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idly peeling the polish off a fingernail, while her coffee cooled. "If you knew how to cook I'd let you," she said.
    When he got within a block of the rooming house, Sonny killed his motor and let the pickup coast up to the curb. Sometimes just the sound of a pickup would waken Old Lady Malone. He tiptoed in, trying to miss all the squeaky boards. When Old Lady Malone woke up she always came slopping down the hall in her dead husband's house shoes to tell Sonny to be sure and turn out his fire. Then she frequently went in the bathroom and made bad smells for half an hour.
    His room was discouragingly cold, and smelled dusty.
    Things always smelled dusty after the wind had been blowing for a day or two. He considered reading for a while, but there was nothing there to read except a couple of old Reader's Digests and a few sports magazines. He had read them all so many times he had them practically memorized.
    That morning he hadn't bothered to make his bed and the quilts were all in a heap. He undressed and snuggled under the heap, his mind returning at once to Genevieve. Not Genevieve at the café, though—Genevieve naked, just out of her bath, with the ends of her black hair dampened and drops of water on her breasts. In a room so dry, with the dusty air chafing his nostrils, the thought of Genevieve dripping water was very exciting; but unfortunately the fantasy was disturbed by his feet poking out from under the ill-arranged covers into the cold air. For a moment he attempted to kick the covers straight but they were too tangled. He had to get up, turn on the light, and make the bed, all the while somewhat embarrassed by his own tumescence. Like most of his friends he went through life half-convinced that the adults of Thalia would somehow detect even his most secret erections and put them down in the book against him. The chill of the room and his own nervousness were distracting, and by the time the quilts were spread right his only thought was to get under them and get warm. Before he could reestablish his picture of Genevieve naked he was asleep.

chapter four
    The one really nice thing about high school in Thalia was that it gave everybody a chance to catch up on their sleep. Sonny and Duane habitually slept through their three study halls and were often able to do a considerable amount of sleeping in class. Working as hard as they did, school was the only thing that saved them. Occasionally they tried to stay awake in English class, but that was only because John Cecil, the teacher, was too nice a man to go to sleep on. When they got to English class on Monday morning Jacy was already there, wearing a new blue blouse and looking fresh and cheerful. Mr. Cecil sat on his desk, and he also looked happy. He had on a brown suit and an old green tie that had been knotted so many times the edges were beginning to unravel. His wife Irene kept the family accounts and had decided the tie was good for one more year. She was a fat bossy woman and their two little girls took after her. Yet somehow, despite his family, Mr. Cecil managed to keep liking people. When he wasn't actually teaching he was always hauling a carload of kids somewhere, to a fair or a play or a concert. In the summertime he often hauled carloads of boys over to an irrigation ditch where they could swim. He didn't swim himself but he loved to sit on the bank and watch the boys.
    "Well, I wonder what my chances are of interesting you kids in John Keats this morning," he said, when the class was settled.
    "None at all," Duane said, and everybody laughed. Mr. Cecil laughed too—it was all in fun. The kids didn't hold it against him that he liked poetry, and he didn't hold it against them that they didn't. He read them whatever poetry he felt like reading, and they dozed or got other homework done and didn't interrupt. Once in a while he told good stories about the poets' lives; Lord Byron and all his mistresses interested the boys in the class a good deal. They