Americas involment in the Holocaust

Americas involment in the Holocaust Free Online Research Papers When the war broke out in 1930. The world couldn’t know what was really happening in Germany or what Adolf Hitler had in store for any jew, gypsy, homosexual and any other individual that got in the way of his master plan. America during the Holocaust was considered one of the most powerful nations in the world. Economically, politically and socially. There are many reasons why America wasn’t much involved during the holocaust. United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt hurried after the holocaust broke out in Europe and gathered his cabinet and military advisors together, there ut was agreed that the U.S. would stay neutral. One reason because the United States weren’t directly threatened and they had no reason to be involved. This reason was a valid one because it was the American policy to stay neutral in any affair not having anything to do with them unless American soil was threatened directly. Some jews escape from the tragic thing happening and made it to America. As Jews in Germany faced the violence and discrimination that was brought on by Hitler’s government. Some American Jewish leaders urged with the U.S. State Department to change their standards regards to German Jews immigration. In 1936 U.S. immigration officials did change their considerations to include the levels of a German jews educat ion, job skills, and if they had American relatives. In only one year with the new policy the immigration had doubled in the amount of visas they granted to the German Jews. After so many Jews were allowed in the U.S. the Americans were getting upset because there was little job opportunities for them. So the State Department started many up excuses why their visas were denied and immigration became so restricted . During the Holocaust Anti-Semitism was a reason why the U.S. didn’t enter the war zone in the beginning. Anti-Semitism was a factor that limited American Jewish actions during the war time and put American Jews in a difficult position. In the late 1930s the levels of anti-Semitism was high and continued to rise into the 1940s. there was another type of Anti-Semitism during this time called passive Anti-Semitism. While many Americans wouldn’t physically harm a jew they had negative internal feelings towards them. Jews have been continuously looked down on and been used as scapegoats. Research Papers on America's involment in the HolocaustThe Effects of Illegal ImmigrationAppeasement Policy Towards the Outbreak of World War 219 Century Society: A Deeply Divided EraAssess the importance of Nationalism 1815-1850 EuropeQuebec and CanadaNever Been Kicked Out of a Place This NiceCapital PunishmentComparison: Letter from Birmingham and CritoEffects of Television Violence on ChildrenHip-Hop is Art

MDR or Manifestation Determination Review

MDR or Manifestation Determination Review The MDR or Manifestation Determination Review is a meeting which must take place within ten days of a behavior infraction that would cause a student to be removed from their current placement in a public school for more than 10 days. This is a cumulative number: in other words, during a single school year when a child is suspended or removed from school, before an eleventh (11th) day, the school district is required to notify the parents. That includes a suspension of more than 10 days. After a student with disabilities approaches 7 or 8 days of suspension, it is common for schools to attempt to aggressively address the problem to avoid the Manifestation Determination. If a parent disagrees with the result of that meeting, they are well within their rights to take the school district to due process. If the hearing officer agrees with the parents, the district may be required to provide compensatory education. What Will Happen After an MDR Takes Place? An MDR is held to determine if the behavior is a manifestation of the students disability. If it is determined that it is,  in fact, part of his/her disability, then the IEP team must determine if appropriate interventions have been in place. That should include having an FBA (Functional Behavioral Analysis) and a BIP (Behavior Intervention or Improvement Plan) are in place and followed as written. If the behavior relating to the students disability has been addressed appropriately with an FBA and BIP, and the program has been followed with fidelity, the students placement may be changed (with the approval of parents.) Students diagnosed with autism, emotional disturbances, or oppositional  defiant disorder may exhibit behaviors that are related to their diagnosis. The school would need to provide evidence that the school has addressed his/her aggressive, inappropriate or offensive behavior, that from a general education student would earn a suspension or even expulsion. Once again, if there is strong evidence that the behavior has been addressed, then a change of placement to a more restrictive placement might be appropriate. Students with other disabilities may also exhibit aggression, offensive or inappropriate behavior. If the behavior is related to their disability (perhaps a cognitive inability to understand their behavior) they may also qualify for an FBA and BIP.   If it is unrelated to their diagnosis, the district (also known as the Local Education Authority or LEA can exercise the regular disciplinary procedure. Then other legal contingencies apply, such as whether there is a progressive discipline policy in place, whether the school has followed the policy and whether the discipline is reasonably appropriate for the infraction.   Also Known As Manifestation Determination Meeting Example When Jonathon was suspended for stabbing another student with scissors, an MDR or Manifestation Determination Review was scheduled within the ten days to determine whether Jonathon should stay a Pine Middle School or placed in the districts special school for behavior.

The law of contracts and the law of torts Essay

The law of contracts and the law of torts - Essay Example Hadley v. Baxendale involved millers whose crankshaft had broken, and they called upon the defendants to deliver a crankshaft to repair. The defendants delayed sending the crankshaft to plaintiffs for seven days when it was only supposed to take two. The plaintiffs milling operation ceased during the period this seven day period. Therefore, the plaintiffs sued for profits lost during the five extra days that the crankshaft was not delivered. The court ruled that the plaintiffs could not recover such loss, as it could not fairly and reasonably be considered to arise naturally from the breach. Hadley established the basic rule for how to determine the scope of consequential damages arising from a breach of contract, and this rule is that parties should only be liable for all losses that ought to have been contemplated by the contracting parties, and those that arise naturally, in the ordinary course, from the breach. Hadley's basic rule regarding damages was modified to the composite t est of â€Å"reasonably foreseeable as liable to result† in Victoria Laundry (Windsor) Ltd v Newman Industries Ltd (1949). Victoria Laundry regarded a laundry which ordered a boiler from Newman Industries. Newman Industries delivered the boiler five months late. During this period of time, Victoria Laundry had to forego a lucrative contract with the ministry of supply, due to the Victoria Laundry's limited laundry cleaning capacity, which was a result of not having the boiler.

The Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada Essay

The Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada - Essay Example With the laws that govern intellectual property being clear on the legality of the limited access to copyrighted songs on the internet, the demand for royalty from the authors causes confusion on the extent of justified free access to such songs. The case between the two entities begs the question of where to draw the line between the freedom for information access and the copyright laws. This research aims to explore the flawlessness of the Canadian copyright laws that stipulate that the free previews comprise fair dealing with the intent of research.   Using both CCH v. Law Society of Upper Canada and Alberta (Education) v. Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright), explore the validity of the Canadian copyright law regarding the use of reviews for the purposes of research   This investigation hinges upon methods and mechanisms that aim to uncover answers to the research questions. The selected methods of research emanating from the significant research needs. The sources that the research utilizes are also accessible and available for analysis. This study shall take into consideration some legal principles and beliefs as regarding the application of the copyright law and the right of access to information in Canada and the world through. The study will concentrate on the information that exists and the interrelation of different entities on the validity and significance of copyright laws in a society with special interest to Canada and focus on the Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada v. Bell Canada scenario.   The research will use different methods of investigations namely, documentary sources, interviews and questionnaires.

United States History Essay Example for Free

United States History Essay The years from 1929 to 1945 played a big role in the history of the economy, political and social development in the United States. The paper discusses the controversial Great Depression in the United States as well as the country’s involvement in World War II. The important details are written and studied here. INTRODUCTION In 1929, the United States of America has been involved in its own controversies as well as affected the many other countries of the world because of the downfall of its economy. The Presidents of the United States in the controversial periods were involved in trying to uphold the economic situation in the country as well as being a powerful country around the world at that time. The United States of America had to face the Great Depression and WWII at the same time. Only then did the economy and political stability of the country was regained. Isolationism is a foreign economic policy stance applied by the 29th and 30th presidents of the United States, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge respectively. This is one policy that many historians blame for the stock market crash in 1929 since it applies the laissez-faire approach. It was also said that the isolationist attitude of the Americans at that time were displayed by both presidents. In the latter years, leaders under the administration of President Roosevelt grew sentiments for the same idea of isolationism. Herbert Hoover took office as the 31st president of the United States of America from March 4, 1929 – March 4, 1933. During his presidency of the United States, the stock market crash of 1929 happened. He believed that interfering with the economy is not a part of the government responsibility and was accused by some critics of taking laissez-faire stance. Due to his disregard of the economic crisis on the nation, many Americans lost their jobs and homes and he was rated very poorly among all the presidents of the United States (Krugman, 2008). Many people believed that President Hoover had huge responsibility in salvaging the country from Great Depression after taking over the presidential office. On the other hand, there are many who believe that he also did well as the president of the US especially in the midst of the economic crisis. His being the Secretary of Commerce before being the president is the standard basis on this argument (Reich, 2008). The Crash of 1929 is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated events that transpired in the economic stability of the United States of all time. The first time the stocks went low continuously is also known as the Black Tuesday. It was on October 29, 1929, just a few months after President Hoover took office. American investors lost billions of dollars worth of investments in a matter of one month. One reason that caused the stock market crash seen by the historians was the rampant buying on margin practice of the people in 1929 as well as confluence factors. Hooverville is what the shanty towns around the United States are called. The Americans who suffered greatly from the Great Depression ended up building shanty towns in America. These towns were named after the President Herbert Hoover by Charles Michelson, chief publicity of the Democratic National Committee. (Kaltenborn, 1956) There were also other notable events that happened within the period of 1929 and 1945. One of these is the Bonus Army also known as the Battle of Anacostia Flats which occurred in June, 1932 where the World War I veterans camped in demonstration outside Washington D. C. during the Hoover’s presidency. One of the important names to note of during this period was Franklin Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States of America. He served the United States of America as president from March 4, 1933 to April 12, 1945. He was a figure of the century for being the president to battle the economic crisis as well as the World War II. Under his presidency, he made the New Deal for the recovery of the economy, unemployment and for the reforms the system of the American banking. The New Deal (1933-1936) was a promise from President Roosevelt to the American citizens during his nomination address. After taking office, President Roosevelt immediately worked to provide the Americans what he promised them in his nomination speech. The new deal he had for the country was for the immediate relief. The banks were in panic and so he immediately proposed bill that will put the bank into financial stability. In the New Deal of President Roosevelt, the continuation of major relief program was included. However, it was named as Federal Emergency Relief Administration. The New Deal agencies were the Civilian Conservation Corps, Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the Federal Trade Commission. He also expanded the former President Hoover’s agency, Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Recovery on the economic situation was through federal spending. The reformation of the economy was passed on the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), whereas the unanimous decision of the U. S. Supreme Court found it to be unconstitutional. However, the president opposed the decision of the Supreme Court. The Banking Holiday was declared by then new President Roosevelt after him taking the seat into office. As the president, he called special Congress session to institute the mandatory bank holiday that would last for four days. The holiday was to give way for the federal inspections of banks on their financial security. The Emergency Banking Relief Act (March 9, 1933) and the amendment of the Trading with Enemy Act are part of the reform under the Roosevelt administration. There was a Second New Deal after the congress election in 1935 bringing more legislation. The â€Å"Alphabet Soup† or the Alphabet Agencies refers to the many acronyms and abbreviations the legislation, programs and agencies linked with President Roosevelt’s New Deal. It was named coined after the alphabet soup noodles. The acronyms and abbreviations the Alphabet Soup refers to the following: Agricultural Adjustment Administration or AAA which is to provide federal subsidies to farmers creating numerous new jobs through the Civil Conservation Corps or CCC, Civil Works Administration or CWA, the Public Works Administration or PWA, and the Tennessee Valley Authority or TVA. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration or FERA was also established to provide relief on the state level, while the National Industrial Recovery Act or NIRA was passed to salvage nations failing factories. Huey P. Long of Louisiana was a senator from January 25, 1932 – September 10, 1935. He is the major critic of the president’s New Deal. According to him, the New Deal that the president was offering at that time is not doing any help for the betterment of the Americans’ situation. He has a totally different principle from Roosevelt. He believed that the Great Depression was because of the income inequality therefore proposing that the tax levy on the rich American must be bigger so that the normal families will survive. He was popular during the first term of President Roosevelt but was assassinated in 1935. From the beginning of World War II in 1939 during the administration of President Roosevelt, rationing system was applied in the United States. This system was applied to gasoline because of the shortage in the Eastern states of America. The reason for this is because in those years, petroleum products were carried by tankers. The dangers on tankers carrying petroleum were faced with operating U-Boats just off the US coast. Moreover, the speed limit of 35 mph to save fuel was imposed. In 1942, tires were also rationed because of the interruption on the supplies of natural rubber. By November in 1943, almost all the basic commodities were supplied to the people through rationing. The bombing of Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, 1941 by the Japanese Empire opened the involvement of the United States Military to World War II. After the military involvement of the United States in World War II, the need for arms and cooperation of the Allied countries’ civilian forces had developed the informal term of home front. This means that the country at war and so are the populace of the country if need be. Hiroshima is the first city in the empire of Japan that was attacked by the United States of America with the nuclear weapon named â€Å"Little Boy†. The attack was made on August 6, 1945 under the executive order of the U. S. President Truman. Over 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima. The nuclear bombing followed in Nagasaki on August 6, 1945. After six days, the Japanese Empire surrendered to the Allied Powers. On September 2, 1945, the Instrument of Surrender was signed ending the Pacific War and the World War II. Germany signed the Instrument of Surrender also ending World War II in the Europe. REFERENCES: Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty!. (2004). W. W. Norton Company. New York City. ISBN 0-39-397873-5 Krugman, Paul. (December 28, 2008). Fifty Herbert Hoovers. New York Times. Retrieved May 9, 2009. http://www. nytimes. com/2008/12/29/opinion/29krugman. html? _r=1. Reich, Robert B. (May 2008). Interview with Robert B. Reich. The Duncan Group, Inc. Retrieved May 9, 2009. http://www. duncanentertainment. com/interview_reich. php Kaltenborn, Hans. (1956). It Seems Like Yesterday. G. P. Putnam’s Sons. New York City. Page 88. Emergency Banking Relief Act of 1933. (1933). U. S. Statutes at Large (73rd Congress, 1933). Documents of American History. Retrieved on May 10, 2009. http://tucnak. fsv. cuni. cz/~calda/Documents/1930s/EmergBank_1933. html. Roosevelt, Franklin D. (July 2, 1932). Roosevelts Nomination Address. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. Retreived May 10, 2009. http://www. feri. org/archives/speeches/jul0232. cfm. Hawley, Ellis. The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly (1966) Fordham University Press. p. 124 World War II Rationing. AmeHistoricalSociety. Retrieved May 10, 2009. http://www. ameshistoricalsociety. org/exhibits/events/rationing. htm#items. Adams, S. Crawford, A. (2000). World War II. First edition. Printed in association with the Imperial War Museum. Eyewitness Books Series. New York, Doring Kindersley Limited. Hakim, Joy (1995). A History of Us: War, Peace and all that Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509514-6.

Philosophical Justifications for Physical Education

Philosophical Justifications for Physical Education Issues in Physical Education Examine the implications of the various philosophical justifications for Physical Education for the teaching of the subject. The philosophies of the philosophers Within a traditional context, Physical Education (PE) has been perceived as a non-academic subject in comparison to more well established subjects such as mathematics and the sciences. Different philosophers and commentators conjure various justifications by which PE can be placed within the National Curriculum (NC) and how the subject itself should be approached and delivered. This essay attempts to highlight and examine these philosophies, their implications and how they affect the perceptions and delivery of PE in this country. Education is essentially associated with attainment of valuable knowledge. This knowledge, according to Hirst (1974, 1992, 1994) and Peter (1966), is that of theoretical and intellectual attainment. It is knowledge in this context which has an impact on our everyday lives. This is what is often termed as ‘orthodox’ education which arguably excludes PE. Reid (1998) supports this view stating that education must comprise (of) an acquisition of valuable knowledge. (Taking this into account) From Reid’s perspective, it follows that (it can be argued that) PE (does in fact) can be considered to develop valuable knowledge on its particular subject matter. (Moreover) In addition to this, Reid (1998) reinforces his hypothesis by highlighting the link between the theoretical concept and the resulting practical knowledge. This is as a result of a ‘new orthodoxy’ construct within PE, (developed from attempts) which developed from a perceived need to justify PE’s intellectual properties. These include the increase in academic PE through examinations and the establishment of PE degrees and Sports Science degrees. Reid (1998) (believes) suggests that PE fulfils the criteria that education demands, simply by practical knowledge through experience to develop ‘knowing how’. (So) When this is reinforced with theoretical knowledge relating to PE, educators of the subjects are arguably (overstepping) exceeding the currently accepted educational requirements as practical knowledge is deemed a satisfactory justification for inclusion within the NC. You need to put a reference to support this statement. One example of this type of educational justification can be seen in Sport Science degrees where physiology is complementary to pedagogy. This point made in Hoberman, J. (1992). Add the quote if you wish Reid (1998) in fact, states that practical knowledge should not be either linked with or (lessened) reduced to ‘simple’ ability, where a student is able to strike a ball for example. â€Å"It is not the status of PE which is problematic then, but rather the academic view of education† (Reid, 1997, page 21), which is perhaps a little uncertain. It is this indecision which hinders the perception of PE within the subject itself and their resulting arguments of justification of NC status. Reid (1997) further argues that education is not simply an academic endeavour but also the endorsement of personal and social assistance. This hedonistic approach somewhat further blurs the boundaries as to what is and what is not considered to be educational, as it suggests enjoyment is a precondition for education. Enjoyment is totally subjective and what may be perceived as enjoyable by one individual may not necessarily be enjoyable (for) by another. This continued difference in opinion is echoed by Parry (1998). It is suggested that Reid (1998) fails to validate practical knowledge and to justify just how the skills learnt are worthwhile in nature. Where Reid (1997) states that the source of educational value of PE is in fact the pleasure extracted from the subject, it has been suggested that he has fallen (prone) prey to the perhaps arguably misleading notion of hedonism (Parry, 1998). As suggested earlier, pleasure, by definition, is (found) derived only from something a person enjoys. Should an individual fail to enjoy PE, (than) then this contradicts Reid’s (1997) concept. Carr (1997) however states that as much as Reid’s (1997) work challenges some of the standard perceptions of education, it does contain some inaccuracies and misconceptions. It would be sensible to state just what you think these misconceptions are. Although Carr (1997) accepts that PE has certain levels of knowledge acquisition, this does not necessarily mean a concurrence with all of Reid’s (1998) opinions. This is rather messy, and the point is not clearly made. What are the specific points that Carr disagrees with? state. You might find it useful to put parts of the next paragraph in here. The implications of this are that Reid (1998) believes that PE can alter your perception and comprehension of the world. However, people can be perceived as less educationally proficient should their experiences in the sciences and maths for example, be less than others. This is not the case with regard to PE as individuals are seen as ‘non-sporty’ rather than educat ionally deficient. These differing view points again further obscures the boundaries of PE’s educational worth. This point is made in Andy Clark (1996), I suggest that you put in the reference! Carr’s (1997) opinions differ in that his paper raises the prospect of a distinction between education and teaching of ‘life skills’ (or schooling). The implications of this are that Carr (1997) believes that education provides valuable knowledge and understanding, which is the predominant culture within schools, but schools also aim to provide vocational knowledge. It is suggested that sport falls into this appreciation as it teaches skills and abilities that can be applied directly or adapted for life after school and beyond. These abilities can include communication and team work. Parry (1998) has expressed the opinion that education is not purely the quest for ‘valued’ knowledge but is coupled with enhancement of personal virtue due to â€Å"philosophical anthropology and the promotion of Olympian ideas† (Parry, 1998, page 65). (In other words) The implications being that, as a result of philosophical perspectives upon the human race, the promotion of the Olympian ideal that occurs through PE (which) has a lasting effect upon the individual in that it alters their values, goals for excellence, and their relationships. This is supported by McNamee (2005, page 16) who states a less restricted overview of education which is â€Å"the initiation into a range of cultural practices that have the capacity to open up the possibilities of living a full and worthwhile life†. (Yet) Again the implication of this viewpoint is that it supports the notion that PE can help provide and establi sh ‘life skills’, thus supporting its educational value. McNamee (2005, page 15) feels that Peter and Carr (1997) remain too ideological due to their â€Å"traditional liberal distinctions† even though McNamee (2005) states his belief that education is a vessel for dispensing cultural customs. McNamee (2005) continues to highlight some oversights in the work of both Reid and Parry, suggesting that the (forma) former does not describe important epistemological aspects within PE as a subject. Although Reid does cite examples of practical knowledge application, there is a distinct absence of examples that are relevant to PE itself, thus providing evidence to support his view point but not with particular clarity in regard to PE. In fairness, I don’t think that Reid’s paper was specifically about PE as such, it was about education in general although certainly it featured PE do you want to rephrase this point? Additionally, McNamee (2005) believes that Reid’s hedonistic (standing) view point that simply pleasure alone is justification for PE’s place on the NC is not entirely plausible. A point made in: Pekka Elo Juha Savolainen (2000), . Do you want to cite the reference? In comparison, McNamee (2005) draws attention to the cultural (practices) roles sport can play. These include, as Parry (1998) suggests, the formation of identities and the development to values which (is) are suggested to be closely linked to education. People â€Å"have the capacity to develop, evaluate and live out their own life plans based on a combination of projects, relationships and commitments† (McNamee, 2005, page 16). Sport and PE, according to McNamee (2005), (has) have the ability to meet these potentials through a unique assortment of internal, and in turn external values, that are somewhat unique to sport and PE. One example could be teamwork experience from team games. Teamwork blankets many subdivisions including communication. The skills learned and finely developed within PE lessons can help in the attainment of employment, not necessarily only in a sporting context. So it would appear that PE contains the valued principles that Hirst and Peter suggest are key to education. The implications are therefore, according to McNamee (2005, page 17), that the educators of â€Å"cultural rituals† should ensure that â€Å"the values PE has and gives, are kept in good health†. The implication here being that , this argues that PE should remain within the curriculum as it teaches and enriches ‘life skills’. (So) It appears therefore that there is much debate with regard to the implications of the conflicting elements of various philosophies regarding a unified perception of just what PE is and the resulting justification of its place within the NC. Reid argues that practical knowledge alone is in fact as valued as intellectual knowledge. Moreover, Reid also states that the gratification taken from PE further enforces this validation. Carr believes the contrary because philosophers have failed to differentiate between schooling and education. In contrast, Parry takes the view that a more Olympian standing point should be taken, in that PE can be used to promote achievement and excellence. Furthermore, McNamee states that PE contains many cultural values and can be used as a vessel to deliver these. In doing so, PE has an effect on our everyday lives, (therefore) thereby becoming educationally noteworthy as it contains ‘valued’ principles. These somewhat contradictory philosophies and the resulting confusion in the implications derived from them, highlight the fact that (through) by selecting one philosophy as a standard conception of PE’s justification within the NC and not another, will inevitably lead to a dispute as to why it was selected in the first place. Clearly this is a matter of personal evaluation. What must be taken into account are the philosophies and ideologies of the PE teachers themselves. They are the administrators and deliverers of the subject and their opinions and ideologies can greatly influence the notion and (conception) implementation of PE. You could cite Tà ¤nnsjà ¶, T. and Tamburrini, C. (Eds.) (2000) As a reference on this point The philosophies of the Physical Education teachers. The ‘philosophies’ of PE teachers are generally considered to come about as a result of the culmination of experiences within sport, education, and everyday life (within and outside school). Included within these is ‘sport for all’, education for leisure and the continued development of the academic principles within PE (Green, 2000, 2001, 2003). Although these greatly influence the philosophies of PE teachers, health related exercise and enjoyment of the subject appear to be the central focal point of their lessons. According to Green (2000), enjoyment and pleasure formed the basis for PE teacher’s lessons. One could say that a happy classroom is a learning classroom. It is through this that PE offers enjoyment, which acts as a catalyst for increased control over students and in turn heightens learning (Green, 2000). (Their) His justification of this is that PE can often be a ‘release’ of stress and pressure from other academic aspects of school, yet still maintaining its own promotion of the academic virtues in itself (Green, 2000). However, as discussed previously, enjoyment is not considered a prerequisite of education. With teachers adopting a more hedonistic approach to their lessons, the educational value of their lessons arguably become questionable. Do you want to justify this comment? Suggest using reference Savolainen J Elo P 2000 In fact, many PE teachers perceive their subject as secondary to other subjects as they consider PE inferior in an academic sense (Green, 2000). In Green’s (2000) study, many PE teachers associated enjoyment with sport. Understandably, sport is seen as the chief characteristic for the delivery of PE. The implications being that this often falls under a competitive sports bracket, largely in the form of team games. The main emphasis for PE teachers was development of skill acquisition and the resulting competence in performance (Green, 2000). However, this focus on competition within sport (is) can be contradictory to PE teacher’s slant towards hedonism. Many students dislike competitiveness and some even dislike sport in a ‘traditional’ sense (e.g. rugby, cricket, hockey etc.). This is particularly the case with girls (Green, 2001). The implication therefore appears that students can associate a distaste for something which PE teachers perceive as the very essence of their subject, something which they feel (is) should be enjoyable. Another justification for inclusion on the NC from a PE teacher’s perspective is the promotion of health related fitness. One could question whether one hour of PE a week has an effect upon a student’s fitness, but rather highlights the fact that PE lessons themselves do not endorse healthy living but create an association with physical activity which can be carried into life after school. This in turn develops a healthy lifestyle (Green, 2001, 2003). PE teachers see sport as the main conduit for endorsement of a healthy lifestyle (Green, 2000). However, it is important to note that it is an assumption that PE actually has an impact on students and therefore affects their behaviour later in life, although this is perhaps a rather logical assumption. Kirk (2002) suggests that there is little evidence to suggest that PE lessons in secondary schools actually successfully promote lifelong participation. Therefore, it is important to establish what PE teachers are doing, and can do, to reinforce their hedonistic approach to establish current and future healthy living (discussed later). The principal difference between teacher’s philosophies and philosophers philosophies is that teachers are frequently (somewhat) adamant their hedonistic approach is justification enough, where as, by contrast, philosophers are more inclined to persevere a more ‘orthodox’ educational justification. The implications of this statement being that PE teachers tend to feel a greater need to justify their position within the NC, and arguably this is justly so as they perhaps fail to acknowledge the perspective of some philosophers. It could therefore be argued that the philosophies of PE teachers are in fact more ideological in nature, as their attitudes towards justification within the NC, when compared to research by philosophers, are paradoxical. This may be due to the fact that PE teachers are more engaged than removed with their ideas (Green, 2001). Green has suggested that the implications are that these ideologies are suggested to have been formed by what they (the teachers) are accustomed to (i.e. learned practices). This may have stemmed from individual’s (e.g. their own PE teachers) and experiences that have influenced their belief. Green (2000 Pg 79) states that â€Å"It is somewhat unsurprising to find that PE teachers’ philosophies as well as their practices represent something of a compromise (Green, 2000, page 79) between these influences as they perhaps, in terms of opinions and view points, pull them in distinctly assorted directions.† However, Green (2000) does argue that some relationship is present, connecting both philosophers’ and PE teachers’ opinions, although this is perhaps more through coincidence than mindful analysis by PE teachers. The practical implication of this philosophy in this link can be seen in a more leisure-based PE programme. Sport England (2003) note that that the most frequently taught sport within schools is athletics. This is followed by gym, tennis, rounders, hockey and netball. It can be seen that these sports are consistent with the competitive team sports which PE teachers are accustomed to and with those sports in which many students are disinclined to participate (in). There is a stark contrast between this statement and a survey detailing of what sports students enjoy the most. You need to quote the source of this survey. These include basketball, badminton, swimming, cycling, roller skating and bowling (more ‘lifestyle activities’). As it stands, PE lessons are dominated by more ‘traditional’ sports. These appear to be the sports which students find less enjoyable. It is therefore contradictory of their hedonistic approach for teachers to persist with these spor ts. Promotion of lifelong participation is one of their (the teachers) justifications for position within the NC, and as it appears ‘carry over’ of these sports into adulthood is negligible, it would be illogical and contradictory to fail in the inclusion of more ‘lifestyle activities’, even if this goes against their ideologies. These activities are often carried out after school as extracurricular PE, as normal school time and budgets restrict the ability to run them. Fairclough, Stratton and Baldwin (2002) state that under 50% of schools offer lifestyle activities as extra-curricular PE. This is supported by Penny and Harris (1997, cited in Green, Smith and Roberts, 2005, page 28) who state that extra curricular PE is â€Å"more of the same†. This is being of reference again to ‘traditional games’ PE. It is clear that some teachers are taking (into) account of the (findings) beliefs of the philosophers that we have cited above. They understand the importance of ‘carry over’ into life after school as (this is) being best achieved through more ‘lifestyle’ activities. However, more is needed as only half of schools run these activities within their lessons or as extra curricular options. Ideally you need a reference to back up this statement So, it therefore appears that the implication of the thrust of these arguments is that the majority of PE teachers position enjoyment at the forefront of their lessons. This compliments Reid’s argument that PE is, and should continue to be, more hedonistic. A more leisure orientated education has developed, as suggested by McNamee, which runs parallel with, and encompasses, valued cultural practices philosophy (Green, 2003). (However), This is not always the case however, as some teachers are restricted to their ‘comfort zone’ in terms of what sports and activities their lessons include. This is seen in the findings of Sport England (2003) where only 50% of schools offer a more leisure based, ‘lifestyle’ option. By remaining within their ‘comfort zone’, teachers are contradicting their justification of NC status by pleasure, as many students do not enjoy more ‘traditional’ PE. (Moreover, their (the teachers)). Teachers may co nsider that another justification of life long participation is also challenged as those who fail to enjoy PE lessons are more inclined to sever ties with physical activity. In contrast, the view of Carr that PE should perhaps be dissected and analysed separately from the other aspects of the NC has implications that coincide with the view that teachers have formed of their subject. They (consider) regard it in a different way to other more overtly academic subjects, as it is more of a release of pressures from those other subjects. There are various philosophies and ideologies which have formed for, and have formed as a result of, the justification for NC status. This is a bold statement. Can you justify it? Some contradict one another, and some support each other. This is messy and nebulous. If you have a clear point you need to make it overtly. (However,) what is clear however, is that there is much debate on the subject, and a topic which demands so much deliberation must, in itself, justify its importance solely through the vastness and time spent on arguing its case. No. I don’t agree. It must justify itself on the strength of its arguments or the evidence base supporting it. The philosophical justification has nothing to do with the length of time spent arguing about it! This applies whether the argument is for or against NC inclusion. References Carr, J. (1997) Physical Education and Value Diversity: A Response to Andrew Reid. European Physical Education Review, 3(2), page 195-205. Fairclough, S., Stratton, G., and Baldwin, G. (2002) The Contribution of Secondary School Physical Education to Lifetime Physical Activity. European Physical Review, 8(1), page 69-84. Green, K. (2000) Exploring Everyday Philosophies of PE Teachers from a Sociological Perspective. Sport, Education and Society, 5(2). Green, K. (2001) Physical Education Teachers in their Figurations: A Sociological Analysis of Everyday ‘Philosophies’, Sport, Education and Society, 6(2). Green, K. (2003) Physical Education Teachers on Physical Education: A Sociological Study of Philosophies and Ideologies. Chester: Chester Academic Press. Green, K., Smith, A., and Roberts. (2005) Young People and Lifelong Participation in Sport and Physical Activity: A Sociological Perspective on Contemporary Physical Education Programmes in England and Wales. Leisure Studies, 24(1), page 27-43. Hirst, P. (1974) Knowledge and the Curriculum. London, Routledge, Kegan and Paul Hirst, P. (1992) Education, Knowledge and Practices. Papers of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, April 26-28. Hirst, P. (1994) Keynote Address, National Conference for Physical Education, Sport and Dance, Loughborough University, 1994. McNamee, M. (2005) The Nature and Value of Physical Education. in Green, K. and Hardiman, K. (Eds.) Physical Education: Essential Issues, page 1-20. London: Sage. Parry, J. (1998) The Justification of Physical Education. in Green, K. and Hardman, K. (Eds.) Physical Education: A Reader, page 36-68. Meyer and Meyer: Verlag. Penny, D. and Harris, J. (1997) Extra-curricular Physical Education: More of the Same for the More Able. Sport, Education and Society, 2(!), page 41-54. Peter, R.S. (1966) Ethics and Education, London, Allen and Unwin. Reid, A. (1997) Value Pluralism and Physical Education. European Physical Education Review. 3(3). Page 6-20 Reid, A. (1998) Knowledge, Practice and Theory in Physical Education. in Green, K. and Hardman, K. (Eds.) Physical Education: A Reader, page 17-35. Meyer and Meyer: Verlag. Sport England (2003) Young People and Sport in England: Trends in Participation 1994-2002. Sport England: London. Generally a good piece of work. I have made changes in grammar and syntax directly but have left some changes for your discretion. You must get out of the habit of starting paragraphs and sentences with adverbs!!! In commenting on this piece, I have tried to follow your own thought train and arguments which are largely sound, and have not tried to substantially alter the thrust of your submission. It is important to put in overt references to â€Å"the implications† of the various philosophies, as many of your comments are relevant but rather tangential and do not therefore directly relate to the question. You have spent a fair bit of time arguing that the NC is essentially pivotal in the justification of the various philosophical schema outlined and I’m not sure that the authors would actually agree with you. It is surely the viability or justification of the NC that is secondary to the philosophical outlines. You might want to reconsider some of your stronger statements on this point. The references that I have suggested that you include are:- Andy Clark (1996), Connectionism, Moral Cognition, and Collaborative Problem Solving, in May Friedman Clark (eds), Mind and Morals. Essays in Cognitive Science and Ethics, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp.109-128. Pekka Elo Juha Savolainen (2000), Just Learning in Acta Philosophica Fennica vol. 65: New Ethics New Society or the Dawn of Justice, Hakapaino Oy, pp. 149-187. Savolainen J Elo P 2000 Philosophy Teaching As Cultural Heritage: From Bildung Und Urteilskraft To Communities Of Inquiry Bulletin of the Russian Philosophical Society (2000) Hoberman, J. (1992) Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance and the Dehumanization of Sport, New York: The Free Press Tà ¤nnsjà ¶, T. and Tamburrini, C. (Eds.) (2000) Values in Sport: Elitism, Nationalism, Gender Equality and the Scientific Manufacture of Winners, London: Routledge. I think you should do well with this as it is certainly well above the standard of many that I have seen. If you wanted to expand the arguments further you could move into the area of virtue theory as a philosophy and the implications for teaching which are huge Here is an extract from Lumpkin, A.; Stoll, S.K.; Beller, J.M. (1999) Sport Ethics: Applications for Fair Play, (second edition) Boston: McGraw Hill. In the recent past, there has been a revival of virtue theory in mainstream and applied ethics. This has usually taken the form of a resuscitation of Aristotle’s work. Here ethics is based upon good character and the good life will be lived by those who are in possession of a range of virtues such as courage, co-operativeness, sympathy, honesty, justice, reliability, and so on and the absence of vices such as cowardice, egoism, dishonesty, and so on. Sport’s traditional function as role modeller for youth is premised upon virtue theory. Russell Gough’s (1997) admirable book is a user-friendly application of virtue ethics in sports. This language has an immediate application in the contexts of sports in theory but in practice, spitefulness, violence, greed often characterise elite sports. Moreover, we often question the integrity of certain coaches or officials just as chastise players who deceive the officials Ref: Gough, R. (1997) Character is everything: promoting ethical excellence in sports, Orlando: Harcourt Brace.

Bag of Bones CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Ki lay fast asleep just as I had left her, on her side with the filthy little stuffed dog clutched under her jaw. It had put a smudge on her neck but I hadn't the heart to take it away from her. Beyond her and to the left, through the open bathroom door, I could hear the steady plink-plonk-plink of water falling from the faucet and into the tub. Cool air blew around me in a silky twist, caressing my cheeks, sending a not unpleasurable shiver up my back. In the living room Bunter's bell gave a dim little shake. Water's still warm, sugar, Sara whispered. Be her friend, be her daddy. Go on, now. Do what I want. Do what we both want. And I did want to, which had to be why Jo at first tried to keep me away from the TR and from Sara Laughs. Why she'd made a secret of her possible pregnancy, as well. It was as if I had discovered a vampire inside me, a creature with no interest in what it thought of as talk-show conscience and op-ed page morality. A part that wanted only to take Ki into the bathroom and dunk her into that tub of warm water and hold her under, watching the red-edged white ribbons shimmer the way Carla Dean's white dress and red stockings had shimmered while the woods burned all around her and her father. A part of me would be more than glad to pay the last installment on that old bill. ‘Dear God,' I muttered, and wiped my face with a shaking hand. ‘She knows so many tricks. And she's so fucking strong.' The bathroom door tried to swing shut against me before I could go through, but I pushed it open against hardly any resistance. The medicine-cabinet door banged back, and the glass shattered against the wall. The stuff inside flew out at me, but it wasn't a very dangerous attack; this time most of the missiles consisted of toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes, plastic bottles, and a few old Vick's inhalers. Faint, very faint, I could hear her shouting in frustration as I yanked the plug at the bottom of the tub and let the water start gurgling out. There had been enough drowning on the TR for one century, by God. And yet, for a moment I felt an incredibly strong urge to put the plug back in while the water was still deep enough to do the job. Instead I tore it off its chain and threw it down the hall. The medicine-cabinet door clapped shut again and the rest of the glass fell out. ‘How many have you had?' I asked her. ‘How many besides Carla Dean and Kerry Auster and our Kia? Two? Three? Five? How many do you need before you can rest?' All of them! the answer shot back. It wasn't just Sara's voice, either; it was my own, as well. She'd gotten into me, had snuck in by way of the basement like a burglar . . . and already I was thinking that even if the tub was empty and the water-pump temporarily dead, there was always the lake. All of them! the voice cried again. All of them, sugar! Of course only all of them would do. Until then there would be no rest for Sara Laughs. ‘I'll help you to rest,' I said. ‘That I promise.' The last of the water swirled away . . . but there was always the lake, always the lake if I changed my mind. I left the bathroom and looked in on Ki again. She hadn't moved, the sensation that Sara was in here with me had gone, Bunter's bell was quiet . . . and yet I felt uneasy, unwilling to leave her alone. I had to, though, if I was to finish my work, and I would do well not to linger. County and State cops would be along eventually, storm or no storm, downed trees or no downed trees. Yes, but . . . I stepped into the hall and looked uneasily around. Thunder boomed, but it was losing some of its urgency. So was the wind. What wasn't fading was the sense of something watching me, something that was not-Sara. I stood where I was a moment or two longer, trying to tell myself it was just the sizzle of my overcooked nerves, then walked down the hall to the entry. I opened the door to the stoop . . . then looked around again sharply, as if expecting to see someone or something lurking behind the far end of the bookcase. A Shape, perhaps. Something that still wanted its dust-catcher. But I was the only Shape left, at least in this part of the world, and the only movement I saw was ripple-shadows thrown by the rain rolling down the windows. It was still coming down hard enough to redrench me as I crossed my stoop to the driveway, but I paid no attention. I had just been with a little girl when she drowned, had damned near drowned myself not so long ago, and the rain wasn't going to stop me from doing what I had to do. I picked up the fallen branch which had dented the roof of my car, tossed it aside, and opened the Chevy's rear door. The things I'd bought at Slips ‘n Greens were still sitting on the back seat, still tucked into the cloth carry-handle bag Lila Proulx had given me. The trowel and the pruning knife were visible, but the third item was in a plastic sack. Want this one in a special bag? Lila had asked me. Always sa]b, never sorry. And later, as I was leaving, she had spoken of Kenny's dog Blueberry chasing seagulls and had given out with a big, hearty laugh. Her eyes hadn't laughed, though. Maybe that's how you tell the Martians from the Earthlings the Martians can never laugh with their eyes. I saw Rommie and George's present lying on the front seat: the Stenomask I'd at first mistaken for Devore's oxygen mask. The boys in the basement spoke up then murmured, at least and I leaned over the seat to grab the mask by its elastic strap without the slightest idea of why I was doing so. I dropped it into the carry-bag, slammed the car door, then started down the railroad-tie steps to the lake. On the way I paused to duck under the deck, where we had always kept a few tools. There was no pick, but I grabbed a spade that looked up to a piece of gravedigging. Then, for what I thought would be the last time, I followed the course of my dream down to The Street. I didn't need Jo to show me the spot; the Green Lady had been pointing to it all along. Even had she not been, and even if Sara Tidwell did not still stink to the heavens, I think I would have known. I think I would have been led there by my own haunted heart. There was a man standing between me and the place where the gray forehead of rock guarded the path, and as I paused on the last railroad tie, he hailed me in a rasping voice that I knew all too well. ‘Say there, whoremaster, where's your whore?' He stood on The Street in the pouring rain, but his cutters' outfit green flannel pants, checked wool shirt and his faded blue Union Army cap were dry, because the rain was falling through him rather than on him. He looked solid but he was no more real than Sara herself. I reminded myself of this as I stepped down onto the path to face him, but my heart continued to speed up, thudding in my chest like a padded hammer. He was dressed in Jared Devore's clothes, but this wasn't Jared Devore. This was Jared's great-grandson Max, who had begun his career with an act of sled-theft and ended it in suicide . . . but not before arranging for the murder of his daughter-in-law, who'd had the temerity to refuse him what he had so dearly wanted. I started toward him and he moved to the center of the path to block me. I could feel the cold baking off him. I am saying exactly what I mean, expressing what I remember as clearly as I can: I could feel the cold baking off him. And yes, it was Max Devore all right, but got up like a logger at a costume party and looking the way he must have around the time his son Lance was born. Old but hale. The sort of man younger men might well look up to. And now, as if the thought had called them, I could see the rest shimmer into faint being behind him, standing in a line across the path. These were the ones who had been with Jared at the Fryeburg Fair, and now I knew who some of them were. Fred Dean, of course, only nineteen years old in '01, the drowning of his daughter still over thirty years away. And the one who had reminded me of myself was Harry Auster, the firstborn of my great-grandfather's sister. He would have been sixteen, barely old enough to raise a fuzz but old enough to work in the woods with Jared. Old enough to shit in the same pit as Jared. To mistake Jared's poison for wisdom. One of the others twisted his head and squinted at the same time I'd seen that tic before. Where? Then it came to me: in the Lake-view General. This young man was the late Royce Merrill's father. The others I didn't know. Nor did I care to. ‘You ain't a-passing by us,' Devore said. He held up both hands. ‘Don't even think about trying. Am I right, boys?' They murmured growling agreement the sort you could hear coming from any present-day gang of headbangers or taggers, I imagine but their voices were distant; actually more sad than menacing. There was some substance to the man in Jared Devore's clothes, perhaps because in life he had been a man of enormous vitality, perhaps because he was so recently dead, but the others were little more than projected images. I started forward, moving into that baking cold, moving into the smell of him the same invalid odors which had surrounded him when I'd met him here before. ‘Where do you think you're going?' he cried. ‘For a constitutional,' I said. ‘And no law against it. The Street's the place where good pups and vile dogs can walk side-by-side. You said so yourself.' ‘You don't understand,' Max-Jared said. ‘You never will. You're not of that world. That was our world.' I stopped, looking at him curiously. Time was short, I wanted to be done with this . . . but I had to know, and I thought Devore was ready to tell me. ‘Make me understand,' I said. ‘Convince me that any world was your world.' I looked at him, then at the flickering, translucent figures behind him, gauze flesh heaped on shining bones. ‘Tell me what you did.' ‘It was all different then,' Devore said. ‘When you come down here, Noonan, you might walk all three miles north to Halo Bay and see only a dozen people on The Street. After Labor Day you might not see any one at all. This side of the lake you have to walk through the bushes that are growing up wild and around the fallen trees there'll be even more of em after this storm and even a deadfall or two because nowadays the townfolk don't club together to keep it neat the way they used to. But in our time ! The woods were bigger then, Noonan, distances were farther to go, and neighboring meant something. Life itself, often enough. Back then this really was a street. Can you see?' I could. If I looked through the phantom shapes of Fred Dean and Harry Auster and the others, I could. They weren't just ghosts; they were shimmerglass windows on another age. I saw a summer afternoon in the year of . . . 1898? Perhaps 1902? 1907? Doesn't matter. This is a period when all time seems the same, as if time had stopped. This is a time the old-timers remember as a kind of golden age. It is the Land of Ago, the Kingdom of When-I-Was-a-Boy. The sun washes everything with the fine gold light of endless late July; the lake is as blue as a dream, netted with a billion sparks of reflected light. And The Street! It is as smoothly grassed as a lawn and as broad as a boulevard. It is a boulevard, I see, a place where the community fully realizes itself. It is the main conduit of communication, the chief cable in a township criss-crossed with them. I'd felt the existence of these cables all along even when Jo was alive I felt them under the surface, and here is their point of origin. Folks promenade on The Street, all up and down the east side of Dark Score Lake they promenade in little groups, laughing and conversing under a cloud-stacked summer sky, and t his is where the cables all begin. I look and realize how wrong I have been to think of them as Martians, as cruel and calculating aliens. East of their sunny promenade looms the darkness of the woods, glades and hollows where any miserable thing may await, from a hot lopped off in a logging accident to a birth gone wrong and a young mother dead before the doctor can arrive from Castle Rock in his buggy. These are people with no electricity, no phones, no County Rescue Unit, no one to rely upon but each other and a God some of them have already begun to mistrust. They live in the woods and the shadows of the woods, but on fine summer afternoons they come to the edge of the lake. They come to The Street and look in each other's faces and laugh together and then they are truly on the TR in what I have come to think of as the zone. They are not Martians,' they are little lives dwelling on the edge of the dark, that's all. I see summer people from Warrington's, the men dressed in white flannels, two women in long tennis dresses still carrying their rackets. A fellow riding a tricycle with an enormous front wheel weaves shakily among them. The party of summer fo1k has stopped to talk with a group of young men from town; the fellows from away want to know if they can play in the townies' baseball game at Warrington's on Tuesday night. Ben Merrill, Royce's father-to-be, says Ayuh, but we won't go easy on ya just cause you're from N'Yawk. The young men laugh; so do the tennis girls. A little farther on, two boys are playing catch with the sort of raw homemade baseball that is known as a horsey. Beyond them is a convention of young mothers, talking earnestly of their babies, all safely prammed and gathered in their own group. Men in overalls discuss weather and crops, politics and crops, taxes and crops. A teacher from the Consolidated High sits on the gray stone forehead I know so well, patiently tutoring a sullen boy who wants to be somewhere else and doing anything else. I think the boy will grow up to be Buddy Jellison's father. Horn broken watch for finger, I think. All along The Street folks are fishing, and they are catching plenty; the lake fairly teems with bass and trout and pickerel. An artist another summer fellow, judging from his smock and nancy beret has set up his easel and is painting the mountains while two ladies watch respectfully. A giggle of girls passes, whispering about boys and clothes and school. There is beauty here, and peace. Devore' s right to say this is a world I never knew. It's ‘Beautiful,' I said, pulling myself back with an effort. ‘Yes, I see that. But what's your point?' ‘My point?' Devore looked almost comically surprised. ‘She thought she could walk there like everyone else, that's the fucking point! She thought she could walk there like a white gal! Her and her big teeth and her big tits and her snotty looks. She thought she was something special, but we taught her different. She tried to walk me down and when she couldn't do that she put her filthy hands on me and tumped me over. But that was all right; we taught her her manners. Didn't we, boys?' They growled agreement, but I thought some of them young Harry Auster, for one looked sick. ‘We taught her her place,' Devore said. ‘We taught her she wasn't nothing but a nigger. This is the word he uses over and over again when they are in the woods that summer, the summer of1901, the summer that Sara and the Red-bps become the musical act to see in this part of the world. She and her brother and their whole nigger family have been invited to Warrington's to play for the summer people,' they have been rid on champagne and ersters . . . or so says Jared Devore to his little school of devoted followers as they eat their own plain lunches of bread and meat and salted cucumbers out of lard-buckets given to them by their mothers (none of the young men are married, although Oren Peebles is engaged). Yet it isn't her growing renown that upsets Jared Devore. It isn't the fact that she has been to Warrington's; it don't cross his eyes none that she and that brother of hers have actually sat down and eaten with white folks, taken bread join the same bowl as them with their blacknigger fingers. The folks at Warrington's are flatlanders, after all, and Devore tells the silent, attentive young men that he's heard that in places like New York and Chicago white women sometimes even fuck blackniggers. Naw! Harry Auster says, looking around nervously, as if he expected a few white women to come tripping through the woods way out here on Bowie Ridge. No white woman'd fuck a nigger! Shoot a pickle! Devore only gives him a look, the kind that says When you're my age. Besides, he doesn't care what goes on in New York and Chicago; he saw all the flatland he wanted to during the Civil War . . . and, he will tell you, he never fought that war to free the damned slaves. They can keep slaves down there in the land of cotton until the end of the eternity, as far as Jared Lancelot Devore is concerned. No, he fought in the war to teach those cracker sons of bitches south of Mason and Dixon that you don't pull out of the game just because you don't like some of the rules. He went down to scratch the scab off the end of old Johnny Reb's nose. Tried to leave the United States of America, they had! The Lord! No, he doesn't care about slaves and he doesn't care about the land of cotton and he doesn't care about blackniggers who sing dirty songs and then get treated to champagne and ersters (Jared always says oysters in just that sarcastic way) in payment for their smut. He doesn't care about anything so long as they keep in their place and let him keep in his. But she won't do it. The uppity bitch will not do it. She has been warned to stay off The Street, but she will not listen. She goes anyway, walking along in her white dress just as if there was a white person inside it, sometimes with her son, who has a blacknigger African name and no daddy his daddy probably just spent the one night with his mommy in a haystack somewhere down Alabama and now she walks around with the get of that just as bold as a brass monkey. She walks The Street as if she has a right to be there, even though not a soul will talk to her ‘But that's not true, is it?' I asked Devore. ‘That's what really stuck in old great-granddaddy's craw, wasn't it? They did talk to her. She had a way about her that laugh, maybe. Men talked to her about crops and the women showed off their babies. In fact they gave her their babies to hold and when she laughed down at them, they laughed back up at her. The girls asked her advice about boys. The boys . . . they just looked. But how they looked, huh? They filled up their eyes, and I expect most of them thought about her when they went out to the privy and filled up their palms.' Devore glowered. He was aging in front of me, the lines drawing themselves deeper and deeper into his face; he was becoming the man who had knocked me into the lake because he couldn't bear to be crossed. And as he grew older he began to fade. ‘That was what Jared hated most of all, wasn't it? That they didn't turn aside, didn't turn away. She walked on The Street and no one treated her like a nigger. They treated her like a neighbor.' I was in the zone, deeper in than I'd ever been, down where the town's unconscious seemed to run like a buried river. I could drink from that river while I was in the zone, could fill my mouth and throat and belly with its cold minerally taste. All that summer Devore had talked to them. They were more than his crew, they were his boys: Fred and Harry and Ben and Oren and George Armbruster and Draper Finney, who would break his neck and drown the next summer trying to dive into Eades Quarry while he was drunk. Only it was the sort of accident that's kind of on purpose. Draper Finney drank a lot between July of 1901 and August of 1902, because it was the only way he could sleep. The only way he could get the hand out of his mind, that hand sticking straight out of the water, clenching and unclenching until you wanted to scream Won't it stop, won't it ever stop doing that. All summer long Jared Devore filled their ears with nigger bitch and uppity bitch. All summer long he told them about their responsibility as men, their duty to keep the community pure, and how they must see what others didn't and do what others wouldn't. It was a Sunday afternoon in August, a time when traffic along The Street dropped steeply. Later on, by five or so, things would begin to pick up again, and from six to sunset the broad path along the lake would be thronged. But three in the afternoon was Low tide. The Methodists were back in session over in Harlow for their afternoon Song Service; at Warrington's the assembled company of vacationing flatlanders was sitting down to a heavy mid-afternoon Sabbath meal of roast chicken or ham; all over the township families were addressing their own Sunday dinners. Those who had already finished were snoozing through the heat of the day in a hammock, wherever possible. Sara liked this quiet time. Loved it, really. She had spent a great deal of her life on carny midways and in smoky gin-joints, shouting out her songs in order to be heard above the voices of redfaced, unruly drunks, and while part of her loved the excitement and unpredictability of that life, part of her loved the sereni ty of this one, too. The peace of these walks. She wasn't getting any younger, after all; she had a kid who had now left purt near all his babyhood behind him. On that particular Sunday she must have thought The Street almost too quiet. She walked a mile south from the meadow without seeing a soul even Kito was gone by then, having stopped off to pick berries. It was as if the whole township were deserted. She knows there's an Eastern Star supper in Kashwakamak, of course, has even contributed a mushroom pie to it because she has made friends of some of the Eastern Star ladies. They'll all be down there getting ready. What she doesn't know is that today is also Dedication Day for the new Grace Baptist Church, the first real church ever to be built on the TR. A slug of locals have gone, heathen as well as Baptist. Faintly, from the other side of the lake, she can hear the Methodists singing. The sound is sweet and faint and beautiful,' distance and echo has tuned every sour voice. She isn't aware of the men most of them very young men, the kind who under ordinary circumstances dare only look at her from the corners of their eyes until the oldest one among them speaks. ‘Wellnow, a black whore in a white dress and a red belt! Damn if that ain't just a little too much color for lakeside. What's wrong with you, whore? Can't you take a hint?' She turns toward him, afraid but not showing it. She has lived thirty-six years on this earth, has known what a man has and where he wants to put it since she was eleven, and she understands that when men are together like this and full of redeye (she can smell it), they give up thinking for themselves and turn into a pack of dogs. If you show fear they will fall on you like dogs and likely tear you apart like dogs. Also, they have been laying for her. There can be no other explanation for them turning up like this. ‘What hint is that, sugar?' she asks, standing her ground. Where is everyone? Where can they all be? God damn! Across the lake, the Methodists have moved on to ‘Trust and Obey,' a droner if there ever was one. ‘That you ain't got no business walking where the white folks walk,' Harry Auster says. His adolescent voice breaks into a kind of mouse-squeak on the last word and she laughs. She knows how unwise that is, but she can't help it she's never been able to help her laughter, any more than she's ever been able to help the way men like this look at her breasts and bottom. Blame it on God. ‘Why, I walk where I do,' she says. ‘I was told this was common ground, ain't nobody got a right to keep me out. Ain't nobody has. You seen em doin it?' ‘You see us now,' George Armbruster says, trying to sound tough. Sara looks at him with a species of kindly contempt that makes George shrivel up inside. His cheeks glow hot red. ‘Son,' she says, ‘you only come out now because the decent folks is all somewhere else. Why do you want to let this old fella tell you what to do? Act decent and let a lady walk.' I see it all. As Devore fades and fades, at last becoming nothing but eyes under a blue cap in the rainy afternoon (through him I can see the shattered remains of my swimming float washing against the embankment), I see it all. I see her as she starts forward, walking straight at Devore. If she stands here jawing with them, something bad is going to happen. She feels it, and she never questions her tidings. And if she walks at any of the others, ole massa'll bore in on her from the side, pulling the rest after. Ole massa in the little ole blue cap is the wheeldog, the one she must face down. She can do it, too. He's strong, strong enough to make these boys one creature, his creature, at least for the time being, but he doesn't have her force, her determination, her energy. In a way she welcomes this confrontation. Reg has warned her to be careful, not to move too fast or try to make real friends until the rednecks (only Reggie calls them ‘the bull gators') show themselves how many and how crazy but she goes her own course, trusts her own deep instincts. And here they are, only seven of em, and really just the one bull gator. I'm stronger than you, ole massa, she thinks, walking toward him. She fixes her eyes on his and will not let them drop,' his are the ones that drop, his the mouth that quivers uncertainly at one corner, his the tongue that comes out as quick as a lizard's tongue to wet the lips, and all that's good . . . but even better is when he falls back a step. When he does that the rest of them cluster in two groups of three, and there it is, her way through. Faint and sweet are the Methodists, faithy music carrying across the lake's still surface. A droner of a hymn, yes, but sweet across the miles. When we walk with the Lord in the light of His word, what a glory He sheds on our way . . . I'm stronger than you, sugar, she sends, I'm meaner than you, you may be the bull gator but I'm the queen bee and if you don't want me stingin on you, you best clear me the rest of my path. ‘You bitch,' he says, but his voice is weak; he is already thinking this isn't the day, there's something about her he didn't quite see until he saw her right up close, some blacknigger hougan he didn't feel until now, better wait for another day, better Then he trips over a root or a rock (perhaps it's the very rock behind which she will finally come to rest) and falls down. His cap falls off, showing the big old bald spot on top of his head. His pants split all the way up the seam. And Sara makes a crucial mistake. Perhaps she underestimates Jared Devore's own very considerable personal force, or perhaps she just cannot help herself the sound of his britches ripping is like a loud fart. In any case she laughs that raucous, smoke-broken laugh which is her trademark. And her laugh becomes her doom. Devore doesn't think. He simply gives her the leather from where he lies, big feet in pegged loggers' boots shooting out like pistons. He hits her where she is thinnest and most vulnerable, in the ankles. She hollers in shocked pain as the left one breaks,' she goes down in a tumble, losing her furled parasol out of one hand. She draws in breath to scream again and Jared says from where he is lying, ‘Don't let her! Dassn't let her holler!' Ben Merrill falls on top of her full-length, all one hundred and ninety pounds of him. The breath she has drawn to scream with whooshes out in a gusty, almost silent sigh instead. Ben, who has never even danced with a woman, let alone lain on top of one like this, is instantly excited by the el of her struggling beneath him. He wriggles against her, laughing, and when she rakes her nails down his cheek he barely feels it. The way it seems to him, he's all cock and a yard long. When she tries to roll over and get out from under that way, he rolls with her, lets her be on top, and he is totally surprised when she drives her forehead down on his. He sees stars, but he is eighteen years old, as strong as he will ever be, and he loses neither consciousness nor his erection. Oren Peebles tears away the back of her dress, laughing. ‘Pig-pile!' he cries in a breathy little whisper, and drops on top of her. Now he is dry-humping her topside and Ben is dry-humping just as enthusiastically from underneath, dry-humping like a billygoat even with the blood pouring down the sides of his head from the split in the center of his brow, and she knows that if she can't scream she is lost. If she can scream and if Kito hears, he'll run and get help, run and get Reg But before she can try again, ole massa is squatting beside her and showing her a long-bladed knife. ‘Make a sound and I'll cut your nose off,' he says, and that's when she gives up. They have brought her down after all, partly because she laughed at the wrong time, mostly out of pure buggardly bad luck. Now they will not be stopped, and best that Kito should stay away please God keep him back where he was, it was a good patch of berries, one that should keep him occupied an hour or more. He loves berry-picking, and it won't take these men an hour. Harry Auster yanks her hair back, tears her dress off one shoulder, and begins to sucker on her neck. Ole massa the only one not at her. Old massa standing back, looking both ways along The Street, his eyes slitted and wary; old massa look like a mangy timber-wolf done eaten a whole generation of chickenhouse chickens while managing to avoid every trap and snare. ‘Hey Irish, quit on her a minute,' he tells Harry, then widens his wise gaze to the others. ‘Get her in the puckies, you damn fools. Get her in there deep.' They don't. They can't. They are too eager to have her. They arm-yank her behind the forehead of gray rock and call it good. She doesn't pray easily but she prays now. She prays for them to let her live. She prays for Kito to stay clear, to keep filling his bucket slow by eating every third handful. She prays that if he does take a notion to catch up with her, he will see what's happening and run the other way as fast as he can, run silent and get Reg. ‘Stick this in your mouth,' George Armbruster pants. ‘And don't you bite me, you bitch.' They take her top and bottom, back and front, two and three at a time. They take her where anybody coming along can't help but see them, and ole massa stands off a little, looking first at the panting young men grouped around her, kneeling with their trousers down and their thighs scratched from the bushes they are kneeling in, then he peers up and down the path with his wild and wary eyes. Incredibly, one of them it is Fred Dean says ‘Sorry, ma'am' after he's shot his load feels like halfway up to east bejeezus. It's as if he accidentally kicked her in the shin while crossing his legs. And it doesn't end. There's come down her throat, come running down the crack of her ass, the young one has bitten the blood right out of her left breast, and it doesn't end. They are young, and by the time the last one has finished, the first one, oh God, the first one is ready again. Across the river the Methodists are now singing ‘Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine' and as ole massa approaches her she thinks, It's almost over, woman, he the last, hold on hold steady and it be over. He looks at the skinny redhead and the one who keeps squinching his eye up and tossing his head and tells them to watch the path, he's going to take his turn now that she's broke in. He unbuckles his belt, he unbuttons his flies, he pushes down his underwear dirty black at the knees and dirty yellow at the crotch-and as he drops a knee on either side of her she sees that ole massa' s little massa is just as floppy as a snake with its neck broke and before she can stop it, that raucous laugh bursts all unexpected from her again even lying here covered with the hot jelly spend of her rapists, she can't help but see the funny side. ‘Shut up!' Devore growls at her, and smashes the heel of one hard hand across her face, breaking her cheekbone and her nose. ‘Shut up that howling!' ‘Reckon it might get stiffer if it was one of your boys layin here with his rosy red ass stuck up in the air, sugar?' she asks, and then, For the last time, Sara laughs. Devore draws his hand back to hit her again, his naked loins lying against her naked loins, his penis a flaccid worm between them. But before he can bring the hand down a child's voice cries, ‘Ma! What they doin to you, Ma? Git off my mama, you bastards!' She sits up in spite of Devore's weight, her laughter dying, her wide eyes searching Kito out and finding him, a slim young boy of eight standing on The Street, dressed in overalls and a straw hat and brand-new canvas shoes, carrying a tin bucket in one hand. His lips are blue with juice. His eyes are wide with confusion and fright. ‘Run, Kito!' she screams. ‘Run away h ‘ Red fire explodes in her head,' she swoons back into the bushes, hearing ole massa from a great distance: ‘Get him. Dassn't let him ramble, now.' Then she's going down a long dark slope, she's lost in a Ghost House corridor that leads only deeper and deeper into its own convoluted bowels,' from that deep falling place she hears him, she hears, her darling one, he is screaming. I heard him screaming as I knelt by the gray rock with my carry-bag beside me and no idea how I'd gotten to where I was I certainly had no memory of walking here. I was crying in shock and horror and pity. Was she crazy? Well, no wonder. No fucking wonder. The rain was steady but no longer apocalyptic. I stared at my fishy-white hands on the gray rock for a few seconds, then looked around. Devore and the others were gone. The ripe and gassy stench of decay filled my nose it was like a physical assault. I fumbled in the carry-bag, found the Stenomask Rommie and George had given me as a joke, and slipped it over my mouth and nose with fingers that felt numb and distant. I breathed shallowly and tentatively. Better. Not a lot, but enough to keep from fleeing, which was undoubtedly what she wanted. ‘No!' she cried from somewhere behind me as I grabbed the spade and dug in. I tore a great mouth in the ground with the first swipe, and each subsequent one deepened and widened it. The earth was soft and yielding, woven through with mats of thin roots which parted easily under the blade. ‘No! Don't you dare!' I wouldn't look around, wouldn't give her a chance to push me away. She was stronger down here, perhaps because it had happened here. Was that possible? I didn't know and didn't care. All I cared about was getting this done. Where the roots were thicker, I hacked through them with the pruning knife. ‘Leave me be!' Now I did look around, risked one quick glance because of the unnatural crackling sounds which had accompanied her voice which now seemed to make her voice. The Green Lady was gone. The birch had somehow become Sara Tidwell: it was Sara's face growing out of the criss-crossing branches and shiny leaves. That rain-slicked face swayed, dissolved, came together, melted away, came together again. For a moment all the mystery I had sensed down here was revealed. Her damp shifting eyes were utterly human. They stared at me with hate and supplication. ‘I ain't done!' she cried in a cracked, breaking voice. ‘He was the worst, don't you understand? He was the worst and it's his blood in her and I won't rest until I have it out!' There was a gruesome ripping sound. She had inhabited the birch, made it into a physical body of some sort and intended to tear it free of the earth. She would come and get me with it if she could; kill me with it if she could. Strangle me in limber branches. Stuff me with leaves until I looked like a Christmas decoration. ‘No matter how much of a monster he was, Kyra had nothing to do with what he did,' I said. ‘And you won't have her.' ‘Yes I will!' the Green Lady screamed. The ripping, rending sounds were louder now. They were joined by a hissing, shaky crackle. I didn't look around again. I didn't dare look around. I dug faster instead. ‘Yes I will have her!' she cried, and now the voice was closer. She was coming for me but I refused to see; when it comes to walking trees and bushes, I'll stick to Macbeth, thanks. ‘I will have her! He took mine and I mean to take his!' ‘Go away,' a new voice said. The spade loosened in my hands, almost fell. I turned and saw Jo standing below me and to my right. She was looking at Sara, who had materialized into a lunatic's hallucination a monstrous greenish-black thing that slipped with every step it tried to walk along The Street. She had left the birch behind yet assumed its vitality somehow the actual tree huddled behind her, black and shrivelled and dead. The creature born of it looked like the Bride of Frankenstein as sculpted by Picasso. In it, Sara's face came and went, came and went. The Shape, I thought coldly. It was always real . . . and if it was always me, it was always her, too. Jo was dressed in the white shirt and yellow slacks she'd had on the day she died. I couldn't see the lake through her as I had been able to see it through Devore and Devore's young friends; she had materialized herself completely. I felt a curious draining sensation at the back of my skull and thought I knew how. ‘Git out, bitch!' the Sara-thing snarled. It raised its arms toward Jo as it had raised them to me in my worst nightmares. ‘Not at all.' Jo's voice remained calm. She turned toward me. ‘Hurry, Mike. You have to be quick. It's not really her anymore. She's let one of the Outsiders in, and they're very dangerous.' ‘Jo, I love you.' ‘I love you t ‘ Sara shrieked and then began to spin. Leaves and branches blurred together and lost coherence; it was like watching something liquefy in a blender. The entity which had only looked a little like a woman to begin with now dropped its masquerade entirely. Something elemental and grotesquely inhuman began to form out of the maelstrom. It leaped at my wife. When it struck her, the color and solidity left Jo as if slapped away by a huge hand. She became a phantom struggling with the thing which raved and shrieked and clawed at her. ‘Hurry, Mike!' she screamed. ‘Hurry!' I bent to the job. The spade struck something that wasn't dirt, wasn't stone, wasn't wood. I scraped along it, revealing a filthy mold-crusted swatch of canvas. Now I dug like a madman, wanting to clear as much of the buried object as I could, wanting to fatten my chances of success as much as I could. Behind me, the Shape screamed in fury and my wife screamed in pain. Sara had given up part of her discorporate self in order to gain her revenge, had let in something Jo called an Outsider. I had no idea what that might be and never wanted to know. Sara was its conduit, I knew that much. And if I could take care of her in time I reached into the dripping hole, slapping wet earth from the ancient canvas. Faint stencilled letters appeared when I did: J.M. MCCURDIE SAWMILL. Mccurdie's had burned in the fires of '33, I knew. I'd seen a picture of it in flames somewhere. As I seized the canvas, the tips of my fingers punching through and letting out a fresh billow of green and gassy stench, I could hear grunting. I could hear Devore. He's lying on top of her and grunting like a pig. Sara is semiconscious, muttering unintelligibly through bruised lips which are shiny with blood. Devore is looking back over his shoulder at Draper Finney and Fred Dean. They have raced after the boy and brought him back, but he won't stop yelling, he's yelling to beat the band, yelling to wake the dead, and if they can hear the Methodists singing ‘How I Love to Tell the Story' over here, then they may be able to hear the yowling nigger over there. Devore says ‘Put him in the water, shut him up.' The minute he says it, as though the words are magic words, his cock begins to stiffen. ‘What do you mean?' Ben Merrill asks. ‘You know goddam well,' Jared says. He pants the words out, jerking his hips as he speaks. His narrow ass gleams in the afternoon light. ‘He seen us! You want to cut his throat, get his blood all over you? Fine by me. Here. Take my knife, be my guest!' ‘N-No, Jared!' Ben cries in horror, actually seeming to cringe at the sight of the knife. He is finally ready. It takes him a little longer, that's all, he ain't a kid like these other ones. But now ! Never mind her smart mouth, never mind her insolent way of laughing, never mind the whole township. Let them all show up and watch if they like. He slips it to her, what she's wanted all along, what all her kind want. He slips it in and sinks it deep. He continues giving orders even as he rapes her. Up and down his ass goes, tick-tock, just like a cat's tail. ‘Somebody take care of him! Or do you want to spend forty years rotting in Shawshank because of a nigger boy's tattle?' Ben seizes one of Kito Tidwell's arms, Oren Peebles the other, but by the time they have dragged him as far as the embankment they have lost their heart. Raping an uppity nigger woman with the gall to laugh at Jared when he fell down and split his britches is one thing. Drowning a scared kid like a kitten in a mud-puddle . . . that's another one altogether. They loosen their grip, staring into each other's haunted eyes, and Kito pulls free. ‘Run, honey!' Sara cries. ‘Run away and get ‘Jared clamps his hands around her throat and begins choking. The boy trips over his own berry bucket and thumps gracelessly to the ground. Harry and Draper recapture him easily. ‘What you going to do? ‘ Draper asks in a kind of desperate whine, and Harry replies ‘What I have to.' That's what he replied, and now I was going to do what I had to in spite of the stench, in spite of Sara, in spite of my dead wife's shrieks. I hauled the roll of canvas out of the ground. The ropes which had tied it shut at either end held, but the roll itself split down the middle with a hideous burping sound. ‘Hurry!' Jo cried. ‘I can't hold it much longer!' It snarled; it bayed like a dog. There was a loud wooden crunch, like a door being slammed hard enough to splinter, and Jo wailed. I grabbed for the carry-bag with Slips ‘n Greens printed on the front and tore it open as Harry the others call him Irish because of his carrot-colored hair grabs the struggling kid in a clumsy kind of bearhug and jumps into the lake with him. The kid struggles harder than ever,' his straw hat comes off and floats on the water. ‘Get that!' Harry pants. Fred Dean kneels and fishes out the dripping hat. Fred's eyes are dazed, he's got the look of a fighter about one round from hitting the canvas. Behind them Sara Tidwell has begun to rattle deep in her chest and throat like the sight of the boy's clenching hand, these sounds will haunt Draper Finney until his final dive into Eades Quarry. Jared sinks his fingers deeper, pumping and choking at the same time, the sweat pouring off him. No amount of washing will take the smell of that sweat out of these clothes, and when he begins to think of it as ‘murder-sweat,' he burns the clothes to get shed of it. Harry Auster wants to be shed of it all to be shed of it and never see these men again, most of all Jared Devore, who he now thinks must be Lord Satan himself. Harry cannot go home and face his father unless this nightmare is over, buried. And his mother! How can he ever face his beloved mother, Bridget Auster with her round sweet Irish face and graying hair and comforting shelf of bosom, Bridget who has always had a kind word or a soothing handler him, Bridget Auster who has been Saved, shed in the Blood of the Lamb, Bridget Auster who is even now serving pies at the picnic they're having at the new church, Bridget Auster who is mamma; how can he ever look at her again or she him if he has to stand in court on a charge of raping and beating a woman, even a black woman? So he yanks the clinging boy away Kito scratches him once, just a nick on the side of the neck, and that night Harry will tell his mamma it was a bush-pricker that caught him unawares and he will let her put a kiss on it and then he plunges the child into the lake. Kito looks up at him, his face shimmering, and Harry sees a little fish flick by. A perch, he thinks. For an instant he wonders what the boy must see, looking up through the silver shield of the surface at the face of the fellow who's holding him down, the fellow who's drowning him, and then Harry pushes that away. Just a nigger, he reminds himself desperately. That's all he is, just a nigger. No kin of yours. Kito's arm comes out of the water his dripping dark-brown arm. Harry pulls back, not wanting to be clawed, but the hand doesn't reach for him, only sticks straight up. The fingers curl into a fist. Open. Curl into a fist. Open. Curl into a fist. The boy's thrashing begins to ease, the kicking feet begin to slow down, the eyes looking up into Harry's eyes are taking on a curiously dreamy look, and still that brown arm sticks straight up, still the hand opens and closes, opens and closes. Draper Finney stands on the shore crying, sure that now someone will come along, now someone will see the terrible thing they have done the terrible thing they are in fact still doing. Be sure your sin will find you out, it says in the Good Book. Be sure. He opens his mouth to tell Harry to quit, maybe it's still not too late to take it back, let him up, let him live, but no sound comes out. Behind him Sara is choking her last. In front of him her drowning son's hand opens and closes, opens and clos es, the reflection of it shimmering on the water, and Draper thinks Won't it stop doing that, won't it ever stop doing that? And as if it were a prayer that something is now answering, the boy's locked elbow begins to bend and his arm begins to sag; the fingers begin to close again into a fist and then stop. For a moment the hand wavers and then I slammed the heel of my hand into the center of my forehead to clear these phantoms away. Behind me there was a frenzied snap and crackle of wet bushes as Jo and whatever she was holding back continued to struggle. I put my hands inside the split in the canvas like a doctor spreading a wound. I yanked. There was a low ripping sound as the roll tore the rest of the way up and down. Inside was what remained of them two yellowed skulls, forehead to forehead as if in intimate conversation, a woman's faded red leather belt, a molder of clothes . . . and a heap of bones. Two ribcages, one large and one small. Two sets of legs, one long and one short. The early remains of Sara and Kito Tidwell, buried here by the lake for almost a hundred years. The larger of the two skulls turned. It glared at me with its empty eyesockets. Its teeth chattered as if it would bite me, and the bones below it began a tenebrous, jittery stirring. Some broke apart immediately; all were soft and pitted. The red belt stirred restlessly and the rusty buckle rose like the head of a snake. ‘Mike!' Jo screamed. ‘Quick, quick!' I pulled the sack out of the carry-bag and grabbed the plastic bottle which had been inside. Lye stille, the Magnabet letters had said; another little word-trick. Another message passed behind the unsuspecting guard's back. Sara Tidwell was a fearsome creature, but she had underestimated Jo . . . and she had underestimated the telepathy of long association, as well. I had gone to Slips ‘n Greens, I had bought a bottle of lye, and now I opened it and poured it, smoking, over the bones of Sara and her son. There was a hissing sound like the one you hear when you open a beer or a bottled soft drink. The belt-buckle melted. The bones turned white and crumpled like things made out of sugar I had a nightmare image of Mexican children eating candy corpses off long sticks on the Day of the Dead. The eyesockets of Sara's skull widened as the lye filled the dark hollow where her mind, her prodigious talent, and her laughing soul had once resided. It was an expression that looked at first like surprise and then like sorrow. The jaw fell off; the nubs of the teeth sizzled away. The top of the skull caved in. Spread fingerbones jittered, then melted. ‘Ohhhhhh . . . ‘ It whispered through the soaking trees like a rising wind . . . only the wind had died as the wet air caught its breath before the next onslaught. It was a sound of unspeakable grief and longing and surrender. I sensed no hate in it; her hate was gone, burned away in the corrosive I had bought in Helen Auster's shop. The sound of Sara's going was replaced by the plaintive, almost human cry of a bird, and it awakened me from the place where I had been, brought me finally and completely out of the zone. I got shakily to my feet, turned around, and looked at The Street. Jo was still there, a dim form through which I could now see the lake and the dark clouds of the next thundersquall coming over the mountains. Something flickered beyond her that bird venturing out of its safe covert for a peek at the re-arranged environment, perhaps but I barely registered that. It was Jo I wanted to see, Jo who had come God knew how far and suffered God knew how much to help me. She looked exhausted, hurt, in some fundamental way diminished. But the other thing the Outsider was gone. Jo, standing in a ring of birch leaves so dead they looked charred, turned to me and smiled. ‘Jo! We did it!' Her mouth moved. I heard the sound, but the words were too distant to make out. She was standing right there, but she might have been calling across a wide canyon. Still, I understood her. I read the words off her lips if you prefer the rational, right out of her mind if you prefer the romantical. I prefer the latter. Marriage is a zone, too, you know. Marriage is a zone. So that's all right, isn't it? I glanced down into the gaping roll of canvas and saw nothing but stubs and splinters sticking out of a noxious, uneasy paste. I got a whiff, and even through the Stenomask it made me cough and back away. Not corruption; lye. When I looked back around at Jo, she was barely there. ‘Jo! Wait!' Can't help. Can't stay. Words from another star system, barely glimpsed on a fading mouth. Now she was little more than eyes floating in the dark afternoon, eyes which seemed made of the lake behind them. Hurry . . . She was gone. I slipped and stumbled to the place where she'd been, my feet crunching over dead birch leaves, and grabbed at nothing. What a fool I must have looked, soaked to the skin, wearing a Stenomask askew over the lower half of my face, trying to embrace the wet gray air. I got the faintest whiff of Red perfume . . . and then only damp earth, lakewater, and the vile stink of lye running under everything. At least the smell of putrefaction was gone; that had been no more real than . . . Than what? Than what? Either it was all real or none of it was real. If none of it was real, I was out of my mind and ready for the Blue Wing at Juniper Hill. I looked over toward the gray rock and saw the bag of bones I had pulled out of the wet ground like a festering tooth. Lazy tendrils of smoke were still rising from its ripped length. That much was real. So was the Green Lady, who was now a soot-colored Black Lady as dead as the dead branch behind her, the one that seemed to point like an arm. Can't help . . . can't stay . . . hurry. Couldn't help with what? What more help did I need? It was done, wasn't it? Sara was gone: spirit follows bone, good night sweet ladies, God grant she lye stille. And still a kind of stinking terror, not so different from the smell of putrescence which had come out of the ground, seemed to sweat out of the air; Kyra's name began to beat in my head, Ki-Ki, Ki-Ki, Ki-Ki, like the call of some exotic tropical bird. I started up the railroad-tie steps to the house, and although I was exhausted, by the time I was halfway up I had begun to run. I climbed the stairs to the deck and went in that way. The house looked the same save for the broken tree poking in through the kitchen window, Sara Laughs had stood up to the storm very well but something was wrong. There was something I could almost smell . . . and perhaps I did smell it, bitter and low. Lunacy may have its own wild-vetch aroma. It's not the kind of thing I would ever care to research. In the front hall I stopped, looking down at a heap of paperback books, Elmore Leonards and Ed Mcbains, lying on the floor. As if they had been raked off the shelf by a passing hand. A flailing hand, maybe. I could also see my tracks there, both coming and going. They had already begun to dry. They should have been the only ones; I had been carrying Ki when we came in. They should have been, but they weren't. The others were smaller, but not so small that I mistook them for a child's. I ran down the hall to the north bedroom crying her name, and I might as well have been crying Mattie or Jo or Sara. Coming out of my mouth, Kyra's name sounded like the name of a corpse. The duvet had been thrown back onto the floor. Except for the black stuffed dog, lying where it had in my dream, the bed was empty. And Ki was gone.