TOWN FROM THE TREETOP

People die and people go away""-- this is what happens to Manfred Walker of Truett, Oklahoma, and has been happening ever since his mother died, his father left town, and he keeps meeting the Greyhound bus once a week in the hope that he just might come back. He lives with his aunt, who exasperates him, and during the course of the summer here he spends more and more time up in the maple tree, wishing he weren't so white and skinny. He makes one friend he loses; he takes to movie-going and girl-watching, particularly one Ruthelma who is not interested in him; he haunt's Poke, another misfit, .the one-armed night watchman; and finally he frequents the town carnival where he is introduced to really ""nekkid experience"" and the pain of still another, the Negro ""Incredible Wounded Man"" whose scars show inside and out. Finally he realizes he's AZYGOUS ( meaning ""occurring singly; not paired""). There's a raw grain to most of this but in between, a real sense of the town- heat, dust, June bugs and all, and Manfred will move right in on you. (Some of his elders, like his aunt Alice will flinch at the pubescent preoccupations and initiatory experiences.)