“Where yuh from boy? What rural—see, sober now—precincts miss you?” “Wappinger Falls, near Poughkeepsie. My name’s Hodge Backmaker.” “Well now, that’s friendly of you, Hodge. I’m George Pondible. Periodic. Just tapering off.” I hadnt an idea what Pondible was talking about. Trying to understand made my head worse. “Took everything, I suppose? Havent a nickel left to help a hangover?” “My head,” I mumbled, quite superfluously. He staggered to his feet. I slowly sat up, tenderly touching the lump over my ear with my fingertips. “Best thing—souse it in the river. Take more to fix mine.” “But ... can I go through the streets like this?” “Right,” he said. “Quite right.” He stooped down and put one hand beneath the drunk, who murmured unintelligibly. With the other he removed the jacket, a maneuver betraying practice, for it elicited no protest from the victim. He then performed the still more delicate operation of depriving him of his shirt and shoes, tossing them all to me. They were a loathsome collection of rags not fit to clean a manurespreader. The jacket was torn and greasy, the pockets hanging like the ears of a dog; the shirt was a filthy tatter, the shoes shapeless fragments of leather with great gapes in the soles. “It’s stealing,” I protested. “Right. Put them on and let’s get out of here.” The short walk to the river was through streets lacking the glamour of those of the day before. The tenements were smokestreaked, with steps between the parting bricks where mortar had fallen out; great hunks of wall were kept in place only by the support of equally crazy ones abutting. The wretched things I wore were better suited than Pondible’s to this neighborhood, though his would have marked him tramp and vagrant in Wappinger Falls. The Hudson too was soiled, with an oily scum and debris, so that I hesitated to dip even the purloined shirt, much less my aching head. But urged on by Pondible I climbed down the slimy stones between two docks and pushing the flotsam aside, ducked myself in the unappetizing water. “Fixes your head,” said Pondible with more assurance than accuracy. “Now for mine.” The sun was hot and the shirt dried on my back as we walked away from the river, the jacket over my arm. Now that my mind was clearing my despair grew rapidly; for a moment I wished I had waded farther into the Hudson and drowned.