In Broad Daylight Read Online Free PDF Page A

finish it, almost anything else can be forgiven.
    A stoic strain runs through the character. The only legitimate complaints concern the weather, crop prices, and the government. Personal problems, physical ills, are usually borne privately.
    For all the cherished sense of privacy, true secrets in Skidmore are hard to come by. A farmer passing through town can tell who is shopping for groceries, who is drinking coffee, who is in the tavern, who is buying fertilizer, and who is applying for a loan, just by glancing at the location of the vehicles parked up and down Elm Street. If a married woman or man goes out dancing at the saloons in Maryville on Friday night, it will be old news by church on Sunday.
    Although the people are friendly to each other and to outsiders, there is a distinct difference between friendliness and openness. And different boundaries exist for different people. One respected community leader, who was responsible for reviving the long dormant Punkin' Show, the town's annual celebration, concluded after living in Skidmore for fourteen years that because he was born and raised elsewhere, he would never truly be accepted.
    Skidmore is not class-oriented, probably because there are so few classes. With the exception of a banker, a few cashiers, a clerk or two, and a few shopkeepers, it is a blue collar town: farmers, mechanics, hired hands, 'dozer operators, repairmen, people who work with their hands. The biggest distinctions exist within farming. The rich farmer-the man with lots of land, most of it paid for-is at the top of the heap. Next comes the yeoman farmer, the one with a couple hundred acres and six kids, who makes it from year to year, until one year maybe he doesn't. After that comes the renter or sharecropper, who works someone else's land in exchange for a share of the crops.
    At the bottom is the furtive subculture of the lowlifes, a midwestern version of the southern rednecks, made up of people who exist on the outermost fringes of the community. The lowlifes live in rundown houses or trailers, drink a lot, fight, never pay taxes, have probably spent time in jail once or twice-usually for assault, or stealing, or discharging a weapon -and are terribly suspicious of strangers. The men, usually unkempt with scraggly beards and dirty hair, are most at home in the timber, working their dogs or hunting coon.
    Despite the commonality of values and the similarity of life experiences of most of the residents, Skidmore does not have a strong sense of community. Partly because of the values themselves-independence, self sufficiency, dislike of outside authority-and partly because of the economic decline of the community and the continuing loss of the young people, the community doesn't steer a strong course; it seems, instead, to maintain barely enough momentum to avoid losing steerage way altogether.
    Coming into Skidmore from the east, Route 113 rounds a wide curve and disappears under a canopy of tall maples, ashes, and elms. The trees bend slightly to the north at the top from the persistent blowing of the south winds. All the streets in town are named for trees, and Route 113 becomes Elm, the wide, paved main street of town. Flanked by narrow gravel shoulders, Elm runs through four blocks of quiet neighborhood before sloping into the depression where the railroad once ran. Most of the houses are one-or two-story white clapboards, plain but well maintained, set back from the street fifteen or twenty feet, with gravel drives and occasional garages. Narrow sidewalks, cracked here and there, bisect well-cared-for lawns. Metal mailboxes on posts stand where the curbs would be, if there were curbs. The houses sit far apart, and in midsummer most of the spacious backyards contain large vegetable gardens brimming with sweet corn, lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, squash, cucumbers, beans, and peppers. Summer evenings in the neighborhood are quiet; a few people sitting out on their steps or porch swings,