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of clomping up and down the cabin preparing the bag of cornmeal and starting the corn oil in the frying pan, Romana too she’s making an exquisite big salad with lots of mayonnaise and in fact poor Billie is mutely helping her setting the table and the little boy is crooning by the stove it’s almost like a happy domestic scene suddenly—Only I watch it from the porch with horrified eyes—Also because their shadows in the lamplight gone casting on the walls look huge and monsterlike and witch-like and warlock-like, I’m alone in the woods with happy ghosts—The wind is howling as the sun goes down so I go in, but I go out at once again madly to my creek, always thinking the creek itself will give me water that will clear away everything and reassure me forever (also remembering in my distress Edgar Cayce’s advice “Drink a lot of water”) but “There’s kerosene in the water!” I yell in the wind, nobody hearing—I feel like kicking the creek and screaming—I turn around and there’s the cabin with its warm interiors; the silent people inside all noticeably glum because they cant understand anyway what’s with the nut wandering in and out from cabin to creek, silent, wan faced, stupefacted, trembling and sweating like midsummer was on the roof and instead it’s even cold now—I sit in the chair with my back to the door and watch Dave as he lectures on bravely.

“What we’re having is a sacrificial banquet with all kinds of goodies you see laid in a regal spread around one little delicious fish so that we all have to pray to the fish and take tiny little bites, we only 160