mythical folk. Uncle Herb laughed in his quick, barking, not altogether friendly way, and wheezed, “Yeah, I’m going to visit a Mister Gatsby, doncha know,” and slapped the side of the big yellow car, making a solid metallic thump. Gordon had sat with his arm out the window for the whole trip, the summer breeze of their passage caressing the black hair on his arm. The hair was more apparent that summer; Gordon compared his to Uncle Herb’s and found that he had made remarkable progress in just a year. It took six more years before he understood the enigmatic remark about Gatsby. By the time he had read the book—ignoring the proffered Malamud from his mother—he could no longer remember much about the big houses on Long Island, or whether any of them had a green light on the end of a dock, or any of the other stuff. The beaches there, he remembered, were thin and stony, a bleak margin begrudged by the big inland estates. There wasn’t much to do. Children built sand castles which their parents periodically approved, peering into the yellow-blue sun haze over the tops of their paperback books. He remembered thinking that if Long Island was typical, goyische life was dull. By contrast, Uncle Herb took him to some actual prizefights that summer, fights as big and real as he’d ever thought life could be. Thump thump his legs pounded on, and before him he saw again the white square of the ring, the two figures dancing and punching, a head jerking back when hit, the ref waltzing around the men, shouts and whistles and a hot, close, salty smell from the liquid crowd. “Didja see that guy Alberts in the fifth round,” Uncle Herb said at the intermission, “feet like sandbags? Like a guy looking for a collar button he dropped. Sheesh!” And after the decision: “Those refs! Giving him two rounds, using what for eyes? I wouldn’t want to go on hunting trips with them.” Thump thump thump and the salty smell of the crowd went away and Gordon was running into a rising sun, the tang in his nostrils was a sea breeze thousands of miles from Long Island and he was throwing his fists out as he ran, uppercuts and cross punches and jabs with their own rhythm, his feet connected to his fists, panting hard, a face muddy and formless in front of him, now resolving into Lakin as Gordon wondered at it the same instant that he gave it two of his best, a fake and a belly punch and then the jab, fast and easy, then some more as he thought about Lakin and began to self-consciously erase the swimming face, but held it for three quick jabs, his knuckles sailing through the milky image and the head rocking back one, two, three times thump thump thump yeah Uncle Herb taking him places that whole long summer while his father was hanging on, keeping the boy’s mind occupied—Gordon threw two more punches at the air, aiming at he didn’t know what—mind filled yeah with fights and beaches and books while his father said nothing, smiled when you talked to him, never complained, just crawled away from everyone to die, the way they did it in the Bernstein family, just quietly, no fuss, nobody beating the drum for you, not for a Bernstein thump thump thump the beach sand now warming under his feet, sweat trickling into his eyes, stinging, blurring the morning, his throat raw. Jesus, he had run a long way. The cliffs were high here. He had slogged past Scripps pier and down to Black’s Beach, a long deserted stretch below the Torrey Pines Park. He was running in shadow now and as he brushed the sweat from his eyes he suddenly saw that he was about to stumble on something. He leaped, thinking it was a sleeping dog, ran on by reflex and looked back. A couple. Legs akimbo. Woman’s heels pointed at the sky. The whites of four eyes. Jesus he thought, but somehow it didn’t disturb him that much. The idea was logical: lonely beach, horny couple, beautiful sunrise, salty smell. But it did mean he had to run even farther. Give them time to finish their thump thump thump. Certainly it was a better vision to end a run with than Lakin’s creamy face, Gordon thought muzzily. Lakin was a problem he couldn’t solve and maybe, he saw, that was