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girl’s hairdo. How could a young girl look at Jim Garner and not know that was a real man?
    Doris has read that Jim Garner and his wife of twenty-three years, Lois, split up recently. What a shame. It doesn’t seem fair to Lois, who stood by him during the lean years, before Maverick. Raised his children. Some thanks.
    Still, Garner is a very attractive man, and if they are going to have relations tonight, Doris will pretend that Reg is Jim Garner. In fact, Reg is built something like Jim Garner. Not so much hair, of course. But he’s also a big man.
    What Reg is thinking about, as he slides the waistband of his shorts down his legs (he always waits until he is under the covers to do this), is that loose gutter. Tomorrow, when he goes back to the girl’s house to till her garden, he will mention the gutter. No need to charge her: it will be a simple job.
    Her name is Ann. Looks like an Ann—quiet type. What’s she doing down there? What does she do at night? He wonders where her bedroom is. Downstairs probably—there would be no point heating the upstairs for just one person. That room in the front, most likely.
    He imagines coming down her road very early one morning—3 or 4 a.m., the hour he leaves the house during hunting season, when he’s after his deer. He pictures himself in his red plaid shirt, with his gun over his shoulder, opening the front door. Scuffing the dirt off his boots on the front hall rug. Hanging his orange cap on a hook by the door, walking through the doorway to her bedroom. He would have to duck his head, the ceilings are so low.
    She would be wearing a long white nightgown and her hair—why does she tie it back?—would be spread out on the pillow like an angel.
    He would just stand there for a few minutes, watching her sleep, the way he used to go into Jill and Timmy’s room sometimes, when they were very little, just listening to them breathe. Then he would bend over and pull back the covers. He would see her nipples, pink under the nightgown, and her other hair, down below.
    “Your hands are so rough,” she says, in that sleepy voice children have when you get them up in the middle of the night because you’ve got a long drive ahead, to the grandparents’.
    “I know,” he says. He worked on a construction crew before his back gave out on him.
    He leans his gun against the bed and bends to unlace his shoes. “Let me do it,” she says. She sits up slowly and kneels at his feet. When she bends to untie the knots he can see the tops of her breasts. They’re the kind that tilt up.
    “I’m sorry,” he says. “I have to take this off you.”
    “I know,” she says, and stands in front of him, absolutely still, while he rips the long white gown from the lace at her neck to the hem. It falls to the floor. She’s white as a birch.
    Then he picks her up and carries her out to the field, the spot where corn would grow so well. He lays her down on a patch of moss and kisses her flat stomach just above where the hair starts. He lowers himself very slowly down over her. He is hard as the butt of a rifle. “Yes,” she cries, as if she’s wounded. “Shoot through to my heart. My heart is broken.”
    “Are you finished?” Doris asks him. “Can I get up now and wash?”
    Her curlers have left little ridges on his cheek.
    The baby’s mother has left a can of Enfamil in the diaper bag and a pink terry-cloth sleeper suit, but Mrs. Ramsay does not need these items. As soon as Wanda leaves (she seems to be getting fatter and fatter), Mrs. Ramsay takes down the little jar of Blueberry Buckle that she picked up at the Grand Union last Tuesday. She props Melissa on the sofa next to her, supported by three crocheted pillows. She takes out the yellow duck sweater she has just finished, unties the ugly little sneakers the mother put on and replaces them with yellow booties. “How about some Blueberry Buckle?” she asks conversationally.
    “Let’s see what we have tonight,” she says,