"Does his wife ever come with him?"

"Not to my knowledge, Miss Snoopy Bloomers-but that don't mean she isn't home playing bridge or painting her fingernails. Or having her hair done at a fancy salon with one entire wall of sinks and another of hair dryers."

"I was merely inquiring."

"So I heard." The conversation went on in this vein for a while, but there wasn't really anyplace for it to go, and after a few minutes Estelle picked up the list. "So we got to find one more player. I can't think of anyone, Ruby Bee. We pretty much got every single child in town who was willing to play and wasn't already signed up for the supermarket team. Did you hear they even bought spangely little outfits for the cheerleaders? Red-and-white-striped miniskirts and blue leotards with stars on 'em. Joyce said they were real cute."

"Cheerleaders!" Ruby Bee sniffed at that nonsense. "What featherbrained girls agreed to do that?"

"Some of the high-school girls, I heard. Jim Bob told the boys who're going to work at the supermarket that he'd get them free beer if they could talk their girlfriends into it. Ten minutes later, he had them lined up at the front door for interviews. The front door of his private office, I might add."

"No?" Ruby Bee said, shocked.

"It's the gospel truth. Heather Riley told Lottie Estes, in the strictest confidence, of course, so this is just between you and me, that Jim Bob made her stick out her chest and prance around the room like an ostrich. Then he had her sit down right next to him on the cot in his office and asked her questions that had nothing to do with cheerleading-unless that's what they call what goes on in the backseats of cars these days. Heather finally burst into tears and ran out of the room, and now her boyfriend won't even talk to her."

There was a period of relative quiet while the two humphed and snorted. Ruby Bee finally gave up expressing her disgust and said, "So he's got all the players he needs, a coach, uniforms, cheerleaders, miniskirts, equipment, and heaven knows what else. You know what we got, Estelle? We got eight players." She stuck eight fingers under Estelle's nose to emphasize her point. "We got no coach, no uniforms, no smarmy high-school girls in miniskirts, no equipment, no nothing. We don't have diddly squat."

"I can't argue that one," Estelle said with a morose sigh. "We may have to call those little children and tell them they can't play after all."

"I am not a quitter, Estelle Oppers. Jim Bob is going to be called to explain hisself on Judgment Day just like everybody else, but when he lifts up his squinty yellow eyes, he's going to find Rubella Belinda Hanks standing before him."

"Holding a baseball bat," Estelle added, taken with the image. "Looking at him hard enough to split his britches."

"You can be beside me," Ruby Bee said in a spurt of generosity. "And you know what? When his britches split, it turns out his drawers are red and white striped, and everybody sees it and starts laughing to beat the band. Can you picture the look on his face then?"

That rocked them back and forth until both of them had tears rolling down their cheeks and Estelle nearly wet her pants but managed to hold it. The near-miss sobered her up enough for an idea to pop into her head.

"Stop, Ruby Bee," she said. "An idea just popped into my head. It was exactly like when a light bulb goes on over a character's head in a cartoon."

Ruby Bee wiped her eyes on the hem of her apron and tried to look impressed with all this upcoming illumination. "So what is it, Estelle?"

"It has to do with Arly. We can call-"

"Don't waste your breath. Arly made it real plain that she wasn't going to have one thing to do with any baseball team. She'll have a fit if we so much as throw out a hint in her direction. She may be fond of making jokes and saying smart-alecky things, but there's something about her that I can't rightly put my finger on but I try my best to avoid."

"We're not throwing a single hint in her direction, or not yet, anyways. Remember Hammet, Robin Buchanon's bush colt that stayed with Arly after Robin was killed? How old do you reckon he was at the time?"

"Lordy, Estelle, he was such a wild creature that I didn't want to get close enough to look. He was runty, that's for sure. Runty and filthy and smelly. And blessed with his ma's nasty language. Did I tell you what he had the audacity to say right to my face?"

"More than once. Now what we need to do is find out where Hammet's pa lives. Why don't you pour me a glass of beer and scoot the pretzels down this way. This is one fine idea, if I say so myself."

And she always did, Ruby Bee thought as she pushed the pretzel basket down the smooth expanse of the bar.

Alex had taken Jackie outside to play catch, which was somewhat interesting in that Alex couldn't catch a cold, much less a ball. Neither could Jackie, for that matter, but he was a docile sort and trudged along rather than argue.

Ivy was reading a book that would have caused the good folks at Organic Gardening to faint in their compost piles. "Organophosphate," she read aloud with difficulty. "Tetraethyl pyrophosphate." She repeated the words until they had a pleasant rhythm to them and seemed to roll off her tongue.

Alex wouldn't hear them, because once he understood what they meant, he'd be as panicky and upset as a bronco with a burr in its tail. Alex preferred ladybugs and praying mantises to control the insects that savaged the gardens every summer. He planted marigolds to fight the slugs. He constructed quaint scarecrows when a shotgun would have been much more effective.

Alex was in harmony with his environment, Ivy told herself as she put aside the book. He genuinely liked the rabbits that gnawed the lettuce, the groundhogs that wallowed in the squash, the deer that nibbled everything they could reach over the fence, or everything in sight when they'd knocked the fence down, which they did once a month or so. For all she knew, he had affection for the bugs and slugs and other foul things.

Ivy was more in harmony with the real world of dwindling bank accounts, bills, mortgage payments, supplies, the increase in the electric rate, and all the basically nonorganic aspects of their life.

There wasn't much she could do about the animals that trampled the gardens and enjoyed a well-balanced diet at her expense, but she could do something quite lethal to the ones that traveled on six legs. The insecticide wasn't cheap, but the increase in productivity per acre would more than cover the cost. There was a possibility they could lower prices just a bit, and perhaps keep a few customers.

Alex would protest and perhaps go so far as to forbid it-if he knew, of course. Ivy figured she could send him and Jackie into town on some errand, then waltz out to the garden and orchards to take care of the insects all by herself. Alex could continue to be as organic as he wished, and she could use enough of the organophosphate to at least attempt to be competitive with the supermarket. Or she could sprinkle it on the salads in the deli department and ensure there would be no more supermarket with which to be competitive.

Geraldo Mandozes slammed down the checkbook and leaned back in the metal chair. If business got any slower, he figured he'd have to call it quits and try to sell the damn building and equipment to someone else. But there would be no buyers beating down the door. He'd used all his savings to buy the business and bring his family to this godforsaken place. Geraldo's anger grew hotter than a peck of jalapeño peppers as he remembered how long he'd cooked for other people to save the money.