The Buck Passes Flynn Read Online Free PDF Page B

unpacking, they walked through the small house and out the front door.
    As they crossed the main street of Ada, Texas (population formerly 1,856; presently three, including the pig woman), Flynn said to her: “Earthquake?”
    “Well, I thought so. I surely did.” They avoided a scrub pine lying in the middle of the road. “Of course I didn’t recollect it until all this had happened—after our brothers and sisters left and we were scratching our heads as to why on earth they’d do such a thing.”
    “When do you think you felt the tremors?”
    “Why, that Thursday morning before—you know, before everybody began pullin’ up stakes? That Thursday morning, real early it was, and late the night before, Wednesday.”
    “What were the tremors like?”
    “The earth moved. Just as if Satan was walking the land.”
    “Mrs. Fraiman, did anyone else mention to you feeling the tremors?”
    “Why, no. I scarcely gave it a thought myself, at the time.”
    The front door of the grocery store had been forced open crudely—most likely with a well-aimed kick.
    Flynn said, “I take it the tremors you say you felt were not enough to make you think of moving away from town.”
    “No. But you never know. The other people might have felt them more than I did. The tremors might have given them more worry than they did me. My husband says he didn’t feel them at all.”
    Behind the door of the grocery store, on the floor, lay a dead cat.
    “Poor Bowie,” said Marge Fraiman. “We forgot all about you, didn’t we?”
    Except for a few cans that had dropped and rolled into corners, the shelves were bare. A half-empty box of crackers was on its side on the checkout counter. Someone had stepped on a cereal box in the main aisle.
    Heads of lettuce were rotting in their bins and on the floor.
    Tomatoes had been thrown against the wall.
    “Poor Mister Joe Barker,” Marge Fraiman said. “He just worked so hard at keepin’ this store. Who’d ever think he’d run off? And him in his middle seventies.”
    “I expect people in this town found it hard to keep up with their grocery bills?” Flynn asked.
    “They surely did. We all do. Are you a family man, Mister Flynn?”
    “I am.”
    “Then you know the price of things. Isn’t it just wicked, the way the price of things has just skyrocketed?”
    “It is indeed, ma’am.”
    She had picked up a loaf of stale bread. “Just look at the price marked on that. My mommy would roll over in her grave, if she knew what we’re expected to pay for a loaf of bread just now. Sometimes I can’t help but think, Mister Flynn, that somehow we’re bein’ had.”
    “‘Had,’ ma’am?”
    “Well, the price of things. Just look. I suppose if you have a good salary, you just get used to it.”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “The farmers and ranchers aren’t makin’ that kind of money. They produce the food. Don’t get much for it. How come the food costs so much when you buy it in the store?”
    Flynn said nothing.
    Marge Fraiman put the loaf of stale bread carefully back on the shelf, as if she had decided not to buy it.
    “Of course, the people did get squeezed, you know. Well, they got squeezed.”
    “How do you mean?” he asked.
    “Well, because of inflation. They heard their farms and ranches went up two or three times in value so they all rushed off to the bank and raised their mortgages as high as they could, and went off and bought all this equipment on credit, these huge tractors, air-conditioned, some of ’em, combines, washers, dryers. Why, Raury Phil had three tractors out to his place, and his daddy had run the same place with nothing like a tractor. Never could keep up the payments. Every other week he was runnin’ into Bixby to up his mortgage some more, just to pay the credit charges. Some of these people around here were in real trouble, Mister Flynn.”
    Flynn stood ready to pull the door closed after them.
    She looked around the store. “I suppose I should come over here