our house down
with those big tractors of theirs. They'll bury it in concrete and set
off those guided missiles of theirs right over it."

"They can't make me get out," Sam said.

* * * * *

Ed Michaels scooped up a pound, one ounce of nails and spilled them onto
his scale. He pinched off the excess, then dropped it back in and fed
the nails into a brown paper bag. He crumpled the top and set it on the
counter. "That's twenty-nine plus one, Sam. Thirty cents."

Collins laid out a quarter and a nickel and picked up the bag.
"Appreciate you doing this after store hours, Ed."

Michaels chuckled. "I wasn't exactly getting ready for the opera, Sam."

Collins turned around and saw Sarah Comstock still waiting, the petition
in her hand.

"Now what's a pretty girl like you doing, wasting her time in politics?"
Collins heard himself ask.

Mrs. Comstock twittered. "I'm old enough to be your mother, Sam
Collins."

"I like mature women."

Collins watched his hand in fascination as it reached out to touch one
of Sarah Comstock's plump cheeks, then dropped to her shoulder and
ripped away the strap-sleeve of her summer print dress.

A plump, rosy shoulder was revealed, splattered with freckles.

Sarah Comstock put her hands over her ears as if to keep from hearing
her own shrill scream. It reached out into pure soprano range.

Sarah Comstock backed away, into the shadows, and Sam Collins followed
her, trying to explain, to apologize.

"Sam! _Sam!_"

The voice cut through to him and he looked up.

Ed Michaels had a double-barreled shotgun aimed at him. Mrs. Michaels'
face was looking over his shoulder in the door to the back, her face a
sick white.

"You get out of here, Sam," Michaels said. "You get out and don't you
come back. Ever."

Collins' hands moved emptily in air. He was always better with his hands
than words, but this time even they seemed inexpressive.

He crumpled the sack of nails in both fists, and turned and left the
hardware store.

II

His house was still there, sitting at the end of Elm Street, at the end
of town, on the edge of the prairie. It was a very old house. It was
decorated with gingerboard, a rusted-out tin rooster-comb running the
peak of the roof and stained glass window transoms; and the top of the
house was joined to the ground floor by lapped fishscales, as though it
was a mermaid instead of a house. The house was a golden h