Robichaux's belief, his own belief could make it so.
The second day. Muggy heat in the morning, the slow wind lifting garbage from the weeds. Weary and aching, Donnell was on the verge of collapse. Like the rectangle of yellow light lengthening across the floor, a film was sliding across his own rough-grained, foul-smelling surface. But to his amazement he felt stronger as the day wore on, and he realized he had been moving around without his cane. During the treatments the sick man's body arched until only his heels and the back of his head were touching the pallet. Two of the man's teeth shattered in the midst of one convulsion, and they spent most of a rest period picking fragments out of his mouth. The fly in the web had died and was a motionless black speck suspended in midair, a bullet-hole shot through the sundrenched backdrop of pines. The spider, too, had died and was shriveled on the windowsill. In fact, all the insects in the cabin - palmetto bugs, flying ants, gnats, beetles - had gone belly up and were not even twitching. Around now the eldest boy knocked and asked could he borrow the TV 'so's the babies won't cry.' He would not enter the cabin, said that his mama wouldn't let him, and stood mute and sullen watching the heaving of his father's chest.
On the second night, having asked Mr Brisbeau to keep watch, they walked down to the Gulf, found a spit of solid ground extending from the salt grass, and spread a blanket. Now and again as they made love, Jocundra's eyes blinked open and fastened on Donnell, capturing an image of him to steer by; when she closed them, slits of white remained visible beneath the lids. Passion seemed to have carved her face more finely, planed it down to its ideal form. Lying there afterward, Donnell wondered how his face looked to her, how it displayed passion. Everything about the bond between them intrigued him, but he had long since given up trying to understand it. Love was a shadow that vanished whenever you turned to catch a glimpse of it. The only thing certain was that without it life would be as bereft of flesh as Robichaux's face had been of life: an empty power.
Jocundra rolled onto her stomach and gazed out to sea. An oil fire gleamed red off along the coast; the faint chugging of machinery carried across the water. Wavelets slapped the shore. Sea and sky were the same unshining black, and the moonlit crests of the waves looked as distant as the burning well and the stars, sharing with them a perspective of great depth, as if the spit of land were extending into interstellar space. Donnell ran his hand down her back and gently pushed a finger between her legs, sheathing it in the moist fold. She kissed the knuckles of his other hand, pressed her cheek to it, and snuggled closer. The movement caused his finger to slip partway inside her, and she drew in a sharp breath. She lifted her face to be kissed, and kissing her, he pulled her atop him. Her hair swung witchily in silhouette against the sky, a glint of the oil fire bloomed on her throat, and it seemed to him that the stars winking behind her were chattering with cricket's tongues.
On the afternoon of the third day, Donnell decided he had done all he should to Mr Robichaux. Though his field was not yet normal, it appeared to be repairing itself. His entire chest was laced with broken capillaries, but his color had improved and his breathing was deep and regular. Over the next two weeks they visited daily, and he continued to mend. The general aspect of the shacks and their environ improved equally, as if they had suffered the same illness and received the same cure. The dog wagged its tail and snuffled Donnell's hand. The children played happily in the yard; the litter had been cleared away and the weeds cut back. Even Mrs Robichaux gave a friendly wave as she hung out the wash.
The last time they visited, while sitting on the steps and waiting for Mr-Robichaux to dress, the youngest girl - a grimy-faced toddler, her diaper at half-mast - waddled up to Donnell and offered him a bite of her jelly donut. It was stale, the jelly tasteless, but as he chewed it, Donnell felt content. The eldest boy stepped forward,