Cornered! by James McKimmey Page B

her lonely farmhouse four miles south of Arrow Junction, Ted Burley, at this moment, did not know nor care. But when he awoke later that morning, he would know, and the knowledge would frighten and shame him. But right now he was oblivious to all.
     
    Bob Saywell was up and moving.
    His conversation with Ann had not been, to him, entirely unsuccessful. The results of it had been, in essence, very similar to some very typical results he’d had with customers in his store. There were a few people in and around Arrow Junction who did not buy as much as they could from Bob Saywell, going, instead, to Graintown and using the three larger groceries there. This saved them money, because Bob Saywell was up a cent or two on most canned goods and a bit more on meats.
    However, Bob Saywell knew how to keep at it. He took a variety of approaches. With some he emphasized service. With others he emphasized quality. With a few he emphasized the point that trading with him was the best loyalty you could show to your own home town of Arrow Junction, because where would you be if you didn’t have his general store to come to in case of emergency when you couldn’t get to Graintown? With some few others he was required to resort to veiled threat—a cutting-out approach, designed to make the subject feel guilty, threatening him (indirectly but effectively) with possible deletion from the close Arrow Junction circle of society of which nobody doubted Bob Saywell was the hub. It all depended. But the main thing was you didn’t get discouraged. You kept at it. And the undeniable fact was that there was little buying potential in Arrow Junction that did not, finally, give in to Bob Saywell.
    Ann Burley, then, was hardly any different from a lagging customer of his store. He’d scored as well as he’d expected to score in that first inning. There were plenty of innings coming up to score harder. It was this positivism that had started Bob Saywell’s brain turning on an axis created out of pure and absolute lubricity.
    It had started the night before, when, after climbing into bed with Martha, Bob Saywell’s mind switched back to his encounter with Ann. The proximity to Martha at once started the sharp pangs of desire—not because Martha was desirable, but because she was so undesirable that the contrast between Ann and her, even though Ann remained but a mental picture at the moment, became all the more urgent in its effect.
    Martha did the cooking, the dishwashing (at store and home), the housework, the sewing, and the going-to-meetings required to attune one’s spirit to the whole of Arrow Junction’s. Martha, in effect, worked like a horse. But she never questioned it, would never rise up against it. This was all in the world that Martha knew about marriage, and it was all Bob Saywell cared for her to know.
    That she was a flop in the department of physical love as well as incapable of procreation did not, of course, deny the fundamental fact that she was a woman. And when Bob Saywell reached close proximity in their large bed, he had often enough reached desire, but seldom these latter years had he taken advantage of his marital opportunity. Martha was submissive, but she really did prefer the obligations of cooking and cleaning the house a good bit more. Of course, Martha could not help an inability to conceive. But Bob Saywell had never been disappointed that they’d had no children. Who, if Martha were busy being pregnant and wiping children’s noses, would do the work?
    So, despite certain lacks, Martha was nevertheless a woman and Bob Saywell liked to waste no opportunities available to him. But on this evening, Bob Saywell was not even concerned with getting his due from Martha.
    Most of the time Bob Saywell spent in saving his emotion for fairer pastures—his trips to Chicago, for instance. Now there was the mental image of good-looking, clean-formed Ann.
    So Bob Saywell suddenly decided he could stand no more of this