“He was a thief,” said Adam. “I didn’t think so once, but I do now. He stole from the G.A.R.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Lee.

There were tears in Adam’s eyes. Very often these days tears came suddenly to Adam. Lee said, “Now you sit right here and I’ll bring you some breakfast. Do you know who’s coming to see us this afternoon? Abra.”

Adam said, “Abra?” and then, “Oh, sure, Abra. She’s a nice girl.”

“I love her,” said Lee simply. He got Adam seated in front of the card table in his bedroom. “Would you like to work on the cutout puzzle while I get your breakfast?”

“No, thank you. Not this morning. I want to think about the dream before I forget it.”

When Lee brought the breakfast tray Adam was asleep in his chair. Lee awakened him and read the Salinas Journal to him while he ate and then helped him to the toilet.

The kitchen was sweet with tarts, and some of the berries had boiled over in the oven and burned, making the sharp, bitter-sweet smell pleasant and astringent.

There was a quiet rising joy in Lee. It was the joy of change. Time’s drawing down for Adam, he thought. Time must be drawing down for me, but I don’t feel it. I feel immortal. Once when I was very young I felt mortal—but not any more. Death has receded. He wondered if this were a normal way to feel.

And he wondered what Adam meant, saying his father was a thief. Part of the dream, maybe. And then Lee’s mind played on the way it often did. Suppose it were true—Adam, the most rigidly honest man it was possible to find, living all his life on stolen money. Lee laughed to himself—now this second will, and Aron, whose purity was a little on the self-indulgent side, living all his life on the profits from a whorehouse. Was this some kind of joke or did things balance so that if one went too far in one direction an automatic slide moved on the scale and the balance was re-established?

He thought of Sam Hamilton. He had knocked on so many doors. He had the most schemes and plans, and no one would give him any money. But of course—he had so much, he was so rich. You couldn’t give him any more. Riches seem to come to the poor in spirit, the poor in interest and joy. To put it straight—the very rich are a poor bunch of bastards. He wondered if that were true. They acted that way sometimes.

He thought of Cal burning the money to punish himself. And the punishment hadn’t hurt him as badly as the crime. Lee said to himself, “If there should happen to be a place where one day I’ll come up with Sam Hamilton, I’ll have a lot of good stories to tell him,” and his mind went on, “But so will he!”

Lee went in to Adam and found him trying to open the box that held the clippings about his father.

3

The wind blew cold that afternoon. Adam insisted on going to look in on the draft board. Lee wrapped him up and started him off. “If you feel faint at all, just sit down wherever you are,” Lee said.

“I will,” Adam agreed. “I haven’t felt dizzy all day. Might stop in and have Victor look at my eyes.”

“You wait till tomorrow. I’ll go with you.”

“We’ll see,” said Adam, and he started out, swinging his arms with bravado.

Abra came in with shining eyes and a red nose from the frosty wind, and she brought such pleasure that Lee giggled softly when he saw her.

“Where are the tarts?” she demanded. “Let’s hide them from Cal.” She sat down in the kitchen. “Oh, I’m so glad to be back.”

Lee started to speak and choked and then what he wanted to say seemed good to say—to say carefully. He hovered over her. “You know, I haven’t wished for many things in my life,” he began. “I learned very early not to wish for things. Wishing just brought earned disappointment.”

Abra said gaily, “But you wish for something now. What is it?”

He blurted out, “I wish you were my daughter—” He was shocked at himself. He went to the stove and turned out the gas under the teakettle, then lighted it again.

She said softly, “I wish you were my father.”

He glanced quickly at her and away. “You do?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you.”

Lee went quickly out of the kitchen. He sat in his room, gripping his hands tightly together until he stopped choking. He got up and took a small carved ebony box from the top of his bureau. A dragon climbed toward heaven on the box. He carried the box to the kitchen and laid it on the table between Abra’s hands. “This is for you,” he said, and his tone had no inflection.

She opened the box and looked down on a small, dark green jade button, and carved on its surface was a human right hand, a lovely hand, the fingers curved and in repose. Abra lifted the button out and looked at it, and then she moistened it with the tip of her tongue and moved it gently over her full lips, and pressed the cool stone against her cheek.

Lee said, “That was my mother’s only ornament.”

Abra got up and put her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek, and it was the only time such a thing had ever happened in his whole life.

Lee laughed. “My Oriental calm seems to have deserted me,” he said. “Let me make the tea, darling. I’ll get hold of myself that way.” From the stove he said, “I’ve never used that word—never once to anybody in the world.”

Abra said, “I woke up with joy this morning.”