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yelled at Benjy for not waking her up and telling her he was there. He couldn’t explain how scared he’d been. How tightly coiled he’d lain all night, smothered by his father’s arms and breath. Now, as then, the trick was to almost stop breathing, to not even be here, and then the scratching would go away.
    W ith his eye at the crack in the garage door, Duvall could see down the driveway to the street. He crouched in a cold sweat as the black Lab scratched at the door, growling. Duvall ducked back as the dog snuffled its muzzle along the crack and then began to bark. A car was coming down the street, now slowing, now rumbling into the driveway, its brakes grinding metal against metal. The dog’s barking grew frantic. Duvall closed his eyes.
    The car door creaked open, slammed shut, and then footsteps raced toward the garage. He buried his face in his sweaty hands, whispering, “Deliver me, Lord. Deliver me, and I will never, ever…”
    “Get out of here!” a woman hissed. “Goddamn dog…go on!”
    He watched through the crack as she went to the lilac bush and snapped off a switch of new blooms and swatted the fleeing dog’s rump. “Get over in your own yard and stay there!” she called, throwing the branch after him.
    The dog ran onto the back steps of the yellow house, still barking. With her arms folded, the woman stood on the edge of the driveway, staring back at the dog. Something in her stance and the sag of her shapeless skirt reminded Duvall of a child, willful and hard-edged where softness had probably never been allowed, who would, if she had to, stand out there all night, facing that ugly animal down.
    The screen door of the yellow house opened and a slender woman with soft blond curls leaned out and caught the dog by its collar. “Marie, I’m sorry. Really I am. Louis keeps letting him off the rope,” she called, and when she got no response, pulled the struggling dog inside the house.
    “Yah, you’re sorry,” Marie muttered as she came around the front of her dented old car. “Sorry he didn’t take my arm off.” She sighed then and hurried into her own house.
    A few minutes later a girl with limp brown hair dragged down the driveway with an armload of books pressed to her chest. The seat of her navy blue school uniform was shiny and wrinkled. She hesitated on the back steps a minute, then squared her shoulders and went inside. Next to arrive was a stocky boy, his baseball cap rimming a practiced scowl. When SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 21
    he turned at the door, Duvall saw that his shirt was ripped halfway up his back.
    After another hour had passed and no one else had come, Duvall closed his eyes and sank back against a stack of newspapers that were bundled and tied with string. He hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours and wasn’t sure when he last had eaten. His exhaustion and hunger had rendered him numb.
    As soon as it was dark he would be on his way. By tomorrow’s sunset he would be rolling again. Many’s the time he had been down before. “Many’s the time,” he whispered into the gloaming silence of the cluttered garage.
    But never down for long, he reminded himself. “Never for long,” he groaned softly, drifting into sleep.
    A little while later, his eyes shot open with the smell of frying meat. His stomach growled, and for a split second his eyes washed with tears, for it seemed he was a young man again, awaking for the first time in a cell.
    From the house now, their voices rent the stillness like stabbing thrusts.
    “Did you see about the job?” the woman asked.
    “I had a game,” her son said.
    “Who ripped your shirt? You know what Mr. Graber said, if you were in one more fight.”
    “We were just fooling around. Some of the guys—”
    “Just fooling around, huh? Doesn’t matter! Brand-new shirt, what do you care?”
    “Mom!”
    “Did you see Jarden Greene about the job? Uncle Renie said—”
    “I had a game! I told you!”
    “Uncle Renie said not to wait, to