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Show 43 When I heard someone walking on the gravel and saw her coming toward me, I looked for somewhere to hide. There was nowhere, she had seen me anyhow, and all I could do was watch in fascinated horror as she stopped at the head of the row of peas I was weeding. She looked down at me with that dazzling smile. "I've got a flat," she said. I suppose I had noticed that she was pushing her bike but I was hoping that she would say hello and ride on so that I wouldn't have to stand up and reveal in full my dusty and tattered clothes. I remembered a hole in my seat, next to the pocket seam. I looked at that flat tire as if at a malignancy. "Could you help me fix it?" she said. "Oh sure sure sure!" Like a sprinter I took off from my kneeling position, fast so she wouldn't see the hole in my seat, running out to the pickup truck for a patch kit and tire pump, to the shed for tools, and then zipped back to her. She had moved into the shade of a small poplar tree, planted when we built the house, and again she smiled at me. She wore shorts. Girls wore baggy shorts to gym class, and nicer ones to play tennis, the few who played tennis, but otherwise they did not wear them at all. Only kids wore jeans, slacks were considered fast, and that left skirts. Girls wore skirts. And here she was in a pair of shorts, which fit, a ribbon in her hair, and sweating. She wiped the sweat off her forehead and upper lip with a handkerchief and told me that she was bicycling out to her old house to see it again and had had the flat. It was a single-speed, balloon-tired bike, and she had been pushing it for a mile. "Could I have a drink of water, Chess?" "Oh sure sure sure!" I zipped inside for it. If I kept moving fast enough, I thought, she wouldn't notice my raggedy clothes. I knew it would |