Out of Their Minds

"That they are," she said. "And the old folks are nice enough. But them two boys of theirs! They are holy terrors. All the girls are scared of them. They go to dances all the time and they are filthy-mouthed and do a lot of drinking."

I looked across the room and the three still were watching me, with triumphant leers pasted on their faces. I was a stranger to the town and they had bluffed me out, they had overbid me. It was silly on the face of it, of course, but in a little place like this small triumphs and small insults, because of the lack of any other kind, are often magnified.

Christ, I thought, why did I have to run into this Bailey woman? She'd always been bad news and she hadn't changed. She was a meddler and a busybody and there was no good in her.

The baskets were going rapidly and only a few of them were left. George was getting tired and the bidding had slowed down. I told myself that perhaps I should buy a basket, to demonstrate, if nothing else, that I was no stranger, but was a man, instead, who had come back to Pilot Knob and meant to stay awhile.

I looked around and there was no sign of Linda Bailey. More than likely she was sore at me and had stalked away. Thinking of her, I felt a little flare of anger. What right had she to demand that I protect the minister's daughter, Nancy, against the more than likely i

There were only three baskets left now and George picked up one of them. It was only half the size some of the others had been and it was not over decorated. Holding it up, he began his auction singsong.

There were two or three bids and they got it up to three fifty and I made it four.

Someone over against the wall said five and I glanced in that direction and the three were gri

"Make it six," I said.

"Seven," said the middle one of the trio.

"I have seven," said George, somewhat aghast, for this was the highest any bid had run that night. "Do I hear seven and a half or does someone want to make it eight?"

I hesitated for a moment. I was certain that the first few bids had not come from any of the three against the wall. They had only entered the bidding after I had made my bid. They were, I was certain, deliberately baiting me and I was sure, as well, that everyone in the room knew what they were up to.

"Eight?" asked George, still looking at me. "Do I hear an eight?"

"Not eight," I told him. "Let us make it ten."

George gulped. "Ten!" he cried. "Do I hear eleven?"

He switched his eyes to the three against the wall. They glared back at him.

"Eleven," he said. "It takes eleven. No raise smaller than a dollar. Do I hear eleven?"

He didn't hear eleven.

When I went to the front of the room to pay the auction clerk and to get the basket, I glanced at the wall. The three were no longer there.

Standing to one side, I opened the basket and the name on the slip of paper placed atop the lunch was that of Kathy Adams.

8

The first lilacs were coming out and in the cool, damp evening they had filled the air with a faint suggestion of that fragrance which, in the weeks to come, would hang a heavy perfume along all the streets and footpaths of this little town. A wind, blowing up the hollow from the river, set the suspended street lights at the intersections swinging and the light and shadow on the ground went bouncing back and forth.

"I'm glad that it is over," Kathy Adams said. 'The program, I mean, and the school year too. But I'll be coming back in September."

I looked down at the girl walking at my side and she was, it seemed to me, an entirely different person than the one I'd seen that morning in the store. She had done something to her hair and the schoolteacherish look of it was gone and she'd put away her glasses. Protective coloration, I wondered—the way she'd looked that morning, a deliberate effort to make herself appear the kind of teacher who would gain acceptance in this community. And it was a shame, I told myself. Given half a chance, she was a pretty girl.

"You said you'll be back," I said. "Where will you spend the summer?"

"Gettysburg," she said.

"Gettysburg?"

"Gettysburg, P.A.," she told me. "I was born there and my family still is there. I go back each summer."

"I was there just a few days ago," I said. £1 stopped on my way here. Spent two full days, wandering the battlefield and wondering what it had all been like that time more than a hundred years ago."

"You'd never been there before?"

"Once before. Many years ago. When I first went to Washington as a cub reporter. I took one of the bus trips. It was not too satisfactory. I've always wanted to be there on my own, to take my time and see what I wanted to see, to poke into all the corners and to stand and look as long as I wished to stand and look."

"You had a good time, then?"

"Yes, two days of living in the past. And trying to imagine."

She said, "We've lived with it so long, of course, that it's become commonplace with us. We have pride in it, naturally, and a deep interest in it, but it's the tourists who get the most out of it They come to it fresh and eager and they see it, perhaps, with different eyes than we do."

"That may be right," I said, although I didn't think so.

"But Washington," she said. "There is a place I love. Especially the White House. It fascinates me. I could stand for hours outside that big iron fence and just stare at it."

"You," I said, "and millions of other people. There are always people walking up and down the fence, going slow and looking."

"It's the squirrels I like," she told me. "Those cheeky White House squirrels that come up to the fence and beg and sometimes come right out on the sidewalk and sniff around your feet, then sit up, with their little paws dangling on their chests, looking at you with their beady little eyes."

I laughed, remembering the squirrels. "They're the ones," I said, "who have it made."

"You sound as if you're envious."

"I could be that," I admitted. "The squirrel, I should imagine, has a fairly simple life, while our human life has become so complex that it is never simple. We've made a terrible mess of things. Maybe no worse now than it has ever been, but the point is that it's not getting any better. It's maybe getting worse."

"You're going to put some of that into your book?"

I looked at her in surprise.

"Oh," she said, "everybody knows that you came back to write a book. Did they simply guess or did you tell someone?"

"I suppose that I told George."

"That was enough," she said. "All you have to do is mention anything at all to a single person. Within three hours, flat, everyone in town knows exactly what you said. Before noon tomorrow everyone will know that you walked me home and paid ten dollars for my basket Whatever possessed you to make a bid like that?"

"It wasn't showing off," I told her. "I suppose some people will think that and I am sorry for it. I suppose I shouldn't have done it, but there were those three louts over against the wall…"

She nodded. "I know what you mean. The two Ballard boys and the Williams kid. But you shouldn't mind them. You were fair game to them. New and from a city. They simply had to show you..»

"Well, I showed them," I said, "and I suppose it was just as childish of me as it was of them. And with less excuse, for I should know better."

"How long do you plan to stay?" she asked.

I gri

"I didn't mean that."

"I know you didn't. But the book will take awhile. I'm not going to rush it. I'm going to take my time and do the best job of which I'm capable. And I have to catch up with a lot of fishing. Fishing I've been dreaming about all these years. Maybe some hunting in the fall. I imagine this might be a good place for ducks."