by Edward Mann
Papa sat whittling on a leftover piece of cherry wood, drinking Hiram Walker 12 Year from a Dixie cup. Middle of October jack-a-lanterns sat on porch railings. Soaring temperatures in Jefferson City perpetuated the worse fall drought in decades. Small fires popped up in the Big Dismal swamp like fox fire on piles of rotten wood.
“It’s the swamp eating itself,” he said, “like the damn world. Oh well— plane down any piece of wood and a few chips will go a-flying. Bet your Mama could find some deeper meaning in that.”
“That’s for sure,” I replied, unsure if Papa’s remark had any caustic underpinnings.
“Hell of a note what your Mama calls rendering,” he continued—this time I could hear the heartache—“Ought to try putting some of that high powered perception on her own heart, her own self, and family.”
Don’t get me wrong. Mama was well liked in Jefferson, her opinions softly revealed only to me and Jenny, although, sometimes, catapulted at Papa in rock embedded snowballs of impotent bitterness.
Papa, at first glance, took it on the chin.
Jenny was Mama’s sounding board, her sometimes pin-cushion falling place.
While Papa whittled, I watched Mama and Jenny through the screen door playing hearts. The few trick or treaters that had come by— Batman, Robin, Superman, and Glenda the Good Witch of the West —had all been waved to the front door where a bowl of silver bells, miniature Hershey bars, and candy apples sat on Papa’s Mama, Miss Althea’s fancy leaf table.
“Mama seems happy now,” I said. “Think Jenny will stay with us?”
Papa shrugged.
“Hard to say. It’s out of my hands.”
“How come you never talk about it?”
“I thought maybe you were too young to understand,” Papa said, walking over to the fence where Mama’s Four O’ Clocks stood, there scattering the cherry shavings on the pine straw.
“People make mistakes Junior. But the world don’t forgive shit: only people do, or say they do. It’s hard for most men to forgive their wife running around. ”
“Even Jenny…?”
Papa smiled.
“I guess. But Jenny’s family; family’s different— not for everybody, you understand— maybe it shouldn’t be, but it is— besides, I don’t think Jenny wants forgiving.”
“If she’s wrong, then why not?
“Sometimes,” he said, “it’s not that simple.”
“Mama says right’s right, wrong’s wrong.”
“She would,” he replied—this time softly, almost reverently— then asked, “how about if you found your wife at The Camelot Motel?”
Thinking about Jenny in those terms was hard, so I changed the subject.
“Street looks empty without the Caddy out there,” I said, fishing for elaboration.
“Yeah, fancy won’t it?” Papa said, pushing back with his foot, causing the green swing to rock. “Before your Mama and me were married, Belhaven on the Fourth was big doings, had a street dance, parade with floats, boat races—lots of stuff. In 1940, just before I left for Paris Island, both your Mama and Jenny ran for Queen of the Seafood Festival. Jenny wanted it. Your Mama I think was pushed into it by Miss ET, not sure. She won though. Jenny was runner up. Both rode up on the back seat of a Cadillac, kind of like Louie does now. Jimmy Moore used to let Jenny and your mama sit in the newest Cadillac on the lot.”
“I guess it was a hard decision, not trying to beat my time, I mean. So he picked Jenny, even though she was going with a buddy of mine.”
“What happened to him?”
“Oh,” he said, “a heart surgeon— I heard, at Duke— probably makes more money in a year than I will in my life. Some women no ain’t cut out to be wives.”
Papa, outside of a few indiscretions, was known for hard work and his handshake integrity. First there was a short stint in the Coast Guard brig in Long Island for Rum running. Only 18, Papa hardly felt the C note grease his palm, heard the silk suited man tempt him, just knew money would look good to Mama’s papa. Then he had prison time, liquor hauling, drinking, and if the sweet thing from Pantego had not fucked with him, life may have been different. There for damn sure would have been no me to tell his story.
Redemption—Papa never quit trying to relight the flame in Mama’s eyes.
Take Mama’s twentieth anniversary fandango. Detailed long distance arrangements to the Outer Banks called for a dozen roses, champagne, an ocean front room, all the love amenities not affordable in 1945 for an unemployed, recently discharged WWII veteran whose wife had spent the previous two years waiting, writing letters, reading Look Homeward Angel and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
In the rears of one smoky afternoon, while changing a tire on his truck, Papa narrated the story in his usual nonchalant manner, how he had carried Mama back to where the USO had been, to the docks for steamed oysters and the Casino Club where they once sat in wooden window sills listening to Woody Herman’s Herd, about waking up to find Mama walking on the beach and the undertow of emotionless silence smothering any honeymoon hopes he might have had, of afternoons spent watching Jockey Ridge, Mama, now and then, entertaining notions of flight, imagining what it had been like when the Wright Brothers discovered what birds understood about eternity.
When they returned, Louie pawed Papa’s leg until he picked him up then growled at Mama.
Still I was not surprised.
Mama was an unfinished model, incomplete, as though God had paused to reconsider at the very moment Papa snatched her from the jaws of Granddaddy Columbus.
At Nag’s Head Mama Papa said made him stop at the Galleon Art Gallery in Kill Devil Hills. Mama’s blue eyes fired up like jets, he said, when walking through the array of paintings, sculptures, and bereted artisans. Papa said it was the only time she perked up.
Isn’t it wonderful, Roman, such beauty?
Papa bought her two pictures: Water Lilies, by Claude Monet; and The Gulf Stream, by Winslow Homer— $100, a shit load of money in 1962.
The Monet was her favorite. When company came, Mama stood by the China cabinet fingering the glass, her long black hair pulled back held by a rhinestone clip. Like a curator, Mama pointed out the metaphysical associations of the painting: the lily, fleur-de-lis of sweetness, virginity, purity, majesty; lily of the valley, the glory of the flower celebrating Gabriel’s annunciation of the birth of Jesus.
The water lily has strong lady like arms. The roots loosen and grow into new water lilies. The root of the lily is located in the mud at the bottom of a pond. The painting reveals the possibilities of life reflected by God’s natural creations.
Soon Christmas was upon us. Every night fighting words drifted through the vents in my room before breakfast, all over the black eye Jenny blamed on darkness and the kitchen cabinet.
Jenny’s husband Earl was a Charlie Brown nut, a real goof ball, with big hands, shoulders and one hell of a temper. Crude, always drunk as a lord—flirting with Mama. Christmas brought out the Judas worse in him. There at the table, Jenny’s eyes looked murderous; Mama’s excited; Papa’s as dead as a Blue on the fishmonger’s scale, the refuse of the party still on the table: the preacher’s cookies, cheese ball, chips and dip—all the usual fare for sin eaters.
“I think I’ll stay here and clean up. Junior, what say? Give me a hand?”
“Fine by me,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” Mama said.
Out the kitchen window, under the street lights, the neighborhood looked like Papa— bitter, black, suspended in time, maybe as he had those six months in jail, as the taillights of Earl’s GTO furious to fading red. From behind Papa’s eyes some other man peeped out at me, one I’d never seen before, but would see again in Cadillac Heaven. While fingering the scar on the table made by my wood burning set Papa stared at the picture as though he were talking to it.
“Junior,” he said, “don’t tell your Mama,” Papa said, “I hate that God damn picture.”
Mama never told me what happened between her and Earl, Papa neither. I learned by spiritual osmosis, through keyholes in rooms, from phrases drifting up through the vents in my room; from the den after Jenny went to visit her sister Elva, when, at least, one reason for Mama’s hard on for Papa dropped by.
On my belly I lay like a sniper, listening. Spiritual osmosis required, in this case, a certain distance: I wanted her words of alchemic judgment to meld with all I had heard Mama speak of in regard to art.
You know damn well better! He’s married, Ruby… so is she….what does that make her. Nobody gets away with these things. Her Mama was the same way. It’s in the blood…
Miss Althea’s voice seemed ceaseless; blending new testament grace with scrap iron old testament damnation and opinions of manhood, the old woman spoke of what granddaddy was and was not and should have been, but mainly what Papa should have learned from it all and hadn’t— her voice fading like Jenny’s marriage and Papa’s hopes of finding Mama had, no more than flesh forty years embattled by widowhood and isolation at the end of the world and taken out on Papa.
I had been raised to respect old folks.
Jenny said she would worry about hell fire later. Some things have no answers. When she dies, I’ll go, but just to make sure she’s dead.
By six Papa and Jimmy sat quietly petrified. Mama stood and stared out the window at her frozen flower garden, me still belly down, my heart stinging. Osmosis—what I gathered in science class to be the process of diffusing moisture from high to low intensity, the force supporting a plant’s growth and river’s flow—seemed to be the identical metaphor employed Mama’s used to describe the creative marriage between the eye and canvas.
Jenny said she waited by the Willow Tree for Uncle Jimmy’s car to pull off and the last of Miss Althea’s fruit basket hat to disappear around the corner of John Small Avenue before heading for the back stairs.
About 6:30—as soon as the foot falls on the back stairs ceased—I headed for the attic and knocked.
“Come in,” she called out.
Jenny stood behind a dressing screen in the corner.
“I know you’ve heard things, honey,”— Jenny looked over at me, then let her hair fall and shook it loose. She rested her elbow on the edge of the screen and said, “Even Canaan liked having Mama around to blame its own sins on. That’s me. I’m a home wrecker. Got any idea what life with Earl was like?”
Jenny’s new boyfriend’s name was Tommy Blue, a tall man with black hair, Elvis side burns, and high cheek bones. I did not tell her that I’d overheard Georgia, the colored lady that helped Mama on Saturday washday, tell Mama how they found Tommy’s wife in a pool of vomit, how her Mama had taken her to Emergency, about the sleeping pills, raw liquor and bloody miscarriage.
Jenny walked from behind the screen then sat down on the bed and patted the space beside her.
“To bad you’re not older, honey pie,” she said, sighing, “boy oh boy what I could do for you. What do you think Mrs. Nobles would say about that?”
“Why do you think Papa calls her that some times?”
“Oh, just a way to prove ownership, that she’s his. You know, men like to own things, stake a claim,” she replied, tracing a finger along my jeans’ seams, “your Papa is a good man and tries hard. Your Mama loves him, it’s just…”
“Just what?”
“You know we had plans. We both wanted to be movie stars, just not a shooting one, one that burns out too soon. Maybe every little girl does but your Mama wanted more, kind of like Betty Davis in Now Voyager. That’s why she draws. The art class—I just went with her for moral support.”
“Is she unhappy?”
“Your Papa get you to ask me that?”
“No,” I said.
“You best let them work this out. Even Ruby don’t know who she is. What worried me is Anna?”
“Aunt Ann?”
“Yes. Ann tore up Canaan, did what she wanted, didn’t care who she hurt. She lived with Roman and your Mama for a while. Didn’t know that did you?”
I shook my head.
“She hated Columbus and tried to get your Mama to hate him too, men in general. Ruby listened. Roman proved her wrong. I can’t be Anna, her strong right arm. I can’t go back there.”
Earl broke Jenny’s jaw New Year’s Eve, walked barefoot down Hwy 17 to The Little Mint and called Papa. Mama came with him. Jenny spent a week in the hospital, Earl a week in jail. Now her cheeks looked rosy again, her lips full, hair shiny, and filled with stories to tell.
But it was Jenny’s story about Papa that I most recalled.
While looking at Winslow’s picture of The Gulf Steam, Papa became the man on the boat trying to get back to shore. Black, muscle bound waves rolled under him, their white capped teeth cresting with each rise and fall of the of the trawl, while Mama poetically related the story of Jonah and how God pulled men out of trouble by the hair on the head.
The year flew by, complete with Earl’s enraged visits, Mama’s broomstick riding and Papa’s surprising protective combativeness when it came to Jenny’s welfare.
Once the divorce was final, Tommy was always on the carport afternoons when I got home from school.
It was on such a day that Mama dropped the bomb about Papa.
First of June, Mama was putting up the pulpy white scrapings of silver queen Papa and I had brought her from Canaan the week before. Jenny ordered me to help her.
Tommy, in an effort to made good with Papa, had offered to clean the trash out of the gutters.
“Your Papa had a girlfriend one time. Her husband ran the Zacharias’ Butcher Shop in Pantego. I left the letter she wrote him right on the washing machine. That night on the porch— just about where you are sitting now—I got hold of him.
Louie growled and Jenny laughed.
“Cute Ruby,” she said, “you know how he was raised. Not much love in Miss Althea’s world. The strumpet probably smothered him.”
“How come you always take up for him, Jenny?”
“Not many good ones left.”
“You ain’t married to him.”
“What’d he say?” I asked.
“Nothing, he knew better. I talked. I told him one of us was leaving and it damn sure won’t going to be me.”
“What did Papa do?”
“He stormed out the house. Came home about four in the morning drunk. I made him sleep under the house. That was your Papa’s probation time.”
“How long did that last?”
“What’s today’s date?”
“June 9th.”
“Ask me again next year.”
Mama put the knife to another ear, splitting each row of kernel, and then started on me.
“Pete and repeat,” she said, “you even look like your father’s baby pictures.”
One day, maybe a week later—while Papa and I were working on the pickup, all covered with grease and sweat— I asked him about the girl from Pantego.
She was just a kid, Junior. Not much older than you. I lost my mind I guess. I never meant to hurt your Mama. You believe me don’t you?
Mama put the paper to the side, stood up, stretched, then walked to the fence and looked at her garden.
“What you think it means, Junior, when a flower blooms at night and there’s no one to see it?”
“I don’t know Mama,” I said, bounding up the open staircase to my room. One foot of the bottom ring, I stopped in my tracks.
The door of Mama’s bedroom was open.
In the gray light Mama’s vanity shined like molasses. I opened the top drawer, took out the photograph album, and began to thumb through the pictures.
Three caught my eye, one of Papa in his Coast Guard uniform in front of Montauk Lighthouse and one of Papa’s Papa in the fields behind a mule, holding the reins with one hand, waving with other. Roman the first died of a heart attack in that very field, the back forty by the Big Gum. Papa told how farm hands laid him out on the dining room table between the fried chicken and beans, how his papa, still a young man, had spoken plainly with him before he died, told him he loved him and handed out instructions concerning Miss Althea.
This was before the draft notice, which led to the third.
The station was right next to the combination post office and dry goods store in Middleton. All the brothers (who were all a lot older) were dressed in suits. Papa, in uniform, stood on the end with his arm around Mama and Miss Althea, their faces half in shadow. Papa’s smile was determined; Grandmama’s angry; Mama’s sad; the brother’s flat and empty as a piece of sheet metal, reflecting light while obscuring the fear and guilt of where Papa was going and they had been spared.
The light seemed to change in Mama’s room.
For a moment I saw myself squeezing between Papa, Mama, and the Zacharias girl, twenty years his junior, whom I imagined in the bloody apron helping package back bone, burger, and bludgeon the round steak, eyeing Papa in the not-yet-stained red camels Mama had ironed for that morning, and him seeing her too—neither one blinded by the glare of his gold wedding band in the white counter light.
By Easter Jenny’s fear of taking Anna’s place as a sister and Mama co-dependence came to a head. A Nevada deputy sheriff looking for a rabid dog found Columbus’ youngest outside a Spanish mission in Lovelock, sixty miles down the interstate from Reno, said she’d walked something like ten miles and had a black eye and fractured cheek bone—cause of death, liver failure.
“Thank you lord,” Mama had mumbled, “she has been released.”
And I recalled the drama: the station wagon loaded to the gills, Grapes of Wrath style; Lou and Claude fighting; the children’s noses pressed the back window heading for the City of Angels— Ann waving from the passenger side.
Jenny hung close to Mama then, although I knew Tommy did not like it.
“It was Papa’s fault,” Mama said.
“I know,” Jenny said. “Annie told me.”
Louie looked doubtful when Jenny’s visits included talk of Tommy. Papa did not mind, even after their visits came to include sipping on Four Roses. Louie saw something else, something not so much evil but terrifyingly fragile, something trapped like a butterfly in a jar.
Cadillac Heaven sat on the corner of River and Bridge Street. The caddy he found was 16 years old, just a mite younger than their marriage, with fenders like hips, grooves in the hood like cleavage, and misty-eyed headlights. Someone had loved and worshiped the caddy like a girl like a sweetheart.
I can still remember how surprised Mama was when he laid on the crazy horn.
Men came out on the porch from their ball games in their undershirts; women, in light flowery house dresses from the backs of houses hugging clothes baskets, were followed by kids with footballs in hand—all of them felt called by the honker.
Papa’s smile stretched forever—his lips pulled back, teeth showing, the one gold one gleaming in the sunlight—delighted that finally, the over soul of the neighborhood had spoken up for him in spirit…
Hey world…You all thought Roman Nobles was a penniless postman. How wrong you all were. He’s got the money to buy his wife a Cadillac, not on credit neither, but with cash, and a boy to carry on when he’s gone.
The neighborhood crashed in on Papa and the Caddy, then a rip tide, a mighty undercurrent of fear sucked them back to their respective car hoods, porches, yards, waiting, waiting for Mama to shoot Papa down.
“I am not going anywhere with that little Monster,” Mama broadcasted from the carport steps.
“No Ruby,” Papa said, with a flourish of hand, “we are all family here. Louie is Junior’s Puppy. All for one, one for all.”
Mama hung the dish rag on the fence. “Not too fast and not too long,” she said.
Papa drove us through the country, past road side truck stands overflowing with winter truck vegetables, collard greens, turnips, sweet potatoes, side meat, and sweating hoop cheese.
In the rear view mirror I watched Papa’s eyes. Behind them I knew lived a stranger, not Papa, not even Roman, but some illusion shaped by fate, his Mama, and who he figured Mama would accept him as, a hero, a man with a design, who like the Phoenix bird rose out of ashes of the depression, not to wealth as most folks considered it, but able to buy whatever would fix his family’s ills, only to—because of a subverted brand of innocence—fall into nothingness again. Therefore, because Monet’s Water Lilies and Homer’s The Gulf Stream defined and reflected Grace, the hope of rebirth and re-invention, Papa hated and feared the sight of it. But what I feared most was the secret not rendered, that Papa wanted to return to New York and smuggle liquor, or make his own, or in truth loved the meat cutter’s young wife and would have left had his courage and fear of Mama not defeated him so failingly.
Maybe, I thought—at least at that moment—that Papa’s heart might have longed for the diminishing faces seen from the train window: the old folks, first waving, then—along with his brothers and Mama—eaten alive by the smoke of the departing train and swamp fog of the early morning Canaan. Maybe he was as helpless as that, as me, as I was to help him, as Mama was to help herself.
But then I heard another rendering, Papa’s bragging voice at parties that contradicted that notion…
Ruby was crazy about me. I had just finished basic training. After the first dance, she was hooked like a starving catfish.
….and Mama’s haughty laugh and response…..
Somebody had to take him in. I felt sorry for him. I don’t know why I let him kiss me; must have been crazy. He stepped on my feet, held me like a sack of potatoes, and could not hold his liquor. Fool threw up while walking me to my car.
Buttressing Mama’s Nebraska holiness childhood stood a monument of memory bricked by the excitement of War, a juxtaposition peopled by soldier boys and sailors from other parts of the country, a story narrated melodramatically with intense description and passion externalized and internalized by fragmented time.
I was the favorite, even prettier than Jenny. All the boys bought extra tickets to dance with me. I could have had anybody, but I chose Roman. I must have been out of my mind.
Papa turned off River Road onto Honey Pod Trail. On the private gravel road was a farm with green and black tar papered tobacco barns. Out buildings—anchored in a sea of stumped corn stalks and swaying red winter wheat—stood freshly painted red and molten in the reluctant afternoon blaze.
Up ahead on Hwy 33 Old Ford Church of Christ was having what appeared to be a wedding rehearsal.
“Pull over, Roman,” Mama said.
Papa slowed down, then pulled over to the shoulder.
Under a huge White Oak tree a young girl barely sixteen and her fiancé stood before the preacher. A big woman—older, I assumed, the grandmamma—was trying to get the flower girl and ring bearer to behave long enough for the prospective bride and groom to practices their vows. The preacher was old, maybe sixty, and grim—in spite of the heat still dressed in staunch black, stiff collared suit from another age.
Suddenly he stopped the procedure, redressed the kids, then explained to the groom when he could kiss the bride. The young boy, much to the horror of family and the minister, grabbed the girl and kissed her deeply, not a peck but a full-fledged, open mouthed, head sucking smack.
“Praise Jesus,” I shouted.
Louie barked.
Papa laughed.
“Hallelujah,” Papa yelled.
Mama’s head snapped around, her eyes burning into Papa. Her fingernails and lipstick at once seemed black and smeared. The wind picked up blowing her black hair, wild, out of control, sucking the life out of her cheeks.
We drove on.
Ratcheted in the blue, purple, orange and red smeared sky a faded gold moon appeared, eye-like, just above the pine stands watching as Mama retreated into her blue bubble, undefeated, her face frozen like the stone angels at the graveyard.
Suddenly I felt my bones harden; the skin on my face seemed drum head tight, my ears filled with whistle and I heard Jenny’s voice.
Whistling in your ears means someone is sweet on you, Junior.
Papa turned around in the road and headed back, Louie still on seat by his shoulder.
The dead people—Papa and Mama, Jenny and me—rode on in silence. Louie sat snug against Papa’s leg now, daring Mama to come closer.
That Spring Jenny left Tommy, that is, after she cold cocked him with a broken chair leg.
Papa picked her up at Camelot and brought her home. Mama was so happy we all went to the Park View Drive-in to eat chili dogs and analyze Streetcar Named Desire—a double date, Mama and Papa in front, me and Jenny in the back.
When we returned, Mama took Papa’s hand and whispered in his ear.
It’s bedtime honey.
Jenny and I about died of shock—what the hell happened?—at the same time we were tickled. It had been a while. Louie hopped on Jenny’s lap, put his paws on her chest, and licked her face.
“Your Mama never liked the world much. Oh, she loved you. I never seen a Mama set so much store in a child. Actually, Ruby and I saw the movie at the Skeet Theater. Marlon Brando was the new man, the rebel. I never loved nobody good for me after that.”
Jenny sat up straight, held the book directly in front of me. Mitch tells Blanche she’s not clean enough to bring into the house with his mother. “Nobody ever said that to me,” Jenny said, proudly, “good to have at least one person you know you are not as bad as, right?”
“Maybe,” I said.
The following month Mama’s Papa Columbus was buried next to Anna at Soul Cemetery in Goshen.
Mama put away the bone china duck dishes and silver. Monet’s The White Lilies and Winslow Homer’s The Gulf Stream now hung on opposing walls, crucifixes of hope and death.
Mama exchanged the new solitaire diamond for a cameo locket with a picture of me and Papa and Jenny inside.
Papa agreed to join Mama’s reading—something I knew he hated, at first anyway—before reading the fictionalized story of Huey Long in All The King’s Men.
The Great Compromise—Mama and Jenny agreed to go herring dipping at Fremont Trestle.
After bypassing River Street, Papa crawled down the winding dirt path that led to the foot of the trestle.
Papa and opened the car door. Mama and Jenny looked like kids, both in rolled up blue jeans and Papa’s old works shirts ready for the rag box.
“Come on Junior,” Jenny said, then asked…
Reckon we got a wide enough net for supper.
Papa kept a skipjack boat moored by Haven’s Wharf. Mama looked tiny in the stern next to Papa. Jenny hung tough in the bow with me. Voices of black men and women fishing off the bridge filled the night air. Their kids ran down the bank, climbed across creosote pilings, positioning themselves in the lattice patterned cross tie supports, wild and white eyed.
I steered. The one-horse motor puttered steady and low. Papa swooshed the net dipper through the black water in a wide ark, then dropped the net full on the floor of the skiff. To my surprise Mama and Jenny scooped the fish up with their hands and placed them in a wash tub.
“Jenny, Anne and I used to go herring fishing with Papa. Ann was the prettiest, Papa’s favorite,” Mama said, speaking to me but staring at the fish, the moon’s reflection on the black water, the limestone layered banks of the river, and the shadowed faces with cane poles on the trestle.
About 9:00 Papa placed the washtub’s worth of squirming herring in the trunk. Mama got in then reached over to unlock Papa’s door. Jenny scooted all the way over and rested her head on my shoulder. In the mirror Mama’s eyes smiled at me. Jenny kissed my cheek and smiled back. Papa laughed. Louie panted on top of the seat.
“Let’s go home,” Papa said.
“Best word in the world,” Jenny sang out.
Mama nodded.
At the corner of Bridge and Fourth, the entrance to Cadillac heaven appeared as bright as day. The red Caddy sat on the front line on its hind legs outshining the new ones, ready to pounce. Turkey Moore was showing it to a young couple, pointing to a sign that read…
SURPRISE YOUR WIFE WITH A CREAM PUFF. 500 CASH OR BEST OFFER!
Louie barked then jumped down in Mama’s lap, his little balls dangling between bony legs like purple scuppernongs. The pink end of his pecker stuck out when he saw Willow Street—a sign of instinctual knowing, vision— his voice yipping round, and round, and round.
