But so complex and subtle are childhood identifications that he could also think of himself as still a boy, living with his sister in a cottage just as small, white and beautiful, but set adrift on a pirate-perilous sea remote from his stepfather's mockery.
With a swift, defiant gesture Robert reached in through the window, and grasped the crude doll replica of himself. He lifted it out, jarring the parent dolls slightly.
"Excuse me, Mom," he said.
To the replica of his stepfather he offered no apology.
Durkin's lips whitened, and for the barest instant a defeated look touched his gaunt face. From thought to attitude he had the whip hand over his stepchildren. Yet even when his power could not be questioned he found himself a shunned and forgotten man.
Fury turned the living flesh and bone of his face into a stone mask with features so sharp that his wife recoiled as if feeling the cruel rasp and bite of them against her cheeks.
Cursing softly, Durkin swung about and went striding toward the kitchen door without a backward glance.
All through dinner he was silent, completely ignoring his wife, and raising his eyes only to stare out the kitchen window at the bare yellow earth he could at least bend to his will. Even when the children excused themselves, and ran out into the yard again he remained sullenly uncommunicative.
In an attempt to make conversation Helen Durkin said: "Will, it came over the radio right after you left. They're making some more of those atomic weapon tests. Remember the last time—how the explosion shook the house?"
"So that's where the flash came from!" Durkin muttered. "I saw it when I stopped at the gas station to get my battery checked. I figured it was just heat lightning."