“Is that what he said?” Clinton asked.

“No, no. That’s what I say. I‘m doing the reconstructing. I’m reconstructing this whole thing, and there it is. —Course, she wasn’t no fiddling good, prob’ly a drunk to boot, and maybe even some kind of a maniac in the bargain. But you see, that Berry-berry, he can’t keep away from her in the first place, can he. O-hooo no! And it’s the old man that carries the gold down to Western Union!”

They drove in silence for a long time. Clinton pictured in his mind a dimly lighted tavern in the hills of Kentucky, Berry-berry flipping a coin at the bar while sloe-eyed, long-haired, smooth-skinned women cloaked their desire in cigarette smoke, tapped in time to the jukebox with high-heeled slippers; and waited, waited, waited. In his mind, everybody tapped out the time, nervously, even the bartender and the faceless men who sat against the walls watching, waiting; but Clinton, as the author of this picture, could not really get the thing moving; he could never see Berry-berry in operation, only this throbbing frieze of tension and desire.

“But I’m bettin’ on him,” Ralph said, as if there had been no pause. “He’s just foolin’ around, sampling. He’s sampling” He seemed to like that word: “Sampling life and all of its riches. —But when he buckles down, look out!”

“What’s he going to do then?” Clinton wanted to know.

“Just watch. And I’m bettin’ on him to win. I didn’t say I was bettin’ on him to show or to place. I’m bettin’ on him to win!”

When Ralph Williams laughed, he did not as a rule use his vocal chords at all. He blew out air that passed first through pockets of spittle in his cheeks. So the sound was more than anything else like an escape of steam. This is how he laughed now; and it signified his complete confidence in Berry-berry’s prospects.

Now Clinton, during this ride downtown, was experiencing something that he did not at the time think about by name: for the minute a happy person names his condition there is at that moment a chink in it: he has turned the coin over and studied it too closely. But on this trip downtown, every part of Clinton Williams had got inside of the moment that was then taking place: his eyes saw the Christmas Eve movements of people and automobiles through the frosted windshield and his own white breath; he smelled the cold, and the car, and his father, and the tobacco they burned between them; his ears were filled with Ralph’s theories and reconstructions; and his own imagination was alive, enriching each word the old man spoke.

And as the car rolled across Cleveland toward the Western Union office, Clinton knew, again without naming what he knew, that he himself was moving across some stretch of time and ignorance, covering, so to speak, some of the ground that lay between him and his brother.

part 2