144
PARTISAN REVIEW
on the plate. The shining melt spilled roundly, rambling and con–
gealing; wherever it ridged, they smoothed it delicately with their
fingertips. From the apex of this rounded cone sprang three long fiery
wicks.
Because they were to be up all night these two had been forgiven
the fast and had supplied themselves against possible hunger. But
neither had yet eaten or drunk, nor did either privately intend to
unless, as seemed unlikely, he became too faint or too sleepy to attend
properly to his share of the work. Their coffee frothed so noisily
over its can of Sterno rather because this enhanced their feeling of
privilege and maturity; Willard was drinking some while he talked al–
though, Richard reflected, it was long after midnight, when the fast
began. He had also practically finished off a box of Fig Newtons.
The coffee was so strong that it empurpled the wall of the cup,
and its smell was almost as enviably masculine as that of white
lightning. The three younger boys kept respectfully quiet and looked
on, eagerly and sleepily. They watched now the lapped purple
rings
in the slanted cup, now the shining of the living wax and its satin
look where it had slowed and had been smoothed, now the strong
loose smoky flame and the hypnotized faces which leaned above it,
and now the reckless primitive profile and the slash-lined blue-black
cheek of the great athlete Willard Rivenburg, whom they had never
seen in quite such quiet intimacy. Nobody knew for sure just how
old Willard was, but he looked as many men can only at thirty or so,
and then only
if
they have been through a war, or years of the hard–
est kind of work. Richard tried to imagine why he was here tonight.
He was fairly sure it was not for any kind of religious reason:
Willard had been confirmed, and made his Confession and his Com–
munion, but it was obviously just as a matter of course; when he
took his turn serving Mass or swinging the Censer or carrying the
Crucifix he was never exactly irreverent yet he always looked as
if
secretly he might be chewing tobacco; it looked as odd and out of
place, somehow, as watching a horse dressed up in cassock and
cotta and doing these things. He never even crossed himself at a hard
time in a game, the way some of the others did. No, he wouldn't be
here because he felt pious. It might be because everybody and every–
thing on the place was thinking about just these things that were
happening, and moving around them; a kind of shadow and stillness
