When Tolliver heard the news about the additional $10,000 needed, he laughed. "There's been another bid on the land, Percy! They want another ten thousand! Well, here's a check for ten grand! I took out a loan on the church's Building Fund—only a temporary one, of course."
"The Building Fund?" Percy gasped.
"Don't worry about it, Perce! When the news of the highway interchange comes out, contractors will be on their knees begging to buy from us! We'll get a hundred times what we paid!"
"Two hundred would be better," said Percy, doing calculations.
"Do I hear three?" Tolliver crowed. "Stick with me, Percy, and we'll be standing in clover!"
An hour after they made the deal and sent the check for ten thousand embezzled dollars, Tolliver and Percy went out to view their new land. Jubilant spirits plummeted, and they stared in shock at their newly-acquired swamp.
"There ain't going to be no highway interchange through here!" Percy cried. "This is the nothingest nothing I ever seen!"
"There's got to be some mistake," Tolliver murmured. "There's got to be something here. Hey! Maybe there's oil under here. We're sitting on a huge oil field!"
"We're sitting on the insurance money! The Building Fund! The Parsonage Renovation Fund! The Parking Lot Repaving Fund!" Percy shouted hysterically.
"We'll take care of it," Tolliver said, always optimistic that his schemes would work. "We'll find a way to get more money."
Nevertheless he was still glum when they went back to town. Thacker drove by, read their doleful faces, and exchanged a merry glance with Sammy. That whole week Thacker had been keeping an eye on Sammy and grinning to himself whenever someone spoke to the "deaf" man. Life was great fun, he thought.
"I wish," Norm said to Lucille that night as they closed up the café and bus station, "that Tolliver hadn't roped Sammy into lighting that fire. I'm gonna talk to that Tynan kid."
Lucille gathered up her bundles. She'd insisted on taking Norm's laundry, claiming that the place he took them to made a mish-mash of the collars. "Oh, Norm, Sammy's his own man. We can't hold onto him—he isn't ours."
"The heck he isn't!" Norm said indignantly. "We raised him, Lucille! Who's he got?"
Lucille smiled up at him. "I know he's filled a place in your heart…like I have, maybe." When he stared at her, she slipped out of the building and waited for him outside.
"Sometimes," Norm said as he locked the door, "I just don't understand you, Lucille. What did you mean by that?"
"I hear a lot of things," Lucille said. "I know that your wife and son died in the big flu epidemic when you were in France. And I just figured Sammy and I help fill a hole in your heart. We argue, and I feed you, and Sammy adores you. A sort of fill-in family."
"Why…why didn't you ever say anything?"
"Why take apart a clock that's ticking?"
"Well, I'll be. Thirty-two years…"
"Thirty-three and a half." She smiled roguishly at him and walked away toward her house.
"No starch on those collars!" he called after her and turned toward his own house, marveling inside. All this time… Well, there was still time ahead.