They could slice him up like salami.”

When we finally got to the river it was worth it, and I could see why she had wanted to come here. It was beautiful and remote and there was a feeling of peace about it as if they’d forgotten to wind the clock and it had run down fifty years ago. There was no concrete or steel about the bridge; it was a sagging ruin of oak timbers and loose planking weathered to the bleached-out whiteness of old bones against the dark wall of timber beyond it, and tilted a little as if it would go out with the next high water. There was a jam of whitened logs on the upper side and the water ran dark, almost like black tea, out from under the jam, boiling up a little and swinging around in a big hole on the downriver side. The road approached from below the bridge and where I pulled the car off and stopped in the shade of a huge pin oak there was a clean sandy bank sloping down to the sandbar below the pool.

She looked across the river and then at me. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

“It’s perfect,” I said.

We got out. Spunky ran down to the sandbar to get a drink and then took off to investigate the surrounding country. I took the water jar down to the river’s edge and filled it for her, and when I came back she was looking around for a place to sit down in the shade.

“Wait,” I said, “I’ve got—” And then I chopped it off suddenly, feeling cold chills down my back. I’d almost said blanket. It had been a near thing, and thinking about it scared me.

She looked at me questioningly. “What is it?”

I got hold of myself. “Nothing,” I said. “False alarm. I started to say I had a Sunday paper in the car that you could sit on, but I just remember I didn’t bring it.”

“Oh,” she said, “I don’t need anything. This is nice sand, just like a beach.”

She sat down with the block of paper on her legs and took up one of the charcoal sticks, looking meditatively at the bridge. Then she glanced around at me where I’d stretched out on the sand, just smoking a cigarette and watching her.

“Do I make you nervous?” I asked. “Watching you, I mean?”

She shook her head. “No. But I was just thinking you’d probably be awfully bored.”

“Take my word for it,” I said, looking at the lovely face and the big, serious eyes. “I’m not bored.”

“You know, you’re awfully nice,” she said quietly. “You’re not at all like I thought you were at first. I—” She broke off and looked out over the bridge. “I mean, does that sound like too shameless a thing to say?”

“You’re a solid brass hussy,” I said.

She smiled, trying to cover up the confusion in her face. “Don’t make fun of me, please. What I’m trying to say is that you have been nice and the least I could do is acknowledge it, after the mean things I thought about you at first.”

I rolled on my side and propped myself on my elbow. “I told you how that happened. I just got the instructions mixed up. This is Approach No. 2, known as the waiting game. You want me to explain how it works? You take these two citizens, A and B, we’ll call ’em—”

She laughed, and picked up the charcoal stick again.