“But he didn’t!” Walter walked resolutely ahead of her. “Goddamnit!” she cried. “He didn’t!”

Walter strode on as though he were alone, and it seemed miles to Annie as she straggled along behind him, exhausted by the day, by unjust accusations, by her utter dependence, at this moment, on Walter. They had left the outskirts of San Diego behind them; they were walking along a cliff above the beach. The California landscape was so wild, so unassailable in its un-human nature; one no sooner left some colony clustered about the milder reaches of its coastline than the noise and busyness of town life seemed empty deception.

Walter suddenly sank to his knees among hummocks of sand and sword grass, then lay down, his arms outstretched, and shut his eyes.

Annie stared out at the Pacific. Her father had said it was the only thing, except the desert, worth looking at for more than five minutes; as she gazed at the vast emptiness through narrowed eyes, it seemed a nebulous waste, a shapeless moving waste. On the beach below, she caught sight of a lone swimmer as he leaped into the surf, arms swinging, knees cranking.

“Lie down, Annie,” said Walter sleepily.

She sat and looked at him. He’d come all this way, down one coast, through the Panama Canal, up another coast—for her? His demand was heavy on her, as though it carried all the hours, the days of his journey. She was not worth it—he seemed to know that already. She leaned toward him. He lay there like a stone, a man on his back, his feet pointing straight up in their heavy work boots, smelling of warm skin and clean cotton work shirt. He placed his hand on her back.

“Annie?”

He had written her nine letters, the last one mailed from Colón; his handwriting was like barbed wire strung across the pages. The letters were all about her; her ignorance, her exhibitionism—did she remember the night she had paraded around in her underwear in Jersey Lighter’s loft?—she was ignorant of the world, of people, of her own class origins, of sex, of money. She knew nothing of the world of struggle, of what it was like to work for a living. She was spoiled; all women of her class were spoiled. Working women, working-class women were different; he described them; he said they met men on real terms; they had real cunts, he wrote, and knew what to use them for. But he was going to change her —he was going to teach her.