“For Martin’s wedding present,” I said steadily, “I want to buy him the farm he grew up on. Can you tell me where it is? I haven’t told the realtor I want to see this one particular farm because of course she’ll know I want it for some reason, and Joseph Flocken won’t sell to me if he knows I’m going to give it to Martin.”

“You’re right, he won’t. I’ll tell you what you need to know. But then I’m going to give you some advice. You’re a lot younger than me.” She sighed.

“It’s a good idea, getting the farm for him,” she began. “He always hated someone else having it, someone else letting it fall into ruin. But Joseph always had it in for Martin, in particular, though he wasn’t too fond of Barby. I’m not either, for that matter. One of the disadvantages of being married to Martin is that Barby becomes your sister-in-law… I’m sorry, I promised myself I wasn’t going to be bitchy. Barby had a hard time as a teenager. The reason the blood’s so bad between the kids and Flocken- Martin’ll never tell you this, Barby told me-she got pregnant when she was sixteen, and when Mr. Flocken found out, he stood up in front of the whole church-not a mainstream church, one of these little off-sects-or off sex, ha!-and told everyone in the church about it, with Barby sitting right there, and asked their advice-so she got sent to one of those homes and missed a year of school and had her baby, and gave it up for adoption. And nothing ever happened to the kid who was the dad, of course, he just went around town telling everyone what a slut she was, and what a stud he was. So Martin beat him up and blacked Mr. Flocken’s eye.”

What a dreadful story. I tried to imagine being publicly denounced in that fashion, and cringed at the thought.

“Okay, the farm is south of town on Route 8, and you can’t see the house from the road, but there’s a mailbox with ‘Flocken’ on it by the gate.”

I copied the directions onto the little pad the motel left in the drawer below the telephone. “Thanks,” I told her. And I braced myself for the advice.