“I endorsed it, didn’t I?” Randy loosened his shoulders and flexed his toes and fingers and looked intently at Edgar’s face. It would squash, like a potato.

“I doubt that your account would cover it.”

Randy’s account stood below four hundred. This had been little to worry about, with his citrus checks due on the first of the year. Now, considering Mark’s urgency, it was dangerously low. He decided to probe Edgar’s weakness. He said, “Penny-wise, pound-foolish, that’s you, Edgar. You could have been in on a very good thing. Give me back the check. I’ll cash it in San Marco or Orlando in the morning.”

Edgar realized he might have made an error. It was most unusual for anyone to want five thousand in cash. It indicated some sort of a quick, profitable deal. He should have found out why the cash was needed. “Now, let’s not be in a rush,” he said. Randy held out his hand. “Give me the check.”

“Well, if I knew exactly why you had to have all this cash in such a hurry I might be able to make an exception to banking rules.”

“Come on. I don’t have time to waste.”

Edgar’s pale, protruding eyes shifted to Florence, frankly listening, and Eli Blaustein hovering nearby, interested. “Come into my office, Randolph,” he said.

After Randy had the cash, in hundreds, twenties and tens, he said, “Now I’ll tell you why I wanted it, Edgar. Mark asked me to make a bet for him.”

“Oh, the races!” Edgar said. “I very rarely play the races, but I know Mark wouldn’t be risking that much money unless he had a sure thing. Running in Miami, tomorrow, I suppose?”

“No. Not the races. Mark is simply betting that checks won’t be worth anything, very shortly, but cash will. Good afternoon, Fish-eye.” He left the office and sauntered across the lobby. As Mrs. Estes unlocked the bank door she squeezed his arm and whispered, “Good for you!”

Edgar rocked in his chair, furious. It wasn’t a reason. It was a riddle. He repeated Randy’s words. They made no sense at all, unless Mark expected some big cataclysm, like all the banks closing, and of course that was ridiculous. Whatever happened, the country’s financial structure was sound. Edgar reached a conclusion. He had been tricked and bluffed again. The Braggs were scoundrels, all of them.

Randy’s first stop was Ajax Super-Market. It really wasn’t a supermarket, as it claimed. Fort Repose’s population was 3,422, according to the State Census, and this included Pistolville and the Negro district. The Chamber of Commerce claimed five thousand, but the Chamber admitted counting the winter residents of Riverside Inn, and people who technically were outside the town limits, like those who lived on River Road. So Fort Repose had not attracted the big chain stores. Still, Ajax imitated the supermarkets, inasmuch as you wheeled an aluminum cart around and served yourself, and Ajax sold the same brands at about the same prices.

Randy hated grocery shopping. None of the elaborate surveys, and studies in depth of the buying habits of Americans had a classification for Randolph Bragg. Usually he grabbed a cart and sprinted for the meat counter, where he dropped a written order. Then he raced up and down the aisles, snatching cans and bottles and boxes and cartons from shelves and freezers apparently at random, running down small children and bumping old ladies and apologizing, until his final lap brought him past the meat counter again. The butchers had learned to give his order priority, for if his meat wasn’t cut he didn’t stop, simply made a violent U-turn and barreled off for the door. When the checker rang up his bill Randy looked at his watch. His record for a full basket was three minutes and forty-six seconds, portal to portal.

But on this day it was entirely different, because of the length of his list to which he had been adding, the quantities, and the Friday afternoon shopping rush. After he’d filled three carts, and the meat order had already been carried to the car, he was still only halfway down the list, but physically and emotionally exhausted. His toes were mashed, and he had been shoved, buffeted, butted in the ribs, and rammed in the groin. His legs trembled, his hands shook, and a tic had developed in his left eye. Waiting in the check-out line, maneuvering two topheavy carts before and one behind, he cursed man’s scientific devilishness in inventing H-bombs and super-markets, cursed Mark, and swore he would rather starve than endure this again.

At last he reached the counter. Pete Hernandez, acting as checker, gaped. “Good God, Randy!” he said. “What’re you going to do, feed a regiment?” Until the year before, Pete had always called him “Mr. Bragg,” but after Randy’s first date with Pete’s sister their relationship naturally had changed.

“Mark’s wife and children are coming to stay with me a while,” he explained.

“What’s she got-a football team?”

“Kids eat a lot,” Randy said. Pete was skinny, chicken breasted, his chin undershot and his nails dirty, completely unlike Rita except for black eyes and olive skin.

Pete began to play the cash register with two fingers while the car boy, awed, filled the big sacks. Randy was aware that seven or eight women, lined up behind him, counted his purchases, fascinated. He heard one whisper, “Fifteen cans of coffee-fifteen!” The line grew, and he was conscious of a steady, complaining murmur. Unaccountably, he felt guilty. He felt that he ought to face these women and shout, “All of you! All of you buy everything you can!” It wouldn’t do any good. They would be certain he was mad.

Pete pulled down the total and announced it loudly: “Three hundred and fourteen dollars and eighty cents, Randy! Gees, that’s our record!”

From habit, Randy looked at his watch. One hour and six minutes. That, too, was a record. He paid in cash, grabbed an armful of bags, nodded for Pete’s car boy to follow, and fled.

He stopped at Bill Cullen’s bar, short-order grill, package store, and fish camp, just outside the town limits. There was space for two cases in the front seat, so he’d lay in his whisky supply. Bill and his wife, a strawhaired woman usually groggy and thick-tongued with spiked wine, operated all this business in a tworoom shack joined to a covered wharf, its pilings leaning and roof askew, in a cove on the Timucuan. The odors of fried eggs, dead minnows, gasoline and kerosene fumes, decaying gar and catfish heads, stale beer and spilt wine oozed across land and water.

Ordinarily, Randy bought his bourbon two or three bottles at a time. On this day, he bought a case and a half, cleaning out Bill’s supply of his brand. He recalled that Helen, when she drank at all, preferred Scotch. He bought six fifths of Scotch.

Bill, inquisitive, said, “Planning a big barbecue or party or something, Randy? You figure you’ll try politics again?”

Randy found it almost impossible to lie. His father had beaten him only once in his life, when he was ten, but it had been a truly terrible beating. He had lied, and the Judge had gone upstairs and returned with his heaviest razor strop. He had grabbed Randy by the neck and bent him across the billiard table, and implanted the virtue of truth through the seat of his pants, and on bare hide, until he screamed in terror and pain. Then Randy was ordered to his room, supperless and in disgrace. Hours later, the Judge knocked and came in and gently turned him over in the bed. The Judge spoke quietly. Lying was the worst crime, the indispensable accomplice of all others, and would always bring the worst punishment. “I can forgive anything except a lie.” Randy believed him, and while he could no longer remember the lie he had told, he never forgot the punishment. Unconsciously, his right hand rubbed his buttocks as he thought up an answer for Bill Cullen.

“I’m having visitors,” Randy said, “and Christmas is coming.” This was the truth, if not the whole truth. He couldn’t risk saying more to Bill. Bill’s nickname was Bigmouth and his lying not limited to the size of yesterday’s catch. Bigmouth Bill could spark a panic.