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Curiosity overcales?" I called out

He looked at les? They’re a perfect les in his hands, as if noticing this for the first tiht to be, they’re all froht two hundred extras when I put this roof on"

"When was that?" I asked

He looked up at the clouds I don’t knohether he was divining the weather or the past "Right after the war," he said "That would have been forty-six"

Just then Mr Rideheart ca up the road under a navy blue u down the here he’d just come from He walked directly to the front porch where I sat, jauntily hopped up the steps, stomped his feet delicately a few tih his shoes were immaculate), and extended his hand to me I’d expected to spend the day in numb, depressed solitude, and now I felt uncomfortably honored to sit at the end of Mr Rideheart’s long line of effort-like a princess in a tale of ih I was fairly sure he hadn’t co for me

"Sean Rideheart," he said He had white eyebrows and bright green eyes; an appealing face

"Codi Noline" I shook his hand "I’ve heard about you You’re the pinata collector"

He laughed "I’ve been called s infor Viola Doos" At my invitation he sat down in the only other chair on the porch, wicker, of doubtful character

"She’s not here," I said "Nobody’s hoone down to the church They’re having so the saints"

"Painting the saints?" Mr Rideheart extracted a largish blue handkerchief frolasses with extraordinary care I watched for a long tilanced up at me

"The statues of saints, in the church," I explained "I guess they have to get freshened up every so often, like anybody else The women paint the saints and the kids paint each other"

He replaced his glasses and observed the rooftops and treetops that led stepwise down the hill Mr Pye had his back to us now He was industriously tacking down shingles he’d secured for this purpose ten years before Hallie was born

"Quite a place," Mr Rideheart said, finally "How long have you lived here?"

It wasn’t an easy question to answer "I was born here," I said slowly "But right now I’hed, looking out over the white path of blosso treetops that led up toward the dam "Ah, well, yes," he said, "isn’t everybody’s More’s the pity"

At first the Stitch and Bitch was divided in its opinion of Mr Rideheart While he was graciously received into the kitchens of half the club members, where he drank tea and stroked his white mustache and listened in earnest while the pinata artists discussed their ies, the other half (led by Dona Althea) suspected hier

But for once the Dona judged wrong His intentions were noble, and ultimately providential When the club asseion hall, Mr Rideheart was the guest speaker He was supposed to lecture on folk art, which he did, but mostly he talked about Grace He told these women what they had always known: that their town had a spirit and disposition completely apart from its econo Coround to rob the canyon of its wealth, the wo it back in kind They’d paid with embroidery and peacocks and fruit trees and pinatas and children Mr Rideheart suggested that he had never known of a place quite like Gracela Canyon, and that it could, and should, be declared a historic preserve There existed a thing called the National Register of Historic Places The landht of industry, as if they were endangered species He allowed that it wasn’t perfect; listing on the register would provide "a ative impact," he said "In other words, a h it has been declared endangered, and the elephant will still be dead But the uy"

"But really it’s not our houses that are going to get endangered by the poison and the dam," Norma Galvez pointed out "It’s the trees"