PARTISAN REVIEW
moved from the clearing up a slope to some obelia bushes. There
was a nice tunnel under them and he crawled into it until he came
to a slightly wider place where he was accustomed to sit. He settled
himself and adjusted the obelia so that he could see through
it
prop–
erly. His face was always very red in the bushes. Anyone who parted
the obelia sprigs at just that place would think he saw a devil and
would fall down the slope and into the pool. The woman and the two
little boys entered the bath house.
Enoch never went immediately to the dark secret center of the
park. That was the peak of the afternoon. The other things he did
built up to it and they had become very formal and necessary. When
he left the bushes, he would go to the
FROSTY BOTTLE,
a hot-dog
stand in the shape of an Orange Crush with frost painted in blue
around the top of it. Here he would have a chocolate malted
milk–
shake and would make a few suggestive remarks to the waitress whom
he believed to be secretly in love with him. After that he would go to
see the animals. They were in a long set of steel cages like Alcatraz
Penitentiary in the movies. The cages were electrically heated in the
winter and air-conditioned in the summer and there were six men
hired to wait on the animals and feed them T-bone steaks. The
ani–
mals didn't do anything but lie around. Enoch watched them every
day, full of awe and hate. Then he went
there.
The two little boys ran out the bath house and dove into the
water, and simultaneously a grating noise issued from the drive–
way on the other side of the pool. Enoch's head pierced out the bushes.
He saw a high rat-colored car passing, which sounded as if its motor
were dragging out the back. The car passed and he could hear it
rattle around the tum in the drive and on away. He listened care–
fully, trying to hear if it would stop. The noise receded and then
gradually grew louder. The car passed again. Enoch saw this time
that there was only one person in it, a man. The sound of it died
away again and then grew louder. The car came around a third
time and stopped almost directly opposite Enoch across the pool.
The man in the car looked out the window and down the grass
slope to the water where the two little boys were splashing .and
screaming. Enoch's head was as far out the bushes as it would
come and he was squinting. The door by the man was tied on with
a rope. The man got out the other door and walked in front of the
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