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"But I don't know why I never had nothin but bad luck ever since I got this hat. It ain't supposed to be that way. It's supposed to be bringin me all the good luck the Paleys ever had."
He glared at Dorothy and said, "Do you know what? I had good luck until I showed you that place, you know, the flowers. And then, after you know what, everythin went sour as old milk. What did you do, take the power out a me by doin what you did? Did The Old Woman In The Earth send you to me so you'd draw the muscle and luck and life out a me if I found the hat when Old Guy placed it in my path?"
He lurched up from the easy chair, clutched two quarts of beer from the refrigerator to his chest, and staggered toward the door.
"Kin't stand the smell in here. Talk about my smell. I'm sweet violets, compared to the fish a some a you. I'm goin out where the air's fresh. I'm goin out and talk to The Old Guy In The Sky, hear what the thunder has to say to me. He understands me; he don't give a damn if I'm a ugly old man that's ha'f-ape."
Swiftly, Deena ran in front of him and held out her claws at him like a gaunt, enraged alley cat.
"So that's it! You've had the indecency to insult this young girl! You evil beast!"
Old Man halted, swayed, carefully deposited the two quarts on the floor. Then he shuffled to the picture of Deena's mother and ripped it from the wall. The nails screeched; so did Deena.
"What are you going to do?"
"Somethin I been wantin to do for a long long time. Only I felt sorry for you. Now I don't. I'm go
"Over my dead body you'll throw that in the creek!" screamed Deena.
"Have it your way," he growled, lurching forward and driving her to one side with his shoulder.
Deena grabbed at the frame of the picture he held in his hand, but he hit her over the knuckles with it. Then he lowered it to the floor, keeping it from failing over with his leg while he bent over and picked up the two quarts in his huge hand. Clutching them, he squatted until his stump was level with the top part of the frame. The stump clamped down over the upper part of the frame, he straightened, holding it tightly, lurched toward the door, and was gone into the driving rain and crashing lightning.
Deena stared into the darkness for a moment, then ran after him.
Stu
She ran to the door, looked out, turned back to Gummy.
"What's got into him?" she cried. "He's so cruel, yet I know he has a soft heart. Why must he be this way?"
"It's you," said Gummy. "He thought it din't matter how he looked, what he did, he was still a Paley. He thought his sweat would get you like it did all em chicks he was braggin about, no matter how uppity the sweet young thin was. 'N you hurt him when you din't dig him. Specially cause he thought more a you 'n anybody before.
"Why'd you think life's been so miserable for us since he found you? What the hell, a man's a man, he's always got the eye for the chicks, right? Deena din't see that. Deena hates Old Man. But Deena kin't do without him, either..."
"I have to stop them," said Dorothy, and she plunged out into the black and white world.
Just outside the door, she halted, bewildered. Behind her, light streamed from the shanty, and to the north was a dim glow from the city of Onaback. But elsewhere was darkness. Darkness, except when the lightning burned away the night for a dazzling frightening second.
She ran around the shanty toward the Kickapoo, some fifty yards away -- she was sure that they'd be somewhere by the bank of the creek. Halfway to the stream, another flash showed her a white figure by the bank.
It was Deena in her terrycloth robe, Deena now sitting up in the mud, bending forward, shaking with sobs.
"I got down on my knees," she moaned. "To him, to him. And I begged him to spare my mother. But he said I'd thank him later for freeing me from worshiping a false goddess. He said I'd kiss his hand."
Deena's voice rose to a scream. "And then he did it! He tore my blessed mother to bits! Threw her in the creek! I'll kill him! I'll kill him!"
Dorothy patted Deena's shoulder. "There, there. You'd better get back to the house and get dry. It's a bad thing he's done, but he's not in his right mind. Where'd he go?"
"Toward that clump of cottonwoods where the creek runs into the river."
"You go back," said Dorothy. "I'll handle him. I can do it."
Deena seized her hand.
"Stay away from him. He's hiding in the woods now. He's dangerous, dangerous as a wounded boar. Or as one of his ancestors when they were hurt and hunted by ours."
"Ours?" said Dorothy. "You mean you believe his story?"
"Not all of it. Just part. That tale of his about the mass invasion of Europe and King Paley's hat is nonsense. Or, at least it's been distorted through God only knows how many thousands of years. But it's true he's at least part Neanderthal. Listen! I've fallen low, I'm only a junkman's whore. Not even that, now -- Old Man never touches me anymore, except to hit me. And that's not his fault, really. I ask for it; I want it.
"But I'm not a moron. I got books from the library, read what they said about the Neanderthal. I studied Old Man carefully. And I know he must be what he says he is. Gummy, too -- she's at least a quarter-breed."
Dorothy pulled her hand out of Deena's grip. "I have to go. I have to talk to Old Man, tell him I'm not seeing him anymore."
"Stay away from him," pleaded Deena, again seizing Dorothy's hand. "You'll go to talk, and you'll stay to do what I did. What a score of others did. We let him make love to us because he isn't human. Yet, we found Old Man as human as any man, and some of us stayed after the lust was gone because love had come in."
Dorothy gently unwrapped Deena's fingers from her hand and began walking away.
Soon she came to the group of cottonwood trees by the bank where the creek and the river met and there she stopped.
"Old Man!" she called in a break between the rolls of thunder. "Old Man! It's Dorothy!"
A growl as of a bear disturbed in his cave answered her, and a figure like a tree trunk come to life stepped out of the inkiness between the cotton woods.
"What you come for?" he said, approaching so close to her that his enormous nose almost touched hers. "You want me just as I am, Old Man Paley, descendant a the Real Folk -- Paley, who loves you? Or you come to give the batty old junkman a tranquillizer so you kin take him by the hand like a lamb and lead him back to the slaughterhouse, the puzzle factory, where they'll stick a ice pick back a his eyeball and rip out what makes him a man and not an ox."
"I came..."
"Yeah?"
"For this!" she shouted, and she snatched off his hat and raced away from him, toward the river.
Behind her rose a bellow of agony so loud she could hear it even above the thunder. Feet splashed as he gave pursuit.
Suddenly, she slipped and sprawled face down in the mud. At the same time, her glasses fell off. Now it was her turn to feel despair, for in this halfworld she could see nothing without her glasses except the lightning flashes. She must find them. But if she delayed to hunt for them, she'd lose her headstart.
She cried out with joy, for her groping fingers found what they sought. But the breath was knocked out of her, and she dropped the glasses again as a heavy weight fell upon her back and half stu