something almost pathetically wistful in the way her face was opening up and in the tentative friendliness of her voice.

You’re a dirty son of a bitch, I thought.

* * *

Her name was Jewel Tennison before she was married, and she was twenty-four. She had lived all her life in Exeter, the county seat, except for one whole year with an aunt in New Orleans when she was about twelve. Her mother and father were both dead. She had a brother who lived in California, in Barstow. No, the name wasn’t spelled like Lord Tennyson’s. She remembered about him. She’d had him in high school. That was with a “y,” wasn’t it? They’d had a house in Exeter, nearly half paid for, when he lost his job in the sheriff’s department, and they’d sold it and bought this camp. She had also put in twelve hundred dollars her mother had left her. She had been a drum majorette in high school and she missed television out here. They could probably put up high enough an antenna to get the two Sanport channels, but there wasn’t any electricity. She liked I Love Lucy.

No, she’d never thought about her hands that way. It was awful the way dishwater made them so rough, but she hadn’t paid much attention to the way they were made underneath. Did I really think they were expressive? Where had I learned to notice things like that about women, little things like their hands and the way they walked? Not that way about the way they walked—she knew I didn’t mean it like that. It was different, kind of, wasn’t it? Most men just—well, you know.

No, she didn’t like fishing. The fish themselves gave you the creeps. They felt cold, and scaly. You know. And they’d fin you if you didn’t watch out. She swam a little, but there were water moccasins in the lake. She’d played tennis some, in high school, but she didn’t think women should take athletics too seriously. They got muscles. Nobody liked women with muscles. Especially in their legs.

Oh? Well, uh—I mean, thank you. It was funny, wasn’t it, the way I could say things that should make you mad but they didn’t really, somehow. They just didn’t seem fresh, the way I said them. Oh, then maybe that was it. Just the way you would admire any other work of art, like a poem, or a symphony? She’d never thought of it that way. But I was just teasing her now, of course. Work of art! But it was nice, the way I said things.

She didn’t talk about Nunn. I noticed it. From the depths of that sullenness she was slowly drowning in she was capable of making the crack about “being a trusty,” of making it to a total stranger, but now it was different. It wasn’t an act, really, I thought; when she was talking to somebody who took the trouble to recognize her as a human being, the hard shell of churlishness and defiance softened and she was no longer bound by that Procrustean compulsion to trim all her utterances to fit it. I doubted very much that she was any longer in love with Nunn, but when she was opening her petals this way and feeling good inside she realigned herself with the soap opera dogma that you didn’t discuss your mate with outsiders, no matter what kind of a sad bastard he was.

There was no difficulty in reading between the lines, however. She was dying out here. She was going crazy with loneliness. The trees were closing in over her and burying her alive. She was starved—not love-starved, at least in any physical sense, for you felt Nunn would collect his marital accounts-receivable as they fell due even if he probably did approach the bed with the subtlety and finesse of Machine-gun Kelly looting a bank—but just starved for companionship and understanding and perhaps a little gentleness. One tender gesture, I thought, would buy you a season pass. Not here, probably, and certainly not now in broad daylight, but it could be arranged. However, that was a matter to be shelved for possible future consideration; right now all I was after was information.

No, their business was mostly just fishermen. Some of them came and stayed three or four days, and a few hired George for a guide. The groceries were mostly for people who liked to go on up the lake and camp out for a day or