In the early morning hours, something Nathaniel had eaten decided to disagree with him violently. Lighting a candle, he padded downstairs to the earth closet in the cellar (the miracles of electricity and plumbing, fully installed in the Boston town house, had not yet come to Mingulay). Returning to his room, he passed the library, saw a lamp burning, and Lockwood seated at the desk, his back to the door. The desk was covered with papers, but he wasn’t working, only leaning back in the chair, smoking a cigarette and nipping from a glass and staring out the casement windows toward the black water beyond the long slant of lawn. He slugged back half of what was in the glass—dark rum or whiskey—and muttered, “Son of a bitch, liquidation …” Raising the glass, he made a toast, “So here’s to liquidating,” and then drank off the rest. He looked so lonely and forlorn that Nathaniel wondered if he ought to speak to him for a while, keep him company, but while he debated whether to announce his presence, Lockwood did a strange thing, the strangest thing Nathaniel had ever seen anyone do. He climbed up on the chair and stood none too steadily, unbuttoned his fly, and commenced to piss on the papers, a great long splashy horsepiss it was, too, his pizzle with its hood of a foreskin moving back and forth across the desk like he was putting out a fire, one of his eyes squinting against the smoke from the cigarette clamped between his teeth.

The scene played itself back in Nathaniel’s mind all through services the next morning, all through the ride back to Mingulay from Blue Hill, and it spoiled the fairness of the morning, soured the sweet breath of the spruce woods that crowded the road on both sides. He felt like a witness to a shameful crime, but something—he didn’t know what—restrained him from reporting it; and the keeping it to himself made him feel less like a witness and more like an accessory. It was close to noon by the time the family got back, and Lockwood was still in bed, to Nathaniel’s deep irritation. This was the summer of his introduction into the world of work, Sundays were his one day off from the quarry, and it struck him as a gross injustice that he had been required to get up at seven and go to church, while the half brother who had gotten himself drunk and done that disgusting thing was allowed to sleep in. He had a good mind to rat on him.