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Show were having a chat on the back porch. "Will Kathleen be going back to school?" Jame asked, turning his back on Karl and beginning to cross the girder to the next piling. "Yep. She'll be in eleventh grade this year." Karl had to strain to manage a sensible answer, but the effort of concentrating on his speech kept him from looking at the river. He was able to move his foot, to take a step. "Mom says that since Kathleen earns three dollars a week just working evenings, she should stay in school. And Kathleen wants to stay." Karl took another step. From ahead, Jame called back, "Now you should ask me how my sister Mary Margaret is." "Why should I ask that?" Karl said through clenched teeth. "Because Mary Margaret's sweet on you." Karl bit his lip and slid his hands forward on the steel truss. Jame's comment about Mary Margaret caught him so off-guard that his muscles loosened enough for him to move forward. If Mary Margaret weren't Jame's sister, and if Karl hadn't been so concerned about clinging for his life to the underside of a bridge, he'd have shot back a nasty insult. Short, bow-legged Mayo Culley and his four-foot-ten-inch wife Bridey were Jame's unlikely parents. In one heroic burst of creation they had produced the mighty Jame, and afterward could never come close to making another like him. The younger Culley children -- Mary Margaret, Francis X, and the three little Marys -- carried their slight resemblance to Jame on skinny bodies. Mary Margaret, the same age as Karl, was shy to the point of wordlessness, and held her |