Miss Moon, he knew well. Duane had been four when Uncle Art had taken him into town to get a library card.

Miss Moon had frowned slightly, shaken her head, and peered at the chubby little boy in front of her desk. "We have very few picture books, Mr. McBride. We prefer that the parents of ... ah ... pre-readers use their own cards when checking out books for the little ones."

Uncle Art had said nothing. Pulling the nearest volume off the shelf, he had handed it to four-year-old Duane. "Read," he'd said.

"Chapter One ... I am born," read Duane. "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to . . ."

"OK," Uncle Art had said and returned the book to its shelf.

Miss Moon had frowned and fussed with the chain of her glasses, but she'd written out a lending card to Duane McBride. For years that card had been Duane's prize possession, despite the fact that Miss Moon always treated him with a chilliness bordering on resentment. Finally she had denned her role as one of limiting the number of books the overweight little boy could check out, remonstrating firmly with him when he returned something late-not, as it turned out, because he had tarried in reading it, but almost always because he had devoured the stack of books during the first few days after returning to the farm, then waited weeks for the Old Man to find time to drive him into town again.

When, in second grade, Duane had gone on a Nancy Drew mystery binge, alternating the female detective's adventures with C. S. Forester and everything by Robert Louis Stevenson, Miss Moon had pointed out that the Nancy Drews were girls' books-her term-and she asked pointedly whether Duane had a sister.

Duane had grinned at her, adjusted his glasses, and said, "Nope," checking out his limit of five books, all Nancy Drews. When that series was finished, he'd discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs and spent a delirious summer traversing the steppes of Barsoom, the jungles of Venus, and-most eagerly-swinging from the "middle terrace" of Lord Greystoke's jungle. Duane wasn't quite sure what the middle terrace was, but he'd tried to simulate it in the low oaks down by the creek, Witt watching him with a cocked head and puzzled eyes while Duane swung from limb to limb and ate lunch in the branches.

The following summer, Duane was reading Jane Austen but Miss Moon said nothing this time about girls' books.

Duane hiked into town just after he finished his morning chores. The Old Man had been tilling less and less acreage every year, leasing out most of the three hundred and forty acres to Mr. Johnson, so there wasn't too much to do. Duane still watched over the livestock, made sure they had water in the back pasture, but they were much less of a problem now that they were out of the barn. The dreaded manure-hauling had been completed in May, so Duane didn't have to worry about that.

This morning he had finished the maintenance work on the six-row cultivator; the hydraulic lift on the rear gangs was lowering too quickly, so Duane had adjusted the portable hydraulic-lift cylinder and oiled and tightened the implement setting frame. All the while Duane had been working on the cultivator, the big combine with the cornpicker-husker had been hovering over him in the barn. The Old Man had driven the thing into the central maintenance area to fiddle with the picker unit; he was always trying to improve the things, always modifying, adapting, and converting something on the farm machinery until they barely resembled the factory units. With the cornpicker, Duane noticed, the Old Man was doing something with the cornhead attachments. The shields were off each of the eight-row units and Duane could look in and see the bright steel of the snapping rolls, conveyors, and gather chains.

Most of the farmers in the area dragged cornpicker units behind their tractors or bought a self-propelled one, but the Old Man had bought an old full-size combine and attached the eight-row cornhead to it. It meant fast work in high-yield years, but mostly it meant lots of maintenance keeping the old combine running and "modifying" the threshing, husking, shelling, and cleaning parts of the huge machine.

Sometimes Duane thought that the Old Man only stayed in farming to tinker with the machinery.

That morning Duane had finished with the cultivator and turned to look at the combine looming behind him, snapping rolls reaching toward him like augered sword blades in the circle of light from overhead, and he'd considered doing some of the obvious modification himself as a surprise for his father. Then he'd decided not to spoil the Old Man's fun. Besides, he had more animals to feed and rows to hoe in the garden before breakfast, and he wanted to get into town before ten.

Duane would have liked to have waited for a ride-he still didn't like walking that last mile and a half down Jubilee College Road-but he knew the Old Man had held off all week to start his serious binge on Friday night at Carl's or the Black Tree, and Duane didn't want to ride with him then.

So he walked. The day was bright and clear and stiflingly hot. Duane unbuttoned the top three buttons on his plaid shirt, seeing where the darkly tanned skin ended in a sharp V and his pale flesh began.

He paused by Mike O'Rourke's house on the edge of town. Mike wasn't home but one of his older sisters said that it was all right for Duane to get a drink from the backyard pump. Duane drank deeply, tasting the iron and other elements in the water, and then splashed his head and forearms liberally.

When he tapped on Mrs. Moon's screen door, the old lady hobbled toward the light with her two canes and retinue of cats.

"Do I know you, young man?" Duane thought that Mrs. Moon's voice sounded like a parody of an old lady's voice-high, quivery, sliding the scale of inflection.

"Yes'm. I'm Duane McBride. I've been over a few times with Dale Stewart and Michael O'Rourke when they came over to take you for a walk."

"Who did you say?"

Duane sighed and repeated everything in a louder voice.

"I'm not ready for my walk. I haven't eaten supper yet." Mrs. Moon sounded querulous and a bit doubtful. The mob of cats brushed around her canes and rubbed up against swollen legs wrapped in flesh-colored tape. Duane thought of the Soldier with his puttees.

"No, ma'am," he said. "I just wanted to ask you some questions about something."

"Questions?" She took a step back into the dimness of her parlor. The old house was small, white-frame, and smelled as if it had been home to uncounted generations of cats that never went outside.

"Yes'm. Just a couple."

"What about?" She peered myopically at him and Duane realized that he must be only a rounded shadow filling her doorway. He took a step back ... the clever salesman's move, showing deference and a lack of threat.

"Just about ... the old days," he said. "I'm writing a school paper about what life was like in Elm Haven around the turn of the century. I wondered if you'd be so kind as to give me some . . . well, some atmosphere."

"Some what?"

"Some details," said Duane. "Please?"

The old woman hesitated, turned with a stiff movement of both canes, and receded with her retinue of cats, leaving him standing there alone. Duane hesitated.

"Well," came her voice from the darkness, "don't just stand there. Come on in. I'll put on tea for us."

Duane sat and sipped tea and munched cookies and asked questions and listened to tales of Mrs. Moon's childhood and her father and Elm Haven in the good old days. Mrs. Moon nibbled at cookies as she spoke and slowly but surely a small litter of crumbs had grown up on her lap. The cats took turns leaping onto the couch to eat the crumbs as she petted them absently.