Clinton was delighted to be a part of this emergency. In a matter of seconds, he was in his winter coat and standing at the front door.

“Ralph,” Annabel said, as she handed him his car keys and opened the door for them, “I’m going to say something and I don’t want any filthy answer: I’ve always worshiped you for the way you are in a crisis. Always the complete master, and that’s a very Christian way to be. Now go ahead, say I’m silly.”

“Come on, let’s go,” Ralph said. He took hold of Clinton’s arm.

As they crossed the porch and descended the icy steps, Clinton felt that in a way the old man was leaning on him for support. He even felt, for that moment and during the ride downtown, that he was a necessary person, not just some nail-biting nuisance who was always underfoot.

“I got a load on my mind, boy,” Ralph said to him. They stopped for a red light and the two of them lighted cigarettes. “You know what that Galbralian did? You know who he took a poke at? You know what it was that big-assed brother o’ yours took and swung on? It was a woman, is what it was. That’s what he took a swing at, some woman.”

A horn sounded behind them. They moved forward. “Boy, he don’t fool, that big-assed Galbralian brother o’ yours, no-sir-goddamree!” He whistled like a man gravely impressed by the doings of another.

Then, his eyes on the traffic, he said, “What about you, Clint, you still hangin’ on to your cherry?”

Clinton went stiff with embarrassment and shame, but he did not like to tell lies. “Yes, sir, I am,” he said. “I’ve still got it.”

“Well, there’s nothin’ wrong with that,” Ralph consoled him, with more gentleness than his words themselves could convey. “You just hang onto it for a while if you want to. It won’t hurt you. What are you, fourteen years old? —Well, I say there’s too goddam much song-and-dance about the whole matter anyway. You know they’s lots of women would like to have a man believe they got some priceless sonofabitch of an heirloom tucked away down there, but that’s not the case. That’s not the case atoll. It’s not platinum either, and it’s not some priceless goddam heirloom. If you want to know what it is, I‘ll tell you. It’s a crack, is what it is. And I’m not knockin’ it either, it has a perfectly scientific function, and the world’d be in one sorry spot without it. But what I’m gettin’ at is that big six-footer of a Galbralian of a brother of yours—he’s out of his goddam head on the subject.”

Ralph leaned forward in his seat. “Now I’ll just reconstruct this whole Covington, Kentucky, mess right now for you. What he did, he got hold of some bar-fly and he took her upstairs and he planked her. He planked her, and from then on she wouldn’t keep away from him, just kept suck-in’ around at his elbow till he let her have it.”