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lightly tossed along by the summer as the gulls knocked about in the rough currents at the mouth of the Kennebec.

    One night in late August, when Mother had served at the evening meal and had only just had time to change into her saddle shoes and the long skirt she played croquet in, Father was called from his room to assist with an injured man. Father ran past the lawn for croquet where Mother was waiting for him. She held a mallet over her shoulder. The Christmas-like light bulbs strung in the trees lit the lawn for croquet in such a ghostly way that—to my father—my mother “looked like an angel holding a club.”
    “I’ll be right with you,” Father said to her. “Someone’s been hurt.”
    She came with him, and some other running men, and they ran down to the hotel piers. Alongside the dock was a throbbing big ship aglow with lights. A band with too much brass was playing on board, and the strong fuel smell and motor exhaust in the salt air mixed with the smell of crushed fruit. It appeared that some enormous bowl of alcoholic fruit punch was being served to the ship’s guests, and they were spilling it over themselves or washing the deck down with it. At the end of the dock a man lay on his-side, bleeding from a wound in his cheek: he had stumbled coming up the ladder and had torn his face on a mooring cleat.
    He was a large man, his face florid in the blue wash of the light from the moon, and he sat up as soon as anybody touched him. “ Scheiss !” he said.
    My father and mother recognized the German word for “shit” from Freud’s many performances. With the assistance of several strong young men the German was brought to his feet. He had bled, magnificently, over his white dinner jacket, which seemed large enough to clothe two men; his blue-black cummerbund resembled a curtain, and his matching bow tie stuck up straight at his throat, like a twisted propeller. He was rather jowly and he smelled strongly of the fruit punch served on board ship. He bellowed to someone. From on board came a chorus of German, and a tall, tanned woman in an evening dress with yellow lace, or ruching, came up the dock’s ladder like a panther wearing silk. The bleeding man seized her and leaned on her so heavily that the woman, despite her own obvious strength and agility, was pushed into my father, who helped her maintain her balance. She was much younger than the man, my mother noted, and also German—speaking in an easy, clucking manner to him, while he continued to bleat and gesture, nastily, to those members of the German chorus left on board. Up the dock, and up the gravel driveway, the big couple wove.
    At the entrance to the Arbuthnot, the woman turned to my father and said, with a controlled accent: “He vill need stitches, ja ? Of course you haf a doctor.”
    The deck manager whispered to Father, “Get Freud.”
    “Stitches?” Freud said. “The doctor lives all the way in Bath, and he’s a drunk. But I know how to stitch anybody.”
    The desk manager ran out to the dorm and shouted for Freud.
    “Get on your Indian and bring old Doc Todd here! We’ll sober him up when he arrives,” the manager said. “But for God’s sake, get going!”
    “It will take an hour, if I can find him,” Freud said. “You know I can handle stitching. Just get me the proper clothes.”
    “This is different,” the desk manager said. “I think it’s different, Freud—I mean, the guy. He’s a German , Freud. And it’s his face that’s cut.”
    Freud stripped his work clothes off his pitted, olive body; he began to comb his damp hair. “The clothes,” he said. “Just bring them. It’s too complicated to get old Doc Todd.”
    “The wound is on his face , Freud,” Father said.
    “So what’s a face?” said Freud. “Just skin, ja ? Like on the hands or foots. I’ve sewn up lots of foots before. Ax and saw cuts—them stupid loggers.”
    Outside, the other Germans from the ship were bringing trunks and heavy