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‘At last a familiar name,’ he chuckled. ‘Continue, professor.’

‘So the Cherokee established a civilised nation in this area, beginning just before the time the European started to settle on the coastal plains. The Cherokee lived in towns, were devoted to agriculture, had their own language, and even their own newspapers. And then came the Over-mountain men. And, after a fairly long time, they forced or coerced the Cherokee into leaving. And that’s where we are now.’

‘I’m sure there must be a moral to the story,’ he said. ‘There is. The valley of the Tennessee is no different from most of the rest of the world. The original people were displaced, and their displacers in their turn are displaced, and so forth. A good title for a history of almost anywhere in America or Europe would be, “But Nobody Comes From Around Here.” And the moral of the story is this. People and cultures are already invading the valley, steadily taking it away from you Overmountain men. We can only hope that, when your time comes to knuckle down, you will do it with as much honour as the Cherokee did. End of lesson.’

‘Well,’ he said, after a thinking pause, ‘at least you should record that when my people came over the mountains, we bought the land from the Cherokee, and paid them well.’

‘Sure you did,’ she laughed. ‘If you count whisky and blankets a fair price for five million acres of land. If you really believe that, I own a bridge up in Brooklyn I would like to sell to you. But you didn’t come down here for a history lesson, Mr King. What is it you really want?’

‘Okay, Katie, I’ll tell you what I want.’

‘What?’

‘You, Katie, that’s what!’

‘For heaven’s sakes, don’t go on like that. Eloise is making wedding plans for two weeks from now, and you want me?’

‘You’ve got it right!’

‘I don’t know if you’re insane, or Superman, or have a super ego. You want me like you want a hole in your head. What am I supposed to do, change your luck or something?’

‘Don’t be sarcastic, Katie. It doesn’t fit your image. But if you’re going to argue, I suppose I can put it off until later. Come on, we’ll both get some breakfast!’ He walked off towards the house, muttering under his breath, leaving her to follow at her own speed.

She pushed the throttle forward, and swung the wheels of her chair around. Nothing happened. Not even the reassuring click that demonstrated the machinery was working. She tried again, jamming the stick forward as far as it would go. The wheels refused to turn. ‘Damn!’ she muttered. Both sheep looked around at her, levered themselves up, and walked away.

‘You too!’ she snarled after them, but they paid her no attention.

Shaking her head in disgust she grabbed the two over-sized wheels and tried to move the chair by hand. It rocked back and forth easily, but refused to move out of the two little ruts into which it had settled. She banged her fist against the arm of the chair, and repeated three or four more of the words her mother had told her never to say. She knew what she had to do, but her pride held her back. She banged the chair arm twice more, and only succeeded in bruising the underside of her fist.

It had to be done. She leaned back in her chair, a look of extreme distaste on her face, and called, rather softly, ‘Help.’ One of the sheep looked around at her, and a robin, gathering up nerve for the southern flyways, dipped over her head. Using considerably more breath, she started to chant, ‘Help! Help! Damnit, he-e-elp!’

Before the last echo bounced off the mountain face behind her he was back. ‘You called?’ he asked facetiously.

‘No, I didn’t call—I yelled,’ she snarled at him. ‘Why couldn’t there be some other male around when I need help?’

‘There is,’ he chuckled. ‘Little Jon is just around the bend. You want I should send him to help you?’

‘What I really want is a big stick to beat you with!’ she told him coldly. ‘My chair doesn’t work.’

‘Ah.’ He walked around her surveying the chair from all sides. From out of his pocket he pulled a tiny bulb with wires attached. He kneeled down behind her, out of sight. Something rattled. He got up, brushing grass points from his immaculately pressed trousers. ‘Ah,’ he told her.

‘Ah what?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Can you fix it? I can’t seem to make it go by hand.’

He tucked his little contraption back in his pocket and smiled benevolently at her. ‘Tell me, Katie. When you went to bed last night, exactly what did you do?’

‘What do you mean, what did—’

‘Come on, Katie.’ He leaned over and tapped the tip of her nose with his index finger. ‘Pay attention now. Watch my lips. What did you do when you went to bed last night?’

‘Well, I—I went to my room, and I sat by the window for a while, and then I went over to the bed, and I climbed—’

‘No, no, little miss. Details!’

‘I—what are you, some kind of voyeur?’

‘Details!’

‘I—I had a hard time getting undressed, because the cast is so big, but I did, and I put on my nightgown, and
I
—I pulled back the sheets, and I sort of humped my way from the chair to the bed, and then I fell down on the bed and pulled the blankets up over me, and I—I went to sleep.’

‘Leaving the chair standing by the bed?’

‘Of course. Did you think I took it to bed with me?’

‘What makes the chair go, Katie?’

‘I—Electricity. Why are you laughing at me?’

‘Because, my lovely maiden, you have to re-charge the battery on that chair every night, by plugging this little wire into the house electric sockets. You’re out of electricity, dummy!’

‘I’ll dummy you if I ever get my hands on you,’ she snarled. He immediately stepped within range. She snapped her hands back and settled into the farthest corner of her chair, apprehensive, feeling the changed emotions in the air. He stood there, hands in pockets, looking sombrely down at her. She licked her dry lips, and watched him cautiously.

‘Would you—please—’ she offered tentatively. ‘Would you please push me back to the house?’

‘Ah,’ he said contentedly. He put his hands to the stainless steel handles at the back of the chair, and began almost effortlessly to push her back towards the house. He was whistling as they went. She sat absolutely rigid in the chair, staring straight ahead, not daring to make a sound.

Instead of pushing her right up to the house, he detoured towards the swimming pool. The sun was high now, the air sullenly warm. He moved the chair into the shade of one of the beach umbrellas set in the concrete of the pool’s apron. She half-turned herself to thank him, but he was bending down, plugging the charging cord into the waterproof electric connector some feet away from the pool.

‘Now just sit quietly there,’ he admonished her. ‘The battery will build up a reasonable charge in two hours. And in the meantime I’ll get you some breakfast. Gall and wormwood, was it? Or would you prefer scrambled eggs?’

He didn’t wait for an answer, but started off across the lawn in the direction of the kitchen. Her hungry eyes followed him lovingly. And what was that interchange all about, she demanded of herself? All we seem to do is peck at each other’s pride. Somebody—I—need to be a little bit—a lot, more humble. Her thought was interrupted by a splash behind her in the pool. She squirmed around to look. Baby Jon was splashing away in the middle of the enclosure!

Katie struggled to get up, to do something gallant, but before she could even come upright she saw the flash of another swimmer coming up underneath the baby, and breaking water with an enthusiastic spray. Amanda!

‘Oh, my God,’ Katie muttered, ‘Mine enemies are gathered to smite me!’

But the woman in the pool had turned over on her back, and was gently paddling as she enticed the baby to continue his dogged swim to the near side of the pool.
In
a moment both baby and mother were sprawled, panting, on the apron.

‘Hey, how about that, Katie,’ Amanda called. She got up, snatched at a towel from the nearest sun-chair, and swaddled the baby. Both were laughing as they came over to her wheelchair. ‘I started to give Jon swimming lessons when he was eight months old,’ Amanda said, rubbing briskly at the blond hair just peeping out of the towel. ‘I don’t know why I waited so late. Mind if we sit here with you?’

‘I
—
No, I don’t mind,’ Katie mumbled. A quick inspection of the other girl, dressed in a skimpy royal blue bikini, indicated that she couldn’t possibly be carrying concealed weapons!

The baby, now dry, settled down on the spread towel and kicked his heels. His mother dragged a sun-lounger over beside Katie and settled back in it.

‘I’m not mad at you, Katie,’ she said.

‘Well, thank goodness for that!’ Katie breathed a sigh
of
relief.

‘Eubie and I have been married for four years,’ Amanda continued. ‘I know him from A to Z. So how far did he get with you?’

‘Only to A,’ Katie replied. ‘He seemed to have forgotten to tell me he was married. A slight oversight.’ It was hard to keep the bitterness out of her tone.

‘You’re pretty lucky,’ Amanda nodded. ‘He usually aims for Z in a hurry. Is my Adonis getting over the hill?’

‘No,’ Katie sighed. ‘He was in there trying, all the way. When he announced that he was coming back as a “pinch hitter” I packed up and ran—and I only got this far!’

‘I heard that part of the story from my brother,’ Amanda chuckled. ‘He appears to be quite taken with you.’

‘Taking, you mean, not taken. He’s like an octopus.’

‘Men are stinkers, aren’t they!’

‘All of them,’ Katie returned. ‘All of them.’

The two women leaned back in their chairs to reflect on the perfidy of the male of the species.

‘You—you take it very calmly?’ Katie asked.

‘My own fault,’ Amanda confessed. ‘I know better than to leave him alone during the season. But his mother was sick, and she wanted the baby and me to be with her in Nashville. There are times when I think the only solution is to have him neutered. But that would be biting off my nose to spite my face.’

Another period of reflective silence.

‘He’s a lousy outfielder,’ Katie offered.

‘Terrible.’

‘He needs a peach basket instead of a glove.’

‘Or a seeing-eye dog!’

‘He told me he would be playing in the majors at Atlanta by next year. They really gave him his release?’

A happy smile broke over Amanda’s serious face. ‘Yeah!’ she exclaimed happily. ‘How about that! He’s disgusted, but it’s beginning to leak through his brain that you can’t be a professional baseball player if you can’t catch fly balls. No matter how high your batting average is. Isn’t that wonderful?’

‘I dunno,’ Katie commented. ‘I like baseball. Eubie was a disaster area. What comes next?’

‘Well next,’ Amanda said determinedly, ‘I encourage him to quit entirely. His father has a string of drugstores in South Tennessee and North Georgia. If I can talk fast enough we’ll settle down—in Rossville, maybe—and we’ll raise half-a-dozen more kids like Jon, and Eubie can take out his frustrations on the Little League. And we’ll all live happily ever after.’

‘And if that doesn’t work?’

‘Then some dark night I’m going to sneak up on him with a sharp knife and alter the shape of his existence!’

Both women laughed. ‘I wish I understood your brother as well as you understand your husband,’ Katie sighed. ‘He overwhelms me.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Amanda returned. ‘But it’s all a put-on, Katie. He comes on strong like some extrovert. And he’s not.’

‘He’s not? You could have fooled me.’

‘When we were young he was a shy kid,’ Amanda mused, ‘and Dad was a macho man. Harry hated to mix with people, and showed no interest in the family farm— so when he was eight years old Dad sent him off to a military academy. Can you imagine that—eight years old. He learned to build a wall around himself very quickly. But it’s only a wall. Inside him he’s still the lonely little introvert he always was. You can tell when he’s cracking up. He puts on that big stupid grin, that “well I don’t care a nickel’s worth” approach, and becomes as brash as brass. But that’s all a put-on. He can be easily hurt, Katie. Don’t you be the one to do it.’

That was the moment Harry came out, pushing a steaming breakfast trolley. ‘Hey, Mandy,’ he called. ‘Two women laughing? Some poor man is getting the shaft, I’ll bet.’

‘Something like that,’ his sister laughed.
‘You
made the breakfast? That’s not you, brother.’

‘Semantics.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Female chauvinistic semantics!’

‘Oh damn,’ Katie muttered, more to herself than to the others.

‘What happened now?’ he inquired.

‘I dumped eggs on my skirt,’ she sighed. ‘It’s the only one I’ve got left. I do most of my living in jeans, but I can’t get them on over this darn cast.’

‘Now there’s a perfect lead-in,’ Amanda laughed. ‘Harry, you’ll take care of Jon this afternoon. Katie and I are going down to Johnson City to buy her a few little things.’

‘Hey—just a minute—’ he started to complain, and then fell silent. Katie whirled round to see what impossible power had finally shut him up. His sister was glaring at him, jaw stuck out at a furious angle, eyes sparking storm signals. And he had backed down! So that’s what it takes, Katie thought. Steel determination! Just wait until the next time he starts fooling around with me!

An hour later he helped them out to the parking lot. ‘We’ll take the Mercedes,’ Amanda calmly ordered. He swept Katie up out of her chair, walked around the car, and put her carefully into the front seat. As Amanda warmed up the engine he folded a lightweight portable wheelchair, and squeezed it into the boot. Amanda reached for the gear stick, but Harry held up a warning hand. ‘You just wait a minute,’ he called. He walked around again to Katie’s window and stuck his head in.

‘There’s a bus station in Johnson City. And an airport,’ he said quietly. ‘You
will
come back, Katie?’

She was startled. For the past three hours she had been living in a dream world, all thought of flight abandoned. And now his simple question had brought it all to the fore again. Last night she had sworn that everybody was her enemy. And now Amanda had become a close friend. The problem with Eubie had faded deep into the background. Leaving only—Eloise. ‘Is she still here?’ she asked. Her upper lip was trembling. ‘Eloise, I mean?’