“They’re tree frogs,” Cathy said. “It’s the first sign of spring around here … sound like sleigh bells. Nick says when you hear them you know you’ve made it through another winter. I heard them first a month ago.”

“No kidding.”

One of the nice things about Joel was the way he absorbed pieces of information like this and savored them. After a while he asked Cathy what the big furled bright-green leaves were he had seen by the brook on the way to the store. And he laughed when she told him skunk cabbage—“they stink like skunks!”

“Lucky I didn’t try to eat one. They looked good.”

“You really like it here, don’t you?”

He reached over and took her hand. For a moment he didn’t answer.

Then he let it go and rubbed his head.

“It’s an island. But I’ll have to get back to the mainland one of these days.”

“Why not stay and live?”

“I’m a city boy, Cathy—you just said that. It would be just running away for me. … Jeez, what I wouldn’t give for a joint!” he said, kicking a stone ahead of him in the old childish game.

“Why? What would that do?”

“Calm me down.”

Cathy swallowed this in silence. Her communications with Joel were oblique on his side and direct on hers, and she had to take time to understand what he was not saying.

“What is it really like—smoking those?”

“It’s cool. Kind of like floating, and while you’re floating, everything seems unbelievably clear and beautiful.”

“That’s how I feel now because you’re here,” Cathy said.

She pushed her long hair back and stood in the road facing him so Joel would have to look at her. They had long looks, and this was something she found terribly moving, as if their eyes were screens and little by little all the screens slid away one by one and she felt touched by Joel in some deepest place in herself.

“Look at me, Joel … please look at me.”

But Joel pushed her aside and walked on, stubbornly kicking his stone.

“Sometimes I think I’d better get the hell out of here and quick,” he said.

“It’s because you won’t make love to me, isn’t it? … Oh dear,”—for suddenly she had tears in her eyes—“it’s my fault. If only I were really old like, say, twenty-two or -three. Then we could—you wouldn’t be scared. But, Joel, you know I think people should touch each other more. I want to be hugged and that’s something no one does in the family except Gram. Oh, I wish you would hug me!”

“Wouldn’t be a good idea,” Joel said, but for the first time he laughed. “If the wolf hugged Little Red Riding Hood he’d end by eating her up in one big mouthful.”