The village of Barlow's Landing wasn't much to look at. The twistings of the Barlow River as it flowed northward through the valley from the Vermont uplands to Lake Massawippi in Quebec had determined the course of the old Stage Road, where the railbed would be laid, the directions in which the village would grow. The houses, modest in size and sheathed with narrow clapboards once painted white but now weathered and peeling, were scattered between the railroad tracks and the foot of the bridge that defined the northern boundary of the village. Those built between the road and the tracks were on narrow lots, their cindered and sooted backyards hard against the railbed.

Across the road, the houses were built at the foot of the ridge that defined the valley. Most of the inhabitants had running water; it was brought down from springs located in the dense stand of trees high up on the ridge, through pipe logs buried deep in the ground. Those who had abandoned their outhouses and installed flushable crappers had other pipes that discharged into the river.

Almost everyone who lived in The Landing and on the outlying farms attended church on Sunday, and they had a choice; the Anglicans worshipped at a tidy white chapel built on a small rise at the south end of the village; the brethren of the United Church answered the steady summons of the old Revere bell hanging in the church steeple near the river. The bell was the pride of the village; it had been cast down in the States at the Revere foundry for the Curtis Neighborhood congregation, and when the church was eventually abandoned from lack of use, the bell was donated to the Uniteds down in the valley. The Anglicans lacked a bell but felt their stained glass was of superior color and design.

The largest building in the village was the Stage Road Inn, faded and creaky now but still bedding down the occasional commercial traveler beneath linen of questionable freshness and serving plain food and strong drink at the Saturday night dances held in the long, narrow dance hall off the parlor. The second largest building was Langdon's General Store & Feeds, Pincher Langdon, Prop., who was also owned the inn, the ancient waterpowered sawmill upriver on the road to Beebe, and the trackside creamery next to the Massawippi Valley Railroad Station.

He had acquired several farms of various acreage on which he had tenants, and a number of wood lots that he had harvested regularly by neighboring farmers glad for the cash money, however modest the amount. Across the front of the store, facing the road, there was a covered veranda on which there were three rough wooden benches, six straight chairs, and various rusty cans used as spitoons. The front wall of the store was decorated with faded enameled signs advertising Red Man Tobacco, Purity Flour, Jack Canuck! Tar Soap. The large Dominion Paints thermometer, displayed prominently, was considered a village asset. Pincher's front porch was the village men's club and it was their custom to gather there when not occupied to exchange the news, to pick up the mail, to comment on the weather. They were joined at various times by farmers when they hauled in their cream and stopped for supplies, or brought their women to shop.

Pincher was a squat, chunky man, bald, voracious in all his appetites, deceptively powerful - he could heft a full cream can in each hand from loading platform to box car without grunting - and tended to be liverish, especially when it came to money. Mrs. Langdon, Elvira, was gaunt as he was fleshy, wore her hair twisted tightly into a netted bun, and seemingly had few appetites she cared to indulge, but shared her husband's disposition about money. Lucy, their only child, was fair skinned and lightly freckled over the bridge of her nose, wore her red hair in twin braids that reached nearly to her waist, and sang the old Anglican hymns on Sundays and holy days in clear, high voice. Pincher and Elvira marveled that they had produced such a lovely creature. Lucy was their darling.

When Cooch was born he was christened Francis Wendell Charles Hildreth in honor of his father and both grandfathers. It was a hard birthing; there were to be no others. The doctor consoled his parents, telling them that after a while no one would notice the extra thumbs. Francis' father said, "I'll see them, Doc. can't you cut them off? He'll never be able to work right." His mother hugged Francis close and whispered, "Don't touch him."

In his early years Francis stayed close to his mother when they went to the village. He was a slight child and so fair of skin and hair that he was taunted in the school yard by the older boys as "one of them freakin' albeenos." Sometimes they called him Dummy or Thumbs. As he grew older he ventured onto the store's veranda with his father, sitting quietly next to him on a bench or on the floor by his chair, seemingly inattentive and self-absorbed but missing nothing of the man talk flowing around him: grass is thin this year ... hay crop'll be down ... whipped that poor damned horse 'till it dropped ... wouldn't vote for him ... don't know beans ... caught him in the sheep pen again ... damned near killed him ... got beat on that trade ... shot it up on the ridge, eight points ... wouldn't mind catching her in the hay loft ... boys say she's hot ... nice stand of pine ... cut it next winter ... train's late again.

If there were other boys, Francis would avert his eyes and give no outward sign of recognition, even if they spoke to him. Seeing Lucy, he would duck his head but keep his eyes on her from under the brim of his hat. When she spoke to him he smiled but kept his head down. His father took no notice.

Francis had loved Lucy since he saw her skipping rope that first morning at school, braids flying and long aproned skirt belling up with each jump. The children had stopped playing when the Hildreth's dappled mare halted in front of the one-room school. His father held the reins loosely and looked at Francis. He said, "here you are." His mother brushed the hair from his eyes and said, "You'll like school. See, there are all your new friends."

The nudging, the pointing, the whispering started immediately: "There he is ... it's the albeeno kid ... my Pa said he's a dummy ... can't talk ... just grunts ... Jeezum Crow, look at his hands!" His father helped his mother down, then lifted him clear and set him on the ground. With Francis between them holding their hands, they walked past the staring children to the door where Miss Montgomery waited, brass bell in hand. Only the teacher and Lucy smiled at Francis.

Besides the two churches, the school was the only other freshly-painted building in the viilage and it was white, as was the attached shed containing separate outhouses for the boys and girls. They were unheated and drafty and smelled, and hated by Miss Montgomery who had prodded and coaxed two generations through the six grades in the small school and who, as an educated person, had a modern toilet. It was her practice when necessary to leave one of the older children in charge while she slipped away "for just a minute" to her warm home next door. Francis grew to dread her leaving. For then the older boys, usually one of the Putvain brothers, would turn their attention to him.

How he feared the painful knuckle rubs on his scalp, the forearm "frogs" that would throb the rest of the day and leave his pale skin mottled and bruised, the goosings, the finger twistings and nipple tweakings of their horseplay. He smiled to show that he knew they were just fooling around but eventually the silent tears would come. Sometimes Lucy or one of the other girls would try to help: "Bullies! Cowards! Pick on someone your own size. Leave poor Francis alone!" But the scoldings had little effect and they would quickly retreat when Rudy or Buster Putvain advanced, rough hands outstretched at breast level, wiggling fingers and grinning hugely.

By the time Francis was eleven the taunts and pokes had become hard punches to the arms and chest and sharp knee thrusts to the thighs. He hated school but he had become handy in the barn; he had a way with the cows and didn't mind mucking out the gutters and the pig pen. His father would say, "He's quick enough, Mother. I think he's had enough schooling." She would tighten her lips and shake her head in disagreement, and so Francis worked his silently way through the tattered grammars and histories until, at age thirteen, he had comleted grade six.

At the end of that school year Francis went to the annual last-day picnic held at the swimming hole below the railroad trestle downriver from the falls on the outskirts of the village. He had been reluctant to go. His father was readying the mowing machine and the hayrake and he wanted to help but his mother said, "Francis, go swimming with your friends. Lord knows, there'll be time enough for work." He didn't know how to swim and he didn't feel they were his friends but his mother packed his bathing costume and egg salad sandwiches and he went.

They put Francis out in right field during the morning baseball game. He didn't own a glove but it didn't matter as no balls came his way. He struck out both times at bat. After eating, Miss Montgomery insisted they all rest for exactly one hour before going in the water; she wasn't about to have any trouble with stomach cramps this year. Francis sat quietly at the edge of the group, listening to the others talk about the long summer ahead. He knew what he would be doing.

First, he would help his father get in the hay. He liked best to ride the horse rake, making long, undulating rows of sweet-smelling hay to be picked up by the loader. It was hot, tiring work, but his mother kept them fed well and there was always a sweaty crock of squaw pee cooling in a shady spot just off the hayfield. Francis felt good when the hay mow was full for the coming winter. His father had promised to paint the back porch and fix the steps, and part of the barn roof needed re-shingling. And there was more than enough weeding and picking to be done in the garden.

Then it would be time for the Fair, time for the farm families to pause in their labors, to take a hard-earned respite; the hay had been made and stored and the autumn harvest was yet to come; there was time now for visiting, for kicking over the traces, however briefly. Just the thought of those magic days made him shivery: the bright colors, the laughing, jostling crowds, the sulky races and the foot races between the fleetest young men in the county, the ox pulls and horse and pony pulls and tugs of war behind rawhide-mucled farmboys, their necks and arms burnt nearly black from hours of toiling in the hot sun -- how the crowd hooted when then the losers were pulled into the mudhole separating the two teams; the game booths filled with shiny treasures (two years ago Francis had won a blue satin pillow fringed with gold and embroidered with the words Home-Sweet-Home that he had tried to give to Lucy when he saw her with some girls by the carousel, but when the others giggled she blushed and ran off with them, and Francis had taken it home to his mother); and the food stalls brimming with hot dogs and soda pop and pink angel hair candy; the show barn filled with prize livestock, clipped and curried until they seemed to glow; the exhibitions of vegetables and farm crops and honey and maple syrup and handwork finished indoors during the dark winter months; the Grand Parade with its dashing horseback riders in wondrous costumes and spirited martial music. And then there were the exotic people who traveled with the carnival.

Last year, when he was twelve, he had become keenly aware the girls in the hootchy-cootchy show. His mother found him, hands deep in his trouser pockets, watching them shimmy in front of the show tent while the barker promised the men in the audience unspeakable pleasures once they stepped inside. Shocked and embarrased, she snatched him away as the men guffawed and nudged and pointed. Later, his father marched him by the ear into the woodshed and beat him with a leather belt. Francis bit his lips and refused to cry.

And now, sitting here by the river on the last day he would attend school, Francis remembered the girls dancing and squeezed his legs together and hugged himself. The Putvain twins were watching him. Rudy winked at his brother and said, "It's time the albeeno learned to swim, doncha think?" Buster smiled and winked back.

The boys changed into their singlet bathing costumes behind one clump of bushes, the girls behind another, and Miss Montgomery stationed herself between to insure there would be no peeking. There was much giggling and shrieking as the girls maneuvered to remain hidden and the boys vied in trying to shove various of their number out into the open. Francis kept his back turned to the group as he struggled into his swimming suit. Buster said, "Hey, do you think albeenos have more than one dink?" "Let's see," said Rudy, as he grabbed Francis and started to yank off his singlet. "Boys! I hear you! Stop that!" Miss Montgomery started toward the bushes."All of you out now. Into the water. You too, girls." Rudy punched Francis in the back and Buster whispered, "Dummy, we're going to teach you to swim."

Francis was fascinated by the pulsating, shifting patterns of light before his eyes. Perhaps the lights were inside his head. He no longer knew. He didn't know anything anymore, which way was up, which down. Francis no longer cared. The fear was gone, he had ceased trying to claw his way out of the water. There had been panic when they threw him into the river. He vaguely heard their shouts and laughter as he flailed at the flowing water to keep from going under. He disappeared silently, choking beneath the surface, his lungs filling with each involuntary gasp. As the water closed over his head, Francis entered a silent world where light had substance, was thick and green. Above, a glow of lighter hue marked the direction of the distant warm sun. He screamed in silent terror.