"Oh, for heaven's sake," Mrs. Beasley said, and began to laugh. "I'm sorry."

"That's all right; it does a man good to have a lady pay him a compliment. 'Specially one as good-looking as you." He turned toward Suralee and me and winked.

Mrs. Beasley pressed her thin lips tightly together, unsuccessfully trying to hold back a smile. "Well, I did have my days," she said. "I surely did."

"These Band-Aids are for the hardware store," Dell said. "We're all out."

"You work at the hardware store?" Mrs. Beasley asked, for which I was grateful. It was where Suralee and I were headed next, and now it would be infinitely more interesting to go there.

"Yes, ma'am," Dell said. "Today's my first day."

"Where are you from?" Mrs. Beasley asked, and he told her Odessa, Texas.

"And what brings you here?" she asked.

"Just here doing a favor," he said. "For a friend."

"I see." Mrs. Beasley handed him his change. "Well, welcome to Tupelo."

He put his hat back on and tipped it. "Thank you kindly." Just before he pushed out the door, he smiled at Suralee and me. His eyes were an arresting light blue. He had one dimple on the left side. Straight white teeth.

"Kill me dead before I die," Suralee said.

I swallowed. "Do you still want ice cream?"

"Are you crazy?"

We always got along this way. We understood each other. We started out the door and Mrs. Beasley said, "Don't you girls want your cones?"

"We'll be back," I told her.

"Your Seventeen Seventeen?" she asked.

Suralee and I looked at each other, and I ran back to the counter. Mrs. Beasley put the magazine in a bag and handed it to me, then put her finger to her lips; her husband was emerging from the back room. I thanked her, then ran outside to join Suralee, who was waiting impatiently.

We quickly crossed the street, Shooter trotting behind us. Debby's Dress Shop was located next to the hardware store, and I saw Mrs. Black, the owner, standing at the window with her arms crossed, watching us. She was probably afraid we were headed her way, coming in to finger the Ship'n Sh.o.r.e blouses we couldn't afford but liked to look at anyway. If we tried something on, she always checked for smells, and made no effort to disguise it. When Suralee told Shooter to lie down beside a parking meter in front of the hardware store rather than the dress shop, Mrs. Black gave a fake-friendly wave. Hating myself, I smiled and waved back. I had to. Debby Black had once donated a set of saucepans to us. Most had scorch marks and one was missing screws at the handle, but LaRue fixed it for us.

Inside the hardware store, Suralee and I saw not Dell but Brooks. He was standing by a display of paint cans near the front of the store, dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt, shiny navy blue pants, and white socks with his black tie shoes. He was talking to an old colored man; they were laughing about something. "Hey, Diana!" he said in his overly hearty way. Suralee always said he should do used-car ads. Brooks only jutted his chin at her-he always forgot her name. Diana!" he said in his overly hearty way. Suralee always said he should do used-car ads. Brooks only jutted his chin at her-he always forgot her name.

"Hey," I said. "This is my friend, Suralee. Remember?"

"'Course I do. What can I do for y'all?"

I looked around the store as though trying to locate what I needed, when in fact I was looking for Dell. Suralee began moving across the heads of the aisles, doing the same thing.

"My mom needs something," I said, at the same time that Suralee pointed and said, "Right there!"

"Plumbing supplies?" Brooks asked, for that was the aisle Suralee had gone down.

"No, that's for Suralee's mom," I said. "My mom needs you to look at her icebox."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Not keeping things cold."

"Again?" Brooks looked at his watch. "I can't leave right now, but I can come by after dinner. Tell her we'll have a TV date, how's that?"

I shrugged. She wouldn't mind his company, but I would. They would talk in low voices and ignore me. Sometimes my mother winked at Brooks. Once, I'd seen him rub her hand. He'd used only two fingers and had moved them along slowly; it had made the back of my neck cold.

"Tell her I'll be there about seven-thirty, and I'll bring her a Dairy Queen-doesn't she like Dairy Queen milk shakes?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, I'll bring her one."

"I like them, too," I said. "Especially chocolate."

"Yeah, I believe that's your mother's favorite, too." He turned again to the colored man. "I'll tell you what," he told him. "I 'bout busted a gut, watching old Randy try to throw that ball. Looked like a G.o.dd.a.m.n girl."

"Like a girl, you say," the colored man said, then laughed, a wheezy sound.

I started for the aisle I'd seen Suralee go down and saw her standing at the end of it. She was talking to Dell, her hands loose at her sides, relaxed as if she'd known him forever. "Here she is," she said when she saw me. Then, when I reached them, "Mr. Dell Hansen, I'd like you to meet Miss Diana Dunn."

"...h.e.l.lo," I said dully, studying the floor. I wanted to look into his eyes and say, "Hi!" brightly, but I couldn't. The only time I wasn't shy was when I was in front of an audience. Last year I had run for secretary of the seventh-grade cla.s.s and had to give a speech in front of the entire student body. I did all right with that but couldn't handle the one-on-one conversations the candidates were supposed to have in the cafeteria during lunch hour. For two weeks before the election, card tables were set up at the front of the room for the people running for office, and everyone but me chatted easily with kids who'd come up to talk or to ask questions. I'd stared into my lap, afraid to eat lunch or talk, and I lost the election, along with a fair amount of weight. "What's the matter with you?" Peacie had scolded one morning at breakfast. "Way you suck up food, you ought to be busting out of your clothes, not drowning in them." Of course, as Suralee not unkindly pointed out, I wouldn't have had a chance to win anyway. She said no one in our school had the vision to see the noses on their face, much less the kind of qualities a good leader needed to possess.

Dell leaned forward to shake my hand. "Diana Dunn. Sounds like a movie star!"

Suralee gasped. "That is exactly exactly what I tell her what I tell her all the time all the time!"

Suralee had indeed told me this, though only once. But I had to agree. Sometimes I lay in my bed at night whispering, "And now, The Ed Sullivan Show The Ed Sullivan Show is proud to present...Miss Diana Dunn!!" And then I would say to the audience, "Thank you. is proud to present...Miss Diana Dunn!!" And then I would say to the audience, "Thank you. Thank Thank you! Oh, aren't you nice, thank you all!" you! Oh, aren't you nice, thank you all!"

"Suralee just invited me to your play," Dell said.

I looked quickly at Suralee. "You know, the one tomorrow night, in your backyard," she said smoothly.

"It costs fifty cents," I said, avoiding eye contact with Suralee.

"Okay if I bring a date?" Dell asked.

"Yes!" we said together. A dollar!

This was it. Things were starting to happen. This was a sign. There was so much for Suralee and me to talk about-most particularly what we were going to do for a play. We always had a few ideas on hand-the latest featured Suralee playing my mother in a garbage-can iron lung-but nothing was ready to present.

"We'd better go," I told Suralee. There were roles to be decided on, costumes to be designed. Refreshments to be begged from my mother and Peacie. Especially from Peacie. We had a watermelon we might be able to use, but then we would have to follow Peacie's rules: Eat the flesh, but! save the juice in a bottle to drink; bake the seeds in lard and salt; use the white rind for preserves; keep the green skin for her to feed to her chickens. She loved her chickens, and she named them, every one. She said they could cure things. If you got a wart, you were supposed to p.r.i.c.k it with a needle, rub the blood on a kernel of corn, and then feed the corn to one of her "children"-your wart would disappear. She swore by it. Also she swore by placing slices of raw potato on your forehead and securing them with a blue bandanna to get rid of a headache. "Come on, on," I told Suralee, pulling her arm.

"I'm coming!" Over her shoulder, she told Dell, "So don't forget. Eight o'clock, tomorrow night. Green Street, about nine blocks from here, the white house with the ramp."

Dell followed us to the door as we were leaving, and when he saw Shooter lying outside, he said, "Is that y'all's dog?"

"He's mine," Suralee said.

"He wouldn't have anything to do with me before. Mind if I try to pet him again?"

"I don't mind. But he will."

"Just a quick try," Dell said. "I like a challenge."

"Your funeral," Suralee said.

Dell followed us outside. Shooter stood at attention when he saw Suralee, his tail wagging. But when Dell stepped toward him, his tail stopped and the hair between his shoulders stood up. "It's okay," Dell said, and Shooter growled low in his throat.

Dell stood still, his hand outstretched. "I'll let you come to me, then. Now, let's talk about this, man to man. You don't have to put on a show for me. You know you're curious, so why don't you just come on over and have a little sniff?" The dog stood staring, head lowered.

"He won't," Suralee said. But he did. After the briefest hesitation, Shooter walked up to Dell. He wouldn't allow him to pet him-he ducked when Dell tried-but he sniffed Dell's hand thoroughly. Then he attached himself to Suralee's side.

"I have never seen him do that," Suralee said. "Not one time."

I poked her in the ribs-Let's GO.

On the way home I told Suralee, "My mom says if a man likes kids and dogs, he's a good man."

Suralee said, "My father liked dogs and kids. So much for that theory, I guess." She picked up a stone and flung it into a field we were pa.s.sing, watched it land without comment, then resumed walking. "Hey. Guess what. Tomorrow night is a full moon." She affected an English accent. "'The loveliest faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy.'"

"Who said that?" I asked, and she gave her usual response: anonymous.

"The moon...brings all things magical," I said in my own English accent, then added shyly, "I said that."

"I thought so," Suralee said, smiling. She touched my hand. "But it's nice. We'll put it in the play."

"The night can be measured," I said, with no accent at all.

Suralee stopped walking. "Who said that that?"

"My mother. It's true. There's a beginning and an end to the night. Because of the sphere shape. You measure from where you can see stars to where you no longer can. It's about the size of the Pacific Ocean." Suralee stared at me. "It's true!"

"How does she know?"

I shrugged. "She read it somewhere."

People brought my mother books from the library or from yard or estate sales, and she read them all. She would have someone fold her hands over her vent hose and then pad them with a towel. The book would rest on this padding, and my mother would hold a pencil in her mouth and use the eraser end to turn pages. She read a lot of mysteries and biographies, but mostly she loved science books.

Suralee pulled at her bottom lip, thinking. It was a characteristic I admired and emulated, just as I imitated the way she watched movies: from the corner of her eye, with her head turned slightly away from the screen. Finally, "We might could use that, too," Suralee said.

We walked the rest of the way home in silence, past houses that grew increasingly less cared for, past a field full of b.u.t.terflies and gra.s.shoppers and sharp-edged weeds sticking out of orange-colored dirt. We walked past two bare-chested little twin girls swinging on a gate, their mother yelling through the window for them to stop stop that. We walked alongside drooping phone wires held up by poles that had ads stapled on them: a lost cat, a church-group concert, an offer to make money by making phone calls from home. Suralee took a tab with a phone number from an ad promising a weight loss of ten pounds in a week. "You don't need to lose weight," I said. that. We walked alongside drooping phone wires held up by poles that had ads stapled on them: a lost cat, a church-group concert, an offer to make money by making phone calls from home. Suralee took a tab with a phone number from an ad promising a weight loss of ten pounds in a week. "You don't need to lose weight," I said.

Suralee said, "It's not for me."

It was for her mother, then. Suralee didn't often speak to or of her mother directly. She had other ways.

"You want to go to Glenwood before we go home?" I asked. Sometimes Suralee and I walked up to the cemetery and lay on the graves. We liked to pretend we were letting dead people speak through us. "I was a hardworking man with a talent for whittling," Suralee might say from her grave. "I died in childbirth on a Sat.u.r.day morning," I might say from mine. I preferred the darker dramas.

"Not today," Suralee said. "Too much to do." She was right. For the amount of money we'd be charging, this needed to be a good play.

Peacie had sugar cookies for us when we got home. The b.u.t.ter was going to go rancid, she said; that was the reason and the only reason. She piled them high on a plate and set them on the kitchen table. "What you don't finish, you wrap up. Ants getting to be the size of elephants around here."

In the living room, my mother sat with her best friend, Brenda, who'd been the witness at my mother's wedding. She and my mother talked frequently on the phone and visited as often as they could, but it was only about three times a year, now that Brenda had moved to Nashville. Every now and then Brenda would surprise my mother and just show up, and then they'd laugh and talk for hours-about men, about hairdos, about children, about old times. Brenda was a terrific dancer, as my mother used to be. Sometimes they watched American Bandstand American Bandstand together, and Brenda would dance in front of my mother. I used to worry it would make my mother sad, but it didn't seem to. She would nod, keeping time, and Brenda would shake her hips and shimmy and twirl. One day she'd grabbed Peacie as a partner, and I'd been stunned to see that snarly woman's fancy footwork. I stood at the doorway, watching, and when Peacie was finished dancing, she came to stand before me, all wild-eyed and out of breath. "I guess you done had your eyes opened," she said. together, and Brenda would dance in front of my mother. I used to worry it would make my mother sad, but it didn't seem to. She would nod, keeping time, and Brenda would shake her hips and shimmy and twirl. One day she'd grabbed Peacie as a partner, and I'd been stunned to see that snarly woman's fancy footwork. I stood at the doorway, watching, and when Peacie was finished dancing, she came to stand before me, all wild-eyed and out of breath. "I guess you done had your eyes opened," she said.

I nodded, not looking at her.

"Didn't know I could dance. You surprised."

Again I'd nodded.

"That's the Jesus truth. It's a wide, wide world. Sooner you lift up your gaze from your own self, sooner you know that."

"Peacie," my mother had said. "Let her be."

It was one of the few times my mother interfered on my behalf, and I'd been grateful. "Come over here and light me a cigarette," she'd said. I'd snuck a little inhale, and my mother had smiled. But then she'd said, "Don't get started with something you won't be able to do without."

Now Brenda was showing my mother something in a hairstyle magazine. "See? You really should let it get long again, Paige."

"It's too hard to manage," my mother said. "But I do like that style." She saw me then and asked, "Oh, good. Is Brooks coming?"

"After dinner."

She nodded, worried-looking. "It's gotten worse. I don't know if he can fix it this time."

"He's bringing you a milk shake, and he said how about a TV date."

I mumbled this last, and my mother said, "How about a what what?"

"A TV date," I said.

My mother and Brenda exchanged glances, and then my mother said slowly, "I guess that would be all right." Again they exchanged glances.

Suralee came into the living room. "Hey, Mrs. Dunn," she said. "Hey, Brenda." Brenda allowed no one to call her by her last name. She said it reminded her of being a "Mrs.," something she'd just as soon forget. "G.o.dd.a.m.n men," she said. "Only thing they're good for is nothing." But she didn't mean it. She wanted another man. She talked about it all the time.

"How's your mom?" my mother asked Suralee.

"Okay, I guess."

"Well, you tell her again that if she ever wants to visit, just come on by. Anytime."

"Yes, ma'am, I will."

Noreen would not visit, I knew. She was afraid to visit my mother. She had said so the first time my mother had invited her, though not in those words. But I knew. It made me sad; my mother needed friends to come to the house and see her in the way that Brenda did. Apart from sunbathing, she never went out. I was hopeful that Noreen would change her mind. Ironically, she needed friends more than my mother did.