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chain.
    Ballard put the nickel in his pocket and raised the rifle.
    Elbow rests permitted, sang the pitchman.
    I don’t need no rest, said Ballard. He fired five times, lowering the rifle between rounds. When he was done he pointed aloft. Let me have that there big bear, he said.
    The pitchman trolleyed the little card down a wire and unpinned it and handed it to Ballard. All of the red must be removed from the card to win, he said. He was looking elsewhere and didn’t even seem to be talking to Ballard.
    Ballard took the card in his hand and looked at it. You mean this here? he said.
    All of the red must be removed.
    Ballard’s card had a single hole in the middle of it. Along one edge of the hole was the faintest piece of red lint.
    Why hell fire, said Ballard. He slapped three more dimes on the counter. Step right up, said the pitchman, loading the rifle.
    When the card came back you could’nt have found any red on it with a microscope. The pitchman handed down a ponderous mohair teddybear and Ballard slapped down three dimes again.
    When he had won two bears and a tiger and a small audience the pitchman took the rifle away from him. That’s it for you, buddy, he hissed.
    You never said nothin about how many times you could win.
    Step right up, sang the barker. Who’s next now. Three big grand prizes per person is the house limit. Who’s our next big winner.
    Ballard loaded up his bears and the tiger and started off through the crowd. They lord look at what all he’s won, said a woman. Ballard smiled tightly. Young girls’ faces floated past, bland and smooth as cream. Some eyed his toys. The crowd was moving toward the edge of a field and assembling there, Ballard among them, a sea of country people watching into the dark for some midnight contest to begin.
    A light sputtered off in the field and a bluetailed rocket went skittering toward Canis Major. High above their upturned faces it burst, sprays of lit glycerine flaring across the night, trailing down the sky in loosely falling ribbons of hot spectra soon burnt to naught. Another went up, a long whishing sound, fishtailing aloft. In the bloom of its opening you could see like its shadow the image of the rocket gone before, the puff of black smoke and ashen trails arcing out and down like a huge and dark medusa squatting in the sky. In the bloom of light too you could see two men out in the field crouched over their crate of fireworks like assassins or bridgeblowers. And you could see among the faces a young girl with candyapple on her lips and her eyes wide. Her pale hair smelled of soap, womanchild from beyond the years, rapt below the sulphur glow and pitchlight of some medieval fun fair. A lean skylong candle skewered the black pools in her eyes. Her fingers clutched. In the flood of this breaking brimstone galaxy she saw the man with the bears watching her and she edged closer to the girl by her side and brushed her hair with two fingers quickly.

B ALLARD HAS COME IN FROM the dark dragging sheaves of snowclogged bracken and he has fallen to crushing up handfuls of this dried or frozen stuff and cramming it into the fireplace. The lamp in the floor gutters in the wind and wind moans in the flue. The cracks in the wall lie printed slantwise over the floorboards in threads of drifted snow and wind is shucking the cardboard windowpanes. And Ballard has come with an armload of beanpoles purloined from the barnloft and he is at breaking them and laying them on.
    When he has the fire going he pulls off his brogans and stands them on the hearth and he pulls the wadded socks from his toes and lays them out to dry. Hesits and dries the rifle and ejects the shells into his lap and dries them and wipes the action and oils it and oils the receiver and the barrel and the magazine and the lever and reloads the rifle and levers a shell into the chamber and lets the hammer down and lays the rifle on the floor beside him.
    The cornbread he has baked in the fire is a crude