Beauty Queen

of people who hadn't much time to eat.
    Bill had never been too fond of Mary—she had all of Cora's faults, and none of her virtues. He was aware that Jeannie was fond of her, mostly because she admired Mary's strictness with the children.
    "Where's little Cora?" he asked Mary.
    "Upstairs," said Mary shortly.
    Bill started up the back stairs, but Mary said, "Wait, I'll have to go with you." When they were alone, going down the hall upstairs, Mary said, "I have to unlock the door."
    "Unlock the door?" said Bill incredulously. "You mean she is locked in her room?"
    "If we didn't lock her in," Mary said grimly, "she'd be running after boys. She is a boy-crazy little monster, that's what she is. A seething caldron of sin at the age she is . . ."
    Bill couldn't believe his ears.
    Mary unlocked the door of Cora's room. The room was stripped of all the posters that Bill remembered. He could understand Jeannie not liking posters of rock stars, but even the cheerful animal posters were gone. The radio and stereo were gone. The room was bare and deathly neat as a nun's cell. Cora was laying on the bed in her bathing suit, facing the wall, her limbs bathed in sweat. Mary went back downstairs.
    Bill sat down on the bed beside her.
    "How long have you been in here?" he asked.
    "Since last night," she said in a low voice.
    "They brought your supper up here?"
    Her body shook with a bitter soundless laugh. "They didn't bring me nuthin'."
    Gently Bill pulled her into a sitting position. She sat drooping like a wilted flower, clutching his hand. Finally she bent her head and put one cheek against his hand.
    "I'd like to run away," she said in a low voice. "But I know awful things happen to kids that run away. I don't want awful things. But I don't like it here. Ever since Daddy went to China, Mom has been pretty weird."
    She raised her head, and looked into his eyes with a strange intensity. "I wish Mom wasn't saved. I wish she was an infidel like everybody else."
    He shook his head disbelievingly, and stroked her hot dry little hand.
    "You aren't saved, are you, Granddaddy?"
    "Listen, Cora . . He spoke to her as if she were an adult. "... Cora, there are two kinds of people who are saved. Some of them become wonderful people, and the others, well, it kind of goes to their heads . . . Heaven only knows what the Lord Jesus thinks of the second kind ...
    He kept talking with a terrible urgency.
    "Cora, your mother shouldn't be doing these things. But
    I don't think your mother is well these days. Now if I let you out of your room, will you promise me that you won't run away or do anything like that? And I'm going to make things better for you. Do you promise, Cora?"
    "I promise," she said, closing her eyes. "Just get me a drink of water, please, Granddaddy?"
    Bill went downstairs like a tornado.
    The whole downstairs, so elegantly furnished with colonial antiques, seemed to have turned into a shoddy political office of some kind. Jeannie and Tom Winkler and the whole bunch of them were there. Most of them were madly stuffing envelopes, and Jeannie was on the phone talking to someone. Tom Winkler looked angry.
    When Jeannie hung up the telephone, Bill asked, "What's happening here?"
    "Well," said Jeannie in her brightest, most brittle, most nervous voice, getting up and coming toward him, "it's a little fund-raising mailing that—"
    Tom Winkler cut her off. "It's another bunch of antihomosexual crap," he said. "Over my dead body," he added.
    "Oh come on, Tom, it's nothing to do with me, or my campaign, it's just . . ."
    "Some people want to start a national anti-homosexual organization, and Jeannie isn't going to participate in it," said Winkler, furious, "she's just going to raise them a little seed money, that's all. .."
    "Now, Tom, really—" Jeannie started to raise her voice.
    "Before you people get into a big discussion," Bill said, "Jeannie, could I speak to you for a minute?"
    He motioned Jeannie upstairs. When they were in the hallway, Jeannie, noticing the taut expression on his face, said, "What on Earth . . ."
    Bill opened the door of little Cora's bedroom. "You will not do this," he said.
    "I will if I please," she flared at him. "How would you like a fallen thirteen-year-old grandchild?"
    They were speaking in low voices.
    "This is my house," he said, "and you will not abuse my grandchildren in my house. Do those people downstairs know what is going on?"
    "No, of course not, they—"
    "I'll bet not. If they knew, they'd