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By Root 429 0

"When you're my age, you'll feel different. I used to think the same as you: Women - so what? But then you get to talking to some woman, and it's mighty nice. You'll see." Kenyon doubted it; he could not conceive of ever wanting to waste an hour on any girl that might be spent with guns, horses, tools, machinery, even a book. If Bob was unavailable, then he would rather be alone, for in temperament he was not in the least Mr. Clutter's son but rather Bonnie's child, a sensitive and reticent boy. His contemporaries thought him "stand-offish," yet forgave him, saying, "Oh, Kenyon. It's just that he lives in a world of his own." Leaving the varnish to dry, he went on to another chore - one that took him out-of-doors. He wanted to tidy up his mother's flower garden, a treasured patch of disheveled foliage that grew beneath her bedroom window. When he got there, he found one of the hired men loosening earth with a spade - Paul Helm, the husband of the housekeeper.

"Seen that car?" Mr. Helm asked. Yes, Kenyon had seen a car in the driveway - a gray Buick, standing outside the entrance to his father's office.

"Thought you might know who it was."

"Not unless it's Mr. Johnson. Dad said he was expecting him." Mr. Helm (the late Mr. Helm; he died of a stroke the following March) was a somber man in his late fifties whose withdrawn manner veiled a nature keenly curious and watchful; he liked to know what was going on. "Which Johnson?"

"The insurance fellow." Mr. Helm grunted. "Your dad must be laying in a stack of it. That car's been here I'd say three hours." The chill of oncoming dusk shivered through the air, and though the sky was still deep blue, lengthening shadows emanated from the garden's tall chrysanthemum stalks; Nancy's cat frolicked among them, catching its paws in the twine with which Kenyon and the old man were now tying plants. Suddenly, Nancy herself came jogging across the fields aboard fat Babe - Babe, returning from her Saturday treat, a bathe in the river. Teddy, the dog, accompanied them, and all three were water-splashed and shining.

"You'll catch cold," Mr. Helm said. Nancy laughed; she had never been ill - not once. Sliding off Babe, she sprawled on the grass at the edge of the garden and seized her cat, dangled him above her, and kissed his nose and whiskers. Kenyon was disgusted. "Kissing animals on the mouth."

"You used to kiss Skeeter," she reminded him.

"Skeeter was a horse" A beautiful horse, a strawberry stallion he had raised from a foal. How that Skeeter could take a fence! "You use a horse too hard," his father had cautioned him. "One day you'll ride the life out of Skeeter." And he had; while Skeeter was streaking down a road with his master astride him, his heart failed, and he stumbled and was dead. Now, a year later, Kenyon still mourned him, even though his father, taking pity on him, had promised him the pick of next spring's foals.

"Kenyon?" Nancy said. "Do you think Tracy will be able to talk? By Thanksgiving?" Tracy, not yet a year old, was her nephew, the son of Eveanna, the sister to whom she felt particularly close. (Beverly was Kenyon's favorite.) "It would thrill me to pieces to hear him say 'Aunt Nancy.' Or 'Uncle Kenyon. 'Wouldn't you like to hear him say that? I mean, don't you love being an uncle? Kenyon? Good grief, why can't you ever answer me?"

"Because you're silly," he said, tossing her the head of a flower, a wilted dahlia, which she jammed into her hair. Mr. Helm picked up his spade. Crows cawed, sundown was near, but his home was not; the lane of Chinese elms had turned into a tunnel of darkening green, and he lived at the end of it, half a mile away. "Evening," he said, and started his journey. But once he looked back. "And that," he was to testify the next day, "was the last I seen them. Nancy leading old Babe off to the barn. Like I said, nothing out of the ordinary."

The black Chevrolet was again parked, this time in front of a Catholic hospital on the outskirts of Emporia. Under continued needling ("That's your trouble. You think there's only one right way -