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By Root 462 0

but those were sentimental reveries born of a wish to punish his father and mother and other enemies. From young manhood onward, however, the prospect of ending his life had more and more lost its fantastic quality. That, he must remember, was Jimmy's "solution," and Fern's, too. And lately it had come to seem not just an alternative but the specific death awaiting him. Anyway, he couldn't see that he had "a lot to live for." Hot islands and buried gold, diving deep in fire-blue seas toward sunken treasure - such dreams were gone. Gone, too, was "Perry O'Parsons," the name invented for the singing sensation of stage and screen that he'd half-seriously hoped some day to be. Perry O'Parsons had died without having ever lived. What was there to look forward to? He and Dick were "running a race without a finish line" - that was how it struck him. And now, after not quite a week in Miami, the long ride was to resume. Dick, who had worked one day at the ABC auto-service company for sixty-five cents an hour, had told him, "Miami's worse than Mexico. Sixty-five cents! Not me. I'm white." So tomorrow, with only twenty-seven dollars left of the money raised in Kansas City, they were heading west again, to Texas, to Nevada - "nowhere definite." Dick, who had waded into the surf, returned. He fell, wet and breathless, face down on the sticky sand. "How was the water?"

"Wonderful."

The closeness of Christmas to Nancy Clutter's birthday, which was right after New Year's, had always created problems for her boy friend, Bobby Rupp. It had strained his imagination to think of two suitable gifts in such quick succession. But each year, with money made working summers on his father's sugar-beet farm, he had done the best he could, and on Christmas morning he had always hurried to the Clutter house carrying a package that his sisters had helped him wrap and that he hoped would surprise Nancy and delight her. Last year he had given her a small heart-shaped gold locket. This year, as forehanded as ever, he'd been wavering between the imported perfumes on sale at Norris Drugs and a pair of riding boots. But then Nancy had died. On Christmas morning, instead of racing off to River Valley Farm, he remained at home, and later in the day he shared with his family the splendid dinner his mother had been a week preparing. Everybody - his parents and every one of his seven brothers and sisters - had treated him gently since the tragedy. All the same, at meal times he was told again and again that he must please eat. No one comprehended that really he was ill, that grief had made him so, that grief had drawn a circle around him he could not escape from and others could not enter - except possibly Sue. Until Nancy's death he had not appreciated Sue, never felt altogether comfortable with her. She was too different - took seriously things that even girls ought not to take very seriously: paintings, poems, the music she played on the piano. And, of course, he was jealous of her; her position in Nancy's esteem, though of another order, had been at least equal to his. But that was why she was able to understand his loss. Without Sue, without her almost constant presence, how could he have withstood such an avalanche of shocks - the crime itself, his interviews with Mr. Dewey, the pathetic irony of being for a while the principal suspect? Then, after about a month, the friendship waned. Bobby went less frequently to sit in the Kidwells' tiny, cozy parlor, and when he did go, Sue seemed not as welcoming. The trouble was that they were forcing each other to mourn and remember what in fact they wanted to forget. Sometimes Bobby could: when he was playing basketball or driving his car over country roads at eighty miles an hour, or when, as part of a self-imposed athletic program (his ambition was to be a high-school gymnastics instructor), he took long-distance jog-trots across flat yellow fields. And now, after helping clear the dining table of all its holiday dishes, that was what he decided to do - put on a sweatshirt and go for a run. The weather was remarkable.