He got up stiffly from the swing. “I got somethin I been aimin to give you if it wouldn’t make you mad. You reckon it would?”

“I doubt it.” Winer grinned.

The old man went back into the house, Winer following. “I bought me a pair of shoes through the mail a year or two ago and then couldn’t wear em. I expect my feet’s about through growin too. I been kindly keepin a eye on them feet of yourn and I believe they’ve growed a size or two since spring.”

They passed through the front room past the dead stove the old man kept up winter and summer and stepped down into the long, narrow lean-to that served as the old man’s bedroom. The room was dark and lowceilinged and Winer stood uncertainly for a moment letting his eyes adjust to the cloistered gloom and watching shapes gain outline and solidity, ephemeral shapes halftransient lock themselves into recognizable form: an old chifforobe whose dusty mirror presented him with a warped sideshow representation of himself, an old rustcolored iron bed, boxes stacked on boxes nigh to the ceiling, old lavender and gray Sunday dresses fading and shapeless on their hangers, faint scent of lemon verbena out of some other time, or life. Oliver fetching up from the bottom of the chifforobe a newlooking pair or black hightop shoes, freshly removed from their box and tissue paper like some memento covertly hidden from time.

“Here we go,” the old man said. He handed the shoes to Winer. “Hold em up agin ye shoes there and measure em.”

“I believe they’ll fit. How much do you want for them?”

“Nothin.”

“I’ll pay you.”

“Take em on. They ain’t doin nobody no good settin there. I don’t need em noway.”

“I’d rather pay you.”

“I may get you to sell my sang for me some Saturday. Either my legs ain’t what they used to be or they keep scootin town a little farther west ever year.”

After the fetid room the air outside seemed fresh and clean. With the shoebox turned upside down and tucked under his arm Winer stepped into the rain. He crossed under the pear tree through the spate of discarded scrapiron that lay like mutant fruit and onto the road. Oliver sat back in the swing. The chain creaked, tautened. He watched Winer out of sight beyond the hedge broke in a curve of the road and the road ascended. The road crossed the creek there and he could hazily see the wooden bridge. Then dusk moved in unnoticed with the rain and a little wind blew chill out of the west and stung him with spray. Winer disappeared in blue dusk. Dark gathered in the shadow of the pear tree and crept toward the porch and Oliver rose and went into the house to light his lamp.

These evenings Winer’s mother would be in the front room awaiting him and she would be sitting motionless on the rocker before the dead fireplace. Tonight she had the lamp lit on the mantle and she sat at the repair of some garment made soft and nigh shapeless by repeated washing and she did not even look up when he came in. A sallow young-old woman whose highcheeked face looked somehow androgynous, nunlike perhaps or resembling an ascetic priest at some vague rites. Coronaed by the yellow halo of light she looked unreal, a ghost at some vigil, faded sepia image on a funeral-home calendar.

His room was in the attic and he climbed a ladder to it, she did not even ask him about the box. He stowed the shoes in a wooden trunk then sat at the foot of his bed a moment looking at them. He figured Oliver could wear them. He sat staring at them in a curiously hopeless way and then closed the lid.

The loft room was unbearable during the summer and Winer had taken to sleeping wherever the heat would let him.