There was a club at the high school he had attended, Alpha Omega: girls in their matching sweater sets and bobby socks and loafers, girls laughing and holding hands, clear-faced girls who thought this small town was the center of the universe. So much is coming back to him. Afternoons in a high school gym or walking the elm-shaded sidewalks to the movie theater, his youth and all that he failed to do in life calling his name.

So foolish what sticks in the brain—so inconsequential, so meaningless, and yet sometimes there is something in the glint of the sun on those rails and the thought of youth that makes him almost believe he can go back. It was like a part of him had also died on that cold night in December, and now it is just a simple continuation of that process, a signing over of all the other parts: Here is my heart, and here is my brain.

Frank was here. He had written that in charcoal there on the brick of Preston’s root cellar. Perhaps today that fearful-looking young woman will finally let him in the house, and then he will say he just wants to wander there in the yard and adjoining woods, and he will look for his place, and if by fate it is there, he will climb down into it, like a dog making its bed.

Harvey

Sometimes when Harvey is asked to sit by himself a few minutes at school or at camp, he thinks about what Super Monkey might do. First, Super Monkey would be able to wear any mustache he wants to wear at school. It is not fair for a kid not to be allowed to wear a mustache whenever he wants to if he needs to. Second, Super Monkey can get all the money and jewels he needs anytime at all. He can buy his mama a car and a castle and any other stuff she wants and he guards where the rabbits are living in the tree and he guards where all the little fish and skinks is buried and he tells that bad man, “Don’t kill the Dog House Girl,” and “Don’t kill or hurt Harvey’s mama just because she has to write a report on you. That is her job and she does it good and you are not good, bad man. You eat poo-poo platters and murder people.” And Super Monkey thinks the bad man should pick up trash for the rest of his life and he will be one nobody waves at.