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“Oh, you’ll see him around,” Blindy said. “You’ll recognize him any time you see him. I’ll let it come as a surprise.”

“You don’t want to see him,” I told the stranger.

“You know that’s one of the reasons I’d like to see sometimes,” Blindy said. “I’d like to just have one good look at him.”

“You know what he looks like,” Frank told him. “You went up and put your hands on his face once.”

“Did it again tonight too,” Blindy said happily. “That’s why he put me out of the car. He ain’t got no sense of humor at all. I told him on a cold night like this he’d ought to bundle up so the whole inside of his face wouldn’t catch cold. He didn’t even think that was funny. You know that Willie Sawyer he’ll never be a man of the world.”

“Blackie, you have one on the house,” Frank said. “I can’t drive you home because I only live just down the road. But you can sleep in the back of the place.”

“That’s mighty good of you, Frank. Only just don’t call me Blackie. I’m not Blackie any more. Blindy’s my name.”

“Have a drink, Blindy.”

“Yes, sir,” Blindy said. His hand reached out and found the glass and he raised it accurately to the three of us.

“That Willis Sawyer,” he said. “Probably alone home by himself. That Willie Sawyer he don’t know how to have any fun at all.”

Summer People

HALFWAY DOWN THE GRAVEL ROAD FROM Hortons Bay, the town, to the lake there was a spring. The water came up in a tile sunk beside the road, lipping over the cracked edge of the tile and flowing away through the close growing mint into the swamp. In the dark Nick put his arm down into the spring but could not hold it there because of the cold. He felt the featherings of the sand spouting up from the spring cones at the bottom against his fingers. Nick thought, I wish I could put all of myself in there. I bet that would fix me. He pulled his arm out and sat down at the edge of the road. It was a hot night.

Down the road through the trees he could see the white of the Bean house on its piles over the water. He did not want to go down to the dock. Everybody was down there swimming. He did not want Kate with Odgar around. He could see the car on the road beside the warehouse. Odgar and Kate were down there. Odgar with that fried-fish look in his eye every time he looked at Kate. Didn’t Odgar know anything? Kate wouldn’t ever marry him. She wouldn’t ever marry anybody that didn’t make her. And if they tried to make her she would curl up inside of herself and be hard and slip away. He could make her do it all right. Instead of curling up hard and slipping away she would open out smoothly, relaxing, untightening, easy to hold. Odgar thought it was love that did it. His eyes got walleyed and red at the edges of the lids. She couldn’t bear to have him touch her. It was all in his eyes. Then Odgar would want them to be just the same friends as ever. Play in the sand. Make mud images. Take all-day trips in the boat together. Kate always in her bathing suit. Odgar looking at her.

Odgar was thirty-two and had been twice operated on for varicocele. He was ugly to look at and everybody liked his face. Odgar could never get it and it meant everything in the world to him. Every summer he was worse about it. It was pitiful. Odgar was awfully nice. He had been nicer to Nick than anybody ever had. Now Nick could get it if he wanted it. Odgar would kill himself, Nick thought, if he knew it. I wonder how he’d kill himself. He couldn’t think of Odgar dead. He probably wouldn’t do it. Still people did. It wasn’t just love. Odgar thought just love would do it. Odgar loved her enough, God knows. It was liking, and liking the body, and introducing the body, and persuading, and taking chances, and never frightening, and assuming about the other person, and always taking never asking, and gentleness and liking, and making liking and happiness, and joking and making people not afraid. And making it all right afterwards. It wasn’t loving. Loving was frightening. He, Nicholas Adams, could have what he wanted because of something in him. Maybe it did not last. Maybe