Michael Malone - Weebly

the overseers here didn't tell Tracy flatly to throw that
junk in the town dump where it belongs, and then cover
her husband with something decent. Come on, Orchid.
Ransom Bank, now. Death and taxes this morning. All
you can count on."
"Summer and babies," said Mrs. O'Neal.
"Pphht!"
Ramona waited on the sidewalk while her
housekeeper climbed the steps of Ransom Bank to
bring its president out. With some satisfaction the old
woman surveyed from her wheelchair the town whose
name she bore. No vandal had scrawled on the wood
buildings or chiseled away at the stone ones. No natural
disaster or economic blight had frightened the life out of
her town and left it a ghost. The streets were clean, the
green was green, people walked in and out of offices
and stores. She nodded. Dingley Falls would last awhile
longer, it would outlast her. She took some comfort in
that. Given the world's limits, this little town was no
worse than most places, and better than many. It had
lived three hundred years, like the huge copper beech
towering over the green that Elijah Dingley had planted