He smiled, but said, “Be sure to act like you know where you’re going.”

“I do.”

“What?”

“We’re looking for the neatly kept space, with a few flower pots, perhaps a whirligig, but most definitely a little American flag.”

“A whirligig?”

“You know, those little lawn decorations that whirl with the wind- from ducks with wind-milling wings to dairymaids that milk cows whenever a little breeze blows.”

“God help us. Whose trailer will that be?”

“Our informant’s.”

“I thought you’d never been here before?”

“I haven’t. But I’ve had to interview plenty of people who live in trailer parks. You learn.”

Most of the homes in the park were double-wides and fairly neatly kept, but we didn’t have to go far before we found a trailer that fit the bill; immaculate, appropriately decorated and-best of all-an aged but recently washed Ford Escort was parked in the carport. The owner was probably home. I did a little more cruising around to make sure it was the leading candidate. There were some contenders, but I decided the first one was our best choice.

“She’ll have a hat on,” I predicted. “And she’s already seen us.” Travis shook his head, still not convinced that I knew what I was doing. But as I pulled up at the curb, an old woman came warily out of her mobile home. She was frowning.

“Note the straw bonnet,” I said to Travis, and heard him choke back a laugh.

He suddenly seemed to enter into the spirit of the enterprise though, saying, “Stay here. My bandaged hand makes me less dangerous, your swollen face makes you scarier.”

“Thanks a bunch,” I said, but let him have his way. I rolled the passenger window down so that I could hear their conversation.

Travis got out of the van and gave her his most charming smile. She was obviously still suspicious, but that smile seemed to have the effect on her that it did on everyone else-she smiled back.

Travis-suddenly possessed of an accent any matinee buckaroo would take pride in-turned back toward the van and said, “Oh! Look here, Irene. Isn’t this the most clever whirligig you ever did see?”

I waved from the van.

He crouched down beside one of them, staring at it as if it were the Shroud of Turin. “Why, it’s even better than any of the ones we saw at the fair! Excuse me, ma’am, but where on earth did you find it?”

The object of this acclaim was a harness racer; the horse trotted in the wind, and the wheels of the rig moved. That Travis’s admiration marked him as a rank amateur in whirligig appreciation mattered not one whit to the owner of this specimen.

“Oh, honey,” she said, shaking her head sadly, “the fellow that made that passed on a couple of years ago. I’ve never seen another like it myself. He made it for me because I live out here near the track.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, without the least bit of insincerity. “But you have something very unique to remember him by, don’t you?”

“Yes, yes, I do,” she said wistfully.

“I’m Travis Maguire,” he said, then gestured toward me. “And that’s my cousin, Irene.”

“Trudy Flauson,” she said.

He cocked his head to one side and said, “I’ll bet some school kids used to call you Mrs. Flauson.”

She laughed. “Yes-only it’s Miss Flauson. But I am a retired schoolteacher. How you guessed, I’ll never know.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, apparently becoming bashful, “maybe you just reminded me of one of my favorite teachers. Well, I’m sorry if we disturbed you, ma’am, but I made Irene stop the car when I saw this yard. I just love whirligigs, and here you have half a dozen of them. We were all turned around anyway, so I said, ”Look at that pretty little yard, Irene. I want a closer look at that trotter.“ And she said people in California might not like folks snooping around their yards, and were as like to shoot you as look at you, but I’m not from around here, so I said, ”This house is flying an American flag, and the yard so pretty, I’ll take my chances that the owner knows varmints from honest folks. What’s it going to hurt to stop for a minute?“”

In a lower voice, he said, “Can’t blame her for being distrustful. Husband beats her.”

She gave me a pitying look. I was going to strangle him.

“My mama asked me to come out here to try to get her to leave him. I’m also supposed to look up a third cousin of ours living here in Los Alamitos.” He slaughtered the Spanish, making it sound closer to “Last Tomatoes.”

“Los Alamitos,” she corrected. “It means ‘little cottonwood trees.”“

He looked all around. “Cottonwoods? Where?”

“There used to be lots of them,” Miss Flauson said, laughing.

He laughed, too, then suddenly stopped, wincing and holding his hand. He looked up, smiling bravely. “I guess we should get back to business. Thanks for letting me see your whirligigs.”

“Honey, is that hand bothering you?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

“Don’t let him tell you that!” I called. “Wilbur was going to hit me with a hot iron and Travis stopped him by grabbing it bare-handed.”

Her eyes widened, and Travis turned bright red.

“Now, Irene, hush!” he said. “Ma’am, you don’t need to hear all our troubles. And I didn’t do anything anybody else wouldn’t have done.”

She winked at me, as if to say she knew a humble hero when she saw one.

“Well,” he said, “we’d better try to find our way over to Cousin Gerald’s place. He’ll wonder why we never showed up.”

“Gerald!” she said, scowling. “Gerald whom?”

“Spanning?” he said meekly.

“You mean to say you’re looking for Gerald Spanning?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Travis said.

“Which one?”

We looked blankly at one another.

“Junior or Senior?” she asked.

“Junior?” Travis said, looking at me with unfeigned surprise.

I stepped into the batter’s box and called out, “I told you, Travis, that ever since Cousin Dolores passed on, nobody has been able to keep track of all the births in the family. Sorry, Miss Flauson, we didn’t know we had a fourth cousin.”

“Well, you may wish you never did learn about it. This one is no blood relations of yours, she’s his wife. That’s just what we call her around here. Her real name is Geraldine, and she’s old Gerald’s wife. So we call them Gerald Junior and Gerald Senior. Just nicknames.”

“Oh” was all either one of us could manage.

“I have nothing to say against Gerald Senior,” she went on. “He is one of the hardest-working men I ever hope to meet on this side of heaven. Drinks a little, but not more than most fellows around here. That’s how he met her-she’s a cocktail waitress. Mostly they keep to themselves, but Gerald Senior’s always willing to lend a hand to a neighbor if need be. But that wife of his is another story.” She paused, then said, “Well, I won’t carry tales about your family. You’ll see for yourself, I’m sure.”

“They been married long?” Travis asked.

“No, not so long. Four or five years, perhaps.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Travis said. “It would have been awful if we’d acted too surprised when we met her. Uh-I don’t suppose I could ask you to point us in the right direction to my cousin’s place?”

She was happy to oblige, describing not only the route, but the trailer itself. “I think I may have seen Gerald going to work this morning, but maybe he’s back by now.”

We thanked her profusely, and she waved to us as we drove off down the lane.

Once we were out of sight, Travis started laughing. “God, you are a sorry liar!”

“Me?”

“Wilbur? Caught a hot iron bare-handed? Puh-leese. And we already told her neighbor that I cut my hand. They might talk to one another.”

“Oh, yeah? What about the fact that the guy with the cut hand has a sister that lives here? And doesn’t have a rodeo accent?”

He grinned and shrugged. “We’ll have to be more careful.”

“No kidding. By the way-how did you know she was a teacher?”