There were people out front. Hubert Ranall was just finishing mowing the lawn. A woman not much older than he, Jessie Shively, rose from her flower bed and peeled off her rubber gloves, brushing soil from her knees. A handsome woman with gray hair and still very vital, she had just transferred several late bloomers from bed to pot and would take them inside to protect them as long as any mother could. On the porch was the only person Bean actually recognized by name, Avina Atchison, the house’s owner, rocking with a sweater around her shoulders and some needlepoint on her lap. She was long-faced and dour, not quite as old as her boarders, but looked it. She kept her eyeglasses on a chain around her neck and owned almost as many wigs as Dolly Parton. Today her hair had a reddish hue. It almost looked real. She waved when the squad car pulled up. But none of them spoke when George Bailey climbed out and, without even a thank you or a nod, started up the walk. Bean grimaced. What a charming guy.

The frail old man stopped as he reached the porch and turned to the woman. “Viney,” he said, looking at the darkening sky as if fearing rain. “Come in the house.”

She looked up questioningly. “Did you say something, George?”

“I said you should come in now. And you too, Jessie. And Hubert. It’s getting dark.”

The woman looked from him to the black man and back again. “Since when were you so concerned with us?”

“Yeah, George,” Jessie Shively said, coming onto the porch. “Besides, you don’t have to worry. We’re all grown up now. We aren’t afraid of the dark anymore.” She and the landlady broke up laughing. Bailey stiffened and hobbled on into the house.

Charlie Bean eased the car along the road until he was just across the little plank fence from Hubert. The big man smiled broadly and tipped an imaginary hat but did not take his attention away from his struggle with the bogged down push-mower. “Looks like hard work,” Bean called.

“Ain’t easy,” Ranall laughed back. “But a little hard work never hurt nobody, right?”

The deputy nodded. “Wouldn’t the power mower be a lot easier?”

The big man looked at him quizzically. “It certainly would,” he said, “if we had one.” Shaking his head, he untangled the blades of the ancient mower and continued his work, hurrying to beat the nighttime.

“What about the gas can . . .” Charlie started, but then he just shrugged it off, chalking it up to Old Man Bailey’s senility. He drove back down the hill toward town as the sky darkened further, and didn’t notice the figure standing in an upper floor window behind him.