are far away, following dry creek beds or looking for blackberries, or else they are hidden in the house, spying at us through cracks in the blinds. Th e car seat has grown slick with our sweat. I dare my brother to sound the horn, wanting to do it myself but not wanting to get the blame. He knows better. We play I Spy, but it is hard to find many colors. Gray for the barns and sheds and toilets and houses, brown for the yard and fields, black or brown for the dogs. The rusting cars show rainbow patches, in which I strain to pick out purple or green; likewise I peer at doors for shreds of old peeling paint, maroon or yellow. We can't play with letters, which would be better, because my brother is too young to spell. Th e game disintegrates anyway. He claims my colors are not fair, and wants extra turns.
In one house no door opens, though the car is in the yard. My father knocks
and whistles, calls, 'Hullo there ! Walker Brothers man!' but there is not a
stir of reply anywhere. This house has no porch, just a bare, slanting slab of
cement on which my father stands. He turns around, searching the barnyard,
the barn whose mo w must be empty because you can see the sky through it,
and finally he bends to pick up his suitcases. Just then a window is opened
upstairs, a white pot appears on the sill, is tilted over and its contents splash
down the outside wall. The window is not directly above my father's head, so
only a stray splash would catch him. He picks up his suitcases with no partic
ular hurry and walks, no longer whistling, to the car. 'Do you know what that
was?' I say to m y brother. 'Pee.' H e laughs and laughs.
My father rolls and lights a cigarette before he starts the car. Th e window
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2720 / ALICE MUNRO
has been slammed down, the blind drawn, we never did see a hand or face. 'Pee, pee,' sings my brother ecstatically. 'Somebody dumped down pee!' 'Just don't tell your mother that,' my father says. 'She isn't liable to see the joke.' 'Is it in your song?' my brother wants to know. My father says no but he will see what he can do to work it in.
I notice in a little while that we are not turning in any more lanes, though it does not seem to me that we are headed home. 'Is this the way to Sunshine?' I ask my father, and he answers, 'No, ma'am, it's not.' 'Are we still in your territory?' H e shakes his head. 'We're goingfast,' my brother says approvingly, and in fact we are bouncing along through dry puddle-holes so that all the bottles in the suitcases clink together and gurgle promisingly.
Another lane, a house, also unpainted, dried to silver in the sun.
'I thought we were out of your territory.'
'W e are.'
'Then what are we going in here for?'
'You'll see.'
In front of the house a short, sturdy woman is picking up washing, which
had been spread on the grass to bleach and dry. Whe n the car stops she stares at it hard for a moment, bends to pick up a couple more towels to add to the bundle under her arm, comes across to us and says in a flat voice, neither welcoming nor unfriendly, 'Have you lost your way?'
My father takes his time getting out of the car. 'I don't think so,' he says. 'I'm the Walker Brothers man.'
'George Golley is our Walker Brothers man,' the woman says, 'and he was out here no more than a week ago. Oh, my Lord God,' she says harshly, 'it's you.'
'It was, the last time I looked in the mirror,' my father says.
The woman gathers all the towels in front of her and holds on to them
tightly, pushing them against her stomach as if it hurt. 'Of all the people I
never thought to see. And telling me you were the Walker Brothers man.'
'I'm sorry if you were looking forward to George Golley,' my father says
humbly.
'And look at me, I was prepared to clean the henhouse. You'll think that's just an excuse but it's true. I don't go round looking like this every day.' She is wearing a farmer's straw hat, through which pricks of sunlight penetrate and float on her face, a loose, dirty print smock, and canvas shoes. 'Who are those in the car, Ben? They're not yours?'
'Well, I hope and believe they are,' my father says, and tells our names and
ages. 'Come on, you can get out. This is Nora, Miss Cronin. Nora, you better
tell me, is it still Miss, or have you got a husband hiding in the woodshed?'
'If I had a husband that's not where I'd keep him, Ben,' she says, and they
both laugh, her laugh abrupt and somewhat angry. 'You'll think I got no man
ners, as well as being dressed like a tramp,' she says. 'Com e on in out of the
sun. It's cool in the house.'
