The tablet covers were pulled from the wall while he was in the Army. The spots their tacks left were painted over. The tulip of frosted glass was replaced by a fluorescent circle that buzzes and flickers. Mom converted his room to her junk room: an old push-treadle Singer, a stack of Reader’s Digests and Family Circles, a bridge lamp whose socket hangs broken like a chicken’s head by one last tendon, depressing pictures of English woods and Italian palaces where he has never been, the folding cot from Sears on which Nelson slept in his father’s room while Mim was here. When Mim left Tuesday, the kid, dazed by his good fortune in owning a mini-bike over in West Brewer, moved back into her room, abandoning Rabbit to memories and fantasies. He always has to imagine somebody, masturbating. As he gets older real people aren’t exciting enough. He tried imagining Peggy Fosnacht, because she had been recent, and good, all gumdrops; but remembering her reminds him that he has done nothing for her, has not called her since the fire, has no desire to, left her blue Fury in the basement and had Nelson give her the key, scared to see her, blames her, she seduced him, the low blue flame that made her want to be fucked spread and became the fire. From any thought of the fire his mind darts back singed. Nor can he recall Janice; but for the bird-like dip of her waist under his hand in bed she is all confused mocking darkness where he dare not insert himself. He takes to conjuring up a hefty coarse Negress, fat but not sloppy fat, muscular and masculine, with a trace of a mustache and a chipped front tooth. Usually she is astraddle him like a smiling Buddha, slowly rolling her ass on his thighs, sometimes coming forward so her big cocoa-colored breasts swing into his face like boxing gloves with sensitive tips. He and this massive whore have just shared a joke, in his fantasy; she is laughing and good humor is rippling through his chest; and the room they are in is no ordinary room but a kind of high attic, perhaps a barn, with distant round windows admitting dusty light and rafters from which ropes hang, almost a gallows. Though she is usually above him, and he sometimes begins on his back, imagining his fingers are her lips, for the climax he always rolls over and gives it to the bed in the missionary position. He has never been able to shoot off lying on his back; it feels too explosive, too throbbing, too blasphemous upwards. God is on that side of him, spreading His feathered wings as above a crib. Better turn and pour it into Hell. You nice big purple-lipped black cunt. Gold tooth.