«Honey, that's the way business is done in small Southern towns … just by sort of talking things over. When the time comes, we'll draw up some kind of agreement. You have to remember that things are slow-paced here.»

She would grant that. Things were snail-paced in Quiggville, in fact, and if it wasn't for the appointments of her piano pupils she often would not know what day of the week it was. Yet to see Ray so happy and absorbed in his work was worth it all, she felt. Traditionally a wife was the helpmate of her husband and should make the sacrifices and endure the necessary hardships to give him his start.

When they had met on the campus, Ray had made his prospects clear from the very beginning. His parents were dirt-poor farmers from the mountain area of Tennessee and he was attending school through a scholarship and money he had saved while in the army. Sally was not wealthy by any means, but certainly better off financially and in family background. They had married during their senior year and moved to Quiggville right after graduation. Ray had been recruited with glowing promises by John Blodgett … he needed a pharmacist immediately; the old man who had the job had died and the local residents had to go ten miles to the county seat to have prescriptions filled. In answer to Ray's questions about a share in the business he said he would be willing to take in a partner as soon as Ray could raise «a little cash to bind the deal» as he was occupied with other business interests and did not like to work in the store himself.

Sally never forgot her first look at Quiggville. It was little more than a crossroads, actually, with a square in the center of town where the roads met. The important stores and churches were located on the square, with a grassy park and the Confederate monument in the center. Stretching beyond that were a few blocks of houses in each direction along the shady quiet streets … and then the shabby, haphazardly- placed houses of the black people. A half-mile out of town was a new subdivision of rambling brick homes where the younger business and professional people lived and entertained each other with rounds of barbecues and cocktail parties.