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By Root 996 0

ranch in Castle View. It was a long walk uphill for Nettle Cobb, and by the time she got there her legs were tired and she was very cold. She met only three or four other pedestrians, and none of them looked at her; they were bundled deep into the collars of their coats, for the wind had begun to blow strongly and it had a keen edge. An ad supplement from someone's Sunday Telegram danced across the street, then took off into the hard blue sky like some strange bird as she turned into the Keetons' driveway. Mr. Gaunt had told her that Buster and Myrtle wouldn't be home, and Mr. Gaunt knew best. The garage door was up, and that showboat of a Cadillac Buster drove was gone.

Nettle went up the walk, stopped at the front door, and took the pad and the Scotch tape from her left-hand coat pocket. She very much wanted to be home with the Sunday Super Movie on TV and Raider at her feet. And that's where she would be as soon as she finished this chore. She might not even bother with her knitting. She might just sit there with her carnival glass lampshade in her lap. She tore off the first pink slip and taped it over the sign by the doorbell, the embossed one which said T H E K E E T O N s and NO SALESMEN, PLEASE.

She put the tape and the pad back in her left pocket, then took the key from her right and slipped it into the lock. Before turning it, she briefly examined the pink slip she had just taped up.

Cold and tired as she was, she just had to smile a little. It really was a pretty good joke, especially considering the way Buster drove.

It was a wonder he hadn't killed anyone. She wouldn't like to be the man whose name was signed at the bottom of the warning-slip, though. Buster could be awfully grouchy. Even as a child he hadn't been one to take a joke.

She turned the key. The lock opened easily. Nettle went inside.

4

"More coffee?" Keeton asked.

"Not for me," Myrtle said. "I'm as full as a tick." She smiled.

"Then let's go home. I want to watch the Patriots on TV." He glanced at his watch. "If we hurry, I think I can make the kick-off."

Myrtle nodded, happier than ever. The TV was in the living room, and if Dan meant to watch the game, he wasn't going to spend the afternoon cooped up in his study. "Let's hurry, then," she said.

Keeton held up one commanding finger. "Waiter? Bring me the check, please."

5

Nettle had stopped wanting to hurry home; she liked being in Buster and Myrtle's house.

For one thing, it was warm. For another, being here gave Nettle an unexpected sense of power-it was like seeing behind the scenes of two actual human lives. She began by going upstairs and looking through all the rooms. There were a lot of them, too, considering there were no children, but, as her mother had always been fond of saying, them that has, gets.

She opened Myrtle's bureau drawers, investigating her underwear.

Some of it was silk, quality stuff, but to Nettle most of the good things looked old. The same was true of the dresses hung on her side of the closet. Nettle went on to the bathroom, where she inventoried the pills in the medicine cabinet, and from there to the sewing room, where she admired the dolls. A nice house. A lovely house. Too bad the man who lived here was a piece of shit.

Nettle glanced at her watch and supposed she should start putting up the little pink slips. And she would, too. just as soon as she finished looking around downstairs.

6

"Danforth, isn't this a little too fast?" Myrtle asked breathlessly as they swung around a slow-moving pulp truck. An oncoming car blared its horn at them as Keeton swung back into his lane.

"I want to make the kick-off," he said, and turned left onto the Maple Sugar Road, passing a sign which read CASTLE ROCK 8

MILES.

7

Nettle snapped on the TV-the Keetons had a big color Mitsubishi-and watched some of the Sunday Super Movie. Ava Gardner was in it, and Gregory Peck. Gregory seemed to be in love with Ava, although it was hard to tell; it might be the other woman he was in love with. There had been a nuclear war. Gregory Peck drove