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counts."

    "Counts for what?"

    "Digestibility, efficient use of nutrients, toxin shedding."

    "You're not fat."

    Indeed he wasn't. He said, "Actually, I don't even think about fat any more. I was obsessed with that for years, but that's very low level body awareness. Thinking about fat and calories is actually a symptom of the problem, not a way to find a solution.

    "What's the solution?"

    "My main effort now is to be aware of toxins and try to shed them as regularly as possible. I urinate twelve to twenty times a day, now. I sweat freely. I keep a careful eye oil my bowel movements."

    He said this utterly without embarrassment. "Knowing that organizes everything. For example, when I used to think about exercise as aerobic conditioning or muscle strengthening, I found it very difficult to motivate myself to do it. Now I think of it as a way to move fluids, to cleanse cells and bathe them afresh, and I want to exercise.

    If I don't exercise, I can feel myself getting a little crazy from the toxins in my brain."

    I said, "How so?"

    "Oh, you know. Negative thoughts. Worries about things at the bank.

    Failure of hope. That kind of thing. I used to have that all the time. I can spot someone in the toxic overload stage a mile away.

    I said, "What are the toxic foods?"

    "Oh, Ginny, goodness me, everything is toxic. That's the point.

    You can't avoid toxins. Thinking you can is just another symptom ú of the toxic overload stage. For years I was nuts about eating just the right things. Beef never touched my lips, or chocolate, or coffee.

    It got worse and worse. I was cutting out something every month, desperately looking for just the right combination of foods. I was crazy. I was getting thinner, but then you store the toxins in your muscles and organs and it's actually worse."

    "When was that?" I said. "I had no idea." Daddy had stopped staring at Marv and started eating, which was a relief.

    "No one did." He finished his eggs and began on his sausage. "It was a very isolated time for me. Now I talk about it whenever it comes up.

    I feel much better. You blow off toxins through your lungs, too."

    "Hmmp," said my father. Marv fell silent, and Daddy looked up to watch Marv eat his English muffin. He said, "You got any hot sauce? Tabasco works the best."

    "For what?" said my father.

    "Drawing off a good sweat." He gave us an innocent smile. I smiled back at him and shook my head. "We don't eat much spicy food." Marv wiped his mouth and said, "That's okay. I'll get to it later."

    Daddy seemed more or less his normal self. He drank every night and was gruff every morning. It was a habit we were used to and was reassuring in its way. I'd made up my mind to ask him pointblank if he'd been serious about incorporating the farm and giving Ty and Pete more say-so in its operation. The fact was, it had taken mere instants for the two of them, and Rose, too, to take possession in their own minds, and mere instants for Caroline to detach herself.

    Disbelief or even astonishment, on Harold's back porch had turned with marvelous suddenness into intentions and plans. My talk with Ty had soothed me, but then, when I woke up, it was Pete I worried about.

    Pete's natural state of mind was an alternating current of elated certainty and angry disappointment. I was a little afraid of him.

    The night before Rose got married, she sat at the foot of my bed rolling up her hair, caroling her amazement that she had actually gotten him to marry her. Secretly, I was amazed, too, and maybe a bit jealous, so handsome was Pete, the image of James Dean, but smiling and ebullient, never rebellious or sullen. And he had real musical talent-he played four or live instruments well enough to put himself through college playing in three different ensembles: the university string quartet (first violin), a country band (fiddle, mandolin, and banjo), and a jazz group (piano, occasionally bass).

    He made more money and went to more