracking, crimping sound came again, and now the rusty Crisco can that had been lying in the bow of the boat was floating in three inches of water. Spray blew in Hal's face. There was a louder snapping sound, and the bow seat fell in two pieces and floated next to the bait box. A board tore off the left side of the boat, and then another, this one at the waterline, tore off at the right. Hal rowed. Breath rasped in his mouth, hot and dry, and then his throat swelled with the coppery taste of exhaustion. His sweaty hair flew.
Now a crack zipped directly up the bottom of the rowboat, zigzagged between his feet, and ran up to the bow. Water gushed in; he was in water up to his ankles, then to the swell of calf. He rowed, but the boat's shoreward movement was sludgy now. He didn't dare look behind him to see how close he was getting.
Another board tore loose. The crack running up the center of the boat grew branches, like a tree. Water flooded in.
Hal began to make the oars sprint, breathing in great failing gasps. He pulled once... twice... and on the third pull both oar swivels snapped off. He lost one oar, held on to the other. He rose to his feet and began to flail at the water with it. The boat rocked, almost capsized, and spilled him back onto his seat with a thump.
Moments later more boards tore loose, the seat collapsed, and he was lying in the water which filled the bottom of the boat, astounded at its coldness. He tried to get on his knees, desperately thinking:
Petey splashed toward him, arms out, screaming and crying and laughing. Hal started toward him and floundered. Petey, chest-deep, floundered.
They caught each other.
Hal, breathing in great winded gasps, nevertheless hoisted the boy into his arms and carried him up to the beach, where both of them sprawled, panting.
'Daddy? Is it gone? That nastybad monkey?'
'Yes. I think it's gone. For good this time.'
'The boat fell apart. It just... fell apart all around you.' Hal looked at the boards floating loose on the water forty feet out. They bore no resemblance to the tight handmade rowboat he had pulled out of the boathouse.
'It's all right now,' Hal said, leaning back on his elbows.
He shut his eyes and let the sun warm his face.
'Did you see the cloud?' Petey whispered.
'Yes. But I don't see it now... do you'?' They looked at the sky. There were scattered white puffs here and there, but no large dark cloud. It was gone, as he had said.
Hal pulled Petey to his feet. 'There'll be towels up at the house. Come on.' But he paused, looking at his son. 'You were crazy, running out there like that.' Petey looked at him solemnly. 'You were brave, Daddy.'
'Was I?' The thought of bravery had never crossed his mind. Only his fear. The fear had been too big to see anything else. If anything else had indeed been there. 'Come on, Pete.'
'What are we going to tell Mom?' Hal smiled. 'I dunno, big guy. We'll think of something.' He paused a moment longer, looking at the boards floating on the water. The lake was calm again sparkling with small wavelets. Suddenly Hal thought of summer people he didn't even know—a man and his son, perhaps, fishing for the big one.
He shuddered, but those were only things that might be.
'Come on,' he said to Petey again, and they walked up the path through the flaming October woods toward the home place.
Cain Rose Up
Garrish walked out of the bright May sunshine and into the coolness of the dorm. It took his eyes a moment to adjust, and at first Harry the Beaver was just a bodiless voice from the shadows.
'It was a bitch, wasn't it?' the Beaver asked. 'Wasn't that one a really truly bitch?'
'Yes,' Garrish said. 'It was tough.' Now his eyes pulled in the Beaver. He was rubbing a hand across the pimples on his forehead and sweating under his eyes. He was wearing sandals and a 69 T-shirt with a button on the front that said Howdy Doody was a pervert. The Beaver's huge buck teeth loomed in the gloom.
'I was gonna drop it in January,' the Beaver said. 'I kept telling myself to do it while there was still time.
And then add-drop was over and it was either go for it or pick up an incomplete. I think I flunked it, Curt. Honest to God.' The housemother stood in the corner by the mailboxes. She was an extremely tall woman who looked vaguely like Rudolph Valentine. She was trying to push a slip strap back under the sweaty armhole of her dress with one hand while she tacked up a dorm sign-out sheet with the other.
'Tough,' Garrish repeated.
'I wanted to bag a few off you but I didn't dare, honest to God, that guy's got eyes like an eagle. You think you got your A all right?'
'I guess maybe I flunked,' Garrish said.
The Beaver gaped. 'You think you
