Florence Hyde, Meany's wife, didn't even pretend to be busy at anything; she dragged on her cigarette, and called out to Wally. 'Hi, honey!'

'Hi, Florence,' Wally said, smiling.

Big Dot Taft, who'd miraculously run a mile, getting stung all the while, the night Senior had dumped Ira Titcomb's bees, put out her cigarette and picked up an empty crate; then she put the crate down and wondered where she'd left her broom. 'Hi, cutey,' Dot said to Wally cheerfully.

'What's new?' Wally asked the women.

'Nothing new here,' said Irene Titcomb, Ira's wife. She laughed and turned her face away. She was always laughing-and turning away the side of her face with the burn scar, as if she were meeting you for the first time and could keep the scar a secret. The accident had happened years ago, and there couldn't have been anyone in Heart's Haven or Heart's Rock who hadn't seen Irene Titcomb's scar and didn't know the exact details of how she got it.

One night Ira Titcomb had sat out in his yard all night with an oil torch and a shotgun; something had been getting into his hives-probably a bear or a raccoon. Irene had known this was Ira's plan, yet she was surprised when she woke up, hearing him calling her. He was on the lawn and waving the lit torch under her window; all she saw was the torchlight. He asked her to make him some bacon and eggs, if she wouldn't mind, because he was so bored waiting for whatever it was he intended to shoot that he'd gotten hungry.

Irene was humming to herself, watching the bacon fry, when Ira came to the kitchen window and tapped on the pane to find out if the food was ready. Irene was unprepared for the vision of Ira in his beekeeper suit, moving out of the darkness and into the faint light from the kitchen window with fire in his hands. She had seen {199} her husband in his beekeeper suit many times, but she hadn't imagined that he'd be wearing it while he waited to shoot a bear or a coon. She'd never seen the way the suit glowed in firelight, or at night, either.

Ira had worn the suit because he'd imagined that his shotgun blast might rip into one of the hives and loose a few bees. He had no intention of scaring his wife, but poor Irene looked out the window and saw what she thought was a flaming white apparition! No doubt this was what had been molesting the hives! The ghost of a beekeeper of bygone days! It had probably killed poor Ira and was now coming for her! The frying pan flew up in her hands, splashing the hot bacon grease on her face. Irene was lucky she didn't blind herself. Oh, those athome accidents! How they surprise you.

'Whatcha want, big boy?' Big Dot Taft asked Wally. The apple mart women teased and flirted with Wally endlessly; they thought he was gorgeous and a lot of fun, and these three had known him since he was a little boy.

'He wants to take us for a ride!' cried Irene Titcomb, still laughing-her face still turned away.

'Why don't you take us to a movie, Wally?' Florence Hyde asked him.

'Oh, God, what I wouldn't do for you, Wally,' Dot Taft said, 'if you took me to a movie!'

'Don't you want to make us happy, Wally?' Florence asked him, whining a little.

'Maybe Wally's going to fire us!' Irene Titcomb shrieked, and that broke up the three of them. Dot Taft roared so loud that Florence Hyde inhaled her cigarette the wrong way and began to cough, which made Dot roar some more.

'Is Grace here today?' Wally asked casually, when the women calmed down.

'Oh, God, he wants Grace!' Dot Taft said. 'What's she got that we haven't got?'

Bruises, Wally thought. Broken bones, false teeth- certainly genuine aches and pains. {200}

'I just want to ask her something,' Wally said, smiling shyly-his shyness was deliberate; he handled himself, very smoothly around the mart women.

'I'll bet she'll say “No!” ' Irene Titcomb said, giggling.

'No, everyone says “Yes!” to Wally,' Florence Hyde teased.

Wally allowed the laughter to subside.

Then Dot Taft said, 'Grace is cleaning the pie oven.'

Thank you, ladies,' Wally said, blowing them kisses, backing away.

'You're bad, Wally,' Florence Hyde told him. 'You just came here to make us jealous.'

That Grace must have a hot oven,' Dot Taft said, and this started more laughter and coughing.

'Don't get burned, Wally,' Irene Titcomb called after him, and he left the mart women chattering and smoking at a higher pitch than when he'd found them.

He was not surprised that Grace Lynch had drawn the worst job for a rainy day. The other women sympathized with her, but she was not one of them. She stood apart, as if she were afraid everyone might suddenly turn on her and beat her as badly as Vernon did, as if the beatings she'd already survived had cost her the necessary humor for trading stories equally with Florence and Irene and Dot.

Grace Lynch was much thinner and a little younger than these women; her thinness was unusual among the regular mart women. Even Herb Fowler's girlfriend (Squeeze Louise) was heftier than Grace, and Dot Taft's kid sister, Debra Pettigrew-who was fairly regular in pie season, and when the assembly line to the packinghouse was running-even Debra had more flesh on her than Grace had.

And since she had needed new teeth, Grace was even tighter-lipped than usual; there was a grim concentration to the narrow line of her mouth. Wally couldn't remember ever seeing Grace Lynch laugh-and some form of yucking it up was essential to relieve the boredom 201 of the life of the apple mart women. Grace was simply the cowed dog among them. She didn't look as if she took any pleasure from eating pie-or from eating anything at all. She didn't smoke, and in 194- everyone smoked- even Wally. She was noise-shy and flinched around the machinery.

Wally hoped she was wearing long sleeves so that he wouldn't have to look at the bruises on her arms, but she was half in one of the deep shelves of the pie oven when Wally found her; she was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, but both sleeves were rolled up above her elbows to spare the shirt some of the oven-black. Wally startled her with her head in the oven, and half her body, too, ami Grace made a little cry and banged one of her elbows against the door hinge as she withdrew in too much of a hurry.

'Sorry I scared you, Grace,' Wally said quickly-it was hard to walk up on Grace without making her bump into something. She said nothing; she rubbed one elbow; she folded and unfolded her thin arms, hiding her very slight breasts or, by keeping her arms in constant motion, concealing her bruises. She wouldn't look Wally in the eye; as poised as Wally was, he always felt a terrific tension when he tried to talk with her; he felt she might suddenly run away from him or throw herself ai: him- either with her claws out, or kissing him with her tongue stabbing.

He wondered if she mistook his inescapable search for the new bruises on her body for a sexual interest; maybe that was part of the problem between them.

'That poor woman is just crazy,' Ray Kendall had told Wally once; maybe that was all.

'Grace?' Wally asked, and Grace trembled. She was squeezing a wad of steel wool so tightly that the di rty suds streaked down one arm and wet the waist of her shirt and the bony hip of her denim work: jeans. A single tooth, probably false, appeared out of her mouth and clenched a tiny piece of her lower lip. 'Uh, Grace,' Wally said. 'I've got a problem.' {202}

She stared at him as if this news frightened her more than anything anyone had ever told her. She looked quickly away and said, 'I'm cleaning the oven.' Wally thought he might have to grab her to keep her from crawling back in the oven. He suddenly realized that all his secrets-that anyone's secrets-were entirely safe with Grace Lynch. There was absolutely nothing she dared to say, and no one in her life to tell it to-if she ever got up the courage.