A brood of ragged children had gathered at the door behind the woman, silently, one by one. They stared at the car, not with the bright curiosity of children, but with the tension of savages ready to vanish at the first sign of danger.
"How many miles is it to the factory?" asked Rearden.
"Ten miles," said the woman, and added, "Maybe five."
"How far is the next town?"
"There ain't any next town."
"There are other towns somewhere. I mean, how far?"
"Yeah. Somewhere."
In the vacant space by the side of the house, they saw faded rags hanging on a clothesline, which was a piece of telegraph wire. Three chickens pecked among the beds of a scraggly vegetable garden; a fourth sat roosting on a bar which was a length of plumber's pipe. Two pigs waddled in a stretch of mud and refuse; the stepping stones laid across the muck were pieces of the highway's concrete.
They heard a screeching sound in the distance and saw a man drawing water from a public well by means of a rope pulley. They watched him as he came slowly down the street. He carried two buckets that seemed too heavy for his thin arms. One could not tell his age.
He approached and stopped, looking at the car. His eyes darted at the strangers, then away, suspicious and furtive.
Rearden took out a ten-dollar bill and extended it to him, asking, "Would you please tell us the way to the factory?"
The man stared at the money with sullen indifference, not moving, not lifting a hand for it, still clutching the two buckets. If one were ever to see a man devoid of greed, thought Dagny, there he was.
"We don't need no money around here," he said.
"Don't you work for a living?"
"Yeah."
"Well, what do you use for money?"
The man put the buckets down, as if it had just occurred to him that he did not have to stand straining under their weight. "We don't use no money," he said. "We just trade things amongst us."
"How do you trade with people from other towns?"
"We don't go to no other towns."
"You don't seem to have it easy here."
"What's that to you?"
"Nothing. Just curiosity. Why do you people stay here?"
"My old man used to have a grocery store here. Only the factory closed."
"Why didn't you move?"
"Where to?"
"Anywhere."
"What for?"
Dagny was staring at the two buckets: they were square tins with rope handles; they had been oil cans.
"Listen," said Rearden, "can you tell us whether there's a road to the factory?"
"There's plenty of roads."
"Is there one that a car can take?"
"I guess so."
"Which one?"
The man weighed the problem earnestly for some moments. "Well, now, if you turn to the left by the schoolhouse," he said, "and go on til you come to the crooked oak, there's a road up there that's fine when it don't rain for a couple of weeks."
"When did it rain last?"
"Yesterday."
"Is there another road?"
"Well, you could go through Hanson's pasture and across the woods and then there's a good, solid road there, all the way down to the creek."
"Is there a bridge across the creek?"
"No."
"What are the other roads?"
"Well, if it's a car road that you want, there's one the other side of Miller's patch, it's paved, it's the best road for a car, you just turn to the right by the schoolhouse and—"
"But that road doesn't go to the factory, does it?"
"No, not to the factory."
"All right," said Rearden. "Guess we'll find our own way."
He had pressed the starter, when a rock came smashing into the windshield. The glass was shatterproof, but a sunburst of cracks spread across it. They saw a ragged little hoodlum vanishing behind a corner with a scream of laughter, and they heard the shrill laughter of children answering him from behind some windows or crevices.
Rearden suppressed a swear word. The man looked vapidly across the street, frowning a little. The old woman looked on, without reaction. She had stood there silently, watching, without interest or purpose, like a chemical compound on a photographic plate, absorbing visual shapes because they were there to be absorbed, but unable ever to form any estimate of the objects of her vision.
Dagny had been studying her for some minutes. The swollen shapelessness of the woman's body did not look like the product of age and neglect: it looked as if she was pregnant. This seemed impossible, but glancing closer Dagny saw that her dust-colored hair was not gray and that there were few wrinkles on her face; it was only the vacant eyes, the stooped shoulders, the shuffling movements that gave her the stamp of senility.
Dagny leaned out and asked, "How old are you?"
The woman looked at her, not in resentment, but merely as one looks at a pointless question. "Thirty-seven," she answered.
They had driven five former blocks away, when Dagny spoke.
"Hank," she said in terror, "that woman is only two years older than I!"
"Yes."
"God, how did they ever come to such a state?"
He shrugged. "Who is John Galt?"
