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started breathing again, but I still couldn’t move.
    There was a sound somewhere like that of a buzzer, and I thought it was just another of the ringing noises in my head until he stepped over me and started around the serving bar. “Don’t go away,” he said, and flicked off the light. I lay in darkness and in agony.
    If I could hit him just once I’d break him in two. The next time I’d have better sense than to pull him toward me. I’d take him apart. But I had to get up first. I tried again, and this time I managed to roll over. Sweat ran off my face and I had to fight against vomiting on the floor. I heard a door chime and then the door opening, and voices. The door closed. Purvis had company. It was a man. I could hear snatches of what he was saying.
    “Federal radio inspector . . . complaints of television interference . . . amateur transmitter in the neighborhood . . .”
    “No, I haven’t got a television set,” Purvis said.
    “Oh. Well, thanks.”
    “Not at—” Purvis began. His voice cut off with a shaky inward sucking of breath as if he had started to pull it in to scream, and then I heard the impact itself as if somebody had hurled a green watermelon against the wall. It was sickening. I froze up tight, forgetting my pain, and waited. Something slid softly to the floor, as if being helped, the way Purvis had eased me down. Then nothing happened at all. There was no sound. I slowly exhaled, beginning to feel the pain in my throat again. He moved. I heard footsteps coming toward the dinette. Something blocked off the light coming in from the living-room, and I knew he was standing in the doorway. He seemed to fill it. I couldn’t see him, because I was lying behind the serving bar and refrigerator. I waited, sweating with suspense. Would he come on in and look around into the kitchen side? I was helpless; he’d kick my head in like someone killing a snake. He stood there for a moment, and then I heard him turn and go away. It sounded as if he was going into the bedroom. He came out again and I heard the desk drawer being pulled open. There was a rustling of papers. I tried to breathe quietly, but air seemed to gasp and hiss through the agony in my throat like steam through old radiator pipes.
    I could move a little now, and managed to push myself up to my hands and knees. If he did come out here and find me I wanted at least to be on my feet. I heard him shut the desk drawer and then the sound of his footsteps again. They appeared to be going toward the front door. He was leaving. I crawled silently around the end of the bar and came forward until I could see most of the living-room. Purvis’s feet and legs were in view, near the sofa. I slipped along the linoleum another two or three feet and peered around the edge of the doorway. He was standing in the front door. I saw his feet and legs first and then my glance went on up, and up. He was as big as a house. His back was turned toward me as he peered out into the hall, and he seemed to fill the doorway. He was bareheaded, and his hair was dark and brush-cut. He went out softly, pulling the door shut. I never had seen his face. I sighed weakly and pushed myself to my feet. I had to hold onto the refrigerator. My clothes were soaked with sweat.
    I didn’t know whether I’d ever be able to speak again. My throat felt as if I had a logging chain doubled around it with a tractor pulling on each end. I wheezed as I staggered into the living-room and stood looking down at Purvis. He lay on his back with his eyes open, staring blankly up at the ceiling. His left forearm was broken, bent grotesquely across the rug as if he had another elbow inside the dark blue sleeve. He’d shoved it up instinctively, in that last thousandth of a second he was alive, trying to ward off the blow, and the impact had been so terrible it had broken it and then had enough power left over to make that kind of a mess of his head. I looked around to see what he had been hit