The River

By Flannery O’ Connor

1953

THE child stood glum and limp in the middle of the dark living
room while his father pulled him into a plaid coal. His right
arm was hung in the sleeve but the father buttoned the coat anyway
and pushed him forward toward a pale spotted hand that stuck
through the half-open door.
  "He ain't fixed right," a loud voice said from the hall.
  "Well then for Christ's sake fix him," the father muttered. "It's
six o'clock in the morning." He was in his bathrobe and barefooted.
When he got the child to the door and tried to shut it, he found
her looming in it, a speckled skeleton in a long pea-green coat
and felt helmet.
  "And his and my carfare," she said. "It'll be twict we have to ride
the car."
  He went in the bedroom again to get the money and when he
came back, she and the boy were both standing in the middle of
the room. She was taking stock. "I couldn't smell those dead cigarette
butts long if I was ever to come sit with you," she said, shaking
him down in his coat.
  "Here's the change," the father said. He went to the door and
opened it wide and waited.
  After she had counted the money she slipped it somewhere
inside her coat and walked over to a watercolor hanging near the
phonograph. "I know what time it is," she said, peering closely
at the black lines crossing into broken planes of violent color.
"I ought to. My shift goes on at 10 P.M. and don't get off till 5
and it takes me one hour to ride the Vine Street car."
  "Oh, I see," he said. "Well, we'll expect him back tonight, about
eight or nine?"
  "Maybe later," she said. "We're going to the river to a healing.
  This particular preacher don't get around this way often. I wouldn't
have paid for that," she said, nodding at the painting, "I would
have drew it myself."
  "All right, Mrs. Connin, we'll see you then," he said drumming
on the door.
  A toneless voice called from the bedroom, 'Bri ng me an rcepack."
"Too bad his mamma's sick," Mrs. Corwin said. "What's her
trouble?"
  "We don't know," he muttered.
  "We'll ask the preacher to pray for her. He's healed a lot of
folks. The Reverend Bevel Summers. Maybe she ought to see him
sometime."
  "Maybe so," he said. "We'll see you tonight," and he disappeared
into the bedroom and left them to go.
  The little boy stared at her silently, his nose and eyes running.
He was four or five. He had a long face and bulging chin and
half-shut eyes set far apart. He seemed mute and patient, like an
old sheep waiting to be let out.
  "You'll like this preacher," she said. "The Reverend Bevel Summers.
You ought to hear him sing."
  The bedroom door opened suddenly and the father stuck his
head out and said, "Good-by, old man. Have a good time."
  "Good-by," the little boy said and jumped  as if he had been shot.
Mrs. Connin gave the watercolor another look. Then they went
out into the hall and rang for the elevator. "I wouldn't have drew
it," she said.
  Outside the gray morning was blocked off on either side by the
unlit empty buildings. "It's going to fair up later," she said, "but
this is the last time we'll be able to have any preaching at the river
this year. Wipe your nose, Sugar Boy."
  He began rubbing his sleeve across it but she stopped him. "That
ain't nice," she said. "Where's your handkerchief?'
  He put his hands in his pockets and pretended to look for it while
she waited. "Some people don't care how they send one off," she
murmured to her reflection in the coffee shop window. "You pervide."
She took a red and blue flowered handkerchief out of her
pocket and stooped down and began to work on his nose. "Now
blow," she said and he blew. "You can borry it. Put it in your
pocket."
  He folded it up and put it in his pocket carefully and they walked
on to the corner and leaned against the side of a closed drugstore to
wait for the car. Mrs. Connin turned up her coat collar so that it
met her hat in the back. Her eyelids began to droop and she looked
as if she might go to sleep against the wall. The little boy put a
slight pressure on her hand.
  "What's your name?" she asked in a drowsy voice. "I don't know
but only your last name. I should have found out your first name."
His name was Harry Ashfield and he had never thought at any
time before of changing it. "Bevel," he said.
  Mrs. Connin raised herself from the wall. "Why ain't that a coincident!"
she said. "I told you that's the name of this preacher!"
  "Bevel," he repeated.
  She stood looking down at him as if he had become a marvel to
her. "I'll have to see you meet him today," she said. "He's no ordinary
preacher. He's a healer. He couldn't do nothing for Mr. Connin
though. Mr. Connin didn't have the faith but he said he would try
anything once. He had this griping in his gut."
  The trolley appeared as a yellow spot at the end of the deserted
street.
  "He's gone to the government hospital now," she said, "and they
taken one-third of his stomach. I tell him he better thank Jesus for
what he's got left but he says he ain't thanking nobody. Well I declare,"
she murmured, "Bevel!"
  They walked out to the tracks to wait. "Will he heal me?" Bevel
asked.
  "What you got?"
  "I'm hungry," he decided finally.
  "Didn't you have your breakfast?"
  "I didn't have time to be hungry yet then,” he said.
  "Well when we get home we'll both have us something," she said.
"I'm ready myself."
  They got in the car and sat down a few seats behind the driver
and Mrs. Connin took Bevel on her knees. “Now you be a good
boy," she said, "and let me get some sleep. Just don't get off my lap."
She lay her head back and as he watched, gradually her eyes closed
and her mouth fell open to show a few long scattered teeth, some
gold and some darker than her face; she began to whistle and blow
like a musical skeleton. There was no one in the car but themselves
and the driver and when he saw she was asleep, he took out the
flowered handkerchief and unfolded it and examined it carefully.
Then he folded it up again and unzipped a place in the innerlining
of his coat and hid it in there and shortly he went to sleep himself.
  Her house was a half-mile from the end of the car line, set back a
little from the road. It was tan paper brick with a porch across the
front of it and a tin top. On the porch there were three little boys
of different sizes with identical speckled faces and one tall girl who
had her hair up in so many aluminum curlers that it glared like the
roof. The three boys followed them inside and closed in on Bevel.
They looked at him silently, not smiling.
  "That's Bevel," Mrs. Connin said, taking off her coat. "It's a coincident
he's named the same as the preacher. These boys are J. C.,
Spivey, and Sinclair, and that's Sarah Mildred on the porch. Take
off that coat and hang it on the bed post, Bevel."
  The three boys watched him while he unbuttoned the coat and
took it oft. Then they watched him hang it on the bed post and then
they stood, watching the coat. They turned abruptly and went out
the door and had a conference on the porch.
  Bevel stood looking around him at the room. It was part kitchen
and part bedroom. The entire house was two rooms and two porches.
Close to his foot the tail of a light-colored dog moved up and down
between two floor boards as he scratched his back on the underside
of the house. Bevel jumped on it but the hound was experienced and
had already withdrawn when his feet hit the spot.
  The walls were filled with pictures and calendars. There were two
round photographs of an old man and woman with collapsed
mouths and another picture of a man whose eyebrows dashed out of
two bushes of hair and clashed in a heap on the bridge of his nose;
the rest of his face stuck out like a bare cliff to fall from. "That's
Mr. Connin," Mrs. Connin said, standing back from the stove for a
second to admire the face with him, "but it don't favor him any
more." Bevel turned from Mr. Connin to a colored picture over the
bed of a man wearing a white sheet. He had long hair and a gold
circle around his head and he was sawing on a board while some
children stood watching him. He was going to ask who that was
when the three boys came in again and motioned for him to follow
them. He thought of crawling under the bed and hanging onto one
of the legs but the three boys only stood there, speckled and silent,
waiting, and after a second he followed them at a little distance out
on the porch and around the corner of the house. They started off
through a field of rough yellow weeds to the hog pen, a five-foot
boarded square full of shoats, which they intended to ease him over
into. When they reached it, they turned and waited silently, leaning
against the side.
  He was coming very slowly, deliberately bumping his feet together
as if he had trouble walking. Once he had been beaten up in the
park by some strange boys when his sitter forgot him, but he hadn't
known anything was going to happen that time until it was over.
He began to smell a strong odor of garbage and to hear the noises
of a wild animal. He stopped a few feet from the pen and waited,
pale but dogged.
  The three boys didn't move. Something seemed to have happened
to them. They stared over his head as if they saw something coming
behind him but he was afraid to turn his own head and look. Their
speckles were pale and their eyes were still and gray as glass. Only
their ears twitched slightly. Nothing happened. Finally, the one in
the middle said, "She'd kill us," and turned, dejected and hacked,
and climbed up on the pen and hung over, staring ill.
  Bevel sat down on the ground, dazed with relief, and grinned up
at them.
  The one sitting on the pen glanced at him severely. "Hey you,"
he said after a second, "if you can't climb up and see these pigs you
can lift that bottom board off and look in thataway.' He appeared
to offer this as a kindness.
  Bevel had never seen a real pig but he had seen a pig in a book
and knew they were small fat pink animals with curly tails and
round grinning faces and bow ties. He leaned forward and pulled
eagerly at the board.
  "Pull harder," the littlest boy said. "It's nice and rotten. Just lift
out thet nail."
  He eased a long reddish nail out of the soft wood.
  "Now you can lift up the board and put your face to the…”
a quiet voice began.
  He had already done it and another face, gray, wet and sour, was
pushing into his, knocking him down and back as it scraped out
under the plank. Something snorted over him and charged back
again, rolling him over and pushing him up from behind and then
sending him forward, screaming through the yellow field, while it
bounded behind.
  The three Connins watched from where they were. The one
sitting on the pen held the loose board back with his gangling foot.
Their stern faces didn't brighten any but they seemed to become
less taut, as if some great need had been partly satisfied. "Maw
ain't going to like him lettin' out thet hawg," the smallest one
said.
  Mrs. Connin was on the back porch and caught Bevel up as he
reached the steps. The hog ran under the house and subsided, panting,
but the child screamed for five minutes. When she had finally
calmed him down, she gave him his breakfast and let him sit on her
lap while he ate it. The shoat climbed the two steps onto the back
porch and stood outside the screen door, looking in with his head
lowered sullenly. He was long-legged and humpbacked and part of
one of his ears had been bitten off.
  "Git away!" Mrs. Connin shouted. "That one yonder favors Mr.
Paradise that has the gas station," she said. "You'll see him today
at the healing. He's got the cancer over his ear. He always comes to
show he ain't been healed."
  The shoat stood squinting a few seconds longer and then moved
off slowly. "I don't want to see him," Bevel said.

  They walked to the river, Mrs. Connin in front with him and
the three boys strung out behind and Sarah Mildred, the tall girl,
at the end to holler if one of them ran out on the road. They looked
like the skeleton of an old boat with two pointed ends, sailing slowly
on the edge of the highway. The white Sunday sun followed at a
little distance, climbing fast through a scum of gray cloud as if it
meant to overtake them. Bevel walked Oil the out side edge, holding
Mrs. Connin's hand and looking down into the orange and purple
gulley that dropped off from the concrete.
  It occurred to him that he was lucky this time that they had
found Mrs. Connin who would take you away for the day instead
of an ordinary sitter who only sat where you lived or went to the
park. You found out more when you left where you lived. He had
found out already this morning that he had been made by a carpenter
named Jesus Christ. Before he had thought it had been a
doctor named Sladewall, a fat man with a yellow mustache who
gave him shots and thought his name was Herbert, but this must
have been a joke. They joked a lot where he lived. If he had thought
about it before, he would have thought Jesus Christ was a word like
"oh" or "damn" or "God," or maybe somebody who had cheated
them out of something sometime. When he had asked Mrs. Connin
who the man in the sheet in the picture over her heel was, she had
looked at him a while with her mouth open. Then she had said,
  "That's Jesus," and she had kept on looking at him.
In a few minutes she had got up and got a book out of the other
room. "See here," she said, turning over the cover,"this belonged
to my great grandmamma. I wouldn't part with it for nothing on
earth." She ran her finger under some brown writing on a spotted
page. "Emma Stevens Oakley, 1832," she said. "Ain’t that something
to have? And every word of it the gospel truth," She turned the
next page and read him the name: "The Life of Jesus Christ for
Readers Under Twelve." Then she read him the book.
  It was a small book, pale brown on the outside with gold edges
and a smell like old putty. It was full of pictures, one of the carpenter
driving a crowd of pigs out of a man. They were real pigs, gray
and sour-looking, and Mrs. Connin said Jesus had driven them all
out of this one man. When she finished reading, she let him sit on
the floor and look at the pictures again.
  Just before they left for the healing, he had managed to get the
book inside his innerlining without her seeing him Now it made his
coat hang down a little farther on one side than the other. His mind
was dreamy and serene as they walked along and when they turned
off the highway onto a long red clay road winding between banks of
honeysuckle, he began to make wild leaps and pull forward on her
hand as if he wanted to dash oft and snatch the sun which was rolling
away ahead of them now.
  They walked on the dirt road for a while and then they crossed a
field stippled with purple weeds and entered the shadows of a wood
where the ground was covered with thick pine needles. He had
never been in woods before and he walked carefully, looking from
side to side as if he were entering a strange country. They moved
along a bridle path that twisted downhill through crackling red
leaves, and once, catching at a branch to keep himself from slipping,
he looked into two frozen green-gold eyes enclosed in the darkness
of a tree hole. At the bottom of the hill, the woods opened suddenly
onto a pasture dotted here and there with black and white cows and
sloping down, tier after tier, to a broad orange stream where the
reflection of the sun was set like a diamond.
  There were people standing on the near bank in a group, singing.
Long tables were set up behind them and a few cars and trucks
were parked in a road that came up by the river. They crossed the
pasture, hurrying, because Mrs. Connin, using her band for a shed
over her eyes, saw the preacher already standing out in the water.
She dropped her basket on one of the tables and pushed the three
boys in front of her into the knot of people so that they wouldn't
linger by the food. She kept Bevel by the hand arid eased her way
up to the front.
  The preacher was standing about ten feet out in the stream where
the water came up to his knees. He was a tall youth in khaki trousers
that he had rolled up higher than the water. He had on a blue shirt
and a red scarf around his neck but no hat and his light-colored hair
was cut in sideburns that curved into the hollows of his cheeks. His
face was all bone and red light reflected from the river. He looked
as if he might have been nineteen years old. He was singing in a
high twangy voice, above the singing on the bank, and he kept his
hands behind him and his head tilted back.
  He ended the hymn on a high note and stood silent, looking down
at the water and shifting his feet in it. Then he looked up at the
people on the bank. They stood close together, waiting; their faces
were solemn but expectant and every eye was on him. He shifted his
feet again.
  "Maybe I know why you come," he said in the twangy voice,
"maybe I don't.
  "If you ain't come for Jesus, you ain't come for me. If you just
come to see can you leave your pain in the river, you ain't come for
Jesus. You can't leave your pain in the river," he said. "I never told
nobody that." He stopped and looked down at his knees.
  "I seen you cure a woman oncet!" a sudden high voice shouted
from the hump of people. "Seen that woman git up and walk out
straight where she had limped in!"
  The preacher lifted one foot and then the other. He seemed
almost but not quite to smile. "You might as well go home if that's
what you come for," he said.
  Then he lifted his head and arms and shouted, "Listen to what I
got to say, you people! There ain't but one river and that's the River
of Life, made out of Jesus' Blood. That's the river you have to lay
your pain in, in the River of Faith, in the River of Life, in the
River of Love, in the rich red river of Jesus' Blood, you people!"
His voice grew soft and musical. "All the rivers come from that
one River and go back to it like it was the ocean sea and if you
believe, you can lay your pain in that River and get rid of it because
that's the River that was made to carry sin. It's a River full of
pain itself, pain itself, moving toward the Kingdom of Christ, to be
washed away, slow, you people, slow as this here old reel water river
round my feet.
  "Listen," he sang, "I read in Mark about an unclean man, I read
in Luke about a blind man, I read in John about a dead man! Oh
you people hear! The same blood that makes this River red, made
that leper clean, made that blind man stare, made that dead man
leap! You people with trouble," he cried, "lay it in that River of
Blood, lay it in that River of Pain, and watch it move away toward
the Kingdom of Christ."
  While he preached, Bevel's eyes followed drowsily the slow circles
of two silent birds revolving high in the air. Across the river there
was a low red and gold grove of sassafras with hills of dark blue
trees behind it and an occasional pine jutting over the skyline. Behind,
in the distance, the city rose like a cluster of warts on the
side of the mountain. The birds revolved downward and dropped
lightly in the top of the highest pine and sat hunch-shouldered as if
they were supporting the sky.
  "If it's this River of Life you want to lay your pain in, then come
up," the preacher said, "and lay your sorrow here. But don't be
thinking this is the last of it because this old red river don't end
here. This old red suffering stream goes on, you people, slow to the
Kingdom of Christ. This old red river is good to Baptize in, good to
lay your faith in, good to lay your pain in, but it ain't this muddy
water here that saves you. I been all up and down this river this
week," he said. "Tuesday I was in Fortune Lake, next day in Ideal,
Friday me and my wife drove to Lulawillow to see a sick man there.
Them people didn't see no healing," he said and his face burned
redder for a second. "I never said they would."
  While he was talking a fluttering figure had begun to move forward
with a kind of butterfly movement-an old woman with
flapping arms whose head wobbled as if it might fall off any second.
She managed to lower herself at the edge of the bank and let her
arms churn in the water. Then she bent farther and pushed her face
down in it and raised herself up finally, streaming wet; and still
flapping, she turned a time or two in a blind circle until someone
reached out and pulled her back into the group.
  "She's been that way for thirteen years," a rough voice shouted.
"Pass the hat and give this kid his money. That's what he's here
for." The shout, directed out to the boy in the river, came from a
huge old man who sat like a humped stone on the bumper of a
long ancient gray automobile. He had on a gray hat that was turned
down over one ear and up over the other to expose a purple bulge
on his left temple. He sat bent forward with his hands hanging between
his knees and his small eyes half closed.
  Bevel stared at him once and then moved into the folds of Mrs.
Connin's coat and hid himself.
  The boy in the river glanced at the old man quickly and raised
his fist. "Believe Jesus or the devil!" he cried. "Testify to one or the
other!"
  "I know from my own self-experience," a woman's mysterious
voice called from the knot of people, "I know from it that this
preacher can heal. My eyes have been opened! I testify to Jesus!"
The preacher lifted his arms quickly and began to repeat all that
he had said before about the River and the Kingdom of Christ and
the old man sat on the bumper, fixing him with a narrow squint.
From time to time Bevel stared at him again from around Mrs.
Connin.
  A man in overalls and a brown coat leaned forward and dipped
his hand in the water quickly and shook it and leaned back, and a
woman held a baby over the edge of the bank and splashed its feet
with water. One man moved a little distance away and sat down
on the bank and took off his shoes and waded out into the stream;
he stood there for a few minutes with his face tilted as far back as
it would go, then he waded back and put on his shoes. All this
time, the preacher sang and did not appear to watch what went on.
  As soon as he stopped singing, Mrs. Cannin lifted Bevel up and
said, "Listen here, preacher, I got a boy from town today that I'm
keeping. His mamma's sick and he wants you to pray for her. And
this is a coincident-his name is Bevel! Bevel," she said, turning to
look at the people behind her, "same as his. Ain't that a coincident,
though?"
  There were some murmurs and Bevel turned and grinned over
her shoulder at the faces looking at him. "Bevel," he said in a loud
jaunty voice.
  "Listen," Mrs. Connin said, "have you ever been Baptized, Bevel?"
He only grinned.
  "I suspect he ain't ever been Baptized," Mrs. Connin said, raising
her eyebrows at the preacher.
  "Swang him over here," the preacher said and took a stride forward
and caught him.
  He held him in the crook of his arm and looked at the grinning
face. Bevel rolled his eyes in a comical way and thrust his face forward,
close to the preacher's. "My name is Bevvvuuuuul," he said in
a loud deep voice and let the tip of his tongue slide across his mouth.
  The preacher didn't smile. His bony face was rigid and his narrow
gray eyes reflected the almost colorless sky. There was a loud
laugh from the old man sitting on the car bumper and Bevel grasped
the back of the preacher's collar and held it tightly. The grin had
already disappeared from his face. He had the sudden feeling that
this was not a joke. Where he lived everything was a joke. From
the preacher's face, he knew immediately that nothing the preacher
said or did was a joke. "My mother named me that," he said
quickly.
  "Have you ever been Baptized?" the preacher asked.
  "What's that?" he murmured.
  "If I Baptize you," the preacher said, "you'll be able to go to the
Kingdom of Christ. You'll be washed in the river of suffering, son,
and you'll go by the deep river of life. Do you want that?"
  "Yes," the child said, and thought, I won't go back to the apartment
then, I'll go under the river.
  "You won't be the same again," the preacher said. "You'll count."
Then he turned his face to the people and began to preach and
Bevel looked over his shoulder at the pieces of the white sun scattered
in the river. Suddenly the preacher said, "All right, I'm going
to Baptize you now," and without more warning, he tightened his
hold and swung him upside down and plunged his head into the
water. He held him under while he said the words of Baptism and
then he jerked him up again and looked sternly at the gasping
child. Bevel's eyes were dark and dilated. "You count now," the
preacher said. "You didn't even count before."
  The little boy was too shocked to cry. He spit out the muddy
water and rubbed his wet sleeve into his eyes and over his face.
  "Don't forget his mamma," Mrs. Connin called. "He wants you
to pray for his mamma. She's sick."
  "Lord," the preacher said, "we pray for somebody in affiiction
who isn't here to testify. Is your mother sick in the hospital?" he
asked. "Is she in pain?"
  The child stared at him. "She hasn't got up yet," he said in a high
dazed voice. "She has a hangover." The air was so quiet he could
hear the broken pieces of the sun knocking the water.
  The preacher looked angry and startled. The red drained out of
his face and the sky appeared to darken in his eyes. There was a
loud guffaw from the bank and Mr. Paradise shouted, "Haw! Cure
the afflicted woman with the hangover!" and began to beat his knee
with his fist.

  "He's had a long day," Mrs. Connin said, standing with him in the
door of the apartment and looking sharply into the room where the
party was going on. "I reckon it's past his regular bedtime." One of
Bevel's eyes was closed and the other half closed; his nose was
running and he kept his mouth open and breathed through it. The
damp plain coat dragged down on one side.
  That would be her, Mrs. Connin decided, in the black britches--long
black satin britches and barefoot sandals and red toenails. She
was lying on half the sofa, with her knees crossed in the air and her
head propped on the arm. She didn't get up.
  "Hello Harry," she said. "Did you have a big day?" She had a
long pale face, smooth and blank, and straight sweet-patata-colored
hair, pulled back.
  The father went off to get the money. There were two other
couples. One of the men, blond with little violet-blue eyes, leaned
out of his chair and said, "Well Harry, old man, have a big day?"
  "His name ain't Harry. It's Bevel," Mrs. Connin said.
  "His name is Harry," she said from the sofa. "Whoever heard of
anybody named Bevel?"
  The little boy had seemed to be going to sleep on his feet, his
head drooping farther and farther forward; he pulled it back suddenly
and opened one eye; the other was stuck.
  "He told me this morning his name was Bevel," Mrs. Connin
said in a shocked voice. "The same as our pread1er. We been all
day at a preaching and healing at the river. He said his name was
Bevel, the same as the preacher's. That's what he told me."
  "Bevel!" his mother said. "My God! what a name."
  "This preacher is name Bevel and there's no better preacher
around," Mrs. Cannin said. "And furthermore," she added in a
defiant tone, "he Baptized this child this morning!"
His mother sat straight up. "Well the nerve!" she muttered.
  "Furthermore," Mrs. Connin said, "he's a healer and he prayed
for you to be healed."
  "Healed!" she almost shouted. "Healed of what for Christ's sake?"
  "Of your affliction," Mrs. Connin said icily.
  The father had returned with the money and was standing near
Mrs. Cannin waiting to give it to her. His eyes were lined with red
threads. "Go on, go on," he said, "I want to hear more about her
affliction. The exact nature of it has escaped ... " He waved the bill
and his voice trailed off. "Healing by prayer is mighty inexpensive,"
he murmured.
  Mrs. Connin stood a second, staring into the room, with a skeleton's
appearance of seeing everything. Then, without taking the
money, she turned and shut the door behind her. The father swung
around, smiling vaguely, and shrugged. The rest of them were looking
at Harry. The little boy began to shamble toward the bedroom.
  "Come here, Harry," his mother said. He automatically shifted
his direction toward her without opening his eyes any farther.
"Tell me what happened today," she said when he reached her. She
began to pull off his coat.
  "I don't know," he muttered.
  "Yes you do know," she said, feeling the coat heavier on one side.
She unzipped the innerlining and caught the book and a dirty handkerchief as they fell out. "Where did you get these?"
  "I don't know," he said and grabbed for them. "They're mine.
She gave them to me."
  She threw the handkerchief down and held the book too high
for him to reach and began to read it, her face after a second assuming
an exaggerated comical expression. The others moved
around and looked at it over her shoulder. "My God," somebody
said.
  One of the men peered at it sharply from behind a thick pair of
glasses. "That's valuable," he said. "That's a collector's item," and
he took it away from the rest of them and retired to another chair.
  "Don't let George go off with that," his girl said.
 "I tell you it's valuable," George said. "1832.”
  Bevel shifted his direction again toward the room where he slept.
He shut the door behind him and moved slowly in the darkness to
the bed and sat down and took off his shoes and got under the
cover. After a minute a shaft of light let in the tall silhouette of his
mother. She tiptoed lightly cross the room and sat down on the
edge of his bed. "What did that dolt of a preacher say about me?"
she whispered. "What lies have you been telling today, honey?"
  He shut his eye and heard her voice from a long way away, as if
he were under the river and she on top of it. She shook his shoulder.
"Harry," she said, leaning down and putting her mouth to his
ear, "tell me what he said." She pulled him into a sitting position
and he felt as if he had been drawn up from under the river. "Tell
me," she whispered and her bitter breath covered his face.
  He saw the pale oval close to him in the dark. "He said I'm not
the same now," he muttered. "I count."
  After a second, she lowered him by his shirt front onto the pillow.
She hung over him an instant and brushed her lips against his forehead.
Then she got up and moved away, swaying her hips lightly
through the shaft of light.

  He didn't wake up early but the apartment was still dark and
close when he did. For a while he lay there, picking his nose and
eyes. Then he sat up in bed and looked out the window. The sun
came in palely, stained gray by the glass. Across the street at the
Empire Hotel, a colored cleaning woman was looking down from an
upper window, resting her face on her folded arms. He got up and
put on his shoes and went to the bathroom and then into the front
room. He ate two crackers spread with anchovy paste, that he found
on the coffee table, and drank some ginger ale left in a bottle and
looked around for his book but it was not there.
  The apartment was silent except for the faint humming of the
refrigerator. He went into the kitchen and found some raisin bread
heels and spread a half jar of peanut butter between them and
climbed up on the tall kitchen stool and sat chewing the sandwich
slowly, wiping his nose every now and then on his shoulder. When
he finished he found some chocolate milk and drank that. He would
rather have had the ginger ale he saw but they left the bottle
openers where he couldn't reach them. He studied what was left
in the refrigerator for a while-some shriveled vegetables that she
had forgot were there and a lot of brown oranges that she bought
and didn't squeeze; there were three or four kinds of cheese and
something fishy in a paper bag; the rest was a pork bone. He left
the refrigerator door open and wandered back into the dark living
room and sat down on the sofa.
  He decided they would be out cold until one o'clock and that they
would all have to go to a restaurant for lunch. He wasn't high
enough for the table yet and the waiter would bring a highchair
and he was too big for a highchair. He sat in the middle of the
sofa, kicking it with his heels. Then he got up and wandered around
the room, looking into the ashtrays at the butts as if this might be a
habit. In his own room he had picture books and blocks but they
were for the most part torn up; he found the way to get new ones
was to tear up the ones he had. There was very little to do at any
time but eat; however, he was not a fat boy.
  He decided he would empty a few of the ashtrays on the floor.
If he only emptied a few, she would think they had fallen. He
emptied two, rubbing the ashes carefully into the rug with his
finger. Then he lay on the floor for a while, studying his feet which
he held up in the air. His shoes were still damp and he began to
think about the river.
  Very slowly, his expression changed as if he were gradually seeing
appear what he didn't know he'd been looking for. Then all of a
sudden he knew what he wanted to do.
  He got up and tiptoed into their bedroom and stood in the dim
light there, looking for her pocketbook. His glance passed her long
pale arm hanging off the edge of the bed down to the floor, and
across the white mound his father made, and past the crowded
bureau, until it rested on the pocketbook hung on the back of a chair.
He took a car-token out of it and half a package of Life Savers.
Then he left the apartment and caught the car at the corner. He
hadn't taken a suitcase because there was nothing from there he
wanted to keep.
  He got off the car at the end of the line and started down the
road he and Mrs. Connin had taken the day before. He knew there
wouldn't be anybody at her house because the three boys and the
girl went to school and Mrs. Conn in had told him she went out to
clean. He passed her yard and walked on the way they had gone
to the river. The paper brick houses were far apart and after a while
the dirt place to walk on ended and he had to walk on the edge
of the highway. The sun was pale yellow and high and hot.
  He passed a shack with an orange gas pump in front of it but
he didn't see the old man looking out at nothing in particular from
the doorway. Mr. Paradise was having an orange drink. He finished
it slowly, squinting over the bottle at the small plaid-coated figure
disappearing down the road. Then he set the empty bottle on a
bench and, still squinting, wiped his sleeve over his mouth. He
went in the shack and picked out a peppermint stick, a foot long
and two inches thick, from the candy shelf, and stuck it in his hip
pocket. Then he got in his car and drove slowly down the highway
after the boy.
  By the time Bevel came to the field speckled with purple weeds,
he was dusty and sweating and he crossed it at a trot to get into
the woods as fast as he could. Once inside, he wandered from tree
to tree, trying to find the path they had taken yesterday. Finally he
found a line Worn in the pine needles and followed it until he saw
the steep trail twisting down through the trees.
  Mr. Paradise had left his automobile back some wayan the road
and had walked to the place where he was accustomed to sit almost
every day, holding an unbaited fishline in the water while he stared
at the river passing in front of him. Anyone looking at him from
a distance would have seen an old boulder half hidden in the
bushes.
  Bevel didn't see him at all. He only saw the river, shimmering
reddish yellow, and bounded into it with his shoes and his coat on
and took a gulp. He swallowed some and spit the rest out and then
he stood there in water up to his chest and looked around him. The
sky was a clear pale blue, all in one piece-except for the hole the
sun made-and fringed around the bottom with treetops. His coat
floated to the surface and surrounded him like a strange gay lily pad
and he stood grinning in the sun. He intended not to fool with
preachers any more but to Baptize himself and to keep on going
this time until he found the Kingdom of Christ in the river. He
didn't mean to waste any more time. He put his head under the
water at once and pushed forward.
  In a second he began to gasp and sputter and his head reappeared
on the surface; he started under again and the same thing happened.
The river wouldn't have him. He tried again and came up, choking.
This was the way it had been when the preacher held him under--he
had had to fight with something that pushed him back in the
face. He stopped and thought suddenly: it's another joke, it's just
another joke! He thought how far he had come for nothing and
he began to hit and splash and kick the filthy river. His feet were
already treading on nothing. He gave one low cry of pain and
indignation. Then he heard a shout and turned his head and saw
something like a giant pig bounding after him, shaking a red and
white club and shouting. He plunged under once and this time, the
waiting current caught him like a long gentle hand and pulled him
swiftly forward and down. For an instant he was overcome with
surprise: then since he was moving quickly and knew that he was
getting somewhere, all his fury and fear left him.
  Mr. Paradise's head appeared from time to time on the surface
of the water. Finally, far downstream, the old man rose like some
ancient water monster and stood empty-handed, staring with his
dull eyes as far down the river line as he could see.

End