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the whitening tin-framed mirror where they saw themselves in dusty silver and wondered what was the toughest road they knew.
    She went back to her chair on the porch. She led an orchestra with the spoon, and sang several songs. Henry was a hard worker, very strong for his size, and he made up stories. He never went anywhere without adventures. He once had wept in her lap at the top of a mountain. She kissed her hands, ran them down her breast, and said a prayer, for she believed in God, as did Henry—in His power, and that He made everything. That is really why they told everyone to go to hell, for they needed no one, and saw that no one believed.
    She prayed to God, surveying His hills and rising high above them, glancing at green pines, and turning humorous circles in heaven. She loved God, and she loved Henry. God made her shake like a true priest, and although she was quiet she was thundering at the hills for His sake, and for Henry’s sake.
    Henry came up the mountain in the wooden station wagon. There were books on the seat next to him, and groceries in the back. He was driving to music. She could see by the way he moved his head from side to side and was rhythmically intent on making the car sway gracefully up and down turns, through the cool sunshine air.
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    H E PULLED up and left the radio on. He got out of the car and walked around the front to face Agnes, who was on the porch, as still as a branch.
    He was dark-haired and had a wide smile. He wore a bulky olive Navy N- I jacket, denim pants, and brown leather boots. She looked at him and remembered what she had looked like in the mirror—tan, her nose a little shiny, in a white dress and crown of blond, with blue eyes sadly piercing the leaded glass darkened from age in the mountains.
    They were still, and the wind ceased. “Well,” she said, and raised her eyebrows slightly.
    â€œI told them that I wouldn’t go,” he said. “That I wouldn’t go to prison either, that we both would go into the mountains and fight there to the death, on the little point, for what we believed. And when I said it, I meant it. Were right, aren’t we, Agnes?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThen they met for about ten minutes. When they came out, the psychiatrist took me aside and told me I was not fit for military service.”
    Agnes lifted the sheets of her dress, floated down the steps, twirled in slow motion over millions of particles of white dust, circled dizzy around Henry while he laughed and leaned back and looked at her blue sparkling eyes. “We’re both crazy,” he said. “Aren’t we?”
    â€œYes,” said Agnes, “and we’re free.” And they sat on the wooden steps of the porch and said that the day was especially fine.
    â€œWhy,” Henry said, “do you have that spoon so tightly in your hand?”
    And Agnes began to cry.

RUIN
    M Y FATHER was a cattle rancher in Jamaica. One day after the war he had become sick after eating a bad piece of frozen meat, and that was it. Suddenly all our cane went down and men began putting up fences. By himself my father took the Oracabessa launch to Cuba, went up into the mountains he said, and came back a week later with a Cuban he had known during the war in North Africa. Pappy was his name, and he had two teeth in his mouth and looked thin and stupid, but he knew cattle.
    It was a risk for my father to take the Oracabessa launch across the straits in September. It was only ninety miles, but September in Jamaica is the time for bad storms; they come up quickly. He was very daring, my mother told me, after the war, and I remember it a bit myself. All the men were a little like that. My mother said that after Al Alamain my father thought he could do anything. He was impetuous, like a young boy, the war having taught him both how temporary life is, and how valuable.
    He had been a cane grower all his life, that was what he knew, but he was willing