They were, it was true, rounded, vividly colored, frequently alert and even witty. A few were notably independent. He wouldn't want that sort. He would prefer a woman of the clinging vine type, one who would force him to cherish her. He would attempt to find pleasure in the sweet ecstasy of fervent kisses, in the warm scent of tingling hair. He would wait silently for these manifestations of desire; he would withhold his participation in cheaper, more devious frenzies, so that, the moment come, he could prove that he was a man, not different from other men.
He was happy in the thought that he had attained a point of view completely at variance with that of other days. He could, he thought, trace the slow development of the decay, now at last arrested, the cancerous growth removed. He was whole, sane. He would remain so.
He did not leave for New York until the fourth of July. It was mid-afternoon, a sultry day with Texas lying on a thin shell above an inferno. Heat waves were rising in distorting curtains from the pavements as Ken walked with his father from the Lowell block to the station.
It was cooler within the brick building. Father and son sat, chatting about little things. Uncle Joe would be down on Sunday; Martha had asked Dad to put in a gas stove, but he didn't want to spend even the three dollars a month instalments. When Ken returned to New York, he said, and when he got a job, he would send money home. And take out insurance. And otherwise become a good boy.
They were still chatting when the rickety local train wheezed into town. The heat had quieted every one down.
