the street only for occasional cherry sodas. Stern knew what his mother would say if Stern suggested that Winkel come look at his son. "Even with half a mind he knows more than anyone else. Do you know how big that man was? And I can still get him, too. He'll come to me in two seconds if I want him, no matter how crazy he is." The swelling disappeared mysteriously one morning, and in a few days Stern, with a leaping heart, was able to carry his son into his car and back to the house. He kept his nose deep in his son's neck and marveled that some good had come out of the sickness. He had finally been among people in this bleak town, nurses and doctors and visitors in the halls. A day later, he spotted a blossom on the cancer side of the wild cherry tree--and there were other things, too, that happened quickly. A new stop sign on Stern's corner, one that would prevent motorcycle boys being shot out of cannons; a shortcut across the estate; a plan to kill his boiler; and a new attitude on the part of the dogs. And then, of course, a week afterward, the man had said kike and looked between his wife's legs. * * * * * There were only three other occasions on which Stern and his wife discussed the kike man. One occurred the very next night when Stern, still in his topcoat, caught her wrists around the oven and said, "I just want to see how it happened." "What do you mean?" she said. "I want to get a picture in my mind of what it was all about. Get on the floor and show me exactly how you were. How your legs were when you were down there. It's important." "I wont do that," she said, breaking through to clean the oven. "I've got to see it," said Stern, grabbing her again. "Just for a second." "I'm not going to do anything like that. I told you to forget it." "I'm not fooling around," he said, and, taking her around the waist, he threw her to the kitchen floor, her jumper flying back above her knees. "You crazy bastard," she said, flicking a strip of skin from his nose in a quick swipe and getting to her feet. "All right, then--me," said Stern, getting on the floor. "My topcoat's your dress. Tell me when I'm right." He drew the coat slightly above his knees and said, "This way?" "I'm not doing this," his wife said. "I don't know what you want me to do." "Were you this way?" he asked. "Just tell me that." "No," she said. He drew the coat up higher. "This?" "Uh-uh," she said. He flung the overcoat back over his hips, his legs sprawling, and said, "This way?" "Yes," she said. Stern said, "Jesus," and ran upstairs to sink in agony upon the bed. But he felt excited, too. On the weekend, several days later, as Stern unloaded cans of chow mein from the supermarket, his wife said, "He has big arms." "Who?" Stern asked, knowing full well who she meant "The man," she said. "The man who said that thing." "Oh," Stern said. "What do arms mean?"