Wayne works on the boss and a week later I'm back, on probation, painting the warehouse. Wayne brings me meatball sandwiches from out on the road, skinny things with a seam of cheese gumming the bread.

Was it worth it? he asks me.

He's watching me close. I tell him it wasn't.

Did you at least get some?

h.e.l.l yeah, I say.

Are you sure?

Why would I lie about something like that? Homegirl was an animal. I still have the teeth marks.

d.a.m.n, he says.

I punch him in the arm. And how's it going with you and Charlene?

I don't know, man. He shakes his head and in that motion I see him out on his lawn with all his things. I just don't know about this one.

We're back on the road a week later. Buckinghams, Imperials, Gold Crowns and dozens of card tables. I keep a copy of Pruitt's paperwork and when the curiosity finally gets to me I call. The first time I get the machine. We're delivering at a house in Long Island with a view of the Sound that would break you. Wayne and I smoke a joint on the beach and I pick up a dead horseshoe crab by the tail and heave it in the customer's garage. The next two times I'm in the Bedminster area Pruitt picks up and says, Yes? But on the fourth time she answers and the sink is running on her side of the phone and she shuts it off when I don't say anything.

Was she there? Wayne asks in the truck.

Of course she was.

He runs a thumb over the front of his teeth. Pretty predictable. She's probably in love with the guy. You know how it is.

I sure do.

Don't get angry.

I'm tired, that's all.

Tired's the best way to be, he says. It really is.

He hands me the map and my fingers trace our deliveries, st.i.tching city to city. Looks like we've gotten everything, I say.

Finally. He yawns. What's first tomorrow?

We won't really know until the morning, when I've gotten the paperwork in order but I take guesses anyway. One of our games. It pa.s.ses the time, gives us something to look forward to. I close my eyes and put my hand on the map. So many towns, so many cities to choose from. Some places are sure bets but more than once I've gone with the long shot and been right.

You can't imagine how many times I've been right.

Usually the name will come to me fast, the way the numbered b.a.l.l.s pop out during the lottery drawings, but this time nothing comes: no magic, no nothing. It could be anywhere. I open my eyes and see that Wayne is still waiting. Edison, I say, pressing my thumb down. Edison, New Jersey.

Andre Dubus.

DELIVERING.

Jimmy woke before the alarm, his parents' sounds coming back to him as he had known they would when finally three hours ago he knew he was about to sleep: their last fight in the kitchen, and Chris sleeping through it on the top bunk, grinding his teeth. It was nearly five now, the room sunlit; in the dark while they fought Jimmy had waited for the sound of his father's slap, and when it came he felt like he was slapping her and he waited for it again, wished for it again, but there was only the one clap of hand on face. Soon after that, she drove away.

Now he was ashamed of the slap. He reached down to his morning hardness which always he had brought to the bathroom so she wouldn't see the stain; he stopped once to turn off the alarm when he remembered it was about to ring into his quick breath. Then he stood and gently shook Chris's shoulder. He could smell the ocean. He shook Chris harder: twelve years old and chubby and still clumsy about some things. Maybe somebody else was Chris's father. No. He would stay with what he heard last night; he would not start making up more. Somewhere his mother was naked with that son of a b.i.t.c.h, and he squeezed Chris's shoulder and said: 'Wake up.' Besides, their faces looked alike: his and Chris's and his father's. Everybody said that. Chris stared at him.

'Come with me.'

'You're crazy.'

'I need you to.'

'You didn't say anything last night.'

'Come on.'

'You buying the doughnuts?'

'After we swim.'

In the cool room they dressed for the warm sun, in cut-off jeans and T-shirts and sneakers, and went quietly down the hall, past the closed door where Jimmy stopped and waited until he could hear his father's breath. Last night after she left, his father cried in the kitchen. Chris stood in the doorway, looking into the kitchen; Jimmy looked over his head at the table, the beer cans, his father's bent and hers straight, the ashtray filled, ashes on the table and, on the counter near the sink, bent cans and a Seagram's Seven bottle.

'Holy s.h.i.t,' Chris said.

'You'd sleep through World War III.'

He got two gla.s.ses from the cupboard, reaching over the cans and bottle, holding his breath against their smell; he looked at the two gla.s.ses in the sink, her lipstick on the rim of one, and Chris said: 'What's the matter?'

'Makes me sick to smell booze in the morning.'

Chris poured the orange juice and they drank with their backs to the table. Jimmy picked up her Winston pack. Empty. s.h.i.t. He took a Pall Mall. He had learned to smoke by watching her, had started three years ago by stealing hers. He was twelve then. Would he and Chris see her alone now, or would they have to go visit her at that son of a b.i.t.c.h's house, wherever it was? They went out the back door and around to the front porch where the stacked papers waited, folded and tied, sixty-two of them, and a note on top saying Mr. Thompson didn't get his paper yesterday. 'It's his G.o.dd.a.m.n dog,' he said, and cut the string and gave Chris a handful of rubber bands. Chris rolled and banded the papers while Jimmy stood on the lawn, smoking; he looked up the road at the small houses, yellow and brown and grey, all of them quiet with sleeping families, and the tall woods beyond them and, across the road, houses whose back lawns ended at the salt marsh that spread out to the northeast where the breeze came from. When he heard the rolling papers stop, he turned to Chris sitting on the porch and looking at him.

'Where's the car?'

'Mom took it.'

'This early?'

He flicked the cigarette toward the road and kneeled on the porch and started rolling.

'Where'd she go so early?'

'Late. Let's go.'

He trotted around the lawn and pushed up the garage door and went around the pickup; he did not look at Chris until he had unlocked the chain and pulled it from around the post, coiled it under his bicycle seat, and locked it there. His hands were ink-stained.

'You can leave your chain. We'll use mine at the beach.'

He took the canvas sack from its nail on the post and hung it from his right side, its strap over his left shoulder, and walked his bicycle past the truck and out into the sun. At the front porch he stuffed the papers into the sack. Then he looked at Chris.

'We're not late,' Chris said.

'She left late. Late last night.' He pushed down his kickstand. 'Hold on. Let's get these papers out.'

'She left?'

'Don't you start crying on me. G.o.dd.a.m.nit, don't.'

Chris looked down at his handlebar.

'They had a fight,' Jimmy said.

'Then she'll be back.'

'Not this time. She's f.u.c.king somebody.'

Chris looked up, shaking his head. Shaking it, he said: 'No.'

'You want to hear about it or you just going to stand there and tell me I didn't hear what I heard.'

'Okay, tell me.'

's.h.i.t. I was going to tell you at the beach. Wait, okay?'

'Sixty-two papers?'

'You know she's gone. Isn't that enough for a while?' He kicked up his stand. 'Look. We've hardly ever lived with both of them. It'll be like Pop's aboard ship. Only it'll be her.'

'That's not true.'

'What's not.'

'About hardly ever living with both of them.'

'It almost is. Let's go.'

Slowly across the gra.s.s, then onto the road, pumping hard, shifting gears, heading into the breeze and sun, listening for cars to their rear, sometimes looking over his shoulder at the road and Chris's face, the sack b.u.mping his right thigh and sliding forward but he kept shoving it back, keeping the rhythm of his pedalling and his throws: the easy ones to the left, a smooth motion across his chest like second to first, snapping the paper hard and watching it drop on the lawn; except for the people who didn't always pay on time or who b.i.t.c.hed at him, and he hit their porches or front doors, a good hard sound in the morning quiet. He liked throwing to his right better. The first week or so he had cheated, had angled his bicycle toward the houses and thrown overhand; but then he stopped that, and rode straight, leaning back and throwing to his right, sometimes having to stop and leave his bicycle and get a paper from under a bush or a parked car in the driveway, but soon he was. .h.i.tting the gra.s.s just before the porch, unless it was a house that had a door or wall shot coming, and he could do that with velocity too. Second to short. He finished his road by scaring himself, hitting Reilly's big front window instead of the wall beside it, and it shook but didn't break and when he turned his bicycle and headed back he grinned at Chris, who still looked like someone had just punched him in the mouth.

He went left up a climbing road past a pine grove, out of its shade into the warmth on his face: a long road short on customers, twelve of them scattered, and he rode faster, thinking of Chris behind him, pink-cheeked, breathing hard. Ahead on the right he saw Thompson's collie waiting on the lawn, and he pulled out a paper and pushed the sack behind his leg, then rose from the seat pumping toward the house, sitting as he left the road and bounced on earth and gra.s.s: he threw the paper thumping against the open jaws, his front tire grazing the yelping dog as it scrambled away, and he lightly hand-braked for his turn then sped out to the road again. He threw two more to his left and started up a long steep hill for the last of the route: the road cut through woods, in shade now, standing, the bicycle slowing as the hill steepened near the hardest house of all: the Claytons' at the top of the hill, a pale green house with a deep front lawn: riding on the shoulder, holding a paper against the handlebar, standing, his legs hot and tight, then at the top he sat to throw, the bicycle slowing, leaning, and with his left hand he moved the front wheel from side to side while he twisted to his right and c.o.c.ked his arm and threw; he stood on the pedals and gained balance and speed before the paper landed sliding on the walk. The road wound past trees and fifteen customers and twice that many houses. He finished quickly. Then he got off his bicycle, sweating, and folded the sack and put it in his orange nylon saddlebag, and they started back, Chris riding beside him.

From one house near the road he smelled bacon. At another he saw a woman at the kitchen window, her head down, and he looked away. Some of the papers were inside now. At Clayton's house he let the hill take him down into the shade to flat land and, Chris behind him now, he rode past the wide green and brown salt marsh, its gra.s.s leaning with the breeze that was cool and sea-tanged on his face, moving the hair at his ears. There were no houses. A fruit and vegetable stand, then the bridge over the tidal stream: a quick blue flow, the tide coming in from the channel and cove beyond a bend to the north, so he could not see them, but he knew how the cove looked this early, with green and orange charter boats tied at the wharves. An hour from now, the people would come. He and Chris and his father went a few afternoons each summer, with sandwiches and soft drinks and beer in the ice chest, and his father drank steadily but only a six-pack the whole afternoon, and they stood abreast at the rail, always near the bow, the boat anch.o.r.ed a mile or two out, and on lucky days filled a plastic bag with mackerel slapping tails till they died, and on unlucky ones he still loved the gentle rocking of the boat and the blue sea and the sun warmly and slowly burning him. Twice in late summer they had bottom-fished and pulled up cusks from three hundred feet, tired arm turning the reel, cusk breaking the surface with eyes pushed outward and guts in its mouth. His mother had gone once. She had not complained, had pretended to like it, but next time she told them it was too much sun, too smelly, too long. Had she been with that son of a b.i.t.c.h when they went fishing again? The boats headed in at five and his father inserted a cleaning board into a slot in the gunwale and handed them slick cool mackerel and he and Chris cleaned them and threw their guts and heads to the sea gulls that hovered and cried and dived until the boat reached the wharf. Sometimes they could make a gull come down and take a head from their fingers.

They rode past beach cottages and up a one-block street to the long dune that hid the sea, chained their bicycles to a telephone pole, and sprinted over loose sand and up the dune; then walking, looking at the empty beach and sea and breakers, stopping to take off sneakers and shirts. Jimmy stuffing his three bills into a sneaker, then running onto wet hard sand, into the surf cold on his feet and ankles. Chris beside him, and they both shouted at once, at the cold but to the sea as well, and ran until the water pushed at their hips and they walked out toward the sea and low sun, his feet hurting in the cold. A wave came and they turned their backs to it and he watched over his shoulder as it rose; when it broke they dived and he was riding it fast, swallowing water, and in that instant of old sea-panic he saw his father crying; he opened his eyes to the sting, his arms stretched before him, hands joined, then he was lying on the sand and the wave was gone and he stood shouting: 'All right.' They ran back into the sea and body-surfed until they were too cold, then walked stiffly up to higher sand. He lay on his back beside his clothes, looked at the sky; soon people would come with blankets and ice chests. Chris lay beside him. He shut his eyes.

'I was listening to the ball game when they came home. With the ear plug. They won, three to two. Lee went all the way. Rice drove in two with a double-' Bright field and uniforms under the lights in Oakland, him there too while he lay on his bunk, watching Lee working fast, Remy going to his left and diving to knock it down, on his knees for the throw in time when they came in talking past the door and down the hall to the kitchen- 'They talked low for a long time; that's when they were drinking whiskey and mostly I just heard Pop getting ice, then I don't know why but after a while I knew it was trouble, all that ice and quiet talk and when they popped cans I figured they'd finished the whiskey and they were still talking that way so I started listening. She had already told him. That's what they were talking about. Maybe she told him at the Chief's Club. She was talking nice to him-'

'What did she say?'

'She said-s.h.i.t-' He opened his eyes to the blue sky, closed them again, pressed his legs into the warm sand, listened to the surf. 'She said I've tried to stop seeing him. She said Don't you believe I've tried? You think I want to hurt you? You know what it's like. I can't stop. I've tried and I can't. I wish I'd never met him. But I can't keep lying and sneaking around. And Pop said Bulls.h.i.t: you mean you can't keep living here when you want to be f.u.c.king him. They didn't say anything for a minute and they popped two more cans, then she said You're right. But maybe I don't have to leave. Maybe if you'd just let me go to him when I wanted to. That's when he started yelling at her. They went at it for a long time, and I thought you'd wake up. I turned the game up loud as I could take it but it was already the ninth, then it was over, and I couldn't stop hearing them anyway. She said Jason would never say those things to her, that's all I know about that son of a b.i.t.c.h, his name is Jason and he's a civilian somewhere and she started yelling about all the times Pop was aboard ship he must have had a lot of women and who did he think he was anyway and she'd miss you and me and it broke her heart how much she'd miss you and me but she had to get out from under his s.h.i.t, and he was yelling about she was probably f.u.c.king every day he was at sea for the whole twenty years and she said You'll never know you b.a.s.t.a.r.d you can just think about it for another twenty. That's when he slapped her.'

'Good.'

'Then she cried a little, not much, then they drank some more beer and talked quiet again. He was trying to make up to her, saying he was sorry he hit her and she said it was her fault, she shouldn't have said that, and she hadn't f.u.c.ked anybody till Jason-'

'She said that?'

'What.'

'f.u.c.k.'

'Yes. She was talking nice to him again, like he was a little kid, then she went to their room and packed a suitcase and he went to the front door with her, and I couldn't hear what they said. She went outside and he did too and after she drove off he came back to the kitchen and drank beer.' He raised his head and looked past his feet at a sea gull bobbing on the water beyond the breakers. 'Then he cried for a while. Then he went to bed.'

'He did?'

'Yes.'

'I've never heard him cry.'

'Me neither.'

'Why didn't you wake me up?'

'What for?'

'I don't know. I wish you had.'

'I did. This morning.'

'What's going to happen?'

'I guess she'll visit us or something.'

'What if they send Pop to sea again and we have to go live with her and that guy?'

'Don't be an a.s.shole. He's retiring and he's going to buy that boat and we'll fish like b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. I'm going to catch a big f.u.c.king tuna and sell it to the j.a.panese and buy you some weights.'

He squeezed Chris's bicep and rose, pulling him up. Chris turned his face, looking up the beach. Jimmy stepped in front of him, still holding his arm.

'Look: I heard Pop cry last night. For a long time. Loud. That's all the f.u.c.king crying I want to hear. Now let's take another wave and get some doughnuts.'

They ran into the surf, wading coldly to the wave that rose until there was no horizon, no sea, only the sky beyond it.

Dottie from tenth grade was working the counter, small and summer-brown.

'Wakefield boys are here,' Jimmy said. 'Six honey dip to go.'