She was feminine and dainty and she dressed always with a hint of a passed period. She wore jabots¹ occasionally and antique pins. Her shirtwaists had always some lace and some handwork, and the collars and cuffs were invariably immaculate. She used lavender toilet water so that her skin and her clothing and her purse smelled always of lavender, and of another, almost imperceptible, acid odor which was her own. She had pretty ankles and feet, on which she wore very expensive shoes, usually of kid and laced, with a little bow over the instep. Her mouth was rather wilted and childlike, soft, and without a great deal of character. She talked very little but had in her own group gained a reputation for goodness and for sagacity; the first by saying only nice things about people, even people she did not know, and the second by never expressing a general idea of any kind beyond perfumes or food. She met the ideas of other people with a quiet smile, almost as though she forgave them for having ideas. The truth was that she didn’t listen.

There had been times when Mildred wept with rage at her mother’s knowing, forgiving smile after one of Mildred’s political or economic deliveries. It took the daughter a long time to discover that her mother never listened to any conversation that had not to do with people or places or material things. On the other hand, Bernice never forgot a detail about goods or colors or prices. She could remember exactly how much she had paid for black suede gloves seven years ago. She was fond of gloves and rings—any kind of rings. She had a rather large collection, but she wore with anything else, always, her small diamond engagement ring and her gold wedding band. These she removed only to bathe. She left them on when she washed her combs and brushes in ammonia water in the hand basin. The ammonia cleaned the rings and made the little diamonds shine brightly.

Her married life was fairly pleasant and she was fond of her husband. She thought she knew his weaknesses and his devices and his desires. She herself was handicapped by what is known as a nun’s hood, which prevented her experiencing any sexual elation from her marriage; and she suffered from an acid condition which kept her from conceiving children without first artificially neutralizing her body acids. Both of these conditions she considered normal, and any variation of them abnormal and in bad taste. Women of lusty appetites she spoke of as “that kind of woman,” and she was a little sorry for them as she was for dope fiends and alcoholics.

Her husband’s beginning libido she had accepted and then gradually by faint but constant reluctance had first molded and then controlled and gradually strangled, so that his impulses for her became fewer and fewer and until he himself believed that he was reaching an age when such things did not matter.

In her way she was a very powerful woman. She ran an efficient, clean, and comfortable house and served meals which were nourishing without being tasty. She did not believe in the use of spices, for she had been told long ago that they had an aphrodisiac effect on men. The three—Mr. Pritchard, Mildred, and herself—did not take on any weight, probably because of the dullness of the food. It did not stimulate any great appetite.

Bernice’s friends knew her as one of the sweetest, most unselfish people you will ever meet, and they often referred to her as a saint. And she herself said often that she felt humbly lucky, for she had the finest, most loyal friends in the whole world. She loved flowers and planted and pinched and fertilized and cut them. She kept great bowls of flowers in her house always, so that her friends said it was like being in a florist’s shop, and she arranged them herself so beautifully.

She did not take medicines and often suffered in silence from constipation until the accumulated pressure relieved her. She had never really been ill nor badly hurt, and consequently she had no measuring rod of pain. A stitch in her side, a backache, a gas pain under her heart, convinced her secretly that she was about to die. She had been sure she would die when she had borne Mildred, and she had arranged her affairs so that everything would be easy for Mr. Pritchard. She had even written a letter to be opened after her death, advising him to marry again so that the child could have some kind of mother. She later destroyed this letter.

Her body and her mind were sluggish and lazy, and deep down she fought a tired envy of the people who, so she thought, experienced good things while she went through life a gray cloud in a gray room. Having few actual perceptions, she lived by rules. Education is good. Self-control is necessary. Everything in its time and place. Travel is broadening. And it was this last axiom which had forced her finally on the vacation to Mexico.

How she reached her conclusions not even she knew. It was a long, slow process built up of hints, suggestions, accidents, thousands of them, until finally, in their numbers, they forced the issue. The truth was that she didn’t want to go to Mexico. She just wanted to come back to her friends having been to Mexico. Her husband didn’t want to go at all. He was doing it for his family and because he hoped it would do him good in a cultural way. And Mildred wanted to go, but not with her parents. She wanted to meet new and strange people and through such contacts to become new and strange herself. Mildred felt that she had great covered wells of emotion in her, and she probably had. Nearly everyone has.

Bernice Pritchard, while denying superstition, was nevertheless profoundly affected by signs. The bus breaking down so early in the trip frightened her, for it seemed to portend a series of accidents which would gradually ruin the trip. She was sensitive to Mr. Pritchard’s unrest. Last night, lying sleepless in the Chicoys’ double bed, listening to the sighing breaths of her husband, she had said, “This will turn into an adventure when it’s over. I can almost hear you telling it. It will be funny.”

“I suppose so,” Mr. Pritchard answered.

There was a certain fondness between these two, almost a brother-and-sister relationship. Mr. Pritchard considered his wife’s shortcomings as a woman the attributes of a lady. He never had to worry about her faithfulness. Unconsciously he knew that she was without reaction, and this was right in his mind. His nerves, his bad dreams, and the acrid pain that sometimes got into his upper abdomen he put down to too much coffee and not enough exercise.

He liked his wife’s pretty hair, always waved and clean; he liked her spotless clothes; and he loved the compliments she got for her good housekeeping and her flowers. She was a wife to be proud of. She had raised a fine daughter, a fine, healthy girl.

Mildred was a fine girl; a tall girl, two inches taller than her father and five inches taller than her mother. Mildred had inherited her mother’s violet eyes and the weakness that went with them. She wore glasses when she wanted to see anything clearly. She was well formed, with sturdy legs and strong, slender ankles. Her thighs and buttocks were hard and straight and smooth from much exercise. She played tennis well and was center on her college basketball team. Her breasts were large and firm and wide at the base. She had not inherited her mother’s physiological accident, and she had experienced two consummated love affairs which gave her great satisfaction and a steady longing for a relationship that would be constant.

Mildred’s chin was set and firm like her father’s, but her mouth was full and soft and a little frightened. She wore heavy black-framed glasses, and these did give her a student look. It was always a surprise to new acquaintances to see Mildred at a dance without glasses. She danced well, if a little precisely, but she was a practicing athlete and perhaps she practiced dancing too carefully and without enough relaxation. She did have a slight tendency to lead, but that could be overcome by a partner with strong convictions.

Mildred’s convictions were strong too, but they were variable. She had undertaken causes and usually good ones. She did not understand her father at all because he constantly confused her. Telling him something reasonable, logical, intelligent, she often found in him a dumb obtuseness, a complete lack of thinking ability that horrified her. And then he would say or do something so intelligent that she would leap to the other side. When she had him catalogued rather smugly as a caricature of a businessman, grasping, slavish, and cruel, he ruined her peace of conception by an act or a thought of kindliness and perception.

Of his emotional life she knew nothing whatever, just as he knew nothing of hers. Indeed, she thought that a man in middle age had no emotional life. Mildred, who was twenty-one, felt that the saps and juices were all dried up at fifty, and rightfully so, since neither men nor women were attractive at that age. A man or a woman in love at fifty would have been an obscene spectacle to her.

But if there was a chasm between Mildred and her father, there was a great gulf between Mildred and her mother. The woman who had no powerful desires to be satisfied could not ever come close to the girl who had. An early attempt on Mildred’s part to share her strong ecstasies with her mother and to receive confirmation had met with a blankness, a failure to comprehend, which hurled Mildred back inside herself. For a long time she didn’t try to confide in anyone, feeling that she was unique and that all other women were like her mother. At last, however, a big and muscular young woman who taught ice hockey and softball and archery at the university gained Mildred’s confidence, her whole confidence, and then tried to go to bed with her. This shock was washed away only when a male engineering student with wiry hair and a soft voice did go to bed with her.

Now Mildred kept her own counsel, thought her own thoughts, and waited for the time when death, marriage, or accident would free her from her parents. But she loved her parents, and she would have been frightened at herself had it ever come to the surface of her mind that she wished them dead.

There had never been any close association among these three although they went through the forms. They were dear and darling and sweet, but Juan and Alice Chicoy regularly established a relationship which Mr. or Mrs. Pritchard could not have conceived. And Mildred’s close and satisfying friendships were with people of whose existence her parents were completely ignorant. They had to be. It had to be. Her father considered the young women who danced naked at stags depraved, but it would never have occurred to him that he who watched and applauded and paid the girls was in any way associated with depravity.

Once or twice, on his wife’s insistence, he had tried to warn Mildred against men just to teach her to protect herself. He hinted and believed that he had considerable knowledge of the world, and his complete knowledge, besides hearsay, was his one visit to the parlor house, the stags, and the dry, unresponding acquiescence of his wife.

This morning Mildred wore a sweater and pleated skirt and low, moccasin-like shoes. The three sat at the little table in the lunchroom. Mrs. Pritchard’s three-quarter-length black fox coat hung on a hook beside Mr. Pritchard. It was his habit to shepherd this coat, to help his wife on with it and to take it from her, and to see that it was properly hung up and not just thrown down. He fluffed up the fur with his hand when it showed evidence of being crushed. He loved this coat, loved the fact that it was expensive, and he loved to see his wife in it and to hear other women speculate upon it. Black fox was comparatively rare, and it was also a valuable piece of property. Mr. Pritchard felt that it should be properly treated. He was always the first to suggest that it go into summer storage. He had suggested that it might be just as well not to take it to Mexico at all, first, because that was a tropical country, and second, because of bandits who might possibly steal it. Mrs. Pritchard held that it should be taken along, because, in the first place, they would be visiting Los Angeles and Hollywood where everyone wore fur coats, and second, because it was quite cold in Mexico City at night, so she had heard. Mr. Pritchard capitulated easily; to him, as well as to his wife, the coat was the badge of their position. It placed them as successful, conservative, and sound people. You get better treatment everywhere you go if you have a fur coat and nice luggage.

Now the coat hung beside Mr. Pritchard, and he ran his fingers deftly up through the hairs to clear the long guard hairs from the undercoat. Sitting at the table, they had heard through the bedroom door Alice’s hoarse, screaming attack on Norma, and the animal vulgarity of it had shocked them deeply, had driven them as nearly close together as they could be. Mildred had lighted a cigarette, avoiding her mother’s eye. She had done this only in the six months since she had turned twenty-one. After the initial blow-up the subject had never verbally come up again, but her mother disapproved with her face every time Mildred smoked in front of her.

The rain had stopped and only the drips from the white oaks fell on the roof. The land was soggy, water-beaten, sodden. The grain, fat and heavy with the damp, rich springtime, had lain heavily down under the last downpour, so that it stretched away in tired waves. The water trickled and ran and gurgled and rushed to find low places in the fields. The ditches beside the state highway were full, and in some places the water even invaded the raised road. Everywhere there was a whisper of water and a rush of water. The golden poppies were all stripped of their petals now, and the lupines lay down like the grain, too fat, too heavy, to hold up their heads.

The sky was beginning to clear. The clouds were tattering, and there were splashes of lovely clear sky with silks of cloud skittering across them. Up high a fierce wind blew, spreading and mixing and matting the clouds, but on the ground the air was perfectly still, and there was a smell of worms and wet grass and exposed roots.

From the area of the lunchroom and garage at Rebel Corners the water ran in shallow ditches to the large ditch beside the highway. The bus stood shining and clean in its aluminum paint, and the water still dripping from its sides and its windshield flecked with droplets. Inside the lunchroom it was a little overwarm.

Pimples was behind the counter, trying to help out, and this would never have occurred to him before today. Always, in other jobs, he had hated the work and automatically hated his employer. But the experience of the morning was still strong in him. He could still hear Juan’s voice saying in his ears, “Kit, wipe your hands and see if Alice got the coffee ready yet.” It was the sweetest-sounding sentence he had ever heard. He wanted to do something for Juan. He had squeezed orange juice for the Pritchards and carried coffee to them, and now he was trying to watch the toaster and scramble eggs at the same time.

Mr. Pritchard said, “Let’s all have scrambled eggs. That’ll make it easier. You can leave mine in the pan and get them good and dry.”

“O.K.,” said Pimples. His pan was too hot and the eggs were ticking and clicking and sending up an odor of wet chicken feathers that comes from too fast frying.

Mildred had crossed her legs and her skirt was caught under her knee, so that the side away from Pimples must be exposed. He wanted to get down that way and look. His darting, narrow eyes took innumerable quick glances at what he could see. He didn’t want her to catch him looking at her legs. He planned it in his mind. If she didn’t move he would serve the eggs and he would take a napkin over his arm. Then, after he set down their plates, he would pass their table and go on about ten feet and drop the napkin as though by accident. He would lean down and look back under his arm, and then he would be able to see Mildred’s leg.

He had the napkin ready and he was mixing the eggs to get them done before she moved. He stirred the eggs. They were stuck by now so he scooped shallowly to leave the burned crust in the pan. The odor of burning eggs filled the lunchroom. Mildred looked up and saw the flash in Pimples’ eye. She looked down, noticed how her skirt was caught, and pulled it clear. Pimples saw her without looking directly at her. He knew that he had been caught and his cheeks stung with blood.

A dark smoke rose from the egg pan and a blue smoke rose from the toaster. Juan came in quietly from the bedroom and sniffed.

“God Almighty,” he said, “what are you doing, Kit?”

“Trying to help out,” said Pimples uneasily.

Juan smiled. “Well, thanks, but I guess you’d better not help out with eggs.” He came to the gas stove, took the hot pan of burned eggs, put the whole thing into the sink, and turned the water on. It hissed and bubbled for a moment and then subsided, complaining, in the water.

Juan said, “Kit, you go out and try to start the engine. Don’t choke her if she won’t start. That’ll only flood her. If she doesn’t start right away, take off the distributor head and dry the points. They may have got wet. When you get her started, put her in low for a few minutes and then shift her to high and let the wheels turn over. But be careful she doesn’t shake herself off those sawhorses. Just let her idle.”

Pimples wiped his hands. “Should I open the grease cock first and see if she’s still full?”

“Yeah. You know your stuff. Yeah, take a look. That gudgeon grease was pretty thick this morning.”

“It might of shook down,” said Pimples. He had forgotten the last look at Mildred’s leg. He glowed under Juan’s praise.

“Kit, I don’t figure anybody would steal her, but keep an eye on her.” Pimples laughed in sycophantic amusement at the boss’s joke and went out the door. Juan looked over the counter. “My wife’s not feeling very well,” he said, “What can I get for you folks? More coffee?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Pritchard. “The boy was trying to scramble some eggs and he burned them up. My wife likes hers moist—”

“If they’re fresh,” Mrs. Pritchard interposed.

“If they’re fresh,” said Mr. Pritchard. “And I like mine dry.”

“They’re fresh, all right,” said Juan. “Right fresh out of the ice.”

“I don’t think I could eat a cold-storage egg,” said Mrs. Pritchard.

“Well, that’s what they are, I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“I guess I’ll just have a doughnut,” said Mrs. Pritchard.

“Make mine the same,” said Mr. Pritchard.

Juan looked frankly and with admiration at Mildred’s legs. She looked up at him. Slowly his eyes rose from her legs, and his dark eyes were filled with so much pleasure, were so openly admiring, that Mildred blushed a little. She warmed up in the pit of her stomach. She felt an electric jar.

“Oh—!” She looked away from him. “More coffee, I guess. Well, maybe I’ll take a doughnut too.”

“Only two doughnuts left,” said Juan. “I’ll bring two doughnuts and a snail and you can fight over them.”

The engine of the bus exploded into action outside and in a moment was throttled down to a purr.

“She sounds good,” said Juan.

Ernest Horton came quietly, almost secretly, out of the bedroom door and closed it softly behind him. He walked over to Mr. Pritchard and laid the six thin packages on the table. “There you are,” he said, “six of them.”

Mr. Pritchard pulled out his billfold. “Got change for twenty?” he asked.

“No, I haven’t.”

“You got change for twenty?” Mr. Pritchard asked Juan.

Juan pushed the “No Sale” button on the cash register and raised the wheel weight on the bill compartment. “I can give you two tens.”

“That will do,” said Ernest Horton. “I’ve got a dollar bill or so. You owe me nine dollars.” He took one of the tens and gave Mr. Pritchard a dollar.

“What are they?” Mrs. Pritchard asked. She picked one up but her husband snatched it out of her hand. “No you don’t,” he said mysteriously.

“But what are they?”

“That’s for me to know,” said Mr. Pritchard playfully. “You’ll find out quick enough.”

“Oh, a surprise?”

“That’s right. Little girls better keep their noses out of what doesn’t concern them.” Mr. Pritchard always called his wife “lit tle girl” when he was playful, and automatically she fell into his mood.

“When do iddle girls see pretty present?”

“You’ll find out,” he said, and he stuffed the flat packages in his side pocket. He wanted to come in limping when he got the chance. He had a variation on the trick. He would pretend that his foot was so sore that he couldn’t take off his shoe and sock himself. He would get his wife to take off the sock for him. What a kick that would be to watch her face! She’d nearly die when she saw that sore foot on him.

“What is it, Elliott?” she asked a little peevishly.

“You’ll find out, just keep your pretty hair on, little girl.”

“Say,” he went on to Ernest, “I just thought up a new wrinkle. Tell you about it later.”

Ernest said, “Yup, that’s what makes the world tick. You get a new wrinkle and you’re fixed. You don’t want to go radical. Just a wrinkle, like they call it in Hollywood, a switcheroo. That’s with a story. You take a picture that’s made dough and you work a switcheroo—not too much, just enough, and you’ve got something then.”

“That makes sense,” said Mr. Pritchard. “Yes, sir, that makes good sense.”

“It’s funny about new wrinkles,” said Ernest. He sat down on a stool and crossed his legs. “Funny how you get a wrong idea. Now, I’ve got a kind of an invention and I figured I could sit back and count my money, but I was wrong. You see, there’s lot of fellows like me traveling around living out of a suitcase. Well, maybe there’s a convention or you’ve got a date that’s pretty fancy. You’d like to have a tuxedo. Well, it takes a lot of room to pack a tuxedo and maybe you only use it twice on a whole trip. Well, that’s when I got this idea. Suppose, I said, you’ve got a nice dark business suit—dark blue or almost black or oxford—and suppose you got little silk slipcovers like little lapels and silk stripes that just snap on the pants. In the afternoon you’ve got a nice dark suit and you slip on the silk covers to the lapels and snap on the strips and you’ve got a tuxedo. I even figured out a little bag to carry them in.”²

“Say!” cried Mr. Pritchard, “that’s a wonderful idea! Say, why I’ve got to take up room in my suitcase right now for a tuxedo. I’d like to get in on a thing like that. If you get up a patent and put on a campaign, a big national advertising campaign, why, you might maybe get a big movie star to endorse it—”

Ernest held up his hand. “That’s just the way I figured,” he said. “And I was wrong and you’re wrong. I drew it all out on paper and just how it would go on and how the trousers leg would have little tiny silk loops for the hooks for the stripes to go on, and then I had a friend who travels for a big clothes manufacturer”—Ernest chuckled—“he put me right mighty quick. ‘You’d get every tailor and every big manufacturer right on your neck,’ he said. ‘They sell tuxedos anywhere from fifty to a hundred and fifty bucks and you come along with ideas to take that business away with a ten-dollar gadget. Why, they’d run you right out of the country,’ he said.”

Mr. Pritchard nodded gravely. “Yes, I can see the point. They have to protect themselves and their stockholders.”

“He didn’t make it sound too hopeful,” said Ernest. “I figured I’d just sit and count the profits. I figured that a fellow, say, traveling by air—he’s got the weight limitations. He’s got the right to save room in his suitcase. It’d be like two suits for the weight of one. And then I figured maybe the jewelry companies might take it up. Set of studs and cuff links and my lapels and stripes all in a nice package. I haven’t got around to that yet. Haven’t asked anybody. Might still be something in it.”

“You and I ought to get together for a good talk,” said Mr. Pritchard. “Have you got it patented?”

“Well, no. I didn’t want to go to the expense until I could see if anybody was interested.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Pritchard. “I guess maybe you’re right. Patent attorneys and all, they cost quite a bit of money. Maybe you’re right.” Then he changed the subject. “What time can we get started?” he asked Juan.

“Well, the Greyhound gets in around ten. They bring regular freight and some passengers. We should get started at ten-thirty. That’s the schedule. Can I get you folks anything else? Some more coffee?”

“Some more coffee,” said Mr. Pritchard.

Juan brought it to him and looked out the window at the bus with its wheels turning over in the air. Mr. Pritchard looked at his watch.

“We’ve still got an hour,” he said.

A tall, stooped old man came around the side of the building. The man who had slept in Pimples’ bed. He opened the door to the lunchroom, came in, and sat down on a stool. He had his head bent permanently forward on the arthritic stalk of his neck so that the tip of his nose pointed straight at the ground. He was well over sixty, and his eyebrows overhung his eyes like those of a Skye terrier. His long, deeply channeled upper lip was raised over his teeth like the little trunk of a tapir. The point over his middle teeth seemed to be almost prehensile. His eyes were yellowish gold, so that he looked fierce.

“I don’t like it,” he said without preliminaries. “I didn’t like it yesterday when you broke down, and I like it even less today.”

“I’ve got the rear end fixed,” said Juan. “Turning over right now.”

“I think I’ll cancel and go on back to San Ysidro on the Greyhound,” said the man.

“Well, you can do that.”

“I’ve got a feeling,” said the man. “I just don’t like it. Something’s trying to give me a warning. I’ve had ’em before a couple of times. I didn’t pay any mind to them once and I got into trouble.”

“The bus is all right,” said Juan, his voice rising a little in exasperation.

“I’m not talking about the bus,” said the man. “I live in this county, native of it. The ground’s full of water. San Ysidro River will be up. You know how the San Ysidro rises. Right under Pico Blanco it comes down that Lone Pine Canyon and makes a big loop. Ground gets full of water and every drop runs right off into the San Ysidro. She’ll be raging right now.”

Mrs. Pritchard began to look alarmed. “Do you think there’s danger?” she asked.

“Now, dear,” said Mr. Pritchard.

“I’ve got a feeling,” said the man. “The old road used to go around that loop of the river and never cross it. Come thirty years ago Mr. Trask got himself made roadmaster of this county. The old road wasn’t good enough for him. He put in two bridges and saved what? Twelve miles, that’s what he saved. It cost the county twenty-seven thousand dollars. Mr. Trask was a crook.”

He turned his stiff neck and surveyed the Pritchards. “A crook. Just about to indict him for another job when he died, three years ago. Died a rich man. Got two boys in the University of California right now living on the taxpayers’ money.” He stopped and his upper lip waggled from side to side over his long yellow teeth. “If those bridges get any real strain on them they’ll go out. The concrete isn’t stout enough. I’ll just cancel and go back to San Ysidro.”

“The river was all right day before yesterday,” said Juan. “Hardly any water in it.”

“You don’t know the San Ysidro River. She can get up in a couple of hours. I’ve seen her half a mile wide and covered with dead cows and chickenhouses. No, once I get this kind of feeling I won’t go. I’m not superstitious, either.”

“You think the bus might go through the bridge?”

“I don’t say what I think. I know Trask was a crook. Left an estate of thirty-six thousand five-hundred dollars. His boys are up at college spending it right now.”

Juan came out from behind the counter and went to the wall phone. “Hello,” he said. “Give me Breed’s Service Station out on the San Juan road. I don’t know the number.” He waited a while and then he said, “Hello. Say, this is Chicoy down at the Corners. How’s the river? Oh, yeah? Well, is the bridge all right? Yeah. Well, O.K., I’ll see you pretty soon.” Juan hung up. “The river is up pretty high,” he explained. “They say the bridge is all right.”

“That river can rise a foot an hour when Pine Canyon dumps a cloudburst into it. Time you get there the bridge might be gone.”

Juan turned a little impatiently to him. “What do you want me to do? Not go?”

“You do just as you like. I only want to cancel and get back to San Ysidro. I’m not going to fool around with this kind of nonsense. Once I had a feeling like this and I didn’t pay attention and I broke both legs. No, sir, I got that feeling when you broke down yesterday.”

“Well, consider yourself canceled,” said Juan.

“That’s what I want, mister! You’re not an old-timer here. You don’t know what I know about Trask. Salary of fifteen hundred a year and he leaves thirty-six thousand five-hundred, and a clear title to a hundred and sixty acres of land. Tell me!”

Juan said, “Well, I’ll see you get on the Greyhound.”

“Well, I’m not telling you anything about Trask, I’m just telling you what happened. You figure it out for yourself. Thirty-six thousand five-hundred dollars.”

Ernest Horton asked, “Suppose the bridge is out?”

“Then we won’t go across it,” said Juan.

“Then what’ll we do? Turn around and come back?”

“Sure,” said Juan. “We’ll either do that or jump it.”

The stooped man smiled about the room in triumph. “You see?” he said. “You’ll come back here and there’ll be no bus here for San Ysidro. You’ll sit around here for how long? Months? Wait for them to build a new bridge? You know who the new roadmaster is? A college boy. Just out of college. All books and no practice. Oh, he can draw a bridge, but can he build one? We’ll see.”

Suddenly Juan laughed. “Fine,” he said. “The old bridge isn’t washed out yet and already you’re having trouble with the new one that isn’t built.”

The man turned his aching neck sideways. “Are you getting lippy?” he demanded.

For a moment a dark red light seemed to glow in Juan’s black eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll get you on the Greyhound, don’t you worry. I wouldn’t want you on this run.”

“Well, you can’t kick me off, you’re a common carrier.”

“O.K.,” said Juan wearily. “Sometimes I wonder why I keep the bus. Maybe I won’t much longer. Just a headache. You’ve got a feeling! Nuts!”

Bernice had been following this conversation very closely. “I don’t believe in these things,” she said, “but they say it’s the dry season down in Mexico. It’s like autumn. Summer’s when it rains.”

“Mother,” said Mildred, “Mr. Chicoy knows Mexico. He was born there.”

“Oh, were you? Well, it’s the dry season, isn’t it?”

“Some places,” said Juan. “I guess it is where you’ll be going. Other places there isn’t any dry season.”

Mr. Pritchard cleared his throat. “We’re going to Mexico City and to Puebla and then to Cuernavaca and Tasco, and we may take the trip to Acapulco³ and we’ll go to the volcano⁴ if it’s all right.”

“You’ll be all right,” said Juan.

“You know those places?” Mr. Pritchard demanded.

“Sure.”

“How are the hotels?” Mr. Pritchard asked. “You know how the travel agencies are—everything is wonderful. How are they really?”

“Wonderful,” Juan said, smiling now. “They’re great. Breakfast in bed every morning.”

“I didn’t mean to cause trouble this morning,” said Mr. Pritchard.

“Sure, it’s all right.” He leaned his arms on the counter and spoke confidentially. “I get fed up a little sometimes. I drive that damn bus back and forth and back and forth. Sometime I’d like to take and just head for the hills. I read about a ferryboat captain in New York who just headed out to sea one day and they never heard from him again. Maybe he sunk and maybe he’s tied up on an island some place. I understand that man.”

A great red truck with a trailer slowed down on the highway outside. The driver looked in. Juan moved his hand rapidly from side to side. The truck went into second gear, gathered speed, and went away.

“I thought he was coming in,” said Mr. Pritchard.

“He likes raspberry pie,” said Juan. “He always stops when we got some. I just told him we haven’t got any.”

Mildred was looking at Juan, fascinated. There was something in this dark man with his strange warm eyes that moved her. She felt drawn to him. She wanted to attract his attention, his special attention, to herself. She had thrown back her shoulders so that her breasts were lifted.

“Why did you leave Mexico?” she asked, and she took off her glasses so that when he answered he would see her without them. She leaned on the table, and put her forefinger to the corner of her left eye, and pulled the skin and eyelid backward. This changed the focus of her eye. She could see his face more clearly that way. It also gave her eyes a long and languorous shape, and her eyes were beautiful.

“I don’t know why I left,” Juan said to her. His warm eyes seemed to surround her and to caress her. Mildred felt a little weak and sirupy in the pit of her stomach. “I’ll have to stop this,” she thought. “This is crazy.” A quick and sexual picture had formed in her mind.

Juan said, “People down there, unless they’re rich, have to work too hard and for too little money. I guess that’s the main reason I left.”

“You speak very good English,” Bernice Pritchard said as though it were a compliment.

“Why not? My mother was Irish. I got both languages at once.”

“Well, are you a Mexican citizen?” Mr. Pritchard asked.

“I guess so,” said Juan. “I never did anything about it.”

“It’s a good idea to take out your first papers,” said Mr. Pritchard.

“What for?”

“It’s a good idea.”

“It doesn’t make any difference to the government,” said Juan. “They can tax me and draft me.”

“It’s still a pretty good idea,” said Mr. Pritchard.

Juan’s eyes were playing with Mildred, touching her breasts and sliding down over her hips. He saw her sigh and arch her back a little, and deep in Juan an imp of hatred stirred. Not strongly because there wasn’t much of it in him, but the Indian blood was there, and in the dark past lay the hatred for the ojos claros, the light eyes, the blonds. It was a hatred and a fear of a complexion. The light-eyed people who had for centuries taken the best land, the best horses, the best women. Juan felt the stirring like a little heat lightning, and he felt a glow of pleasure knowing that he could take this girl and twist her and outrage her if he wanted to. He could disturb her and seduce her mentally, and physically too, and then throw her away. The cruelty stirred and he let it mount in him. His voice grew softer and more rich. He spoke directly into Mildred’s violet eyes.

“My country,” he said, “even if I don’t live there, it is in my heart.” He laughed inside at this, but Mildred did not laugh. She leaned forward a little and pulled back the corners of both eyes so that she could see his face more clearly.

“I remember things,” said Juan. “In the square of my town there were public letter-writers who did all the business for the people who couldn’t read or write. They were good men. They had to be. The country people would know if they weren’t. They know many things, those people of the hills. And I remember one morning when I was a little boy I was sitting on a bench. There was a fiesta in this town in honor of a saint. The church was full of flowers and there were candy stands and a ferris-wheel and a little merry-go-round. And all night the people shot off skyrockets to the saint. In the park an Indian came to the letter-writer and said, ‘I want you to write a letter to my patron. I will tell you what to say and you will put it in good and beautiful form so he will not find me discourteous.’ ‘Is it a long letter?’ the man asked. ‘I don’t know,’ said the Indian. ‘That will be one peso,’ said the man. And the little Indian paid him, and he said, ‘I want you to say to my patron that I cannot go back to my town and my fields for I have seen great beauty and I must stay behind. Tell him I am sorry and I do not wish to give him pain, nor my friends, either, but I could not go back. I am different and my friends would not know me. I would be unhappy in the field and restless. And because I would be different my friends would reject me and hate me. I have seen the stars. Tell him that. And tell him to give my chair to my friend brother and my pig with the two little ones to the old woman who sat with me in fever. My pots to my brother-in-law, and tell the patron to go with God, with loveliness. Tell him that.’ ”

Juan paused and saw that Mildred’s lips were open a little, and he saw that she was taking his story as an allegory for herself.

“What had happened to him?” she asked.

“Why, he had seen the merry-go-round,” said Juan. “He couldn’t leave it. He slept beside it, and pretty soon his money was gone and he was starving, and then the owner let him turn the crank that ran the merry-go-round and fed him. He couldn’t ever leave. He loved the merry-go-round. Maybe he’s still there.” Juan had become foreign in the telling. A trifle of accent had come into his speech.

Mildred sighed deeply. Mr. Pritchard said, “Let me get this straight. He gave away his land and all his property and he never went home because he saw a merry-go-round?”

“He didn’t even own his land,” said Juan. “Little Indians never own their land. But he gave away everything else he had.”

Mildred glared at her father. This was one of the times when she found him stupid to the point of nausea. Why couldn’t he see the beauty in this story? Her eyes went back to Juan to tell him silently that she understood, and she thought she saw something in his face that had not been there before. She thought there was a cruel, leering triumph in his face, but it was probably her eyes, she thought. Her damnable eyes that couldn’t see very well. But what she saw was a shock to her. She looked quickly at her mother and then at her father to see whether they had noticed anything, but they were regarding Juan vacantly.

Her father was saying in his slow and, to Mildred, maddening way, “I can understand how he would think it was fine if he had never seen a merry-go-round before, but you get used to anything. A man would get used to a palace in a few days and then he’d want something else.”

“It’s just a story,” Mildred said with so much fierceness that her father turned surprised eyes on her.

Mildred could almost feel Juan’s fingers on her thighs. Her body tingled with desire, aroused and unsatisfied. She itched with a pure sexual longing, and her anger arose against her father as though she had been interrupted in the midst of connection. She put on her glasses, looked quickly at Juan and then away, for his eyes were veiled although he looked at all of them. He was enjoying a kind of triumph. He was laughing at her and also at the thing her father and mother did not know was happening. And suddenly her desire hardened into a knot in her stomach and her stomach ached and she felt a revulsion. She thought she would be sick.

Ernest Horton said, “I always intended to get down Mexico way. Thought I might ask the head office about it some time. Might make some pretty valuable contacts down there. Like these fiestas they have. They sell novelties, don’t they?”

“Sure,” said Juan. “They sell little rosaries and holy pictures and candles and things like that, candy and ice cream.”

“Well, if a guy went down and got a line on that stuff, why, we could probably turn it out a lot cheaper than they can. We could stamp out those rosaries—well, nice ones—out of pot metal. And skyrockets. My company supplies some of the biggest celebrations, all kinds of fireworks. It’s an idea. I think I’ll write a letter.”

Juan looked at the increasing pile of dirty dishes in the sink. He stared over his shoulder at the door to the bedroom and then he opened the door and looked in. The bed was empty. Alice had got up, but the bathroom door was shut. Juan came back and began to scrub the dirty dishes in the sink.

The sky was clearing fast now, and the clean yellow sun was shining on the washed land. The young leaves of the oaks were almost yellow in the new light. The green fields looked incredibly young.

Juan smiled shortly. He cut two slices of bread.

“I think I’ll walk around a little bit,” said Mr. Pritchard. “Want to come, dear?” he asked his wife. She looked quickly at the bedroom door.

“Pretty soon,” she said, and he understood her.

“Well, I’ll just go outside,” he said.