Donald Fuller remembered the story he had heard about the Tory Tree incident in the fall of 1963. It saddened him to think that no one in Anchorchase was able to help out the poor young black woman who had come looking for her uncle. She had been a pretty thing, Fuller recalled, with eyes colored gray and skin the color of dark chocolate. The police had done what they could. They even set up a meeting between the young black woman and the white college kid who had hired the blues guitarist uncle of the girl's. The young woman came away from that meeting, so the story went, convinced that her uncle had moved on to New York.

Presently, as he sat on his front porch thirty years after the young black girl came calling, Fuller remembered something else. The name of the girl sprang into his head as he called to mind the word he needed for a crossword puzzle in the newspaper that sat on his lap.

The answer to the hint for the eight-letter word across: state of deep distress; misery caused by major misfortune.

Calamity. The word and the name.

The eleven-letter word down included the 't' in Calamity. The hint: recompense, reward, punishment.

Retribution.

That's it, Fuller thought. He penciled in the answers. Then he held the folded newspaper at arm's length and admired the fruit of his defeat over the crossword puzzle. The words he had just filled contained letters to several other words that came to him easily now.

After he completed the crossword, Fuller put the newspaper down, stood up and stretched his arms.

He looked east toward the end of the block. In the shadows away from the street light a woman stood carrying a case. Fuller rubbed his eyes and looked again. The woman was gone.

Calamity, he thought. Retribution.

Fuller went into his house. Several minutes later he returned to the porch wearing an old flannel shirt. He carried a small bag of pretzels and two cold beers in his arms. There were times since his retirement that he felt guilty about drinking on a week night. When he had been a working man, doing his part for the state of New Jersey to make sure roads were repaired, Donald Fuller shied away from alcoholic beverages during the week. He reserved his beer drinking for the weekends. Whenever another member of the different crews he had worked with came on the job smelling of booze, it sickened him. A man needed to know how to control himself. He had learned that in the army. But since his retirement he began drinking a little more each week.

Without a job to speak of, collecting a pension and social security, Donald Fuller had plenty of time to think. And mostly he thought about that black Cadillac the college kid drove back forth along Deep Hollow Road. And the women, Fuller thought. There had always been at least one beauty riding along with the college kid. Sometimes several women were crammed into the Cadillac. And not college girls who dreamed of marrying lawyers, doctors and the next astronaut to walk on the moon. No, the college kid's women were all older. Voluptuous and demure were words that came to mind when Fuller thought of them. And with each passing week, he was able to remember more and more certain subtle features each woman bore.

Fuller popped the cap off his beer with a bottle opener he kept on the porch and took a long swig. He wiped his lips with the back of his right hand. Looking past his porch, to the end of the block were shadows drew dark as the day came to an end, he saw the woman again. She was carrying a suitcase, of that much he was certain.