At first I wept for myself—for my incontinence, obviously—and then for my entire, ridiculous existence, and for the loneliness I felt, not only there in the literature section in the late hours on that snowy night, but all the time, constantly, ever since I could remember feeling anything at all. As I wept, I felt lonelier and lonelier and lonelier. I envisioned, one after another, my brothers, the bloated, red faces of my brothers, all my beloved brothers but in particular Hiram and Virgil and Maxwell. These three I loved best. And also George. Would we ever see George again? After a while I was weeping for the rose garden and the former grandeur of our trees and lawns, those green fields where we played as children. We had always hurt one another in our games; hurting was the object of our games; and this made me cry more, and I held the blue pillow to my breast. I wrapped my arms around the blue pillow, hugged it to me, and let the tears come. I was standing in water up to my ankles, and this for some reason became another pressing sadness. I suppose it was because the water was rising that I felt so affected. Before long I was crying for, it seemed, everything. Everything in the red library was deserving of tears. Those eyeless, emaciated, deaf and dead animals on their barren squares of wall always reminded me of past Dougs, the Dougs who perished as youths; and, as I wept, they reminded me, the animals, of myself and of what would surely become of me one day, maybe soon. I was nothing but another Doug. Hiram was the oldest. Father I know, really, only from his occasional, shadowy appearances above the lights, his intermittent manifestations as a damp stain. Actually, this is not, strictly speaking, the whole truth. It is true in the sense that it describes the way I have felt for as long as I have known my feelings. I remember, I think, our father’s face and his voice. I remember his mustache. I remember our father in his underwear at night. I remember the hair on his legs. I remember the smell in the bathroom after he left it. I remember his unhappiness and his dread of our happiness, and I remember him saying, “How’s my Doug?” I remember his body’s smells, his smells of tobacco, of course, and of alcohol and cologne, a cologne like lavender you never smell anymore. I remember the pleasure of seeing him enter the room. I remember certain stories and jokes. Actually, I forget the stories and the jokes, though I remember that these existed. I remember his conviction that he was hated, and I remember the thunder his footsteps made crossing the floor. Time after time my brothers and I have joined together to eat, drink, and bury that man. All we ever did was eat, drink, and injure each other. The sadness of our cruelty was more than I could bear. Tears rose in waves that washed up from the center of my body. The muscles in my sides felt as if they would tear from the strain of that sobbing. The water around my feet was steadily rising. I knew it was prideful to overinterpret broken pipes and a leaking roof, but on the other hand it did seem that I was not completely alone in my crying, that the red library was dripping and pouring out its own tears, its own remorse.