They went out to the porch. A cat leaped from the shadows and ran into the house. “Listen,” Jake said. “There was nothing to eat. I mean nothing. His mother had some withering disease, it just ate her up, day after day. He was one of the three kids that stayed with her, so he had to watch it happen. Her relatives were as bad off, and he saw how the priests didn’t help her, and they would have starved to death if she hadn’t got a job scrubbing floors in an insane asylum outside Boston, taking home garbage the patients wouldn’t even eat. He ran away when he was just a little kid. He was always so big no one knew he was weak—because of that build. He got jobs, and for two years, he told me, he just ate, day and night. Then he worked for the CCC and wanted to send the thirty dollars a month back to his mother. But they couldn’t find her.”

“Boston’s where St. Vincent comes from,” Annie said. Jake continued, as though he hadn’t heard her.

“She’d just gone up in smoke,” he said. “He’s never been able to track down a single member of his family, he’s never had the money to really concentrate on it. I think it drives him crazy, all those people just disappearing, like a boat sinking, and you’re the only survivor.”

“But why was he so angry with me?”

They started down Sycamore Street.

Jake spoke seriously, as though he were really trying to think about it.

“It’s not you. It’s me. I’m the only real friend he’s got. I met him back home. He was working in a place near the farm. My family was pretty nice to him. He thinks women are two kinds, bad and worse. The bad ones are old and can’t do much to you. He knows all about the worse ones. He thinks I’m a pushover, you see, and that I’ll get taken advantage of.”

“Did you tell him about me?” she asked, a tremor in her voice.

“I tell him everything,” Jake said. “It makes him feel good, like I trust him. It comforts him.”

She was struck by the idea that Jake’s confidences could provide that starved gray dog with comfort. For a moment she was silent. They were nearing the boulevard.

“Why does he talk so much about pansies?”

“He was nervous, he always is in front of strangers. I know he’s hard to understand. But he can be really funny! He’s got the damnedest schemes for making money. He can talk all night about money, how it can fix everything. Listen, don’t go. I know you’re only going because of Carson. Look, you go to the Greek’s and wait for me. I’ll go back and explain—”

“Explain what?”