I sat in my mother's chair thinking of these things, more or less, and testing myself by trying not to blink. Then I heard a sound and when it grew louder I could guess what it was, motorcycles, a low throttling growl from that distance but coming closer now, rumbling and cracking, and I knew there would be more than two or three. I went to the window and then they came down the street with a sound that seemed to rip and sunder beneath the tires themselves, cracking off into smaller sounds which were then snapped apart by the next set of wheels and the next, and I counted ten, now twelve bikes, the riders screaming something as they went, eighteen now, an even twenty, dressed in silver and black, the colors of their bikes, and they went past screaming into the sounds of their machines, shouting a curse or warning over the empty lawns. They were gone in seconds and it was as though a hurricane or plague had struck the town. We were all in one piece. But now, as silence began to fill in the holes left by those marauding bikes, I could almost feel every man and woman in town looking from windows down that street and experiencing a strange mixture of longing and terror. We were all in one piece. But we were not quite the same people we had been ten seconds before.

We had cold cuts for lunch. On the radio Mel Allen was describing a nip and tuck ball game, the first of two, and he was saying there's plenty of room out here, folks; you can see the remainder of this game and all of the next; so why don't you come on out and bring the family. Then Jane began to talk about a course she was taking in the primitive religions of the world. It was given two nights a week at the YWCA in a nearby community. The Algonquin Indians heard dead men chirp like crickets. Fijian priests used to stare endlessly at a whale's tooth and then have convulsions. In funeral services in Fiji, the major part of the ceremony was to strangle the dead man's wives, friends and slaves. Jane went upstairs then to get her notebook. We ate in silence. She returned a minute later. Eisenhower was on the radio now with a brief recorded announcement in which he urged people to support their local community chest. The Chinese make a hole in the roof to let out the soul at death. When a Watchandi warrior slew his first victim, the spirit of the dead man entered the warrior's body and became his woorie, or warning spirit; it resided near his liver and warned him of danger by scratching or tickling. It was the custom of the Aztecs to pour the blood of slaughtered victims into the mouths of idols. A Mandingo priest would hold a newborn child in his arms, whisper in its ear and spit three times in its face. The Ojibwas believed that hatchets and kettles Lave souls. A saying of the Zulus was that the stuffed body cannot see secret things. The Zulu doctor prepared himself for dialogue with the spirits by fasting, suffering and long quiet walks. The Yakuts of Siberia worshipped the bear, their beloved uncle. According to the Dayaks, the human soul enters the trunks of trees. Evil spirits had sexual congress with Samoan women at night, causing supernatural conceptions. The Nicaraguans offered human sacrifices to Popogatepec by tossing bodies into volcanic craters. The Ahts of Vancouver's Island considered the moon as husband and the sun as wife. The Mintira people feared a water-demon which had a dog's head and an alligator's mouth. It sucked blood from men's thumbs and big toes until they died. To the Assyrians, insanity was possession by demons. When a Kayan of Borneo died, his slaves were killed so that they could follow him to the next world and obey all his behests. First the female relatives of the deceased master wounded the slaves slightly with spears. Then the male relatives took up these same spears and killed the victims. The human soul weighs three to four ounces.

"All that cruelty and superstition," my mother said.

"Life was cheap in those days, Ann."

"Who were all those people?" she said. "Think of them all, living in caves and huts. Back to the dawn of time. Worshipping bears and monkeys. Millions of souls. How insignificant they seem."

"I know what you mean," my father said. "It's almost impossible to conceive of all those people killing each other and praying to the sun. It makes you think that what you do in your life doesn't make a whole lot of difference. Why should we be any more significant than those primitives?"

"But we are, Clinton."

"Those are good notes, Jane," I said.

"I take them down in shorthand and then copy them out later," she said. "It's the best way to do it."

"It's incredible," my father said. "The way they disregarded human life. But still they were men and women. We're sitting here on a Sunday afternoon eating lunch and listening to the ball game. Those people couldn't be more remote. And yet they were men and women. They believed in something."

"The more magical a race is," my mother said, "the less significant the individual is. Magic overwhelms everything. We in the West value human life almost desperately because we have no magic."

"God is magic," Jane said.

"No. God is the opposite of magic. I've talked to William Potter about this. The subject is foreign to him. We all have magic in us, some more than others, but everything we've been taught tends to bury the magic. Consider what we're eating, Clinton. The body of an animal. What could be more primitive?"

"But we don't worship the animal," I said.

"Only because God took human form. What if He had decided to visit earth in the guise of a lion? The primitives seem insignificant to us because they're so remote in time and creed, as your father says, but also because they were so insignificant to each other. That was magic. Magic made them less important than the animals or planets they worshipped. They were not so far from the mark really. I hold with magic. I'm not sure whether it's good or evil. But I know it's there."

"That's good, Ann," my father said. "That's extremely interesting. "

There was nothing to do. All afternoon I sat on the porch, motionless, thinking of the wet bodies of women. It was getting hotter. The stillness was almost absolute. There was a taste of water in the air, warm salt biting the lips. I felt heavy. I wished it would rain. Is this how people die, watching along the street for some sign that will tell them the moment is here, at last, rise up and act, the time is upon us, quickly, into the streets, now, grenades and motorcycles, a warning word, salt on the wet bodies of women. Dr. Weber walked down the street. He was a short man with a mustache. The machete is a most effective weapon, doctor. You are surprised that I speak your language? Harvard. Class of '34. He was carrying his bag. He wore a dark suit. There was a gravy stain on his shirtfront. I waited for him to look toward the porch and give me that yellow smile which doctors and dentists employ so often, a clenched wry smile as the money changes hands, and when he did I turned away and yawned. Practitioner. Oath-taker. I rode out the afternoon on that yawn.

Later, from the window of my room, I watched them arrive for the party. The Old Holly people came mostly on foot. Those from nearby suburbs or from the city, my father's crowd, arrived in cars or took the cab from the station. There was no particular reason for the party but in a way it was something of a debut for me. It was judged that I was old enough now to partake in adult games, presumably on the fringe of things, nursing a tall cool rum collins (or something to that effect) while everyone admired my preppy manners and told me how much I had grown. Between forty and fifty people would be coming. It had been arranged-this I learned from Jane-that a couple named Loomis would be bringing along their daughter Amy, who was my age. Jane herself had invited her current boyfriend, John Retley Tucker, who was Big Bob Davidson's immediate predecessor in virtually every sense of the word. I called him Sweatley Retley. Mary had not been told about the party because nobody knew where she was.