We looked at each other levelly a moment, then we both smiled and I left. Of course I told Peter, passing on the latest greetings from our old friend. And Peter, after a few sharp, anxious questions to be sure that I wasn't concealing from him some Monstrous Doom, accepted my odd affliction with his usual slight grin and glint of interest. He has long since realized that I don't see quite eye-to-eye with the usual maturing-into-bifocals groups. Since I didn't have to worry about it anymore, I mostly ignored my side vision. However, there were a few more `sharpenings' in the days that followed. Once in a Bayless supermarket on double stamp day, I caused a two-aisle jam of shopping carts because I became so engrossed in one of my peripheral pictures. There I stood at a strategic junction, staring fixedly at a stack of tuna cans while the rising murmur of voices and the muted clish-clish of colliding carts faded away. There were people this time, two women and an assortment of small nearly naked children whose runnings and playings took them in and out of my range of vision like circling, romping puppies. It was a group of Indians. The women were intent on their work. They had a very long slender sahuaro rib and were busy harvesting the fruit from the top of an enormously tall sahuaro cactus, right in the middle of canned tomatoes. One woman was dislodging the reddish egg-shaped fruit from the top of the cactus with the stick, and the other was gathering it up from the ground into a basket, using a tong-like arrangement of sticks to avoid the thorns that cover the fruit. I was watching, fascinated, when suddenly I heard! There was a soft, singing voice in my mind, and my mind knew it was the woman who knelt in the sandy dust and lifted the thorny fruit. 'Good, good, good! softly she sang, 'Food for now. Food for later. Sing good, sing good, Sing praise, sing praise!' 'Lady, are you all right?' An anxious and on my elbow brought me back to Bayless and the traffic jam. I blinked and drew a deep breath. The manager repeated, 'Are you all right?' He had efficiently rerouted the various carts and they were moving away from me now, with eyes looking back, curious, avid, or concerned. 'Oh, I'm so sorry,' I said, clutching the handle of my shopping cart. 'I-I suddenly remembered something and forgot where I was.' I smiled into the manger's anxious face, 'I'm –all right, thank you. I'm sorry I caused trouble.' 'No trouble,' he answered my smile a little tentatively. 'You're sure-' 'Oh, certainly,' I hastened. 'Thank you for your kindness.' And I moved away briskly to look for the pizza mix that was on sale. Up and down the aisles through the towering forest of food I hurried, echoing in my mind, as I contrasted the little lifting sticks and my chrome-bright cart- Good, good Food for now, Food for later. Sing praise! Sing praise! Several days later I stood in one of those goldfish-bowl telephone booths on a service station corner and listened to the purr as Dr. Barstow's office phone rang. Finally his secretary, Miss Kieth, answered briskly, and he eventually came on the line, probably between eyelashes. 'I'm downtown,' I said hastily after identifying myself. 'I know you're busy, but-but-how long have your people been in Tucson?' There was a slight digestive pause and then he said slowly, 'My folks came out here before the turn of the century. 'What-what did they do? I mean, to earn a living? What I mean is, I'm seeing again, right now. There's a big sign over a store, JAS. R. BARSTOW AND SONS GENERAL MERCHANDISE. And if Jas, means James, well, that's you-' I wiped a tissue across my oozing forehead and grimaced at the grime. Dr. Barstow broke the breathing silence. 'That was my great grandfather. At least he's the one long enough ago with the right name. Can you still see the place?' His voice quickened. 'Yes,' I said, concentrating on the telephone mouthpiece. 'I'm dying to go in it and see all that General Merchandise. But I don't think I can go in-not yet. What I wanted to know is, when is the store?' After a minute he asked, 'Does it have a porch over the sidewalk?' I stared studiously at the dial of the phone. 'Yes,' I said, 'with peeled pine porch posts'-I dabbled my lips-'holding up the roof.' 'Then it's after 1897,' he said. 'That was one of our favorite `olden days' stories-the one about the store burning down. And the magnificent one that arose from the ashes. It boasted a porch.' 'Then that's when I'm seeing!' I cried. 'Around the turn of the century!' 'If,' came his voice cautiously, 'if all your seeing is in the same period of time.' 'Someday,' I said determinedly after a slight pause, 'someday I'm going to get a flat `yes' or `no' from you about something!' 'And won't that be dull?' I heard him chuckle as he hung up. I walked over to the store on the next scramble WALK signal at the corner. The concrete clicked under my hurried feet, but, when I stepped up to the far sidewalk, my feet rang hollowly on a wooden porch floor. Hastily, lest a change should come, I hurried across uneven planks to the door. I grabbed the handle. Then I paused, taking a deep breath of a general-store smell that was instantly recognizable-I could smell now! 'Oh!' I thought, the pit of my stomach cold with excitement. 'To see all the things we keep in museums and collections now! Just walk in and-' Then I heard Peter, vigorously and decisively, 'Don't you dare take one step into this-!' Caught in midstep, I turned my full gaze on the handle I held. Jarringly, I thumped down several inches to the sidewalk. I removed my hand from where it was pressed against a dusty, empty store window. Automatically I read the sign propped against the stained sagging back of the display window-You'll wonder where the yellow went- The week following came an odd sort of day. It had rained in the night-torrents of rain that made every upside-down drainage street in Tucson run curb to curb. The thirsty earth drank and drank and couldn't keep up with the heavy fall, so now the runoff was making Rillito Creek roar softly to itself as it became again, briefly, a running stream. The dust had been beautifully settled. An autumnlike sky cover of heavy gray clouds hid the sun. Peter and I decided this was the time for us to relearn the art of bicycling and to do something about my black belt that never lied when it pinched me the news that I was increasing around the middle. It was also time for Peter to stop being critical of the Laundromat for shrinking his pants. So, on this cool, moisty morning we resurrected the bikes from the accumulation in the garage. We stacked them awkwardly in the car trunk and drove across the Rillito, stopping briefly at the bridge to join others who stood around enjoying the unusual sight of Water-in a-River! Then we went on up through the mushrooming foothills land developments, until we finally arrived at a narrow, two-rutted, sandy road that looped out of sight around the low hills and abrupt arroyos. We parked the car and got the bikes out. It was a wonderful day, fragrant with wet greasewood-after-a-rain. The breeze was blowing, cool enough for sleeves to feel good. It was a dustless, delightful breeze. 'I love days like this,' I said, as I wobbled away from the car on my bike. I made ten feet before I fell. 'I get so lonesome for rain.' Peter patiently untangled me from the bike, flexed my arms to see if they were broken, flexed my neck to kiss the end of my nose, then tried to steady my bike with both hands and, at the same time, help me get back on. 'I get so tired of sun, sun, sun-' 'You talk like a native,' said Peter, making nice straight tracks in the damp sand of the road. 'So I am,' I said, my tracks scalloping back and forth across his as I tried to follow him. 'It's only you fotchedon-furriners that find perpetual sun so delightful!' I fell again, this time contriving to have the bike fall one way and me the other with the pedals and my feet twined together. Peter was extricating me, muttering something about a donkey being better for me since it's braced at all four corners, when I saw it-on the next loop of the road where it topped the rise above us. 'Peter,' I said softly, staring at him, 'I can see a horse pulling a buggy on the road over there. There's another and another and a hay wagon looking vehicle. Peter, it's a procession of some sort.' Peter straightened my legs and sat down on the ground near me. 'Go on,' he said, taking my hands.
