“She’s on e-mail. She says that’s what I should do. I’m not keen on it somehow. But I might as well try it.”

“I suppose you never know till you try.”

I felt as if I should say something more. Ask about the weather there, or something, out where she was going. But before I could think of what to say she gave a most unusual little shriek or cry, and then put her hand to her mouth and moved with large cautious steps to my window.

“Careful, careful,” she said. “Look. Look.”

She was laughing almost soundlessly, a laugh that might even indicate that she was in pain. She moved one hand behind her back to hush me as I got to my feet.

In the backyard of my house there was a birdbath. I had put it in years ago so that my mother could watch the birds. She was very fond of birds and could recognize them by their song as well as their appearance. I had neglected it for a good while and had just filled it up that morning.

Now what?

It was full of birds. Black-and-white, dashing up a storm.

Not birds. Something larger than robins, smaller than crows.

She said, “Skunks. Little skunks. More white in them than black.”

But how beautiful. Flashing and dancing and never getting in each other’s way, so you could not tell how many there were, where each body started or stopped.

While we watched, they lifted themselves up one by one and left the water and proceeded to walk across the yard, swiftly but in a straight diagonal line. As if they were proud of themselves but discreet. Five of them.

“My Lord,” said Oneida. “In town.”

Her face looked dazzled.

“Have you ever seen such a sight?”

I said no. Never.

I thought she might say another thing, and spoil it, but no, neither of us did.

We were as glad as we could be.

CORRIE

IT isn’t a good thing to have the money concentrated all in the one family, the way you do in a place like this,” Mr. Carlton said. “I mean, for a girl like my daughter Corrie here. For example, I mean, like her. It isn’t good. Nobody on the same level.”

Corrie was right across the table, looking their guest in the eye. She seemed to think this was funny.

“Who’s she going to marry?” her father continued. “She’s twenty-five.”

Corrie raised her eyebrows, made a face.

“You missed a year,” she said. “Twenty-six.”

“Go ahead,” her father said. “Laugh all you like.”

She laughed out loud, and, indeed, what else could she do? the guest thought. His name was Howard Ritchie, and he was only a few years older than she was, but already equipped with a wife and a young family, as her father had immediately found out.

Her expressions changed very quickly. She had bright-white teeth and short, curly, nearly black hair. High cheekbones that caught the light. Not a soft woman. Not much meat on the bone, which was the sort of thing her father might find to say next. Howard Ritchie thought of her as the type of girl who spent a lot of time playing golf and tennis. In spite of her quick tongue, he expected her to have a conventional mind.

He was an architect, just getting started on a career. Mr. Carlton insisted on referring to him as a church architect, because he was at present restoring the tower of the town’s Anglican church. A tower that had been on the verge of toppling until Mr. Carlton came to its rescue. Mr. Carlton was not an Anglican—he had pointed that out several times. His church was the Methodist, and he was Methodist to the core, which was why he kept no liquor in the house. But a fine church like the Anglican ought not be let go to rack and ruin. No hope looking to the Anglicans to do anything—they were a poor class of Irish Protestants who would have taken the tower down and put up something that was a blemish on the town. They didn’t have the shekels, of course, and they wouldn’t understand the need for an architect, rather than a carpenter. A church architect.

The dining room was hideous, at least in Howard’s opinion. This was the mid-fifties, but everything looked as if it had been in place before the turn of the century. The food was barely all right. The man at the head of the table never stopped talking. You’d think the girl would be exhausted by it, but she seemed mostly to be on the verge of laughing. Before she was done with her dessert, she lit a cigarette. She offered Howard one, saying, quite audibly, “Don’t mind Daddy.” He accepted, but didn’t think the better of her.

Spoiled rich miss. Unmannerly.

Out of the blue, she asked him what he thought of the Saskatchewan premier, Tommy Douglas.

He said that his wife supported him. Actually, his wife didn’t think Douglas was far left enough, but he wasn’t going to get into that.

“Daddy loves him. Daddy’s a Communist.”

This brought a snort from Mr. Carlton that didn’t squelch her.

“Well, you laugh at his jokes,” she told her father.

Shortly after that, she took Howard out to look at the grounds. The house was directly across the street from the factory which made men’s boots and work shoes. Behind the house, however, were wide lawns and the river that curled halfway around the town. There was a worn path down to its bank. She led the way, and he was able to see what he hadn’t been sure of before. She was lame in one leg.

“Isn’t it a steep climb back up?” he asked.

“I’m not an invalid.”

“I see you’ve got a rowboat,” he said, meaning that as a partway apology.

“I’d take you out in it but not right now. Now we’ve got to watch the sunset.” She pointed out an old kitchen chair that she said was for watching the sunset, and demanded that he sit there. She herself sat on the grass. He was about to ask if she would be able to get up all right, but thought better of it.

“I had polio,” she said. “That’s all it is. My mother had it too, and she died.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I suppose so. I can’t remember her. I’m going to Egypt next week. I was very keen on going, but now I don’t seem to care so much. Do you think it’d be fun?”

“I have to earn a living.”

He was amazed at what he’d said, and of course it set her off giggling.

“I was speaking in general terms,” she said grandly, when the giggling finished.

“Me too.”

Some creepy fortune hunter was bound to snap her up, some Egyptian or whatever. She seemed both bold and childish. At first, a man might be intrigued by her, but then her forwardness, her self-satisfaction, if that was what it was, would become tiresome. Of course, there was money, and to some men that never became tiresome.

“You mustn’t ever mention my leg in front of Daddy or he will go apoplectic,” she said. “Once he fired not just a kid who teased me but his entire family. I mean, even cousins.”

From Egypt there arrived peculiar postcards, sent to his firm, not his house. Well, of course, how could she have known his home address?

Not a single pyramid on them. No Sphinx.

Instead, one showed the Rock of Gibraltar with a note that called it a pyramid in collapse. Another showed some flat dark-brown fields, God knows where, and said, “Sea of Melancholia.” There was another message in fine print: “Magnifying glass obtainable send money.” Fortunately, nobody in the office got hold of these.

He did not intend to reply, but he did: “Magnifying glass faulty please refund money.”

He drove to her town for an unnecessary inspection of the church steeple, knowing that she had to be back from the Pyramids but not knowing whether she would be at home or off on some other jaunt.

She was home, and would be for some time. Her father had suffered a stroke.

There was not really much for her to do. A nurse came in every other day. And a girl named Lillian Wolfe was in charge of the fires, which were always lit when Howard arrived. Of course, she did other chores as well. Corrie herself couldn’t quite manage to get a good fire going or put a meal together; she couldn’t type, couldn’t drive a car, not even with a built-up shoe to help her. Howard took over when he came. He looked after the fires and saw to various things around the house and was even taken to visit Corrie’s father, if the old man was able.