Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 08 Read Online Free PDF Page A

her aside. "But the first thing they did was measure the circles. I brought you a tape measure and a little notebook so you can keep track of the figures." She stuffed both in my shirt pocket. I'm not ashamed to admit I was curious about the circles. It was also apparent that Ruby Bee wasn't going to return to her skillet until I'd done something, no matter how foolish. To the crowd's murmured delight, I slipped between the strands of barbed wire and walked down a row that led in the general direction of our Martian manifestation. I wasn't especially surprised when Ruby Bee and Estelle came panting up behind me. They have a real bad habit of deputizing themselves whenever I turn my back on them. There are inmates in rehab clinics with lesser habits.
    Ruby Bee grabbed my arm. "There's a footstep right there in the dirt!"
    "Made by Raz," I said, "with Marjorie hot on his heels. I forgot to ask him if he came down here this morning for a closer look."
    Estelle was in no mood to be regarded as a less diligent sleuth. "They stopped right here," she said, bending over to stare at a collection of marks. She stood up and waved at the crowd. "We found footprints!"
    "And hoofprints!" Ruby Bee added for their benefit.
    I ignored the patter of applause as I studied the marks. They seemed to indicate Raz and his sow had stopped some ten feet away from the nearest circle. If Raz had made the circles at an earlier time, he'd approached from a different direction.
    "Stay here," I said, then began to move carefully along the perimeter. The smallest of the circles was near the undergrowth, but I could find no footprints leading toward or away from it. I completed completed the circumnavigation and rejoined Ruby Bee and Estelle. "I didn't find anything," I confessed.
    "Then let's get busy with the tape measure," Estelle said with the briskness of a trained investigator who'd examined such phenomena innumerable times and reported her findings on X-Files. "You take the tape and go right over there. I'll call out the numbers for Ruby Bee to write down."
    "Not yet," I said grimly. "I want to check the circles themselves for footprints before you go stomping around in them."
    They muttered rebelliously but waited as I approached the edge of the largest circle. The corn had been flattened in a uniform clockwise swirl. Uncomfortably aware of my audience and the terrifying specter that the cameraman might immortalize the moment for the ten o'clock news, I squatted down and searched for so much as a heel print in the crusty soil. Beneath the stalks were some flat marks, but I didn't know what to make of them. The corn itself looked healthy, although it was possible it had been stricken by some invisible disease that would show up under a microscope. I crawled out to the middle of the circle, where I found a small area of disturbed soil. To my regret, I did not find a single footprint.
    "Well?" Ruby Bee yelled at me.
    "Well, come on," I said as I stood up. "Let's measure the damn things for posterity."
    We eventually determined that papa circle had a diameter of eighteen feet; mama of twelve, and baby of six. The paths linking them were twelve and six feet long respectively. After all this had been carefully recorded and presented to me with great solemnity, we hiked back up the hill to Raz's shack.
    More folks had shown up as the story raced through town like a snake going through a hollow log. Some of the high school kids had slipped away from classes to point and goggle. Mrs. Jim Bob and Brother Verber were having a whispered conference in the shade of the ramshackle barn. Dahlia and Kevin looked deeply bewildered, but they usually did when confronted with anything more complex than a comic strip. Other recent arrivals included Elsie McMay, Lottie Estes, Eula Lemoy, Millicent McIlhaney, Kevin's parents, and even a few backwoods Buchanons who normally surface only after a hard rain.
    "Raz must have made more than fifty dollars by now," I said as I held