Poorhouse Fair by John Updike

gregariousness had been a factor in Conner's early dedication to a social cause rather than a more vertical and selfish career, in a science or art--he felt despairing as he proceeded down the deserted stairwell and was glad to come upon Buddy, his one friend in the place. With a bang of the outer door the boy emerged into the hall, drenched. His torso beneath the soaked adhesive shut declared its forms. The collar was recklessly open; in the V the tan hollow at the base of his throat pulsed. His face was red with exertion and his wet hair hyacinthiue. "That's done," Buddy breathed, taking Conner's presence there casually. "The soft drinks are stacked under the trees by the porch. Not that we'll have anybody to drink them, except maybe Noah."
    Buddy's flip acceptance of the rain, Conner's enemy, cut slightly. He asked, "Why did you have to handle the cases?"
    "Beyond and above the call of duty," Buddy sang: parody of Conner! "The driver of the truck, a lovely youth, was so abashed by his error of smashing down our wall that he would have been incapable of completing his delivery. His impulse was to hop astride his mount and flee to Newark, where he was planning, I gathered, to deflower a local bloom."
    "Smash what wall?"
    "The late Mr. Andrews's. Haven't you seen? It made an audible thump."
    "No I haven't. Did you get the kid's name, or were you both too excited?"
    "I was calm as the proverbial vegetable. He was the tot. He even imagined one of the inmates--one of the smaller men--was planning to hide in his cab and make an escape. I begged him to take several, but with a tremor of his bedewed lashes he declined. Behold, his name."
    Conner took the wrinkled damp piece of paper offered him, scribbled in Buddy's somewhat studied Italic hand. "What do you think he'll tell the insurance?"
    "Lies, nothing but lies. He spoke pidgin Spanish in his dangerous, composed moments."
    "O.K. Thanks for everything. You better change, Bedewed. What happened to the cat?"
    "Cross him off your list. Our secret is safe."
    "Buried?"
    "Not yet. I rushed to rescue our friend Ted."
    "O.K." Conner let a frown show, pettishly, since of course there hadn't been time. Now with the rain the cat must lie uncovered. A sadness of sorts pierced him, and he asked, "About the wall. Can I see the damage from the porch?"
    "Nothing easier, alas. It's no mean hole." This last was called on the fly, since the boy was running up the stairs, removing his shirt as he went.
    The warm sense of shelter given by a porch whose railing is spattered with rain insufficiently offset Conner's disappointment with Buddy, his feeling that they had met at incompatible angles, and his renewed awareness that it was still the fate of his kind of man to be, save in the centers of administration, alone. The rain, falling absolutely, with an infrequent breath of wind turning a section temporarily oblique, pounded the porch rail, and a spray so fine it was more of an aroma than a mist rolled in to the wall, dampening the yellow boards, making the tops of checker tables glisten, and tinting the wicker chairs a darker vanilla. The air turned white; a fork of lightning hung above the distant orchards, shocking each spherical tree into relief. Seconds later the sound arrived. The clouds above formed a second continent, with its own horizon; a bar of old silver stretched behind the nearly tangent profiles of the farthest hills and clouds. Again lightning raced down a fault in the sky, the thunder following less tardily. On the lawn before him there was no sign of the day's celebration save the empty aligned tables and the cords of colored bulbs strung on the poles. The fumbling old men had somehow done their job.
    Through veils of rain the damage was indistinct: a discolored patch of some length, and a curious pallidity, as if the wall had been stuffed with oyster shells or fragments of plaster. It did not seem to interfere with the silhouette of the wall. While it could have been worse it was