You lived in a glass bowl in a town this small. On Thursday I told Harshaw I was going to take the next day off to drive down to Houston and try to collect some money a man owed me.

I hadn’t seen any more of Dolores Harshaw at all, but Thursday afternoon I ran into Gloria Harper in the drug store. I had gone in for a Coke at three o’clock and she was sitting alone in a booth. She looked up and smiled, and I went over and sat down.

“Are you doing anything tonight?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not tonight.”

“Well, I hear they’re playing ‘The Birth of a Nation’ at the movie. Why don’t we go see it?”

“It isn’t really that bad, is it?” she asked. “But I’d love to go.” Her smile was something to see; and I noticed I was beginning to look for it when I was around her.

I picked her up around seven. The picture wasn’t too bad, but we ran out on the second feature. As we were walking back up the street to the car she stopped and bought a pencil from the old blind Negro, the one who had come into the bank. He had a little stand there on the sidewalk.

“How are you tonight, Uncle Mort?” she asked.

“Jes’ fine, Miss Gloahia,” he said. “Thank you.”

He’d recognized her by her voice. “Who is he?” I asked as we went on and got in the car.

“Just Mort. He’s been there in that spot fifteen hours a day six days a week since I was in rompers. Maybe he’s been there forever,” she said.

“Did you need a pencil?”

She blushed. “Well, you can always use one.”

We drove around for a while and when I took her home the house was dark. The Robinsons were gone somewhere. We stood by the gate for a moment in the moonlight. I was conscious of thinking she wasn’t merely pretty; she was one of the loveliest girls I had ever seen in my life. For a moment I was like an awkward kid; I wanted to kiss her and I was afraid to.

“Well, good night,” I said.

“Good night,” she said. “And thank you. I enjoyed the picture very much.”

Well, if you’re not a silly bastard, I thought. Why didn’t you ask her to go to the church supper?

I shoved off around ten the next morning, but I didn’t go to Houston. I drove over to a fair-sized town about a hundred miles away, a place I’d never been before. I got a room at a tourist court and then went shopping.

At a drugstore I picked up a hand-wound alarm clock. Then I bought two rolls of surgical cotton at another one, and went around to two or three five-and-ten-cent stores for the rest. I got a cheap soldering-iron, a little solder, a pair of pliers, a short piece of heavy copper wire, and some big sheets of of sandpaper. I mentally checked it off the list. That was about all except some thread and a small flashlight. After I bought those I dropped into a market and bought a carton of canned beer and a box of big kitchen matches and got the clerk to give me a cardboard box about a foot wide and eighteen inches long. I went back to the motel, put the beer in the little refrigerator to keep cold, drew the blinds, and went to work on the clock.

I took the bell cover off, exposing the clapper or striker.