One morning while she was mixing up a spice cake the pair showed up at the back porch with saws, nails and lumber.

"What’re you two up to now?" Eleanor asked, stepping to the screen door, stirring, a bowl against her stomach.

"Will and me are gonna fix the porch floor!" Donald Wade announced proudly. "Ain’t we, Will?"

"Sure are, short stuff." Will glanced up at Eleanor. "I could use a piece of wool rag if you got one."

She fetched the rag, then watched while Will patiently sat on the step and showed Donald Wade how to clean a rusty sawblade with steel wool and oil and a piece of soft wool. The saw, she noticed, was miniature. Where he’d found it she didn’t know, but it became Donald Wade’s. Will had another larger one he’d cleaned and sharpened days ago. When the smaller saw was clean, Will clamped the blade between his knees, took a metal file from his back pocket and showed Donald Wade how a blade is sharpened.

"You ready now?" he asked the boy.

"Yup."

"Then let’s get started."

Donald Wade was nothing but a nuisance, getting in Will’s way most of the time. But Will’s patience with the boy was inexhaustible. He set him up with his own piece of wood on the milking stool, showed him how to anchor it with a knee and get started, then set to work himself, sawing lumber to replace the porch floor. When Donald Wade’s saw refused to comply, Will interrupted his work and curled himself over the boy, gripping his small hand, pumping it until a piece of wood fell free. Eleanor felt her heart expand as Donald Wade giggled and looked up with hero-worship in his eyes. "We done it, Will!"

"Yup. Sure did. Now come over here and hand me a few nails."

The nails, Eleanor noticed, were rusty, and the wood slightly warped. But within hours he had the porch looking sturdy again. They christened it by sitting on the new steps in the sun and eating spice cake topped with Herbert’s whipped cream.

"You know"-Eleanor smiled at Will-"I sure like the sound of the hammer and saw around the place again."

"And I like the smell of spice cake bakin’ while I work."

The following day they painted the entire porch-floor in brick red, and posts in white.

At the "New Porch Party" she served gingerbread and whipped cream. He ate enough for two men and she loved watching him. He put away three pieces, then rubbed his stomach and sighed. "That was mighty good gingerbread, ma’am." He never failed to show appreciation, though never wordily. "Fine dinner, ma’am," or "Much obliged for supper, ma’am." But his thanks made her efforts seem worthwhile and filled her with a sense of accomplishment she’d never known before.

He loved his sweets and couldn’t seem to get enough of them. One day when she hadn’t fixed dessert he looked let-down, but made no remarks. An hour after the noon meal she found a bucket of ripe quince sitting on the porch step.

The pie-she’d forgotten. She smiled at his reminder and glanced across the yard. He was nowhere to be seen as she picked up the bucket and headed inside and began to mix up a piecrust.

For Will Parker those first couple of weeks at Eleanor Dinsmore’s place were unadulterated heaven. The work-why, hell-the work was a privilege, the idea that he could choose what he wanted to do each day. He could cut wood, patch porch floors, clean barns or wash mules. Anything he chose, and nobody said, "Boy, you supposed to be here? Boy, who tol’ you to do that?" Madam was a pleasurable animal, reminded him of the days when he’d done wrangling and had had a horse of his own. He flat liked everything about Madam, from the hairs on her lumpy nose to her long, curved eyelashes. And at night now, he brought her into the barn and made his own bed beside her in one of the box stalls that were cleaned and smelled of sweet grass.

Then came morning, every one better than the last. Morning and Donald Wade trailing along, providing company and doting on every word Will said. The boy was turning out to be a real surprise. Some of the things that kid came up with! One day when he was holding the hammer for Will while Will stretched wire around the chicken pen, he stared at an orange hen and asked pensively, "Hey, Will, how come chickens ain’t got lips?" Another day he and Will were digging through a bunch of junk, searching for hinges in a dark tool shed when a suspicious odor began tainting the air around them. Donald Wade straightened abruptly and said, "Oh-oh! One of us farted, didn’t we?"

But Donald Wade was more than merely amusing. He was curious, bright, and worshiped the shadow Will cast. Will’s little sidekick, following everywhere-"I’ll help, Will!"-getting his head in the way, standing on the screwdriver, dropping the nails in the grass. But Will wouldn’t have changed a minute of it. He found he liked teaching the boy. He learned how by watching Eleanor. Only Will taught different things. Men’s things. The names of the tools, the proper way to hold them, how to put a rivet through leather, how to brace a screen door and make it stronger, how to trim a mule’s hoof.

The work and Donald Wade were only part of what made his days blissful. The food-God, the food. All he had to do was walk up to the house and take it, cut a piece of spice cake from a pan or butter a bun. What he liked best was taking something sweet outside and eating it as he ambled back toward some half-finished project of his choice. Quince pie-damn, but that woman could make quince pie, could make anything, actually. But she had quince pie down to an art.

He was gaining weight. Already the waistband on his own jeans was tight, and it felt good to work in Glendon Dinsmore’s roomy overalls. Odd, how she volunteered anything at all of her husband’s without seeming to resent Will’s using it-toothbrush, razor, clothes, even dropping the hems of the pants to accommodate Will’s longer legs.

But his gratitude was extended for far more than creature comforts. She’d offered him trust, had given him pride again, and enthusiasm at the break of each new day. She’d shared her children who’d brought a new dimension of happiness into his life. She’d brought back his smile.

There was nothing he couldn’t accomplish. Nothing he wouldn’t try. He wanted to do it all at once.

As the days passed, the improvements he’d made began tallying up. The yard looked better, and the back porch. The eggs were easy to find since the hens were confined to the hen house and, slowly but surely, the woodpile was changing contours. As the place grew neater, so did Eleanor Dinsmore. She wore shoes and anklets now, and a clean apron and dress every morning with a bright hair ribbon to match. She washed her hair twice a week, and he’d been right about it. Clean, it took on a honey glow.

Sometimes when they’d meet in the kitchen, he’d look at her a second time and think, You look pretty this morning, Mrs. Dinsmore.But he could never say it, lest she think he was after something more than creature comforts. Truth to tell, it had been a long, long time, but always in the back of his mind lingered the fact that he’d spent time in prison, and what for. Because of it, he kept a careful distance.

Besides, he had a lot more to do before he’d proved he was worth keeping. He wanted to finish the plastering, give the house a coat of paint, improve the road, get rid of the junk cars, make the orchard produce again, and the bees… The list seemed endless. But Will soon realized he didn’t know how to do all that.

"Has Whitney got a library?" he asked one day in early September.

Eleanor glanced up from the collar she was turning. "In the town hall. Why?"

"I need to learn about apples and bees."

Will sensed her defiance even before she spoke.

"Bees?"

He fixed his eyes on her and let them speak for him. He’d learned by now it was the best way to deal with her when they disagreed.

"You know about libraries-how to use ’em, I mean?"

"In prison I read all I could. They had a library there."

"Oh." It was one of the rare times he’d mentioned prison, but he didn’t elaborate. Instead, he went on questioning. "Did your husband have one of those veiled hats, and things to tend bees with?" He didn’t know a lot, but he knew he’d need certain equipment.

"Somewhere."

"Think you could look around for me? See if you can find ’em?"

Fear flashed through her, followed quickly by obstinacy. "I don’t want you messin’ with those bees."

"I won’t mess with ’em till I know what I’m doing."

"No!"

He didn’t want to argue with her, and he understood her fear of the bees. But it made no sense to let the hives sit empty when honey could bring in cold, hard cash. The best way to soften her might be by being soft himself.

"I’d appreciate it if you’d look for them," he told her kindly, then pushed back from the dinner table and reached for his hat. "I’ll be walkin’ into town this afternoon to the library. If you’d like I can take whatever eggs you got and try to sell them there."

He took a bucket of warm water and the shaving gear down to the barn and came back half an hour later all spiffed up in his own freshly laundered jeans and shirt. When they met in the kitchen, her mouth still looked stubborn.

"I’m leaving now. How about those eggs?"

She refused to speak to him, but thumbed at the five dozen eggs sitting on the porch in a slatted wooden crate.

They were going to be heavy, but let him carry them, she thought stubbornly. If he wanted to go sellin’ eggs to the creeps in town, and learning about bees, and getting all money-hungry, let him carry them!

She pretended not to watch him heft the crate, but her curiosity was aroused when he set it back down and disappeared around the back of the house. A minute later he returned pulling Donald Wade’s wooden wagon. He loaded the egg crate on board only to discover the handle was too short for his tall frame. She watched, gratified when with his first steps his heels hooked on the front of the wagon. Five minutes later-still stubbornly silent-she watched him pull the wagon down the road by a length of stiff wire twisted to the handle.

Go on, then! Run to town and listen to every word they say! And come back with coins jingling in your pocket! And read up on bees and apples and anything else you want! But don’t expect me to make it easy on you!


Gladys Beasley sat behind a pulpit-shaped desk, tamping the tops of the library cards in their recessed bin. They were already flat as a stove lid, but she tamped them anyway. And aligned the rubber stamp with the seam in the varnished wood. And centered her ink pen on its concave rest. And adjusted her nameplate-Gladys Beasley, Head Librarian-on the high desk ledge. And picked up a stack of magazines and centered her chair in the kneehole. Fussily. Unnecessarily.

Order was the greatest force in Gladys Beasley’s life. Order and regimentation. She had run the Carnegie Municipal Library of Whitney, Georgia, for forty-one years, ever since Mr. Carnegie himself had made its erection possible with an endowment to the town. Miss Beasley had ordered the initial titles even before the shelves themselves were installed, and had been working in the hallowed building ever since. During those forty-one years she had sent more than one feckless assistant home in tears over a failure to align the spine of a book with the edge of a shelf.

She walked like a Hessian soldier, in brisk, no-nonsense steps on practical, black Cuban-heeled oxfords to which the shoemaker had added a special rubber heel which buffered her footfalls on the hardwood floors of her domain. If there was one thing that ired Gladys worse than slipshod shelving, it was cleats! Anyone who wore them in her library and expected to be allowed inside again had better choose different shoes next time!

She launched herself toward the magazine rack, imposing breasts carried like heavy artillery, her trunk held erect by the most expensive elastic and coutil girdle the Sears Roebuck catalogue had to offer-the one tactfully recommended for those "with excess flesh at the diaphragm." Her jersey dress-white squiggles on a background the color of something already digested-hung straight as a stovepipe from her bulbous hips to her club-shaped calves and made not so much as a rustle when she moved.

She replaced three Saturday Evening Postmagazines, tamped the stack, aligned it with the edge of the shelf and marched along the row of tall fanlight windows, checking the wooden ribbing between the panes to be sure Levander Sprague, the custodian, hadn’t shirked. Levander was getting old. His eyesight wasn’t what it used to be, and lately she’d had to upbraid him for his careless dusting. Satisfied today, however, she returned to her duties at the central desk, located smack in front of double maple doors-closed-that led to wide interior steps at the bottom of which were the main doors of the building.