Static-y rock music from Kyle’s transistor radio. Mosquitoes biting, big soft amazing swellings on the back of Marya’s thighs, her upper arms. Scratching until the blood comes: God damn it, what does she care, the bites are itching like crazy and anyway her dress is red, blood spots won’t show. Beer and ale; potato chips; cold greasy chicken parts devoured by hand, and the unwanted parts—wings, necks—thrown at anyone who isn’t on guard. The boys are rowdy, crashing about in a game of touch football gone slightly askew (they are touching, they’re even shoving and bumping), shouting words meant to be funny, friendly—ugly words: cocksucker, bullshit, fuck-face, jerk-off, cunt—until Kyle runs into Bob Bannerman deliberately, crouched low so that his shoulder rams Bob’s stomach, and the game is over. Lester Hughey dumps a Styrofoam container of potato salad on the ground. I’m not going to eat this shit, he says, it doesn’t taste like anything, it tastes like shit. So Erma Dietz is angry because she made the potato salad: Erma Jelinski, that is: and now she and Ron are leaving and she takes Marya aside, pinching her arm, saying, You, you’d better come with us, Marya, half chiding, as if she was Marya’s big sister or something, as if she was Wilma in fact, and Marya says no, she’s having too good a time.

Anyway—she’s supposed to ride back with Bonnie and Fred. Unless they’ve already left.

Next, some confusion about a watermelon—some craziness—smashing it and scooping up handfuls of the watery pulpy flesh and throwing it at one another. The hilarity of seeds stuck in Bob Bannerman’s spiky hair.

Eulalie’s boyfriend, a tall skeletal silent boy from Kincardine who drives a Harley-Davidson and is very much envied by the Innisfail crowd, takes offense for some reason: shoves Lester Hughey backward: and when Eulalie tries to calm him down (pulling at his arm, giggling, acting as if somehow she might be to blame) he strikes her across the chest with a sweep of his arm, hard. Then suddenly it is over and Eulalie and the boy are driving away. An earsplitting roar as the motorcycle revs up, tires churning in the gravel. . . .

What time is it? Marya is hiding behind a tree, trying desperately to vomit. She gags and gags—feels her very eyeballs straining with the pressure—but nothing comes up.

Then finally it does. Splashing on the gnarled roots of the old tree, splashing onto her feet and ankles.

Marya, Marya! they are calling.