And he had seen paleness in her eyes, some disappointment he couldn’t calculate but could feel commencing, like some dead zone inside her had uncovered all at once. He thought that it was the print of something lost, something irretrievable, though it was all he knew, and he felt that was only part of it.

A year ago a letter came unaddressed and sat a month in general delivery before the card came warning him to pick it up. It said:

Robard:

We are in Tulare now. W. W. pitches. Come and see me please. I still love you. Your cousin. Beuna.

After a month in the mail slot, it smelled like the same gardenias, thick and rank, flagging to the onionskin so his neck prickled when he smelled it, and he decided then that he had to go, if it was just to see what was there, and could work on explanations later.

He had sat beside her in the Tulare fairgrounds in the smothering night heat and watched W.W. on the brick dust under the lights expel one spiteful pitch after another that no one could ever hit or even halfway see, the last six batters going back without bothering to swing, so that the game was over in an hour and a half.

Beuna had on a red sunsuit printed with elephants running, the halter pinching her breasts up so that he doubted if she could swallow all the way down. Her stomach had forged over her shorts and he thought then that she was much fuller now, after twelve years, but ripe like a peach orchard pear, and womanish in a way that he had never ever seen before and never even really imagined to be possible. She sat beside him and slowly pressed her bare thigh against his until he began to feel like some great whirling gyro were being turned against him. And she never once uttered a word nor made a sound, and for the hour and a half he had sat as though some hot current were passing into his leg, turning a circuit through his body and passing out through his fingers, taking all his strength and resistance as it went.

When she released him, she set her head sideways and stared at him, holding him, like the high point on a compass.

“Robard,” she said, her voice sounding like a bubble rising up out of the cramped insides of her throat. “I love you.”

The first banquet of grandstand lights fell dim, sinking them in queer afternoon shadowlight.

“All right,” he said, looking across the dingy field for some sign of W.W., knowing he was baiting calamity by even being there.

“I’m so wet,” she said. “My God!” She fished her hand in his trousers and squeezed him there until he felt a noise down in his throat that wouldn’t come loose. “Robard?” she breathed, bringing her mouth to an inch from his ear and squeezing as hard as she could. “Do you love me?”

“All right,” he said, unable to get his breath.

“Is that all?” she said, her eyes pinching up meanly and her grip relaxing so that he had time to feel his saliva get thick as gravy.

“You do what you can,” he said, sucking air through his nose, trying to keep his throat constricted.

“Well,” she said reproachfully, staring at her toes on the next riser down. He could hear W.W.’s voice calling out of the dark across the field. Behind him other voices were laughing. Suddenly she had him again, foisting her hand in his trousers as if she were driving a nail and until he felt like some awful vision was about to appear in front of him. The last standard of lights died off, huddling them in a wretched darkness. “Since you put it thataway,” she said slowly, “I guess it’ll be fine.”

On the road back across the desert he began to try to settle things. In general, he knew, things didn’t end in your life because by all sensible estimations they ought to. Or because people involved did things or changed places that would ordinarily make carrying on any longer a natural hardship. Because once a force got a start in you, it grew and took on dimensions and shadings and a life separate and sometimes as complete and good as your practical, good-sense way, he would see that, and understand that nothing in his life ever ended. Things only changed and grew up into something else.

In three weeks a letter arrived at general delivery written on drugstore stationery. It said:

Robard:

We are not in Tulare now, but are in Tacoma, Washington. It ain’t nice here and rains. He played good at Tulare and pitched at Oakland one time, but everybody got a hit, and he rode the bus up here the next day and I come by car.