Noah would be like that, she thought—without having colorful wagons, or being dressed in a colorful costume, without spice-rich meals and music and laughter. Noah would be like the Gypsies only in his leaving. Quietly gone, with little trace of having been there.

She wondered why the old woman had accused her of having him in her bedroom.

Meanness, probably.

Or maybe the old woman could sense something that existed, ghostlike, in the house, the awkward mix of a man and a woman, both with a yearning to be Gypsies.

And maybe it had nothing to do with anything other than the existence she shared with the old woman, the monotony of day following day for both of them-the mind playing tricks, making little lives out of nothing, like a child playing with paper dolls.

TWELVE

From the ladder leaning against the store side, Noah watched cars gathering under the oaks fronting the store, and he knew the people driving them—all men—were there because the story of his fishing had made its way across the valley, as Taylor had predicted it would.

“There’s talk,” Taylor had said earlier, taking coffee with Noah. “When I got home last night, I got a call from the principal of the school, asking about you. He said there’d been more people bringing money by his house to get in on the fishing contest than he ever remembered, especially this soon. They usually wait to the day of the fishing.”

All the talk had been caused by the number of fish Noah had caught for Howard Reynolds, Taylor said, and the principal wanted to know if it was true.

“I told him whatever he heard wasn’t half the story,” Taylor had added. “Told him I’d been fishing with you yesterday and I saw you do the same thing at a fishing hole where nobody’s caught nothing bigger than a minnow in the last five years.”

Taylor had smiled proudly, had said, “You wait and see how many people show up around here today. They got their corn laid by and there’s nothing much for them to do, so they’ll be here. But don’t you worry about it. I’ll keep them away from you until you come down to eat.” He had laughed, had added, “You know the story about Tom Sawyer?”

Noah had said he did not.

“It’s a book by that writer Mark Twain,” Taylor had explained. “In it, this boy named Tom gets some help painting a fence. Maybe you can do the same thing with the store.”

Noah did not know what Taylor meant about Tom Sawyer, or how Tom Sawyer got help for painting a fence. Whatever he had done, Noah did not think it would work for him, even if he wanted it to. But he did not want help. The painting was his job. He had started it, he would finish it.

At the noon hour, Taylor called Noah to stop his painting and to come down from the ladder to eat his sandwiches. One pimento cheese, one tomato, Taylor said.