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stomach of public education had found her indigestible and was spitting her back. But it was only Norma Crandall, calling to tell them that Jud had picked the last of the corn and they were welcome to a dozen ears if they wanted it. Louis went over with a shopping bag and scolded Jud for not letting him help pick it.
    â€œMost of it ain’t worth a tin shit anyway,” Jud said.
    â€œYou’ll kindly spare that talk while I’m around,” Norma said. “She came out on the porch with iced tea on an antique Coca-Cola tray.
    â€œSorry, my love.”
    â€œHe ain’t sorry a bit,” Norma said to Louis and sat down with a wince.
    â€œSaw Ellie get on the bus,” Jud said, lighting a Chesterfield.
    â€œShe’ll be fine,” Norma said. “They almost always are.”
    Almost, Louis thought morbidly.
    *  *  *
    But Ellie was fine. She came home at noon smiling and sunny, her blue first-day-of-school dress belling gracefully around her scabbed shins (and there was a new scrape on one knee to marvel over), a picture of what might have been two children or perhaps two walking gantries in one hand, one shoe untied, one ribbon missingfrom her hair, shouting, “We sang ‘Old MacDonald’! Mommy! Daddy! We sang ‘Old MacDonald’! Same one as in the Carstairs Street School!”
    Rachel glanced over at Louis, who was sitting in the windowseat with Gage on his lap. The baby was almost asleep. There was something sad in Rachel’s glance, and although she looked away quickly, Louis felt a moment of terrible panic. We’re really going to get old, he thought. It’s really true. No one’s going to make an exception for us. She’s on her way . . . and so are we.
    Ellie ran over to him, trying to show him her picture, her new scrape, and tell him about “Old MacDonald” and Mrs. Berryman all at the same time. Church was twining in and out between her legs, purring loudly, and Ellie was somehow, almost miraculously, not tripping over him.
    â€œShh,” Louis said and kissed her. Gage had gone to sleep, unmindful of all the excitement. “Just let me put the baby to bed and then I’ll listen to everything.”
    He took Gage up the stairs, walking through hot slanting September sunshine, and as he reached the landing, such a premonition of horror and darkness struck him that he stopped—stopped cold—and looked around in surprise, wondering what could possibly have come over him. He held the baby tighter, almost clutching him, and Gage stirred uncomfortably. Louis’s arms and back had broken out in great rashes of gooseflesh.
    What’s wrong? he wondered, confused and frightened. His heart was racing; his scalp felt cool and abruptly too small to cover his skull; he could feel thesurge of adrenaline behind his eyes. Human eyes really did bug out when fear was extreme, he knew; they did not just widen but actually bulged as blood pressure climbed and the hydrostatic pressure of the cranial fluids increased. What the hell is it? Ghosts? Christ, it really feels as if something just brushed by me in this hallway, something I almost saw.
    Downstairs the screen door whacked against its frame.
    Louis creed jumped, almost screamed, and then laughed. It was simply one of those psychological cold pockets people sometimes passed through—no more, no less. A momentary fugue. They happened; that was all. What had Scrooge said to the ghost of Jacob Marley? You may be no more than an underdone bit of potato. There’s more gravy than grave to you. And that was more correct—physiologically as well as psychologically—than Charles Dickens had probably known. There were no ghosts, at least not in his experience. He had pronounced two dozen people dead in his career and had never once felt the passage of a soul.
    He took Gage into his room and laid him in his crib. As he pulled the blanket up over his son,