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Old Mr. Burns, half-blind, paunch, dirty, spirited, came down the backyard talking to himself, singing, swiping at the tall weeds with his cane. In the toilet, too, after some moments of strain and silence, his voice was heard.
There is a green hill far away
Outside a city wall
Where the dear Lord was crucified
Who died to save us all.
    Mr. Burns’s singing was not pious but hectoring, as if he longed, even now, for a fight. Religion, around here, came out mostly in fights. People were Catholics or fundamentalist Protestants, honor-bound to molest each other. Many of the Protestants had been—or their families had been—Anglicans, Presbyterians. But they had got too poor to show up at those churches, so had veered off to the Salvation Army, the Pentecostals. Others had been total heathens until they were saved. Some were heathens yet, but Protestant in fights. Flo said the Anglicans and the Presbyterians were snobs and the rest were Holy Rollers, while the Catholics would put up with any two-facedness ordebauching, as long as they got your money for the Pope. So Rose did not have to go to any church at all.
    All the little girls squatted to see, peered in at that part of Mr. Burns that sagged through the hole. For years Rose thought she had seen testicles but on reflection she believed it was only bum. Something like a cow’s udder, which looked to have a prickly surface, like the piece of tongue before Flo boiled it. She wouldn’t eat that tongue, and after she told him what it was Brian wouldn’t eat it either, so Flo went into a temper and said they could live on boiled baloney.
    The older girls didn’t get down to look, but stood by, several making puking noises. Some of the little girls jumped up and joined them, eager to imitate, but Rose remained squatting, amazed and thoughtful. She would have liked to contemplate, but Mr. Burns removed himself, came out buttoning and singing. Girls sneaked along the fences to call to him.
    “Mr. Burns! Good morning Mr. Burns! Mr. Burns-your-balls!”
    He came roaring at the fence, chopping with his cane, as if they were chickens.
    Younger and older, boys and girls and everybody—except the teacher, of course, who locked the door at recess and stayed in the school, like Rose holding off till she got home, risking accidents and enduring agonies—everybody gathered to look in the entryway of the Boys’ Toilet when the word went round: Shortie McGill is fucking Franny McGill!
    Brother and sister.
    Relations performing.
    That was Flo’s word for it: perform. Back in the country, back on the hill farms she came from, Flo said that people had gone dotty, been known to eat boiled hay, and performed with their too-close relations. Before Rose understood what was meant she used to imagine some makeshift stage, some rickety old barn stage, where members of a family got up and gave silly songs and recitations. What a performance! Flo would say in disgust, blowing out smoke, referring not to any single act but to everything along that line, past and present and future, going on anywhere in the world. People’s diversions, like their pretensions, could not stop astounding her.
    Whose idea was this, for Franny and Shortie? Probably some of thebig boys dared Shortie, or he bragged and they challenged him. One thing was certain: the idea could not be Franny’s. She had to be caught for this, or trapped. You couldn’t say caught, really, because she wouldn’t run, wouldn’t put that much faith in escaping. But she showed unwillingness, had to be dragged, then pushed down where they wanted her. Did she know what was coming? She would know at least that nothing other people devised for her ever turned out to be pleasant.
    Franny McGill had been smashed against the wall, by her father, drunk, when she was a baby. So Flo said. Another story had Franny falling out of a cutter, drunk, kicked by a horse. At any rate, smashed. Her face had got the worst of it. Her nose was crooked, making