The End of Vandalism Read Online Free PDF

she said. “But I wouldn’t take any, and Hans knows this. The drug is paper. It would be like chewing a receipt from the store.”
    They drove into the town of Walleye Lake. A woman in an oncoming station wagon began to turn in front of them but slammed on the brake when Louise leaned on her horn.
    “That’s right, honey,” said Louise. “I’m coming straight.”
     
    The Lighthouse was across the street from the Moonview Inn in town. It was a drive-in restaurant built around a bleached-orange tower. A green neon tube circled the top of the tower, and the light was on although it was not yet dark. In full season, waitresses in white sailor hats would circulate among the cars, but in the spring customers had to line up at the counter under the tower, and on this evening the line was long. Directly in front of Louise and Mary were a father and a little girl carrying a stuffed horse. The little girl had light blue eyes and long brown hair. Mary said hello to her and asked the name of the horse.
    “Can’t touch this,” said the girl. “Hammer time.”
    “Hammer, how ferocious,” said Mary. “I used to have a horse, her name was Velvet. That’s right, a big old lady likeme. I was chosen from all the girls in all the riding clubs to bring my horse Velvet to opening day of the Iowa State Fair. I had white leather gloves that rode high on my arms, and who do you think was on the horse by my side? Well, it was Tim Thompson. He was the best barrel racer in the nation, and he was from California.”
    The father had turned to listen. He wore a cardigan sweater with a bowling pin on it, and had the same spooky eyes as his daughter. Together they reminded Louise of the kind of peaceful, doomed space aliens you might see on Outer Limits. The girl chewed on the neck of the stuffed horse, then raised her head. “What’s a barrel racer?” she said.
    “That’s someone who rides around barrels like they did in Western times,” said Mary, leaning thoughtfully on her walking stick. “Anyway, this Tim Thompson—”
    “Why did they ride around barrels?” said the girl.
    “Sweetie, I guess they were in their way,” said Mary. “But you can disregard the barrels. They really don’t have much importance to the story. Anyway, everyone knew Tim Thompson. So we rode up the midway and onto the racetrack, and when we got to the grandstand Tim Thompson turned to me and said, ‘Mary, you ride better than the women do in California. You ride much better than they do.’ See, he was tickled by my riding, and he said he was going to give me a present. But then the fair got going, and there was a rodeo that he had to be in, and he forgot about the present. Well, I didn’t forget, but I rode home in a dream anyway. The only other thing I’d ever done was walk beans. It was a long time later when a delivery boy brought a package to my dad’s farm. This boy worked for Supersweet in Grafton, and his name was Leon Felly, and he had freckles over every bit of his face.He gave me a cardboard box, and I opened it, and it was an ivy plant from Tim Thompson.”
    “Did you hear that?” said the father. “The lady got her present finally.” He rubbed his forearm absently, and soon he turned his daughter and himself away from Mary.
    “She has a crutch,” the girl said.
    Louise looked sideways at Mary. “That ivy is from your mother,” she said.
    Mary scowled. “What ivy?” she said. “You always just assume you know what I’m talking about. There’s a big world of ivy out there, Louise. You’ve never seen the plant from Tim Thompson. It died that winter—the winter following the fall when I rode in the fair. It was one of the worst winters we ever had, and a big frost came and tore up all the hollyhocks and all the ivy, including the ivy that Tim Thompson gave me.”
    “He never gave you no kind of ivy,” said Louise.
    Mary laughed bitterly. “We walked out the windows onto snowdrifts that year,” she said.
    “You never