I got a fair swallow considering the size of the spout and was therefore pleased with myself.

“Pick him up, gentlemen,” Spooner said to those standing closest, and I felt arms around me and men’s hands clasping my arms and then the spout went away as I was hoisted from the rug. A bell was ringing in the distance. This was the dinner bell. After standing, I surprised my brother Ralph with a hug for helping me. There was a general movement toward the oak table, and merely by standing erect I seemed to become swept up in this movement, brothers making their way to seats. Of course it was late and everyone had had a lot to drink and nothing to eat but peanuts. For this reason there was a fair amount of swaying from side to side as men smelled food rolling in through the library’s northern doors, on trolleys pushed by Jason and Joshua. Up ahead, over the horizon of swaying heads, fortunate brothers arrived at the oak table and stationed water glasses in preferred places, or draped jackets casually on chair backs to claim spots not named as theirs on Jeremiah’s seating plan. Brothers in the rear had to step over Virgil to get in line. Feet shuffled and the floorboards groaned and groaned. No one was talking in that solemn progression that advanced over Virgil. Several men were smoking, and at intervals along our line small clouds of cigarette smoke drifted or were blown upward out of mouths toward the ceiling.

Now it turned out that Donovan, while I had been resting, had kindled the fire in the hearth. His blaze was really up. Dry logs were catching, the flue was drawing, and everything seemed grand except for the fact that bats tenant the chimney. This was not a new problem. It never fazed anyone particularly when three or five bats flapped out of the hearth and turned figure eights around the chandelier cords above our heads. We keep nets on long poles expressly for this event.

That night it was the triplets, Herbert, Patrick, and Jeffrey, who grabbed nets on poles and went hunting bats. The triplets are professionally trained dancers, so they can do this sort of thing.

“Pork chops for dinner,” I said quietly to the back of the man in front of me. This was Rex. He answered gruffly, “Nothing ever changes around here, does it?” and I asked him if he had by any chance noticed Spooner in the crowd. He told me he hadn’t. He then said, “Stop bumping into me, Doug.” I hadn’t realized I had been and I apologized and moved away. Milton, Pierce, and Fielding were strolling along in a clique behind me. I asked if they’d noticed Spooner anywhere, but no one had. Fielding was carrying his broken camera’s parts in his hands. A triplet shouting, “Heads up!” raced by, enormous net trailing, after a bat that apparently had touched down on the underside of an elk’s antler. Everyone turned to watch, but when the triplet arrived at the elk, the bat had flown. Milton said, “That was Patrick.”