THIRD PLACE:

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A 4

condition.

The

Relative

Interlude

j. lorna strayer

ith the cloth in hand the woman paused at the screen door. Ahead was the bulky unsightly barn. It hadn't been painted since the coal company had bought the place twenty years before. Each time she looked out the drab grayness was a reminder that the house was in the same

They had owned the farm once; the children had been little, the offer good, so they sold intending to lease it for just a year and then buy a place down cast. Wayne was no more than a baby then. Funny, how twenty years can mount, one on the other, to a huge stack of living, or how it can seem to drain into a creek with the spring rains and disappear, she thought.

Even though the buildings had been neglected the farm had a neat, respectable appearance. Flaming sage edged the clipped lawn. The barnyard was orderly and clean as was possible with a herd of shorthorns. Balls of graycolored cotton hung limply from the screen door. Some one had told her cotton would scare away flies, but so far it seemed to have had little or no effect for the fly spool hanging from the kitchen light looked as though it had fallen into a box of raisins. With Wayne and his friend home for a vacation someone was continuously running in and out, and the flies always became worse in late

summer.

one