“Well, let’s go then,” I said. “Bring the record, Charles William. We’ll buy it and take it home.” I took hold of Malcolm’s arm. His arm was as strong as my daddy’s. I leaned into his arm, into his one hundred and twenty-five I.Q. and his normalcy. What passes in the world for normalcy. I decided to ignore what Charles William had been telling me. I didn’t see what I could do about it. I didn’t want to be involved in it. So I turned my attention to Malcolm Martin and his perfect body and decided to forget it. “Not that I care two straws who he does it with or knew before that way though I’d like to find out so long as I don’t have the two of them under my nose all the time like that slut that Mary …” Charles William lifted the needle from the groove and picked up the record and slid it into its cover and handed it to me. Then he pulled a second recording out of a bin and laid it on top of the first one. It was Edna St. Vincent Millay. My favorite poet. A recording of her voice. No one else gives me such presents, a poet would later write, and I would think of Charles William when I read it.

We paid for the records and left the store and went across the street to a restaurant called Cotton’s Gin and went inside and were seated at long plank tables. We ordered beer and salads and platters of french fries. “Tell about the Wreck,” Irise said. “Tell us what it looks like.”

“It’s hidden.” Charles William waved his beer glass in the air. “Over by the engineering building. We finished it last night. It’s a surprise. You’ll see it in the morning.”

“It’s the best one we’ve ever had,” Malcolm added. “One of our alumni saw it. He said it was the best one he’d ever seen. It’s sure to win.”

“I wanted to decorate the house to match it but they made me stop.” Charles William laughed again. “Davie and I started on a sofa, making it match the Wreck decor but they all came in and stopped us.”