Earthly Possessions

Eleven

The Dorothea Whitman Home was a mansion on a hill, landscaped, framed by trees. "Sheesh!" Jake said, peering at it through the windshield. We had parked at the gateposts, which were topped with spongy stone balls. It was six o'clock in the morning, and both of us were half asleep and chilled through. Also, we hadn't had breakfast yet. We could have, but Jake had spent the time shaving instead. He had shaved without water and his face had a new, raw, inadequate look. I thought we'd have done much better going to a Toddle House. And there wasn't a sign of Mindy Callender.

"Now, here is what she told me," said Jake. "Said, *Park at the gatepost and I'll come on down.' Well, ain't this a gatepost? Ain't it?"

"Looks like one to me," I said. "Maybe she meant the front door."

"Why would she call the front door a gatepost?"

"But if she has to make a fast getaway, see. Then we ought to be parked a mite nearer."

"I would stay by the gatepost," I said. "Well, I tell you this much," said Jake. "Five minutes more and I'm going. I can think of lots of places Td rather be than here." High on the hill, the great scrolled door of the mansion opened and someone stepped out. From this far away she looked like one of those little figures in a weather house. Her stomach was circular, flower-shaped, preceding the rest of her by a good two feet. She wore a straw hat and a pink dress, and carried a suitcase and a bundle of something dark.

While she was walking toward us she never once looked in our direction, but picked her way carefully with her head lowered so that all we saw was the crown of her hat. "Is that Mindy?" I asked Jake.

"Naw, it's the warden."

"Well, I don't know what Mindy looks like."

"It's Mindy, all right," he said. "She never did dress like she had any common sense."

For she was close enough now so that we could see what she was wearing: a print sundress not meant for anyone so pregnant, with straps as thin as the joint lines on a Barbie Doll's shoulders. Her hat was ringed with little embroidered hearts. The bundle in her arms turned out to be a cat. "Gripes, a cat!" Jake said.

Mindy raised her head then and looked at us. She had a childish round face with a pointed chin, and white-blond hair that streamed to her waist. Some ten feet from the car she stopped and set her suitcase down, not smiling. "Well,"

Jake sighed, and he opened the door and got out. "Hey there, Mindy," he called.

"Who's that you got with you."

"Hmm?"

"Who's that lady, Jake?"

"Oh, why, she's just going to ride with us a spell," Jake said. "Get on in, now."

"How'm I going to get in with the doors chained shut?"

"Use my side. Move it, Mindy, they'll be after you."

"Oh, everybody's still sleeping," Mindy said. She came around the car, lugging the suitcase stiff-armed and just barely hanging on to her cat. Jake drew away from her, but without actually stepping back.

"Now I am not going to drive no cat about," he told her.

"But he's mine."

"Look here, Mindy."

"He belongs to me." Jake rubbed his nose. "Okay, okay," he said. "Make sure he stays in your lap, though." He opened the back door, shoved her suitcase in, and stood aside to let her follow it.

Mindy stayed where she was. "Aren't I going to sit in the front?" she asked him.

"How come?"

"We been separated all these months and now you want to ask how come?" She stood on tiptoe suddenly and twined her free arm around his neck. She really was a tiny girl. The biggest thing about her was that stomach, which Jake carefully wasn't looking at. "We got a lot of plans to make," she said, and kissed the corner of his mouth. Then she slid into the car, bounced a little, and turned to me. 'Tin Mindy Callender," she told me.

"I'm Charlotte Emory."

"Pee-ew! Where'd this old car come from? Smells like a dustbin." Maybe it did, but all I could smell was her perfume: sugared strawberries. As soon as Jake had settled in the driver's seat, he rolled down the window a crack. "Won't you be cold?" I asked Mindy.

"Oh, no. I've got the hot flashes."

"The what?"

"Been hot as Hades the whole seven months. Can't stand a blanket, won't wear sweaters. It only happens with some rare few women." She cast a sudden look at Jake, who didn't say anything.

He started the car and set off down the road. "What's that funny noise?" Mindy asked him.

"What noise?"

"Jake, I just don't know about this car. Where'd you say you got it?"

"Off a friend," Jake said.

"Some friend." She settled back, hugging the cat. This cat was a marbled brown color, with glaring yellow eyes and chipped ears. It was plain, he didn't like to be held. First he tried to struggle free and then he gave up, but not really: his eyes were squared, the tip of his tail twitched, and every time Mindy patted him he would shrug her off. "I believe that Plymouth would rather he hadn't come," said Mindy.

Jake said, "Who?"

"Plymouth. My cat."

"Well, I go along with Plymouth," said Jake. "What you want a cat for? You never used to like them."

"At the Home there's a pet for everyone," Mindy told him. "They say it's therapeutic.'

"Therapeutic."

"Some of the girls have dogs. Some have birds."

"Well, I don't hold with having birds," said Jake.

"We make things, too; that's therapeutic. And we have a lot of activities, speeches and lessons and things. Last night we had Child Care; that's why I couldn't meet you. We were going to give a bath to a rubber doll and I didn't want to miss it." Jake slammed on the brakes, though the highway was deserted.

He turned and stared at Mindy. "Watch the road, Jake," Mindy said.

"Now, let me get this straight," said Jake. "You couldn't meet us last evening because you had to give a doll a bath."

"Well, there was a lot of other stuff too," Mindy said.

"Mindy Callender, do you know where we spent last night? Sleeping out. Shut in a car in the middle of the woods, and with no hot flashes to warm us, neither."

"Well, who is us'?" Mindy asked.

"Me and Charlotte, who'd you think?" She gave me a closer look. Deep down, her eyes were speckled. "I didn't quite catch it," she said. "

"Where is it you come from?"

"Clarion," said Jake.

"She been riding all this way with you?"

"She's, ah, going as far as Florida," Jake told her. "Then shell be saying goodbye."

"Florida! Oh, Jake, is that where we're headed?" And she rose up to hug him, covering my lap with a billow of skirts, pulling Jake sideways. The car swerved. The cat made a leap and landed in the back seat, shaking various parts of himself and looking insulted.

"Watch it, will you," Jake said. "Well, I figure we might as well be warm the next two months, no harm in that. Besides, Oliver's in Florida."

"Oh, Oliver, Oliver, always Oliver," said Mindy, picking brown hairs off her dress.

Now that the cat was gone I could see that she also had a purse: shiny white vinyl, heart-shaped, like something a child would carry to Sunday School. She caught me looking at it and spun it by its strap. "Like it?" she asked me. "It's new."

"It's very nice," I said.

"I thought it would match my other stuff." She raised a thin, knobby wrist, with a bracelet dangling heart-shaped charms in all different colors and sizes.

The pink stone in her ring was heart-shaped too, and so was the print of her dress. "Hearts are my sign" Mindy said. "What's yours?"

"Well, I don't really have a sign," I told her.

"You married, Charlotte?"

"Of course she's married, leave off of her," Jake said.

"I was fust asking."

"She don't want all your busybody questions."

"Look here, Jake, we were just having this ordinary conversation about my purse and all, and the only thing I asked her was-"

"You got any money in that purse?"

Jake said.

"Huh? I don't know. A little, I guess."

"How much?"

"Well, talk about busybody!"

"See, I left home without my wallet," Jake said.

"How could you do a thing like that?"

"Never mind how, it just happened that way. How much you got?" Mindy opened her purse and riffled through it. "Ten, fifteen… sixteen dollars and some cents, it looks like."

"That ain't very much," said Jake.

"Well, la-de-da to you, mister." We passed a truckful of crated chickens.

There was a silence. Then Jake said, "They let you carry money around that place?"

"Sure."

"But what would you use it for?"

"Oh, like if we want to walk into town or something. Buy us a soda or shampoo or movie magazine."

"You just walk on into town," said Jake. "Any old time you want"

"What's wrong with that?"

I took tight hold of the door handle and waited. But Jake didn't say a thing, not a word. He merely drove on, with his face as still as a stone.

In the restroom of the diner where we stopped for breakfast, Mindy had me put her hair into ponytails. "I was scared to do it myself," she said, "and my roommate was asleep."

"What were you scared of?" I asked.

"Why, you know I shouldn't raise my arms that high. I might strangle the baby on its cord."

"But-"

"How do I look?" she asked me.

She looked about twelve years old, younger than my daughter even, with her two perky ponytails and her blue, trusting gaze. In the mirror beside her I was suddenly dimmed: an older woman, flat-haired, wearing a raincoat that had clearly been slept in. "Don't you have no lipstick?" Mindy said.

"Lipstick? No."

"Well, maybe you'd like to borrow mine." She handed it to me, already unrolled-something pink and fruity-smelling. I handed it back.

"Thanks anyway," I told her.

"Come on, you could use a little color."

"No, really, I-"

"You want me to do it?"

"No. Please."

"But listen, at the Home I made up everybody. I mean a lot of those girls just never had learned what to do with theirselves, you know? Keep still a minute."

"Stop!" I said.

She looked startled. She took a step backward, still holding the lipstick.

"Oh, I'm sorry," I told her.

"That's all right," she said. She rolled and capped the lipstick in silence, and dropped it into her purse.

"Well!" she said. But when she looked up again I saw that her face was white and stricken, smaller somehow than before.

"Please don't feel bad," I told her. "It's just that I didn't want to be put in someone else's looks. I mean," I said, trying to make a joke of it, "what if I got stuck that way? Like crossing your eyes; didn't your mother ever warn you about that?" Mindy said, "Oh, Charlotte, do you think he's at all glad to see me?"

"Of course he is," I said.

Driving was slower now because we had to stop so often. First of all, the cat kept getting carsick. From time to time he would give this low moan, and then Jake would curse and brake and swerve to the side of the road. The trouble was, the cat wouldn't come out of the car then. We'd all be calling, "Plymouth?

Here, Plymouth;" but he only crouched down beneath the seat, and we'd have to sit helpless and listen to his little choking sounds. This is therapeutic?" Jake asked.

Then Mindy had so many foot cramps. Every time one hit her, we'd have to stop and let her walk it off. We stood leaning against the car, watching her hobble through some field littered with flowers and beer bottles. It was truly warm now, and so bright I had to squint. Mindy looked like a little sunlit robot.

"It's easing!" she would call back. "I feel it starting to ease up some!"

"Now's the kind of time I wish I smoked," Jake said.

"I can feel those muscles slacking!" Jake's jacket ballooned in the wind. He slouched beside me. Our elbows touched. We were like two parents exercising a child in the park. "You had children," he said suddenly, as if reading my mind.

I nodded.

"Ever get foot cramps?"

"Well, no."

"It's all in her head," he told me.

"Oh, I doubt that." I could feel him watching me. I looked away. Then he asked, "How many?"

"What?"

"How many children."

"Two," I said.

"Your husband like kids?"

"Well, of course."

"What's he do?"

"Do?"

"Do for a living, Charlotte, Where's your mind at?"

"Oh. He's a… well, he's a preacher,"

I said.

Jake whistled.

"You're putting me on," he told me.

"No." Mindy wandered back to us, trailing strands of flowers. "They're gone now," she said. But Jake only looked at her blankly, as if wondering what it was that was supposed to have gone.

Along about noontime, we passed a billboard showing a clump of plastic oranges, welcoming us to Florida. "Whoopee!" Mindy said. "Now, how much further?"

"Forever," Jake told her. "Ain't you ever seen a U. S. map? We are driving down its great old long big toe."

"But I'm tired of riding. Can't we stop at a motel or something? Miss Bohannon says long drives aren't good for us."

"Who's Miss Bohannon?"

"She's a nurse, she teaches Child Care." Jake frowned and speeded up. "Well, another thing," he said. "I don't understand why they have this Child Care business."

"To tell how to care for a child, silly."

"Seems kind of pointless if you ask me," Jake said. "You know most of them girls will just put their kids out for adoption."

"Sure, but they're not the ones that take the course," said Mindy. They take Good Grooming."

"Ah," Jake said. He drove along a while. Some thought worked through his forehead. He took his foot off the gas pedal. "Wait," he said.

"Are you telling me you're going to keep this kid?"

"Well, naturally."

"Now, listen. I don't think that's such a very good idea."

"Why… Jake? You're not saying we should just…" Mindy turned and looked at me. I stared hard at a passing Shell station.

"What you getting at, Mindy?" Jake asked. "Are you trying to plan on us marrying, or something?"

"Of course I plan on it," Mindy said. "Otherwise what did you drive all this way for? You must have cared a little bit, to come so far."

"Well, Fm only human," said Jake. "I mean, even when they hijack a plane, they let the kids go free. Even when they're fighting for lifeboats, they put the kids in first."

"Lifeboats? What? What're you talking about?"

"I come to get a baby out of prison," Jake said. "Hal Some prison. Seems you told me a bald-faced lie,"

"It wasn't a lie! How can you say that? Now listen here, Jake Simms," Mindy said. "You're not backing out of this. You come all this way, take me out of the Home, transport me to another state-and now you're going to change your mind? No sir. We're going to get married and have a little baby, and the prettiest home you ever heard of."

"Not ever in a million, billion years," said Jake.

"Why, we could stay right here in Florida, if you like. Get a little place near Oliver, wouldn't that be nice? Really the climate would be better for the children," she said, turning to me. I mean, they won't get so many colds and all, we won't have to buy all those snowsuits. It's cheaper. And I've always been a warm-weather person. make the house real summery, lots of bright colors, straw chairs, those ruffly white curtains with the tie-backs, you know the kind, what do you call them?"

"Priscillas," I said.

"Priscillas. That's what well have. Priscillas. Everywhere but the living room; I think there we'll have fiberglass drapes of some type. Gold, you know, or maybe avocado. Which would you rather, Jake. Gold?" Jake stared straight ahead of him.

"Avocado?" The scenery slid past us; used boat lots, real estate offices, praline shops. Everything looked untidy. If this was Florida I didn't like it at all. I didn't even like the way the sun shone here, so flat and white, burdening the tinny roofs of the roadside stands.

"Jake, I got this cramp again," Mindy said in a small voice.

Jake didn't so much as change expression. He just pulled over and stopped the car. From beneath the back seat, the cat gave a yowl. Jake got out and the two of us slid after him. We were on the edge of a shambling little town called Pariesto, according to the signs. Mindy had nowhere to walk but the littered gravel at the side of the road-white-hot, mica-laden, dazzling to the eyes. She stalked off anyway, very fast, with her hands joined under her stomach.

"Now, don't you dare say I should go after her," Jake told me.

I was surprised. "Me?" I said.

"Isn't that what women do? 'Oh, go after her, Jake. Go see if you can help.'"

"But-I haven't opened my mouth," I said.

"You were about to."

"I was not!" Mindy stumbled in her little sandals. She went down on one knee.

"Go after her," Jake told me.

I ran and caught up with her. By the time I arrived she was on her feet again. "Mindy?" I said. "Are you all right?"

"Oh, yes," she said, brushing at her skirt. She kept her eyes lowered; her lashes were long and white, clumsily tipped with little blotches of mascara. "I'm supposed to just point my heels," she said. "That's what helps, the cramps. If I just, like, jab my heels in the gravel, here…" She stopped and looked up at me. "Charlotte," she said, "it wasn't a lie. Can't you explain to him? He doesn't understand. I mean, it really is a prison if you got no place else to go to. Isn't it?"

"Well, naturally," I said. "You want to turn around now?"

"I just don't have any choice; hell have to go through with this," she said, letting me lead her back. "It's not any picnic for me, you know. Long about the fifth or sixth month, why, I got so mad and so tired of waiting for him I believe I just stopped loving him. I really believe I might not love him any more. But what else is there for me to do?" We walked along the strip of gravel, wading through cellophane bags and candy wrappers.

Jake had got back in the car to wait for us, I saw. He was sitting in the passenger seat, with his head bowed low and buried in his hands.

From Pariesto on, Mindy did the driving. She said it helped her foot cramps.

I sat in my usual place, and Jake moved to the middle. Although it was hot now, he kept his jacket on and his collar up, as if for protection. The wind ruffled his hair into those damp curls and turned my face stiff and salty. Only Mindy, working on her own peculiar little thermostat, seemed comfortable. She kept her elbows out and her chin up, and drove at a fast, smooth pace that gradually raised her spirits. Before long, she was humming. Then she started singing. She sang "Love Will Keep Us Together." When her accelerator foot began beating in rhythm, Jake said, "You want to cool it a little?" But the rest of the time he let her do as she pleased. He slid down in his seat, with his arms folded across his chest and his head tilted back. I would have said he was asleep, if I hadn't looked closely and seen the gray slits of his eyes.

Late in the afternoon, in a town I didn't catch the name of, we stopped at Woolworth's. Mindy wanted to get a glass of milk at the soda fountain. She said she had to have at least a quart a day. "Yeah, well," Jake said, "but the way I figure it, we're not but a couple of hours from Perth. Can't you hold out till then?"

"It's not for me, it's for the baby," Mindy told him. "If it was for me I could hold out forever. I hate milk. You coming?" She stepped. from the car in a swirl of pink, and we followed her into Woolworth's. This was an old Woolworth's, with creaky dark floors and a smell of popcorn. There were counters full of Spray-Net, eyelash curlers, harlequin reading glasses, and mustard- seed pendants-objects I thought had vanished long ago. Mindy got waylaid by the salt-and-pepper set shaped like kerosene lanterns, and stopped to buy it. I expected Jake to hurry her but he didn't. He just stood there with his hands in his pockets, his face-slack and lifeless, gazing at a Batman comic on the floor.

Then we went on to the soda fountain where Mindy ordered her milk. "Ugh," she said when it came. "It's so white. It's so thick." The waitress took offense and flounced off, slapping things with a dishrag as she went. "Well, this is for your sake, El-ton," Mindy said, and she patted her stomach and started drinking, one sip at a time. "We're naming him for Elton John," she told me. Jake studied a picture of a gray milkshake and a pink plastic hot dog from the forties. I flipped through someone's cast-off newspaper hunting "Peanuts," but even after I found it it didn't make me laugh.

When we got back to the street, we were blinded for a moment. Everything was so hot and bright, and a herd of strange, long-legged motorcycles built like praying mantises was glittering past. Jake wiped his face on his sleeve. "Next time, remind me to get my conditioned car," he told me. "This one here will be a hundred and fifty degrees inside." As if he had sounded some alarm, Mindy cried, "Oh, no!" and started running.

"What'd I say?" Jake asked me.

I shrugged.

Mindy was tugging at the car doors-first the chained ones, then the others.

She fell down out of sight. When we came around to the driver's side she was on the floor in back, reaching under both seats, patting the dusty carpeting.

"Plymouth? Plymouth?"

"We left the windows open," I told Jake.

"You left yours open," she said, straightening up. A smudge of dirt crossed the bridge of her nose, and her hair was fraying out of its ponytails. "I closed mine up tight as a bubble, do you think I'd forget a thing like that?"

"Oh, Mindy, I'm sorry," I said, "but I'm certain we can-"

"Shoot, he'd have died of heat anyway if we'd have shut all the windows," Jake said. "You can't blame Charlotte here."

"I blame you both. I blame the two of you. You didn't neither one of you want him along anyhow. Plymouth? Oh, what'll he do now? In this town he's never laid eyes on before? Why, he might not even have caught on he was going anyplace, buried beneath the seat like he was. What must he be thinking now, coming out the window to find everything's different?"

"Why, Mindy," Jake said, "I just know hell be all-"

"You don't know a blasted thing," she told him.

"Now I want you and her to go hunt that cat and be quick about it, you hear?"

She slapped the pavement with her sandal. A pale blue vein stood out along her neck. Jake's mouth dropped. "Miudy?" he said. "What's got into you?" But she wouldn't answer.

"You've changed, Mindy. You've turned real mean and hard, seems like."

"Yes, maybe I have," she said, "But it's you that helped cause it, Jake Simms. I didn't go and do it all alone." They looked at each other. They were so still I could hear them breathing.

Then Jake said, "Well, the… cat, I guess I better hunt the cat. You coming, Charlotte?"

"All right," I said.

We started up the sidewalk, leaving Mindy behind in case the cat returned on his own. We stooped to peer under each parked car for Plymouth's lantern eyes.

"Does he know his name, do you think?" I asked Jake.

"Everything's gathering in on me," he said.

I took his arm. We passed a few more cars, but didn't glance under them. We came to the end of the block and stood still, gazing into a travel agent's window to our left. "Now there is a sport I just never have tried," he said finally. He was looking at a skiing poster. "You ever skied?"

"Not even once," I said. "I always wanted to, though."

"You reckon it's dangerous?"

"Well, a little, maybe."

"I got a feeling I'd be good at it," he told me. "I know that sounds conceited."

"Maybe we should have gone north instead of south," I said.

"Someplace cold."

"Someplace with clear, cold air."

"Well," Jake said, sighing.

"Well." Then I had a thought. "Listen," I said. "What if someone's picked Plymouth up?"

"Picked him up?"

"I mean, he could be miles away from here by now.

He could be half a county over."

"That's so," Jake said. "Why, sure. He could be anywhere! And glad to get there, too. It's no use hunting further." We separated and walked back to the car. Mindy was leaning against the door. At this distance she seemed older, less hopeful. She was staring at her feet, and from the way she slumped I guessed she had one of those late-pregnancy backaches. I don't think she had really expected that we would find her cat. She barely raised her eyes when we came up.

"Now, Mindy-" Jake began, but she shooed his words away wearily and straightened, hoisting her belly with both hands. "We might as well get going," she said.

We settled in our familiar places. Mine seemed worn to the shape of my body by now. I knew exactly where to put my feet so as not to tip over the cup of melted ice on the floor. Jake laid his arm across the back of Mindy's seat.

"That cat wasn't happy with us anyhow," he told her. This way is better. Don't you think?" Mindy didn't answer. She set her jaw, frowned straight ahead, and went into reverse. We hit a car parked a full space behind-us. Jake removed his arm. "All right, you're doing just fine there," he said. "Now you want to go forward, I believe. Give this guy here a signal to let him know you're coming."

Mindy unrolled her window and trailed one hand out like a limp, used ribbon. The car drifted into the street, went through a yellow light, proceeded several blocks in an aimless haphazard manner. Jake shifted his weight. "Uh, Mindy-" he said.

We arrived at a striped sawhorse, set square across the street. Two policemen guarded it with their arms folded, their backs to us. They had a beefy, stubborn way of standing. Holsters and radios and official-looking cases dangled from their belts, all the same grainy black leather. "Lord God," said Jake. At the last minute, Mindy stopped the car. "Go around," Jake told her.

"Back up. Run them down. Make a U-turn."

"Huh?" said Mindy.

"You can't do that," I said to Jake, "it's a one-way street. Sit still and enjoy the parade."

"Parade?" A white-and-gold drum major pranced across our windshield, pronging the air with his silver baton.

Brassy music bleated behind him. "Oh, parade," said Jake.

Mindy started crying. The two of us looked over at her.

"Mindy?" Jake said.

"It's all arranged against me!" she wafted. "Nothing will ever come out like I have dreamed! Well never get to Florida!" She bent her head to the steering wheel, both arms circling it. She cried out loud, like a child. But we could only hear her during pauses in "King of the Road," which was bearing down on us from someplace to the west. "Mindy, what is it?" Jake asked her. "You feel all right?" She shook her head.

"You don't have pains or nothing."

"I have pains all over," she said. Her voice was muffled, hollow as a bell. "I'm only young! I can't do this all by myself!" Jake reached over and cut off the ignition. The car shuddered and died.

"King of the Road" had won, it seemed. It sailed above everything. The band strutted by us, high school kids, skinny little Adam's-appled boys and sweaty girls. But Mindy's head was still on the steering wheel, and Jake was turned in my direction as if he expected something from me. He said, "Charlotte, can't you help me here?" I never know what's needed. I gave him a Kleenex from my purse.

"Well, thanks a lot," he said.

I said, "Or maybe a… do you want me to go get some water?" He looked at Mindy, who only went on crying. I don't know how I could have brought water anyway; the street was packed by now. Cars had drawn up all around us and behind us. People were getting out and sitting on their fenders in their shirtsleeves.

A man came by with a whole fat tree of balloons. "Would you like a balloon?" I asked Mindy.

"Charlotte, for mercy's sake," Jake said. "Can't you do no better than that?"

"Well, I was only… Selinda would have," I said. But that wasn't the truth. Selinda wouldn't have liked a balloon either. The truth was that I was grieving for Jake and Mindy both, and I didn't know who I felt sadder for. I hate a situation where you can't say dearly that one person's right and one is wrong. I was cowardly I chose to watch the parade. A team of Clydesdales clopped past with a beer wagon, and my eyes followed their billowing feet in a long restful journey of their own. The Clydesdales left great beehives of manure. I enjoyed noticing that. There are times when these little details can draw you on like spirals up a mountain, leading you miles.

Next came a flank of majorettes, and a flowered lady who tripped alongside them with a vanity case. "Watch those feet, girls!" she kept calling. "Turd ahead!" The majorettes might have been eyeless under their visored hats, but they sidestepped neatly when necessary. The soldiers were braver and slogged straight through. A little black boy marched beside them, carrying a grownup's crutch like a rifle and swinging one rubbery arm, laughing and rolling his eyes at his friends. I have never in all my life seen anybody more delighted with himself.

"Now, where'd that Kleenex walk off to?" Jake asked me.

"Here's another," I said.

"Mindy? You ought to sit up and take notice, Mindy; they got a big float with a beauty queen on it. Top Touch sausage meat. I've eaten Top Touch before."

Mindy hiccuped but didn't raise her head. Jake looked over at me. "Well, what have I got to do?" lie asked.

"Um…"

"You're supposed to know all this junk, what have I got to do?"

"Oh, it's Founder's Day," I said.

"Huh?" I pointed to a tiny old lady with long blond hair, wearing a miniskirt, carrying a poster. FOUNDER'S DAY it said, above four men's pencil-drawn faces with much-erased mouths. ONE HUNDRED TEARS OF PROGRESS.

"Well, I knew it wasn't no standard holiday," said Jake. "Lord, look at her hairdo. Reckon it's real?"

"It couldn't be. It's a wig. Saran or something," I said.

"Dynel, maybe. That's what my sister's got, Dynel." Mindy sat up, wiping her face with the backs of her hands. Muddy gray tear tracks ran down her cheeks and her mascara had turned her raccoon-eyed. "Mindy!" Jake said. "Want a Lifesaver?

Want some chewing gum?" She shook her head.

"I believe we got some Fritos left."

"I don't want your old Fritos, Jake Simms. I want to lie down and die."

"Oh, now, don't say that. Look, I'm trying my best here. Want me to do a magic trick? I do magic tricks," he told me. "I bet you didn't know that." believe you mentioned it," I said, watching a float of chubby men in fezzes.

"I'm right good, aren't I, Mindy? Tell her." Mindy mumbled something to the steering wheel.

"What' s that, Mindy? Speak up, I can't hear you." Mindy tilted her chin.

"He makes things disappear," she told the windshield.

"Bight," said Jake.

"He makes things vanish into nowhere. He undoes tilings. Houdini is his biggest hero."

"Now at the moment I don't have no equipment," said Jake. "But bearing that in mind, Mindy, you just name any trick your heart desires and I will see what I can do. I mean that. Remember how you like magic?" She didn't answer. He looked over at me. His face was damp from the heat of the car, and his hair was coiled and springy. "She used to like magic a lot," he told me.

"Well, I don't any more!" Mindy said.

"I don't know what's got into her." The fezzes were at long last gone and here came another high school band. Everybody clapped and waved. But then there must have been a hitch of some kind, somewhere up front. They came to a halt, still playing, then finished their tune and fell silent and stood staring straight ahead. You could see the little pulses in their temples. You could see the silver chain linking a musician to his piccolo, giving me a sudden comical picture of the accident that must once have happened to make them think of this precaution. I laughed-the loudest sound on the street. For the clapping had stopped by now. There was some understanding between players and audience; each pretended the other wasn't there. Well finally the parade resumed and so did the clapping, and the audience was filled with admiration all over again as if by appointment. The players marched on. Their legs flashed as steadily and evenly as scissors. I was sorry not to have them to watch any more.

"I would think a drum would be a right good instrument," Jake told me, gazing after them.

"You just like whatever booms and damages," said Mindy.

We looked at her.

"Oh! I was going to do my billfold trick," Jake said, "No, thank you."

"Now, where's my… shoot, my billfold."

"Never mind," said Mindy.

"Lend me your billfold, Charlotte," Jake said.

I pulled it out of my purse and gave it to him, meanwhile watching a floatful of white-wigged men signing a paper that was scorched around the edges.

"Look close, now," Jake said to Mindy. "Maybe you'll figure how I do it, finally. Here we have a empty billfold, see? Observe there ain't no tricks to this, no hidden pockets, secret compartments…" I heard him riffling through it, flicking the plastic windows, snapping up some flap. There was a sudden silence.

"Why," he said. "Why, what have we here. Charlotte? Charlotte, what is this?" I took my eyes away from the parade and looked at what he held out. "It's a traveler's check," I told him.

"A traveler's check! Looky there, Mindy, a hundred-dollar traveler's check!

We're rich! Why didn't you tell me?" he asked. "What kind of sneaky way is that to act?"

"I don't know. I didn't think," I said.

"Didn't think? Carrying around a hundred dollars and didn't think?'

' "Well, I've had it for so long, you see. I mean I had it for just one purpose, I forgot it could be used for anything else,"

"What in hell purpose was that?" Jake asked.

"Why, for traveling," I said.

"Charlotte," Jake told me, "we are traveling."

"Oh," I said.