230
JOYCE CAROL OATES
silent intimacy, too gentle, the man's bare feet in the water and the boy
a few feet away, leaning away from his father. He was about nine years
old and still his father held his hand.
A small yipping dog, a golden dog bounded near them.
Anna turned shyly back to her reading; she did not want to have
to speak to these neighbors. She saw the man's shadow falling over her
legs, then over the pages of her book, and she had the idea that he
wanted to see what she was reading. The dog nuzzled her; the man
called him away.
She 'watched them walk down the beach. She was relieved that
the man had not spoken to her.
She saw them in town later that day, the two of them red-haired
and patient, now wearing sandals, walking with that same look of
care. The man's white shorts were soiled and a little baggy. His pull–
over shirt was a faded green. His face was broad, the cheek.bones wide,
spaced widely apart, the eyes stark in their sockets, as if they fastened
onto objects for no reason, ponderous and edgy. The little boy's face
was pale and sharp; his lips were perpetually parted.
Anna realized that the child was blind.
The next morning, early, she caught sight of them again. For some
reason she went to the back door of her cottage. She faced the sea
breeze eagerly. Her heart hammered.... She had been here, in her
family's old house, for three days, alone, bitterly satisfied at being alone,
and now it was
a
puzzle to her how her
soul
strained to fly outward,
to meet with another person. She watched the man with his son,
his
cautious, rather stooped shoulders above the child's small shoulders.
The man was carrying something, it looked like a notebook. He sat
on the ' sand, not far from Anna's spot of the day before, and the dog
rushed up to them. The child approached the edge of the ocean, timid–
ly. He moved in short jerky steps, his legs stiff. The dog ran around
him. Anna heard the child crying out a word that sounded like "Ty"
- it must have been the dog's name - and then the man joined in, his
voice heavy and firm.
"Ty- ."
Anna tied her hair back with a yellow scarf and went down to
the beach.
The red-haired man glanced around at her. He smiled. She stared
past
him
at the waves. To talk . to him or not to talk - she .had the
freedom of that choice. For a moment she felt that she had made a
mistake, that the child and the dog would not protect her, that behind
