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disgustingly, to turn out another baby every ten months or so.

    Otis Parker was always in hock to the company credit union. Velta knew this because she worked in the credit office as a typist and file clerk. Velta didn't have much regard for anybody who didn't have money.

    It would be just like that Parker boy to get Jade pregnant. She hoped Jade was too smart to let that happen, but, unfortunately, like her stunning good looks, the girt had inherited a romantic, passionate streak from her father.

    Velta's eyes moved to the framed photograph on the end table, Ronald Sperry's laughing blue eyes-so like Jade's -stared back at her. The soldier's cap sat at a jaunty angle atop his dark curls. His Congressional Medal of Honor was suspended around his neck. Other medals were pinned to the breast pocket of his military uniform, attesting to his valor and courage during the Korean conflict.

    Velta was sixteen when Palmetto's dashing war hero had returned home. The low-country town had never had such a grand distinction. The entire population had turned out to welcome his train as it chugged into the depot. The red carpet had been rolled out for the town's favorite son, who

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    was coming straight from Washington, D.C., where he had been wined and dined. He'd even shaken hands with the president.

    Velta was introduced to him at a citywide dance held in his honor at the VFW hall. That very night, while they danced to tunes by Patti Page and Frank Sinatra, she made up her mind to man-y Ronald Sperry.

    For the next two years she pursued him shamelessly, not giving up until he popped the question. Lest something jinx it, Velta saw to it that they were married within a week of his proposal.

    Unfortunately, there were no North Korean Communists in Palmetto. Years after his triumphant return home, Ronald was still at a loss as to what to do with the rest of his life. He had no grandiose ambitions. Though he was dashingly handsome, he had no desire to capitalize on the Medal of Honor the way Audie Murphy had. He didn't aspire to movie stardom.

    Orphaned and penniless, he had joined the arrny only so he would have a place to sleep and food to eat. He had been an ideal soldier because there was always somebody telling him what to do and when to do it. His officers had ordered him to shoot straight and kill the gook commies and, because he was an excellent marksman, that's what he had done. On the afternoon that he wiped out twenty-two Koreans, it never occurred to him that his actions would merit a medal.

    He was popular with people. He had a charisma and magnetism that folks just naturally gravitated to. Everybody liked Ron Sperry. However, hanging out with the guys and telling amusing stories in the pool hall didn't produce revenue. He drifted from one meaningless, futureless job to another.

    With each one he began, Velta's spirits rose. This would be the one that catapulted them to riches. The Medal of Honor gave them instant respectability, but never the riches and social acceptance Velta craved, Even a Medal of Honor didn't establish you with Southern society if you had no

    distinguished grandfather and lots of family money to go with it.

    Velta had ranked fourth in a family of nine children. Her father had been a sharecropper until he dropped dead behind a plow mule, leaving destitute her mother and all the offspring who weren't already married. The family had to rely on the charity of others for food and shelter.

    More than poverty and hunger, Velta feared scorn. When the laurel wreath around Ron's head began to wilt, she surmised that people were laughing behind their backs. She berated him for squandering their one chance for fame and fortune. She threatened him and cajoled him, but he simply lacked the initiative to work for a living. She refused to let him reenlist in the army. That would be too demeaning, an admission of defeat, she had told him.

    At her wits' end, she had