He sits hunched against his knees, looking out at the slowly flopping meager surf. The inshore water is the color of weak coffee and the combs of the surf too are stained a faded brown. Down the beach the blackened stumps of stubbed-off trees protrude from the gray sand. Through a thin rain he can see woody islands out in the bay. He looks up at the tops of the tall pines stirring faintly in breeze. The rain falls softly. It is mild, soothing; weather without malice. A freeboard rain. He has come a long way and he has a long way to go. But for this moment there is nothing but easily drawn breaths. He wishes Mr. Oliver was here and the Ghost and Polly and Elmer the assistant and Mrs. Parker and everybody from those days. Wherever they are, pressed down by life or sweating over some difficult task or running for their lives in a dream, let them step aside for a time and come sit on this sandy beach and rest.

He pushes up to his feet and takes a few small steps. He feels like a child, a lopsided novice, manhandled into the world. They said back in Chat-town that he was a zigzag baby. Zigzag by way of his irregular birth, by way of his wayward mother, needing all the luck he could get from the caul. They would say now that the zag had put him in prison and sent his life off into the briars. But here he is. For a moment he is here, free under these big pine trees. The wind soughs and shudders, a mild wind bringing with it hints and foretelling. He dances a few steps, swinging his shoulders, bending down, straightening his back as he moves. Under the hard hand a life moves. Somebody wrote those words and he read them. Words come all the way from some room in some city up north, some dreamer sitting alone at a table, who drew them off the reels of mystery and power in himself.

He scoops up a handful of beach sand, lets it pour through his fingers. The sand is soft, mixed in its coloring like something halfway between dirt and sand. With his gritty fingers he dabs his forehead. He knows he no longer looks as young as he is. He’s seen men in prison who look like Methuselah. A sadness, his own, the one he located early, pushes in among the hopefulness. A mournfulness — the miseries they call it in Chattanooga. Chat-town. Where people come and go. He wants to go back there, slip through like a will o’ the wisp, touch down here and there. Then he’ll see.

He lies back and listens to the surf lightly flop and sizzle, the brown Gulf water sliding up and sinking back again.

BOOK FOUR

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