THE_GREAT_WHITE_NORTH

he great white North was a new world for Kerry Foster. She was securely nestled between the Catskill Mountains and the Adirondacks in her new home with Howard Bates. The cold of mid-March was an incredible shock to her system. Her thin body wrestled with the chill of the nights, and she woke each morning curled into a tight, cramped ball buried beneath a mountain of blankets. It was her first encounter with real snow, the sort of snow that engulfs you with its presence. Yet, it was not the weather which impressed young Kerry there in Saratoga Springs, New York; it was the intellectual climate that raced her mind to exhaustion and left her anxious at the end of each day for the beginning of the next. Saratoga was a resort community. It had also been a haven for artists and writers for many years, and Kerry found herself burdened with her own na‹vete.

Howard went to great lengths to assure Kerry that she was not "just plain stupid," during her first two weeks in Saratoga Springs. Regardless of his encouragement, she continued to refer to herself as such.

Since Howard had leased his house to the Wilsons until July, he and Kerry had moved into a boarding house in the center of town, which was owned by an old friend of Howard's named Clare Friedman. Clare Friedman was a tiny whisper of a woman with dark, curly hair sprinkled with gray. She had exceptionally intense, brown eyes. She was not the sort to smile without sincerity, and Kerry, who was accustomed to the constant tradition in Texas of smiling in salutation, felt intimidated by Clare. She was certain that Clare Friedman had no use for her whatsoever.

Clare was a published poet. She also published a popular weekly newspaper based around the arts and policital issues. Her paper was aptly titled The Avalanche. Because of the newspaper, she housed a constant flow of musicians, poets, artists of all sorts, and political radicals within her huge, wandering house.

Howard had met Clare twenty-five years before in New York City; she had been a client of his insurance firm. They had become close friends shortly after meeting each other. It had been Clare who'd inspired Howard to retire in Saratoga Springs. She was a strong-willed woman in her mid-fifties, and as the years had passed, Howard had come to love her as an adopted daughter. Clare, seemingly, had no family of her own; Howard was her only link to familial graces, and he provided an air of normality which, in truth, did not exist in her lifestyle.

Clare did not dislike Kerry; quite the contrary, she was most impressed with this young woman from Texas who had devoted herself to Howard's welfare. Kerry mentioned in passing one day that she wrote poetry and prose. Clare had heard her sing and play guitar, and she liked some of Kerry's original songs so she asked Kerry if she could read her work.

Well, Clare thought her poetry was very weak; it seemed to lack its own melody, as though Kerry could not write poetry without placing it within a song. The prose was a different story altogether. Clare was impressed with the approach Kerry took in relating the subject matter. She left herself open for the reader in her essays; she was believable yet so vulnerable in her work that the pieces held a quality of charm to them that Clare had not expected. She held such a refreshing view of things that Clare decided to ask Kerry to write a record review for The Avalanche. It was a Phil Ochs album, I Ain't Marching Anymore, that Clare presented to Kerry during her second week at the boarding house. The album itself was actually several years old, and Clare wasn't totally convinced that it would be appropriate for The Avalanche to run the article, but she was anxious to instill new social thoughts in Kerry's mind.

Kerry became obsessed with the album. She spent two days sitting in Clare's parlor listening to the record non-stop. The entire boarding house became quite familiar with Phil Ochs during those two days, and Clare was almost to the point of calling the project off for the sake of her tenants when Kerry presented her with her review.

Clare ran the review; she edited one line which was, "Phil Ochs' lyrics punch injustice right smack in the nose!" Kerry didn't miss the line when the review ran in The Avalanche; she was too consumed with the pride of seeing her name as a by-line in print.

It just so happened, in the way that things are bound to happen, that Clare was one of the organizers in New York State in planning the massive march on Washington to be held May Day against the war in Vietnam. One of the events included a free outdoor music festival which would feature, among others, Phil Ochs and a Texas band that Kerry was fond of, Tracy Nelson and Mother Earth. Kerry decided she was going to Washington, D.C., with Clare. They in fact planned on traveling in Howard's 1967 Pontiac.

Howard forbade it. He sulked around the boarding house with his cane looped on his arm for days before he gave his verbal opinion of the plan. Once he'd made his statement out in the open to Kerry and Clare, he ceased to sulk and would in fact repeat the same statement each time he passed one of them anywhere in the house. Howard was quite concerned that he didn't have a chance of persuading Kerry not to attend the rallies; his only hope was to play upon Kerry's sympathies. He would corner Kerry, and in his soft-spoken manner he would say, "Leota will chip the enamel right off her teeth chewing me out if I let you do this. Through all these years, I've come closer than a mosquito's whiskers to having a serious falling out with your dear grandmother, Leota, and now that I am finally out of her doghouse, I wish to heaven that you would not throw a log on the old fire, Kerry." Howard would then wink at Kerry and shuffle off in search of Clare.

Now, Howard could afford not to be so eloquent with Clare; once he'd located her in the house, he'd simply wave his cane at her and scold, "Oh, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, and I'll just be damned if you're taking my Pontiac!"

"Really, Howard," Clare would reply. "Don't you think you're being a bit selfish in this matter?" Clare would roll her eyes skyward and continue with whatever chore Howard had interrupted, which aggravated Howard to no end. Seconds after each of these encounters Clare would hear the slamming of Howard's door and the gentle sound of his pacing back and forth in his room.

Kerry was determined to gain Howard's approval for the trip to Washington. She finally shocked Howard by simply saying, "Oh, Howard, who cares what Leo thinks anyway?"

Howard's eyes lit up like the Fourth of July fireworks displays, and he replied, "Now, don't you start that 'Oh, Howard' business with me, young Kerry. I get quite enough of that from Clare, thank you. You're not going on this adventure, period, and neither is my Pontiac. Clare's a grown woman, and she can do as she pleases, but you just don't have any idea what you're getting into. That is all I'm going to say on this subject, and I'd appreciate it if you would improve your tone of voice next time you address me; you're almost as sassy as your grandmother Leota." Howard doggedly walked away from Kerry, firmly tapping his cane of the floor and mumbling, "Closer than a mosquito's whiskers, by God . . . Leota's going to skin me alive." Kerry could see the curls of Howard's handlebar mustache twitching as he walked away from her. She was now certain that Howard had resigned himself to the fact that she was going to the rallies even if he wouldn't admit it to her. If only he'd change his mind about the Pontiac!

One of the tenants in Clare's boarding house was a young photographer named Puttnam. Puttnam was a Vietnam veteran who had come to live in Clare's house as one of the fringe benefits of being the staff photographer for The Avalanche. He had only been out of the army for a year and a half and still had a lot of demons to exorcise from his experiences in Vietnam. Puttnam was six-foot-five with strawberry blond hair and a lanky frame. His appearance was most often disheveled, and he had a habit of pushing his long hair out of his face constantly. He had enormous sky-blue eyes which held such deep sorrow that, even though Puttnam was often given to fits of bellowing laughter, you could still feel the pain within him; you could even hear his anguish within that boisterous laughter.

Lunches at Clare's could be maddening. Clare served a plate lunch each day. Her dining room seated about twenty folks and had become a gathering place for pseudo-intellectuals. Afternoons were given to screaming matches among the customers. Howard was an excellent referee as he was past the point in his life when he felt compelled to make an impression on anyone concerning his intellect. On days when the noise level became too much for Howard to tolerate, he would tap his cane on the floor sharply and say, "Sure is getting up in the day around here. Haven't you folks got some work you could be doing? The world's a-waitin'."

Of course most of the folks that hung around Clare's at lunch time didn't have jobs of any kind, but Howard's age made him the voice of authority, and they would usually begin clearing out of Clare's once Howard had made it clear that they were wearing out their welcome.

Kerry spent a great deal of time with Puttnam. He was the only individual in the group around Clare's who did not try to intimidate Kerry. Puttnam was a history buff and could go on for hours about American history, which Kerry found to be fascinating. Kerry was an avid reader of contemporary American fiction which Puttnam hadn't yet discovered so they had an even trade of information for each other. While the others sat around the dining room discussing Proust and Shelley in literature and plotted their plans to overthrow the world by quoting Lenin, Engels, and Marx, Kerry and Puttnam sat off in the corner at a small table greedily exchanging knowledge current to their own generation. The two of them made no plans to change the world situation; they were, in fact, a change in American society because they were do-ers rather than procrastinators.

Once a week Clare held a staff meeting for The Avalanche in the dining room after lunch. The meetings were a free-for-all with Clare usually making all the final decisions herself since the staff could not bring themselves to agree on anything with each other. The staff had grown to eight members since the addition of Kerry as music columnist. She also contributed essays on various subjects, which Clare used, when the space was available. Kerry's columns were becoming quite popular among the readers of The Avalanche, and she began receiving mail soon after her first article on Phil Ochs. The rest of the staff members enjoyed their own particular niches in preparing the paper each week, except for Kerry who was filling a double slot with a writer named Ernest Hinkle. Ernest was quite indignant about having to compete with Kerry for what had been his slot before her arrival.

Ernest was from Teaneck, New Jersey. He was a small man who bathed only once a week, wore the same wool sweater day in and day out, had an annoying habit of meddling in other people's business, and professed to be an expert on just about everything. He was particularly peeved that Clare had chosen to take Kerry to the Washington rallies as a music reviewer for the paper. Ernest felt that he had earned the right to go since he had been with the paper for almost three years and underneath his intellectual rhetoric dwelled the heart of a hard-core male chauvinist. When Kerry began receiving favorable letters from the readers (he'd never received any letters), Ernest set about trying to discredit Kerry in any way he could at staff meetings and attempted to finagle an invitation to the rallies as a staff writer from Clare. By the third staff meeting in April it became clear to Ernest that he was not going to be included as a staff member at the rallies. He was convinced that anyone from below the Mason-Dixon Line was an absolute nit-wit, and this person who was stepping in on his territory was not only from Texas but was also, very obviously, a girl.

Clare was embarrassed by Ernest's attitude. She hoped that in time Ernest would accept Kerry as part of the staff and that their duo role could become a somewhat disjunctive asset to The Avalanche. Clare felt that she could not intervene in Kerry's behalf since she was well aware of Ernest's attitude towards women. She, instead, was inclined to feel that sooner or later Kerry herself would catch Ernest at his own game, and she quietly sat back to wait for that moment to present itself.

Ernest was a sincere writer as a rule. His columns were very basic, yet they had served The Avalanche well in defining the format for the magazine. He was a bit narrow in his choice of material to review and chose not to listen to anything which was not political in nature. Clare had been encouraging him for months to expand his interests as there were many records being sent to them by women artists; she'd had little success as Ernest left those albums stacked in a pile in the corner of Clare's office. Kerry filled a gap in the paper which Ernest himself had created with his closed mind. She listened to every record sent to her, plus going through that stack of records which Ernest had abandoned with a deaf ear.

Kerry had thus far written reviews of Carole King's Tapestry album, Rosalie Sorrels' Travelin' Lady, Townes Van Zandt's Our Mother the Mountain, and a review of a performance by Don McLean at the coffeehouse, Caffe Lena, there in Saratoga Springs. Kerry did not write unfavorable reviews; she instead adopted a system of singularizing the material which she felt was performed with subtle clarity by the artists. She was not particularly discriminating in terms of the quality of the musical production itself; she focused on the lyrical content and the emotion those lyrics could turn in the listener. This flaw in her technique became Ernest's legitimate bone of contention at weekly staff meetings.

Margaret English was a poet. She reviewed the new poetry submitted to the paper. She was a shy, thoughtful young woman from Auburn, New York. Margaret had never been a social person. She wrote her reviews and her poetry with the tender observation of one who longs to experience without bias. Jack Simpson covered world events and wrote either a political commentary or submitted a political cartoon for each issue. Ty Gallagher covered art and theatre; he kept an apartment in New York City and only traveled to Saratoga for staff meetings. He was beginning to move up in his field; several of his articles had been picked up by a larger daily newspaper in the Northeast. Marlin Stancell covered national events and the underground political scene plus writing on occasional review of new fiction. Clare was editor; she collected articles on health and the growing ecology movement.

The Avalanche was still a small produciton. It had about three thousand subscribers in the North and sold about the same amount on the newsstands. Though it was small by any standards in distribution, it was still a highly respected publication and more successful than most of the small magazines and newspapers which were attempting to follow the same format.

The staff meeting before the May Day Rallies was a heated gathering. The staff was being forced to choose between an article Ernest had written on the collected works of Paul Robeson, and a review Kerry had written on Jerry Jeff Walker's album, Driftin' Way of Life. The staff was voting in favor of Kerry's article--not for its merits, but because Ernest's piece on Paul Robeson hadn't quite come together on paper, and though it was more in line with the tone of that issue, Ernest had written it in haste and it rambled off the subject . . . it in fact focused more on the political stance of Ernest Hinkle and was a blatant attempt by Ernest to validate his own intelligence. Robeson lived in Philadelphia at that time after spending many years abroad. Margaret had timidly suggested that Ernest arrange an interview with Robeson on the telephone, which would bring the article back to a more direct and personal level. This would mean postponing the article on Robeson for at least a month, and Ernest was enraged over the possibility of being voted down by his colleagues, especially since the toss-up involved an article on some bimbo from Texas. Ernest had not done his homework. . . . Jerry Jeff Walker was in fact from the Northern regions of the country. Ernest pointed out vehemently that Kerry and Marlin already had a slot in this issue. They had collaborated on a review of Larry McMurtry's new novel, Movin' On. He insisted that it was simply redundant to print two reviews in the same issue on Texas writers . . . the fact that he thought they were both from Texas doubled his rage . . . he considered Marlin a traitor.

"This is just outrageous that we're going to present two pieces in the same issue on Texas writers. Our readers know there are no real writers in Texas. . . . They'll think we have Katherine Anne Porter on the brain . . . we'll be the laughing stock of the Northeast. This article on Paul Robeson is much more relevant to the interests of our readers. Texas writers have no credibility in this region of the country . . . they are a bad joke," Ernest proclaimed.

Kerry was sitting directly across the table from Ernest. She guessed that this must be the sixth day since he had last bathed as the whole room reeked of damp wool and perspiration. The situation was not eased much by Ernest, who began to flap his arms wildly to make his point. Margaret sat on one side of him while Ty sat on the other side. Margaret excused herself from the table several times during the meeting. Kerry wondered if she was excusing herself to avoid contact with Ernest's body odor because it was nauseating to everyone at the table.

"What you're saying is bullshit, Ernest. Maybe an article on Paul Robeson would be more in tune with this paper, but you just didn't pull it off," Kerry remarked. Howard sat in a rocking chair across the room by the window reading a magazine. Upon hearing Kerry's remarks he closed the magazine and folded it gently in his lap while his ears perked up in anticipation of Ernest's rebuttal.

Ernest slapped his hand flat down on the table, which woke Puttnam up from his daydreaming. "Just how would you know whether I pulled it off or not? You're not even old enough to know or value the work of Paul Robeson . . . who is this scathing gravel-voiced Jerry Jeff Walker anyway?" Ernest bellowed.

"You're missing the damn point here, Ernest. I do not agree with your attitude towards Texas writers, but I do agree that an article on Paul Robeson makes a hell of a lot more sense than a review of a Jerry Jeff Walker album . . . but the Robeson thing just didn't come together, and you're too hard-headed to admit it. Age has nothing to do with art . . . I know a good line when I read one and a decent score of music when I hear it . . . Robeson's work was and is more politically valuable to the arts than Walker's, but you did not do it justice, you didn't even come close. Walker is a good, solid artist . . . his lyrics are a bit light, but the music is great . . . he's gathering a strong following up here . . . he's from up here, by the way, . . . my article was simply intended to introduce our readers to something they might enjoy," Kerry replied.

"Your choice of vocabulary is disgusting! It's a prime example of your Texas no-talents. If you can't find any words to express yourself that aren't laced with profanity, then would you mind just keeping silent? You have absolutely no taste whatsoever in literature, music, or art," Ernest hissed. He then leaned back in his chair and began tapping a pencil on the edge of the table. He was extremely smug, deciding he'd finally put Kerry in her place, and his beady gray eyes gleamed with satisfaction beneath his thick horn-rimmed galsses.

Kerry stood up from the table while collecting her papers in front of her. She fumbled with the papers just long enough to get them in order before clutching them tightly to her chest. "You're a fucking snob, Ernest. You wouldn't know a good line or a decent song if it reached out and slapped you right in the face. You sit here each week claiming to know more about art than any of us, yet you leave a stack of artistic endeavors two feet high piled in Clare's office; untouched by your filthy fingers . . . you don't know art . . . you can't even make a solid decision of your own without reading the reviews of other writers first. You use the lyrics of the performers you do review to pat yourself on the back. When was the last time you took a chance on an unknown artist, when was the last time you even listened to one? You're not interested in finding out what made Paul Robeson's work so heartfelt . . . you're interested in the prestige of writing about Paul Robeson. Ya better get your ass on the phone to Philadelphia if you want that piece to work . . . I'd think it would be quite interesting to have a conversation with him, you might learn something . . . perhaps he could lend you an ounce or two of credibility," Kerry said through clenched teeth. She strolled to the door, leaving her chair in the middle of the floor. She turned around just before making her exit to address Ernest once more, "Ya know, Ernest, I'd enjoy these meetings a lot more if you'd take a bath now and then. It's no wonder that you're called a chauvinist pig behind your back considering that you actually do smell like one!"

"Bravo," Puttnam exclaimed, jumping to his feet and beginning a round of applause which spread to each staff member around the table. . . .

"Oh, grow up, Puttnam . . . this is an absolute outrage," Ernest shouted, but his voice was barely audible over the clapping hands of his fellow staff members.

Kerry could hear Puttnam's bellowing laughter from her room, and before too long she also heard the front door slam shut. She walked to the window which faced the street just in time to see Ernest stomping down the sidewalk with a swift click. Papers were flying in all directions from his briefcase as he'd forgotten in his haste to close the latch. Kerry opened the window and shouted out to Ernest, "Ernest, you're losing your papers. Hey, Ernest, pay attention to what you're doin', man!"

Ernest looked back at Kerry and shouted, "Fuck you, Foster, you little creep."

An older woman who lived down the street happened to be passing by at the time, and she stopped alongside Ernest, gave him a shove on the arm, and replied, "You just watch your language, young man . . . there are children in this neighborhood."

Ernest scrambled around the sidewalk and street to retrieve his scattered papers while Kerry stood in the window and giggled over her triumph. She had won this round with Ernest, and somewhere within the squabble she had also won his respect. That was evident in the fact that he had just bestowed the greatest honor possible on Kerry by addressing her by her last name; that was a ritual normally reserved by men like Ernest for situations involving men among men.

Kerry returned to the dining room to find the entire staff still discussing the incident. Puttnam was still standing; he was in the process of delivering an impersonation of Ernest's indignant reaction to the rest of the staff after Kerry had left the room. Clare was trying to calm Howard down; he was shaking his cane in the air and shouting, "That young man should be banned from these procedures . . . if he ever talks to my Kerry like that again, he's going to be picking rosewood out of his teeth!"

Even Margaret was laughing; Kerry had never seen her laugh before. She was normally such an intensely serious young woman. But at this moment she sat at the table with a delicate, slender hand poised over her mouth, giggling uncontrollably. She reached out with her other hand upon seeing Kerry enter the room and motioned for her to come stand beside her at the table. She wrapped her arm around Kerry's waist and hugged her tightly.

"Oh, but he's had that coming for so long," Margaret began. "I'm so proud of you for not letting him intimidate you. It's something I've been waiting for since the first day you joined us."

"But, he's such a good writer, Margaret. He really does have a lot more on the ball than I do. He's so dedicated to keeping his columns pure. I feel terrible that he's walked out on the paper. I can't possibly fill the empty space it'll leave in The Avalanche, Kerry said.

"Oh, he'll be back, Kerry. When he comes back, he'll have that piece on Robeson honed down to the edge of perfection. This has happened before with Ernest. We've all had to humiliate him in public in order to get his attention. It was obvious that he wrote that article to spite you, and now he'll have to write that article to defend his art and the journalistic integrity of the paper. We can all relax now as Ernest will go back to writing for this paper with the dedication he had before he began this campaign to oust you from the staff. It is the understanding that matters, and it's hard for Ernest to understand anything except his own narrow view. We are a family here at this paper; Ernest is part of us, and we'll love him in spite of himself and regardless of his faults because in many ways he is simply the bad side of all of us, and it's impossible to dismiss a portion of one's self," Clare said as she helped Howard to his feet.

"Well, I think that a swift kick in the old rear-end is what that young man needs," Howard said. He placed the magazine he'd been reading in the rocking chair and followed Clare out of the dining room with his cane securely looped on one arm and his other hand nervously twiddling the curls in his mustache.

Kerry had earned a place in this family. In a sense, all of the staff members had put her through a probationary period; Ernest had simply been more vocal about it. In any family, whether it is by birth or one that is created out of loneliness for the lack of a natural family, there will always be a role that each individual is expected to fill, as each member of a family must be productive and contribute to the definition of that unity.

Many truths had been revealed about these peculiar individuals with Kerry's outburst. Margaret had shown a side of herself which the others had never considered her to have--a sense of humor. She and Kerry began a friendship that would last throughout their lives. It was a friendship which would open up new worlds for both of them for in the same manner in which Margaret had never opened her life to the shared bonds of friendship; Kerry had never known the unspoken trust of having a woman friend, and it created an awareness in Kerry that all women face a difficult and painful task in tackling an occupation controlled by men. Many of their female contemporaries would refuse to compete with the male world and would instead band together to form their own empires separate from the mainstream, in fact, separate from reality, with the end result of only reaching each other and reinforcing their own beliefs which had already been established. Kerry and Margaret were so far removed from their contemporaries that they would unconsciously dive head first into the male establishment and while neither would ever be considered serious artists by the "women's movement," they would survive and function within the media as proof that women could be equals in a male-dominated society. They would be more successful in changing the attitudes of chauvinistic men than their contemporaries who simply circulate among themselves, yet it would always be their contemporaries who would receive the credit for having changed the structure of the establishment itself. They had a grand example to follow in Clare. Margaret would one day devote herself to writing the biography of Clare Friedman, and it would be accepted in the literary world not simply as a book by a woman author about a woman author but as a definitive classic about the life of a gifted and dedicated artist and publisher.

Clare, as a living example to Kerry and Margaret, taught them both that they could not simply produce their works and demand that they be accepted because they were women and thus deserved to be acknowledged; she instead instilled within the two of them the reality that their work had to be equal if not better than that of their male counterparts and that they themselves were the only individuals who could make their work succeed or fail.

A love affair began between Margaret and Puttnam. Her lovely laughter during the staff meeting had stolen his heart. Howard's room in the boarding house was situated between Margaret and Puttnam's and the sound of Margaret's cautious footsteps passing his room began waking him during the night as well as the indiscreet thunder of Puttnam's visits to Margaret's room which could shake the whole house.

No one was supposed to know about the affair except for Kerry, but the entire household was well aware of this blooming spring romance. Howard simply wanted a good night's sleep, and one night when he'd been awakened twice by the pitter-pat of Margaret's feet in the hallway outside his door, he decided it was time to address this problem. It was about three in the morning when he heard Margaret's door creak open and the crash of Puttnam's footsteps heading towards his room. Howard, who was dressed in his flannel nightshirt, yanked his bedroom door open, which startled the hell out of Puttnam, who was clad only in his boxer shorts; he immediately began his ritual of pushing the hair out of his face.

"Puttnam!" Howard barked.

"Yes, sir," Puttnam replied, wishing he could melt into the woodwork.

"By God, I wish you'd stop this nonsense and simply retire with Miss English at bedtime. It's all this sneaking about from room to room that's keeping me awake at night, not the creaking of the bedsprings. Just what in the hell is the intrigue of shuffling back and forth all night long?" Howard asked. He only stood as tall as Puttnam's chest, and he had to lean his head back uncomfortably to addrss Puttnam eye to eye.

"Well, nothing, sir," Puttnam said shakily.

"Well, then, by God, choose whose room you're going to horse around in and stay there," Howard bellowed.

"Yes, sir," Puttnam said while Howard swiveled around on the toes of his bare feet and retreated to his room, loudly banging the door shut behind him.

Howard settled back into bed that night, and the sound of shuffling feet ceased to wake him after that . . . on some nights the creak of the bedsprings or Puttnam's boisterous laughter would jolt him to an upright position and his eyes would snap open in confusion, but the sounds were so joyous in nature that Howard never complained and he would fall back to sleep almost immediately; he'd sometimes dream he was snuggled in the nape of Kerry Pearl's neck, and during those dreams he could actually smell her sweetness, which had always been the scent of lilac. "Sweet dreams, my dear," he would mumble in his sleep and a contented smile would rest upon his face as he slumbered, as though Kerry Pearl had actually been there to return his affections.

*****

The staff members who were to attend the rallies included Kerry, Clare, and Puttnam. On Friday at six a.m. they met in the dining hall only to find Howard seated stubbornly on his suitcase tapping the floor with his cane. He'd reluctantly consented to allowing them the use of his Pontiac . . . they were all three now aware of the one condition he'd forgotten to mention.

"Good morning, Howard," Clare said nonchalantly as she strolled by Howard clutching her large straw handbag in both hands. "You're up awfully early this morning. . . . Going somewhere?" she asked.

"You bet I am," Howard replied, shaking his cane at Clare. "I'm going to Washington, D.C., and you'd best not argue with me because I hold the keys to the Pontiac, and it's not leaving the driveway without me in it."

"Howard, this is not a vacation. This trip would be too hard on you. We'll be sleeping on the floor of a dorm at the university there . . . that's no place for an eighty-seven year old man," Clare said. Kerry and Puttnam had decided to stay out of the conversation completely and had withdrawn to the doorway to wait for Clare to settle the argument and send Howard back to bed.

"My dear, I was not in the outhouse when you were making plans for the housing arrangements, and since I can afford to do so, I have taken the liberty to reserve rooms at the Holiday Inn in Arlington. I intend to pay for the rooms out of my own pocket as I won't have young Kerry sleeping on the floor of some dorm with strangers, and as I've already stated, THE PONTIAC IS NOT BUDGING WITHOUT ME!"

"Howard, you're impossible," Clare replied in exasperation. They stared each other in the eye for several tense moments in an attempt to dissuade the other's intentions. Howard broke the silence; it was his victory. "We're history in the making, by God. Puttnam, put these bags in the old buggy and let's get rollin'" Howard boasted in triumph. He gently pulled Clare aside at the front door and whispered, "I'll stay in the motel room if I feel I can't handle the activities. I know my own limits, Clare, so don't fret over my health. I'd like to feel useful, and at my age, the days of feeling useful are few and far between. I just wanted to see these young people speak up for their rights for I surely agree with their cause, and what better way is there for an old man like me to show his support, than to join them. I'll be serving my own generation by going to our nation's capital. You see, it isn't just the young or the radical left who are opposed to the war, and I have the same right to voice my opinion as they do. I promise to behave myself," Howard said with a grin.

They settled into the Pontiac for the long drive to Washington with Clare driving first. Puttnam sat in the front with Clare and carried on a hushed conversation with Kerry, who was seated in the backseat behind Clare. Howard fell asleep almost immediately after they turned onto the highway; his mustache twitched in the morning glow and his hand which clutched the worn handle of his cane would jump occasionally when Clare would pass over a dip in the road. He snored quietly with his head resting on the window of the Pontiac, and the car was engulfed with the smell of fresh coffee which Puttnam poured for Clare out of the thermos she'd packed in early dawn. They were out to defend America; they were soldiers of peace, and none of them knew better than Puttnam how important it was to bring peace.

After lunch Clare switched places with Kerry, and Puttnam drove. It was mid-afternoon, and Puttnam was cruising down the interstate going eighty miles per hour when Howard was awakened by the sound of loose gravel hitting the side of the car. He looked out the window just in time to witness a small foreign car swerving onto the shoulder to his right.

"Puttnam, I hate to be a back seat driver, but do you realize that you've just run someone off the road?" Howard remarked.

"Where's that?" Putnam asked somewhat in a daze.

"Back there, that little sports car . . . you nearly ran over those folks," Howard said.

"Oh, that . . . they'd been driving along for miles with their blinker on. . . . I just sort of helped 'em make up their minds. They're okay. Look back there . . . see they've finally turned that blinker off."

Howard turned to look out the rear windshield, and sure enough the little sports car had managed to veer back on the highway.

"Well, that's one heck of a way to get somebody's attention. Let's slow down a bit . . . I mean, after all, I don't really have insurance for you as a driver, and we should proceed as careful as is possible," Howard pleaded.

"Ah, I'm a good driver, Mr. Bates, I'm just trying to get us into D.C. before rush hour traffic starts," Puttnam said while pushing his hair back from his face with an exaggerated gesture.

"Puttnam," Clare barked, aggravated at having been wakened from her short nap. "Slow this vehicle down and don't argue with Howard; it's his car."

"Yes, ma'am," Puttnam replied cheerfully.

They did indeed pull into Washington at rush hour, and Puttnam managed to get in the wrong lane several times, therefore placing them on the wrong freeways. It was dark when they finally pulled into the parking lot at the Holiday Inn, and after Howard and Clare had registered at the office and Puttnam had deposited their gear into the adjoining rooms, they all ordered sandwiches from room service and soon after, collapsed from exhaustion. Howard was the last to fall asleep; he'd slept for most of the the trip, and he always had a difficult time falling asleep in a new environment. Puttnam, who slept in the other bed in their room, snored so loudly that Howard finally coaxed himself to sleep by placing a pillow over his head.

Clare was the first one up the next morning. She was scheduled to speak at an organization meeting for the New York delegation at St. Edwards Church. She took Kerry with her to the meeting, leaving Puttnam in charge of getting Howard up out of bed.

Howard was quite cranky that morning. He spent his first waking moments berating Puttnam for snoring all night.

"Puttnam, I do hope that you will try to fall asleep on your side tonight. Your snoring is so loud that I would not have been surprised had the management called to complain. Have you ever considered consulting your physician about this problem?" Howard asked.

"Well, if I ever decide to have a physician, Mr. Bates, I'll certainly consult him about it," Puttnam replied. He had settled into a chair by the window and was in the midst of trying to read the morning paper. It was a daily ritual for Puttnam to read the paper cover to cover without interruption. Having Howard as a roommate did not lend itself to this end.

Howard sat on the edge of the unmade bed still in his nightshirt, the tails of which he had tucked snuggly between his clenched knees.

"Where did you say Clare was gone off to?" Howard asked while straightening the curls in his mustache.

"Aw, she and Kerry went down to some church for a meeting. Each state is going to be assigned to different locations for the rallies. She said she'd be back 'round lunchtime," Puttnam said with a crack of the spine of the newspaper and a hard stare at Howard.

Howard pushed his feet into his slippers which he'd left tucked neatly under the side of his bed. He stood up slowly and began to stretch his small wirey limbs with a hearty groan followed by two sets of knee bends.

"You don't think there's a possibility of Clare getting lost out there in the Pontiac, do you, Puttnam?" Howard asked shyly.

"Naw, fact is, she didn't take the Pontiac. Some gal came by here to pick her and Kerry up," Puttnam said in amusement. He folded the newspaper in his lap and watched as Howard performed his morning exercises. It wasn't the type of performance one would normally expect of an eighty-seven year old man.

Howard had positioned himself on his back on the floor with his hands folded across his chest; he counted his sit-ups out loud as he did them; sometimes he counted without actually performing the sit-up.

"Do you do this every morning, Mr. Bates?" Puttnam asked.

"Only when I want to nowadays. I'm too old to make myself do anything I don't want to do. It's good for the old ticker now and then. My dear departed wife was a firm believer in keeping the body pure . . . she was a walker, you know. I used to exercise like this every day for her benefit. I only do it every now and then these days . . . when I get to feeling guilty," Howard puffed.

Watching Howard exercise caused Puttnam's stomach to growl. He proposed to Howard that the two of them grab a bit of breakfast. Howard was a slow dresser. Puttnam paced the floor for a good half hour while Howard waxed his mustache and combed his hair just so.

Howard wore a white long-sleeved shirt and gray pleated trousers while Puttnam had chosen yesterday's blue jeans and a clean, navy blue t-shirt. The two of them strolled briskly to the coffee shop with Puttnam continually pushing his unruly hair back off of his forehead and Howard gingerly tapping his cane on the asphalt. Puttnam kept his free hand stuffed snugly into the front pocket of his jeans as he had this irresistible urge to reach over and unbutton the top button of Howard's crisp white shirt which Howard had meticulously fastened. It had always bothered him to see any man with his top button fastened. He viewed it as a sure sign of fastidiousness and he did not wish to think Howard fastidious, as he had grown to respect this old gentleman.

Decidedly, he did not relish the thought of sharing a motel room with Howard for the next few days, but he lingered in thought on each sentence Howard spoke in conversation because Howard did not speak without importance. He waited for truths to come from Howard as though the old fellow held the key to all truths within him. The truth for Puttnam Burley would not come from Howard Bates . . . it would rest in the clear blue eyes of Margaret English; her heart would connect him with the rarity of contentment, and contentment was the exact truth which Puttnam sought.

The two men chose to sit at the counter in the coffee shop.

"So, tell me, Puttnam, what are your plans for the future?" Howard asked as the waitress poured their first cup of coffee.

"Can't say as I have any, Mr. Bates," Puttnam sighed.

Howard interrupted him gracefully, "Please call me Howard. It seems so formal with you always addressing me as Mr. Bates. You're the only one around Clare's who does so."

"It's a habit I suppose; I was taught to treat my elders with a certain amount of respect," Puttnam said.

"Oh, I quite understand, I had that same habit in my youth. Pounded into me, it was, by my father. He had high hopes that all his children would rise above their humble beginnings in Plainview, Texas . . . none of us did, of course; we simply moved away," Howard responded. "Now, let's hear more about your plans. All young people have them. Surely you must have some goals in mind for the coming years," Howard continued.

"Well, my main goal for the immediate future is to survive these rallies with my camera equipment intact. There's been quite a bit of scuttlebutt going around that this ain't gonna be no picnic here in D.C.," Puttnam said as he winked at Howard. He bellowed with laughter then, and Howard thought it odd that Puttnam could laugh at such serious matters. Puttnam chose the most peculiar situations in which to find humor. It was a desperate sense of humor; Howard hoped that years would ease the desperation for this young man who had seen too much for his age.

The waitress served them breakfast soon after Puttnam's burst of laughter. They ate in silence. Howard ate his food slowly, cleaning his mustache periodically with his paper napkin while Puttnam attacked his scrambled eggs voraciously. When they had finished their meals and the waitress had cleared the counter, Howard resumed the conversation.

"What about Miss English? I hope you don't mind my asking such a personal question," Howard said while pouring cream into his second cup of coffee.

"She wants to move to the South sometime soon. She doesn't want to spend another winter here in the North. She's good, ya know. She really doesn't belong at The Avalanche. Not that it's a bad publication or anything like that; she'd just be a lot happier in some sort of academic setting . . . maybe teaching at some college somewhere," Puttnam said.

"What about you, Puttnam . . . what'll you do if Miss English moves away from Saratoga? Will you stay at The Avalanche?" Howard asked.

"No sir, I expect I'll go with her when she goes . . . if she'll have me," Puttnam replied with a tone of gentleness . . . somewhat hesitant, somewhat unsure of his own position in Margaret English's heart.

Back in the motel room Puttnam spread his camera equipment out on his bed and began the task of getting organized for tonight's concerts. Howard pulled a chair up in front of the television to watch an old movie in anticipation of a baseball game set to air at noon. The thundering sound of trucks rolling along Highway 395 could be heard clearly in their room as they silently went about their individual tasks, awaiting the return of Clare and Kerry.

Clare and Kerry arrived at the motel in a cab. Howard strolled to the window to watch them. Kerry was carrying a bundle of flyers in one hand and her notebook in the other; Clare held only a road map of some sort and her large straw handbag which she balanced awkwardly on her hip as she fumbled to close her coin purse within the tangled belongings inside her bag. She pulled a hairbrush from the bag which had several paper clips, an ink pen, and the keys to Howard's Pontiac trailing after it.

"Kerry, how did this get in my purse? I do wish that you would carry your own things with you," Clare bellowed at Kerry who was slipping quietly into their room.

Puttnam was waiting impatiently inside the door to their connecting rooms. He was ready to get on with their mission of covering the activities around the city.

"The boss is not in a good mood this afternoon, Puttnam . . . I advise you to step lightly in her path," Kerry whispered as she passed Puttnam in the doorway and proceeded on into Puttnam and Howard's room to visit with Howard. Puttnam turned and followed her back into his own room.

"Whaddaya mean she's not in a good mood, Kerry?" Puttnam tried to whisper. Puttnam didn't quite have the knack for whispering.

"My mood is just fine, thank you, Puttnam . . . so nice of you to be concerned," Clare said, slamming the door closed between the two rooms, leaving Puttnam staring at a blank wooden door which had barely escaped smacking him in the nose when it closed. He turned to face Kerry with a bewildered look on his face.

"What's up with Clare?" he asked.

"Oh, she's just upset because she doesn't feel that the rallies are going to have much of an impact with the way they've been organized. She's not really getting a chance to have much say so about anything . . . not that she wants to . . . but the rest of the organizers just sort of treated her like a hostile member of the press," Kerry said as she sat down on the end of Howard's bed. Howard was pretending to watch the television; he did not feel it was appropriate for him to get involved.

"Well, what's she planning to do?" Puttnam asked, dropping himself down beside Kerry on the end of the bed.

"She wants to go home. I don't think she will . . .maybe she just needs a nap or something. She's mad at me because I said I didn't want to leave until after the concerts tonight, said she wished she'd brought Ernest instead of me because he was more interested in the politics of the whole thing," Kerry said with a sigh of discouragement.

"Aw, don't take it personally, Kerry. She's just very intense about her beliefs. She'll get over it. If Ernest was here, he'd be driving her crazy by now," Puttnam replied, placing a comforting arm around Kerry's shoulders.

"It's a long way home for me, Puttnam. I'm not used to this sort of thing," Kerry cried.

"It's a long way home for all of us, darlin'. Welcome to reality," Puttnam replied. "Clare can be a tough old bitch sometimes, Kerry. She's got a business to run and a group of misfits for employees to direct. If you're gonna be a journalist, ya can't be getting upset each time things go a little haywire . . . it is the nature of such things to go haywire."

"I beg your pardon," Howard interrupted.

"Oh, sorry, Howard, no disrespect intended there about Clare," Puttnam winced realizing his slip of the tongue belatedly.

Howard cleared his throat loudly and gave Puttnam a stern stare before turning back to the television, placing his elbows in his knees and cupping his head in his hands.

"So, what's the agenda here?" Puttnam asked withdrawing his arm from around Kerry's shoulders.

Kerry removed her glasses and brushed the tears from her cheeks before answering Puttnam's question. "Well, there's the concerts tonight. Clare says we need plenty of pictures of that. There are a couple of meetings tomorrow at Georgetown University. The whole intention of the rallies is to shut this city down come Monday morning by blocking the bridges with marchers. Clare says it isn't going to work because organizing starts at six a.m. on Monday, and she says John Mitchell will make damn sure we're all in jail before rush hour traffic gets under way. Anyway, we're assigned to Dupont Circle," Kerry said.

"Sometimes Clare knows what she's talking about. She's a pretty sharp cookie," Howard said, not looking up from the television.

"Well, I think I'll take my camera gear and go on downtown and get some sight seeing in before the concerts. Tell Clare that I'll be back here by five to meet up with you guys," Puttnam said collecting his gear on his bed.

"I think I'll watch the baseball game with Howard," Kerry said.

"Puttnam, why don't you take the old Pontiac? It's not gonna do any of us any good just sitting out there in the parking lot," Howard said over his shoulder.

"Thanks, Howard . . . Kerry, would you ask Clare for the keys?" Puttnam said. Kerry and Howard gave him one brief glance, then they both turned back to the television. Neither could believe that Puttnam had asked such an obviously foolish question; they then turned to face on another, Kerry began to snicker, and Howard just grinned.

"Never mind," Puttnam said as he knocked softly on Clare's door.

"What is it?" Howard and Kerry heard Clare bellow. Puttnam disappeared into Clare and Kerry's room; soon they heard the room door to the outside close and the sound of the engine starting up in the Pontiac followed.

Puttnam drove slowly into the city. He had been in Washington many times yet still found it difficult to navigate in the traffic. He caught himself wondering, "Just what the hell am I doing in this city with an eighty-seven- year-old man, a middle-aged lady editor, and a vulnerable kid from Texas." He'd read an article in the paper that morning about a protest march earlier in the month by Vietnam Veterans and felt that he should have been here then, not now, not with all these misfits. He headed for the National Zoo in hopes of clearing his thoughts.

The traffic was heavy in Georgetown. It seemed to him that every long-haired hippie in the country had decided to sight-see today. He found a place to park the Pontiac several blocks from the zoo on Connecticut Avenue.

It was a clear sunny day in the nation's capitol. Puttnam ambled along the avenue with his camera bag swinging slowly by his side. Once inside the stone gates of the zoo, his nerves began to calm, and he whistled softly to himself.

He sat quietly on a bench near the seals' pool with his camera ready to shoot interesting passersby. He noticed a short, slender, young man with oily brown hair tied back into a pony tail with a leather strap and a bright red headband around the top of his head. He was wearing blue jeans littered with paisley patches, the denim in his jeans was faded to a pale blue, and an army fatigue shirt with the sleeves cut off just above his boney elbows, the edges of the sleeves ragged with loose threads. Puttnam had put in his time wearing fatigue clothing; he was quite perplexed that this clothing had become a fad here at home. The young man came closer to Puttnam and eventually sat down on the bench next to him. In close observation Puttnam noted the peculiar shape of the young man's nose which was extremely pointed and off center on the boy's face; it cast an unusual shadow on his right cheekbone and the bridge of the nose was sunburned while the rest of the young man was tanned to a light bronze. The air around them smelled of springtime and the voices of birds and small children mingled into one cacophonous symphony, a sound unique to zoos and recognizable to anyone who had ever visited such a place.

"Hey, man, how's it goin'?" the young man slurred. He reached into a pocket of his shirt and pulled out a pack of Marlboros, generously shaking the pack in front of Puttnam in a gesture of offering.

"Can't complain," Puttnam said in an effort to discourage conversation with the stranger. He declined the offer of a cigarette with a waving motion of his left hand.

"Beautiful day, ain't it?" the young man replied. He lit his cigarette by cupping his hands around the flame of the match against the wind. He held the match awkwardly between his first two fingers of his right hand while shuffling his sandal-clad feet, which were caked with dust, in the gravel beneath the bench. Once the cigarette was lit, he bent forward, placing his elbows on his knees and letting the cigarette dangle in his hand; he held it loosely between his thumb and forefinger with the lit end pointing towards his palm. He blew his first puff of smoke, which he'd inhaled deeply, out into the atmosphere, then turned to face Puttnam, resting his head in the palm of his left hand. He had small brown eyes which seemed not to focus on any one object and shifted back and forth with a constant flurry. The presence of the stranger made Puttnam uneasy, and he directed his attention to the seals in hopes that the kid would go away.

"You do that for a living?" the strange kid asked.

"Do what for a living?" Puttnam asked suspiciously, forgetting his camera gear.

"Shutterbug stuff, you know man, takin' pictures," the kid replied with an odd chuckle while miming the movements of holding a camera and making a clicking noise with his tongue as though he were taking pictures with his invisible camera.

"Yeah, I do this for a living," Puttnam mumbled. He pushed his hair back off his forehead and moved his large frame a couple of inches farther down the bench from the stranger in an exaggerated movement.

"Well, hey, man, I got some great pot here. You wanna buy a half a lid? I got myself stuck here in this city with no scratch. I just wanna round up a few bucks to get back home," the kid whispered to Puttnam.

Puttnam turned to glare at the strange young man beside him on the bench. He was surprised to find a hint of sincerity in the kid's eyes. A sudden curiosity for the disheveled young stranger overcame him. He wondered if perhaps this kid was as lost as he in the world. "That's dangerous stuff, fella, asking a total stranger if he wants to buy some pot. Where's your head? What if I had been a narc? Ain't you got no sense? Besides, only a fool would be walkin' around D.C. right now holdin' any drugs. Haven't you seen all the cops loitering around this city . . . they're just looking for a reason, any reason, to throw hippies in jail. . . . Where you from, anyway?" Puttnam asked sternly.

Ignoring Puttnam's lecture, the kid replied, "Atlanta, Georgia . . . I come up here with some pals of mine for the V.M.V. march earlier in the month, and those fuckers left me here."

"You're a Vet?" Puttnam asked in disbelief.

"Naw . . . my brother would've been 'cept he didn't make it home, if you get my drift," the kid said.

"So, I guess you decided to come here in his place?" Puttnam asked, receiving a nod of confirmation from the kid who took a drag from his cigarette and tilted his head back to exhale the smoke. "What's your name, kid?" Puttnam asked.

"Chuck Renfro. What's yours?" the kid asked, extending his hand to Puttnam.

"Burley . . . Puttnam Burley," Puttnam replied while shaking the kid's hand firmly. "So, Chuck, what'd you do back there in Atlanta?" Puttnam asked in a friendly tone.

"I play the bass . . . electric bass that is, in a soul band. We're pretty hot down there. I'm the only honky in the group," Chuck said with a grin. He again put on a mime show for Puttnam, only this time he was pretending to play his electric bass, bouncing back and forth on the bench with one arm tucked in close to his belly and his other arm extended out to his left as though he were clutching the neck of his guitar. "Ya sure you don't wanna buy some pot, man? It's some good old home grown stash, guaranteed to getcha off, man," Chuck asked.

"Like I said, Chuck, this ain't exactly the most ideal setting in which to be holdin' anything. Thanks for the offer though," Puttnam replied. He then let loose with his bellowing laughter which startled the young man, who jumped a bit on the bench beside Puttnam.

"How 'bout some acid, then?" Chuck asked hesitantly. "I got some orange sunshine here," he added.

Puttnam pushed his hair back slowly, thinking of the concerts scheduled for that evening and the fact that Kerry had mentioned once that she and her boyfriend, Fletcher, had done quite a bit of acid together . . . he'd done a lot of acid himself, but not since he'd been stateside. "How much 'ya sellin' that acid for?" Puttnam asked fidgeting on the bench.

"Oh, to you, man, one hit for two-fifty, two for five, or five for ten bucks. How much do ya want?" Chuck asked, leaning close to Puttnam's ear.

"Gimme a couple of hits for five," Puttnam said as he pulled his billfold out of his back pocket and retrieved a five dollar bill from its innards. He handed the five over to Chuck in the palm of his hand and Chuck in turn slipped him to small barrel-shaped tablets. Puttnam glanced quickly at the contents of his palm; the tablets were familiar to him from the past, and he closed his hand around them gently before depositing the two tablets into his camera bag.

"Much obliged to ya, Puttnam Burley. This is gonna help me get back on the road south. You have a safe trip, now, paisano," Chuck said as he stood to make his exit and stuffed the five dollar bill in the pocket of his jeans.

"Yeah, same to ya Chuck. Hey, now you be careful with yourself, kid," Puttnam said.

Puttnam packed up his camera as Chuck trotted away down the path. He left the zoo with the LSD stored neatly in an empty film can in his camera case and began searching for the closest pub on Connecticut Avenue where he might grab a cold beer before returning to the motel to meet Clare and Kerry. He strolled along the sidewalk, occasionally pushing his hair back humming the melody to a Don McLean song, "American Pie," quietly to himself. Puttnam drew quite a few stares and turned the heads of many when he walked down the street due to his great height, and he often forgot how tall he was, which caused him to wonder why people looked at him so strangely. He was happy though, feeling the sunshine warm upon his skin and daydreaming about Margaret. He ducked into a pub just a few blocks from the zoo and perched himself on a barstool close to the television. It was a dark barroom . . . one of those places where the daytime did not exist; it was always nighttime in this bar . . . you could drink in good conscience. A person could be whoever they wanted to be in this bar . . . say whatever they pleased . . . stay as long as you wanted; as long as you paid your tab and left peaceably at closing time. Puttnam lifted his hand in a toast to the bartender when he was served his beer. He watched the tail end of the double-header on the television and the announcer's voice boomed out across the barroom from the speaker in the T.V. set. Puttnam chugged down three draft beers before leaving the bar. He stopped outside on the sidewalk long enough to let his eyes adjust to the bright sunlight. The Pontiac was parked just a few blocks up. A bright green Chevrolet had parallel parked so close to his back bumper that he had to maneuver the big Pontiac several minutes in order to free himself from the parking space. He headed back to the motel with a light heart, elated with his recent purchase for him and Kerry, and anticipating an enjoyable evening at the concerts.

"WE ARE EVERYWHERE . . . POWER TO THE PEOPLE. . . ." screamed a young woman standing next to Kerry close to the front of the stage. The crowd swayed together with the beat of the music. The Beach Boys were playing "Good Vibrations," and Kerry was high having taken a half a hit of the orange sunshine two hours earlier. Puttnam rushed in and out of the crowd in front of the stage taking pictures of the band for The Avalanche. Kerry had been able to spot him by the flash of light from his camera when the concerts had first started, but now there were so many flashes of cameras within the crowd that Kerry had a hard time keeping up with Puttnam.

Clare and Howard had stayed behind at the motel to rest. Clare had been fearful of losing Howard in the dark and the turnout for the concerts was expected to be large, which meant that it would be virtually impossible to locate the small gentleman in the crowds.

Kerry wore a permanent smile upon her face. She'd left her glasses at the motel, and her eyes seemed to sparkle in the dark. She wore a soft cotton Mexican dress of light lavender with bright colored embroidery stitched in the yoke. Kerry had pulled the long hair around her face back and braided it into a long flowing braid; several wisps of hair had fallen loose from the braid and they curled slightly around her face. The rest of her hair, caught in the gentle breeze, danced around her waist. Puttnam had caught her unaware of his camera many times and had quickly snapped some animated shots of Kerry dancing to the music. He hoped he had captured her light heart on film, to preserve it for Margaret. It was so rare to see Kerry abandoning herself to such gaiety; she seemed intent on carrying the burdens of the world on her slender young shoulders, so lost in the seriousness of it all was she, that her youth lay guarded within her, unexplored. Never had he known a person so withdrawn as Kerry. Outwardly she projected the carefully constructed image of one who is involved with the actions around her, yet it was a thin disguise, for Puttnam could see that she was merely observing; that participation was impossible for her; the giving of one's self to the emotion of fleeting moments was beyond her realm of understanding. She thrived on the emotions of others; she sampled those emotions within her own heart and savored their effects just as a wine connoisseur would retain the drops of a fine wine on the tongue. She sought to palliate the intensity of emotion within herself for she could not forget pain once it was felt and she could not forgive its origins.

Puttnam pushed through the crowd to find Kerry. She was quite easy to spot in her lavender dress. They both laughed loudly as they collided into each other amidst the throng of people dancing wildly with their hands high in the air.

"Did you get your interview with Phil Ochs?" Puttnam yelled to Kerry.

"What?" Kerry yelled back with the music pounding in her ears.

"I said, did you get your interview with Phil Ochs?" Puttnam repeated leaning closer to Kerry's ear.

"Oh. . . . no, I couldn't find him. It's a madhouse backstage," Kerry screamed. "Seems that every musician in the country has gathered here to get a chance to go on stage. What about the photographs? How'd you do?" Kerry asked with a grin and poked Puttnam sharply in the side with her elbow in reference to their partnership in being high on the acid.

"I think I did okay . . . it's so crowded around here that there hasn't really been much room to navigate . . . hey, a couple of times I got so spaced out that I forgot to reload the camera . . . what a dumbass . . . out here running around snapping shots with no film in the damn thing," Puttnam replied, straining to be heard over the music, then throwing his head back, shaking with massive spurts of laughter. "Let's move back so we can hear each other," Puttnam screamed reaching out to grasp Kerry's arm in order to lead her away from the front of the stage and the madding crowd.

As they walked along through the crowd Kerry ducked just in time to miss being smacked on the head with a large picket sign topped with a poster of Ghandi spiriting a clenched fist. The young man holding the sign was waving it wildly over his head completely unaware of those standing close beside him. Puttnam recognized him immediately as being none other than the notorious Chuck from the zoo.

Puttnam tapped him lightly on the shoulder and upon getting his attention, he said, "Hey, man, how's it goin'?"

"Hey, this is somethin', ain't it? . . makes me glad those guys went off and left me here," Chuck replied nodding his head at Puttnam . . . "Oh and hey, man, I even got a ride back to Atlanta day after tomorrow with some cats from Mobile, Alabama. I'm crashin' out in some dorm at American University. How's that stuff, man . . . you get off?" Chuck added with a wink to Puttnam.

"Sure thing, kid . . . it's pretty tame stuff though compared to some of the trips I had over in Nam," Puttnam said. Kerry was growing impatient. She tugged at Puttnam's arm and motioned for the two of them to move farther back in the crowd.

"Puttnam, who is that guy . . . come on, let's go sit down somewhere," Kerry said impatiently. Puttnam opened his mouth and pointed at his tongue, then motioned towards Chuck in an effort to make Kerry understand why he'd stopped to talk with the guy. Kerry caught on immediately and released her grip on Puttnam's arm, turning her attentions temporarily back to the music.

"That your old lady, man? . . . she's a fine looking mama . . . did all right for yourself there didn't 'cha, dude?" Chuck asked pointing towards Kerry.

"No . . she's a friend . . . I mean we work together . . . nah, she's not 'my old lady'. Hey, Kerry this is Chuck, he's that fellow I met at the zoo today," Puttnam said gaining Kerry's attention and grinning from ear to ear.

"Pleasure to meet you, Chuck," Kerry replied while trying to focus on the young man's eyes which didn't seem to see her at all.

"Hey, likewise, doll," Chuck remarked, and he stood up on his tip toes to whisper in Puttnam's ear. "Man, if she ain't your date . . . what 'cha think . . . maybe she might be interested in this old boy from Georgia?"

"No way, man . . . she's got a boyfriend back in Texas . . . nah, she wouldn't be interested, Chuck," Puttnam said, shaking his head in amusement. He hoped that Kerry hadn't overheard Chuck's inquiry; she had, of course. She moved closer to Puttnam wishing that the conversation would come to a halt as situations such as this one were difficult to deal with when she was stoned.

"Well, I mean, hey, man, like they say, 'outta sight outta mind'. Know what I mean? I could sure show her a good time," Chuck said in a snicker to Puttnam.

"What'd he say?" Kerry yelped. Puttnam began shuffling them away from Chuck, and Kerry reluctantly followed Puttnam's sharp tugs on her arm.

"Well, we gotta split now, Chuck . . . we'll check ya later," Puttnam called back over his shoulder while pulling Kerry along beside him. Kerry kept looking back at Chuck with an irritated grimace on her face.

"Sure thing, man, hey; be seein' y'all down the road, man," Chuck called back as Kerry and Puttnam disappeared into the crowd.

"The nerve of that guy," Kerry said. "Where does he get off thinkin' he could pick me up like that."

"It's just that you're so damned irresistible, Miss Kerry . . . ya little heartbreaker. Poor old Chuck'll probably never get over your rejection," Puttnam said, beside himself in amusement over the incident. Margaret would get a kick out of the story.

"Yeah sure, Puttnam," Kerry groaned. They turned to face each other in the crowd, there beneath the stars with the flood lights casting a surreal glow and the sound of light-hearted rock and roll crashing into their ears. The atmosphere was charged with the electricity of thousands of souls gathered together for a common cause. Kerry and Puttnam gazed into each other's eyes for a second or two before both doubled over in laughter from the effects of the acid which made all things humorous to an extreme degree and any diversion well worth investigating.

"I'll race 'ya over to those benches," Kerry said once she'd recovered from the spasms of laughter. She turned flippantly on her heels and dashed off towards the east in a fast clip.

Kerry was no match for Puttnam's long legs. He stood back, watching her slender shape dart into the night with her hair flowing out behind her before breaking into a run himself. He pushed his hair back from his face as he ran, the sweetness of the humid night air lingering on his breath. He threw his head back, beckoning the May moon with laughter while thinking to himself, "Forgive me, dear Margaret, for I have sinned by thinking such lecherous thoughts about Kerry." He slowed his pace as he approached the bench where Kerry had collapsed in laughter, thoughtfully reminding himself, "It's only the acid, Puttnam old boy, remember dear Margaret and it's only the acid."

"It's a wonderful night, isn't it, Puttnam?" Kerry asked. Her hands were clasped firmly in her lap as she gazed up at the stars. She had kicked her sandals off and was running her feet through the grass.

"It's a welcomed distraction, indeed," Puttnam replied. "I met this freelance photographer a couple of hours ago who invited us over to his apartment for a pickin' party later on. I've been thinking that that might be a good idea since we're both so stoned . . . can't see the two of us going back to the motel this way. Can you imagine me trying to carry on a straight conversation with Howard? He's a far-out guy for such an old fella, but I don't think he's gonna understand LSD like we do, and the way I'm feeling right now, I know I'm not going to come down for a while," Puttnam said. He pushed his hair back from his face, crossed his legs, and placed his other arm on the back of the bench behind Kerry, gently patting her on the head as he did so. Her hair was fine in texture; he had grown accustomed to the coarse fullness of Margaret's shoulder-length auburn mane, so the softness of Kerry's chestnut hair took him by surprise and he rolled his large blue eyes skyward, berating himself once again for his prurient thoughts.

"Howard?" Kerry began with a snicker. "He'll probably be asleep when we get back. It's Clare I'm worried about . . . nothing gets by her. She'll probably give me another one of her lectures about social reforms and journalistic responsibilities. Frankly, I don't think I could sit through one of those with a straight face; Clare seems to think I'm not dealing with a full deck as it is," Kerry said, with a sigh.

Puttnam noticed that Kerry's accent seemed to become more severe with her current high. Her Texas accent was quite refreshing to his ears and the slowness of her speech created a suspenseful quality to their conversations.

"Aw, Clare's a piece of cake. She's been around lots of kids who were stoned on acid there at the boarding house. She probably wouldn't even say anything to 'ya about it . . . what 'cha think about going over to this party for a while, though? Guy's name is Hank, he's got a little dark room set up at his place. I'd like to see how some of his stuff from tonight came out," Puttnam said.

Kerry was so stoned that the low resonance in Puttnam's voice seemed to take on the sound of an echo, and she had to reflect on the context of their conversation in order to comprehend his questions. "Well, dad-gum, Puttnam, I just don't know about going over to this guy, Hank's . . . I mean, if he's anything like that character you scored from in the zoo, I don't think I'd be interested," Kerry giggled.

"Oh, get off my case about that jerk, Kerry. . . . How was I to know that the little weasel would show up down here?" Puttnam replied light-heartedly and let loose with his side-splitting laughter.

"Oh, weasel, my ass . . . that guy was just a plain old weirdo; one of those loud-mouthed southern boys whose mother probably raised him on paregoric," Kerry cackled. They both shook with laughter from Kerry's joke as the crowd began going wild over the last encore from The Beach Boys.

"Anybody ever tell you ya got a smart mouth for such an innocent looking broad?" Puttnam asked, as Kerry stood up to watch the end of the concert.

Kerry hadn't heard his question above the roar of the crowds. Most of the band and musicians who'd performed earlier in the evening were coming out on stage for the last encore. Kerry stood on her tip-toes, straining to get another look at her new hero, Phil Ochs.

Puttnam got up slowly from the bench. He stretched his muscular arms high in the air then moved close to Kerry's side.

"I told that fellow, Hank, that we'd meet up with him down in front of the stage. He said we could walk to his apartment from here . . . we'd better get down there pretty soon. . . . Guess I should get a few shots of everyone out on stage together," Puttnam said bending down close to Kerry's ear.

"What about Clare and Howard?" Kerry replied. "They'll worry if we don't come back."

"We can give Clare a call from Hank's place," Puttnam said, digging into his camera bag for a new roll of film. Once his camera was reloaded they strolled side by side back into the tightly knit crowd of thousands whose voices had joined together in unison to chant, "WE ARE EVERYWHERE . . . POWER TO THE PEOPLE!"

Puttnam reached out for Kerry's hand as they worked their way through the crowd. Kerry imagined that the whole world could hear the chants, and they chanted along with them in all languages in harmony.

Kerry and Puttnam began to dance as they neared the front of the stage. The Beach Boys were closing up with their song "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and for a fleeting moment Kerry thought of Fletcher. This was a song they had sung to each other when they were younger, before they'd trusted their hearts to each other by making love, back when making love was a wicked temptation in their young minds. She remembered long Texas nights when they'd sit out on the curb at Kerry's house and dream for their future. They would kiss until their lips were sore and their hearts were stilled in the musky night air; sometimes they could hardly breathe for the longing they shared for each other's touch. She missed Fletcher then and she missed her home, where the seasons barely changed, where practically everything remained the same forever.

Puttnam studied the pensive look on Kerry's face for a few seconds. She had stopped dancing, and he reached out to touch her softly on her cheek, which brought her back to reality. She glanced up into Puttnam's sorrowful blue eyes and winked candidly at her companion.

". . . Wouldn't it be nice if we were older then we wouldn't have to wait so long . . ."

*****

Ernest was working late in Clare's office. His typewriter was on the blink and he'd had to swallow his pride and return to the fold at The Avalanche so he could get some work finished. The phone out in the main hall had been ringing off and on for several hours; he refused to answer it and Margaret was upstairs reading, also refusing to respond to the nagging peal of the phone. He heard her padding downstairs just as the phone began ringing again.

"Margaret, answer that phone, for Chrissakes!" Ernest bellowed through clenched lips nervously clinging to a lit cigarette, the ash of which measured at least an inch long. He squinted his eyes at the page in the typewriter and continued pounding away on its keys as Margaret reached for the phone out in the hall.

She gave a nasty look to the door of Clare's office as she tucked her thick auburn hair behind her ears, straightened the collar of her flannel robe where it had fallen open from her descent down the stairs, and picked up the receiver on the third ring.

"Hello," Margaret said in her shy tone of voice.

"Hello . . . is Kerry there? . . . Kerry Foster, is she 'round?" Fletcher asked cautiously; it was late, almost eleven o'clock in Denton, Texas which meant it was close to midnight in Saratoga Springs, and he was afraid he might have woken someone up at the boarding house. He'd been trying to reach Kerry all night; he had to talk to her tonight. . . .

"She's in D.C. for the march on the Capitol. Is this by any chance Fletcher Seibel?" Margaret asked. She sat down quietly on the first step on the stairs to await his reply.

"Yes, Ma'am, this is Fletcher . . . sorry to be calling so late. May I ask who this is?" Fletcher asked, gaining a bit more confidence at the recognition of his name. He was sitting in an old wooden cane-backed chair at his desk with only his study lamp on for light. Kerry's picture sat in front of him on the desk; he pondered her smile, the dimples on either side, her high rosey cheek bones, and the hint of passion in her hazel eyes. He scratched his full brownish-black beard as he cupped the phone to his ear. His dark brown hair was tousled on top and it waved thickly just an inch or two below the break in the collar of his short-sleeved denim work shirt. Fletcher was a breathtakingly handsome man of twenty-two. He was six-foot-one with a medium build, squared broad shoulders, penetrating dark eyes, and an air of gentleness about him which made him most attractive.

"This is Margaret English, Fletcher. Kerry talks about you constantly. I'm sorry you've missed her," Margaret replied.

"Me, too," Fletcher began, "she's written to me about you so often. It's nice to finally make your acquaintance, even if it is over the phone. . . . I almost feel like I know you from the way Kerry talks about you and your friend, Puttnam, in her letters. You know, I knew she was going to those Washington rallies, but I guess it just slipped my mind. When's she due back into Saratoga?" Fletcher asked.

Margaret sensed a tone of urgency in Fletcher's voice. He had a smooth southern drawl somewhat like Kerry's, but his voice flowed more smoothly with a quiet eloquence more akin to Louisiana rather than Texas. Fletcher's voice held the mysteries of bayous and pine trees, cool green moss, and old families dating back for generations in the south while Kerry's voice brought forth images of wide dusty streets, Ford pick-up trucks, tumbleweed, and short, spiked cactus plants. "She won't be back until Tuesday, Fletcher. It sounds like this is some sort of emergency. Is there anything I can help you with?" Margaret asked.

"I don't know . . . well, maybe . . . you see, I really needed to talk to Kerry tonight. I hate to just write her a letter with what I have to say . . . just wouldn't be right," Fletcher said quietly.

"Tell you what, Fletcher, . . . I have the phone number for the motel in D.C. upstairs. Hold on a second and I'll run up there and get it for you. She's sharing a room with Clare; they both keep pretty late hours, so you shouldn't have to worry about waking one of them up," Margaret said thoughtfully. She laid the phone down on the step and lifting her robe up at the knees to avoid tripping over its hem, she ran up the stairs to her room to retrieve the phone number for Fletcher, wondering what could be wrong with him.

"Here's the number, Fletcher. They're at the Holiday Inn in Arlington, room one-forty-seven, area code seven-zero-three-five-five-two-four-four-nine-nine," Margaret said into the phone gasping for breath.

"Thanks, Margaret. You know, on second thought, I think it would be a good idea to fill you in on what's going on down here. Kerry's not likely to talk about it . . . she sorta keeps things to herself . . . and I feel she's going to need a lot of understanding from her friends up there for a while once she hears my news," Fletcher said somberly.

"Well, I don't want to pry, Fletcher, but I'd be glad to help in any way I can," Margaret said as she settled back down on the bottom step of the stairs. She glanced off towards the door to Clare's office and began listening to Fletcher's urgent news wishing that Ernest would just drop dead as the sound of the pounding typewriter became more and more irritating as Fletcher went on with his story.

Fifteen minutes later, the door opened to Clare's office just as Margaret was replacing the phone to its cradle. Ernest poked his head out into the hall, and finding Margaret there he replied, "Who in God's name has been calling here all night long? . . . It's late and I'm trying to get some work finished in here."

"Oh, why don't you just go crawl back under a rock somewhere, Ernest. The world doesn't revolve around you, Buster," Margaret snapped.

Ernest stared at Margaret in disbelief for her outburst. Margaret was normally so docile that he could hardly believe what he was hearing. He pushed his heavy glasses back up the bridge of his nose, made an attempt at taming his hair, which was freshly shampooed for a change in honor of his return to The Avalanche, and stepped out in the hall, curious about Margaret's behavior.

"What's wrong, Margaret?" Ernest inquired in genuine concern.

Margaret stood with her hand still on the receiver of the phone and her other hand clutching the collar of her robe. "It's absolutely none of your business, Ernest," Margaret said, advancing towards the dining hall to her left. She was contemplating making a pot of coffee in the kitchen and the last company she desired right now was that of Ernest Hinkle.

Ernest seemed to read her thoughts exactly and he called after her, "Hey, Margaret, if you're making coffee . . . would you mind throwing in a couple of cups for me? I really do have to get this work done tonight."

Margaret stopped in the center of the dining room, turned on her heels seething in anger over Ernest's thoughtless request, and strolled right back past Ernest in the hallway. She stopped as she was halfway back up the stairs and replied, "Make your own damn coffee, Ernest Hinkle."

Ernest was bewildered by her reaction. Margaret had always been kind to him, and he did not relish the thought of having another enemy at The Avalanche. He reluctantly mounted the first step on the stairs after her.

"Ernest, by God, you'd better be nice to Kerry when she gets back here," Margaret said out of the blue. She turned to face Ernest on the stairway. She had an intense look on her face, and Ernest was confused in trying to figure out what any of this had to do with Kerry Foster. He was intent on finding out what the problem was; Ernest prided himself on having the scoop on everyone.

Ernest sighed deeply in frustration. He had never understood women, and this one was a poet, a very beautiful poet at that.

"How about this, Margaret . . . I'll make the coffee. I was ready for a break anyway. We can talk about it . . . whatever's bothering you. I'm not such a bad guy sometimes. Come on in the kitchen," Ernest said. He reached a hand out to Margaret, which she promptly refused. She did, however, follow him reluctantly through the dining hall.

Ernest's offer to make coffee was a shock to Margaret. She pushed a loose strand of her wavy hair back into place behind her ear, and studying the back of Ernest's head as they entered the kitchen, she replied, "I'm anxious to see if you really know how to make coffee Ernest, but I'm warning you, no funny stuff!"

"Scout's honor, Margaret . . . coffee . . . no funny stuff," Ernest said jokingly, waving his hand in the air without looking back at her.

"Promise?" Margaret asked hesitantly.

"Oh, good grief, Margaret . . . I promise not to lay one hand on your lily white flesh. I'd have to have a death wish to do something that radical, now wouldn't I? Puttnam Burley would break every bone in my body for an offense such as that," Ernest scoffed as Margaret sat down at the small breakfast table in the corner of the kitchen. She watched in curiosity as Ernest fumbled with the Melitta coffee maker over the sink; it was a scene she could not have imagined, even in her wildest dreams.

"Everything's fine on this end, Puttnam. Howard's been asleep for hours. I don't think he'll even notice your absence as long as you're back by morning. I do have messages for both you and Kerry," Clare said quietly. She was propped up in her bed reading some notes for Kerry's next article in The Avalanche.

"Let's have 'em," Puttnam said jovially. Kerry was kneeling down in front of Hank's record collection. Hank had excused himself to his dark room, leaving Kerry and Puttnam out in the living room to greet the other guests he'd invited over to his place during the course of the evening.

"First of all," Clare began, "Fletcher called from Denton and requested that I have Kerry get in touch with him tonight, no matter how late . . . he'll be waiting up, and second, Margaret called, oddly enough, in reference to Fletcher's phone call, and she asked that I have you call her at the house before I let Kerry call Fletcher. Sounds pretty important to me, but Margaret assured me that it has nothing to do with death or illness in the family . . . it's just some sort of personal crisis," Clare said. She noticed an unusual tone of high spirits in Puttnam's voice; she could not resist the temptation to make note of it, "By the way, Puttnam, are you high on some sort of controlled substance?" she asked.

Puttnam never bothered to lie to Clare, and he smiled to himself as he replied, "Yes, ma'am, I certainly am." He shook with laughter as he spoke as did Clare on the other end of the line.

"Shame on you . . . and be careful," Clare said before hanging up the telephone. She overheard the music starting up in the background at Hank's apartment as she replaced the receiver on its cradle and began going over the notes again. During her reading, she fretted over the reasons for Fletcher's insistence on having Kerry call him, though they remained a mystery to her. She was in no way pleased that the young man was disturbing her reporter while on assignment, a point she had contemplated expressing during her conversation with the young man, but he had sounded so despondent that she had neglected to bring it up. "Reporters," she thought to herself, "Puttnam and Kerry are out there lolly-gagging around stoned on something or another and I still call them reporters . . . some staff I have here." Clare pulled a pencil from behind her ear and began correcting Kerry's spelling, which was atrocious. Her glasses rested on the tip of her nose and she'd pulled the blanket up over her chest. Clare was a small woman with such a youthful face that, had it not been for the streaks of gray in her close-cropped curly dark hair, any onlooker could have mistaken her for a child, curled up on a sleepless night reading a story book.

"Well, I suppose this is why this magazine sells," Clare mumbled to the empty room, surprising herself by actually speaking out loud; her voice had broken the silence in the room like a heavy clap of thunder.

*****

Puttnam waited for the operator to clear the collect charges with Margaret, noting how wonderful Margaret's voice sounded on the other end of the line.

"Puttnam, where's Kerry?" Margaret asked immediately.

"She's right here, darlin'. What seems to be the trouble?" Puttnam replied as he leafed through the pages of a photography magazine Hank had left out on the coffee table waiting for Margaret's reply. It was a long reply, and he glanced up occasionally at Kerry, still pulling records out of the record bin. Kerry was unaware of his phone conversation and the attention directed towards her. She was listening attentively to the Janis Joplin record she had played on the stereo.

"He can't tell her that tonight, Margaret . . . she's stoned on acid. That's a terrible thing to tell somebody who's stoned," Puttnam said. His smile had quickly faded from his face. "Yes, I'm stoned, too," he added a moment later. There was a pause in Puttnam's end of the conversation, Kerry turned to address Puttnam just in time to hear Puttnam close the conversation with, "No, I won't leave her alone tonight . . . I love you, too, Babe." Puttnam hung up the phone and looked up at Kerry, who now stood in front of him as he sat on the sofa.

"Kerry, Margaret says that you're supposed to call Fletcher tonight," Puttnam said.

"Oh, I'll wait till tomorrow. It's after midnight already," Kerry replied cheerfully.

"He's waitin' up for ya to call, darlin', better go ahead and call him now. Here take my place by the phone," Puttnam said sadly. He stood up and walked to the stereo as Kerry sat down in his place on the sofa and began giving the required information to the operator for her collect call to Fletcher. He could only speculate Fletcher's end of the conversation from Kerry's responses; she seemed quite calm considering the circumstances.

"Hi, Kerry, I'm glad you got my message," Fletcher said. Their connection was a weak one, and he strained to hear her voice on the other end.

"It's nice to hear your voice," Kerry said loudly.

"How are things in Washington. Have you gotten an interview with Richard Nixon yet?" Fletcher teased. He toyed with the phone cord, prolonging breaking his news to Kerry as long as he could.

"Oh, he's called several times, but I just told him my schedule was full and he'd have to get in line, just like everybody else," Kerry giggled. "Why'd you call Fletcher? Is something wrong?" Kerry added, not falling for Fletcher's attempts to beat around the bush.

"Hey, my mom had lunch with your mom last week . . . she says your dad's moving to Houston; his company is opening up an office down there. I wondered if you knew since you haven't mentioned it in any of your letters," Fletcher said, still stalling for time.

"That's interesting . . . no, he hasn't mentioned it, but I haven't talked to him in almost a month. I'm not surprised though. He's been wanting to move out of Austin for a long time now," Kerry said, a bit surprised at the news. She couldn't help but notice that Puttnam was staring at her, though he was pretending to look over an album jacket for a Simon and Garfunkel record.

"Kerry, that's not why I called. I gotta tell you something and I know this is not the right time, but there will never be another time and I had to tell you myself," Fletcher began.

"What is it, Fletcher?" Kerry asked, realizing that this was no ordinary phone conversation with Fletcher.

"Kerry, ya know, we've had this understanding between us that we should both date other people while we're so far apart . . . Kerry, I'm getting married next week," Fletcher said reluctantly. The muscles in his throat became tight, and he could barely get the words out of his mouth.

"You're what?" Kerry replied in shock. "I don't think I heard you right . . . I don't understand," Kerry said in disbelief. "You can't do that, you're supposed to come up here after exams in a couple of weeks." Kerry added.

"I won't be coming, Kerry," he replied, pausing briefly to regain his composure. "Remember a few weeks ago, I mentioned that girl who's the daughter of an old classmate of my dad's? Her name's Denise . . . she's a freshman and I took her out to 'The Office Club' to hear Dee Moeler," Fletcher said.

"Yeah, I remember . . . that was before I moved to Saratoga . . . you said you didn't really want to take her out, but you did it as a favor for your Dad since she didn't really know anyone up there. I remember you said she turned out to be pretty nice and you hoped I got to meet her sometime . . . you even suggested that we fix her up with Wiley and the two of you could come down to Austin for a weekend . . . yeah, I remember. . . . I thought that was a great idea 'cause Wiley was always such a hermit," Kerry said.

"She's pregnant, Kerry . . . I don't know how it happened, but she is and we have to get married . . . she doesn't believe in abortion," Fletcher said in agony.

"Well, hell-bells, Fletcher, you know damn well how it happened . . . that's stupidity at its max," Kerry said sarcastically. The news was just beginning to sink in and the acid caused her state of mind to turn to anger rather than tears. "How could you, of all people, make such a negligent mistake . . . you, who used to watch my calendar like a hawk. . . . How could you do this to us, to our future?" Kerry winced.

"Kerry, let me explain. . . I know it was a stupid mistake, but . . . ," Fletcher began before Kerry interrupted him.

"Who went to the 'free clinic' last year, took a number, and sat sandwiched between some freak with crabs and a female heroin addict waitng for methadone treatment for four hours just to get The Pill so we wouldn't have to worry about accidents anymore . . . you asshole . . . who loved you, man . . . who's loved you for almost nine years . . . what makes her exempt from abortion, Fletcher . . . it was your first choice for me a couple of years ago when we had that little scare," Kerry cried.

"We were too young then, Kerry, besides it was a false alarm . . . we're adults now, and I have to take on the responsibility for my actions . . . she told her folks . . . they told mine . . . there's just no way around it," Fletcher pleaded.

"We had it all mapped out, Fletcher, you and I . . . . we had those all-American dreams, we would live our lives together and we would change the world . . . what a crock of shit that turned out to be . . . nothing lasts forever . . . the last person in the world I ever expected to break my heart was you . . . ," Kerry said trailing off with a soft shudder of anguish.

"Kerry, I'll always love you . . . it isn't that I love Denise . . . it's just my responsibility . . . ," Fletcher tried to explain. His head rested in his hand and the tears began to roll down into his beard.

Kerry blurted out in anger, "Don't you tell me that, Fletcher Seibel . . . I don't want to hear you tell me you don't love this person you've decided to throw away our future for . . . I don't want to have to live with that . . . it's you who has to reconcile that little dose of pain, not me, so don't try to pass that guilt on to my shoulders. I can tell you this; I'll always feel the same about what we had, it'll always be sacred . . . it was the first love . . . it'll probably be the last. I'm gonna hang up now, Fletcher, . . . I'm about as stoned as one can get . . . I don't want to deal with this now . . not now, maybe not ever," Kerry said calmly.

"Oh, Kerry, don't say that . . . you sound like your Leo when she talks about old Edgar . . . so defeated . . . we'll get over this . . . tell me you won't become as bitter as your grandmother, Kerry, I'm not dying . . . not dead . . . our relationship will just take on a new meaning now, as friends. . . . I want us to be friends," Fletcher replied. In all his life, he never thought he would be saying farewell to the one who'd shared his dreams, to the one who held his heart.

"Well, maybe I'm just like my Grandmother Leo, Fletcher, maybe we're just two peas in a pod . . maybe all people who hurt inside are alike in that regard . . . maybe just two of a kind heart, we are . . . not sharing the same mind . . . just sharing the same pain," Kerry said softly into the phone as Puttnam watched on.

"Kerry, we started out as friends . . . we'll always have that special bond between us," Fletcher said in response to her statement. "I don't want to live without that friendship," Fletcher added.

"We didn't start out as friends, Fletcher . . . we started out as adversaries, cursing one another across a tetherball pole . . . no, we didn't start out as friends . . . that came later . . . that was something we gave to each other when we learned to trust one another . . . we had secrets . . . we had trust . . . something you should have thought about two months ago or whenever the hell little Denise got pregnant. I have to go now . . . congratulations . . . sorry I won't be able to attend the wedding," Kerry cried as she hung the phone up on Fletcher, who sat for several minutes with the dead receiver in his hand. When he finally composed himself enough to get up from his chair and stretch out in his bed, sleep did not come to him; it eluded him that night just as it would for many nights to come. The peacefulness he had once held in sleep, in his dreams of Kerry and their future, would not return for many years for the happy-go-lucky days of his youth were spent now for both of them, and the first real trials of adulthood and disillusionment lay before him wrestled firmly to the ground, the hard cold earth, in his nightmares; the most dreaded nightmare of all, the loss of the love of Kerry Foster.

Puttnam kneeled down in front of Kerry where she sat on the sofa with her elbows on her knees and her face buried in her hands.

"You knew, didn't you, Putts?" Kerry said in a muffled tone.

Puttnam reached out to stroke her hair in a comforting gesture. "Yeah, I knew, darlin' . . . I'm awfully sorry. . . . Life's a drag sometimes . . . ain't it, Babe?" Puttnam said.

"It's so humiliating, Putts . . . that you know . . . that Margaret knows and probably Clare. What's it all for, anyway? What good does it do to love someone if they'll never love you back?" Kerry said tearfully. The doorbell rang at Hank's, and Puttnam feared that they would soon be surrounded by an apartment full of strangers.

"Let's get out of here, Kerry," Puttnam said as he got up to answer the door for Hank.

"But . . . Hank said that the cops are everywhere tonight . . . we can't be walking the streets this late stoned on acid," Kerry replied.

"We've got a motel, remember . . . we can cruise on over there and sit out in the parking lot till we come down . . . cops can't bust us there. Don't you worry, doll, it'll all work out. . . . I know he was special and I won't try to convince you that he wasn't but you're special, too and you'll survive . . . hell, you might even be happy again someday," Puttnam said, trying to add some humor to the subject as he reached for the doorknob to let in Hank's guests.

"You're right Puttnam," Kerry called out. "Just screw old Fletcher . . . God knows everybody else has."

Puttnam and Kerry lingered at Hank's just long enough to say their farewells to him. Hank tossed a six-pack of beer at Puttnam as they were walking out the door. He sensed that they were both troubled about something, and remembering that Kerry was from Texas, he winked at her as she slipped past him and said, "Y'all come back, now."

Kerry and Puttnam sat together on a lounger out by the pool at the motel. Kerry quietly recounted many humorous tales of her years with Fletcher. She would burst out with wild laughter occasionally during the telling of such stories, and Puttnam held her close to him, comforting her as only a friend or a brother could do; all thought of prurience vanished from Puttnam's heart.

They came down slowly from the effects of the LSD, both felt Kerry's pain, both became enchanted by the early morning glow in the heavens. They were hypontized by the sound of the water slapping against the side of the pool, and they fell into a deep sleep in each other's arms as dawn came to greet them. The sound of the water gently stroking the edge of the pool created a healing force during her sleep; so far from home was she, so far from her true course in life's travels and so young to be wounded so deeply. They had playfully tossed the six-pack back and forth across the pool to each other when they'd first arrived back at the motel; neither one had been interested in the drinking of any alcohol. The six-pack rested on its side beneath the lounger where they slept, unopened. Its contents were shaken and lukewarm, just waiting for the first sucker to come along and pop one of its tops.

Sunday seemed to fly by for Puttnam, Howard, Kerry, and Clare. Clare spent the beter part of the morning at organizaitonal meetings at St. Edward's church and the afternoon driving around the city just to get familiar with the streets. Slogans had been painted on all the bridges and on some of the federal buildings. Clare was most disappointed in the rallies; she felt the whole thing was been infiltrated by the F.B.I. and that they were in control.

She had committed herself to staying for the duration. She was even proud of Howard for coming with them to Washington to throw in his own two cents for the anti-war movement though she still did not feel that he had any idea what lay in store for them during the next two days.

Clare was livid in her beliefs that the citizens had a right to march on their capitol in protest against American involvement in Vietnam. The war was wrong, though all wars were wrong in Clare's heart. She was fearful that the Nixon administration was intent on making these rallies into a mockery of the movement.

Puttnam and Kerry, understandably, napped off and on throughout the day. They took turns playing cards with Howard; he won every hand and was extremely pleased with himself until he realized that Kerry and Puttnam weren't really giving the cards their full attention.

During one hand of "Go-Fish" Howard became so frustrated with Puttnam that he threw his cards down on the table to gain Puttnam's attention and replied, "By God, Puttnam, are you playing this game or not?"

Howard's outburst had barely rattled Puttnam, who was lost in his own thoughts and he answered, "Yeah, sure . . . now what game is this we're playing here?"

Needless to say, they all retired early that evening in anticipation of the long day they had waiting for them on Monday.

Kerry's youth was her saving grace in the face of such hurt she felt over Fletcher's abandonment of their relationship. Her outward appearance of resilience deeply touched Puttnam and he admired her courage. Yet, the impression she purposely gave to Puttnam was a false one because in her heart she was bleeding from the open wound of rejection. Her dreams were restless ones, full of conversatons with Fletcher for all those things she had not told him on the phone, all those secrets she did not recite to him. She would share her pain with no one for the time being; she would now be one who gathered strength from suffering alone, because in the end, only she could heal herself. She had been luckier than most, as she had had the warmth of company during the desolation of adolescence and young adulthood; he had had a hand to hold and a hand to give. She would have to learn the meaning of the word loneliness now and in doing so she would gain a better sense of compassion for those around her who were lonely. Though Fletcher would not be alone in physical terms, he would also learn of loneliness with the vast, empty space in his own heart.

Monday morning was frantic for Clare. Howard insisted on carrying a small camp stool with them to Dupont Circle; he and Clare faced each other in the doorway to their adjoining rooms arguing over the matter for several minutes. Puttnam finally solved the problem by simply snatching the camp stool from Howard's hands, stomping out of the motel room, and literally giving the camp stool a swift toss out on the sidewalk in front of their rooms. The act in itself shocked Howard and Clare back to reality, and they went about their business of preparing for the day in silence.

It was early in the morning, not quiet five a.m. when they spun out of the parking lot in Howard's Pontiac with Puttnam behind the wheel, Clare snapping directions, Howard dozing in the back seat, and Kerry braiding her hair next to him. Unbeknownst to Clare, Howard had stashed the notorious camp stool in the trunk of the car still insisting to himself that it would come in handy to someone later in the day.

The streets were still quiet in the twilight of predawn. Street lights glowed with hazy halos reluctantly casting their last hour of illumination on the pavement. Puttnam drove north on Twenty-second Street; he couldn't help but notice the abundance of police vehicles, and in nearing Washington Circle he was shocked to see Military Police scattered throughout the area.

At Clare's request, Puttnam parked the car just a few blocks from DuPont Circle in a lot on Twenty-first Street. They walked the remaining distance to the circle with Puttnam toting Howard's camp stool on his arm with his camera gear resting on top of it. It was actually more of a good luck charm for Howard; small and compact, it was made of two wooden frames which folded together sandwiching a brightly striped strip of canvas which served as the seat of the stool when the wooden frames were unfolded. Howard had used it countless times on fishing trips, and it had always brought him luck. The canvas in the center was worn from years of use. Howard strolled alongside Puttnam tapping his cane on the pavement, occasionally catching Puttnam's eye by tilting his head to the side and shooting him an exaggerated wink while his mustache twitched from the bounce in his walk. Howard had worn his gray flannel suit, a white shirt, his blue bow-tie, and a metal pin clasped to his lapel of the American Flag whose colors had become quite faded. Kerry Pearl had gotten the pin at the Fourth of July picnic in Raymondville back in 1960, and she'd sent it to Howard in payment of a bet they'd made over an all-star baseball game. He sported the pin proudly on this day in her memory.

Clare and Kerry walked side by side as they approached the small crowd of protesters already gathering around the traffic circle. Clare wore a green and white striped seersucker dress belted at the waist and navy blue tennis shoes. She carried a small portable tape recorder for interviews and her large straw handbag, which she regretted bringing as it did not have a shoulder strap and made her load a bit too awkward to juggle. Kerry had braided her long hair into one long braid down her back, and she wore Levi jeans, a yellow tank top, and her leather sandals. She carrried only her notebook, with a ball point pen clipped to its front cover.

As six a.m. drew closer, the protesters began to take their positions around the circle with the intention of blocking morning traffic from all directions. Policemen also converged on the circle with the Marines following behind them with orders for the crowd to disperse peacefully. Network television crews arrived on the scene as the protesters stubbornly stood their ground. It was still too early for the traffic to start backing up, but the few cars whose route had been blocked by the protesters began to honk their horns in angry protest. Puttnam became separated from his companions as the crowd grew to chaotic proportions. He weaved in and out of the masses snapping photos and occassionally stopping to join in the chants of his fellow marchers. "WE ARE EVERYWHERE . . . POWER TO THE PEOPLE!"

Clare was in the process of trying to interview an elderly grandmother, who like Howard, had come to represent her age group in protest against the war. She had a difficult time working her tape recorder and juggling the straw handbag. In frustration she returned to where she'd left Howard sitting on his camp stool and reluctantly asked if he would hold the handbag while she went back to conduct the interview.

Kerry stood just off the curb in the street next to where Howard sat on his camp stool. He delighted in chanting the slogan and was totally immersed in the emotion of the crowd. He had never seen so many people gathered together in disobedience in his entire life, and the thrill of it all filled him with sentiment for their cause. He could hardly sit still on his stool. Each time the police ordered the crowd to disperse peacefully, Howard would jump up from his seat and shake his cane in the air barking, "You just come right here and make me, BY GOD. . . . I know my rights!" Howard would occasionally forget which hand held his cane and instead he would wave Clare's large straw handbag high in the air. Howard's shouts of protest directed towards the rows of policemen and the occasional waving of Clare's handbag caught the eye of a network news correspondent who eventually worked his way through the crowd to approach Howard for an interview. The camera crew followed and the next thing Howard knew, a microphone was being jammed into his face. The crowd was becoming restless and police were beginning to make arrests just across the intersection from them.

". . . and what is your name, sir?" the commentator asked Howard.

Howard rose to his feet for the momentous occasion, blurting out proudly, "My name is Howard Bates and I'm from Saratoga Springs, New York," and reaching out to grab Kerry's arm, pulling her alongside of him, he added, "This is my step-great-granddaughter, Miss Kerry Foster." The reporter smiled at Kerry briefly, then turned his attentions back to Howard.

"How old are you, sir . . . and what made you decide to take part in these marches here in the Capitol?" he asked bluntly.

Howard stood fully erect clutching his cane and Clare's handbag firmly in front of him and replied, "I turned eighty-seven years old in July. I have come to our nation's capitol with my dear Kerry here to protest the abominable war our country is waging in Vietnam . . . too many lives of our young are being spent there for a cause which is not in the best interest of our nation's people."

"Do you feel you will be arrested today and will you go peacefully?" the reporter asked, somewhat taken aback by Howard's responses.

"If it is against the law in our country for the masses to ban together to protest against the wrongdoings of our government, then I shall go to jail alongside these young people when the time comes, but, by God, it will be a sad day in our nation's history and will certainly be a reflection of the poor administration in our White House," Howard stated, shaking his head adamantly.

"Do you consider yourself a radical, politically speaking, Mr. Bates, or do you feel representative of the opinions of other people across the country in your age group?" the reporter asked, jabbing the microphone close to Howard's face while the camera crew zoomed in for a close-up of the elderly man.

"First of all, young man, I don't know any other people in my age group . . . I would say that we are very few, indeed . . . and second of all I am not any sort of radical, I am simply one of the millions within that so-called 'silent majority' who was fed up with being seen but not heard. My mission in coming here was to prove with my presence that all Americans, regardless of age, sex, or social status, do have a say-so in the actions of their government . . . that's all I have to say by God," Howard replied sitting back down on his camp stool. The camera crew and the correspondent moved away from Howard, eventually being swallowed by the crowd.

Clare came bounding up to Howard and Kerry just as the interview was ending. Once the network crew had departed she reached down and grabbed Howard by the arm anxiously and said, "Howard fold that silly camp stool up right now. We have to get back to the car before we get arrested. . . . Kerry, you carry that stool for Howard."

"I can carry it myself, Clare," Howard boasted in a huff.

"Where's Puttnam?" Clare shouted over the crowd. "Anybody seen Puttnam?"

"I haven't seen him for the past half hour," Kerry shouted back. She was engaged in a tug of war over the camp stool with Howard, who finally gave in and loosened his grasp on his side of the wooden frame which almost sent Kerry sprawling out onto the pavement. He turned sheepishly to follow Clare through the crowd of protesters mumbling his apologies to Kerry while suppressing a snicker over the tussle.

"I want to get over to Georgetown University to record the reactions of students to the marches. We can't worry about Puttnam now; he knows where the motel is and he's certainly capable of taking care of himself," Clare shouted to Kerry as they slipped past the edge of the marchers and headed towards the Pontiac on Twenty-first Street. Police sirens and paddy wagons swept past them as they hurried along. They had the good fortune of escorting Howard to the car, which more than likely was a blessing in disguise and aided them in making a clean get away without the threat of arrest. Puttnam would not be so blessed.

Clare fished the keys out of her straw handbag and slid into the driver's seat of the Pontiac. Howard and Kerry both jumped into the front seat beside her and the three of them headed down Twenty-first Street in search of a diner where they could stop and have breakfast and wait for the streets to be cleared. Kerry and Howard were elated over Howard's being interviewed for network news and were discussing whether or not it would actually be used in that evening's telecast. Clare could not resist the temptation to tease Howard about the interview. She turned her head slightly and said, "Howard, didn't your mother ever tell you not to talk to strangers?"

"By God, maybe she did, but it had to have been so long ago that I plum forgot," Howard said with a burst of laughter and a relaxed Texas accent so long out of use and so uncharacteristic of Howard that all three of them shook with laughter until Clare pulled into the parking lot of a Toddlehouse restaurant.

All three returned to somber moods as they sat in a booth at the restaurant. They worried quietly over the absence of Puttnam, each hoping that Puttnam had managed to get out of Dupont Circle without being arrested, but the chances of that now seemed very slim as Puttnam was not the sort to simply walk away peacefully.

*****

The police were closing in on all directions on the protestors. Puttnam was weaving in and out still snapping pictures of the chaos when he noticed a lone protester being chased by a policeman on P Street. The man turned his head slightly and Puttnam, thinking he recognized the profile of the protester as being that of an army buddy of his, broke into a run behind the policeman to help the man. The wind slapped him in the face as he closed in on the cop; he remembered an instance in Vietnam when he had been running full tilt across a rice field. He was under fire then, running wild through the field with his boots sinking into the mud on each step and the sensation that his feet weighed a ton. Bullets had whistled by his ears and his breath had come in short, shallow puffs, so shallow that he'd felt he was hardly breathing at all. He remembered not caring about the other men falling around him in the field; their screams upon being wounded did not slow him down. He'd just wanted to survive, not to fight, as though running were the essence of survival. Someone had fallen behind him, and as he fell he brought Puttnam down with him. He clearly recalled the face now, silent in death, that he'd turned to see resting on his boot. It was the same face that he thought he'd seen on the protester he was racing to aide. He stopped running then and veered off to the right ducking into an alleyway. He walked cautiously through the maze of alleys surrounding DuPont Circle, knowing that somehow he had to get back to the other side in order to meet up with Clare.

Police were everywhere and Puttnam had about given up hopes of not being arrested when he came through an alley and saw that it was relatively clear on that side of the circle. Puttnam sucked in his breath in anxiety over his predicament as he turned the corner. Just in front of him, five cops stood leaning against a squad car and he realized he would have to get past them. He decided to simply display his press badge and take his chances by nonchalantly strolling past. It was impossible for a man of Puttnam's size to stroll nonchalantly; his hair was too long and his clothing too reminiscent of the other protesters for the police to let him pass. Puttnam was just about to step off the curb, having come side by side with the policemen and thinking himself safe from arrest, when a sturdy dark-haired cop grabbed him by the arm. "Step back on the curb, sir. Place your hands on top of the vehicle; feet apart," the policeman barked.

Puttnam did as he was told, turning his head to make one final protest as they searched him for weapons, "I'm a member of the Press . . . here, man, check out the badge. . . . I work for The Avalanche in . . . ," Puttnam shouted but was not allowed to finish as the handcuffs were slapped onto his wrists.

"Just get in the car, sir . . . don't talk . . . just get in the car," the dark-haired cop replied.

"Jesus Christ," Puttnam roared as the squad car in which he was riding turned on its sirens and spun out into the traffic as though it held in its backseat the world's most sought after criminal. Canisters of tear gas began exploding in the streets behind them. Puttnam stared in disgust at the policeman sitting next to him in the backseat. The policeman in the back kept making jokes about the arrests of the protesters and boasting about the numbers they themselves had taken in.

"Either of you fellas ever served in Nam?" Puttnam asked.

"Nah," the cops replied in unison.

"Well, I did and let me tell you, if you had gone you'd be right out there in the streets demanding that Nixon get our asses out of there . . . you'd be right out there with the rest of us," Puttnam said. He tried hard to control his anger, realizing that basically the cops were just doing their jobs.

"Oh yeah," said the cop next to Puttnam. "Well, maybe that's so, who can tell, but it ain't gonna help you any right now and that's for sure."

The two cops laughed loudly at the smart remark.

"All of this is gonna come to somethin' someday," Puttnam began. "Wait and see . . . ya can't just go 'round arrestin' innocent people and throwin' their asses in jail just because you disagree with their point of view. When all is said and done, it's gonna be you guys who come out with mud on your face and those of us you hauled to jail who'll be the heroes."

It was the dark-haired cop who'd initially grabbed Puttnam to arrest him who sat in the backseat. He snickered at Puttnam's statement, and leaning forward in the seat he replied to the driver, "How about this guy, thinks he's some sort of hero . . . maybe we oughtta get his autograph before we book 'em."

Puttnam interrupted his laughter to ask, "Just what are you going to book me for?"

"We gotta nice list of choices, Buddy. Most likely we'll stick ya with, 'conducting yourself in a manner which might lead to a breach of peace' . . . so be quiet back there 'cause it could be worse. You're lucky . . . you're goin' in by 'ya-self'. You'll be out in a few hours. Those guys goin' in in the paddy wagons is gonna be there a while," said the cop who was driving. He didn't like the thought of arresting a vet . . . in his opinion, the whole situation stunk.

Puttnam was placed in a small holding cell with ten other men. The cell was only about five by seven feet in dimensions forcing everyone to stand except for one old codger who was slumped against a far wall with his feet sprawled out in front of him. Nine of the cellmates were protesters from American University and the old man was a drunk who'd been carted in long before dawn to sleep it off.

People were shouting at the guards and at each other up and down the long row of holding cells. Most of the protesters were trading accounts of their arrests, giving descriptions of friends whose whereabouts were unknown, in hopes of finding out if they, too, had been arrested. Puttnam overheard one fellow down the hallway telling of an elderly woman who was a diabetic and had been arrested in DuPont Circle. He yelled out a description of Howard to the guy, but the man hadn't seen any old men being hauled in. Puttnam came to the conclusion that if Clare, Kerry, and Howard had, indeed, been arrested, he'd hear about it soon enough. He resigned himself to leaning against the bars of the cell, listening to the stories of the students, and wishing like hell that he'd eaten breakfast. He had a long hungry wait ahead of him as it would be almost five o'clock before he saw daylight again.

Clare, Kerry, and Howard spent the morning dodging cops and interviewing students on the campus of Georgetown University. Clare had had to park the car a considerable distance from the campus and Howard was worn out before they ever got there. Kerry fretted constantly over Puttnam's whereabouts, causing Clare to seriously contemplate ditching them both. Ten a.m. found the three of them resting on the steps of one of the buildings. Though the campus was in a state of panic, classes were apparently still being held and those students who were not involved in the protests traveled cautiously to and from their classes avoiding any and all eye contact. A hint of tear gas still lingered in the air.

"Clare, it really looks like it's over for today. You've got plenty of interviews. Can't we work our way back to the motel now?" Kerry pleaded thumbing the notebook resting in her lap. "Puttnam might call the motel for us to come get him and we won't be there," she added.

"The only interviews I've gotten so far have been from sympathizers. I want to get one solid counter-point before I leave this campus. Besides, Puttnam isn't going to be able to call the motel if he's in jail . . . too many have been arrested; I just don't think he'd call there anyway," Clare said with a sigh.

At that moment Clare spotted a young woman, loaded down with books, scurrying towards them. Clare took note of the fact that the woman was several months pregnant, very middle class in appearance, and dressed in normal maternity clothes consisting of a long tunic and skirt. Her hair was light brown and she wore it neatly tied back into a ponytail with a colorful scarf which matched the colors in her tunic. She was a pretty young woman, very thin aside from her bulging middle. Clare thought her the perfect candidate for her last interview. She stood up on the steps to intercept the young woman.

"Excuse me, my name is Clare Freidman from Avalanche magazine. Do you have a few moments to give us your opinion of the May Day Rallies and the massive arrests that took place this morning?" Clare asked as she switched on her tape recorder.

The woman gave Clare a puzzled look as she stood in front of her. She thought for a moment before replying, "I don't think I've ever read your magazine. I've seen it around campus though I don't know. You see, I'm late for a biology exam, and as you can see I may never get another crack at it." She started to bypass Clare and noticed Howard and Kerry sitting on the steps behind her.

"Please, I could use your opinion," Clare said. "I promise not to take up too much of your time."

"Okay," the woman replied reluctantly and slowly lowered herself onto the steps to sit down.

"How do you feel about the war in Vietnam?" Clare asked.

"Well, I'm not sure that it's right for us to be over there. You should've seen the Vietnam Vets who were here last week, even they are against it," the woman replied thoughtfully.

"What's your name, dear?" Howard butted in. Clare looked over her shoulder to give him a nasty glare of reprimand.

"Can I just give you my first name? My folks would be unhappy if they knew I was doing this," the woman asked.

"Yes," Clare replied.

"My name is Ann and to tell you the truth I've been too busy trying to finish school and solving my own problems to get involved with the anti-war movement. My husband works here at the University . . . we're both just trying to get our educations and our careers started. I should graduate at the end of this semester . . . working part-time, going to school, and carrrying a child hasn't left much time for politics," Ann answered.

"How did you feel about the protest marches around the city this morning? Did you have a difficult time driving to campus?" Clare asked.

"Well, I don't drive to campus, I walk. We live close to here. Not to sound cruel or anything, but I was glad that the police had the streets and bridges cleared before rush hour began. The radicals had been boasting around campus for days that they were going to close the entire city down and frankly it didn't work. You see, this is a city, not much different from any other city, not everyone works for the government here . . . it wasn't fair to the innocent people for the marches to disrupt their lives . . . it would've been like punishing the civilians for the actions of the government and the military. I really do have to go now . . . I can't miss this exam," Ann said as she clumsily tried to lift herself up off the step. Kerry and Howard stood up to help her while Clare held her books.

They watched her climb the steps and enter the building, hurrying as best as she could.

"She seemed very special to me," Clare said breaking the silence between them. "She didn't have to stop and talk to me, but she did. She certainly has a long road ahead of her in balancing a career and raising a child . . . it's a road I never had the courage to travel. In my day, you either had a career or you had children, never both," Clare added.

"Indeed," Howard replied. The three of them turned to walk off in the direction of the Pontiac with Clare and Kerry stationing themselves on either side of Howard. Howard did not truly need their support; they in fact needed the support of one another. In their exhaustion they borrowed on each other's strengths to carry them the distance to the car.

Leota had had a wonderful day. She had her windows open to the spring air and the breeze blew into the house from the south with such a gentle easy cross flow. Her yard was in full bloom; she'd spent most of the afternoon out puttering in the flower beds. The day had started off on a wonderful note when the postman had delivered to her door not only a postcard from Raleigh, but a three-page letter from Kerry as well.

She leaned back on the kitchen counter sipping on a large frosty glass of iced tea. Her television was blasting the last few minutes of a Leave It to Beaver episode which Leota wasn't much interested in watching. She'd turned the television on only a moment ago in anticipation of watching the evening news.

Thomas Evans watched Leota daydreaming, with her feet crossed in front of her as she leaned on the counter. He hesitated for a short while before interrupting her with a sharp knock on the wooden door frame. Leota jumped at the sound of Thomas' knocking, but after all these years she knew simply by the number of knocks who it was.

"Howdy do, Leota. How's things with you today?" Thomas asked in his deep baritone voice as Leota pushed the screen door open to let him in. He held an envelope in his hand as he entered the kitchen.

"Oh, it's just been a lovely day, Thomas. I got two letters today, one from each of my wayward grandkids. How's things with you?" Leota asked, fussing with a few dishes she'd left in the sink after lunch.

"Fair to middlin' I s'pose. The postman delivered your gas bill over to my place. I thought I'd drop it by and see if you might have some of that special iced tea for this tired old man," Thomas replied with a grin.

"Sure thing, Thomas, but there isn't anything special about my iced tea; it's just plain old Lipton's. Matter of fact, you're just in time for Mr. Cronkite. Why don't you grab yourself a seat in the living room and I'll bring your tea to ya?" Leota said, bustling around the kitchen preparing Thomas his glass of tea.

Leave It to Beaver was still playing when Leota seated herself in the easy chair across the room from Thomas. They both leaned back in their overstuffed chairs with their feet propped up on matching foot-stools waiting for the evening news.

"How's that lovely daughter of yours doing out in Los Angeles, Thomas?" Leota asked. She dipped a finger into her glass of iced tea and swirled the ice around as she waited for Thomas' reply.

"Oh, she's doin' just fine, Leota. You know how Camile is . . . she's a lot like Effie. I think she could just about be happy anywhere long as she's got a good home and a decent job," Thomas said cheerfully. "It sure is lonely 'round my place nowadays without her droppin' by from time to time," he added.

"Well, Lord knows I can sympathize with that, Thomas. I thought I'd miss the daylights outta Kerry and Raleigh. Matter of fact I did for the first week or so after they left, but Anita and I go down to the church every Wednesday evening now to play bingo, and we've started going to the picture show on Mondays--it's half-price for the six o'clock feature, 'ya know. Maybe you might like to join us sometime? You'd be surprised at how good it makes you feel just to get outta the house every now and then. Gives ya something to look forward to," Leota remarked.

"Well, that sounds just fine, Leota. I'll just plan on joining you two ladies on Wednesday for bingo. Are you goin' to the picture show this evening?" Thomas asked.

"Anita's got a late doctor's appointment today. I don't think we're gonna get to go today. Sometimes she gets stuck in that damned doctor's waiting room for hours," Leota sighed. The news was just coming on and Leota glanced over at Thomas. She noticed that his glass was already empty and jumped up from her seat to refill it. "Here, let me get you some more of that Lipton's, Thomas," she said, hurrying off to the kitchen.

"Just a half a glass'll be fine for me, Leota," Thomas called afer her.

Leota returned to the living room with Thomas' tea just in time to see Kerry and Howard loom up on the screen.

"An estimated thirteen hundred arrests were made in the streets of Washington, D.C., this morning just before morning rush hour. Our correspondent in Washington was able to catch an interview with eighty-seven-year-old Howard Bates from Saratoga Springs, New York, as Mr. Bates marched in the streets in what's been termed, 'The May Day Rallies' early this morning," the commentator said.

Thomas jumped from his seat, his feet barely finding their purchase on the floor just in time to grab the glass of iced tea from Leota as it slipped from her fingers. "Oh, dear God in heaven, what's that Howard gotten my Kerry mixed up in now?" Leota screamed.

"This is my step-great-granddaughter, Kerry Foster," Leota heard Howard say to the correspondent.

Thomas helped Leota over to her easy chair where she plopped down mumbling, "Why there ain't no such thing as a step-great-granddaughter, Howard Bates," Leota shouted at the television in disbelief.

"Now, Leota calm down. Let's just listen to what they have to say. Lord, I sure hope they wouldn't throw that Howard in jail at his age and let's just pray they didn't get our Kerry," Thomas said in a calming tone of voice.

Thomas returned to his chair, loosening his tie a bit as he lowered himself down on the cushion. He and Leota both sat transfixed to the television screen for the remainder of Howard's interview.

"He seems like a very intelligent man, Leota. I just bet you he's taken good care of young Kerry up there in the capitol," Thomas remarked.

"Well, he did look pretty spiffy at that, out there amongst the unwashed generation in his flannel suit and bow tie. Guess what he had to say made a whole lot of sense, too. But, that's no excuse for him draggin' our Kerry out into the streets. Lord have mercy, what if they're both in jail up there? Good Lord, Howard's too old to go to jail . . . just might kill the little ne'er do well, and Kerry, she doesn't know the first thing about real life. What if they've thrown her in jail with a bunch of prostitutes and drug pushers? Oh, dear me, those two are like the blind leading the blind. Thomas, get me that little princess phone off the table in there. I've got to reach Julie and I think my legs are too weak to even walk across this room," Leota said pulling a Kleenex out of the cuff of her blouse and swabbing her nose. "Lord, and the little dickens was even carryin' a purse. What in God's name is this world comin' to?" Leota mumbled to herself as Thomas placed the princess phone on the arm of her chair.

Thomas rested his hand on the receiver of the telephone. He looked down at Leota, reflecting on their years of friendship. He thought to himself that she had one of the kindest hearts he had ever known. Her total honesty was her best trait; her lack of common sense in times of crisis, her worst. "Now, Leota, I want you to think about this for just a minute or two. I love young Kerry just as though she were my very own granddaughter and especially since Camile has never seen fit to bless me with any grandchildren of my own, and I would never in my life say anything bad about young Kerry. But, you and I both know that she's been involved with this anti-war movement for a long time now. Maybe it wasn't Howard Bates who dragged her down to Washington . . . maybe he just went along, you know, kind of as a chaperon. Now I know there's been some bad blood betwixt you and the old fellow, but I thought you'd worked all of that out. You just gotta remember that he can't be all that bad if Kerry loves him so . . . she's grown now, Leota, and if you can't stop bein' angry with her for movin' way up north there with Howard then you ought to at least be proud that she's out there speaking up for what she believes in. That old gent's probably never had such a time in his life as he's having right now up there in Washington, D.C. It's only been a week or so ago since you told me that he'd helped our Kerry gain a position on some sort of newspaper up there. You got to put things in their proper perspective now and then Leota. . . . God knows your Edgar certainly did. He stood up for Effie and me right here in our own neighborhood way back when . . . now that wasn't a popular thing to be doing in those times just like Kerry's activities aren't so popular to plain old folks like you and me in these times . . . now, ain' that so, Leota?" Thomas asked, patiently awaiting Leota's reply.

"It's not quite the same thing, Thomas . . . back then it was a matter of moral conscience and obligation to humanity to put an end to that ugliness in our country. . . . Edgar was a loyal follower of Lyndon Johnson's campaign against the discrimination that was going on against your people back then. Yep, it was simply a moral issue and even though Mr. Cronkite keeps a-telling us that his war has become a moral issue, it just ain't the same. . . . Why, what if Raleigh has to go over there? . . . It'll almost be like the civil war again . . . with his sister out in the streets tellin' the world that he's wrong to be there . . ." Leota said. She broke off her sentence to swab her nose again with the tissue. Thomas reached down to hold her hand for he knew that she hurt inside, not because Kerry was out marching in the streets or because Raleigh may end up in the war, but simply because they were grown now and they were gone. . . .

"She won't be out there saying he's wrong for bein' there, Leota . . . she'll just be saying that the govenment's wrong for sendin' him there," Thomas said.

There was a long silence then between the two old friends. Thomas stood beside Leota's chair very gently holding her hand. He hadn't seen Leota cry since just before Edgar died . . . she'd been out in her garden then . . . hoeing the ground for spring planting; something Edgar had always done for her. She would hoe the ground furiously for a few moments, then she would lean back on the hoe shake her fist at the sky and weep loudly; as though she was cussing God directly to his face. It was on a Saturday and Effie had gone out shopping with Camile. Thomas remembered it so well, just as if it were yesterday. He'd walked quietly through the gate that separated their two properties, taken the hoe out of Leota's hands and finished tilling the entire garden while Leota slumped against the clothesline pole watching him; he remembered it every year as he'd been the one to ready her garden for spring planting every year since then and Leota never failed to come out and lean against the clothesline pole while he worked. He stopped planting a garden of his own when Effie passed away; Leota shared hers with him.

"She's never comin' home again, is she, Thomas?" Leota asked looking up into Thomas' dark eyes.

"She'll be back, Leota. She'll be a-walkin' through that front door before you know it. That little Kerry has always done exactly as she pleased and there ain't nothin' in this world that pleases her more than pickin' at you," Thomas said, smiling down at Leota.

Thomas' smile brought a lightness to Leota's heart. She reached for the princess telephone, freeing herself from Thomas' grip on her hand, "Well, let's just call Anita and see if she saw the evenin' news. Won't she be surprised that our Kerry was seen across the nation . . . and Howard, too," Leota said with a grin.

Millie Seibel was in her kitchen fixing supper and watching the television she kept on the kitchen counter. There was a sad atmosphere around the Seibel household since the annoucement that Denise was pregnant. Ruben had hardly spoken a word all week long. If not for Denise's pregnancy, this would have been the happiest month of their lives, with their youngest child graduating from college and going to start his own life away from the shelter of their parental scrutiny.

There had been the fear of an accidental pregnancy between Kerry and Fletcher for years. Julie and Millie had talked it over several times, always agreeing with each other that should the situation arise they would both recommend abortion as the best solution.

They'd lived in curiousity during Kerry and Fletcher's high school years as to whether or not the two young people were sexually active. The question had not been answered until Kerry's senior year of high school and Fletcher's sophomore year of college.

Millie and Ruben had gone to visit their older daughter in Victoria while Fletcher had come down from Denton to stay at their house and take care of their small poodle dog, Jacques. Millie and Ruben had always trusted Fletcher to take care of the house when they left for vacations; this was no exception. They had returned on Sunday afternoon to find the house in fine order and Fletcher took off shortly after their arrival for his drive back to Denton.

Millie had invited Julie and her boyfriend, Bill Sanger, over for dinner. They'd just finished up the dishes and settled in at the dining room table for a game of bridge when Jacques came wagging into the room chewing on something, and with his tail all a-twitter, he'd padded over to Ruben's chair, plopped himself down, and much to Ruben's horror, deposited a well-chewed, used condom right on top of Ruben's brown suede Hush Puppies. Ruben, as a rule, was a very quiet, unemotional sort of man, very easygoing in his manner, but on this particular occasion he had jumped from the table, grabbed the poodle dog, Jacques, by the scruff of the neck, and scurried from the dining room screaming, "Bad dog, you bad little dog, you."

The four adults had laughed about the incident later over coffee, especially over the fact that Ruben had been so shaken up over the matter that he'd returned to the dining room after tossing Jacques outside, still wearing the condom on top of his shoe. Their curiousity about Kerry and Fletcher had been quenched that night, and they'd all been thankful that there had been only the four of them around when the answer to their question was revealed.

Millie smiled to herself as she stood at the kitchen counter chopping onions. Tears rolled down her face from the fumes of the vegetable. The phone began to ring in a sharp peal and she wiped her tears away with the edge of her apron as she reached for the receiver. The phone sat next to the television on Millie's counter. She stared aimlessly at the picture on the screen as she answered the phone. Fletcher was on the other end of the line. They began discussing the time of his arrival from Denton on Thursday and the dinner plans for after the wedding ceremony. Millie was in the middle of describing the dress she had bought to wear for the wedding when she was silenced by the sight of Kerry Foster staring back at her from the television set She had turned the sound down in order to hear Fletcher and she reached over now to turn it back up.

"Hey, Mom, are you still there? What is that noise in the background?" Fletcher asked in the confusion.

"It's Kerry!" Millie said in astonishment.

"Kerry!" Fletcher said, "but how . . . what's she doing there?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, son. She's on the news, the national news. Go turn on your television. Call me back later," Millie said as she placed the receiver back in its cradle without looking down from the screen.

Puttnam did not catch Kerry and Howard's national debut on the evening news. He was in the process of doing an inventory of his camera equipment as it aired. Nothing had been taken from his camera bag, much to Puttnam's relief. Just as the policeman had told him, he was released before his cellmates even though they'd been incarcerated hours before he had.

Luckily, Howard had slipped him a twenty dollar bill that morning before leaving for DuPont Circle. It had cost him ten of that to get out of jail, which left him just enough for cab fare back to the motel.

He had not eaten all day and he slumped in the backseat of the cab with his stomach growling all the way back to the Holiday Inn. It was just beginning to get dark as they pulled into the parking lot. After paying the cab driver, Puttnam knocked softly on Clare's door. She answered it sleepily, tugging her blue nylon robe around her small frame. Puttnam towered above her in the doorway and she stepped aside to let him in, then closed the door gently behind them.

"Where have you been all this time, Puttnam? . . . Howard's worried himself sick about you," Clare whispered. Kerry was sleeping in the bed on the far side of the room. She was curled up in a tight ball on the edge of the bed with her back to them.

Puttnam dropped down into a chair by the door and replied, "I've been in jail, Clare. Where the heck did ya think I'd been?"

"Oh, dear . . . that's what I thought had happened. Puttnam, I'm so sorry, this never should have happened. After all you are basically a member of the press. Did you by any chance get to see Howard's interview on the news?" Clare asked.

"Now, just how the hell was I supposed to watch the news in jail? They don't serve pretzels and beer in that joint, ya know," Puttnam said trying to whisper. He pushed his hair back from his face in a huff.

"Shh . . . you'll wake Kerry up. I wish you'd gotten to see him on the news. He's so proud and throughout the broadcast of the interview he kept saying that he wished you'd been there to watch it with us. You know how he can puff out his chest and fiddle with his mustache when he's pleased with himself. Well, he'd do that, and then say, 'By God, I wish that Puttnam was here to see this. My one chance at stardom in eighty-seven years and he's a-missin' it'," Clare whispered in an exaggerated impersonation of Howard.

"Well, I'm sorry I snapped at you, Clare. I wish I'd been here to see it, too. I wish I'd been anywhere but where I've been for the past ten hours. I'm about to starve to death . . . got anything to eat around here?" Puttnam asked, his nerves beginning to calm.

"No, but I think your friend, Howard, has some pretzels and beer in his room," Clare said with a wink to Puttnam. They both chuckled loud over Clare's remark as Kerry stirred from her deep sleep.

"Hey, Puttnam," Kerry said groggily, sitting up in bed and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

"Hey, 'little Texas'," Puttnam said with a burst of his outrageous laughter while giving Kerry a thumbs-up sign.

Howard had heard the riotous roar of Puttnam's laughter, and he came strolling into the room pulling his flannel robe on over his nightshirt. He was relieved to see Puttnam back in one piece, and he stood between Kerry and Clare's beds nonchalantly tying a knot in the belt of his robe. "By God, it's good to have you back with us again, Puttnam. I was beginning to get a little worried about you. They're predicting on the news that anywhere from seven to ten thousand people were arrested in the streets today and expecting most of those in jail to stay incarcerated until tomorrow morning. How did you keep from being arrested?" Howard asked.

"Well, I did go to jail. Guess by some fluke, I got lucky, and was taken in by myself instead of in one of the wagons. Anyway, I got out about five-thirty," Puttnam said as his stomach growled a loud reminder of his hunger. Howard heard the growl and raised one finger high in the air to gain the attention of his companions.

"I've got a splendid idea," he said. "Let's all get dressed and go on down to the restaurant for a bite to eat and celebrate our last night in this city, our nation's capitol."

"That sounds like a winner to me here, Howard," Puttnam said. He lifted himself out of the chair and headed towards his and Howard's room with Howard following on his heels.

"You'll have to tell me all about it while we get dressed, old boy. We wouldn't want to offend our dear ladies' delicate ears," Howard said.

"Sure thing, Howard," Puttnam replied as they slipped into their room. Kerry and Clare looked at each other in amusement over Howard's old-fashioned chivalry.

They stopped in the bar on the way back to the rooms. Kerry and Clare had red wine, Puttnam a scotch and soda, and Howard a ginger-ale. They toasted each other in boisterous laughter and each of them felt they held a special part of each other within their memories of the hectic day they had just been through.

Kerry and Puttnam stayed up late watching old movies on television while Howard retired to bed and Clare reviewed the tapes of her interviews. The last rally was scheduled for the following morning at the Capitol steps and Clare was looking forward to hearing Bella Abzug speak along with the many others who'd promised to take the podium. She remained wide awake long after the lights were turned off, worrying about the possibility of one or all of them getting arrested at the Capitol steps, especially Howard. This trip had obviously meant so much to him that she did not regret allowing him to accompany them to Washington, D.C., yet she knew he must be exhausted as she herself was tired to the bone.

Clare had many things on her mind that evening. Before leaving Saratoga she had pondered selling The Avalanche to a prospective buyer from New York City. She'd had many offers during the past few years to sell, but she'd turned them down flatly as most had been made from large corporations owning many small magazines and newspapers around the country whose format was totally incongruous with that of The Avalanche. She had spent too many years building the paper to simply have it reduced to trash by any large corporation. This latest offer had come from an old friend of Clare's who'd worked on The Avalanche a few years earlier as a political columnist and Clare was seriously considering accepting. He had asked her to stay on as editor, but the load of responsibilities for the paper itself would be lifted from her shoulders. She finally drifted off to sleep contemplating the freedom of partial retirement from journalism. This trip out into the field had just about convinced her that she was ready for that difficult choice. It was time to pass the paper on to new energy, and the young, whom she'd provided with a training ground, would continue on in her path which was now clearly marked, thanks to Clare, for obstacles. She knew they would not stumble there and they would not fail her with lack of journalistic integrity.

The next morning they left the Pontiac at St. Edwards church and rode to the Capitol in a church bus. Howard reluctantly watched the Pontiac grow smaller as they rode down the street. He was afraid he would never see his prized possession again. He and Puttnam sat side by side in the bus, Clare and Kerry behind them.

"Howard, are you sure you want to do this? They're saying it might get kinda sticky down there at the Capitol; it's surrounded by Marines and the National Guard," Puttnam said, folding the daily newspaper up in his lap.

"Well now, the way I figure it is this . . . if that nice little old woman who's diabetic can come all the way from Atlanta, spend a night in jail, and still be ready to go back out in the streets this morning, then by God, I ought to be able to do the same myself," Howard said impatiently. Every one of his companions had tried to persuade him to stay behind at the church this morning, and he was determined not to let them get the best of him.

Thousands of people were gathered on the mall when they arrived. It was just before noon and confusion reigned within the crowd. They all pushed forward to the Capitol steps where Bella Abzug was expected to speak. National Guardsmen lined the steps and no one was being allowed to pass. Across the street many on-lookers gathered to watch the spectacle; it was lunchtime and most of the spectators were federal employees on their lunch hours. Clare insisted that they try to stay together, so she hooked her arm in Howard's as the throng of the crowd pushed forward to the steps. The National Guard began moving in from the rear and with the exception of protest signs being waved high in the air and the chanting of anti-war slogans, the crowd was peaceful under the circumstances.

Bella Abzug began mounting the steps despite repeated warnings from the loudspeakers not to. She was accompanied by Representative Ron Dellums of California. They were the first to be arrested on the steps as others followed behind them. Puttnam was snapping pictures right and left of the crowd while Clare did her best to interview the people around them and occasionally held her recorder up over her head in an attempt at catching some of the dialogue coming from the steps. Kerry was in awe of the whole gathering. She stood on the other side of Howard chanting with the core of the crowd, "WE ARE EVERYWHERE . . . POWER TO THE PEOPLE."

Clare led the four of them to the edge of the crowd. A man dressed in a blue suit strolled up to stand beside them as people in front of them were being arrested and escorted to waiting military buses. Clare felt that they had somehow landed in the eye of the storm. She turned to a dark-haired man, who appeared to be somewhere in his late thirties, for an interview, "What's your opinion of this rally here today, sir? Do you feel this is an unconstitutional action in arresting these people here on the Capitol steps?" Clare yelled above the shouts and chants in the madness surrounding them.

The man was holding a brown paper bag in one hand and a sandwich in the other with its wrapper rolled halfway down. He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed it slowly for a moment or two contemplating an answer for Clare's questions. He spoke with his mouth full of food, "I don't really know. I'm just on my lunch hour from the Library of Congress . . . guess the police just don't want to take the chance that all these people might get inside the Capitol . . . now that'd be somethin'." The man was interrupted by a Guardsman and Clare looked around to find that they were blocked in. Kerry sat down and refused to budge when a policeman tried to arrest her, Howard simply looped his arm on a Guardsman's elbow and went along peacefully. Clare followed while Puttnam stayed with Kerry. The policeman was tugging at Kerry and Puttnam was becoming aggravated that his toes were being stepped on and his camera was getting banged around by the chaos in the arrests being made.

"Kerry, get your ass up and go along with the man. Jesus Christ, this ain't no fuckin' sit-in; we're going to jail and you might as well make it there in one piece," Puttnam shouted down to Kerry, who looked up at him sheepishly before allowing the policeman to lift her to her feet. The policeman gave her a sharp shove once she was on her feet. Puttnam shook a finger in the scrawny cop's face, "Hey, watch it there, asshole," Puttnam shouted. Kerry threw her long braid back over her shoulder as she and Puttnam joined hands. Howard had caught a glimpse of the policeman shoving Kerry through the arms and legs in motion around him. The same cop approached him and the Guardsman escorting him along. The man who'd been on his lunch break from the Library of Congress was walking swiftly in front of him trying to avoid arrest when the cop reached out and grabbed the man's elbow. "Hey, I'm just on my lunch hour; what is this?" the man screamed at the lunging cop. Howard calmly pushed his cane out in front of him into the policeman's path. The policeman tripped on the rubber-tipped cane and went sprawling to the ground in front of Howard.

"Terribly sorry, there old man," Howard shouted down at the policeman as he and the Guardsman stepped around him. Puttnam could not see Howard in the crowd, but he had seen the policeman disappear. He helped the skinny policeman to his feet when he and Kerry reached that point. Howard turned to the Guardsman walking beside him. He was a large young man with short, cropped hair just barely visible under his helmet, big hands and feet, and a small pugged nose. His boots were polished to a mirrored shine and his uniform was clean and starched. Howard was reminded of Kerry's brother, Raleigh, now off to basic training himself. He looked up at the young man as they walked along and said, "It's been one hell of a morning, hasn't it young man?"

"Yes, sir," The Guardsman replied politely as he helped Howard mount the first step into the waiting bus. Clare ascended the steps behind Howard and nodded at the Guardsman as he retreated back into the crowd. The man on his lunch hour did not escape arrest and was pushed up the steps by the young skinny cop just behind Kerry and Puttnam.

"By God, we're goin' to jail, Clare," Howard shouted from his seat in the back of the bus to Clare, who was seated just in front of him. "Power to the people," he added, which turned the heads of all the protesters around him and renewed their chants.

A stout M.P. standing in the aisle looked towards the back of the bus, and without addressing Howard directly, he waved his hand in the air and shouted above the chants, "HEY, PUT A LID ON IT BACK THERE!"

Howard could not begin to estimate how many protesters had been arrested in the area surrounding the Capitol. They were taken in buses to holding areas around the city. Clare, Puttnam, Howard, and Kerry were taken on their bus to an empty, cavernous National Armory building.

Several hundred protesters refused to give their names. They were segregated and moved to bleachers which had been erected against one wall inside the Armory, while the rest remained out in the center of the room.

Those who were on the floor stood in lines for hours without food or water, waiting to be processed. Howard longed for his camp stool, which Clare had solidly refused to allow him to carry to the Capitol.

During the course of the afternoon the nameless protesters on the bleachers tried to scramble down to the Armory floor and were escorted back into the seats. After a time, it became a game for them to see how far they could get. Those down on the floor would hoot and holler in mass support for the sprinting protesters. Howard was delighted with the game and he chimed right in with the rest of his compadres.

The Guardsmen were fairly sympathetic with the protesters' cause. After all, many of the young men had joined the Naitonal Guard to avoid the draft and the possibility of going to Vietnam. There was very little hostility floating in the atmosphere in the Armory, only an occasional outburst of anger occured between those in charge and those being held against their will. In a sense, they were all there against their will.

Puttnam stood in line next to a fellow Vietnam veteran. They spent their time exchanging stories about the war. For Puttnam, it was an essential form of therapy to discuss the horror he had witnessed there. The United States Government would only acknowledge the physical wounds of Vietnam Veterans, ignoring the wounds of the heart and the soul. The emotional scars created by an undeclared war, with no right and no wrong, left the veterans alone to their own confusion. None of them could forget what they'd been through, yet no one could agree upon a reason for them having gone.

Puttnam was one of the few Vietnam veterans who had found avenues on his own for relieving his emotional anguish. He found that in talking to other vets about their turmoils since their return to the states, he was not alone in his nightmares and that situations such as the one he'd experienced in DuPont Circle were not uncommon to all of them. Though their stories of what they had seen in 'Nam varied uniquely to each individual, they all shared the same loss of innocence to the war. Their fathers who'd served in World War II and their grandfathers before them in World War I had shared that same loss of innocence, yet they had been celebrated for that loss while the Vietnam veteran simply suffered the loss in frustration. He had performed a thankless job for a nation full of thankless Americans. Puttnam found great comfort in relating his emotions to other veterans. It eased his sorrow and loneliness, as they could not all be insane, they could not all be wrong; it was they who had been wronged by their own, a matter of flesh and blood. There would be many Veterans in future years who would not find that same avenue of release as did Puttnam. Raleigh Foster would be one of them. He would hide his tortured soul behind a wall of silence which would be perceived by others as tranquility. His dreams would shout into the night and he would never again believe in his father's America.

During the late afternoon the Guardsmen began passing out blankets to the protesters. Much was made of the passing out of blankets, since none of them had been fed; it was as though they were being sent to bed without any supper. A blanket toss followed across the floor with some of the Guardsmen joining in. Howard had a wonderful time watching the follies, though he did not participate himself. He was shocked to find Clare joining in on the fun. She was such a tiny woman that she had to leap high off the ground to catch the tails of the blankets as they flew by. Kerry sat cross-legged on the floor sulking. She was such a private person that being locked in with such a close, boisterous crowd had brought on a touch of claustrophobia.

One of the Guardsmen had been considerate enough to locate a folding chair for Howard and one for the elderly woman from Atlanta. Though the two of them sat on opposite sides of the Armory, they seemed to preside over the group as elder statesmen.

Food was finally delivered to the Armory in the early morning hours. It consisted of bologna sandwiches. Howard had fallen asleep in his chair. Clare woke him up by tugging gently on his mustache so he would eat.

With the food came news that since the beginning of the rallies the total number of arrests had been twelve thousand protesters. It had taken five thousand policemen backed by a staggering amount of ten thousand troops to round all of them up. Protesters were being charged with offenses ranging from "civil disobedience" to "illegal entry."

They began transporting the protesters to the main Washington, D.C., cell blocks at dawn. It was a long bus ride for Howard. Even the curls in his mustache began to droop from his exhaustion. He snapped at Clare several times during the ride downtown; she finally gave up trying to maintain a conversation with him and rode beside him in silence.

The men and women were separated once they got downtown. They were processed there for a second time and placed in holding cells. The American Civil Liberties Union had won a court order demanding that the protesters be fed. They were also pushing for a court order to force the authorities to place only two prisoners to a cell. That order hadn't come through yet; Puttnam and Howard were placed in a cell with seventeen other prisoners.

The cell was a bit larger than the one Puttnam had been in before, but it still only measured about five by twelve feet. No one had had any sleep except for Howard, and he had only cat-napped during the night. The close quarters made all of them irritable. The air smelled heavily of perspiration and industrial cleaning solutions. Puttnam tried to coax Howard into leaning on him since a clerk had taken his cane from him, but Howard stubbornly refused to do so.

They were served Big Mac hamburgers and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Howard was handed a Big Mac, which he immediately traded off for peanut butter and jelly. The aroma of the two foods mixed with the perspiration and cleaning fluids did not blend well in the stifling cell, so much so that Howard could not finish his sandwich. He felt so weak from nausea that he finally capitulated and moved closer to Puttnam's side to lean his small frame on Puttnam's sturdy arm.

Clare was not idle in her cell with Kerry. She shouted at the guards each time they passed by. The other women in their cell had joined in on her complaints about Howard's age and the fact that they were officially members of the press. The woman from Atlanta had been released earlier in the afternoon because she was a diabetic. Clare was deeply concerned for Howard's stamina. Her pleas were finally passed through the right channels and they were released late in the evening.

Howard was so drained that he could hardly walk. After an hour of bickering with a desk clerk over the whereabouts of both Howard's cane and Puttnam's camera bag, they were free to go. Howard's cane was located; Puttnam's camera equipment was lost forever in the Washington, D.C., Police Department.

Years would go by before the legalities of the massive arrests would be examined in a court of law. The marchers vowed to launch another raid on the Capitol in the autumn. A class action suit would eventually be filed in behalf of all of them, but that case, Dellums v. Powell, would not be resolved until the next decade. Those who'd been arrested and held under such deplorable conditons would then be financially compensated for their discomfort, many of them would be held for another day and a half under the same conditions. Howard would not live long enough to see that case addressed in a court of law, but he did not need a check in the mail or the United States judicial system to convince him that he had had a right to be there on those Capitol steps. He knew in his heart that they were right to do what they'd done, and though the war would not suddenly come to an end because Howard Bates had gone to Washington, by God, he'd been there, and he was proud of his efforts.

Reporters snapped pictures of Howard as they left the building. He had become somewhat of a hero after his appearance on the evening news along with the woman from Atlanta.

Howard balanced himself on Puttnam's arm. He smiled at the photographers with his mustache all a-twitter. Occasionally he'd wave his cane in the air, which came close to smacking Puttnam in the head. His presence there made it clear to a nation of onlookers that the anti-war movement was not simply a collection of misguided, unshaven youths, but the sentiments of patriots, as well, who were in fact the heart of the "silent majority" and that majority would no longer be silent. Richard Nixon's rhetoric about Vietnamization, troop withdrawals, and peace talks would not be taken for granted by the people of America. They were no longer concerned with defeat; they simply wanted the pain to stop and it would not stop without their voices.

The Nixon administration may have succeeded in curbing the attempts by the marchers to close down the city of Washington, D.C., but they had not made a mockery of those intentions and the beliefs of those who had participated were only strengthened by the fear they'd instilled within his administration for their numbers.

Hank was among the photographers outside. Puttnam hailed him over and asked for a ride for the four of them back to the Pontiac. Howard squirmed in the backseat of Hank's car on the way. His eyes lit up when they rounded the corner by the church and lo and behold, there sat his baby blue Pontiac.

Puttnam stopped at a coffee shop to have Clare's thermos filled with coffee. They drove all the way back to Saratoga that night. Howard slept peacefully in the backseat using Clare's straw handbag for a pillow. He was passing through the still of America, going home to rest.

The letter from Fletcher came in July, long after Howard's face had appeared on the front page of every major newspaper in the country and just on the eve of Raleigh Foster's arrival in South Vietnam.

The summer had been kind to Kerry. She'd spent her idle hours enjoying the concerts at Caffe Lena's with Margaret and Puttnam. On some days, in the afternoon, Margaret and Kerry would walk over to the grounds of Yaddo, which was an artists' retreat located there in Saratoga. They would rest out on the lawn under the shade of a tree and they would speculate on the lives of those who'd come to work at Yaddo through the years. Many of Margaret and Kerry's favorite writers had come there to gather their lines, Carson McCullers had been one of them.

The fever that surrounded the horse races took over the city during the summertime. The beauty of the fever was that it made everyone feel like a winner. Everyone lost now and then at the tracks, so no one was considered a loser, and Kerry did not escape the optimism. There were cloudless days when all the world seemed calm in Kerry's heart. She floated through those days along with the tourists who flooded the streets. The heat was not as demanding as that of central Texas; for Kerry it seeemed springlike, though Clare complained about the temperatures and the lack of air conditioning each day.

Howard made many mysterious trips downtown during the month of June. He was at peace with himself by the time July rolled around. He spent most of his days in a rocking chair out on the front porch, drifting in and out of sleep during the late afternoons and chatting with the passersby.

Margaret accepted a teaching position at a university in Houston. She would start in the fall while Puttnam would remain in Saratoga Springs on the staff of The Avalanche until Clare could replace him.

Kerry applied for writing positions in Dallas and Houston. She finally had an offer from a newspaper in Houston to work part-time on the weekly entertainment section of the paper. Clare was quite proud of her. If not for Clare's kindness in hiring Kerry at The Avalanche, Kerry would never have landed the job.

Howard was sad over the prospect of Kerry moving back to Texas. On that cloudy summer day, he sat on the porch holding Kerry's letter from Fletcher in his lap, waiting for Margaret and Kerry to return from a walk down to Congress Park. He watched the two women stroll side by side up the sidewalk. They were very close to being the same size with Margaret standing just a tad taller than Kerry. They both wore sun dresses, their hair flew widly in the wind around their faces, and their voices bubbled in laughter. Margaret and Kerry both had a tendency to freckle in the summer sun just across the bridge of the nose. They both sported their freckled, pink noses as they climbed the steps to Clare's front porch.

"You've got a letter here, Miss Kerry, from London," Howard said, holding the letter up for Kerry to see.

"I don't know anyone in London," Kerry replied. She reached for the letter in Howard's hand and retreated to sit down on the top step to open the envelope.

"It's from Fletcher," Kerry said, looking at the return address.

"I'm going inside to see what Puttnam's up to, Kerry. See you at dinner," Margaret said, reaching down to pat Kerry on the shoulder. Kerry sat with her back to the front door. Margaret motioned to Howard for him to follow her inside so that Kerry could have some privacy, but Howard shrugged his shoulders at her, ignoring the request.

Kerry flipped her hair back over her shoulder then hesitantly opened the envelope. She recognized Fletcher's handwriting immediately.

Dear Kerry,

News from abroad!  I've moved to London to study for a year.  I wanted to call you before I left.
I was in New York City for a few days visiting my cousin before I flew to London.  It's so hard to
explain things . . . they can never be explained away completely.

Denise lost the baby the first week in June.  She moved back in with her folks a couple of weeks
after that.  I was not saddened for the loss but it hit me pretty hard to see such pain pass between
all of us.

I know it is too soon to ask for any sort of reconciliation with you, perhaps that will never be in
the cards for us, but I can always hope . . . perhaps the time apart will enable us to understand
each other, perhaps the time apart will create a need to be together someday.

I saw you on the news in May and your picture was in the paper with Howard.  Your Mother told
my Mom that you all went to jail . . . hope Howard has recovered from the ordeal.

I won't assume that you'll respond to my letter . . . my address is on the back of this page if you
want to write.  Please give my regards to Margaret and to Puttnam.

I suppose it will be my punishment to have a full year of cloudy days here in London. . . . 

I Love you. . . . 

Fletcher.

Kerry looked up from the letter once she'd finished reading its contents. Her eyes were clouded with tears as a gentle rain began to fall. Howard was silent in his rocking chair. He wished he'd gone inside with Margaret for the front porch seemed to grow smaller as the two of them sat facing the late afternoon. Kerry laid the letter down beside her. She folded her arms around her knees and rocked back and forth on the top step. Howard could feel her pain surging through his own heart.

"Kerry, is everything all right?" Howard asked, reluctant to pry. The rain began to fall harder in a steady rhythm around them. The air smelled sweet of summer, holding the scent of freshly cut grass and roses.

"Oh, everything's just peachy. Guess Fletcher's already getting a divorce. He's moved over to London to study. He wants to be a great architect," Kerry mumbled, without looking back at Howard.

"Kerry," Howard said as she turned to face him. "You're such a lovely young woman to hurt so inside. There will be other love in your life; love has many shapes and faces. Even if it's only him that you dream of 'til your last breath of life, there will be others who will waken your heart and still your memories. Put those thoughts of romance out of your head for a while and concentrate on your talents--they can cure what ails you. Why, you can spin a line better than most, the kind of lines that make us feel grateful for the written word. You work at that craft. One of these days love will come to you again; it'll be new and untouched; it'll make you strong and young again.

"My Pearl had a special place in her heart for you . . . she believed you could tame the world with the turn of your smile; course, she was a little prejudiced, but she was excellent at choosing winners. Now, there's a great deal of propinquity between you and my Pearl. By God, she never lowered her jaw bone for any man. She kept that chin up solid and firm. If things didn't work out just the way she planned them, then she'd just carry on and make the best of things the way they were. She'd be sittin' here telling you how much better off you are without that young man clipping your wings. I can't do that because I know you hurt too badly right now to believe something like that from this old fool. I'm always here if you need someone to talk to. The world's out there a-waitin' for ya," Howard said. He tapped his cane on the porch. Then standing to go inside, he shifted his weight on the cane, which he held firmly with both hands in front of him. Kerry noticed that he leaned more on that cane than he used to and he was cautious of his footing. He shuffled towards the screen door and Kerry jumped to her feet to open it for him. He turned to address her once more before entering. "Now, don't you go writing that young man for a while. You just let him stew in his own troubles over there in London town. I expect he has a heart of his own to mend. Forced solitude can do wonders for the heart," Howard said. He winked at her as he reached over to brush a tear from her cheek.

"I love you, Howard. You make my dilemmas in life tolerable; you give them perspective," Kerry cried. She bent forward to kiss him on the cheek and caught the familiar, spicy smell of the wax on his handle-bar mustache; it carried the wealth of wisdom, the mystery of the love of the young for the old, and the memory of Howard would always bring forth that particular smell in her senses, as it was an essential part of his person, as identifiable as his voice.

Howard produced a broad smile across his face as he turned on his heels to enter the house. "By, God, Clare it's starting to rain cats and dogs out here. We better get those upstairs windows closed," he shouted from the front hallway. Kerry stood watching him through the screen door wondering how she could consider moving back to Texas, leaving Howard behind. He had given her so much in their short time together; he had taught her how to give unselfishly.

Clare kept a waste basket on the front porch next to Howard's rocking chair. He like to read the local sale circulars that came in the mail, and he had a tendency to leave them scattered on the porch before Clare had solved the problem by putting a waste basket by his chair. Kerry held Fletcher's letter tightly in her hands and stared into the basket for a few moments before dropping the letter on to the pile of circulars. "By God, this one's for you, Howard," she said softly to herself before going inside to get ready for dinner. Ernest was just coming out of Clare's office as Kerry came in, and she flipped him her finger as she went up the stairs and he joyously reciprocated the gesture. It had become a ritual between the two of them and some things never change.

Howard imagined that with the windows open in the house at night, the whole neighborhood must be listening in on the nightly love making sessions between Margaret and Puttnam.

Howard had not felt well since returning from Washington. He often lay wide awake in his bed until the wee hours of the morning. A.M. would find him cranky, yawning his way through breakfast and anxious for a nap out on the porch in the fresh air. He went to the doctor several times, but he could not find any physical reason for Howard's fatigue except just plain ole old age.

His biggest fear in growing old had always been senility, and the frustration of finding himself caught in its grips was most frightening to him. He found himself forgetting even simple things on a daily basis.

In mid-June, he sold his house to the Wilsons and tied all loose ends in his financial investments. Over the years he'd built a respectable estate. His lawyer drew up a new will for him, and he left everything to Kerry and Clare.

By July, he'd forgotten that all of that was behind him and he called the Wilsons on the telephone to ask them if they would be interested in buying the house. Mrs. Wilson had been quite confused at first, but kind enough to realize the complexity of the problem.

"Why, Mr. Bates, it's so nice of you to inquire, but we've already drawn up the contracts on the house with your lawyer . . . how neglectful of him not to mention it to you. We so enjoy your fine little home here; it's our first real investment . . . thank you so much for your kindness in extending our lease and for deciding to put the house up for sale . . . we just can't imagine ever living anywhere else. Please come visit us soon . . . we so enjoy your visits," Mrs. Wilson had said on the phone to Howard. He remembered the meeting in his lawyer's office with the Wilsons back in June about halfway through her second sentence but was too embarrassed to interrupt her. His mustache had twitched across the receiver as he'd impatiently waded through the awkward conversation and had been quite relieved when he heard the familiar sound of the doorbell ringing on Mrs. Wilson's end of the line; it had given both of them a natural excuse to hang up.

Clare made the final decision to sell The Avalanche. She and Howard shared the same lawyer, so she was well informed about Howard's problem with his memory. She was quite patient with Howard and had made a point not to ask him embarrassing questions about his absenses; often times he could not recall where he had been. Neighbors had seen him taking long walks through Congress Park with his shoulders uncharacteristically stooped against the heat of the sun. She heard him pace the floor late at night amidst the moans and the laughter which came from Margaret's room.

It was a confusing time for Clare. The love affair between Margaret and Puttnam brought new life and joy to the household. The continuing saga of the battle between Kerry and Ernest had mellowed into habit and had become a source of humor and entertainment for them all, the two of them included. Ernest knew that Kerry was leaving in August along with Margaret so he no longer felt genuinely threatened by her presence there. Clare was torn between these wild days of summer and the sorrow of watching Howard slip away from life before her very eyes. Each day he grew more distant, and each day she saw less of the man who had served as a father to her for the past quarter of a century.

When she was alone, she would let herself cry. Her large, dark eyes would stare into a void and the tears would roll freely down her cheeks in great torrents. She could not bear the thought of losing him, yet she knew he was dying. She often hoped that he would go before the weather turned cold in the fall; she had visions of him going mad being forced to stay indoors.

In the evenings she would take a lawn chair out to the front porch and sit quietly next to Howard. Clare had never been a tactile person, having lived her life alone, but she found herself reaching out to touch Howard's arm or his shoulder now and then; it was the grip of dreaming, wishing he would always be there to reach out to. As long as she could feel his fragile bones beneath her fingers, she could ward off the fear of death itself. Clare understood that the greatest irony of death for those among the living is that you wait impatiently for your heart to recuperate from the loss; it never does, for all those who've died still walk beside your heart as though they were the living, and in your own reality, they are still living, still breathing out without breathing in, and it's the breathing in which endeared you to them, as though they would always be a part of you and you could no longer be a part of them. The sorrow for the death of a loved one seemed to Clare a purely selfish emotion, as it was the loss of that gift of affection which human kind mourned. She was totally human, though she fought the pending sorrow with a grace uncommon to most.

The movie The Last Picture Show opened in Saratoga Springs on a warm, clear day during the last week of July. The screenplay was written by Larry McMurtry and Kerry was anxious to see the film. The reviews for the movie had been tremendous throughout the country. Kerry flaunted them in Ernest's face for several days.

In honor of Kerry and Howard's Texas heritage, the whole staff decided to go to a matinee. Clare doubted that Howard could stay awake through the film but hoped that the air conditioning in the theatre would at least keep him from snoring.

The Avalanche staff took up most of the row they chose to sit in down close to the front of the theatre. Puttnam stood impatiently in the aisle waiting for everyone to be seated. Howard was clear-headed that day though he was extrememly cranky. The shuffling of popcorn boxes across him began to grate on his nerves and he startled the entire staff by barking out, "By God, I'm not going to tolerate a popcorn toss throughout this feature. Every one of you get up this instant and go buy your own damned box of popcorn before the movie starts."

The response of the staff was to pass all four boxes of popcorn which had been floating betwen them, to Howard. The previews for upcoming movies were flashing on the screen. Howard chuckled softly, wrappng his arms around the boxes and declared, "I hope you young people don't expect me to ever venture out in public with the likes of you again." He stood up then and re-distributed the popcorn down the row on either side of him, tossing one box in Puttnam's direction at the end of the row which grazed the top of Puttnam's head and landed on the sticky carpet in the aisle. The theatre was only about a quarter full. A couple seated two rows back "shushed" Howard loudly, and he turned to nod politely towards them before taking his seat again.

They were a motley crew indeed in that theatre that day. Kerry, Marlin, and Ernest slumped in their seats, draping their legs over the backs of the seats in front of them while Puttnam rested in an almost horizontal position with his long, lanky legs and big feet perched out into the aisle. Margaret sat in her normal position of perfect posture; Clare and Howard were so small that they could hardly be seen by the rows behind them.

Howard sat with his arms folded on his chest and his cane resting against his leg. He did not go to sleep as Clare had predicted and surprised all of them by responding to some of the scenes vocally. The dust-blown streets in the movie reminded him of his youth and through the film he relived a good portion of his young years in west Texas. The Baptist churches, the treeless landscapes that seemed to extend into the glaze of sunsets, the beer signs that laughed at the dry, parched land with high-pitched squeals as they swung in the never-ending wind, and the sight of naked cotton fields where the plants had no leaves in the fall, only yellow-stained cotton balls which appeared to have been placed there rather than having grown there, all came back to haunt Howard on that July afternoon in the theatre. In his heart he found beauty he'd never felt before for his birthplace, for his youth. Those who had endured that west Texas terrain were a sturdy lot, and for the first time in his life he longed to return there.

Twilight was upon them as they left the theatre in search of the Pontiac. Jack Simpson walked along beside Howard asking him questions about west Texas.

"Of course this movie was set in a different time period than when I lived there. It doesn't seem to change much out there, for that matter, neither does New England. I hadn't set foot in west Texas since my best friend died back during the Depression until my dear wife passed on in the Spring. The buildings had changed and the churches all had neon signs, but the people were the same. There are good folks and bad folks everywhere, except in west Texas the ones with the money and power are usually the bad ones. You find me a fellow who survived the dust storms on a dry land farm during the thirties and forties and carved a living for his family out of almost nothing in terms of his skills and education, and I'd take his word over an Easterner any day. I liked that movie though. It'll make the rest of the country aware that the West is no longer full of John Wayne types and Indians. It's full of plain old folks with troubles similar to those of everyone else," Howard said as they walked along. They all got into the Pontiac. Jack climbed in next to Howard so they could finish their conversation.

"Well, there was the movie GIANT, Mr. Bates. What did you think of that that one? Was it as authentic as The Last Picture Show?" Jack asked.

Howard twiddled with the tips of his mustache for a moment or two. "I recall that movie quite vividly. It reinforced my decision not to live in west Texas but in reality, it was not true to real life; it did not focus on the middle class in Texas. It focused on the new elite and those on the bottom of the social structure. I didn't find myself or anyone I'd ever known in any of the characters whereas with this one we saw today, I saw myself in some of those characters. A small part of me reached out to touch and embrace each one of them . . . like family," Howard said pensively.

"Oh, for God's sake . . . it was just a movie," Ernest remarked from the front seat. He was sitting next to Clare and she jabbed her elbow sharply into his side. Ernest darted her a disdained looked as they pulled up in front of the house.

Puttnam and Clare had decided to fix dinner that evening while Kerry and Margaret walked down to the park. Jack and Marlin departed for the bus station to catch the next bus into New York, where they were planning on spending the weekend at Ty's place in the Village.

The neighborhood was quiet as darkness began to fall. Howard sat on the front porch listening to the faint sounds of pans rattling in the kitchen and occasional outbursts of Puttnam's wild laughter. He took off his good shoes and replaced them with his slippers, which he'd left tucked under his rocking chair. He thought about his Pearl and he thought about his loneliness without her. The warm breeze engulfed him just as Pearl's body had once sheltered his frail soul from loneliness. He closed his eyes and began to dream in pleasant slumber of the touch of her small breasts. Her smile greeted him with its welcome familiarity, and with his head tilted back, his hands crossed in his lap, the cane hanging on the arm of the rocking chair, and the wind stirring the curls in his mustache, he died peacefully in his sleep.

Kerry and Margaret strolled past him when they returned to the house. Kerry smiled at him, thinking he was merely taking a short nap. She placed her finger to her lips in a gesture to Margaret, motioning for silence so that they would not disturb his sleep. Neither bothered to turn the porch light on at the switch just inside the door for fear that the light would wake him.

Puttnam finished his work in the kitchen and carried the plates and silverware out to the dining room to set the table, leaving Clare behind in the kitchen to put the finishing touches on the salad. He placed all the utensils on the long oak table and went to the front door to notify Howard that dinner was almost ready. He pushed the screen door open just a few inches, stuck his head out the door and said, "Hey, Howard, it's gonna be chow-time in about five minutes." He didn't wait for a reply from Howard and since the light was off on the porch, didn't notice the odd angle in which Howard's head was resting. The screen door banged shut behind him, and he scurried back into the dining room to finish setting the table. Ernest came out of Clare's office at about the same time. He'd been proofreading his next article for The Avalanche, and Clare had been kind enough to invite him to stay for dinner.

Ernest reached out to grab Puttnam by the elbow as he hurried past, "Hey, Burley, where's the old man? I ought to apologize for those untimely remarks in the car this afternoon," Ernest said.

"Oh, he's out there catching a few winks . . . Kerry and Margaret are upstairs getting cleaned up for dinner, so he's alone. He needs to get up though so he won't mind you waking him," Puttnam said, pointing towards the front door. He pushed his hair back from his face and rushed on past Ernest for the dining room.

Ernest walked to the screen door, straightened his shirt a bit, and pushed the door open briskly. The door banged shut behind him, bounced on the door jam, and slammed shut for a final loud crack. He heard Clare bellow out from the dining room inside.

"I wish to heaven all of you would quit slamming that door. My nerves shatter every time it slams, sounds like the roof is caving in," Clare said, irritably.

"Yes, ma'am," Ernest overheard Puttnam to say, followed by one of his boisterous fits of laughter.

Ernest sat down on the top step of the porch with his profile to Howard. It was getting quite dark outside, but he didn't seem to notice as he opened his conversation.

"I should apologize to you, Mr. Bates, for making that nasty comment in the car this evening about The Last Picture Show just being a movie. . . . I mean it was just a movie, but it was also an art form and when any form of art touches the heart of the observer, that observer certainly deserves that right to be moved without criticism. To tell you the truth, I was quite moved myself by the film. There were times when I identified totally with that character 'Sam the Lion.' At any rate, I do hope you'll except my apologies. I was way out of line . . . I know you've never had much regard for me as a person . . . not too many people do . . . but hey, I respect you more than you'll ever know. You've been coming around The Avalanche since I came to work here. Maybe someday we can sit and have a good chat. You interested, Mr. Bates?" Ernest asked sheepishly. He turned to face Howard in the gray shadow of the evening, and when Howard did not reply to his statements, he added, "Well, I didn't really expect you to respond right away. I know you like to think things out quite a bit; I'm like that myself. It never pays to be hasty. Don't you think that's so, Mr. Bates?" Silence greeted him and he began to squirm on the top step wondering how he could possibly have offended the old man so badly that the guy wouldn't even accept his humble confessions. "Well, don't you agree on the last statement, Mr. Bates?" Ernest asked again. He noticed that Howard had not moved since he'd been out there and he got up, walked over to the screen door, leaned inside, and flipped the porch light on.

The sight of Howard in death scared the dickens out of Ernest, and he jumped a bit when he saw the angle of Howard's head which was leaning in an awkward position to the side. He reluctantly reached out to feel Howard's pulse, and finding no life within the fragile wrist, he dropped Howard's arm which landed in a dull thud in Howard's lap. Howard had been cradling his ticket stub from The Last Picture Show in his hands and the small piece of orange paper caught in the wind, blew off the porch, and came to rest in Clare's flower bed on the south side of the house.

Ernest rushed into the house, trying to regain his composure before confronting Puttnam with the problem at hand. He forgot about Clare's request regarding the screen door, and he negligently let it slam with a loud bang behind him. Clare came bounding out of the kitchen into the dining room to confront the guilty party.

"Now just who in this household had the nerve to slam that frigging door again?" Clare bellowed, looking straight at Ernest and shaking a soup ladel in her hand.

"I did, I'm sorry Clare . . . uh . . . Burley, can you come outside with me for a moment?" Ernest replied, quite flustered. Puttnam sat a stack of paper napkins down on the end of the table and followed in curiosity after Ernest into the entrance hall. "There's something wrong with the old guy; I think he's dead," Ernest said in a whisper. Clare overheard his remarks to Puttnam and she ran outside to check on Howard.

Puttnam followed after her in a state of semi-shock with Ernest close on his heels.

"He was just sitting there. I swear I didn't touch him. He must've died in his sleep," Ernest said defensively.

Clare looked up at the two men, barking, "Oh, for God's sake, Ernest, shut your mouth and go call an ambulance. Have you no decency?" She was kneeling beside Howard, holding his wrist in her hand. "Puttnam, you go turn the fire off underneath the soup and keep Kerry inside," Clare added, turning to look up at Puttnam.

"Is he . . .?" Puttnam began.

"I'm afraid Ernest was right," Clare said in a more controlled tone of voice.

Puttnam went back into the house, careful not to slam the screen door behind him. Kerry was halfway down the stairs with Margaret close behind her. She took notice of Puttnam's confused behaviour immediately. She stopped on the stairs, glanced at Ernset standing below her at the phone table, then made a dash for the front door. Puttnam caught her before she could reach the door, spun her around, and held her tightly as she struggled to get free.

"He's gone, Kerry. You don't want to see him like this," Puttnam cried. Kerry continued to struggle against him while Margaret and Ernest came to Puttnam's aid in restraining her. "Clare's out there with him. We should give her these few moments with him before the ambulance comes."

"Let her go, Puttnam. We all have to make our own choices in such matters," Margaret said softly. Kerry became more subdued with Margaret's support. Puttnam released her and she walked slowly out the door to join Clare on the porch.

Clare was still holding Howard's wrist. Kerry looked down at Howard's small person and his fragile appearance in death. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt, navy blue cotton trousers, white socks, and his brown leather slippers. His good shoes were tucked neatly beneath the rocking chair.

Kerry knelt down beside Clare, placing her arm around the smaller woman's shoulders. They leaned heavily on each other with their heads bent together, sharing their final moments with their friend, Howard Bates, in silence. They remained still there on the porch; neither of them cried openly.

Clare jumped at the distant sound of the ambulance siren. She lifted her head and spoke softly into the summer night, "You were a good man, Howard Bates, my old friend."

Kerry helped Clare to her feet; they stood together on the top step waiting for the ambulance. The wind caught Kerry's long, fine hair and the breeze blew it softly across Clare's face, tickling Clare's small pointed nose. She brushed Kerry's tresses from her face and smiled, saying, "Let's change sides here, shall we?"

Kerry smiled fondly down at Clare in respect for her composure and shifted to Clare's other side on the steps as the ambulance parked in front of the house.

Neighbors came out into their yards to gape in curiosity as Howard was placed on the stretcher. Margaret took Kerry upstairs while Clare gave the ambulance driver instructions for the destination of the body.

Kerry stretched out on her bed upstairs listening to the muffled conversations below. Her bedroom windows were wide open and the lace curtains blew in and out with the rhythym of the warm summer breeze. She and Margaret had planned to leave for Texas in three days. Howard had given her the Pontiac last week as her going-away present. She lay awake deep into the night driven by thoughts of going back to Texas where, as Howard had said, "The world a-waited her." She longed to take Howard back to Texas, to join Pearlie. She longed to take him away from the winters he so hated in the great white North, back to the land of his birth.

The whole house could hear Kerry singing around midnight. She sat crosslegged on her bed with her guitar in her lap and her face wet with tears. She wrote a new song for Howard. Clare smiled at the lyrics; it eased her pain and brought the welcomed release of sleep. Kerry's high, clear voice bore a pristene quality and her song seemed to rent the air with the spirit of Howard Bates. Puttnam and Margaret lay side by side with their arms entwined listening to the melody .

	Oh, West Texas Dream . . . I dream about the towers
		where the dust goes crazy in the summertime
	We got this four-lane highway where the drivers all get sleepy
		Lord, don't they cuss our flatlands . . . New England bound

	Oh, the settlers who are lured to fight the caprock
		their wheat grows tall and the cotton fights for life
	When the creeks run dry, they build no fences for their cattle
		Windmills tap those water-wells . . . seldom on the rise

	Build me a tower . . . high up on the plains
	I wanna count the stars from Abilene to Amarillo
	Waste my hours . . . prayin' for some rain
	Just to watch the cold beer signs . . . be a-laughin when the dust blows

	Where the mountains meet the plains in far west Texas
		there are no rollin' hills or trees to block the sun
	Oh, the calloused hands that blessed the world with plenty
		left this land so hard . . . could break a heart of stone

	Build me a tower . . . high up on the plains
	I wanna count the stars from Abilene to Amarillo
	Waste my hours . . . prayin' for some rain
	Just to watch the cold beer signs . . . be a-laughin when the dust blows

	Oh, West Texas dream . . . I dream about the towers
		where the dust goes crazy in the summertime
	We got this four-lane highway where the drivers all get sleepy			
	Lord, don't they cuss our flatlands . . . all New England bound.

Howard had requested that his body be cremated and that no services be held in his honor. Clare bought several bottles of champagne and they toasted Howard that next evening after dinner.

Premium Saltine Crackers were sold in decorative tins back in the 1950's. When Clare and Puttnam cleaned out Howard's drawers in his room, they found an old cracker tin where he'd stored his letters from Kerry Pearl. Clare removed the letters carefully and tied them with ribbons. She gave the cracker tin to Puttnam and told him to take it to the funeral home so that Howard's ashes could be stored in it. Puttnam objected to Clare's choice of containers but did as he was told.

The cracker tin was of an ivory color with red and royal blue lettering. This particular tin had obviously been purchased in Texas, most likely in Raymondville, as the lettering on the sides of the tin appeared in both Spanish and English. The mortician did not blink an eye when Puttnam dropped off the tin. Puttnam was curious about how normal this was in the mortician's line of work.

"Don't you think this a bit odd . . . I mean putting some old gent's ashes in a cracker tin?" Puttnam aksed, leaning on the desk in the mortician's office.

"Certainly, not," the mortician replied. He was a short, plump man with rosy cheeks contrary to what Puttnam had expected. "I've seen stranger things than this, just between you and me. Some of the requests we get from our clients are quite peculiar." The mortician leaned across the desk and spoke almost in a whisper to Puttnam. His large belly prohibited him from leaning too far in Puttnam's direction. "Now, I'll just need for Miss Friedman to sign some forms as to the legal destination of the ashes and we'll be all taken care of here. You may pick up Mr. Bates' . . . cracker tin tomorrow," he said softly, and smiling up at Puttnam, he handed the legal forms to him. Puttnam took the forms and left the funeral home. A chill had run up his spine as he passed through the parlor. Though it was a bright, sunny day outside, the parlor in the funeral home was dark and musky as though it were plunged eternally into winter. Puttnam's eyes stung as he stepped out into the sunlight, partially from the blinding effects of coming out of the shadowy gloom of the funeral parlor into the bright daylight, like being wakened during the night by someone flipping on an overhead light, and partly from the sorrow of losing his friend, Howard.

He didn't go back to the boarding house right away. Instead, he folded the forms in half, stuffed them in the back pocket of his jeans, and ran all the way to Congress Park, which was almost a mile from the funeral home. Pedestrians on the sidewalks jumped out of his way as he tore along the streets with his hair blowing wild behind him. He collapsed on a park bench in the shade once inside the park, and he could still hear the wind in his ears from his long flight from the funeral home. He buried his head in his hands with his elbows resting on his widespread knees and sobbed deeply for his loss.

Puttnam stayed in the park for over an hour trying to compose himself. On his way back to the boarding house he stopped off at one of the antique clothing stores along Caroline Street and purchased a lovely ivory-colored camisole made of silk and bordered with soft lace for Margaret. He drummed the fingers of one hand loudly on the counter and constantly pushed his hair back from his face with the other as he waited impatiently for the saleslady to wrap it for him.

Margaret and Kerry had postponed leaving for Texas for another week. Margaret was packed and ready to go, but Kerry seemed reluctant to leave Clare so soon after Howard's death.

Clare had interviewed several photographers to replace Puttnam, but none of them had struck her fancy, and she seemed in no hurry to make a choice yet, which was okay with Margaret as she was looking forward to the time alone in Houston.

Kerry and Clare had decided that it would be best if Kerry took Howard's ashes back to Texas with her. Kerry had plans of driving out to Floydada and leaving his ashes there.

The plan was for Kerry and Margaret to drive as far as Dallas together in the Pontiac, where Margaret would catch a plane for Houston. Kerry's father, Jeff, would pick her up in Houston, and Margaret would stay with him until she could find a house for her and Puttnam.

Kerry had been astonished to discover from talking with her dad that Louise had not moved to Houston with him. They were, in fact, in the middle of a nasty divorce. Secretly, Kerry was pleased with the news about the pending divorce as she'd never cared much for Louise, yet she inquired about Louise's emotional state in her conversations with her dad out of respect for the years she'd had Louise as her stepmother. It wasn't so much that she disliked the woman; it was just that Kerry had never really gotten to know her. Louise had kept a cool distance from Kerry throughout the years. Ethel, on the other hand, had grown quite attached to Louise, basically as a means to manipulate her father; she was sharp enough to realize that maintaining the close relationship with Louise had given her a direct line to her father's ear, which she filled daily.

The phone lines hummed between Austin, Texas, and Saratoga Springs, New York, all that week with gossip. Leota was the most fluent source of information; she claimed that Ethel had now deserted her friendship with Louise altogether and was bad-mouthing her soon-to-be former stepmother all over town. Leota also informed Kerry that Ethel was pregnant again and that Rodney had sent her off for two weeks at a health spa to celebrate. Kerry found out later from her mother that, in fact, they'd lied to Leota about where Ethel had been sent. She'd actually been placed in a hospital to dry out as the consumption of alcohol could be devastating to an unborn child.

Kerry looked foward to the long three-day drive down to Dallas with Margaret. They studied the road maps carefully, planning to take the park road, the Blue Ridge Parkway, down through Virginia. She would drive on out to Floydada after she dropped Margaret off at Love Field in Dallas.

Her job was set to start in September at the Houston newspaper. Her final assignment for The Avalanche was to write a short obituary of Howard Buford Bates. It was unusual for Clare to print such personal articles, but this was special, especially since Howard had made national headlines by attending the May Day Rallies in Washington.

Late one night, with the cracker tin resting on her desk, Clare pulled the bundled letters from Kerry Pearl out of her desk drawer and began to go through them. She hoped to find some interesting tid-bits for Kerry's article in the letters and truly had no intentions of violating Howard's privacy. Through the years, Clare and Howard had shared their personal lives with one another so totally that she did not expect to find any surprises in Kerry Pearl's correspondence. She was quite wrong in her assumption.

Clare carefully arranged the letters in order of their postmarks. The earliest letter dated back to 1904, and the paper was yellowed with age, its texture crisp and fragile. Howard had been attending college at Princeton that year. Clare remembered from her conversations with Howard that he'd graduated from Princeton in 1906. Howard had had a difficult time completing his education. His family was fairly well off for west Texas; they were a ranching family, but Howard's father had demanded that he drop out of school in the East twice to return home and help out around the ranch. Clare could recall that Howard had told her he'd met Kerry Pearl and Max sometime around 1900; his father bought his feed from Max's farm. The three of them had become the best of friends; Howard had even lived with them on both of his return trips from Princeton because he could not get along with his own father. It was most unusual for a west Texas rancher's son to go away to college. Most folks thought it a waste of time around those parts.

Max Schurgood was a strong-willed man. He was a huge, muscular Dutchman who spoke in broken English, just a tad on the boisterous side. His cheeks would flush to crimson in the summer heat, and in the dead of winter he could be seen out working his livestock in his shirt sleeves. Howard had often remarked that the love between Kerry Pearl and Max Schurgood was the greatest love affair he'd ever witnessed in his lifetime. They had a large family; one child came each year to their household. Max called them his blessings and they were indeed his blessings as every one of them inherited Max's heavy bone structure and his boisterous qualities except for Leota. Leota had been different and Max had always favored her.

Clare was not surprised to find Howard complaining of his father's ridicule in the letters in 1904. She read through them briefly and went on to the two letters postmarked in 1905.

							July 6, 1905


Our Dear Howard,

Max and I are indeed looking forward to your visit with us this fall.  He's got that old mare you
took a liking to last year all lined up for your transport back and forth to your Daddy's place.

Max ran into your Daddy in town a while back by the way and he gave our Max quite a talkin'
to about your staying with us on your visits home . . . said it wasn't proper for you to be stayin'
over here with us Catholics.  He's an awnry old buzzard and it was all Max could do to keep
from losing his temper.  We realize that it's best for you that we try to stay on good terms with
your Daddy since he's paying your school fees out there in New Jersey.

The girls are all doing fine in school and the boys are already showing an interest in numbers.
Horace is almost two now and he can hold up two fingers for his age just as pretty as you please.

Well, I've got some chores to attend to so I'll be saying so long for now.  We'll see you in
September.

Max says hello to you and for you to keep that scappy mustache trimmed for the ladies . . . he's
looking forward to you being around during harvest time.  He'll have to go to market down in
Big Springs while you're here . .  says it'll be a relief knowing you'll be lookin' out for me and 
his blessings while he's away. . . . Happy twenty-first birthday, by the way . . . 

Love,
Pearl.

						January 20, 1906


Dear Howard,

I am writing this during the day while Max is out.  He's gone to town for some supplies and won't
be back until nightfall.  We'll mail it next time we go into town for church services . . . which
should be next Sunday.

I know now that I am with child again . . . I guess we'll never know if it is ours but there is
that possibility.

I'm not ashamed of what happened between us while Max was away in Big Springs and he never
has shown any anger over it himself.  He says he loves us both too much to ever hold any
grudges and we can't spend the rest of our lives crying over something that can't be changed.  He
is grateful that we never tried to cover up for what we'd done and that we told him right off what
had happened.

You know that I love my Max with all of my heart . . . he's been a good husband to me and I will
always remain totally devoted to his wishes.

He doesn't like to think that this baby might be yours.  He says it's just another blessing for us
and he won't allow me to talk about whether it's his or not . . . he intends to raise it as his own
regardless of its heritage.

He said that if we lived in a city then maybe he'd be upset about you and me spending a night of
physical pleasures together but we're so isolated out here and when a man and a woman are
placed in such situations then things just happen sometimes.  Neither of us has forsaken your
friendship. . . . Max says if this baby is a boy he's gonna name him Buford and if it's a girl he's
gonna name her Leota after his great aunt.  He says we're all God's children.

I must be going now . . . Horace is out teasing those chickens again.  I hope you can forgive me
for my infidelity to Max. . . . I do not regret it . . . the tornados and the big storm drove us
together that night in November and had you been out in the barn in the loft you'd have been torn
to pieces when that twister hit.

Max says our indiscretion saved your life and for that he thanks the good Lord . . . write us soon.

Your loving friend, 
Pearl.

						   October 12, 1906

Dear friend Howard:

It is usually Pearl who writes you these endless letters but it is I this time who has the need to
send my fond regards.  Our daughter, I say ours because none will ever know who is responsible
for her birth, is a beautiful young baby.

Her eyes are turning from sky blue to blue-green and Pearl believes they will change again as she
grows older.  Horace is jealous of his pretty little sister, while my little Maggie carries her
around like her own baby.

Your Father helped at our barn raising last month.  He tells me you will finish your studies in
economics in December.  Though he does not admit that it is so, Pearl and I can see he is proud
of his youngest son for finishing your schooling.  I intend to see that all my blessings go to
school as I did though I could still use lessons in English.

My crops were good this year.  Pearl has been canning from her garden for the past month . . .
the woman is feeding the whole county!

We wish to see you when you come home in the winter.  My hand of friendship reaches out to
you in forgiveness and understanding. 

Sincerely,

Maxwell Schurgood.

She was astonished at how the three had handled the awkward situation. It must have been quite difficult for all of them, especially Max Schurgood, who had gone to his grave not knowing if his youngest daughter was his own flesh and blood. Howard had often made reference to the fact that Max had spoiled Leota shamelessly when she was a young girl. Clare had seen photos of Leota McFarland in Kerry's room, and if ever there was a woman who could have the same features as Howard, Leota certainly was that woman. Of course Clare had never seen any pictures of the other children so she felt she had no right to speculate that perhaps Leota was indeed Howard's daughter, and she was annoyed with herself for having read the letters at all.

There was a ten-year lag in the correspondence between Howard and Kerry Pearl. Clare assumed that Howard must have lost the letters. No more references were made in regards to Leota's parentage after the ten-year lag.

Clare removed the letters from the stack which contained the information about Howard's life-long secret. She stood up in the early morning light of the gray dawn, searched her bookshelves, and finally pulled a thick volume of the collected works of John Keats. She opened the book to read the inscription on the front page:

	to my lovely friend, Clare Friedman, I wish you a warm winter . . 
	Howard Bates . . . '52.

Clare turned the pages to "Ode to a Nightingale," placed the letters within and closed the book. She climbed up on her chair and standing on her tip-toes, made a space for the book on the top shelf.

Howard's secret would be safe with Clare for as long as she lived on the earth. The discovery of the letters would not take place until long after her death, and that discovery would be made by Margaret English, who would in turn burn the letters and would not use that particular example of Clare's loyalty and character for her biography.

Margaret would come to know Leota quite well in the future years; once she read the letters there would be no doubt in her mind that Leota McFarland had indeed been the daughter of Howard Bates. She would share the secret with no one.

Puttnam leaned his naked body against the window frame, pushing his hair out of his face with great sweeping movements and frowning at the morning sunshine coming in through the window. Margaret was just beginning to stir in the bed across the room. She rested on her elbow gently brushing the sleep from her eyes with her tousled auburn hair shadowing one side of her face.

"Good heavens, Putts, what are you doing standing butt naked in front of the open window? You know that old lady next door would have a heart attack if she looked up and saw you," Margaret said, startling Puttnam. She reached out to him in a beckoning motion with her arm as he turned to face her. "What time is it anyway?" she asked.

"It's almost seven . . . you better get movin' if you're hitting the road today. I'd rather you and Kerry not drive at night . . . it's hard to get a motel room after dark," Puttnam said, waving at someone out the window.

"Who are you waving at, Puttnam?" Margaret asked as she swung her legs over the side of the bed.

"That old lady next door. She's out hanging up her laundry. Come on over and give her a nice smile, Margaret," Puttnam said with a wink of mischief in his eyes. With two strides he was at Margaret's side, pulling her up and trying to make her go to the window naked.

"Puttnam, don't be silly, stop this," Margaret said in a loud whisper. Puttnam pulled her in front of the open window, and when she finally stopped squirming long enough to look outside, she saw that the old woman's yard next door was empty, and her clotheslines were bare.

"Now see, did you really think I would do something like that to that old woman? It's just another morning, Babe," he whispered in her ear.

She felt him becoming aroused as he held her close. She was so miffed at the stunt he'd just played on her that she reached behind her and began to tickle him along his waist.

"Now, now, Margaret, it was just a little joke. You know I can't stand that," Puttnam said as he backed away from her. He burst out with wild laughter as Margaret chased him around the room threatening to tickle him again. When Margaret caught him, she reached out and pulled him close to her instead. She led him back to bed where they made love as though there would never be another time. The bed springs cried out and the house shook from cellar to attic.

Clare was in the kitchen drinking coffee with Kerry. She still wore her bathrobe and slippers with her glasses balanced on the tip of her nose as she snapped the morning paper open. When the house began to rumble, Clare rolled her eyes towards the ceiling and tapped Kerry on the arm. "Sounds like Puttnam's up and off to a good start this morning," Clare remarked in sarcasm.

Kerry wasn't quite awake yet, so she hadn't noticed the house shaking at all. "Huh?" she asked without looking up from her coffee.

"Oh, never mind. I've a feeling that comment was wasted on you this morning," Clare said, continuing to read the newspaper.

"Well, what were we talking about?" Kerry asked in a daze. She reached out and pushed the newspaper down in the center to get Clare's attention.

"I was referring to Margaret and Puttnam's morning escapades. You, my dear, hadn't yet chose to grace the world with words. How's your coffee?" Clare asked, smiling at Kerry.

"Oh, it's fine. I'm gonna miss your coffee," Kerry said as she stirred a spoon around and around in her cup.

"Well, I suppose you're all packed and ready to go?" Clare inquired, folding the newspaper in half. "Those bastards are bombing over there again," Clare said in reference to Vietnam.

"Yep, I'm all packed," Kerry said, worrying about her brother, Raleigh.

Clare got up from the table and walked to the sink to pour herself another cup of coffee. "I have some letters that your great-grandmother, Kerry Pearl, wrote to Howard over the years. I think you should take them back to your grandmother. That obit you wrote for The Avalanche was excellent; perhaps you should take her a copy of that, or if you'd prefer, I'll send her one when the issue comes out next week," she said, as she leaned into the refrigerator for the cream.

"Oh, that'd be great . . . she'd like that," Kerry said.

"Oh good grief, Kerry . . . which is it? Do you want me to send her the obit or do you want me to make a copy for you to take today?" Clare said, pouring the cream into her coffee, replacing the carton into the refrigerator and kicking the door shut with her foot as she spun around to return to the table.

"I'm sorry, Clare. I guess I didn't answer you very well. I think it would be nice if you sent her the issue," Kerry replied just as Margaret came shuffling in to the kitchen. Clare could hear the shower running upstairs.

"All packed, Miss English?" Clare asked, taking her seat beside Kerry.

"I've been packed for days. Puttnam's going to load the car when he gets out of the shower. Kerry, you should bring your things downstairs before he gets out. Are you ready to hit the trail?" Margaret asked cheerfully as she reached for a mug from the kitchen cabinet.

"Yep, I'm ready. I'll go up and get my stuff," Kerry said, pushing her chair back from the table.

"Kerry, I'm going to put those letters and Howard's cracker tin by the front door so you won't forget them. Margaret, don't you let her forget Howard," Clare called out. Kerry smiled at Clare's good nature as she climbed the stairs to her room. She did not feel depressed about leaving until she passed the closed door to Howard's old room.

The first thing that Puttnam saw as he opened the trunk of the Pontiac was Howard's camp stool. His laughter burst out into the early morning stillness. He took the camp stool and placed it in the front seat so the two women would see it when they got in the car.

Kerry, Clare, and Margaret came out on the porch just as Puttnam was slamming the trunk lid closed. Kerry held the road atlas and wore clip-on sun shades over her glasses. Margaret carried the cracker tin and the small box of letters. Ernest came bounding up the sidewalk as they were preparing to get into the Pontiac. His head was tucked down towards the ground, and his briefcase was swinging by his side. He was totally oblivious to what was happening in front of the house, and he walked up to Clare, stopped in front of her, and shoved his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose.

A heat wave had taken over the normally mild weather for the past few days. They all stood by the Pontiac soaked with sweat. Ernest pointed to his briefcase and said, "Clare, we've got to get to work on these corrections. I just can't find the right angle for this story."

"You'll just have to wait a few minutes, Ernest. Can't you see that Margaret and Kerry are fixing to take off for Texas?" Clare said in response to his intrusion.

"Oh, hey, I didn't realize. So long, Foster . . . Margaret, you take care. Really, Clare, I do need to get to these things this morning. . . . I want to take the afternoon off," Ernest said impatiently.

"Oh, Ernest, for God's sake, just go inside and wait in the office," Clare bellowed.

Ernest turned on his heels, seemingly nonplussed by Clare's outburst of anger. He grinned from ear to ear in joy over Kerry Foster's departure. He was surprised with himself for forgetting that it was today; he'd been looking forward to this for months. He knew he'd been right all long; she just couldn't hack it in the North. He stopped on the front porch and turned to wave goodbye to them. Puttnam was leaning through the window on the driver's side kissing Margaret goodbye while Clare stood on the sidewalk with her arms folded across her chest. The engine started up with a roar, and as they pulled away from the curb with Kerry's pony-tail flying in the breeze out of the car window, she yelled out, "Hey, Hinkle, read a book someday," and she flipped him her middle finger. Ernest laughed out loud, trotted down the sidewalk flipping his middle finger back at her. He stopped when he reached the street, opend his hand, and gave her a full, heartfelt wave goodbye.

Kerry watched Clare and Ernest turn to go back inside as they rounded the corner. Puttnam still stood in the street looking after them. His arm seemed to be in a permanent waving position over his head.

When the Pontiac disappeared from sight, Puttnam jammed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and headed down to the main street to grab a beer. The sorrow in his blue eyes faded as the morning slipped by him, undisturbed by his laughter.

Kerry and Margaret had only been on the road for about ten minutes, both riding in silence with the hot breeze flowing into the car, when Kerry opened up the conversation.

"You know, Margaret, the only thing I regret about leaving is that I never did get to go into New York. It's such a shame to have been so close for these past few months and to have never gone in to take a look around," Kerry said, resting her elbow on the window frame.

"Hey, that's right. I forgot that Puttnam, Howard, and I, had planned to take you into the city sometime," Margaret said, turning into the main highway.

"Have ya spent much time in the city?" Kerry asked.

"I went to school in the city and I lived there for a couple of years after I got my degree. My apartment was just a block away from where Ty's is now. I've gone in a few times since I've been at The Avalanche to stay over at Ty's on weekends. He's usually not there very much," Margaret said.

"Well, I guess I'll never get to see it, the city, I mean . . . guess it'll just have to be one of those things I'll dream of getting to do someday. It's kind of weird to leave this neck of the woods without at least gettin' a glimpse of the lights," Kerry sighed as she pulled her elbow in and rolled the window up halfway.

"You've talked me into it," Margaret said pulling off onto the shoulder.

"Talked you into what? I didn't know I was trying," Kerry said in confusion.

"We're going to the city. I'll find a phone and we'll call Ty and see if we can stay at his place tonight," Margaret said turning to face Kerry and putting the car into park.

"You're crazy as hell . . . we can't go to the city . . . we've got to get on down to Dallas. We've only got three days, ya know. You've got plane reservations," Kerry said, surprised at Margaret's spontaneity.

"Reservations are changed day in and day out. How many chances will you and I get to do something like this? Pretty soon Puttnam and I will be lost to domesticity and you'll be off traveling the world in search of the world's greatest story. Fuck it all, we're going," Margaret said with a chuckle, slapping the steering wheel with her hand.

"Oh, I don't know . . . it's so crazy. Isn't it dangerous to take the car into the city? It just won't seem right without Howard; he wanted to show me Manhattan," Kerry said.

"Well, your wish has come true. We've got Howard sitting right in the backseat," Margaret said as she made a u-turn in the highway and headed back to the last service station they'd passed. She pulled up in front of the phone booth, and slamming the car into park, she turned to Kerry, "I know a garage just around the corner from Ty's. It's expensive but we can afford it. You've got that pocketbook filled with dreams . . . you might as well spend some of them," she said in her soft voice and reached out to touch Kerry's cheek before she opened the car door.

Kerry watched her talking on the phone in the booth for several minutes. She couldn't believe the two of them were really going to New York City and could barely contain herself when Margaret climbed back into the Pontiac.

"Well, it's all set. Ty's planning to go hear a friend of his play and has invited us along. He's excited that he'll get to show you around," Margaret said as she headed down the highway watching for the turn-off for 87.

The morning sky glistened above them in cloudless splendor. Margaret lit up a joint to celebrate as they flew down the highway doing seventy. The Catskill Mountains loomed around them and the trees shadowed the highway.

"There's lights beyond these woods, Margaret," Kerry cried out in happiness. She waved at every car they passed, grinning a broad, dimpled smile.

"You can bet your sweet ass there's lights out there," Margaret said, throwing her head back to laugh. "How you doing back there, Howard?" Margaret said, then promptly gave an impersonation of Howard's reply, "It's a fine day to visit the city, by God." Her auburn hair flew around her face as they drove along.

Kerry giggled at Margaret's impersonation of Howard, rolled her window down and screamed out into the air at the top of her lungs, "WA-HOO . . .!"

*****

"God, I can't believe we're here. Would ya look at all these people, all mashed up together and the buildings? Good Lord, how did they build these places so close together like that? I always thought it was a lot more spread out than this; it looks much bigger in pictures. I guess I'm used to seeing Houston or Dallas," Kerry babbled on as they drove along the Hudson Parkway.

Margaret took them straight to Battery Park, found a place to park the Pontiac, and took Kerry by the hand, leading her to a place in the park filled with benches. It was the height of the tourist season and the park was filled with families and screaming children.

"Look over yonder," Kerry cried out in amazement. "It's the Statue of Liberty. I never knew it was green . . . why is it green?" Kerry asked.

"Because it's made of copper; the elements cause it to do that," Margaret said, delighted with Kerry's reaction to the city.

	"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
	with conquering limbs astride from land to land;
	here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
	a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
	is the imprisoned lightening, and her name
	Mother of Exiles.
	From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome;
	her mild eyes command
	The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame:
	'Keep, ancient land, your stored pomp!' cries she with silent lips.
	'Give me your tired, your poor
	your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
	the wretched refuge of your teeming shore.
	Send these, the homeless, tempest tost,
	to me.
	I lift my lamp beside the golden door.'"

Kerry recited to Margaret as they stood looking out at the lady of the harbor.

"I can't believe you remember that whole sonnet, Kerry. Emma Lazarus would be proud," Margaret said. She was touched with Kerry's sentimental recital. "Let's go get a hot dog. It feels like the Fourth of July around here," she said, turning to walk over to the hot dog stand. The loud speaker above them was announcing the time for the next ferry over to Liberty Island, first in English, then in several different languages. The families surrounding them in the park spoke in many different tongues, and Kerry walked along beside Margaret in awe of the entire scene. She had hardly closed her mouth since they'd crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge.

It was getting late in the afternoon, and Margaret had promised to meet Ty at the apartment around four. She and Kerry rushed back to the Pontiac and drove to the parking garage, and strapping themselves with suitcases and Kerry's guitar, they headed over to Ty's apartment, which turned out to be on the sixth floor of the apartment building. The elevator was so small that Kerry got claustrophobic jammed into the small space with all their gear and a large, sweaty man with a beagle dog who proceeded to pee on Kerry's guitar case. The man merely cleared his throat and yanked the dog away from the guitar case while the beagle yelped as the tension on the leash yanked him off of the ground. The man got off on the third floor, and as the door closed behind him, Margaret and Kerry burst out in laughter over the incident.

Margaret had buzzed Ty from downstairs, and he was waiting in the doorway when they got off the elevator. The hallway was so dimly lit, Kerry felt like she was walking through an old movie set for a gangster film.

"You wouldn't believe what just happened to us, Ty. Some mutt just peed on my guitar case on the elevator," Kerry said as she stepped inside the apartment.

"So, you met our resident beagle, did ya?" Ty chuckled. "Just be glad it was your guitar case. How would you like to come in some morning sloshed to the gills and have that little mongrel pee on you? It has been known to happen more than once; you simply have to avoid boarding the elevator with him," Ty said, giving Margaret a hug and taking Kerry's guitar from her.

The apartment was a lot bigger than Kerry had imagined it. She poked her head into the kitchen and then the living room, taking a look around. Ty was a slender man of about five feet eleven with soft brown hair, blue eyes, and a heavy New York accent.

"Go ahead and make yourselves at home. I've got an appointment in about fifteen minutes. I'll leave the key to the front door downstairs and the key to the apartment on the kitchen counter. I'm gonna give ya my room tonight. I'll sleep out here on the sofa . . . that is, if any of us sleeps tonight," he said.

"Now, what's this fella's name we're going to hear tonight?" Kerry asked as Ty headed for the door. "Margaret here got so stoned in the car that she couldn't remember."

"Name's Phil Jesseps. I gave Ernest his last album to review in The Avalanche; jerk never did write a review. You'll like him, he does sort of a country-blues-folk type thing, writes his own stuff. Gotta go . . . see ya in a while, Tex, welcome to the city," Ty said, bussing her cheek and hurrying out the door.

"I'd better call Puttnam and tell him where we are. Want to talk to him or Clare?" Margaret said as she picked up the wall phone in the kitchen.

"No, thanks, I b'lieve I'll just sit here and listen to the city. It has so many sounds; it amazes me," Kerry said, sitting on the window seat in the living room. The windows were all open in the apartment and a hot breeze blew softly past her. The cacophonous roar of the street below drifted up to greet her ears. "Doesn't anyone have air-conditioning around here? How do they stand it?" Kerry asked, not really addressing anyone.

Margaret hung up the phone, walked quietly into the living room and replied, "What did you say, Kerry, I didn't hear you? I was still on the phone."

"Oh, nothin', not really anything at all. You know, I think I'll just sit right here and watch the lights come on in the streets," Kerry said in a sigh.

"Well, if you don't mind, I think I'll take a short nap . . . looks like it's going to be a long night. Puttnam said to tell you to live it up 'cuz there's only one first time in New York City. The next time you come it won't shine quite as bright," Margaret said gaily.

Kerry sat transfixed in the window until darkness overtook her. Her eyes had followed every movement in the street below, and she had watched the street lights come on. One of them on the corner had flickered briefly before coming to life. She turned to gaze into the darkened room, remembering that Fletcher had come to New York before leaving for London. She pondered the thought in sorrow that once again they had not shared one of life's greatest thrills; they had experienced it separately and she longed to know of his impressions, though in truth, even if they had come here together, they would still have had separate feelings.

*****

"Well, this is certainly a refreshing way to spend an evening, watching two hearts mend," Ty said, stirring his drink with a plastic swizzle stick and winking at Margaret. Kerry stood talking with Phil Jesseps at the bar of the dimly lit nightclub.

"What do you mean, watching two hearts mend?" Margaret asked softly. She sipped her red wine and looked around the room. It was a small nightclub. Phil Jesseps had just finished his last set and loud rock and roll was blasting from the speakers mounted above the small stage. The bartender was barking last call to the patrons.

"I heard from Ernest that Kerry's boyfriend dumped her. Even if I hadn't heard that I woulda noticed the sparkle in her eye tonight. She's usually so dead serious and somber. Phil's been having hard times lately; his wife left 'em back in April," Ty said, motioning to the waitress for another round of drinks. "I was thinking of asking Phil and a couple of others over for a nightcap at my place, a little going-away present for the two a ya," he added. A heavy cloud of smoke lingered in the emptying club, the lighting cast a red glow on the hardwood floors, and the sound of clinking glasses as the tables were cleared surrounded the table where Margaret and Ty sat, both occasionally sneaking glances at Kerry and Phil.

"I don't know. Kerry might suspect that we're trying to play matchmaker here, and I certainly never had that thought. Such matters are better left to take their own course," Margaret sighed. Her friendship with Ty had spanned many years, and she understood that he would no doubt do as he pleased regardless of her advice. "Who knows, Ty? Perhaps they have already made plans for the remainder of the evening," Margaret added with a chuckle.

"Yeah, well, I'm gonna ask 'em over anyway," Ty said, pushing his chair back from the table.

"Somehow, I knew you were going to say that, Ty Gallagher," Margaret mumbled, finishing off the last of her wine before starting in on the new glass Ty had ordered for her. Ty turned around as he was leaving the table and flashed her a smile. The contrast of his brown hair and aqua blue eyes was quite striking. Margaret recalled a time several years before when she and Ty had made an attempt at dating each other. Margaret had been the one to call it quits, claiming the relationship interfered with her work. It hadn't; it had actually been a welcome departure. It had simply been a time in her youth when courtship threatened her solitude and Margaret felt that a poet could not survive without that sacred wall of solitude between her and any lover. Ty had the uncanny ability of reading her innermost thoughts, which made him more appealing to her as a friend she could separate with distance, as she could not tolerate such a lack of privacy with a lover. She sipped her wine pensively, enjoying her thoughts alone and treasuring the love she now held for Puttnam, who could enter her solitude without disrupting the calm she found there. He had, in fact, become a part of her privacy.

Phil Jessups and Kerry were the same height. He was slender of frame, had dark brown, wavy hair, a straight, prominent nose, and wore rimless gold framed glasses shadowed by heavily expressive brows above them. He had a thick mustache, a pleasing smile, high cheekbones, and a squared chin. His hair, which was cut bluntly around his neckline and just to the top of his ears on the side, was full and disheveled on top as though he'd spent the evening running his fingers through it; it parted naturally on the side with a kick of a few stray strands standing on end in defiance. He was not exactly handsome, but he had a wonderful sense of humor and a pleasingly gentle disposition. The combination of these added to the intensity of his heavily lashed dark eyes, the complexity of his music, and his finely sculptured hands that made him most attractive.

He stood leaning against the bar with one sneaker-clad foot perched on the foot rail. He wore a tweed sports coat with a pale blue long-sleeved shirt underneath and a pair of loose fitting faded Levi's blue jeans. He held a shot of whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other as Kerry bent close to him in conversation. Ty was disappointed to find them discussing the trends in popular music as he extended his arms around the two of them, drawing them closer to his sides and knocking Kerry a little off-balance.

"Who wants to adjourn this gathering over to my place for a nightcap?" Ty asked, turning his head back and forth between Kerry and Phil. His blue eyes sparkled with gaity.

"I gotta get paid first, Ty. Might be a while before I can get over there," Phil said sharply, irritated with Ty for interrupting his conversations with Kerry, who chose to duck out from under Ty's arm and head back over to the table where Margaret still sat nursing her glass of wine. She glanced over her shoulder once to find the two men head to head in discussion.

She plopped herself down in the chair Ty had vacated next to Margaret, took a sip of Margaret's wine, and asked for a cigarette. "Boy, Ty's a little looped, don't cha think?" Kerry said, a little wobbly herself as she balanced the cigarette in her fingers. She was dressed in a faded jean skirt and white peasant blouse, blue opaque stockings, and her worn penny loafers. She'd started out the evening with her hair hanging loose to her waist, but as the evening had worn on and the wine had flowed, she had twisted the ends into a braid, and tied with a piece of red ribbon, the braid now draped over her shoulder, falling just below her small breast.

"I think I'm a bit looped myself, but I've had a wonderful time, just sitting here listening to the music. I wouldn't have traded this trip into the city for anything. Ty wants to have a few people over to celebrate our trip to Texas. I hope I can stay awake. The city, actually just this city, is so full of life, so full of energy and excitement. Do you feel it?" Margaret asked, seeking out Kerry's eyes in the smoky midnight air of the bar.

"What I think I feel is some sorta infatuation with the night, with Phil Jessep's music, and the city . . . maybe the city just makes that more intense," Kerry whispered, taking a drag from the cigarette and grinning at Margaret. She reached out to push Margaret's heavy auburn hair away from her eyes, just as her grandmother Leo used to push her own bangs out of her eyes.

"Infatuation is it? Looked a bit like lust to me," Margaret teased, the dimples in her ivory cheeks deepened with the flash of her smile. She wore the laced camisole Puttnam had given her beneath a soft, ruffled, sleeved cotton blouse tucked into a pair of corduroy jeans which she'd borrowed from Kerry. The wine had tinted her full lips to a light red.

"Lust, what's lust? It's been so long that I've forgotten what it feels like," Kerry replied, briefly relaxing her smile.

"Let's go see if we can jog your memory, my dear. If you have forgotten the feeling, then it's been too long since you've felt it, and it's high time you re-acquainted yourself with life's greatest distraction," Margaret said, grabbing Kerry's hand as they both stood up from the table.

Kerry unsteadily clutched Margaret's arm as they approached the bar. She whispered softly into Margaret's ear, "I've never been with anyone but Fletcher. I don't think I've got the hang of this lust 'bizness'. What would I say to this guy? I don't know him."

"Oh, that'll be the easy part, my dear. You'll find lots of things to talk about. You see, he doesn't know you either," Margaret answered, snatching her wine glass back from Kerry.

"Well, that's a helluv-an answer," Kerry slurred, as she and Margaret stopped just behind Ty and Phil at the bar.

Ty had a plan worked out for Margaret to go back to his place with him and one of the waitresses while Kerry stayed behind to wait for Phil to get paid. Kerry longed to see the clubs where her childhood hero, Carolyn Hester, had played, and Phil promised to take her by the clubs on the way over to Ty's.

Margaret reluctantly surrendered to the tug of her arm by Ty when he was ready to leave. She turned to wink at Kerry as she walked out the door.

Kerry felt so alone standing at the dark bar at closing time waiting for Phil to emerge from the office door behind the bar. The barroom was empty except for the bartender, who was busy washing down the bar. The smoke was clearing, and as she stared at the rows of alcohol lining the mirror in back of the bar, she thought of Wiley, of how he'd closed the bar where she'd played on Sunday nights, sweeping the broken glass from the floors, waking up old drunks and helping them to the door, changing the marquee outside, barking out at Kerry, who always sat at the end of the bar watching him work, to get off her ass and pack up a six for them to take back to the house. Those were known nights for Kerry, nights of no surprises, nights of endless conversation till dawn with Wiley and Lensel. She wondered if she would ever be that comfortable again, if she would ever be that open again, as she had felt so lost in the North, and though she was returning to Texas, she would not be going home and maturity was creeping up on her, building walls around her heart and extending caution into her actions.

Her thoughts were stilled and her heart began to pound as Phil Jesseps came out of the office carrying his guitar case. He waved goodbye to the club manager over his shoulder and nodded in Kerry's direction for her to follow him.

He shuffled the guitar case from between them as they stepped out onto the sidewalk, and taking her hand, they walked in silence along McDougal Street. It was early for the city and the streets were full of life. Kerry glanced occasionally to her side at Phil's profile and he in turn would risk a look in her direction.

Phil took her by a few clubs, most of which had changed their names since the early sixties when Dylan and Hester had haunted their stages; most no longer hosted folk music as entertainment. They rounded a corner on the narrow streets and Kerry's eye's lit up when she saw the marquee on Third Street for GERDE'S FOLK CITY. Kerry could hear the smooth sound of accoustic music coming from within; and she stopped to look at their calendar which was posted in the front window.

Phil broke their long silence. "You wanna go inside?" he asked.

"Yeah, let's go in," Kerry replied.

The doorman knew Phil and they slipped by him into the bar area, which was a narrow room that opened up to the concert hall in the rear of the club. It was much smaller than Kerry had ever imagined it to be and probably the most famous of all the folk music clubs in New York City. The walls were lined with framed photos of performers who'd played to quiet, attentive crowds over the years. She became enchanted with examining the photographs on the walls in the bar area while Phil leaned his guitar case against the bar and spoke softly with the bartender.

Kerry located Carolyn Hester's photograph on the wall. It looked as though it had been taken sometime in the early sixties, and Kerry smiled fondly at the picture thinking of her chance meeting with Hester and of her sister Ethel. Phil strolled up beside her and cautiously placed his arm lightly around her shoulder.

"You've heard her before?" he asked, biting down on his lower lip.

"She's from Texas. I met her once, oh, it was a long time ago. She sings like an angel; in fact, my sister, Ethel, would trade her last pint of vodka to be a-standin' in my shoes right now. We idolized Carolyn Hester. Ethel taught me how to play her songs on the guitar and we used to sing along with the records. This is really somethin' being in this place, must be a thousand ghosts in these walls, what stories they could tell," Kerry sighed, still staring at the photograph.

As they left Gerde's Folk City, Kerry reached out for Phil's hand. "How far is it back to Ty's place?" she asked, her voice startling Phil with its crisp Texas edge.

"It's several blocks from here. Think you can make it?" he asked, closing his hand around hers.

"Oh, it's not that I'm tired or anything, it's just that I've never been in a New York City cab before. I'd kinda like to give it a spin, might never get another chance," Kerry said in excitement as the warm summer breeze rustled the papers in the streets.

"You're kidding . . . you've never been in a cab before?" Phil asked, stopping on the sidewalk to face Kerry.

"Nope," she replied with a grin.

Phil hailed a cab for them, gave the driver Ty's address, and settled in next to Kerry with his guitar case resting between his knees and his arm secured around her shoulders. Kerry rested her head on his shoulder for a few moments, and feeling awkward she jerked her head up and gazed out at the crowded streets of Greenwich Village. Sensing her nervousness, Phil reached out to touch her hair and said softly, "Showing you around these streets has made all these joints seem new again. . . . I've admired your columns in The Avalanche for quite some time. It's funny that you're here now, that I'm meeting you when you're on your way back to Texas. I felt as if I'd come to know you from your writing. I'd been wanting to meet you."

"That's a wonderful thing to say. Your music touched my heart. I wish Ty had brought your album to me to review. Don't cha ever play Caffe Lena's?" Kerry asked, turning to face Phil.

He smiled back at her as the flash of street lamps lit their faces. "I'm booked up there next month," he said.

"Well, dadgummit it all, you make me wanna turn around and head right back to Saratoga Springs," Kerry said cheerfully, placing her head back on Phil's shoulder.

Phil laughed softly at her honesty. "As long as you're not goin' tonight," he mumbled.

"This it, Buddy?" the cab driver barked out as they pulled up in front of Ty's building.

Phil fished the right amount out of his pocket as Kerry stood on the sidewalk holding his guitar case. They stopped by the mailboxes just inside the entrance of the building, and Kerry buzzed Ty's apartment for him to open the front door to the building. Kerry was amused by Margaret's voice coming out of the speaker, and when Margaret barked, "Who's there?" Kerry light-heartedly replied, "Howard!" at which Margaret chuckled loudly and the front door jumped open a crack with a loud buzz.

When the elevator doors opened up in the lobby, Kerry stuck her head inside and looked around before entering. "What are you doing?" Phil asked.

"Makin' sure there's not any beagle dogs who pee on innocent guitar cases in this elevator," Kerry replied, stepping inside the empty elevator and extending her hand towards Phil, who shook his head and followed her in. Talk of someone named Howard and urinating beagle dogs had him somewhat confused.

Thoughts of confusion left him somewhere between the second and third floors as he chanced embracing Kerry and kissing her softly on the lips. Kerry could hear the soft echo of his voice in song in her mind as she returned his embrace before the elevator door opened, and to Kerry's embarrassment, the fat man with his beagle dog stood facing him. She jumped back from Phil's arms in alarm.

"Goin' down?" the man asked bluntly.

"Goin' up," Phil replied, reaching over to press the button for the door to close. When the door had closed and they were in motion again, Phil laughed out loud in his light easy voice. "How did you know we'd meet some goddamned beagle dog on the elevator?" he asked, bending down to grab his guitar.

"Some things are just downright inevitable," Kerry said, folding her hands in front of her and rolling back on her heels. The door opened on Ty's floor, and as they came out of the elevator, Margaret threw the door open to Ty's apartment to welcome them inside.

Ty greeted them with a glass of red wine for Kerry and a shot of whiskey for Phil. A Doc Watson album was playing on the stereo and a few people sat around Ty's living room smoking pot and listening to the music.

"Let's get some live music going around here," Ty said. He brought Kerry her guitar. She sat in the open window, away from the marijuana smoke which filled the living room. Margaret came to sit next to her while Phil unpacked his guitar from its case. Kerry cradled her guitar in her lap tuning the strings.

"What did you want to hear, Margaret?" Kerry asked nervously. She hadn't played for strangers in several months and Phil's music had been so beautiful that Kerry suffered from a loss of self-confidence.

"Play that traditional song 'I Never Will Marry' and I'll sing with you," Margaret replied in response to Kerry's uneasiness.

Phil pulled up a chair next to Kerry and Margaret. He reached over and plucked one of Kerry's guitar strings in order to tune his guitar to hers. "What key ya doin' this in?" he asked her while tuning up.

"D," Kerry replied, dropping her eyes to the floor. Margaret jabbed her with an elbow and Kerry began to play the song. Phil was not far behind in joining her on guitar, and Kerry watched in amazement as his fingers flew like lightning across the neck of his guitar. Margaret had an alto singing voice which blended nicely in harmony with Kerry's soprano. Kerry sang the first traditional verse alone and Margaret joined in on the chorus. The three of them made up verses to the rest of the song as they went along.

"One mornin' I rambled down by the sea shore
The wind it did whistle . . . the water did roar
I heard some fair maiden . . . give a pitiful cry
it sounded so lonely, that is swept off on high,"

Kerry sang on the first verse while Phil and Margaret joined in on the chorus:

". . . oh, I never will marry, I'll be no man's wife
I intend to live single . . . all the days of my life,"

Margaret took the second verse in her deep mellow voice:

"No, I won't change my name, dear . . . I like it just fine,
It's one of the few things . . . that I can call mine . . ."

Margaret sang, throwing her head back and giggling shyly when she'd finished. Kerry and Phil played an instrumental break after the chorus, then Phil took a verse:

"Love is an anchor . . . in rough rolling seas,
I dream of the harbor . . . where the waters are stilled."

His voice rang with a conversational tone which carried a low resonance that tingled Kerry's spine. Ty, the waitress from the nightclub, and the other couple at the party boisterously joined in on the next chorus, gaily toasting each other with their drinks in praise of being single. Kerry took the last verse:

"Though my life on the highway . . . leaves me weary and pale
it's the love of the music . . . keeps the wind in my sails,"

Kerry sang in her high, clear voice. They all sang the last chorus with gusto while Kerry was lost in the beauty of the guitar leads Phil played. She watched his hands fly across the strings in awe of the grace they held. He, in turn, had watched Kerry's hands and felt the same awe for her long, tapered fingers. He searched her voice for the heart within and found himself lost to its qualities, as it reached out to him with the warmth of outstretched arms or the kiss of warm lips upon his.

Kerry did not think of Fletcher when the song ended, and as she lifted her eyes to meet Phil's, she instead thought of Howard's words to her out of Clare's front porch. Sure enough, she did feel her heart waken and her memories of Fletcher stilled while her body began to stir. She was surprised, pleasantly so, by her response to this stranger whose eyes were filled with questions and mystery. They were, after all, both writers, both seekers and observers, and neither was blessed with the art of completing a successful one-night stand; they were too obsessed with searching hearts for reason. Kerry lifted her wine glass to her lips and drained the glass of its contents. She excused herself and walked to the kitchen for more wine while Phil played a bluesy instrumental piece on guitar.

Margaret followed her into the kitchen. "What's wrong, Kerry? You seemed so sad there for a moment," Margaret asked, filling their glasses with wine.

"Oh, I dunno, I just don't know how to be a date with someone I may never see again. I think I look too deeply into people's eyes. It makes it difficult to just have a passing acquaintance," Kerry whispered. "I mean, I just don't know how to lay down next to someone I've never touched before, someone who's never held me in the night. This is like some sort of maiden voyage and I'm lost at sea," she sighed, leaning against the kitchen counter, cradling her wine glass in both hands.

"Well, you just have to remember to keep all hands on deck," Margaret chuckled, reaching out to touch Kerry's cheek with warm fingertips.

"Oh, now that's a disgusting thing to say, Margaret. Haven't you ever had to face this fear of being with someone you don't know?" Kerry said with a grin.

Margaret replaced the cork in the wine bottle, and turning to face Kerry, she replied, "No, I haven't ever had to face this dilemma. I've always been too shy to reach out to strangers when they turn my head. I've probably missed a lot of nice things in life because of that."

"Well, then just why the hell am I standin' in here taking advice from you if you've never been through this torture before?" Kerry laughed.

"Because you love me and you want me to tell you he's very nice and give you some sort of consent. I can tell you he is nice and he is handsome and he writes wonderful lines and plays guitar beautifully, but I can't give you consent. That's your choice," Margaret said softly.

Kerry and Margaret heard the front door close in the apartment and Ty stuck his head in the kitchen to announce his departure, "I'm gonna run Barb over to her place. With any luck at all, I won't be back tonight but just in case I'm taking the keys. If I don't see 'ya in the morning, have a safe trip. Write me," he said, winking at the two women, and reaching out to touch Margaret's hand cupping her wine glass, he added, "I'm gonna miss the hell outta ya."

Kerry and Margaret went back to the living room with their wine. Kerry brought the whiskey from the kitchen and filled Phil's glass. The couple who had been sitting on Ty's couch had left while they were in the kitchen.

The three of them sat in the living room discussing Ty's wild disposition and Kerry and Margaret's work at The Avalanche. Conversation shifted to Phil and his life in the music scene in New York. Kerry loved to hear him speak; he had a very soothing soft voice in conversation.

They exchanged stories for an hour. Margaret got up to go to the kitchen at three a.m., hoping to find more wine. When Margaret had left the room, silence fell between Kerry and Phil. He stood up, stretched his arms and picked up his guitar leaning against the edge of the sofa. He walked across the room, opened his guitar case, and placed the guitar gently inside. As he snapped the latches closed on the case, he said, "Well, sure has been nice spending the evening with you. Guess I'd better hit the road for home."

"Do you have to go?" Kerry asked nervously. She sat cross-legged on the couch with her hands clasped firmly in her lap anchoring her skirt.

"No, not really. I'm used to greeting the morning light. I just live a block away." He gazed into Kerry's hazel eyes and sat down in the chair across the coffee table from her. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a cigarette, lit it with his lighter, blew the smoke out slowly, and rested his elbows on his knees. He ducked his head down slightly and toyed with his lighter in his hand while scratching his head with the hand that held the lit cigarette. "You sure do sing pretty," he said shyly.

"Thanks . . . ya don't do sa bad yourself," Kerry replied. She reached up and untied the ribbon in her hair, placing it on the coffee table, and ran her fingers through the ends of her hair, untangling the braid.

Phil watched on as she shook her head and her hair cascaded around her shoulders. "Um . . . you wanna make love?" Phil asked in a mumbled tone. He ducked his head back down and took a drag of his cigarette.

Kerry stopped untangling her hair, disbelieving what she thought she'd just heard him ask. "What?" she said softly. She looked across the table at Phil, watching him exhale the smoke from his cigarette.

"Um . . . do you wanna make love? I mean I know we just met but I feel like I've known you for a while through your writing. I sorta got this feeling that you wanted to," Phil said quietly.

"Yep," Kerry said vibrantly, unscrambling her legs and placing both feet on the floor, resting the palms of her hands on her knees.

"What does 'yep' mean?" Phil grinned, looking over to Kerry. Margaret was just about to come back into the living room when she overheard the conversation from the hallway. She rolled her blue eyes towards the ceiling and retreated back into the kitchen with her wine. She didn't want to intrude on their privacy, but Ty's apartment left her only the choice of the bathroom or the kitchen in which to stay out of the way. She certainly didn't want to be in the bedroom at this point.

"Yep, means I'd like to make love with you although I have to warn you, I feel awfully clumsy at this. I'm liable to be quite a disappointment," Kerry said in a breathy voice. The excitement within her made it difficult for her to catch her breath. Her heart pounded so loudly within her breast that she thought Phil could probably hear its beat across the table.

"I seriously doubt that you could disappoint me. I'm a clumsy fool myself," Phil said, standing up and reaching for Kerry's hand across the table.

They walked into the hallway hand in hand. Kerry noticed Margaret leaning against the counter in the kitchen as they passed by. Margaret was nursing her glass of wine and trying to avoid eye contact with Kerry, who stopped in the doorway.

"Good grief, Margaret, you're getting as bad as my sister Ethel. How much wine are you a-gonna drink tonight?" Kerry teased, shaking a finger at her friend and winking openly at her.

"I assume the sofa is up for grabs, now," Margaret replied, toasting Kerry and Phil with her wine glass as she waltzed past them heading for the living room.

The bedroom was lit only by the pale moonlight shining through the windows. Sounds drifted up from the streets as Phil lit a candle on Ty's dressing table. Kerry stood beside him with her hand resting softly on his sleeve as he withdrew the lighter from the flame of the candle.

"Smells like it might rain in a while," Phil said in a whisper to Kerry's ear, which put chill bumps on her arms.

"With all these smells in this city, how can you tell if one of them is rain on the way?" Kerry asked, laughing softly.

"Oh, I dunno . . . I guess when you grow up here, you learn to separate such things," Phil said, helping Kerry pull her blouse over her head. She draped the blouse on the back of a chair and returned to Phil, reaching out to unbutton his shirt with nimble fingers. He grasped one of her hands lightly and lifted it to his lips. "You are very lovely," he said softly, racing Kerry's heart.

They separated for a few moments to finish undressing, occasionally glancing at each other. Kerry giggled quietly when once they happened to look back at each other at the same time.

Kerry folded the comforter back on the queen-sized bed and slipped modestly between the cool sheets. Phil climbed in beside her and slipped his arm beneath her head drawing her towards him. They talked softly for a while, gently touching each other and acquainting themselves with the texture of each other's skin. Kerry felt awkward holding his slender body close to her own as she had only known the solid, muscular frame of Fletcher in her past. The newness of Phil's light touch upon her breasts, as skilled as his touch on the strings of his guitar, surprised and delighted her as she pressed her lips to the nape of his neck and ran her fingers over the fine hair on his chest. She met his lips with her own, taking comfort from the warmth of his breath and the feel of his moist tongue against her lips. The taste of his tongue was pleasingly tinged with whiskey and Kerry returned his kiss passionately.

Both were quiet lovers. Their lithe bodies fit together perfectly and the rhythm of their two bodies blended in harmony, yet Kerry became distracted in listening to Phil's breathing and the taste of his scented warmth to her lips. The sensations fill her heart as she moved beneath him, and even though she did not achieve her own orgasm, she sighed deeply when Phil met his and stroked the soft damp hair on the back of his head feeling her own sense of ecstasy within the rise and fall of his chest against her breasts and the pounding of his heart above her, alternating beats with her own. She felt his velvet warmth within her and held him tightly against her.

Phil lifted himself up on one elbow, gazed down into her eyes, gently pushed her hair back from her face and said, "I told you I was a clumsy fool. It was too soon for you, wasn't it?" he asked.

"No, I don't think it was too soon; it was just too new and I was enjoying just the warmth of your skin against mine. I think it takes a lot of practice for my body to take over and relax just to achieve an end," Kerry replied, looking up at Phil with her cheeks flushed to rose.

They held each other in the morning air still laced in darkness as rain began to fall outside. Phil fell asleep with his head buried in Kerry's long fragrant hair. Kerry turned to face him, watching his eyes in slumber, wondering if he was dreaming as she reached out to pull the sheet up over his shoulders.

She carefully pulled her hair from beneath his head, slipped from the bed, and walked over to the open window where the rain fell softly outside. She felt a bit lonely for Fletcher as she watched the rain. The street lights glowed down in the street with the rain creating an artificial rainbow for a halo around them.

Half awake, Phil reached out for Kerry, and finding her not there, he opened his eyes to see her silvered silhouette in the window. He admired her small waist, the soft curve of her hips, and her long, slender legs before speaking. His voice shattered the stillness of the early morning and Kerry jumped at the sound.

"Can't you sleep?" he asked, resting on his elbow.

"I just wanted to see the city streets in the rain. It's nice, sort of washes them clean, makes them new again," Kerry said, turning to face him.

"Well, maybe we should get in a little more practice over here," Phil said, smiling at Kerry and reaching a hand out for her to join him.

Kerry laughed softly and went back to bed. They made love again, this time with a mutual ending. Dawn found them asleep with their limbs entwined and their faces close together on the same pillow.

The last full blossoms of summer stood laughing along the Blue Ridge Parkway with their petals sheltered from the hot winds of August by cool green foliage as the miles slipped lazily beneath the fat treaded tires of the 1967 baby blue Pontiac, which seemed to float along on the haze above the black, two-laned asphalt on its first journey south. Kerry was behind the wheel with her snap-on shades clipped to her glasses while Margaret sat beside her, studying the road map. The wind roared in through the open windows of the car, snapping the edges of the road map in loud crackling noises. It was mid-morning and the shadows across the tree-lined parkway created the effects of late evening.

"So, you going to write him?" Margaret asked, folding the road map carefully and placing it in the glove compartment.

"Who?" Kerry asked, still lost to her own daydreams. "I promised Howard that I wouldn't write to Fletcher for a while. I'm still too hurt over the whole thing to write," Kerry said.

"I wasn't talking about Fletcher. I know you're not going to write to him. I was referring to Phil; he wouldn't have left his address with me when he left the apartment yesterday if he didn't want you to keep in touch," Margaret said, wiping off the lenses of her sunglasses with the tail of her blue denim work shirt.

"I dunno; I don't really feel like getting anything started up right now. Maybe," Kerry said.

"Well, I think he's a nice man. I wouldn't want him to think that I didn't give you that note with his address when you got up," Margaret said.

"He shouldn't have left like that. He should've woken me up before he left. It scared me when I woke up alone in such a strange place," Kerry said, juggling a can of Coke in her hand against the steering wheel. She had not been driving for very long and it still felt strange to her to be behind the wheel.

"Oh, for Chrissakes, Kerry, it was nine in the morning. He had an appointment with his booking agent. You're so hard on people sometimes. I think it was most kind of him not to wake you. You slept till noon, ya know, don't know why you would've been scared in broad daylight. Nope, I think you're just looking for excuses so you can stay all wrapped up in that little shell of yours," Margaret said, smiling a toothy smile at Kerry.

"Look who's talking about shells. Besides, it's comfortable in this shell. But just to put your mind at ease, I think he's a nice man, too. He made me feel warm again, so I'll write him. I'll tell him you gave me his note. I wouldn't want to be accused of being heartless," Kerry replied, with the beginnings of a smile crossing her face.

Margaret toyed with the cuffs of her shorts, watching the scenery pass by. "Virginia is lovely, isn't it? Takes my breath away. I'm glad we took the parkway instead of the interstate, but I guess we'd better try to reconnect with 81 somewhere near Roanoke if we're going to get in some good mileage today," Margaret said, over the roar of the wind.

"How far do you want to go today?" Kerry said.

"Oh, I don't know. I feel pretty good, thought we might make it to Nashville tonight," Margaret replied.

"That's nine hours away, Margaret, Puttnam told me he'd asked you not to travel at night. Sure you want to try to get that far?" Kerry asked, glancing sideways at Margaret.

"Yeah, I'm sure. I don't see Puttnam anywhere in this car, do you?" Margaret chuckled.

"Nope. B'lieve I'd have noticed if he was. Looks like it's just you and me riding this southern road," Kerry laughed.

"I think I'll name my firstborn, Virginia, for this beautiful state and the state of mind of Virginia Woolf, the sound of her name will always call forth remembrance," Margaret sighed.

"What if your firstborn's a boy?" Kerry giggled.

"Smart-ass. I'll name him Tennessee since that's the next state down the road. He'll be a playwright like Tennessee Williams," Margaret said huskily.

"You're as silly as hell this mornin'," Kerry said, shaking her head. "I bet by the time your firstborn comes along, you'll have forgotten all about these names you've cooked up for 'em," she added.

"Never underestimate the memory of a poet, my dear. What's the bet?" Margaret asked, trying to tame her auburn hair while the wind whipped it from her fingers.

"Oh, I dunno, it's gonna be your ankle biters running around with those names. You set the stakes," Kerry replied.

"I'll bet you one letter to Phil Jesseps," Margaret said, reaching over to tap Kerry on the shoulder.

"Oh, come on, would you forget about that?" Kerry winced.

"One letter, or no bet," Margaret said, leaning back in the seat and propping her feet up on the dashboard.

"One letter it is," Kerry sighed in defeat.

"So nice of you to agree on the stakes you won't have too long to remember. Puttnam and I want to have a little one this year," Margaret said, with a grin.

"This year? What about your job? What about Puttnam's job, the one he doesn't have yet?" Kerry asked, in surprise.

"It won't affect my job. Puttnam's going to raise the children; we've agreed. He's the one who wants to have children the most and I wouldn't make a good full-time parent . . . loud noises bother me," Margaret replied.

"But, how will you support an entire family on your salary?" Kerry asked.

"Oh, we've got it worked out. I have this small inheritance from my grandmother. Puttnam wants to use it to open a music club in Houston, nothing extravagant, just a small club with acoustic and blues acts," Margaret said. "He says it should go over well there, especially since he'll have your support at the newspaper," she chuckled.

"It's a good thing you're a poet. You'd never make it in the secretarial pool; you dream too much," Kerry said, clamping her hands firmly on the steering wheel with her can of Coke resting between her knees.

"We all dream, even secretaries dream, even if it's just about who they're going to jump in the sack with at the next company picnic. Right now the only thing this poet dreams of is food. Let's get the hell off this scenic route, back to civilization. Let us weave to and fro midst the crowded lanes of lonesome dreamers on the interstate and find a diner where we can indulge ourselves in the splendor of a juicy hamburger," Margaret said, waving her hands dramatically in the air.

"You've gone mad out here, Margaret," Kerry laughed, searching for road signs along the side of the road.

"I have never strapped myself in to the binding chains of sanity; sanity is boring," Margaret said, with a soft laugh.

"Yep, it sure is, but then I don't think anyone's really sane . . . they just play the game to avoid a padded cell somewhere. You and I will never have to play that game," Kerry said.

The two women traveled across the South trading philosophies, exchanging laughter, and solving every problem in the universe, from urban traffic to world hunger. Margaret's smoking habit was passed on to Kerry during their trip. They drank wine late into the night, smoking cigarettes and watching all-night movies in their motel room.

Neither of them would ever forget their trip across the country. It would grow in their hearts like a child's memory of the first trip to the circus. They shared their last motel room in Texarkana. Margaret bought a bottle of champagne which they drank out of the plastic cups provided by the motel for water. They toasted their travels with laughter, Margaret in her soft deep chuckle and Kerry in her light airy giggles. No mile was wasted between them, as they both had traveled those miles with their eyes wide open to the world.

Kerry's heart began to sink as she turned into the parking lot of Dallas Love Field. The temperature was up over a hundred degrees that day in Dallas. The two struggled with Margaret's suitcases as they worked their way through the crowds to the ticket counter.

Kerry stayed with Margaret until her plane was called over the loudspeakers. They sat in silence at that gate, Kerry pondering her long drive to Floydada and Margaret dreaming about her new life in Houston.

Kerry waved goodbye to Margaret as she filed into the corridor with other passengers. Margaret turned to wink at her with a tear resting on her cheek.

"So long . . . have a safe flight," Kerry called after her.

"See you in Houston," Margaret replied over her shoulder as she disappeared into the hallway leading to the plane.

Kerry walked back to the Pontiac brushing the tears from her face. She placed Howard's cracker tin in the front seat beside her, pretending he was her traveling companion, and drove west on Highway 287 picking up the smaller Highway 70 in the town of Vernon. It took her seven hours to get to Floydada; the flat land between was a harsh contrast from the terrain she had passed through with Margaret. The mesas stood alone on the prairies in undisturbed solitude; they were the towers Kerry had written about in her song for Howard. The colors at sunset cast an eerie glow across the flatland; Kerry pulled over to the side of the road to watch the highway turn into a ribbon of gold in the distance before her as the sun went down between the mesas. When twilight was upon her, she climbed back into the driver's seat of the Pontiac, tapped lightly on the top of the cracker tin, and whispered, "Bet you'll be glad to get home after all these years."

Kerry checked into the motel where her grandmother Leota had stayed during the funeral. She grabbed a quick grilled cheese sandwich at the diner down the street and fell asleep in her room almost before her head hit the pillow while the television blasted the ten o'clock local news from Amarillo and the bedsprings creaked loudly from the activities of the couple occupying the room next to hers.

She did not dream that night; she had not dreamed since her night with Phil Jesseps. Her sleep was peaceful without the haunting dreams of Fletcher, and when she awoke in the morning at six, she felt rested and calm. Traveling without Margaret had been lonely the day before, but today she was glad for her solitude.

She got directions from the desk clerk at the motel and drove to a nearby florist where she purchased a bouquet of flowers consisting of daisies, carnations, and dandelions. After parking the Pontiac at the cemetery, she took the bouquet and Howard's cracker tin and strolled in the still hot silence of the graveyard in search of Kerry Pearl's grave. The grass had only just begun to cover the grave and the weeds were tall around her as she stood beside the headstone. She freed the flowers in the bouquet from the green tissue paper surrounding them and dropped the flowers one by one across the grave. She opened the cracker tin, studied its gritty contents for only a moment in curiosity, and began to sprinkle Howard's ashes across the grave. They landed with a soft thud on the dry earth. Kerry got down on her knees and covered them gently with soil and flowers. With the stem of a carnation she wrote the name BATES across the foot of the grave in the dirt. She cried no tears, she spoke no words, because Howard was home at last. The wind would catch his name and scatter its letters across the graves of Max and Kerry Pearl Schurgood.

She drove all the way to Austin that day, arriving in the city just before six in the evening. The familiar streets made her eyes light up with joy as she drove to Leota's house. Her body was so tired that she could hardly move from beneath the steering wheel after she'd parked in the driveway. Leota did not care much for air-conditioning and her windows were wide open. Kerry could hear the sound of the evening news on the television, and as she approached the front screen door, it mingled with the voice of Thomas Evans as he asked for another glass of iced tea. Kerry pounded on the screen door with her brow dripping with perspiration from the heat.

Thomas came to the door. He opened it widely to let Kerry in and placed his fingers on his lips.

"Who's a-knocking on that door now, Thomas?" Leota called from the kitchen.

"Why, I think you'd best come see for yourself, Leota," Thomas replied, giving Kerry a hug.

Leota pranced out of the kitchen carrying Thomas' glass of iced tea in her hand. Her mouth fell open when she saw Kerry. She set the tea down on the coffee table and ran to hug her.

"My stars, would you look at this? My girl's home at last . . . why didn't you let me know you were comin'? How'd you get here?" Leota asked, holding Kerry out in front of her with tears brimming in her green eyes.

"I drove here, Leo, all the way from New York. I dropped my friend Margaret off in Dallas. She flew on down to Houston," Kerry said, with a laugh. Thomas stood back watching the two of them embrace with a smile on his lips.

"Well, that is quite a surprise. I didn't know you even knew how to drive, and for you to come home today, today of all days," Leota said.

"Happy birthday, Leo," Kerry said, as her eyes met Leota's and the voices of home rang in her memories.