“Fifty cents for a hand on her crotch.”
Krantz was joking with Breavman about selling Anne to him piece by piece. Breavman didn’t like the joke but he laughed.
“An almost unused nipple for three bits?”
Oh, Krantz.
They had quarrelled over Breavman’s treatment of Martin. Breavman had categorically refused to enjoin the boy to participate in group activities. He had put his job on the line.
“You know we can’t start looking for replacements at this point in the season.”
“In that case you’ll have to let me handle him my own way.”
“I’m not telling you to force him into activities, but I swear you encourage him in the other direction.”
“I enjoy his madness. He enjoys his madness. He’s the only free person I’ve ever met. Nothing that anybody else does is as important as what he does.”
“You’re talking a lot of nonsense, Breavman.”
“Probably.”
Then Breavman had decided he couldn’t deliver a sermon to the camp on Saturday morning when his turn came around. He had nothing to say to anyone.
Krantz looked at him squarely.
“You made a mistake, coming up here, didn’t you?”
“And you made one asking me. We both wanted to prove different things. So now you know you’re your own man, Krantz.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I know.”
It was a moment, this true meeting, and Breavman didn’t try to stretch it into a guarantee. He had trained himself to delight in the fraction. “What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross.”
“Of course you know that you’re identifying with Martin and are only excluding yourself when you allow him to separate himself from the group.”
“Not that jargon, Krantz, please.”
“I remember everything, Breavman. But I can’t live in it.”
“Good.”
Therefore Breavman was obliged to laugh when Anne joined them and Krantz said, “Buttocks are going very cheap.”