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Show -69 side of the valley and the snowy peaks of the Three Sisters; another old whitehead over there had to be Mt. Jefferson. There was a patch of amazing blue over Lebanon and Sweet Home; a streak of falling sun lit up Thin Man's Butte like a personal benediction; the vertical plume of white smoke from the American Can Company plant climbed into the sky straight as a prophet's finger. There was nothing in that landscape to make a man so desperate that he would drown himself. I wished that that severe priest Father Ragni of 3utte could have seen it-it was beautiful enough to turn him into a Unitarian. Even the faint rotten-egg smell from the paper-mills upriver at Albany represented only a childish American pleasure in making things. Just below me was one of several wooden decks, canti-levered over the river, which the city council had built in an attempt to make the waterfront respectable. They were pretty but nobody came there except traveling winos to sleep on the benches or eccentrics like Adam to sit staring at the lazy river and feel sad and sorry they were born. Out in the middle of the water now was the divers' boat; a single bored policeman sat with his back slumped against the transom, one hand lying on the handle of the outboard motor, his hat over his eyes, dozing. Every few minutes the water bubbled, a masked face popped out for a brief conference, then the diver bit his mouthpiece and let himself slip under the surface again. I gradually drifted off, soothed by the sunny morning, |