"Well, that sounds mysterious," I said.

"To see about some game birds. Anyway I thought you might like to get out of here for some fresh air. You want to go?"

I took a deep breath. "Sure," I said. I wasn't sure at all, but my mind had apparently made itself up. "Okay. I could use some fresh air."

Loyd gave a funny little nod, and went out through the gate. Jack disappeared behind him into the cactus jungle.

Chapter 10

HOMERO

10 The Mask

He is lying on his own examining table, resting his eyes. The telephone buzzes quietly but Mrs. Quintana, his receptionist, has given up the battle with insurance forms and gone home.

He places his long hands over his face, the fingertips lightly touching his forehead, thumbs resting on the maxillary bones beneath his eyes. His office in the hospital basement is cool even in this late-September heat, and pleasant in winter as well. As practical and comforting as a cave. The lack of windows has never been a problem; artificial lighting is adequate. He has just examined his last patient of the day, a sixteen-year-old with six small gold rings piercing the cartilage of her left ear. She is expecting twins. They will be born small, and in trouble. There was no reason to tell her everything.

He imagines the procedure by which the tiny gold wires were inserted through flesh and spongy bone. It would have to be painful. He is mystified. Children devote slavish attention to these things, but can't be bothered with prophylactics.

He drifts between wakefulness and sleep, thinking of Codi. Her eyes are downturned and secretive, her heart clearly hardened against him already, to have done this. Her hair is in her eyes. She flips it sideways, chewing the inside of her lip and looking out the window when he talks to her. She'd wanted pierced ears at thirteen; he'd explained that self-mutilation was preposterous and archaic. Now they discuss shoes. He wants to ask, "Do you know what you have inside you? Does your sister know?" Hallie is young to understand reproductive matters but it's impossible that she wouldn't know, they're so much of a single mind, and he is outside of it completely. He has no idea what he can say.

She's in the fifth or sixth month, from the look of her, although Codi was always too thin and now is dangerously thin, and so skillful at disguising it with her clothes he can only tell by other signs. The deepened pigmentation under her eyes and across the bridge of her nose, for one thing, is identical to the mask of pregnancy Alice wore both times, first with Codi, then with Hallie. It stuns him. He feels a sharp pain in his spleen when he looks across the breakfast table each morning and sees this: his wife's face. The ghost of their happiest time returned to inhabit the miserable body of their child. He can't help feeling he has damaged them all, just by linking them together. His family is a web of women dead and alive, with himself at the center like a spider, driven by different instincts. He lies mute, hearing only in the tactile way that a spider hears, touching the threads of the web with long extended fingertips and listening. Listening for trapped life.

Chapter 11

COSIMA

11 A River on the Moon

Loyd and I didn't go to Whiteriver. He was called out on Friday for a seven-day stand on a switch engine in Lordsburg. He seemed disappointed and promised we'd go another time. Loyd didn't have much seniority on the railroad; he'd only moved back to Grace a few years earlier, and at Southern Pacific he was still getting what he called "bumped" a lot. It was hard to plan his time off.

I was somewhat relieved. I'd been unsure of what I was getting into, and had my doubts. Once I found out, I had more.

I'd asked J.T. what "game birds" were. He and I were out working in the old plum orchard one evening, pruning dead branches out of the trees. My job was mainly to stay out of the way of falling timber. It was a fair distance from the house, and Emelina had asked if I could go along to keep an eye on him. She wasn't the type to worry, but a man hanging from the treetops wielding a chainsaw is a nerve-racking sight, believe me. Even if he isn't your husband.

J.T. informed me that game birds were fighting cocks. He was taking a break just then, leaning on one hand against a tree trunk and drinking what seemed like gallons of water.

I was stunned. "You mean like cockfights."

J.T. smiled. "You been talking to Loyd?"

"He invited me to go with him up to Whiteriver. He said something about game birds, and..." I laughed at myself. "I don't know, I was thinking of something you'd eat. Cornish hens."

He laughed too. He offered me the jar of water and I drank from it before handing it back. I was surprised at the easy intimacy I felt with J.T. We hadn't been friends in high school-he was, after all, captain of the football team. Through no meanness on his part, but simply because of the natural laws of adolescent segregation, we might as well have gone to high school on different planets. Being neighbors again now brought back what we'd forgotten then: we had a relationship that dated back even before Emelina. We were next-door neighbors in toddlerhood. We'd played together before male and female had meaning.