The Second Coming

steep copper hood, verdigrised green-brown, shaded the front door like a cathedral porch. Iron spikes and fleurs-de-lis sprouted from the roof peak. Virginia creeper and saplings thrust through broken windows. The glazing on the lower tier was intact. The dusty glass was gilded by the sun and he could not see inside. The greenhouse, he judged, was a good fifty feet long and twenty-five feet wide. As he watched it, his head moved slightly as if he were appraising the width of a green or the length of an iron shot. A single huge pine near the porch towered over the whole forest.
    â€œAre these yours?”
    One heart-jump not from surprise but from anger at being taken by surprise, for in his circling he had, without thinking about it, backed into the fork of cloven pine, a vantage point from which he could see without being seen. He turned, frowning.
    The youth held out two golf balls. He took them, still frowning and inattentive as if it were no more than he expected, a caddy retrieving lost balls, and thanked the youth—no, not a youth he noticed now, another miscalculation: he had at first thought long-haired youth with unchanged voice but no, it must be short-haired girl with woman’s voice—and still frowning, examined the balls.
    â€œYes. Spalding Pro Flite and Hogan four. Yes, that’s them all right. Thanks.” He held out a dollar. Nice going, youth-girl caddy. But the slender hands which had given him the golf balls didn’t move.
    Frowning still—he was still off-balance—he shrugged and turned to leave.
    â€œThis one woke me up.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œHogan woke me up.”
    â€œHogan woke you up?”
    â€œIt broke my window.” She nodded toward the greenhouse.
    â€œWhich one?”
    â€œNot those. At the end of my house, where I was sleeping. The surprise of it was instigating to me.”
    â€œOkay okay. Will five dollars do it?” He fumbled in his pocket.
    No answer. Eyes steady, hands still.
    â€œDid you say your house?”
    â€œYes. It is my house. I live there.”
    There was a window broken in the lower tier. His slice could hardly have carried so far. On the other hand, he had hit the first drive very hard, too hard (Was that it, his anger, that was causing the slice? Never hit a golf ball or a child in anger, said Lewis Peckham), and it went high, curving very foul, and did not hit wood. A real banana ball, said Lewis the first time.
    â€œOkay. How much do I owe you?”
    â€œIt was peculiar. I was lying in my house in the sun reading this book.” She had taken a book from the deep pocket of the jacket and handed it to him, as if to prove—prove what?—and as he examined it, a rained-on dried-out 1922 Captain Blood, he was thinking not about Captain Blood but about the oddness of the girl. There was something odd about her speech and, now that he looked at her, about her. For one thing, she spoke slowly and carefully as if she were reading the words on his face. The sentence “I was lying in my house” was strange. “The surprise of it was instigating.” Though she was dressed, like most of the kids here, in oversize men’s clothes, man’s shirt, man’s jacket, there was something wrong—yes, her jeans were oversize too, not tight, and dark blue like a farm boy’s. Yet her hair was cut short and brushed carefully, as old-fashioned as the book she was reading. It made him think of the expression “boyish bob.”
    â€œI was lying in my house in the sun reading that book. Then plink, tinkle, the glass breaks and this little ball rolls up and touches me. I felt concealed and revealed.” Her voice was flat and measured. She sounded like a wolf child who had learned to speak from old Victrola records. Her lips trembled slightly, not quite smiling, her eyes not quite meeting his yet attentive, sweeping his face like a blind person’s.
    Oh well. She was one of the thousands who blow in and out every summer like the blackbirds, nest where they can, in flocks or alone. Sleep in the woods. At least she had found a greenhouse.
    As he turned away, gripping the three-iron with a two-handed golfer’s grip and with a frowning self-consciousness which almost surprised him, she said: “Are you—?”
    â€œWhat?” He cocked the club for a short chip shot and hung fire.
    â€œAre you still climbing on your anger?”
    â€œWhat?”
    When he swung