Joyce Ann would have screamed, but May Belle made a face.

May Belle was as scrawny as Brenda was fat. She stood a moment in the middle of the floor in her underwear, her skin white and goose-bumpy. Her eyes were still drooped from sleep, and her pale brown hair stuck up all over her head like a squirrel's nest on a winter branch. That's got to be the world's ugliest kid, he thought, looking her over with genuine affection.

"Where you going?"

Jess was awake. He might as well get up. He could milk and feed Miss Bessie, and get that over with. He pulled on a T-shirt and overalls over the underwear he slept in.

"Will you shut up, May Belle? You'll have everyone in the whole house woke up with that big mouth of yours."

"Why are you so mean to me?"

He heard his dad start the pickup. Even though there was no job to go to, he left every morning early to look. Sometimes he just hung around all day at the unemployment office; on lucky days he got picked up to unload furniture or do cleaning.

"Go back to sleep, May Belle."

"Well, get up then."

"I can't. The rain makes too much noise."

"Oh, c'mon," he said. "I'm just gonna milk Miss Bessie. Then maybe we can watch cartoons if we keep the sound real low."

"How you just stand there staring at me when I ain't got my clothes on."

Lord. She thought he was enjoying it. "Yeah, well," he said, heading for the door so she wouldn't throw anything else at him. "Pretty girl like you. Can't hardly help myself." He could hear her giggling as he crossed the kitchen.

He threw the jeans back at her. "Tell Momma what?"

She threw her jeans into his face. "I'm gonna tell Momma."

The shed was filled with Miss Bessie's familiar smell. He clucked her gently over and set his stool at her flank and the pail beneath her speckled udder. The rain pounded the metal roof of the shed so that the plink of milk in the pail set up a counter-rhythm. If only it would stop raining. He pressed his forehead against Miss Bessie's warm hide. He wondered idly if cows were ever scared -- really scared. He had seen Miss Bessie jitter away from P. T., but that was different. A yapping puppy at your heels is an immediate threat, but the difference between him and Miss Bessie was that when there was no P. T. in sight she was perfectly content, sleepily chewing her cud. She wasn't staring down at the old Perkins place, wondering and worrying. She wasn't standing there on her tippytoes while anxiety ate holes through all her stomachs.

He stroked his forehead across her flank and sighed. If there was still water in the creek come summer, he'd ask Leslie to teach him how to swim. How's that? he said to himself. I'll just grab that old terror by the shoulders and shake the daylights out of it. Maybe I'll even learn scuba diving. He shuddered. He may not have been born with guts, but he didn't have to die without them. Hey, maybe you could go down to the Medical College and get a gut transplant. No, Doc, I got me a perfectly good heart. What I need is a gut transplant. How 'bout it? He smiled. He'd have to tell Leslie about wanting a gut transplant. It was the kind of nonsense she appreciated. Of course -- he broke the rhythm of the milking long enough to shove his hair out of his face -- of course what I really need is a brain transplant. I know Leslie. I know she's not going to bite my head off or make fun of me if I say I don't want to go across again till the creek's down. All I gotta do is say "Leslie, I don't wanta go over there today." Just like that. Easy as pie. "Leslie, I don't want to go over there today."

"How come?"

"Yes'm." He was scared to say more for fear she'd hear the shake.

"How come. Because, because, well because…"

"Some lady wants you on the telephone. I had to get dressed to come get you."

He never got phone calls. Leslie had called him exactly once, and Brenda had gone into such a song and dance with her about Jess's getting a call from his sweetheart that Leslie had decided it was simpler to come to the house and get him when she wanted to talk.

It was Miss Edmunds. "Jess?" her voice flowed through the receiver. "Miserable weather, isn't it?"

He licked his lips and shoved his hair off his face.

"I called ya three times already." May Belle was imitating Ellie's prissiest manner.

"Sounds kinda like Miss Edmunds."

"I was thinking of driving down to Washington -- maybe go to the Smithsonian or the National Gallery. How would you like to keep me company?"

"Called me for what?"

He broke out in a cold sweat.

"Jess?"

"You still there, Jess?"

"Yes'm." He tried to get a deep breath so he could keep talking.

"Don't worry. I done milking."

"Great. I'll pick you up in twenty minutes. Just tell me how to get to your house."

"Teacher wants me to go to Washington to the Smithsonian."

"Yeah. Something for school." He stroked her upper arm. "Be back before too late. OK?"

Jess crept back to the phone. "It's OK, Miss Edmunds. I can go."

"Would you like to go with me?"

She jumped at the sound but relaxed again, not fully awake.

Lord. "Yes'm."

"Umm."

"Yes -- yes'm." He had somehow managed to twist himself up in the phone cord. "Yes'm. Just -- just a minute." He untangled himself, put the phone down quietly, and tiptoed into his parents' room. His mother's back made a long hump under the cotton blanket. He shook her shoulder very gently. "Momma?" he was almost whispering. He wanted to ask her without really waking her up. She was likely to say no if she woke up and thought about it.

"Do you need to get permission?" she asked gently.

"Umm." She pulled the blanket to her ears and turned on her stomach.

"Washington?" The syllables were blurred.

As soon as he saw her car turn in, Jess raced out the kitchen door through the rain and met her halfway up the drive. His mother could find out the details from May Belle after he was safely up the road. He was glad May Belle was absorbed in the TV. He didn't want her waking Momma up before he got away. He was scared to look back even after he was in the car and on the main road for fear he'd see his mother screaming after him.

It didn't occur to him until the car was past Millsburg that he might have asked Miss Edmunds if Leslie could have come, too. When he thought about it, he couldn't suppress a secret pleasure at being alone in this small cozy car with Miss Edmunds. She drove intently, both hands gripping the top of the wheel, peering forward. The wheels hummed and the windshield wipers slicked a merry rhythm. The car was warm and filled with the smell of Miss Edmunds. Jess sat with his hands clasped between his knees, the seat belt tight across his chest.

"Damn rain," she said. "I was going stir crazy."

He felt dizzy from the closeness. He nodded.

Even in the rain he could make out the landmarks, looking surprisingly the way the books had pictured them -- the Lee Mansion high on the hill, the bridge, and twice around the circle, so he could get a good look at Abraham Lincoln looking out across the city, the White House and the Monument and at the other end the Capitol. Leslie had seen all these places a million times. She had even gone to school with a girl whose father was a congressman. He thought he might tell Miss Edmunds later that Leslie was a personal friend of a real congressman. Miss Edmunds had always liked Leslie.

"You, too, huh?" She gave him a quick smile.

"Yes'm," he said happily.

"Have you ever been to the National Gallery?"

"No, ma'am." He had never even been to Washington before, but he hoped she wouldn't ask him that.

"Yes'm."

"Great," she said. "My life has been worthwhile after all." He didn't understand her, but he didn't care. He knew she was happy to be with him, and that was enough to know.

She smiled at him again. "Is this your first trip to an art gallery?"

Entering the gallery was like stepping inside the pine grove -- the huge vaulted marble, the cool splash of the fountain, and the green growing all around. Two little children had pulled away from their mothers and were running about, screaming to each other. It was all Jess could do not to grab them and tell them how to behave in so obviously a sacred place.

And then the pictures -- room after room, floor after floor. He was drunk with color and form and hugeness -- and with the voice and perfume of Miss Edmunds always beside him. She would bend her head down close to his face to give some explanation or ask him a question, her black hair falling across her shoulders. Men would stare at her instead of the pictures, and Jess felt they must be jealous of him for being with her.

They ate a late lunch in the cafeteria. When she mentioned lunch, he realized with horror that he would need money, and he didn't know how to tell her that he hadn't brought any -- didn't have any to bring, for that matter. But before he had time to figure anything out, she said, "Now I'm not going to have any argument about whose paying. I'm a liberated woman, Jess Aarons. When I invite a man out, I pay."

After lunch, they trotted through the drizzle to the Smithsonian to see the dinosaurs and the Indians. There they came upon a display case holding a miniature scene of Indians disguised in buffalo skins scaring a herd of buffalo into stampeding over a cliff to their death with more Indians waiting below to butcher and skin them. It was a three-dimensional nightmare version of some of his own drawings. He felt a frightening sense of kinship with it.

He tried to think of some way to protest without ending up with the bill, but couldn't, and found himself getting a three-dollar meal, which was far more than he had meant to have her spend on him. Tomorrow he would check out with Leslie how he should have handled things.

When they came out of the building, it was into brilliant spring sunshine. Jess blinked his eyes against the glare and the glisten.

"Fascinating, isn't it?" Miss Edmunds said, her hair brushing his cheek as she leaned over to look at it.

He touched his cheek. "Yes'm." To himself he said, I don't think I like it, but he could hardly pull himself away.

He felt good again. All the way home in the sunshine Miss Edmunds told funny stories about going to college one year in Japan, where all the boys had been shorter than she, and she hadn't known how to use the toilets.

One dip in the road before the old Perkins place, he said, "Just let me out at the road, Miss Edmunds. Don't try to turn in. You might get stuck in the mud."

He relaxed. He had so much to tell Leslie and ask her. It didn't matter how angry his mother was. She'd get over it. And it was worth it. This one perfect day of his life was worth anything he had to pay.

"Wow!" Miss Edmunds said. "A miracle! Behold the sun! I was beginning to think she had gone into a cave and vowed never to return, like the Japanese myth."

The western sun danced on the windshield dazzling his eyes. He turned and looked Miss Edmunds full in the face. "No, ma'am." His voice sounded squeaky and strange. He cleared his throat. "No ma'am, thank you. Well --" He hated to leave without being able to really thank her, but the words were not coming for him now. Later, of course, they would, when he was lying in bed or sitting in the castle. "Well --" He opened the door and got out. "See you next Friday."

"OK, Jess," she said. She pulled over at his road. "Thank you for a beautiful day."

Suddenly his mother let out a great shuddering sob. "O my God. O my God." She said it over and over, her head down on her arms. His father moved to put his arm around her awkwardly, but he didn't take his eyes off Jess.

He was all the way into the kitchen before he realized that something was wrong. His dad's pickup had been outside the door, but he hadn't taken it in until he came into the room and found them all sitting there: his parents and the little girls at the kitchen table and Ellie and Brenda on the couch. Not eating. There was no food on the table. Not watching TV. It wasn't even turned on. He stood unmoving for a second while they stared at him.

He watched the car go out of sight and then turned and ran with all his might to the house, the joy jiggling inside of him so hard that he wouldn't have been surprised if his feet had just taken off from the ground the way they sometimes did in dreams and floated him right over the roof.

She nodded, smiling. "See you."

He squinted his eyes as though trying to peer down a dark drain pipe. He didn't even know what question to ask them. "What --?" he tried to begin.

"I tolja he just gone off somewhere," May Belle said quietly and stubbornly as though she had repeated it often and no one had believed her.

Brenda's pouting voice broke in, "Your girl friend's dead, and Momma thought you was dead, too."