"Pretty soon, I got to get my kids off to school," Nelly told him as he drove her car to work. "How much you got for wheels?"

"Five hundred dollars."

Doz was grateful.

He nodded.

He nodded.

Doz nodded and smiled. How much was she actually going to let him do?

A postcard cowboy towered over his light-blue "Cheverlay," as he called it in a twangy voice, putting the accent on the first syllable. Though tall, he wore boots that raised him an inch further and the peak of his hat extended him another six inches. Tight blue jeans clung to his bow legs and, studded with metal stars, his wide leather belt reached one and a half times around his narrow waste. His clean light-blue T-shirt had faded almost white in spots. The weather had wrinkled his skin more than age. Nelly's and Doz's noses sniffed a trace of cologne.

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Looking him up and down, Nelly remarked: "You's a long way from home, aintcha?"

"I thought you was from Brooklyn," she said without the slightest hint of sarcasm.

"A l'il erl, m'am, and she'll sound like new."

He hustled back to the trunk, clacking his heels on the pavement, took a can of Three-in-One out, squirted oil on the hinges and swung the door back and forth to work it in. Each time the squeak diminished until Doz could barely hear it. "Sounds better, don't it?" he suggested hopefully.

"Better? I don't want to hear nothing at all." She leaned in on the driver's side and Doz leaned in from the other side. "212 000 miles!" she exclaimed. "Doz when you check the mileage of a ten-year old cah, don't believe nothing under 200 000, you heah?"

"You ain't been more than 212 000 miles in yo wide open spaces? You been 212 000 just to get here."

Nelly and Doz glanced at the speedometer: 212 623! She sat down and bounced on the seat a few times. "You had these springs replaced?"

Trying not to approve, she bent over around the steering column: "Howbout these pedals? They don't look like no 212 623 miles."

She and Doz moved the bench seat back and forth a few times and it slid so smoothly that she nodded at him.

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"But you washed all that Wyoming dust and mud off so you could sell it, didn't you?"

Nelly couldn't help smiling a little.

She shifted into all of the gears, then nodded to Doz. He got out, came around and replaced her in the driver's seat. He found that he could shift more easily than in any of the other cars they had seen, but she had told him never to pay any compliments. She leaned against the top of the car and rocked it back and forth listening for squeaks. No squeaks. She went around in front, leaned on it and rocked it. Still no squeaks. Opening the hood, she checked the fan belt, the water in the radiator and the battery. She pulled the dipstick out, wiped it clean with a piece of paper towel, slid it back in, pulled it out and showed it to Doz. The stain was right on the mark.

"You steam-cleaned this motor," said Nelly.

She gave him a look: "You's laying it on a little thick, don'tcha think?"

She smiled despite herself.

"I tune her muhself.".

She closed the hood more gently than usual, went around to the back and opened the trunk, which looked almost new. Despite the scratches in the black paint, the jack was clean and, turning the handle, she wound it up and down easily. To the factry tool kit, the cowboy had added an adjustable wrench, a Philips screwdriver and a few other things. The spare tire still had its valve cap. Unscrewing it, she pushed the stem down briefly so that it hissed convincingly. The cowboy had clattered around to the passenger side to get a tire pressure gauge in the glove compartment, which he gave her. It

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was the accurate kind with a glass-covered dial. She tried it on the spare tire: 32 psi. And then on the other tires: 32 psi. None of the valve caps were missing. She checked the tiretreads with a dime and couldn't find any excessive or uneven wear. She had an expression on her face that Doz had never seen before: she liked the cah, didn't want to show it and couldn't find anything wrong except for a squeak in the door that had all but disappeared. Perplexed, she started to give the tire pressure gauge back to the cowboy.

"Comes with the car, m'am. Along with some maps, including one of God's country. Take a look."

In the glove department, she found the maps in a map-holder along with the manual and a service booklet in good condition. Glove compartments were never that clean and tidy after ten years. Desperate to find something wrong, she pulled the ash tray out and, although it smelled of tobacco, it was clean.

Suddenly inspired, she asked the cowboy: "How come you left God's country? You in trouble with the law?"

Nelly was grinning: "If he had taken his belt to me... !"

She remembered not to be friendly: "How come you want to sell this cah? Don't you need it to go back to God's country?"

Forgetting that she had told Doz to do the bargaining, Nelly offered him $400.

Nelly criticized it and made a counter offer of $420.

Taking his checkbook out, Doz asked: "How much with sales tax?"

"What you talking bout, Doz. When you give somebody a present, you don't pay no sales tax."

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"No, not for the present I'm giving you," said the cowboy. "You are getting a really nice cah."

"Hey, you got to be kidding! We giving you the present. $500 for your broken-down buggy! "

"He's the realest fake cowboy I ever seen," said Nelly as Doz took her for a spin in his new car.

"A fake? How do you know?"

"I thought he was from Wyoming."

"Yes, m'am. Nelly gave me almost the same rules, but I would have followed them even if she hadn't."

"Yes, M'am."

Embarrassed: "She looked at me and saw that something had happened. She kept asking me who it was. Women... " He shrugged.

She scheduled some more estimates on the afternoon when Siss's train arrived and asked Doz to drive her to the station. When Siss saw Doz, she squealed, jumped down on the platform, ran up to him and hugged him. He wasn't hugging back, however, so she backed away shocked and discovered her mother nearby:

"Come on Doz! You don't have to ask my permission." 

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she had given him and she made sure that Siss understood them. After a little silence, Siss sighed and shrugged her shoulders:

"When will be able to make our own rules?"

Maud laughed: "A few other things have to happen first."

"What if he asks me his name?"

"Tell him to ask your mom," said Maud.

Maud chuckled: "I will know that when he asks me."

Instead of spacing estimates out over time, as Fuss preferred, Maud grouped them on certain days to remind him of a project he had discussed with her: he could train Doz to do estimates. Each had thought of it before mentioning it to the other. If Doz did some of the estimates, Fuss could devote more time to other aspects of the business. The beginning of the school year reduced the number of moves to the usual level, so Fuss could take Doz with him for estimates. At first, he dictated items along with their approximate configuration and weight together with the price he would charge, while Doz wrote them down. He encouraged him to ask questions and gave him homework, which he did in the library where he met Siss. Though dry, manuals, studies, regulations, reports, etc. held his attention because they explained mysteries that interested him. When Fuss saw that Doz was writing even before he dictated, he decided to let him dictate while he wrote. This reversal of roles gave Fuss the opportunity to ask him questions, make comments and correct mistakes. The relationship between them, which had always resembled the one between a father and a son, was deepening. If Fuss complimented him on an estimate that he had done well, Doz felt grateful, but he also wondered how his white employer would take it when he discovered that his black employee was dating his daughter. Meanwhile, however, Doz learned to make estimates so well that Fuss sent him to do them by himself. He enjoyed the job all the more because customers were friendly, helped him with his inventory and complimented him on his expertise. As Fuss had told him, most of their

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customers had boring furniture except for one or two items that they were proud of. Even if they didn't tell him, he could usually guess and, if he thought their pride was justified, he should compliment them. Doz developed an eye for the sofa, the lamp or the picture that required a tactful comment or inspired sincere admiration. Maybe he would have an opportunity to inventory a house like the Heaths.

He had an idea that was trying his modesty, until it finally came out as if of its own accord. What if they wrote the number of each item in the estimate on a tag and tied the tag to the item? When they returned to move the furniture, they could find every item quickly by checking the list for the numbers on the tags. Wondering why he hadn't thought of it himself, Fuss agreed, but he remarked that stickers, if you stuck them on where they didn't harm the finish, would allow them to go even faster. Double stickers with numbers already printed on each half of them, Doz elaborated, would further facilitate their work. When they did an inventory, they could tear the two halves apart, stick one on the item and the other on the inventory. Enthusiastic, Fuss gave Doz the job of making inquiries, requesting estimates and reporting back to him on the feasibility of the project. In a few weeks, they obtained a dozen sheets of wax paper with double stickers numbering from one to fifty stuck to each of them. They had decided to try this many and make changes before ordering a more substantial amount. The only serious problem they encountered made them wonder why they hadn't foreseen it. The number of items on an inventory always came to more than fifty and almost never an exact mutiple of fifty. At first, they wrote A, B, C, etc. after the numbers on the stickers to distinguish between the sheets they came from, but Doz suggested that they order the sheets in different colors so they could distinguish, for instance, between red and green 29s. Delighted with a product he could sell to other movers, the sticker maker developed a glue that, without damaging finish, would hold the stickers until you pried them up with your fingernail on the right side and peeled them off. Nor could you rub them off by brushing them with your clothing. Able Saxton even managed to substitute a pine scent for an odor typical of glues. At Fuss's suggestion, Doz and Able, a fellow black, applied for a patent. Although Able only had a small workshop and one employee at the time, Saxton Office Products would expand as rapidly as Fossez Movers over the next ten years. 

The Heaths started another seminar, which Doz and Siss were eager to attend. When he met her at the Museum, he hardly recognized her because

of her brillant smile. It took him a second to realize that her braces were gone. Forgetting the passers-by, he grabbed her and spun her around in a circle and she cried "stop!" in a tone of voice that everyone interpreted as "don't stop!" The friends they rediscovered at the seminar not only delighted in her smile, but also in the couple's mutual self-confidence that made them even more congenial. Once the introduction of the stickers had succeeded, Doz asked the Heaths whether the Museum could use movers skilled in handling works of art. Samson phoned the director, Mark Jacob, who said that, although he had two employees for that purpose, he often had to hire extras to help them. Since he had trouble finding men he could trust, he liked the idea of a contract that would provide him with movers qualified for the work when he needed them. The Heaths told Doz this news on the next Saturday, when he and Siss accepted their invitation to lunch. Perseus was still holding Medusa's head up in the courtyard where Doz and Plug had put him. How could Doz get Fuss to call Mark without raising Fuss's suspicion that his daughter had something to do with his employee's proposal? Fuss knew his daughter was attending the Heaths' seminars. Doz, Siss and the Heaths discussed several alternatives. If Doz made his proposal to Fuss and told him what the Heaths had learned from Mark, Fuss might suspect that Doz was attending the Heaths' seminar too. If Siss or Maud told Fuss without mentioning Doz, Fuss would recognize the idea as one that had probably came from Doz. Now Siss was interested in art and Maud was interested in moving, but only Doz was interested in both. Hearing it from Siss, Fuss might suspect that she had learned it from Doz. The danger was all the greater because she had just told her father that she was going steady with a boy she liked an awful lot -- She rolled her eyes and the Heaths laughed --. If Maud spoke to Fuss, wouldn't he wonder how she had come to know the Heaths that well. Why she hadn't even met them as far as he knew! The Heaths couldn't tell Fuss themselves because they had no apparent reason to intervene in the matter.

"If Mark called Fuss as if on his own initiative," Samson supposed, "he could say he thought of it himself."

"Phoebe: we know Mark pretty well! We might have heard him complain about having to hire extras at the supper party just last week. Wouldn't that have reminded us of Perseus?"

 
"Mr. Fossez?"

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"This is Mark Jacob at the Mapleton Museum... "

"Good! Next Thursday at 10:30 in my office... Fuss: I wonder whether you could bring the employee who packed Perseus for the Heaths. They told me so many interesting things about him that I would like to meet him. Perhaps he could make an interesting contribution to our conversation."

"Oh!" she cried with big eyes, struggling not to add "Doz!"

Blushing as much for joy as embarrassment, she didn't know what to say.

"Excuse me!" said Siss running for the kitchen.

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Fuss was discussing the importance of the special skills his employees would need to satisfy Mark Jacob.

Doz: "If we tore a painting or broke the arm off of a statue..."

"Perhaps the men who already do this work for the Museum could train us."

Siss, who had been climbing Doz's calf, jumped for joy, but she immediately disguised it by shifting in her seat as if to awaken a sleeping muscle.

Maud promptly toed her calf.

Feeling her jump, Doz blushed darkly.

And Maud toed his foot.

Doz was wondering if there were any training programs run by big museums such as the one in Mammoth or even by a university. Perhaps he could find books or other materials on the subject.

"Let me do that," said Siss eagerly. "I could ask for help at the reference desk. I could order them by interlibrary loan."

Maud toed her calf to warn her.

It escaped Fuss because his eyes were on his daughter, whose initiative had come as a pleasant surprise.

"Since Siss does her homework at the library," Maude explained to Doz as if he didn't know it, "she could arrange for the interlibrary books to be held for you."

Siss touched his calf and Maud pinched his toe, both of them to reassure him, though neither aware of the other.

"Siss is a good student," bragged Fuss. "All A's."

"She got that from you," affirmed Maud with slight irony and she explained what A's were for Doz's benefit.

"Come on, Maud!" objected Fuss almost candidly. "Didn't I marry you for your brains?"

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Feigning outrage: "I hope you married me for more than that!"

"Well..." He smiled at Doz. "You were pretty cute too... like Siss."

"Were? What do you mean were?"

He was trying to imagine how Maud could have been cute like Siss.
 

Fuss had turned the light off and Maud had gone to sleep when he observed: "They like each other!"

"Who likes each other?"

Maud held her breath.

"What time is it?"

Maude rose on her elbow, looked at the clock and fell back on her pillow with slightly exaggerated impatience.

"Thanks!"

"... She told you she had a boyfriend."

She laughed, but he misunderstood her irony.

Startled, she rose on her elbow again, staring at him.

"If only... ?"

An hour or two went by before she could go back to sleep.

They would never forget that fall. The color of the leaves had reached a peak of intensity that Mapleton hadn't seen for five or ten years. Cool and sunny, the weather invited walks, which Doz and Siss took every chance they had. They continued to connive with Maud to hide their courtship from Fuss, who unwittingly kept the three of them laughing. The couple hiked on weekends, spent weekday evenings in the library except for Thursdays,

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visited the Museum on rainy weekend afternoons, saw movies, went to concerts, dance performances and their first opera, The Magic Flute performed by the company in Mammoth. They wondered how the Queen of the Night could have so beautiful a voice and behave so wickedly, how the little demons could be so lovable and yet so evil. The scenery and the changes of scenery also impressed them. Doz wondered how stagehands could assemble and disassemble it as quickly as they did. How could they move and where could they store these enormous props? Perhaps resident and visiting companies needed special moving and storage services that neither they nor the Mapleton Auditorium could provide. He discussed the idea with Maud, but she told him not to mention it to Fuss until the Museum project had worked out. Fuss might have heard about Siss going to theatre and opera performances, so they would have to be careful. As soon as Doz had completed a week of training at the Museum, he sent Nelly and scheduled the other movers. Meanwhile, he was studying a number of books on the subject that Siss had found or ordered for him. Some of them revealed the existence of training programs, but the distance he would have to travel and the cost of taking them postponed this possibility. If the business continued to prosper, Fuss told him, he would be able to spare him long enough to take one of them and share the cost with him in a year or two. Such training would enhance his value to the company. Fuss was involving him more and more in administration, including finances. He was inviting him almost every day after work for a drink in a bar, at the office or even at home and Maud often joined them. They discussed the business and particularly the contract with the Museum, so interest reinforced the pleasure of their company. On advice from Maud, Siss greeted Doz when Fuss came home with him, then retreated with a glance over her shoulder that showed how badly she wanted to leave. More than once, Doz was tempted to tell Fuss about his affair with her, but Maud didn't think Fuss was ready for it yet.

Thad Abercrombie finally died after weeks of an agony known only to people dying of cancer, since description exceeded the possibility of human expression and the secret died with them. The physical pain oozed around the barrier of painkillers, but the anxiety and humiliation tormented them even worse. The last time Doz and Siss had visited Thad, he managed to treat them as cheerfully and his wife as gratefully as ever despite his shriveled body. Barbara, whose misery escaped her will, confessed in the corridor that she had begun to pray God to let Thad die and get it over with.

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Yet, she sobbed, she was afraid God didn't really care. Suddenly tears came pouring out of Siss's eyes. Weeping as if in sympathy, Barbara hugged her and cried: "Oh, Siss!" Doz got permission from Fuss to attend the funeral, where he met Maud and Siss, who had bought a black dress for the occasion. She looked irresistible even in that color. There couldn't have been more than thirty people attending the funeral, most of them black. The ceremony in the church and outside in the churchyard was simple and dignified. The minister discreetly summarized the life of a man who had fought arrogance and corruption with such determination that they had taken their revenge on him. When Doz, Siss and Maude took their turns speaking to Barbara afterwards, she invited them to come and have coffee with her. "I want you to know where I live," she said.

Siss and Maude hadn't told Fuss they were going to a funeral for fear that he would wonder if they were going to the same one as Doz. Without him to talk to as usual, he came home earlier than usual. Because of Barbara's invitation, Siss and Maude came home later than they had expected. Lonely without his women, Fuss met them as they entered the kitchen from the garage.

"Why are you wearing black?" he asked Siss. "Is that the latest teeny fashion?"

"Did something happen to your boyfriend?" he asked trying to stroke her hair without messing it up.

"Well, somebody must have died!"

"Yes," said Maud, "a friend of ours."

How could he have been a friend of theirs without being one of his?

"Thad Abercrombie. He was the patient who shared Doz's room when he was in the hospital. I'm not even sure you would have liked him. He died of cancer. It was pretty awful."

"But how did Siss meet him? She was in Lake Arthur."

Thunderstruck, Fuss stood up. Maud stood up too wringing her hands. She hadn't seen his eyes flash like that for years. When he lost his temper, he

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frightened her and everyone else. He felt so violent that it was a wonder he didn't kill everyone and destroy everything within reach. That was why he rushed out of the house and started off down the street. If anyone had tried to stop him, fists would have flown. Maud started to run after him, turned around and told Siss to call Doz, started again, turned around again and told her to stay at home and not to invite him. Then she ran after her husband, but stopped twenty paces behind him and followed him at that distance like an Anatolian shepherd's wife. How many miles, this time, how many hours...? She had forgotten to tell Siss to make her own supper, go to bed at ten as usual and, especially, not to worry.

She could tell how angry Fuss was by the way he was walking. He was taking big strides, swinging his shoulders, clenching and unclenching his fists and probably muttering to himself. She soon ran out of breath trying to stay twenty paces behind him. She was determined to follow him for fear he would hurt himself, someone else or someone's property. Especially himself! He had struck off in the direction of the street in front of the house and continued as if guided by a compass, crossing a field and a street where motorists swerved and braked. They glared, gestured, blew their horns. Fuss never saw or heard them. He strode up and downhill through a park, entered a woods on the other side and never slowed down. Now she could see and hear him threatening the trees. If only he didn't kick one, but his head against it, slug it! Why didn't he throw his tantrums at home like other husbands, slapping their wives and smashing the furniture? Maud would have preferred for him to take it out on her. Bruises, a black eye, a broken arm, anything but this mad dash across the landscape! Thank God he hadn't taken his pickup!

Lord knows how late it was when they finally came back, exhausted and arm in arm as if they had only gone for an evening stroll. They found Siss in the hall upstairs on the phone.

"I have to hang up now, Doz. I love you and [raising her voice] and I don't care who hears me!"

"Not even me!" said her father entering the master bedroom. He almost seemed to think it was funny.

"I don't know. [Rolling her eyes up:] A few hours, I guess." She might have been confessing a raid on the cookie jar.

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"Mom?"

"What happens now?"

"Maybe Doz should get another job. He told me he was ready to do that last summer. I could get a job too."

"He may be fond of his black employee, but he's not going to like his black son-in-law."

Maude took Siss into Siss's room, shut the door and sat down with her on the bed. "If any white father can live with a black son-in-law, yours can. I'm proud of the way he integrated his work force and you ought to be too. He will talk tough to Doz, but Doz knows that Fuss isn't as tough as he talks. Relations between your father and your husband won't be a problem. The problem... " She took Siss's hands. "will be relations between your children and other children."

"You really think so?"

"You never did that."

"Yes?"

"Come on, Mom! We know where babies come from. Doz doesn't know who his mother and father were, but he knows they made a mistake and he's the mistake. We talked about that and we agreed that we aren't going to make any mistakes."

"You mean people staring at us because we are different from each other?"

"We can take that."

"Yes, we agreed on that."

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Laughing: "only 2:44 in the morning!"

The next day, Fossez Inc. were moving a couple with two children and a third on the way out of a two-bedroom apartment in Stringly and into a three-bedroom house in Sheffield. Since the couple wanted the job done in a single day, both Doz and Fuss joined the crew that morning at the apartment building. Between the apartment on the third floor and the truck out front in the street, there was a hall, three flights of stairs, an entrance and a walkway. Doz and Fuss met each other going in opposite directions in all of those places and especially on the stairs. With one coming down and the other going up, the encounter was particularly tense. The first time they met, in the hall upstairs I believe, they ventured a perfunctory greeting, the next few times, they exchanged a few grunts or nods and, finally, they pretended to ignore each other. The first of the other movers to notice was Nelly, of course:

"Hey, Doz: what's wrong wif you and Fuss? Ain't you speaking no mo?"

After watching such a maneuvre, Mack told Doz: "In England, you and Fuss would have as much trouble passing on the left as you have passing on the right in this country."

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collaborate in sparing his pride. Other men would have settled the matter by a fist fight or, in earlier centuries, a duel.

They finished the move shortly before five as they had planned. Meeting in the office, which Maude had already left, Fuss and Doz each, as usual, sat at his desk and turned to face the other. This time, however, they tried not to look at each other; the obligation to speak first weighed heavily on the father and employer.

"Would you like for me to look for another job, sir?"

"... "

"Yes Sir... I mean... "

"I wanted to tell you. I would have told you... "

"Yes, Sir."

Smiling: "I thought it was a little like that."

"... There's a serious problem."

"I'm an alien, an orphan... "

"No, unh, you are not a bigot. But I'm different from you and your daughter."

Laughing despite himself: "That wasn't very polite."

"We have been telling each other ever since last summer."

"Should I look for another job?"

"We are the same as we were before we met each other."

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"She served me dinner at the Orchid Inn on the first Sunday after I had arrived. She was replacing a waitress who had the day off."

"My toes were broken and she was very kind to me."

"She pedaled a boat with me in Fletcher Park."

"... ?"

"Yes... "

"Yes... I mean no!"

"Yes."

"Yes."

"How could I complain?"

"I don't want to work for anyone else."

"I was hoping you would say that."

"Will you let me?"

"Ridiculous?"

"Perhaps... after she graduates from high school?"

"Five."

"... Is that too many?"

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It wasn't easy to behave, but Doz and Siss managed somehow. Instead of meeting her in the library or at the seminar, he picked her up and drove her home afterwards. He was careful to get her there by eleven, although saying goodnight took more time than either intended. In addition to concerts, films, etc. on the weekend, he took her to parties organized by her classmates, with whom they enjoyed much popularity. They danced a lot, drank a little and never smoked, yet no one made fun of them. Doz invited Siss to restaurants and even to his apartment along with Becky, Myrna, Barbara or her parents. They had fun cooking together and followed the advice of their guests who enjoyed giving it. Although they made a few mistakes trying ambitious recipes, they usually deserved the compliments of their guests. Nelly invited them to dinner at her house, where her kids welcomed them enthusiastically -- they were Nelly's kids! -- and they returned her invitations, including the kids. Doz's friends were Siss's and vice versa. The subtle ways in which people who didn't know them reacted to the difference between them seldom bothered them any more. Invited to the Fossezes' for Thanksgiving, Doz finally met the older son who went to ZTech. Although Jim looked like his mother, he had a double dose of his father's obstinacy. Polite, but aloof, he gave Doz the impression that he felt uneasy about his sister's fiancé. He was a little pedantic too. Handsome and suave, he nonetheless had problems with girls, according to Siss. Freddy had always treated Doz like the older brother he would have preferred. Didn't Doz play catch with him? Freddy admired his athletic ability even though he couldn't understand why he had decided not to play football for ZU or ZTech.

Freddy was the only Fossez infected by football fever, which reaches its highest temperature at Thanksgiving. Although Doz found the symptoms everywhere he went, he never regetted the decision he had made that summer. Siss accepted his invitation to come with him when he went to the ZU-ZTech game as he had promised Blake and Taylo, but without enthusiasm. It always took place on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and, that year, in Mountain Ridge. Expecting bad weather, Siss and Doz had gone shopping together for clothes to wear. She not only cared about what she wore, but also, to his surprise, about what he wore. She insisted on a good fit, comfort, style and harmony between hers and his. Although he worried more about how long the clothes would last, the expedition satisfied them both. She found that he had good taste when he chose them for himself, but he praised everything she tried, so she found him more amusing than helpful. You tried at least ten possibilities, she lectured him,

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before you even considered buying one. Why did he think that was so funny? Nearly everything they bought was made of wool. She chose a thick white sweater, brown pants, a light-red duffle coat, a long white scarf, white mittens, and a white and brown cap big enough to cover her hair without squeezing it. This cap kept slipping to the side, which gave Doz an opportunity to straighten it. He found her even more irresistible in these clothes and yet, despite the extra thickness, she looked as thin as ever. He accused the stores of theft for charging her the same prices as women two or three times her size. Everything she wore white, he wore brown and vice versa, while his duffle coat was brown and he wore light-brown leather gloves. Since a ZU and a ZTech football player had provided them with free tickets, she explained, they shouldn't wear the colors of either team, which she didn't like anyway, she admitted with a chuckle.

On the highway to Mountain Ridge, they encountered wet snow, so Doz wondered whether the game would be called off. Football games were never called off, Siss informed him. "The worse the weather, the better the football," if you could believe Freddy. When they got out of the car, a cold wind flung snowflakes in their faces. On the way to the stadium, most of the others in the crowd wore either light-blue and white with zenos or orange and black with locomotives, as Siss had predicted. Instead of cooling their spirits, the weather actually seemed to warm them somehow. "The worse the weather, the greater the fun!" but Siss didn't seem to think so. The excitement all around them resulted in laughing and shouting, as friends discovered friends they hadn't seen for months and, in many cases, since the last ZU-ZTech game. Telling jokes and stories, they advanced as if to a banquet or ball in a well-heated club. Looming darkly ahead, however, the stadium promised just the opposite. Beating drums and pealing trumpets seemed to prelude a bloody battle. Doz kept telling Siss how different it had been that summer.

The light blue and white on the far side of the stadium contrasted with the orange and black on the near side, where they felt conspicuous despite the modest colors of their clothes. Their seats were near the middle and one third of the way up, yet the players warming up on the field looked distant to them. Engulfed in a sea of competitive enthusiasm, they wondered: "what are we doing here?" Under a gray sky and swirling snow, the stadium appeared entirely different from what it had under a blue sky with a hot sun overhead. Their neighbors seemed aware of their embarrassment, for they

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gave them a friendly but unfamiliar greeting, as if to make guests feel welcome. Siss, whose mitten had been holding Doz's glove since they left the car, squeezed it and she gave him a smile. He reached up with his other hand and straightened her cap. In the corners of their eyes, they glimpsed neighbors noticing. Among the players with the orange helmets and jerseys at one end of the field, Doz recognized Taylo by the way he ran. At the other end, Blake and Tom-Tom stood taller than the others except Shack. Coaches Shanz and Whitaker watched their team from the near side, Coaches Sylvester and Stimson, theirs, from the far side. A band dressed in Napoleonic uniforms, likewise orange and black, occupied a hundred seats below and to the right of Doz and Siss. There were more soldiers in the band than players on the team. He looked across the field and, sure enough, he saw another band in light-blue and white. Where was the symmetry going to stop? Not with the noise! On both sides, the soldiers were beating their drums and bass drums, blowing their trumpets, trombones and tubas as if to drown each other out. Doz whispered to Siss: "neither of these universities is a military academy, is it?"

Grinning, she shook her head.

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they would step sideways imitating the motion of drive and side rods with their arms and repeating: "choo-choo sissss" with each step. A miniature black locomotive with ZTech in orange on the sides of the tender was making a similar noise in a corner of the stadium, where black smoke rose from its stack and steam hissed from its safety value. In the opposite corner, stood a ten-foot paper-maché statue of a zeno, the pride of the ZU Art Department, as one of their neighbors was telling another one. Doz couldn't make the ZU cheers out, but the cheerleaders had an even more curious routine. The girls held hands in a circle while the boys ran around them in a larger circle. Suddenly a boy would turn inward, pick a girl up, dash across the circle and put her down on the other side before returning to the outer circle. While he carried her, she would flap her arms as if flying. Since Siss couldn't explain this routine, Doz asked the neighbors on his side, who couldn't either, but, soon, every one all around them was discussing it. They only agreed on two points: it was a mystery that even zenos couldn't explain and it showed how crazy they were.

Doz was wondering when the game would start. Two players from each team flanked by two officials left the side lines at the middle of the field and met in the center. The tossing of the coin surprized Doz because he couldn't imagine them choosing sides. He understood what it had determined, however, when the ZU defence lined up to kick and the ZTech offence covered the other end of the field to receive. A huge American flag flapping in a corner of the stadium showed that ZTech would face a gusting crosswind in the first quarter. Neither quarterback would be able to control lobs, while receivers would find bullets hard to catch with their hands cold. The snow was falling more thickly and muddying the ground. Suddenly, everyone stood up, turned towards the flag and placed their right hand over the left side of their chest, so Doz followed suit. Amplified by the loudspeakers and accompanied by both bands, a barytone led the crowd in singing what Doz guessed was the national anthem. He wondered why a crowd divided into rival halves at a football game needed to unite for a few minutes to pay allegiance to the national union. What did patriotism have to do with the desire to see one team beat another? On the road back to Mapleton that evening, he asked Siss and she supposed that football attracted people who feel the need to devote themselves to partisan causes. To his surprise, she also confessed that she had always found the American flag a little gaudy, the music and the words of the national anthem, badly written, and most patriotic manifestations, in rather poor taste. Admitting that she had never told anyone else, she asked him not to repeat it.

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The wind, the snow and the mud tormented the players, but they favored the defence. Although ZU had won most of their games that year and ZTech had lost most of theirs, neither team could make a first down for most of the game. Punts and turnovers occurred so frequently that defensive and offensive teams were shuttling on and off the field. If ball carriers didn't slip and fall when they tried to cut, they slipped and fell from the slightest contact with defensive players. Hit or buried, they often fumbled. Infrequent, passes usually went incomplete because the ball either slipped out of a passer's hand as he tried to throw it or through a receiver's hands as he tried to catch it. Taylo was an exception to the rule, because he did catch the ball a few times by cradling it and he could run in the mud with slipping. Doz admired his sense of balance. Twice he outran the ZU secondary, but the ZTech tailback only managed to throw passes that fell short of him and one fell right into the arms of a defensive back. "I could have completed those passes," Doz was thinking. Once Taylo abruptly broke his pattern to catch a bad pass only to collide with a linebacker and fumble the ball. Tom-Tom managed to stay on his feet and move when others were slipping and falling all around him. He made lots of tackles and recovered two fumbles. Next to him, however, Blake was illustrating the adage that the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Several times, he slipped and fell trying to make a tackle, and the ball carrier gained enough yardage to embarrass him. He also missed a block on a punt return and the end who eluded him hit the back returning the punt so hard that he fumbled. Despite the fumbles and intercepted passes, neither team passed the other's twenty-yard line. By the end of the first quarter, all of the players who were or had been in the game were black with mud. 

In addition to the usual reason, Doz and Siss went down to the concourse at half time to shake the snow off, exersize their limbs and find some room to walk around in. Though tempted to leave, they decided that they couldn't let Blake and Taylo down. Weren't the latter braving far worse on the field? "Besides," said Siss with a rueful smile, "I want you to know everything you are missing." When they took the steps back up to their seats, a youngish man came running down at them in his underpants, holding a ZTech flag over his head and shouting "choo!" with every step. He had already started running up and down during the second quarter and he had removed an item of clothing each time he reached the top of the steps. He had stripped to his blue jeans the last time Doz and Siss had seen him before half time.

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Their neighbors had been laughing and, according to one of them, he performed this stunt at all home games. A bottle of bourbon awaited him at the bottom and another at the top, so he took a swig at either end of the stairs. As Doz and Siss started up the stairs, they saw his bony frame and freckled skin pink from the cold jerking down at them on knotty legs. Each moved to his side to let him through, but the drunk stopped a few stops above them, where they could see his eyes shifting back and forth between them.

"Hey!" he shouted at Doz, why aren't you down there?" and he pointed at the field.

Feeling the crowd around him as if it were exerting pressure on him, Doz took Siss by the arm and they went back to their seats. She was shaking with anger. On all sides, people were deploring what had happened, although a few passed it off as a joke. Anxious to get it over with, the couple said what they had to say and gave the looks they had to give. Taking its turn, the ZTech band invaded the field as the ZU band retreated with muddy shoes. The pranzing orange and black soldiers marched from one clever figure or letter to another beating their drums and blowing their horns. Their zeal despite wind, snow and mud, Doz thought, might have done wonders somewhere else under other circumstances. What a frivolous waste of youth and energy! Leading them with an ornate baton, an officer dressed in an exaggeration of their uniform added the equivalent of grace notes and trills to their movements. On the side of the field in front the ZTech stands, a young man in circus attire was twirling a baton, throwing it high in the air and catching it without letting it stop. A girl had been giving practically the same performance for ZU when they returned to their seats. Doz gave Siss a puzzled look.

"Yes, I know."

The only important difference between the second half and the first was the number of penalties. During a punt return, an official caught Blake holding

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the same player he was assigned to block and ZU lost fifteen yards instead of gaining ten. Doz could see Blake's frustration by the way he was walking back to the new line of scrimmage. Taylo was walking between plays too, a sure symptom of discouragement in a young man who loved to run. Although he caught a few passes, he didn't even try to go deep for a while. Yet Tom-Tom was playing as if he thought his team could still win. When the ZTech tackle or end on his side, or the fullback tried to block him, he stood him up and shoved him aside. Almost every time ZTech tried to run his way, he made the tackle and he made some when they ran the other way. Most of the fans had returned for the second half, but a trickle down the exit ramps in the third quarter grew to a stream in the fourth. With four minutes left in the game, Taylo beat the ZU secondary, while the ZTech tailback took a step and started to throw as high and far as he could. Rushing with his hands high in the air, Tom-Tom deflected the ball, which fluttered like a shuttlecock into Blake's arms. Surprized, Blake hesitated a split second, time enough for the ZTech fullback to tackle him. If he had run with the ball, he would have given Tom-Tom the angle he needed to block the fullback. After that, each team had one more futile possession and the referee whistled the end of the game. The score board read 0-0 just as it had before the game had begun.

The teams converged on the entrance to the dressing rooms and the crowd flowed towards the exits. Meeting in the middle of the field, the head coaches shook hands, turned to follow their players and Otto threw his arm over Saw's shoulder. They were complimenting each other and laughing at each other's jokes. A crowd surrounded Tom-Tom on the field. Doz patted Siss on the shoulder and, pointing at Tom-Tom, explained that he had to speak to him. He offered her the keys so she could wait for him in the car, but she preferred to come with him. They got around the crowd by stepping from bench to bench down to the gate at the bottom of the stairs. The wind, the snow and the mud hadn't discouraged the admirers and reporters around Tom-Tom, who was answering their questions with a courtesy possible only to a native of Joshua Well. When he saw Doz and Siss, however, he excused himself and told them he had to talk to his brother whom he hadn't seen since that summer. With a laugh that distinguished him from other giants, he threw his arms around Doz and lifted him off of the ground. His helmet felt cold and hard against his cheek.

"This is Thomas Q. Thomas," Doz told Siss who looked frailer than ever despite her wool. "And this is my fiancée, Siss Fossez."

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"Call me Tom-Tom or you will hurt my feelings." A big, muddy, calloused hand, that had been bruising ZTech shoulders all afternoon, swallowed a little mitten. Noticing the curiosity of his lingering admirers, he took Doz and Siss by the arm, one on each side of him, and guided them towards the dressing-room exit. "So you are going to marry my brother?" he asked Siss.

"Yes, I guess I am," she said looking up at him.

"As long as it's just a little one."

"Your fiancée is the best football player I ever played with or against and the only one who has ever had the guts to give it up."

"I wouldn't have been a good player today," said Doz.

Laughing: "I prefer to move furniture."

Doz and Siss met Taylo and Blake with their dates at the bar of the Score Board. Full of excited fans, this restaurant resembled a stadium outside and a basketball arena inside. A large screen hung on one wall, where a continuous film showed highlights of the sports in season, mostly college football on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Moving banner footlines noted the teams, the score, the place, statistics such as yardage gained, etc. The table tops had the shape and design of flattened footballs, basketballs and baseballs. Momentos decorated the walls, shelves and partitions between booths: numbered jerseys, helmets, baseball caps with team initials, autographed balls, bats, rackets, hockey sticks, photos of teams, stars and coaches, etc. The waitresses wore jerseys of famous teams; the ones with pretty legs wore shorts with splits up the sides and the ones with big bosoms wore loose bras. All of them spoke with the local accent. Taylo's and Blake's dates reminded Doz of Heddy and Kate; they had the same taste for athletes. Since Taylo's date was black and Blake's, white, three of the six in their party were black and three, white. Though tired and discouraged, Taylo and Blake tried to be good company and even treated each other courteously. Instead of sarcasm about football, they sought other subjects, but they couldn't find any that really interested them. The rock thundering from the speakers all around them would have provided them with a popular

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source of enthusiasm, if the word great hadn't exhausted their powers of appreciation. Fortunately their dates, who were keeping time with their heads and shoulders, made distinctions and comparisons that demonstrated an acceptable competence on the subject. The interest shown by Siss and Doz might have been more than polite if the volume hadn't punished their ears. Asking to have it turned down seemed futile. Instead of making them feel better, the beer Blake and Taylo were drinking only made it harder for them to act as if it did, which they considered a duty. The cigarettes they and their dates were smoking started Siss caughing and, unable to stop, she went outside to breathe fresh air, where Doz followed her. When they returned, the four smokers, who continued to smoke, didn't seem to think it appropriate to notice. With apparently genuine sympathy, however, one of the girls said: "I guess it was all this smoke."

The table Taylo had reserved for them was right in the middle of the room in front of the screen. Everyone recognized Taylo and many recognized Blake, so passers-by, comers-on-purpose and even a few stoppers-and-talkers lavished compliments on them for the great game they had played. Taylo and Blake had ordered big, burnt steaks, mashed potatoes and green peas, which hardly surprized Doz. Taylo's date had catfish, Blake's had pork, Siss and Doz had salmon. The four of them had a Caesar's salad, recommended by the dates, which was more than any of them dared to eat. Indeed, the portions were extravagant. Everyone agreed that the food was great, but what were they going to say next? For lack of anything to say, the two football players drank, so the alcohol began to sparkle in their eyes and thicken their tongues. Although Siss and Doz pretended not to notice, their girlfriends did: Taylo's kidded him about driving and Blake's kidded him about acting like a caveman. The latter joke reminded Doz of Blake's remark in the restaurant that summer about the girl he had seduced. Unfortunately, cynicism about sex was a subject that did inspire the two athletes. They competed with each other in making remarks that they thought increasingly subtle and funny; in reality, however, each was taking his turn in using more explicit and obscene language. The more they disgusted their girlfriends, who had been through this before, the merrier they laughed and the louder they spoke.

Siss stood up and said almost matter-of-factly: "It's late, the weather is bad and Mapleton is a long way away."

"You can't go yet!" complained Taylo. "We haven't even had dessert."

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"Howbout cheesecake with marble fudge and maraschino cherries?" enticed Blake.

"Either cheesecake or ice cream, Blake!" cautioned his girlfriend.

"I don't think Taylo needs any dessert," warned his.