Michaels stood up.

Sarah Comstock waddled energetically out of the back. Her sweet, angelic face lit up with a smile. "Sam Collins. Well, I guess _you'll_ want to help us murder them."

"Murder?" Collins repeated. "Who?"

"Those Air Force men who want to come in here and cause all the trouble."

"How are you going to murder them, Mrs. Comstock?"

"When they see our petition in Washington, D.C., they'll call those men back pretty quick."

"Oh," Collins said.

Mrs. Comstock produced the scroll from her voluminous handbag. "You want to sign, don't you? They're going to put part of the airport on your place. They'll tear down your house."

"They can't tear it down. I won't sell."

"You know government men. They'll just _take_ it and give you some money for it. Sign right there at the top of the new column, Sam."

Collins shook his head. "I don't believe in signing things. They can't take what's mine."

"But Sam, dear, they _will_. They'll come in and push your house down with those big tractors of theirs. They'll bury it in concrete and set off those guided missiles of theirs right over it."

"They can't make me get out," Sam said.

* * * * *

Ed Michaels scooped up a pound, one ounce of nails and spilled them onto his scale. He pinched off the excess, then dropped it back in and fed the nails into a brown paper bag. He crumpled the top and set it on the counter. "That's twenty-nine plus one, Sam. Thirty cents."

Collins laid out a quarter and a nickel and picked up the bag. "Appreciate you doing this after store hours, Ed."

Michaels chuckled. "I wasn't exactly getting ready for the opera, Sam."

Collins turned around and saw Sarah Comstock still waiting, the petition in her hand.

"Now what's a pretty girl like you doing, wasting her time in politics?" Collins heard himself ask.

Mrs. Comstock twittered. "I'm old enough to be your mother, Sam Collins."

"I like mature women."

Collins watched his hand in fascination as it reached out to touch one of Sarah Comstock's plump cheeks, then dropped to her shoulder and ripped away the strap-sleeve of her summer print dress.

A plump, rosy shoulder was revealed, splattered with freckles.

Sarah Comstock put her hands over her ears as if to keep from hearing her own shrill scream. It reached out into pure soprano range.

Sarah Comstock backed away, into the shadows, and Sam Collins followed her, trying to explain, to apologize.

"Sam! _Sam!_"

The voice cut through to him and he looked up.

Ed Michaels had a double-barreled shotgun aimed at him. Mrs. Michaels' face was looking over his shoulder in the door to the back, her face a sick white.

"You get out of here, Sam," Michaels said. "You get out and don't you come back. Ever."

Collins' hands moved emptily in air. He was always better with his hands than words, but this time even they seemed inexpressive.

He crumpled the sack of nails in both fists, and turned and left the hardware store.



II

His house was still there, sitting at the end of Elm Street, at the end of town, on the edge of the prairie.