Free Crow Fair by Thomas McGuane Page A

to move up the Architecture Series. This one got a great review in Eurobricks, didn’t it, Nell?” Her face had no expression of any kind, and she was wearing a wash dress of the sort seen in WPA photographs. “We got sidetracked by the Royal Baby series when Kate’s little Prince George of Cambridge was commemorated with a fifty-five brick pram.”
    “I want a baby!” boomed Nell.
    Jewell seemed not to have heard and introduced us. Nell struggled to respond. There was something wrong with Nell, big-time. Retarded, I think, but healthy otherwise and rather pretty. She stood up and smiled, quite a nice smile, and said with extraordinary deliberation, “Hullo.”
    Jewell said, “Why don’t I just leave you two for a moment and let you get acquainted.”
    I instinctively turned as though to follow Jewell out the door, but it was gently closed in my face. Nell said, “We don’t serve drinks in here.”
    “Ah.”
    “But we do have healthful snacks.”
    “Thank you, but I’m okay.”
    “This puzzle is very time-consuming.”
    She had a gentle, crooning voice that, once I absorbed its strangeness, was so soothing as to be almost hypnotic. She told me the puzzle didn’t really interest her and that before her accident she had seen the real Tower of Pisa and that hadn’t interested her, either. I began to ask what sort of accident, to which she answered preemptively, “bicycle,” before going on to tell how on Tuesday she got lost in the woods behind the house and that it didn’t bother her but it bothered “Bruce” and, because it had, she was sad all day, until “Bruce” made her pancakes with blueberry syrup and after that they were fine about the woods and what she was doing there.
    The door opened and Jewell, now shod—they looked like bowling shoes—entered briskly and said, “Just that little bit past name and face makes everyone more comfortable. So you’re Hoyt, right? Okay, Hoyt, I was going to throw somethingtogether for Nell and me. Care to join us? Not promising a lot because the kitchen is a work in progress, to say the very least.”
    This is when lightning struck. I glanced at Jewell in his suspenders and bowling shoes, and at Nell in her clean Depression shift, and said, “Why don’t we run down to Rascal’s and split a pizza? My treat.”
    Before Bruce could answer, Nell clapped her hands and bayed, “I love pizza!”
    “You really want to take us on, Hoyt? We’ve only just met, and we can be a handful. Nell is very active, aren’t you, Nell?”
    I had enough on my hands to understand why I had cooked up the invitation at all. My hands were already pretty full trying to figure out what I could have been thinking in the first place. I tried to sell myself the idea that this would be a rescue operation to save Ann from the wearisome Clearys, but that still left me with the original bafflement as to why she wanted to meet them at all. Nevertheless, everything would be quite clear when the Jewells sat down at the table. The introductions would be interesting, and Nell versus the pizza menu could be a real hoot, since Rascal’s had about a hundred toppings.
    Nell made me promise to help her with the puzzle later, and when I agreed she looked at me quite pointedly and said that she was not a vegetable. I assured Nell that indeed she was not, and Jewell smiled his assent. We stood around for a bit while he set the burglar alarms, an exercise I failed to understand. The Jewells must have come from someplace where this was necessary. Their clothing seemed rural, backwoods almost, but had something of the costume about it. “Pizza!” said Jewell. “What an idea! Nell, when was the last time we had pizza?”
    “Two Thanksgivings ago,” said Nell sternly.
    “Did we enjoy it?” asked Jewell.
    Nell said, “How should I know?”
    I wanted to get in on this somehow and asserted that you could get turkey as a topping at Rascal’s, but the two just gazed at me thoughtfully as though the