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 “But don’t you know which way it is? Isn’t there any way you could tell?” She bent and whipped her legs with the broken branch.

“Well, the lake is over yonder, and we were west of Mandeville last night—”

“You're just guessing,” she interrupted harshly.

“Yes,” he answered. “I guess you are right.”

“Well, we’ve got to go somewhere. We can’t stand here.” She twitched her shoulders, writhing her body beneath her dress. “Which way, then?”

“Well, we w—”

She turned abruptly in the direction she had chosen. “Come on, I’ll die here.” She strode on ahead.

She was trying to explain it to Pete. The sun had risen sinister and hot, climbing into a drowsy haze, and up from a low vague region neither water nor sky clouds like fat little girls in starched frocks marched solemnly.

“It’s a thing they join at that place he’s going to. Only they have to work to join it, and sometimes you don’t even get to join it then. And the ones that do join it don’t get anything except a little button or something.”

“Pipe down and try it again,” Pete told her, leaning with his elbows and one heel hooked backward on the rail, his hat slanted across his reckless dark face, squinting his eyes against the smoke of his cigarette. “What’re you talking about?”

“There’s something in the water,” Jenny remarked with placid astonishment, creasing her belly over the rail and staring downward into the faintly rippled water while the land breeze molded her little green dress. “It must of fell off the boatOh, I’m talking about that college he’s going to. You