Samuel Reed Kept an Old Wooden Bat Behind the Pantry Door for Twenty Years

I had not called either of them back.

Nobody at that counter had asked Daniel Voss for a notary’s name.

“Nine forty in the morning,” I said.

Frank studied the stamp a while.

“And she was on your porch by two,” he said.

Mark Jennings came up the barn aisle at seven o’clock with a folded paper in his glove and his collar turned up against the cold.

I kept both hands on the hay fork.