He knew that he ought to be straight with Toby, and tell him about Jim. But somehow he couldn’t, not until he could get straight about Jim in his own mind. He’d begun, a couple of times, to try and tell Toby what had happened; but the words always came out wrong. What words could there possibly be to describe the experience of watching your own brother being slowly crushed to death under an automobile? What words could there possibly be to describe the knowledge that it was your fault, that you’d accidentally released the jack?

He could see Jim’s hand reaching out to him even today. He could see Jim’s pleading, swollen face, with the blood running from his mouth and his nose. How do you tell your eight-year-old kid about that?

He drove down to Bodega Bay and parked the Chevy in the parking lot outside the Tides Restaurant. Then he walked out along the gray wooden planks of the jetty to the White Dove, a sailboat he was fixing up for a client. Gulls turned and fluttered in the wind, and the tackle and rigging of all the boats tied up in the bay clattered and clanked.

Bodega Bay was a small, shallow bay, enclosed in a hook of land that came out from the Sonoma coast like a beckoning finger. The beaches all around were gray and littered with burnt wood and beer cans, but beyond the beaches were green, rounded hills and quiet farms. The tourists had all gone home now, and the coastline was foggy and silent, except for the meep-meep of gulls, and the slopping of the sea on the piers of the jetty.

Neil clambered down onto the White Dove’s salt-bleached deck and walked aft. The owner had used the boat all summer, and it needed painting, varnishing, and cleaning. Neil glanced up at the mast and saw that several of the lines were frayed and loose.

He was just about to go below and see what repairs were needed in the small cabin when he thought he heard someone speak. He looked up, but there was nobody around, except for old Doughty, Bodega Bay’s Ancient Mariner, who was sitting on a lobster basket thirty or forty feet away.

Neil paused for a couple of seconds, but then he decided he must have made a mistake, and he bent his head to go below.

A voice whispered; “Allen.”

Neil froze. For no reason that he could possibly explain, he felt frightened in a way that he had never felt before. He couldn’t move for a moment, as if the whispered voice had drained him of all energy. Then he turned around, his eyes wide, his face white.