“Doug.”

My eyes were closed. I did not want to open them.

“Doug.”

A draft coming in the window made me cold and I shivered. The floor felt cold.

“Doug. Look at me. Doug,” the voice said. And I could hear the dog again, barking. The dog sounded frightened and far away. He could just as easily have been close. I felt a hand touch my shoulder, and I looked up and saw that it was Spooner leaning over me, gazing down toward me. His face wore a troubled expression. He spoke into my ear. “Let go of Hiram’s foot.”

“Spooner, it’s you. Thank God. Give me a drink, man. Please, give me a drink.”

Then Hiram’s shoe kicked and squirmed. I held on but the shoe kicked my face, and Hiram exclaimed, “Get him off me! He’s a dangerous person!”

“Hang on a minute, Hiram,” Spooner said, and saying this, he knelt on the floor beside me; he reached out, closed his hand around my wrist, and began gently tugging me away. “Doug, you can’t be grabbing people’s feet. It’s not right.”

“Give me a drink, Spooner. Come on, man. I know you’ve got some on you.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Doug.” He gave my wrist a yank but I was holding on tight. “You know what happens when you drink,” he said, straining hard against me.

“Nothing’s going to happen. I just want a taste. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“That’s what you always say, Doug.”

“I mean it.”

He seemed to consider this. “If I give you a taste, will you let go of Hiram’s foot?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

He stopped tugging. He released my hand and reached into his inside coat pocket. That’s where he carries his handsome pewter flask filled with cognac. I felt so happy when I saw Spooner’s flask. He keeps this with him at all times. It is as if the flask is a part of the man. It wears a cork stopper secured inside a glass cap appended from a delicate, silver hinge. It holds a half-pint. It’s antique.

“Pull him off me! Hurry up down there! I want my dinner!” Hiram’s voice commanded. I was aware, now, of other brothers looking on, clean shirt collars and their shaved faces luminous beneath dim chandelier light. I could make out Pierce and Jacob, Allan and Ralph, Nick and Saul, and, a little ways off, directly behind Hiram’s walker, Joe, holding, at his side, that eighteenth-century French erotic drawing on brown paper.

“Just a taste, Doug,” Spooner said.

“Only a taste,” I agreed. My face where Hiram’s shoe had kicked me felt sore. I had numbness and tingling around one eye. The hypodermic needles in my pocket were biting into my chest. I heard a voice in the crowd explaining the situation to someone. “He’s locked onto Hiram’s foot. He won’t let go.” And another voice said, “He got hold of me like that once. I was wearing hiking shoes. Doug got tangled up in the laces and I couldn’t shake him. It was terrible.” This second voice went on to report other details. I did not pay strict attention. The pewter flask had made its appearance from Spooner’s coat and Spooner was unscrewing its glass top and pulling the cork all in one artful motion. Would it be going too far to say that this was what I had been waiting for since nightfall? To nurse from my brother’s flask!—here was a happiness in life. I took the metal spout in my mouth and sucked hard at it, the way a young calf sucks, to feel safe in his world and warm inside himself, and to become strong.