She took them from her lap and handed them to him. And as she did so, her smile was like a beautiful instrument of torture. But the pain it brought him was in her behalf. He wanted to take Echo away and lock her up in some soft and luxurious place, a place protected by thick stone walls, and he would stand next to her, forever, like a sentry, guarding her.

As he started down the stairs, Clinton heard her voice: “Clinton’s a peach, do anything for a person. —Hey, what the hell happened to my kings? Ralph, you are a rat, r-a-t. Lord, where was Echo when they passed out the skulls?”

Clinton put the Dodge in the driveway. He used a whisk broom on its upholstery, swept out the inside of it, wiped the dashboard and steering wheel, and washed the windows. Then he got out the garden hose and several soft rags, and set to work on the body of the car. During much of this time, the sun was shining, and the harder he worked, the better he felt about Echo O’Brien. He had begun to learn that it was possible to shed some of his worries by the simple process of turning his attention elsewhere, especially to some labor that would use up his energies. After a while, a small group of neighbor children had formed in the driveway and soon his imagination was engaged in answering their questions about this strange car. He explained to them that this valuable relic had enough mileage on it to have traveled around the world twenty times over; that jealous manufacturers of competitive cars had offered thousands of dollars just to keep it off the streets, and the lady who owned it was always being hounded by these big executives from Detroit, but she herself was so rich she would not even bother to talk with them. When he had covered the car with a milky liquid wax, he distributed soft rags among these youngsters and allowed them to help with the polishing. Annabel came out later and passed out cookies and prunes and peanuts; and she said, Wasn’t it a shame that Berry-berry’s pretty blue truck had all that mud on it? Clinton drove the truck into the driveway, and while he and his young crew were busy washing it, Berry-berry and Echo came out to watch. When the job was done, the children climbed into the back of the truck and Berry-berry took them for a ride around the block. Then Echo took them for a ride in her Dodge. When they got back to the house, she gave them all the loose change she had in her pocketbook. The young mob went home happy, and Echo told Clinton her Dodge had never looked better.