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Frankie and Siggie let Maxie have the first thrust. "Give the kid a chance. He's got to sow his wild oats."

While the two fathers, waiting their turn, cast their shadows, the young would-be father—"Take it easy, my son," Frankie admonished — peeled the jeans and panties off Billy's deeply sleeping flesh, so diffusing a pentecostal fragrance.

Oh, stupid omission of nature! When the jeans of the first procreation-frenzied father were dropped and nothing made manifest, Maxie was obliged to gird herself with plastic. Oh yes, everything was within reach. Vaseline and all. That's what distinguishes man (or woman) from the beasts. For everything that's lacking under the sun we find a substitute. Where there's a will there's a way.

Billy lay on her camel's-hair blanket ringed around by bushes, and breathed in dream rhythm. None of the bespectacled or unbespectacled fraternity brothers saw a thing. They were much too drooping-drunk in their regalia to take an interest. The sole witnesses were the black-leather boys on their motorcycles. Looking down from the sand hill, they saw will and faith enact a first procreation inside of Billy.

How tenderly the young stallion did it. How easily nature lets itself be fooled. What vast possibilities an open-air theater offers. You improvise a little and imagine the rest. True, our existence is full of holes, but with wonder-working ideas you can plug them. By force of faith and without batting an eyelash, you can give reality to what has none. For if a wafer can be the flesh and a swig of undistinguished wine the blood of our Lord Jesus, then an artfully conceived stopper (much more nobly shaped than the usual stinkhorn) can bring salvation or at least a bit of redemption. Ah, ye rams bulls stallions, how stupid nature has made you! Ye drakes and cocks, what one-tracked minds you have. Ah, ye natural fathers! What, when you shoot your jism, do you know of that surreal act of procreation that requires only the barest intimation of nature?

After Maxie had proved herself in the abstract, it was Siggie's turn. And Billy still clung to her dream. Looking down from the sand hill, the black-leather boys continued to etch on their minds what they saw: this act of unprecedented, monumental swinishness. This artificial fuck. This insult to all Mr. Cleans on this Father's Day of days; for when Siggie invaded the sleeping Billy, both boys took alarm for the chrome-pure innocence of their motorcycles and cov-

ered the twice three headlights of the 500-cc machines with their leather jackets. Similarly shamed, the crows on the nearest pine tree moved to the next to nearest. Such doings were bad enough unseen.

So neither the crows nor the motorcycles saw Frankie drop his trousers and gird himself with the imposing plastic organ. But this time the sacrament didn't work; no sooner was it introduced than Billy woke up. Gone was her dream, and the reality was Frankie. She tried to shake him off. But he went on bucking. Billy didn't want him. "No! No!" she screamed. Siggie and Maxie had to hold her left and right and crucify her a bit. Because to stop in the middle wouldn't have been fair to Frankie — the old wagoner.

"Shut up!" cried Maxie. "It won't be long now!" Siggie assured her. And after a few more thrusts, beneath which Billy whimpered softly, Frankie felt he'd begotten the super-son. He went limp for a moment and then, getting down off Billy, said, "That does it. What's all the noise about? That little fuck sure gives me a lift."

Naturally Billy cried after what they'd done to her. She wept to herself, and she didn't want any tears wiped away by Maxie. "Vile," she said. "You're vile. My God, how vile you are."

Sobbing, she pulled on her panties and jeans and zipped the zipper. The crows came back. The two boys on the sand hill unveiled the headlights of their motorcycles and were all in leather again. An evening breeze blew up from the lake. Now there were plenty of gnats.

Maxie said comforting words: "You just looked too sweet in your sleep. So innocent. We couldn't resist. We were gentle. You wouldn't have noticed a thing if Frankie hadn't come down on you like a load of bricks. Come on, be nice. I'll help you with the dishes. We'll make 'em shine. And if you still want one, you can have a new dishwasher for the house, with all the gadgets."

And Siggie also spoke up: "It had to be. Now it's really Father's Day. Let's drink on it. Come on, Billy. Take a swig."

Frankie popped open a beer bottle and, with a "Cheers" to nature, drank the health of the thrice-willed son.

But Billy didn't want to be nice. And she didn't want

to wash any dishes with Maxie. She didn't want to drink anyone's health. Slowly, as though still weighed down with sleep, she stood up, took a few uncertain steps, and then said firmly, "I'm leaving. I never want to see any of you again. I didn't want that."

And looking each one full in the face, she said, "When I want that, I'll take a real man. It's better. I'm saying that as a woman. See? As a woman."

As though to get a different, fresher, more precise view of things, Billy put on her glasses, which as a rule she wore only at work. Then she walked away, without looking back through her horn-rimmed glasses. Verifiably, she took step after step. The crows followed her from pine tree to pine tree. The motorcycle boys saw what direction she took and started their motors, to carry the latest news around the Grunewaldsee.

Maxie, Siggie, and Frankie looked after Billy as she vanished step by step. They were pretty well disheartened, even though Frankie said lightly, "If they want to travel, let 'em."

After that the three drank beer and schnapps and schnapps and beer, so keeping Father's Day on its feet until dusk. Elsewhere the conversation may well have hinged on football, the state lottery, the income tax, and expense accounts; our three remaining heroes, however, recollected where and how often they had demonstrated their procreative powers in past centuries. Possibly the schnapps helped them to suspend time.

Maxie related how throughout the long Thirty Years' War, now here, now there, when Magdeburg burned, in Westphalian Soest, before Breisach, immediately after the Battle of Wittstock, and during periods of inaction in garrisons and winter quarters, he had tossed his pennies into hundreds of slots. "That was when my name was Axel Lud-strom of the Oxenstierna regiment. We were camped on the Hela Peninsula. Swedish cavalry, youngsters with hardly a bit of fuzz on our cheeks. It was May when I laid a Kashu-bian chick by the name of Agnes in a hollow in the dunes. The other boys took a quick turn at her, too. . "

As for Siggie, he saw himself as a Polish uhlan and

painted a colorful picture of how the heroic young Count Wojczinski met Napoleonic Governor Rapp's prim little cook deep in the forest, where she was gathering mushrooms for the governor's table. "But naturally, when I got down off my horse, kissed her hand, and made her a few flowery compliments, she couldn't resist. We lay on a bed of moss. Around us grew morels, egg mushrooms, puffballs, and big parasol mushrooms. Ah, how they smelled! How we took our fill of being one flesh. What a delight! Only the ants were a bother. Sophie was her name. Later, the patriotic little vixen poisoned the whole lot of us with a stuffed calf's head. Only Rapp escaped. But I have no regrets. . "

Finally, Frankie related at length how as a Prussian dragoon in Ole Fritz's day he had taken care of a farm cook between battles. "Good old Amanda. After Rossbach, Ku-nersdorf, Leuthen, or Hochkirch, whenever I stopped with her to heal my wounds, every time it took. After seven years of war, I had begotten exactly that many sons, for which reason I was appointed inspector of crown lands. Oh, Ka-shubia! That wonderful, sandy soil! Whereupon, with hard discipline, I implanted the potato in Prussia. My sons helped me in my task, all seven of them. . "