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you hear from Charlie?”
    “Yes. And I meant to call you, but I thought it could wait.”
    “Good news?”
    “Pretty good. It’s a long story.” He stared at her. “You’re looking ominously dressed up, woman. I hope there isn’t a party I’ve forgotten about.”
    “Oh, this? This was for morale. I was worried, so I got all fancied up. I generally do anyway, remember? All the happy marriage articles tell you to get dressed up for your husband every evening.”
    “But not this much.”
    They went in through the kitchen. He made a tall drink and took it upstairs with him to sip while he showered and changed. When he was out of the shower, Carol came and sat on the edge of her bed and listened to his account of the talk with Charlie and the employment of Sievers.
    “I wish he’d done something they could arrest him for, but anyway, I’m glad about Sievers. Does he look … efficient?”
    “I wouldn’t know. He isn’t the warmest guy anybody ever met. Charlie seems to think he’s tops.”
    “Charlie would know, wouldn’t he?”
    “Charlie would know. Stop looking so strained, baby. The wheels are in motion.”
    “Isn’t it going to be terribly expensive?”
    “Not too bad,” he lied.
    “I’m going to throw that blue shirt away some day.”
    He buttoned it, grinning at her, and said, “When this goes, I go.”
    “It’s frightful!”
    “I know. Where are the kids?”
    “Bucky is in his room. He and Andy are designing an airplane, they say. Jamie is at the Turners’, and he is invited to stay for dinner. Nancy ought to be back from the village any minute.”
    “Is she with anybody?”
    “She and Sandra went in on their bikes.”
    He went over to the bureau and took another swallow of his drink and set the glass down. He looked at Carol. She smiled. “I guess we can’t help it, darling. The early settlers had it all the time. Indians and animals. That’s what it’s like. Like an animal hiding back there in the woods near the creek.”
    He kissed her forehead. “It’ll be over soon.”
    “It better be. I was hungry this noon, but all of a sudden I couldn’t swallow. And I wanted to go down to the school and look at each one of them. But I didn’t. I dug weeds inan absolute frenzy until the bus let them off in front of the house.”
    He could see the drive from the bedroom window and he saw Nancy cycling toward the barn, turning to wave and yell something back over her shoulder at someone out of sight. Sandra, probably. She wore blue-jean shorts and a red blouse.
    “There’s ole Nance,” he said, “right on the dot.”
    “She is, to use her own words, in a wild rage at Pike. There seems to be new talent at the school. Something with almost platinum hair. So now Pike is a thod.”
    “Thod?”
    “It was new to me too. It seems to be a combination clod and thud. The translation was given with vast impatience. Oh, Motherrr!”
    “I’ll accept that. Pike Foster is a thod. Beyond any question. He’s a phase I’ll be glad to see ended. He’s too meaty and muscular for a fifteen-year-old boy. And when I try to make conversation with him he blushes and stares at me and gives with the most horribly vacant laugh I’ve ever heard.”
    “He doesn’t know how to take you. That’s all.”
    “There’s nothing opaque about me. Two-syllable words dazzle him. A true child of the television age. And of that damn school, and the damn teaching theories. And before you give me the usual smug answer, I will
not
join the PTA and try to do something about it.”
    They went downstairs. Nancy was sitting on a counter in the kitchen, talking on the phone. She gave them a look of helpless boredom, covered the mouthpiece and hissed, “I simply must study tonight.”
    “Then hang up,” Sam said.
    There was a sound like that of a rather underfed horse tumbling down the rear stairs. Bucky and his best friend, Andy, churned across the kitchen and out the screen door and down the steps, heading for the