The Ice Palace

The sunlight dripped over the house like golden paint over an art
jar, and the freckling shadows here and there only intensified
the rigor of the bath of light. The Butterworth and Larkin houses
flanking were entrenched behind great stodgy trees; only the
Happer house took the full sun, and all day long faced the dusty
road-street with a tolerant kindly patience. This was the city of
Tarleton in southernmost Georgia, September afternoon.

Up in her bedroom window Sally Carrol Happer rested her
nineteen-year-old chin on a fifty-two-year-old sill and watched
Clark Darrow's ancient Ford turn the corner. The car was
hot--being partly metallic it retained all the heat it absorbed
or evolved--and Clark Darrow sitting bolt upright at the wheel
wore a pained, strained expression as though he considered
himself a spare part, and rather likely to break. He laboriously
crossed two dust ruts, the wheels squeaking indignantly at the
encounter, and then with a terrifying expression he gave the
steering-gear a final wrench and deposited self and car
approximately in front of the Happer steps. There was a heaving
sound, a death-rattle, followed by a short silence; and then the
air was rent by a startling whistle.

Sally Carrol gazed down sleepily. She started to yawn, but
finding this quite impossible unless she raised her chin from the
window-sill, changed her mind and continued silently to regard
the car, whose owner sat brilliantly if perfunctorily at
attention as he waited for an answer to his signal. After a
moment the whistle once more split the dusty air.

"Good mawnin'."

With difficulty Clark twisted his tall body round and bent a
distorted glance on the window.

"Tain't mawnin', Sally Carrol."

"Isn't it, sure enough?"

"What you doin'?"

"Eatin' 'n apple."

"Come on go swimmin'--want to?"

"Reckon so."

"How 'bout hurryin' up?"

"Sure enough."

Sally Carrol sighed voluminously and raised herself with profound
inertia from the floor where she had been occupied in
alternately destroyed parts of a green apple and painting paper
dolls for her younger sister. She approached a mirror, regarded
her expression with a pleased and pleasant languor, dabbed two
spots of rouge on her lips and a grain of powder on her nose, and
covered her bobbed corn-colored hair with a rose-littered
sunbonnet. Then she kicked over the painting water, said, "Oh,
damn!"--but let it lay--and left the room.

"How you, Clark?" she inquired a minute later as she slipped
nimbly over the side of the car.

"Mighty fine, Sally