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ignore their problems than to dwell on them. I never
had reason to believe they were dangerous or
tempted to bother anyone. £

“I have two teen-age ch11dren a daughter and a
son. I promised them and their mother a trip to
Europe as compensation for the several I had made
for the paper. This was the summer for their grand
tour. My widowed sister came up from New Orleans
to keep house for me. Casually, I putan ad in the
classified to hire a boy to take care of the yard and
do chores that she couldn’t handle.

“The first applicant was a good-looking blond boy
with a lily-white skin. He was husky, though, and
that took away the trace of effeminacy one could
sense in him. He was too neatly dressed for a kid
looking for a handyman’s job. I didn’t like the tight
cut of his pants, and the way he kept looking down
at the bulge of his crotch. But there’s no accounting
for young people today and, after all, I wasn*t his
old man.

“He said his name was Frank. I asked him to sit
down on the porch. He preferred to stand on the
stairs, as though he were on exhibition. Every once
in a while he’d move his stance so I could see the
outline of his body more clearly.

“There was something else on his mind. I decided