JOHNTOWN, TENN.
401
into the dark and he would
be
alone on a mountainside, in the night
shadow of trees, with the last dogwood petals about to drop in the
dark.
He
was shaking, like malaria
in
dog days and the quinine not
taking hold.
Then he felt the pressure on his hand.
Thinking about it afterwards, many nights, lying in the dark
with Celia Hornby's head on his arm and her sleep-breath gentle and
steady, he figured that in that instant of terror his hand must have
tightened on her hand, not playing the dream-game any more, just
twitching like a frog leg dropped in the hot fry-fat in the skillet. And
the girl, not knowing the reason why his grip came suddenly stron–
ger, must have
come
back herself with just a little
more
juice.
Why wouldn't she have come back with a little more juice?
If
she was drifting along in the dream-game, feeling the dream grow?
She couldn't know, he was damned glad to reflect, that he had
been hit like a field mouse by a hoot-owl and snatched into the dark
sky.
He
was ashamed, plain puke-ashamed sometimes lying in his
bed, to remember how he had been snatched, like he wasn't a man
sure of himself.
It
was a comfort, particularly since she had that
self-sureness, drifting along in her own sure dream, that she couldn't
have known what was happening to him when she came back a
little stronger.
Or had she? Had she really come back stronger? Or come back
at all?
It
was a long time, many nights of figuring, before that doubt
struck him. Perhaps in that moment of terror and disorientation on
the mountain he had had to have the feeling that whatever and who–
ever's hand was there was holding on to him. Now he had to grant
the possibility that then he had needed to think so whether it was
true or not, and granting it, didn't know quite what to make of it.
Did it make his shame at weakness greater or less?
He always decided that maybe that didn't matter too much.
Anyway, supposing she hadn't come back at all that time when his
hand had gripped hers, not knowing whose hand it was, she had.
come back plenty since. He reckoned he was on firm ground there,
and by God, it was ground he himself, and no other God-durn man,
had bought and paid for, cleared, broke, seeded, weeded, laid by,
and brought to harvest.
Yes, on the whole, he figured he had no gripe about the way the
