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and barking. Mamie thought, Those boys’re tormenting him again. In her imagination, she could see them sneaking along the right-of-way behind their house to throw rocks into the dog pen. All hackles and teeth, the dog would lunge at them, his snapping chain flipping him crosswise in the air. He was a crazy-mean dog with scary eyes, and the bet was to see if they could goad him into breaking his chain. Once in a while he did break it, his teeth slashing at the fence wire.
    â€œOh, Chinaman,” she muttered. Mamie wanted to get up, poke her head out the window, and yell at them to stop it. She reached for the bedpost to pull herself up, but in the air her fingers bumped across a scratchy face. Her entire body flinched. She lurched crablike on the bed to escape it. The room was too full of sunshine to see clearly. With her pulse pounding, she rubbed her eyes and squinted. “Oh, Daddy,” she gasped. “You scared the daylights out of me.” He was seated on the small chair by her bed.
    â€œMamie,” he said, so softly, and his face turned pale like a foggy image of himself. “I want you to tell me some things.” Again she wiped her fists across her closed eyes, and when she looked once more, he struck three matches from a little pasteboard box—the first two broke to pieces in his fingers. Smoke curled on his lip. He was unshaven, the drag of the comb still showing in his neat, wet hair.
    She scooted up from the pillow, but stammered, said nothing.
    Flattening his hands on his knees, with the cigarette glowing between his fingers, he asked where the gun had come from; did she know where Sherman got it?
    He’s dead, Mamie thought and, slipping out from the twisted quilts, remembered in detail the night before.
    â€œHe had no business with that gun,” her father said. “Somebody’s just as responsible for this as he is. I mean to find out who that is.”
    This time he’s dead, Mamie thought, and they won’t tell me. And the sickening ache that had stayed with her through the night spread vividly along her nerves.
    â€œI’ll find out,” he said, “one way or the other. So you’d better tell me. Mamie, do you know where he got that gun?”
    She shook her head. She wanted to tell him without lying that Sherman lied all the time, that he’d told her different made-up stories about how and where he got the gun, but she shook her head. “Let me hear you say it.” And she muttered, “Dunno,” and asked was he dead. Her father glanced toward the elm twig scratching the windowpane. “Maybe he will be,” he said. For a moment, his eyes glazed. “Probably.” He’s lying to me, Mamie thought. Sherman’s already dead. Her father cleared his throat. “Mamie, do you know anything about this?”
    Matching the cadence of his words, she again shook her head, five, six times. He put the cigarette to his lips but his fingers trembled; a long stub of ash splashed down his shirt. He kept his dark head tilted toward the window. “Why’d he shoot himself, Mamie?” He frowned, studying his cigarette. He wiped his eyes. “Something’s been wrong here a long time for this to happen. I just didn’t see it. Why would he do such a thing? You were around him all the time. If anybody knows about this, you do. You’re the one. You have to.”
    â€œI really liked him,” Mamie said and nodded, without looking up.
    His cigarette had gone out. He held it pointed up in a pinch of his thumb and fingernails. “We found the gun last night,” he said. “I’ve never seen it before.… Well, I’ll find out whose it was and how he got it if I have to go from door to door of every house in Graylie.” As he talked, never once loud or hateful, he pulled from his pants pocket a small green plastic water gun. “Here,” he said, and thrust it at her. “Show me,