He liked the look of it when it was up, like some kind of tall mushroom. The goose-fleshed testicles sagging below it pleased him too. He’d learned from the dictionary that testicles shared the same root as testify, and it meant “witness”—as in, to bear witness to a man’s virility—and when he’d shared this with Hoke—they’d been in the tenth grade—they’d fallen over laughing and made grandiose claims about the size of their balls. Dick, balls, those few cubic inches of flesh: how many hours of concentration had he put into them over the years? In the locker room at school, or during the couple of times he and Hoke and Maynard had skinny-dipped at the bend in the creek, he’d compare himself to the other boys, all of them looking without appearing to look at one another’s endowments, and though he’d fretted about size—Hoke’s was in fact larger, Ned Connor’s was larger still, Maynard’s was a button in a nest—he’d always come to the conclusion that his was respectable. He would pause sometimes before his dresser mirror to admire it. When he was twelve or thirteen, he would occasionally lock himself in the bathroom, sit down on the floor with his legs spread wide, and using an old hand mirror of his mother’s, watch himself masturbate, angling the mirror this way and that. By that point he’d made peace with himself and with God about doing it in bed, in the dark of night, but after the mirror he’d feel sick of himself, and hide the mirror in the back of his closet so he wouldn’t have to consider the possibility that his mother might use it again. But now he thought, So what? There was no need for shame. He thought of Effie bent over in the grass, unembarrassed.

He spread his legs, the trunks falling to his ankles, made a fist around it, and stroked it steadily, feeling the satisfying bounce of his testicles. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back—until the wire went hot and he left it off. He couldn’t finish himself off on the sofa. He reached for his whiskey and took the last sip, sat back and looked at it throbbing there in his lap. He would slip into the downstairs bathroom, do it into the toilet, and pour another drink. He was setting his glass back on the table, about to get up, when one of the patio doors opened—the sound of rain rushed into the room—and he yanked his trunks back up and sat forward, elbows on his knees.

It was Alma, coming inside, shutting the door behind her. He could just see her in the firelight. He said hello, too loudly, but she didn’t seem startled by his voice.