n that apron. There isn't even a grease spot on the frying pan. The
lawn is as smooth as a billiard table. There's his son; he looks just
like his pop, except that he's not grey at the temples. Did you ever
really see a man that handsome, or hair that was just silver over the
ears and the rest glossy black? The daughter looks like a movie starlet,
and her mom is exactly the same, except that she has that grey streak in
front to match her husband. You can see the car in the drive; the treads
of the tires must have just been scrubbed; they're not even dusty.
There's not a pebble out of place; all the flowers are in full bloom; no
dead ones. No leaves on the lawn; no dry twigs showing on the trees.
That other house in the background looks like a palace, and the man with
the rake, looking over the fence: he looks like this one's twin brother,
and he's out raking leaves in brand new clothes--"

Pretty-Lee grabbed her magazine. "You just seem to hate everything
that's nicer than this messy town--"

"I don't think it's nicer. I like you; your hair isn't always perfectly
smooth, and you've got a mended place on your dress, and you feel human,
you smell human--"

"Oh!" Pretty-Lee turned and flounced out of the drug store.

* * *

Brett shifted in the dusty plush seat and looked around. There were a
few other people in the car. An old man was reading a newspaper; two old
ladies whispered together. There was a woman of about thirty with a
mean-looking kid; and some others. They didn't look like magazine
pictures, any of them. He tried to picture them doing the things you
read in newspapers: the old ladies putting poison in somebody's tea; the
old man giving orders to start a war. He thought about babies in houses
in cities, and airplanes flying over, and bombs falling down: huge
explosive bombs. Blam! Buildings fall in, pieces of glass and stone fly
through the air. The babies are blown up along with everything else--

But the kind of people he knew couldn't do anything like that. They
liked to loaf and eat and talk and drink beer and buy a new tractor or
refrigerator and go fishing. And if they ever got mad and hit
somebody--afterwards they were embarrassed and wanted to shake hands....

The train slowed, came to a shuddery stop. Through the window he saw a
cardboardy-looking building with the words BAXTER'S JUNCTION painted
across it. There were a few faded posters on a bulletin board. An old
man was si