It was sort of a sad song. Very faint. And sort of broken. All of those hours down under the ground in that box must have sort of made her crazy. All she needed was some air and food and she’d be all right. But she just kept singing, not wanting to scream any more, not caring, just singing.
I listened to the song.
And then I turned and walked straight across the lot and up the steps to my house and I opened the front door.
“Father,” I said.
“So there you are!” he cried.
“Father,” I said.
“You’re going to get a licking,” he said.
“She’s not screaming any more.”
“Don’t talk about her!”
“She’s singing now,” I cried.
“You’re not telling the truth!”
“Dad,” I said. “She’s out there and she’ll be dead soon if you don’t listen to me. She’s out there, singing, and this is what she’s singing.” I hummed the tune. I sang a few of the words. “I loved you fair, I loved you well...”
Dad’s face grew pale. He came and took my arm.
“What did you say?” he said.
I sang it again, “I loved you fair, I loved you well.”
“Where did you hear that song?” he shouted.
“Out in the empty lot, just now.”
“But that’s Helen’s song, the one she wrote, years ago, for me!” cried Father. “You can’t know it. Nobody knew it, except Helen and me. I never sang it to anyone, not you or anyone.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Oh, my God!” cried Father and ran out the door to get a shovel. The last I saw of him he was in the empty lot, digging, and lots of other people with him, digging.
I felt so happy I wanted to cry.
I dialed a number on the phone and when Dippy answered I said, “Hi, Dippy. Everything’s fine. Everything’s worked out keen. The Screaming Woman isn’t screaming any more.”
“Swell,” said Dippy.
“I’ll meet you in the empty lot with a shovel in two minutes,” I said.
“Last one there’s a monkey! So long!” cried Dippy.
“So long, Dippy!” I said, and ran.
THESE THINGS HAPPEN
IN THE SPRING of the year 1934, Miss Ann Taylor came to teach at the Central School. That was the year she was twenty-four years old and Bob Markham was fourteen. Everyone remembered Ann Taylor. She was the teacher for whom all the children wanted to bring fruit or flowers, and for whom they rolled up the pink and green maps of the world without being asked. She was the woman who always seemed to be passing by on days when the shade was green under the oaks and elms, her face shifting with the bright shadows as she walked until it was all things to all people. She was the fine peaches of summer in the snow of winter, and she was cool milk for cereal on a hot, early summer morning. And those rare few days in the world when the climate was balanced as fine as a maple leaf between winds that blew just right, those were the days like Ann Taylor, and should have been so named on the calendar.
As for Bob Markham, he was the boy who walked alone through town on any October evening with a pack of leaves after him like a horde of Halloween mice. In spring he moved like a slow white fish in the tart waters of the Fox Hill Creek, baking brown with the shine of a chestnut by autumn. Or you might see him on the lawn with the ants crawling over his books as he read through the long afternoons alone, or playing himself a game of chess on his grandmother’s porch. You never saw him with any other child.
That spring when Bob was in the ninth grade, Miss Ann Taylor came in through the door of the schoolroom and all the children sat still in their seats while she wrote her name on the board in a nice round lettering.