"That's pretty!" Trilly tells Mindy May, a skinny, insecure-looking little nine-year-old whose slightly crossed blue eyes shoot Trilly back an intense gaze of mixed gratitude and relief through the narrow gap between fallen eaves of rust-colored hair.

"Mary, you should probably put that purple section of pulp back on the strainer. It looks like it still has too much water in it."

Seemingly invisible to all others in this room is a slightly older girl -- 14 years old, to be exact -- who sits boredly moping on the interior cement steps leading to the bar-latch exit that opens onto the church's parking lot. The girl stares at the dirty indoor-outdoor carpeting at her feet and tries to inscribe in its filth some random word or image with a stick. With her free hand she agitatedly swipes some of her own hair back beyond her shoulder, a boundary which gravity has conspired to help the slack strands violate. The hair is straight and rather fine but no longer nearly so blonde as it still had been just two years ago.

This girl is Sadie Simmons and you more or less know her, though these days it would be definitely less than more. Of course she used to be a participant in all this Camp Fire stuff, and actually appeared to be quite gung-ho about it, her mom being the group's leader and all.

Sadie came to your door once or twice selling candy. She explained to you with great enthusiasm how she would qualify for summer camp by selling so many boxes. You never limited your purchases from her to just one box.

Once, standing on the curb in front of the Franklin Street shops downtown to watch a May Day parade that probably shouldn't have been held, the morning was so forbiddingly blustery and cold, you happened to catch sight of little Sadie Simmons at the head of the Camp Fire procession. She was holding one end of the thick wooden dowel bearing the group's wide banner and Sadie alone looked glad, even proud, to be out there marching along the icy blacktop, freezing her little nosetip off.

Now, as you study this sadly subdued, unfamiliar version of Sadie while pretending to observe the goings-on of the more boisterous girls at the table (who seem eons younger than Sadie rather than just two or three years), it occurs to you that her parents' divorce a couple of years ago has perhaps jolted this formerly childlike child right out of youth and into the premature onset of adulthood.

Or maybe this transformation was just written in the stars. Regardless of the cause, somewhere along the way Sadie lost her own personal fire for the little girls' realm. It isn't so much that she has become like the bad girls of the town. Admittedly, and unfortunately, there are many of these: chasing boys, skipping school, eagerly accepting drink and worse at impromptu parties held beside and inside parked cars at night out on Catfield Flat.

Sadie, however, appears to have no companions with which to pursue all the vices Catfield's adults are reluctant to admit are being taken up by many of the town's children.

So what is it, exactly, about this girl? To your knowledge, she continues to make acceptable marks in school. Since she doesn't seem to be running with a bad crowd -- or any crowd, for that matter -- you decide that she probably isn't into the drug scene. And she isn't known to have a boyfriend or even to be dating at all, so you conclude that she isn't yet a casualty of romance gone wrong.

No, you decide, this girl is adrift in some entirely different fashion -- one that you're completely at a loss to identify. And now, before you have time to ponder the matter further, you find yourself the world's only living soul to catch her drift as it carries her resolutely up the basement steps and through the exit to the expanding universe beyond -- a place where energy is gradually but inexorably consumed in an evolution toward an eternal lifeless darkness; a place where all the useless, burned-out particles remaining after all the energy is gone will spend the remainder of forever fleeing from one another through the unbroken darkness, creating increasingly vast distances between themselves.

The departure was quiet, noticed only by you, but the girl didn't seem at all sneaky in the act. Rather, she appeared so disconnected from the people and activities of this room, she apparently concluded that she could remove herself without altering the future course of events for a single molecule here.

Her assumption might have been correct, if only her own molecules weren't being tracked at this moment by you. To avoid being noticed yourself, you decide against crossing the room to use the same exit Sadie did. You instead retreat to the main floor of the church complex, where you move as quickly as you dare (not wishing to appear beset by urgency) through a series of doors and hallways to finally emerge through the main entrance, which is actually only a tad east up Franklin from the doorway Sadie used.

Outside, the shadows trees cast in the day's waning sunlight stretch long and thin over Franklin Street. You look around and spot Sadie headed west, about half a block distant. Eschewing the sidewalk available in this part of town, she proceeds along the roadway beside the west-facing line of parked cars. Silently to yourself you disapprove; you were brought up to follow the pedestrian safety rule instructing that one should always walk on the side of the street facing oncoming traffic and to this day it continues to bother you whenever you see kids -- even ones as old as Sadie -- violate this rule.

It's 2 1/2 blocks from the church to Division Street, Catfield's main drag and the boundary between the town's "East" and "West" addresses. You sought to maintain the respectful 1/2-block distance between yourself and the girl as she walked at a medium pace. At one point, however, you almost didn't know what to do as she stopped and knelt to pick up something she had found in the street. You slowed appreciably, and were afraid for a moment you might have to stop (to do what -- tie a shoe?) while she stood considering the small item, whatever it was. But then the nervous moment ended as she pocketed the item and began walking again.

The Division Street traffic doesn't cooperate as well with you as it did with Sadie, causing you to lose more ground than you would have preferred. Once across the street, you quicken your pace -- again taking care to avoid appearing too hurried -- until the cushion is again about half a block.

At the corner of West Franklin and West Second, you see Sadie take a right, heading north on West Second, and you speed up again because you realize that West Second is almost immediately intersected by other streets, at any of which Sadie might turn yet again before you have gotten her back in sight.

Fortunately, though, you find she hasn't turned again. You also find yourself silently remarking how glad you are that she hasn't once bothered to turn and look back during the entire time you've been following her.

You and Sadie have traversed roughly half of Catfield's diameter by the time you've tailed her west along Borah Avenue to another turn northward at West Ninth. There you lose sight of her again, but you take some comfort in knowing that this area of West Ninth is one long, unintersected block all the way to the Dolan Canal, where the narrow gravel road running alongside the Flat's main irrigation ditch finally breaks the spell.

You'd choose prudence nonetheless and pick up your pace, but the emergence of a short, slow-moving figure from the block Sadie just entered reminds you of your wish to appear nonchalant. You slow your walk to help create the desired effect, but even with that you discern that you are moving considerably faster than this person, who still isn't quite finished crossing southward over Borah by the time you two inevitably cross paths near Ninth.

The person is a man of untold years, brown of skin which is rilled and furrowed in interesting ways within the face your eyes didn't immediately discover for all the attention drawn by his ancient-looking but still serviceable straw hat. He presents you a wide and unpretentious, irregularly toothed smile beneath a pair of piercing black eyes that twinkle slightly but really betray little of what lies behind them.

You know you've probably seen this man a million times over the past ten or twenty years (and probably always during growing and harvest seasons), but his name you've heard seldom enough that it doesn't immediately come to you. It isn't a first name. It's Senor Alto or something like that. You give him a noncommital half-smile and curtly nod, inwardly anxious to regain the substantial amount of ground you've no doubt lost.

Now you're at Ninth and about to cross Borah yourself, but a woman's shrill voice touches off a rising cacophony of female and male yelling set above a counterpoint of frantic dog barking. You turn and immediately spot the altercation site.

WE NOW PAUSE FOR A STATION BREAK