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"We won’t have far to be carried if we don’t ly small head, and auburn hair that looks artificial, and for the whole trip frorieved little face as if her shoes are on the wrong feet Alice is dismayed She’d expected everyone else on the plane to be experienced trav-elers fro open their papers to the Money section But here she is as usual, bearing up those around her To change the subject froraveyards she asks, "Is St Louie the end of the road for you?"

The woht be incom-patible with her hairstyle

"I stay on till the next stop, Las Vegas," Alice reports "I’ve got a daughter and a little grandbaby out there that have fell on hard ti?"

"Oh, no," Alice says, "irl in her car one ti on ice"

The woraves

"So, sucker!’ What could she do?" Alice reaches for the pictures in her purse "It turned out all right, though; that little girl is a pistol Whoever left her off had no eye for good material"

Alice flatters herself that she kno to get a conversation going, but for this wo; she snaps theshade down and closes her eyes Alice leaves the pictures of Turtle in her wallet, dreading the picture in herto herself She offers a peppermint LifeSaver to the man across the aisle but it’s the same story over there, he barely shakes his head They are a planeload of people ignoring each other Alice has spent her life in small towns and is new to this form of politeness, in which people sit for all practical purposes on top of one another in a public place and behave like upholstery

She can’t remember when she was ever around so e: one is shrunken-looking with overblown masses of curly hair; another is hulky and bald, the head too big for the body; another has the troublesolint of braces, too s around the face It’s as if these people were all produced by different n

Alice saves this up to tell Taylor when she gets to Las Vegas

Whenever she used toht she was cracked But Taylor will knohat she lasses and lays her hands on her face, feeling her eyes like worried, wetAlice kno to think about Everything she’s done before noever crazy-quilted it ht have seemed, always ended up with the corners square The first tiht out the door of the Pitt the postmistress, Renata Hay, when her baby was due; Taylor was elevenon the herown a heavy tail back there Suddenly a grand round of applause went up a for their Social Security checks, and Alice turned in time to see her baby headed out into the street Old Yancey Todd held the door for her like a gentleman

Some people would say a headfirst child like that was bound to wind up headfirst in the mop bucket Alice doesn’t think so In her heart, she knows her daughter would have looked both ways before she went out to play in East Main

Or Yancey would have flagged down the cars When you’re given a brilliant child, you polish her and let her shine The universe makes allowances When Taylor called froas with her soul broken in twenty pieces, Alice felt deeply betrayed The universe has let thes on, and Alice opens her eyes A stewardess is co people’s plastic cups away, like a patient ht try to s Alice watches,at the outfit: under her navy blazer she wears a buttoned white shirt and a paisley silk tie with, even, a fine gold chain fastened across it How long it ht, in spite of her busy life Alice is a passenger in need of co effort so, believing a little gold chain fastened over a silk tie will somehow make a difference