winning here and losing there and running neck-and-neck someplace else. We don't know any things like that, and we don't want to know. It don't matter none to us ... we're too old, and we seen too much of it, and it's hurt us too bad, and we know it just don't matter at all."

"Ben ... I got to crying today. About May and George and the children. I was crying, and thinking about that day...."

"So did I think. None of us ever forgets for a minute. For a second." His lips thinned. "That's part of why we do what we do. Rest is, we just want to be left alone."

They sat in silence for a moment, his arm around her shoulders, his other hand holding hers. Then he released her hand and thumped his own on the table, grinned at her and said, "Life goes on, now! Reckon I'll go down and get that cat—or go walking—or just go soak in some sun. What time are the folks showing up for—"

Jetsound slammed across the peaceful valley.

Ben got up and walked as fast as he could to the door, picked up the rifle leaning there, cocked it. Looking toward town he saw that Tom Pace had been on his way home, and the sound had caught him between trees. Tom hesitated, then turned and dived toward the tree he'd just left—because a rifle was there.

Ben saw men pour out of the doorways of the two habitable buildings on Main Street; they stuck close to the walls, under the porches, and they picked up rifles.

Motionless, hidden, in shadows, under trees, in doorways, behind knotholes, they waited. To see if the plane would buzz the town again.

It did.

It came down low over Main Street while the thunders of its first pass still echoed and rolled. Frightening birds out of trees, driving a hare frantically along the creekbank, blotting out the murmur of the creek and the tree-sounds, driving away peace.

They saw the pilot peering through the plexiglass, down at the buildings ... he was past the town in four winks; but in two they knew that he was curious, and would probably come back for a third look.

He circled wide off over the end of the valley, a vertical bank that brought a blinding flash of sunlight from one wing, and he came back.

Ben leveled his rifle and centered the nose of the plane in his sights. For some reason—probably 

 Prev. P 16/19 next