the tears from her eyes. "I suppose we have to go on doing the same things. We have to have dinner tonight. I must shop...."

He took her in his arms. "It'll be all right," he said.

"I feel so helpless! What are you going to do?"

"Right now," he said, "I think I'll go fishing."

Ann began to laugh, a little hysterically. "You are relaxed about it," she said.

"Might as well relax and give it more thought."

Ann kissed him and went into the kitchen. She was gone when he came out with his rod and creel. Going down the walk under the trees, he was aware again of what a fine autumn afternoon it was. He began to whistle as he went down the hill toward the stream.

He didn't catch anything, of course. He had fished the pool at least a hundred times without luck, but that did not matter. He knew there was a fighting old bass in its depths and, probably, he would have been sorry to catch him. Now, his line gently agitated the dark water as he sat under a big tree on the stream bank and smoked. Idly he opened the copy of Yeats' poems and began reading: Turning and turning in the widening gyre....

In mounting excitement, he read the coldly beautiful, the terrible and revelatory poem through to the end. And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

Ward became aware that his pipe was out. He put it away, feeling the goose pimples, generated by the poem, leave his flesh. Then he shook himself and sighed. We're lucky, he thought, it might have been the way the old boy predicted it in the poem. It might have been terrible.

He sighed again, watching his line in the dark water, and thought of Bobby. You could hardly call Bobby a rough beast. The line flickered in the water and then was still. He would have a lot of time for this kind of life, he thought, if his theory were correct. He watched a flight of leaves dapple the pool with the insignia of autumn. He was not sure he wanted to spend a lifetime fishing.

Suddenly the pool exploded into motion, the water frothed and flashed white and the line in his hand sang like a piano wire. Automatically, he jerked his line and began to reel in, at the same time his mind was telling him no line of its weight could long hold what he had hooked. As suddenly as the action had begun, it was ended and he was pulling something heavy against the stream bank. He gaped at it, his eyes popping. Then he heard the rustle of leaves and the snap of a stick behind him.

"Catch somep'n, teach'?" a voice asked.

"Yes, I caught something." He got his tobacco pouch from his pocket and filled his pipe, trying to keep his hands from trembling.

"Gee, he's a big one, teach'," the voice said.

Ward stood up. The boy, Jacky Hodge, leaning over the bank looking down at the fish. Behind him, Ward saw Bobby, Alec Cress, Danny and several others. Now which of you is laughing? he wondered. But there was no way to tell. Jacky, a boy of twelve or thirteen, had his usual look of stupid good nature. Bobby, under the flambeau of red hair, dreamed at the fish. The others wore the open poker faces of children.

"That's a funny fish," one of them said and then they were all laughing as they raced away.

With some difficulty, Ward got the fish out of the water and began to drag it up the hill toward his house.

"Outspace fish," Ward said as he dumped the thing on the work table where Ann had deposited the bag of groceries.

"Where did you get that?"

"I just caught it. Down in the stream."

"That? In our stream?"

"Yeah."

He looked at it. The fish resembled a small marlin in shape, but it looked as if its sides had been painted by an abstract artist.

"They planted it on my hook," he told her. "Teleported it from somewhere and planted it on me. Like the tigers."

"Who?"

"I don't know—one of the kids. There were a bunch of them down by the river."

"Is it the