Summer Morning, Summer Night (Green Town 4)

He remembered motoring along in the hot, dry night with their swim suits damp on the jolting floor boards. It was a ride of many detours taken just for the hell of it, which was the best reason in the world.

“Good night.” “So long.” “Good night.”

Then Welles was driving alone, at midnight, home to bed.

He nailed the pumpernickel to his bureau the next day.

“I almost cried when, two years later, my mother threw it in the incinerator while I was off at college.”

“What happened in 1920?” asked his wife. “On New Year’s Day?”

“Oh,” said Mr. Welles. “I was walking by the courthouse, by accident, at noon. It was snowing. I heard the clock strike. Lord, I thought, we were supposed to meet here today! I waited five minutes. Not right in front of the courthouse, no. I waited across the street.” He paused. “Nobody showed up.”

He got up from the table and paid the bill. “And I’ll take that loaf of unsliced pumpernickel there,” he said.

When he and his wife were walking home, he said, “I’ve got a crazy idea. I often wondered what happened to everyone.”

“Nick’s still in town with his café.”

“But what about the others?” Mr. Welles’s face was getting pink and he was smiling and waving his hands. “They moved away. I think Tom’s in Cincinnati. He looked quickly at his wife. “Just for the heck of it, I’ll send him this pumpernickel!”

“Oh, but—”

“Sure!” He laughed, walking faster, slapping the bread with the palm of his hand. “Have him carve his name on it and mail it on to the others if he knows their addresses. And finally back to me, with all their names on it!”

“But,” she said, taking his arm, “it’ll only make you unhappy. You’ve done things like this so many times before and...”

He wasn’t listening. Why do I never get these ideas by day? he thought. Why do I always get them after the sun goes down?

In the morning, first thing, he thought, I’ll mail this pumpernickel off, by God, to Tom and the others. And when it comes back I’ll have the loaf just as it was when it got thrown out and burned! Why not?

“Let’s see,” he said, as his wife opened the screen door and let him into the stuffy-smelling house to be greeted by silence and warm emptiness. “Let’s see. We also sang ‘Row Row Row Your Boat’, didn’t we?”

IN THE morning, he came down the hall stairs and paused a moment in the strong full sunlight, his face shaved, his teeth freshly brushed. Sunlight brightened every room. He looked in at the breakfast table.

His wife was busy there. Slowly, calmly, she was slicing the pumpernickel.

He sat down at the table in the warm sunlight and reached for the newspaper.

She picked up a slice of the newly cut bread, and kissed him on the cheek. He patted her arm.

“One or two pieces of toast, dear?” she asked gently.

“Two, I think,” he replied.

THE SCREAMING WOMAN

MY NAME IS Margaret Leary and I’m ten years old and in the fifth grade at Central School. I haven’t any brothers or sisters, but I’ve got a nice father and mother except they don’t pay much attention to me. And anyway, we never thought we’d have anything to do with a murdered woman. Or almost, anyway.

When you’re just living on a street like we live on, you don’t think awful things are going to happen, like shooting or stabbing or burying people under the ground, practically in your back yard. And when it does happen you don’t believe it. You just go on buttering your toast or baking a cake.

I got to tell you how it happened. It was a noon in the middle of July. It was hot and Mama said to me, “Margaret, you go to the store and buy some ice cream. It’s Saturday, Dad’s home for lunch, so we’ll have a treat.”

I ran out across the empty lot behind our house. It was a big lot, where kids had played baseball, and broken glass and stuff. And on my way back from the store with the ice cream I was just walking along, minding my own business, when all of a sudden it happened.

I heard the Screaming Woman.

I stopped and listened.