Alas, Babylon Part 2

Mark spoke very quietly. "You'll take care of Helen?"

"Certainly."

"I won't say be a good father to the children. They love you and they think you're swell and you couldn't be anything but a good father to them. But I will say this, be kind to Helen. She's-" Mark was having trouble with his voice.

Randy tried to help him out. "She's a wonderful, beautiful gal, and you don't have to worry. Anyway, don't sound so final. You're not dead yet."

"She's-more," Mark said. "She's my right arm. We've been married fourteen years and about half that time I've been up in the air or out of the country and I've never once worried about Helen. And she never had to worry about me. In fourteen years I never slept with another woman. I never even kissed another woman, not really, not even when I had duty in Tokyo or Manila or Hong Kong, and she was half a world away. She was all the woman I ever needed. She was like this: Back when I was a captain and we were moving from rented apartment to rented apartment every year or so, I got a terrific offer from Boeing. She knew what I wanted. I didn't have to tell her. She said, 'I want you to stay in SAC. I think you should. I think you ought to be a general and you're going to be a general.' There's an old saying that anyone can make colonel on his own, but it takes a wife to make a general. I guess there wasn't quite enough time, but had there been time, she would've had her star."

Randy saw Lieutenant General Heyc.o.c.k walk from the Operations building toward the plane. "It's time, Mark," he said. They got out of the car and walked quickly toward the gate, and Mark swung an arm around Randy's shoulders. "What I mean is, she has tremendous energy and courage. If you let her, she'll give you the same kind of loyalty she gave me. Let her, Randy. She's all woman and that's what she's made for."

"Stop worrying," Randy said. He didn't quite understand and he didn't know what else to say.

Heyc.o.c.k's aide fidgeted at the end of the ramp. "Everybody's in, Colonel," he said. "The General was looking for you at lunch.

The General wondered what happened to you. He was most anxious-"

"I'll see the General as soon as we're airborne," Mark said sharply.

The aide retreated two steps up the ramp, then waited stubbornly.

They shook hands. Mark said, "Better try to catch a nap this evening."

"I will. When I get home shall I call Helen and tell her you're on the way?"

"No. Not much use. This aircraft cruises at five-fifty. By the time you get back to Fort Repose, we'll be west of the Mississippi." He glanced down at his bare knees. "Looks like I'll have to change into a real uniform on the aircraft. I'd look awfully funny in Omaha."

"So long, Mark."

Without raising his head, Mark said, "Goodbye, Randy," turned away, and climbed the ramp.

Randy walked away from the transport, got into his car, and drove slowly through the base. At the main gate he surrendered his visitor's pa.s.s. He turned into a lonely lane outside the base, near the village of Pinecastle, and stopped the car in a spot shielded by cabbage palms. When he was sure no one watched, and no car approached from either direction, he leaned his head on the wheel. He swallowed a sob and closed his eyes to forbid the tears.

He heard wind rustle the palms, and the chirp of cardinals in the brush. He became aware that the clock on the dash, blurred, was staring at him. The clock said he had just time to make the bank before closing, if he pushed hard and had luck getting through Orlando traffic. He started the engine, backed out of the lane into the highway, and let the car run. He knew he should not have spared time for tears, and would not, ever again.

Chapter 3.

Edgar Quisenberry, president of the bank, never lost sight of his position and responsibilities as sole representative of the national financial community in Fort Repose. A monolithic structure of Indiana limestone built by his father in 1920, the bank stood like a gray fortress at the corner of Yulee and St. Johns. First National had weathered the collapse of the 1926 land boom, had been unshaken by the market crash of 'twenty-nine and the depression that followed. "The only person who ever succeeded in closing First National," Edgar often boasted, "was Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 'thirty-three, and he had to shut down every other bank in the country to do it. It'll never happen again, because we'll never have another s...o...b.. like him."

Edgar, at forty-five, had grown to look something like his bank, squat, solid, and forbidding. He was the only man in Fort Repose who always wore a vest, and he never wore sports clothes, even on the golf links. Each year, when he attended the branch Federal Reserve convention in Atlanta, two new suits were tailored, one double-breasted blue, one pin-stripe gray, both designed to minimize, or at least dignify, what he called "my corporation."

First National employed two vice presidents, a cashier, an a.s.sistant cashier, and four tellers, but it was a one-man bank. You could put it in at any window, but before you took it out on loan, or cashed an out-of-town check, you had to see Edgar. All Edgar's loans were based on Character, and Character was based on cash balance, worth of unenc.u.mbered real estate, ownership of bonds, and blue-chip stocks. Since Edgar was the only person in town who could, and did, maintain a mental index of all these variables, he considered himself the sole accurate judge of Character. It was said you could gauge a grove owner's crop by the way Edgar greeted him on Yulee Street. If Edgar shook his hand and chatted, then the man had just received a big price for his fruit. If Edgar spoke, cracked his face, and waved, the man was reasonably prosperous. If Edgar nodded but did not speak, nemotodes were in the citrus roots. If Edgar didn't see him, his grove had been destroyed in a freeze.

When Randolph Bragg burst into the bank at four minutes to three, Edgar pretended not to see him. His antipathy for Randy was more deeply rooted than if he had been a bankrupt. Bending over a desk as if examining a trust doc.u.ment, Edgar watched Randy scribble his name on the back of a check, smile at Mrs. Estes, the senior teller, and skid the check through the window. Randy's manner, dress, and att.i.tude all seemed an affront. Randy had no respect for inst.i.tutions, persons, or even money. He would come bouncing in like this, at the last minute, and demand service as casually as if The Bank were a soda fountain. He was a lazy, insolent odd-ball, with dangerous political ideas, who never made any effort to invest or save. Twice in the past few years he had overdrawn his account. People called the Braggs "old family." Well, so were the Minorcans old family-older, the descendants of Mediterranean islanders who had settled on the coast centuries ago. The Minorcans were shiftless no-goods and the Braggs no better. Edgar disliked Randy for all these, and another, secret reason.

Edgar saw Mrs. Estes open her cash drawer, hesitate, and speak to Randy. He saw Randy shrug. Mrs. Estes stepped out of the cage and Edgar knew she was going to ask him to okay the check. When she reached his side he purposely ignored her for a moment, to let Randy know that The Bank considered him of little importance. Mrs. Estes said, "Will you initial this, please, Mr. Quisenberry?"

Edgar held the check in both hands and at a distance, examining it through the bottom lens of his bifocals, as if it smelled of forgery. Five thousand, signed by Mark Bragg. If Randy irritated Edgar, Mark infuriated him. Mark Bragg invariably and openly called him by his school nickname, Fisheye. He was glad that Mark was in the Air Force and rarely in town. "Ask that young man to come here," he told Mrs. Estes. Perhaps now he would have the opportunity to repay Judge Bragg for the humiliation of the poker game.

Five years before, Edgar had been invited to sit in the regular Sat.u.r.day night pot-limit game at the St. Johns Country Club in San Marco, county seat and largest town of Timucuan. He had sat opposite Judge Bragg, a spare, straight, older man. Except for a small checking account, the Judge banked and did his business in Orlando and Tallaha.s.see, so Edgar knew him hardly at all.

Edgar prided himself on his cagey poker. The idea was to win, wasn't it? Judge Bragg played an open, swashbuckling game, as if he enjoyed it. On occasion he bluffed, Edgar deduced, but he seemed to be lucky so it was difficult to tell whether he was bluffing or not. In the third hour a big pot came along-more than a thousand dollars. Edgar had opened with three aces and not bettered with his two-card draw, and the Judge had also drawn two cards. After the draw, Edgar bet a hundred and the men who had taken only one card dropped out and that left it up to the judge. The judge promptly raised the size of the pot. Edgar hesitated, looked into the Judge's amused dark eyes, and folded. As the Judge embraced and drew in the hill of chips, Edgar reached across the table and exposed his hand-three sevens and nothing else. Judge Bragg had said, very quietly, "Don't ever touch my cards again, you son of a b.i.t.c.h. If you do, I'll break a chair over your head."

The five others in the game had waited for Edgar to do or say something, but Edgar only tried to laugh it off At midnight, the Judge cashed in his chips and said, "See you all next Sat.u.r.day night-if this tub of rancid lard isn't here. He's a bore and a boor and he forgets to ante." That was the first and last time Edgar played at the St. Johns Club. He had never forgotten it.

Randy walked into the bank's office enclosure, wondering why Edgar wanted to see him. Edgar knew perfectly well that Mark's check was okay. "What's the trouble, Edgar?" he asked.

"Isn't it a little late to bring in a big check like this, and ask us for cash?"

The clock said 3:04. "It wasn't late when I came in," Randy said. He noticed other customers still in the bank-Eli Blaustein, who owned Tropical Clothing; Pete Hernandez, Rita's older brother and manager of Ajax Super-Market; Jerry Kling, from the Standard station; Florence Wechek, with her Western Union checks and receipts. It was their custom to hurry to the bank just at three.

"It's all right for business people to make deposits after closing hour, but I think we ought to have more time to handle an item like this," Edgar said.

Randy noticed that Florence, finished at the teller's window, had wandered within hearing. Florence didn't miss much. "How much time do you need to cash a check for five thousand?" he asked. He was sure his face was reddening. He told himself he must not lose his temper.

"That isn't the point," Edgar said. '"The point is that your brother doesn't have an account here."

"You don't doubt that my brother's check is good, do you?" Randy was relieved to find that his voice, instead of rising, sounded lower and steadier.

"Now, I didn't say that. But it wouldn't be good banking procedure for me to hand you five thousand dollars and wait four or five days for it to clear all the way from Omaha."

"I endorsed it, didn't I?" Randy loosened his shoulders and flexed his toes and fingers and looked intently at Edgar's face. It would squash, like a potato.

"I doubt that your account would cover it."

Randy's account stood below four hundred. This had been little to worry about, with his citrus checks due on the first of the year. Now, considering Mark's urgency, it was dangerously low. He decided to probe Edgar's weakness. He said, "Penny-wise, pound-foolish, that's you, Edgar. You could have been in on a very good thing. Give me back the check. I'll cash it in San Marco or Orlando in the morning."

Edgar realized he might have made an error. It was most unusual for anyone to want five thousand in cash. It indicated some sort of a quick, profitable deal. He should have found out why the cash was needed. "Now, let's not be in a rush," he said. Randy held out his hand. "Give me the check."

"Well, if I knew exactly why you had to have all this cash in such a hurry I might be able to make an exception to banking rules."

"Come on. I don't have time to waste."

Edgar's pale, protruding eyes shifted to Florence, frankly listening, and Eli Blaustein hovering nearby, interested. "Come into my office, Randolph," he said.

After Randy had the cash, in hundreds, twenties and tens, he said, "Now I'll tell you why I wanted it, Edgar. Mark asked me to make a bet for him."

"Oh, the races!" Edgar said. "I very rarely play the races, but I know Mark wouldn't be risking that much money unless he had a sure thing. Running in Miami, tomorrow, I suppose?"

"No. Not the races. Mark is simply betting that checks won't be worth anything, very shortly, but cash will. Good afternoon, Fish-eye." He left the office and sauntered across the lobby. As Mrs. Estes unlocked the bank door she squeezed his arm and whispered, "Good for you!"

Edgar rocked in his chair, furious. It wasn't a reason. It was a riddle. He repeated Randy's words. They made no sense at all, unless Mark expected some big cataclysm, like all the banks closing, and of course that was ridiculous. Whatever happened, the country's financial structure was sound. Edgar reached a conclusion. He had been tricked and bluffed again. The Braggs were scoundrels, all of them.

Randy's first stop was Ajax Super-Market. It really wasn't a supermarket, as it claimed. Fort Repose's population was 3,422, according to the State Census, and this included Pistolville and the Negro district. The Chamber of Commerce claimed five thousand, but the Chamber admitted counting the winter residents of Riverside Inn, and people who technically were outside the town limits, like those who lived on River Road. So Fort Repose had not attracted the big chain stores. Still, Ajax imitated the supermarkets, inasmuch as you wheeled an aluminum cart around and served yourself, and Ajax sold the same brands at about the same prices.

Randy hated grocery shopping. None of the elaborate surveys, and studies in depth of the buying habits of Americans had a cla.s.sification for Randolph Bragg. Usually he grabbed a cart and sprinted for the meat counter, where he dropped a written order. Then he raced up and down the aisles, s.n.a.t.c.hing cans and bottles and boxes and cartons from shelves and freezers apparently at random, running down small children and b.u.mping old ladies and apologizing, until his final lap brought him past the meat counter again. The butchers had learned to give his order priority, for if his meat wasn't cut he didn't stop, simply made a violent U-turn and barreled off for the door. When the checker rang up his bill Randy looked at his watch. His record for a full basket was three minutes and forty-six seconds, portal to portal.

But on this day it was entirely different, because of the length of his list to which he had been adding, the quant.i.ties, and the Friday afternoon shopping rush. After he'd filled three carts, and the meat order had already been carried to the car, he was still only halfway down the list, but physically and emotionally exhausted. His toes were mashed, and he had been shoved, buffeted, b.u.t.ted in the ribs, and rammed in the groin. His legs trembled, his hands shook, and a tic had developed in his left eye. Waiting in the check-out line, maneuvering two topheavy carts before and one behind, he cursed man's scientific devilishness in inventing H-bombs and super-markets, cursed Mark, and swore he would rather starve than endure this again.

At last he reached the counter. Pete Hernandez, acting as checker, gaped. "Good G.o.d, Randy!" he said. "What're you going to do, feed a regiment?" Until the year before, Pete had always called him "Mr. Bragg," but after Randy's first date with Pete's sister their relationship naturally had changed.

"Mark's wife and children are coming to stay with me a while," he explained.

"What's she got-a football team?"

"Kids eat a lot," Randy said. Pete was skinny, chicken breasted, his chin undershot and his nails dirty, completely unlike Rita except for black eyes and olive skin.

Pete began to play the cash register with two fingers while the car boy, awed, filled the big sacks. Randy was aware that seven or eight women, lined up behind him, counted his purchases, fascinated. He heard one whisper, "Fifteen cans of coffee-fifteen!" The line grew, and he was conscious of a steady, complaining murmur. Unaccountably, he felt guilty. He felt that he ought to face these women and shout, "All of you! All of you buy everything you can!" It wouldn't do any good. They would be certain he was mad.

Pete pulled down the total and announced it loudly: "Three hundred and fourteen dollars and eighty cents, Randy! Gees, that's our record!"

From habit, Randy looked at his watch. One hour and six minutes. That, too, was a record. He paid in cash, grabbed an armful of bags, nodded for Pete's car boy to follow, and fled.

He stopped at Bill Cullen's bar, short-order grill, package store, and fish camp, just outside the town limits. There was s.p.a.ce for two cases in the front seat, so he'd lay in his whisky supply. Bill and his wife, a strawhaired woman usually groggy and thick-tongued with spiked wine, operated all this business in a tworoom shack joined to a covered wharf, its pilings leaning and roof askew, in a cove on the Timucuan. The odors of fried eggs, dead minnows, gasoline and kerosene fumes, decaying gar and catfish heads, stale beer and spilt wine oozed across land and water.

Ordinarily, Randy bought his bourbon two or three bottles at a time. On this day, he bought a case and a half, cleaning out Bill's supply of his brand. He recalled that Helen, when she drank at all, preferred Scotch. He bought six fifths of Scotch.

Bill, inquisitive, said, "Planning a big barbecue or party or something, Randy? You figure you'll try politics again?"

Randy found it almost impossible to lie. His father had beaten him only once in his life, when he was ten, but it had been a truly terrible beating. He had lied, and the Judge had gone upstairs and returned with his heaviest razor strop. He had grabbed Randy by the neck and bent him across the billiard table, and implanted the virtue of truth through the seat of his pants, and on bare hide, until he screamed in terror and pain. Then Randy was ordered to his room, supperless and in disgrace. Hours later, the Judge knocked and came in and gently turned him over in the bed. The Judge spoke quietly. Lying was the worst crime, the indispensable accomplice of all others, and would always bring the worst punishment. "I can forgive anything except a lie." Randy believed him, and while he could no longer remember the lie he had told, he never forgot the punishment. Unconsciously, his right hand rubbed his b.u.t.tocks as he thought up an answer for Bill Cullen.

"I'm having visitors," Randy said, "and Christmas is coming." This was the truth, if not the whole truth. He couldn't risk saying more to Bill. Bill's nickname was Bigmouth and his lying not limited to the size of yesterday's catch. Bigmouth Bill could spark a panic.

When he turned into the driveway, Randy saw Malachai Henry using a scuffle hoe in the camellia beds screening the garage. "Malachai!" he called. "How about helping me get this stuff into the house?"

Malachai hurried over. His eyes, widening, took in the cartons, bags, and cases filling the trunk and piled on the seats. "All this going up to your apartment, sir?"

"No. It goes into the kitchen and utility room. Mrs. Bragg and the children are flying in from Omaha tomorrow."

As they unloaded, Randy considered the Henrys. They were a special problem. They were black and they were poor but in many ways closer to him than any family in Fort Repose. They owned their own land and ran their own lives, but in a sense they were his wards. They could not be abandoned or the truth withheld from them. He couldn't explain Mark's warning to Missouri. She wouldn't understand. If he told Preacher, all Preacher would do was lift up his face, raise his arms, and intone, "Hallelujah! The Lord's will be done!" If he told Two-Tone, Two-Tone would consider it an excuse to get drunk and stay that way. But he could, with confidence, tell Malachai.

With the meat packed in the freezer and everything else stacked in cupboards and closets Randy said, "Come on up to my office, Malachai, and I'll give you your money." He paid Malachai twenty-five dollars a week for twenty hours. Malachai picked his own days to mow, rake, fertilize, and trim, days when he had no fruit picking, repairing, or better paying yard jobs elsewhere. Randy knew he was never short-timed, and Malachai knew he could always count on that twenty-five a week.

Malachai's face was expressionless, but Randy sensed his apprehension. Malachai never before had been asked upstairs to receive his pay. In the office, Randy dropped into the high backed, leather-covered swivel chair that had come from his father's chambers. Malachai stood, uncertain. "Sit down," Randy said. Malachai picked the least comfortable straight chair and sat down, not presuming to lean back.

Randy brought out his wallet and looked up at the portrait of his bald-headed grandfather, Woodrow Wilson's diplomat, with the saying for which he was known stamped in faded gold on the discolored frame: "Small nations, when treated as equals, become the firmest of allies."

It was difficult. From the days when they fished and hunted together, he had always felt close to Malachai. They could still work in the grove, side by side, and discuss as equals the weather and the citrus and the fishing but never any longer share any personal, any important matters. They could not talk politics or women or finances. It was strange, since Malachai was much like Sam Perkins. He had as much native intelligence as Sam, the same intuitive courtesy, and they were the same size, weighing perhaps 180, and the same color, cordovan-brown. Randy and Sam Perkins had been lieutenants in a company of the 7th (Custer) Regiment of the First Cav. Together, Randy and Sam had dug in on the banks of the Han and Chongchon, and faced the same bugle heralded human wave charge at Unsan, and covered each other's platoons in advance and retreat. They had slept side by side in the same bunker, eaten from the same mess tins, drunk from the same bottle, flown to Tokyo on R. and R. together, and together bellied up to the bar of the Imperial Hotel. They had (if it were learned in Fort Repose he would be ostracized) even gone to a junior-officer-grade geisha house together and been greeted with equal hospitality and favors. So it was a strange thing that he could not speak to Malachai, whom he had known since he could speak at all, as he had to Sam Perkins in Korea. It was strange that a Negro could be an officer and a gentleman and an equal below Parallel Thirty-eight, but not below the Mason-Dixon line. It was strange, but this was not the time for social introspection. His job was to tell Malachai to brace and prepare himself and his family.

Randy took two tens and a five from his wallet and shoved them across the desk. 'That's for the week."

'Thank you, sir," Malachai said, folding the bills and tucking them into the breast pocket of his checked shirt.

Perhaps the difference was that Malachai had not been an officer, like Sam Perkins, Randy thought. Malachai had been in service for four years, but in the Air Defense Command, a tech sergeant babying jet engines. Perhaps it was their use of the language. Sam spoke crisp upstate-New York-Cornell English, but when Malachai talked you didn't have to see him to know he was black. "Malachai," Randy said, "I want to ask you a serious question."

"Yes, sir."

"What would you say if I told you I have very good information-about as good as you can get-that before long a war is coming?"

"Wouldn't surprise me one bit."

The answer surprised Randy. His swivel chair banged upright. "What makes you say that?"

Malachai smiled, pleased with Randy's reaction. "Well, sir, I keep up with things. I read all I can. I read all the news magazines and all the out-of-state papers I can get hold of and some service journals and lots of other stuff."

"You do? You don't subscribe to them all, do you?" Malachai tried to control his grin. "Some I get from you, Mister Randy. You finish a magazine and throw it away and Missouri finds it and brings it home in her tote bag. And every day she collects the Cleveland papers and the business magazines from Mrs. McGovern's. Mondays I work for Admiral Hazzard. He saves The New York Times and the Washington papers for me and the Naval Inst.i.tute Proceedings and technical magazines. And I listen to all the commentators."

"How do you find the time?" Randy had never realized that Malachai read anything except the San Marco Sun ("It Shines for Timucuan County").

"Well, sir, there's not much for a single, non-drinkin' man to do around Fort Repose, week nights. So I read and I listen. I know things ain't good, and the way I figure is that if people keep piling up bombs and rockets, higher and higher and higher, someday somebody's going to set one off Then blooey!" "More than one," Randy said, "and soon-maybe very soon.

That's what my brother believes and that's why he's sending Mrs. Bragg and the children down here. You'd better get set for it, Malachai. That's what I'm doing."

Malachai's smile was gone entirely. "Mister Randy, I've thought about it a lot, but there's not a doggone thing we can do about it. We just have to sit here and wait for it. There's not much we can lay up-" he patted his breast pocket. "This twenty-five dollars, with what Missouri brings home this evening, is it. Fast as we make it, it goes. Of course, we don't need much and we've got one thing hardly anybody else has got."

"What's that?"

"Water. Running water. Artestian water that can't be contaminated. You all only use it in the sprinkling system because it smells funny some say like rotten eggs. But that sulphur water ain't bad. You gets to like it."

Until that moment, Randy hadn't thought of water at all. His grandfather, in a year of freakish drought, at great cost had drilled nearly a thousand feet to find the artesian layer and irrigate the grove. And his grandfather had allowed the Henrys to tap the main pipe, so the Henrys had a perpetual flow of free water, although it was hard with dissolved minerals and Randy hated to taste it out of the sprinkler heads in grove and garden, even on a hot summer day.

"I'm afraid I'd never get used to it," he said. He counted out two hundred dollars in twenties and thrust the money across the desk. "This is for an emergency. Buy what you need."

The new notes felt slippery in Malachai's fingers. "I don't know when I can pay this back."

"Don't worry about it. I'm not asking you to pay it back." Malachai folded the bills. "Thank you, sir."

"See you next week, Malachai."

Malachai left and Randy mixed a drink. You turned a tap and lo, water came forth, sweet, soft water without odor, pumped from some sub-surface pool by a silent, faithful servant, a small electric motor. Every family on River Road, except the Henrys, obtained its water in the same way, each with its own pump and well. More important than anything he had listed was water, free of dangerous bacilli, unpolluted by poisons human, chemical, or radioactive. Pure water was essential to his civilization, accepted like pure air. In the big cities, where even a near miss would rupture reservoirs, demolish aqueducts, and smash mains, it would be h.e.l.l without water. Big cities would become traps deadly as deserts or jungles. Randy began to consider how little he really knew of the fundamentals of survival. Helen, he guessed, would know a good deal more. It was a required subject in the education of Air Force wives. He decided to talk to Bubba Offenhaus, who ran Civil Defense in Fort Repose. Bubba must have pamphlets, or something that he could study.

Downstairs Graf began to bark, an insistent, belligerent alarm announcing a strange car in the driveway. Randy went to the head of the stairs, shouted, "Shut up, Graf!" and waited to see who would knock.

n.o.body knocked but the door opened and Randy saw Elizabeth McGovern in the front hall, bending over Graf, her face curtained by shoulder-length blond hair. She stroked Graf's hack les until his tail wigwagged a friendly signal. Then she looked up and called, "You decent, Randy?"

One day she would barge in like this and he would be indecent. She bewildered him. She was brash, unpredictable, and sometimes uncomfortably outspoken. "Come on up, Lib," he said. Like the Henrys, she was a special problem.

All through the summer and early fall Randy had watched the McGoverns' house and dock go up, while landscapers spotted palms in orderly rows, laid down turf, and planted flower pots and shrubbery. On a sultry October afternoon, trolling for ba.s.s in the channel, he had seen a pair of faultlessly curved and tapered legs incongruously stretched toward the sky from the McGovern dock. Since she was lying on the canvas-covered planking, heels propped up on a post, the legs were all that could be seen from water level. He turned the prow toward sh.o.r.e to discover whose body was attached to these remarkable and unfamiliar legs. When his boat was almost under the dock he'd spoken, "h.e.l.lo, legs." "You may call me Lib," she'd said. "You're Randy Bragg, aren't you? I've sort of been expecting you'd call."

When they'd become something more than friends, although less than lovers, he'd accused her of luring him with her lovely legs. Lib had laughed and said, "I didn't know, then, that you were a leg man but I'm glad you are. Most American males have a fixation about the mammary gland. A symptom of momism, I think. Legs are for men's pleasure, b.r.e.a.s.t.s for babies'. Oh, that's really sour grapes. I only said it because I know my legs are my only real a.s.set. I'm flat and I'm not pretty." Technically, she was accurate. She was no cla.s.sic beauty when you considered each feature individually. She was only beautiful in complete design, in the way she moved and was put together.