Mrs. Bacon shouted from inside. “I see you. Go on now! Get off the porch!”

He walked slowly down the walk and turned toward home, and he hadn’t gone a block before Abra caught up with him. She was panting from her run. “Got out the back way,” she said.

“They’ll find you gone.”

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t?”

“No.”

Cal said, “Abra, I’ve killed my brother and my father is paralyzed because of me.”

She took his arm and clung to it with both hands.

Cal said, “Didn’t you hear me?”

“I heard you.”

“Abra, my mother was a whore.”

“I know. You told me. My father is a thief.”

“I’ve got her blood, Abra. Don’t you understand?”

“I’ve got his,” she said.

They walked along in silence while he tried to rebalance himself. The wind was cold, and they quickened their steps to keep warm. They passed the last streetlight on the very edge of Salinas, and blackness lay ahead of them and the road was unpaved and sticky with black ’dobe mud.

They had come to the end of the pavement, to the end of the streetlights. The road under their feet was slippery with spring mud, and the grass that brushed against their legs was wet with dew.

Abra asked, “Where are we going?”

“I wanted to run away from my father’s eyes. They’re right in front of me all the time. When I close my eyes I still see them. I’ll always see them. My father is going to die, but his eyes will still be looking at me, telling me I killed my brother.”

“You didn’t.”

“Yes, I did. And his eyes say I did.”

“Don’t talk like that. Where are we going?”

“A little farther. There’s a ditch and a pump house—and a willow tree. Do you remember the willow tree?”

“I remember it.”

He said, “The branches come down like a tent and their tips touch the ground.”

“I know.”

“In the afternoons—the sunny afternoons—you and Aron would part the branches and go inside—and no one could see you.”

“You watched?”

“Oh, sure. I watched.” And he said, “I want you to go inside the willow tree with me. That’s what I want to do.”

She stopped and her hand pulled him to a stop. “No,” she said. “That’s not right.”

“Don’t you want to go in with me?”

“Not if you’re running away—no, I don’t.”

Cal said, “Then I don’t know what to do. What shall I do? Tell me what to do.”

“Will you listen?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’re going back,” she said.

“Back? Where?”

“To your father’s house,” said Abra.

3

The light of the kitchen poured down on them. Lee had lighted the oven to warm the chilly air.

“She made me come,” said Cal.

“Of course she did. I knew she would.”

Abra said, “He would have come by himself.”

“We’ll never know that,” said Lee.

He left the kitchen and in a moment he returned. “He’s still sleeping.” Lee set a stone bottle and three little translucent porcelain cups on the table.

“I remember that,” said Cal.

“You ought to.” Lee poured the dark liquor. “Just sip it and let it run around your tongue.”

Abra put her elbows on the kitchen table. “Help him,” she said. “You can accept things, Lee. Help him.”

“I don’t know whether I can accept things or not,” Lee said. “I’ve never had a chance to try. I’ve always found myself with some—not less uncertain but less able to take care of uncertainty. I’ve had to do my weeping—alone.”

“Weeping? You?”

He said, “When Samuel Hamilton died the world went out like a candle. I relighted it to see his lovely creations, and I saw his children tossed and torn and destroyed as though some vengefulness was at work. Let the ng-ka-py run back on your tongue.”

He went on, “I had to find out my stupidities for myself. These were my stupidities: I thought the good are destroyed while the evil survive and prosper.

“I thought that once an angry and disgusted God poured molten fire from a crucible to destroy or to purify his little handiwork of mud.

“I thought I had inherited both the scars of the fire and the impurities which made the fire necessary—all inherited, I thought. All inherited. Do you feel that way?”

“I think so,” said Cal.

“I don’t know,” Abra said.

Lee shook his head. “That isn’t good enough. That isn’t good enough thinking. Maybe—” And he was silent.

Cal felt the heat of the liquor in his stomach. “Maybe what, Lee?”

“Maybe you’ll come to know that every man in every generation is refired. Does a craftsman, even in his old age, lose his hunger to make a perfect cup—thin, strong, translucent?” He held his cup to the light. “All impurities burned out and ready for a glorious flux, and for that—more fire. And then either the slag heap or, perhaps what no one in the world ever quite gives up, perfection,” He drained his cup and he said loudly, “Cal, listen to me. Can you think that whatever made us—would stop trying?”