Perhaps they had made a mistake in 1970, discouraging K.D. and Fleet's daughter. She was pregnant but, after a short stay at that Convent, if she had it, she sure didn't have it. The uncles had been worried about the shape Fleetwood's offspring took, and besides, there were other suitable candidates around. But K.D. was still messing around with one of the strays living out there where the entrance to hell is wide, and it was time to give him the news: every brothel don't hang a red light in the window.
He was braking in front of the bank when he noticed a solitary figure ahead. He recognized her right away but watched her carefully because first of all she had no coat, and because second, he had not seen her out of her house in six years.
Central Avenue, three wide graded miles of tarmac, began at the Oven and ended at Sargeant's Feed and Seed. The four side streets east of Central were named after the Gospels. When a fifth street was needed it was named St. Peter. Later on, as Ruby grew, streets were laid on the west side of Central, and although these newer streets were continuations of those on the east-situated right across from them-they acquired secondary names. So St. John Street on the east become Cross John on the west. St. Luke became Cross Luke. The sanity of this pleased most everybody, Deek especially, and there was always room for additional houses (financed, if need be, by the Morgan brothers' bank) in the plots and acres behind and beyond those already built. The woman Deek was watching seemed to be leaving Cross Peter Street and heading toward Sargeant's Feed and Seed. But she did not stop there. Instead she was moving resolutely north, where Deek knew there was nothing for seventeen miles. What could the sweetest girl, named for her nature, be doing coatless on a chilly October morning that far from the home she had not stepped out of since 1967? A movement in his rearview mirror took his attention, and he recognized the small red truck coming in from south country. Its driver would be Aaron Poole, late, as Deek knew he would be, since he was bringing in the final payment on his loan. After considering letting Poole wait and driving on to catch up with Sweetie, Deek cut off his motor. July, his clerk and secretary, was not due until ten. There should be no occasion when the bank of a good and serious town did not open on time.
Anna Flood said, "See. Just look at him."
She was watching Deek's sedan circle the Oven and then cruise slowly past her store. "Why does he have to hover like that?" Richard Misner looked up from the woodstove. "He's just checking on things," he said, and went back to laying the fire. "Got a right, doesn't he? It's sort of his town, wouldn't you say? His and Steward's?"
"I would not. They may act like they own it, but they don't." Misner liked a tight fire, and the one he was preparing would be just that. "Well, they founded it, didn't they?"
"Who've you been talking to?" Anna left the window and walked to the back stairs, leading to her apartment. There she slid a pan of meat leavings and cereal under the stairwell. The cat, turned vicious by motherhood, stared at her with warning eyes. "Fifteen families founded this town. Fifteen, not two. One was my father, another my uncle-"
"You know what I mean," Misner interrupted her. Anna peeped into the darkness trying to see inside the box where the litter lay. "I do not."
"The money," said Misner. "The Morgans had the money. I guess I should say they financed the town-not founded it." The cat would not eat while being watched, so Anna forfeited a peep at the kittens and turned back to Richard Misner. "You wrong there too. Everybody pitched in. The bank idea was just a way of doing it. Families bought shares in it, you know, instead of just making deposits they could run through any old time. This way their money was safe."
Misner nodded and wiped his hands. He didn't want another argument. Anna refused to understand the difference between investing and cooperating. Just as she refused to believe the woodstove gave more warmth than her little electric heater.
"The Morgans had the resources, that's all," she said. "From their father's bank back in Haven. My grandfather, Able Flood, was his partner. Everybody called him Big Daddy, but his real name was-"
"I know, I know. Rector. Rector Morgan, also known as Big Daddy.
Son of Zechariah Morgan, known throughout Christendom as Big Papa." And then he quoted a refrain the citizens of Ruby loved to recite. " 'Rector's bank failed, but he didn't.' "
"It's true. The bank had to close down-in the early forties-but it didn't close out. I mean they had enough so we could start over. I know what you're thinking, but you can't honestly say it didn't work. People prosper here. Everybody."
"Everybody's prospering on credit, Anna. That's not the same thing."
"So?"
"So what if the credit's gone?"
"It can't be gone. We own the bank; the bank doesn't own us."
"Aw, Anna. You don't get it, do you? You don't understand." She enjoyed his face even when he was putting down people she liked. Steward, for example, he seemed to despise, but it was Steward who had taught her the scorpion lesson. When Anna was four, she was sitting on the new porch of her father's store-back in 1954-when everybody was building something while a group of men including Steward were helping Ace Flood finish the shelving. They were inside, resting after a quick lunch, while Anna derailed ants on the steps: introducing obstacles into their routes, watching them climb over the leaf's edge and go on as though a brand-new green mountain were an inevitable part of their journey. Suddenly a scorpion shot out near her bare foot, and she ran wide-eyed into the store. The talk stopped while the men weighed this infantile interruption, and it was Steward who picked her up in his arms, asked, What's bothering you, good-lookin'? and relieved her fears. Anna clung to him while he explained that the scorpion's tail was up because it was just as scared of her as she was of it. In Detroit, watching baby-faced police handling guns, she remembered the scorpion's rigid tail. Once, she had asked Steward what it felt like to be a twin. "Can't say," he answered, "since I was never not one. But I guess it feels more complete."