And she knew where he was going. He was going to be burned and roasted and broiled good, but very good.

Mr. Thirkell was falling down, into the Sun.

And here we are, thought Mrs. Bellowes. Here we are, going on out, and out, and out.

There was hardly a sense of motion at all, but she knew that she was traveling at fifty thousand miles an hour and would continue to travel at that speed for an eternity, until. . . .

She saw the other women swinging all about her in their own trajectories, a few minutes of oxygen left to each of them in their helmets, and each was looking up to where they were going.

Of course, thought Mrs. Bellowes. Out into s.p.a.ce. Out and out, and the darkness like a great church, and the stars like candles, and in spite of everything, Mr. Thirkell, the rocket, and the dishonesty, we are going toward the Lord.

And there, yes, there, as she fell on and on, coming toward her, she could almost discern the outline now, coming toward her was His mighty golden hand, reaching down to hold her and comfort her like a frightened sparrow.

"I"m Mrs. Amelia Bellowes," she said quietly, in her best company voice. "I"m from the planet Earth."

ANY FRIEND OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY"S IS A FRIEND OF MINE

IMAGINE A SUMMER THAT WOULD NEVER END.

Nineteen twenty-nine.

Imagine a boy who would never grow up.

Me.

Imagine a barber who was never young.

Mr. Wyneski.

Imagine a dog that would live forever.

Mine.

Imagine a small town, the kind that isn"t lived in anymore.

Ready? Begin . . .

Green Town, Illinois . . . Late June.

Dog barking outside a one-chair barbershop.

Inside, Mr. Wyneski, circling his victim, a customer snoozing in the steambath drowse of noon.

Inside, me, Ralph Spaulding, a boy of some twelve years, standing still as an iron Civil War statue, listening to the hot wind, feeling all that hot summer dust out there, a bakery world where n.o.body could be bad or good, boys just lay gummed to dogs, dogs used boys for pillows under trees that lazed with leaves which whispered in despair: Nothing Will Ever Happen Again.

The only motion anywhere was the cool water dripping from the huge coffin-sized ice block in the hardware store window.

The only cool person in miles was Miss Frostbite, the traveling magician"s a.s.sistant, tucked into that lady-shaped long cavity hollowed in the ice block displayed for three days now without, they said, her breathing, eating, or talking. That last, I thought, must have been terrible hard on a woman.

Nothing moved in the street but the barbershop striped pole which turned slowly to show its red, white, and then red again, slid up out of nowhere to vanish nowhere, a motion between two mysteries.

". . . hey . . ."

I p.r.i.c.ked my ears.

". . . something"s coming . . ."

"Only the noon train, Ralph." Mr. Wyneski snicked his jackdaw scissors, peering in his customer"s ear. "Only the train that comes at noon."

"No . . ." I gasped, eyes shut, leaning. "Something"s really coming . . ."

I heard the far whistle wail, lonesome, sad, enough to pull your soul out of your body.

"You feel it, don"t you, Dog?"

Dog barked.

Mr. Wyneski sniffed. "What can a dog feel?"

"Big things. Important things. Circ.u.mstantial coincidences. Collisions you can"t escape. Dog says. I say. We say."

"That makes four of you. Some team." Mr. Wyneski turned from the summer-dead man in the white porcelain chair. "Now, Ralph, my problem is hair. Sweep."

I swept a ton of hair. "Gosh, you"d think this stuff just grew up out of the floor."

Mr. Wyneski watched my broom. "Right! I didn"t cut all that. Darn stuff just grows, I swear, lying there. Leave it a week, come back, and you need hip boots to trod a path." He pointed with his scissors. "Look. You ever see so many shades, hues, and tints of forelocks and chin fuzz? There"s Mr. Tompkins"s receding hairline. There"s Charlie Smith"s topknot. And here, here"s all that"s left of Mr. Harry Joe Flynn."

I stared at Mr. Wyneski as if he had just read from Revelation. "Gosh, Mr. Wyneski, I guess you know everything in the world!"

"Just about."

"I-I"m going to grow up and be-a barber!"

Mr. Wyneski, to hide his pleasure, got busy.

"Then watch this hedgehog, Ralph, peel an eye. Elbows thus, wrists so! Make the scissors talk! Customers appreciate. Sound twice as busy as you are. Snickety-snick, boy, snickety-snick. Learned this from the French! Oh, yes, the French! They do prowl about the chair light on their toes, and the sharp scissors whispering and nibbling, Ralph, nibbling and whispering, you hear!"

"Boy!" I said, at his elbow, right in with the whispers and nibbles, then stopped: for the wind blew a wail way off in summer country, so sad, so strange.

"There it is again. The train. And something on the train . . ."

"Noon train don"t stop here."

"But I got this feeling-"

"The hair"s going to grab me, Ralph . . ."

I swept hair.

After a long while I said, "I"m thinking of changing my name."

Mr. Wyneski sighed. The summer-dead customer stayed dead.

"What"s wrong with you today, boy?"

"It"s not me. It"s the name is out of hand. Just listen. Ralph." I grrred it. "Rrrralph."

"Ain"t exactly harp music . . ."

"Sounds like a mad dog." I caught myself.

"No offense, Dog."

Mr. Wyneski glanced down. "He seems pretty calm about the whole subject."

"Ralph"s dumb. Gonna change my name by tonight."

Mr. Wyneski mused. "Julius for Caesar? Alexander for the Great?"

"Don"t care what. Help me, huh, Mr. Wyneski? Find me a name . . ."

Dog sat up. I dropped the broom.

For way down in the hot cinder railroad yards a train furnaced itself in, all pomp, all fire-blast shout and tidal churn, summer in its iron belly bigger than the summer outside.

"Here it comes!"

"There it goes," said Mr. Wyneski.

"No, there it doesn"t go!"

It was Mr. Wyneski"s turn to almost drop his scissors.

"Goshen. Darn noon train"s putting on the brakes!"

We heard the train stop.

"How many people getting off the train, Dog?"

Dog barked once.

Mr. Wyneski shifted uneasily. "U.S. Mail bags-"

"No . . . a man! Walking light. Not much luggage. Heading for our house. A new boarder at Grandma"s, I bet. And he"ll take the empty room right next to you, Mr. Wyneski! Right, Dog?"

Dog barked.

"That dog talks too much," said Mr. Wyneski.

"I just gotta go see, Mr. Wyneski. Please?"

The far footsteps faded in the hot and silent streets.

Mr. Wyneski shivered.

"A goose just stepped on my grave."

Then he added, almost sadly: "Get along, Ralph."

"Name ain"t Ralph."

"Whatchamacallit . . . run see . . . come tell the worst."

"Oh, thanks, Mr. Wyneski, thanks!"

I ran. Dog ran. Up a street, along an alley, around back, we ducked in the ferns by my grandma"s house. "Down, boy," I whispered. "Here the Big Event comes, whatever it is!"

And down the street and up the walk and up the steps at a brisk jaunt came this man who swung a cane and carried a carpetbag and had long brown-gray hair and silken mustaches and a goatee, politeness all about him like a flock of birds.

On the porch near the old rusty chain swing, among the potted geraniums, he surveyed Green Town.

Far away, maybe, he heard the insect hum from the barbershop, where Mr. Wyneski, who would soon be his enemy, told fortunes by the lumpy heads under his hands as he buzzed the electric clippers. Far away, maybe, he could hear the empty library where the golden dust slid down the raw sunlight and way in back someone scratched and tapped and scratched forever with pen and ink, a quiet woman like a great lonely mouse burrowed away. And she was to be part of this new man"s life, too, but right now . . .

The stranger removed his tall moss-green hat, mopped his brow, and not looking at anything but the hot blind sky said: "h.e.l.lo, boy. h.e.l.lo, Dog."

Dog and I rose up among the ferns.

"Heck. How"d you know where we were hiding?"

The stranger peered into his hat for the answer. "In another incarnation, I was a boy. Time before that, if memory serves, I was a more than usually happy dog. But . . .!" His cane rapped the cardboard sign BOARD AND ROOM thumbtacked on the porch rail. "Does the sign say true, boy?"

"Best rooms on the block."

"Beds?"

"Mattresses so deep you sink down and drown the third time, happy."

"Boarders at table?"

"Talk just enough, not too much."