“There aren’t any lights on this car,” I observed.

Sam laughed. “They’re only so other people can see you coming, anyway. Maybe we ought to put a candle on the dashboard.” He wrestled with the dog, his left arm rigidly holding the copper wires to the connection. The car rumbled dangerously. “Will you come tomorrow and see us?”

“Won’t you be coming in?”

“No. There’s a little town near us to get food in. I think we’ll just spend a lot of time out there where it’s quiet.”

“I’ll try to get a ride.”

“And bring some horsemeat.”

I slammed the door. The car moved off, shaking, and I watched them go until they turned at the corner.

I bathed strenuously, and then sat beneath the skylight making a careful sentence outline of a paper to be titled “Caliban: Scatological Imagery,” for my Friday class. The image is not the thing, I told myself, the symbol is not the thing. Nothing is the thing but the thing. I kept sniffing at my fingers. It was hard to believe one bath could eliminate all traces of the cat odor. I slept with my hands under the pillow to prevent a finger from accidentally wandering into my mouth.

The country house

A good day for going to the country. I got two pounds of good sirloin tip at the horsemeat market and went over to Rennel’s. He was working on his motorcycle in the living room. The front door was open. I could see him crouched over a pile of greasy black parts. His arms were black, his pale blue shirt smudged over the left breast. Been scratching his pits.

He grunted when I came in. I waited while he washed up and changed into his leather pants. Sat looking at the big green motorcycle. He’d had a wreck the day he bought it and had been working on it ever since. The engine hadn’t spit once in over a year.

We climbed into the Rambler. Out past the natural gas plant. Across the Ross Island Bridge and onto the highway. We went through my old hometown and out past the new housing developments. The fields started coming up. Orchards and milk cows. We took a turnoff onto a narrow road. After a narrower road and a dirt road we turned onto a long twisting drive through thick firs. Dogs barked and a house showed through the trees on one side. We passed it, following the drive. More trees, more barking, and then Sam’s new house.

It was small and white. A fine lawn spread away from it into the trees. The old car looked abandoned in the gravel. Angelina came charging hysterically around the house. The screen door creaked open. Sam came out to us smiling, walking slow, serene.

“Come and look. Oh, horsemeat, thanks.”