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Show -110 voices rang out oddly over the flat s t i l l water; in the boat the cop scratched his nose with the brim of his hat and leaned over the side to see. "Chances are i t ' s nothing," I said. Morgan stared down, "People have been dumping trash in this stretch of the river for a hundred years. How could they find anything in all that mess?" The divers had gone under again and nothing more seemed to be happening. A speck of white floated between the boat and the bank and I recognized the bit of bread I'd thrown out on the water in the morning; some flaw in the current had kept i t in one place a l l day long. A flaw in l i f e ' s current had kept me in one place too, I thought. Because although I often found i t difficult to recognize that former self who peered at me out of old photographs or the recesses of memory, he was me a l l right, and I hadn't progressed much past him. I could look back at myself and see I was s t i l l a child-if I had moved i t was only sidewise-while my old classmates and contemporaries had grown up and could show wives, houses, jobs and children of their own to prove i t . Even my moony brother Jacob had these things, while I, smarter, more firmly in the world, practical, dreamy only on special occasions, had let them slip through my fingers like a ninny sixth-grader dropping fly balls in the outfield while his team-mates jeer. |