be" says he. "Like hell" says I; he shakes his head in mock dismay, and sleeps in snow For a matter of minutes, waking in an old dream with three women naked on a parched lawn, holding him down in a shallow pine box; he's cold and yelling for help. "Why wouldn't you come; where were you?" "Right here; it's all right, I'm right here." Again sleep, longer, deep enough to send me home. Route 59 is slurred with rain; cars dead along the curbs; the stink of the ward hangs on. The clock on the mantel clangs time and again, the phone wakens the house, a nurse talks from his room: he's confused, thinks he is lost, would I talk him back to sleep, do what I can. "It'll be okay, Henry; it's just a dream, like the box on the lawn; the nurses will get you blankets, and tuck you in, get you more milk, one of those whopping pills; let me talk with her again; you'll sleep, you'll see." -- "My ass" says he. "No thanks" says I; "I saw it this afternoon." He has chosen fifteen from the side of the track, and now the sixteenth; he shakes them in his cupped hands like a man rattling bar dice after his money is gone. They are all about the same: grey, smooth, just as they were a year ago when he'd run four miles before breakfast -- in rain, snow, summer heat, no matter. He watches