"Far-traveling. You make that up?"
"Maybe yes and maybe no."
"Far-traveling," whispered Tom.
"Only one thing I'm sure of," said Douglas, closing his eyes. "It sure sounds lonely."
Bang!
A door slammed. In an attic dust jumped off bureaus and bookcases. Two old women collapsed against the attic door, each scrabbling to lock it tight, tight. A thousand pigeons seemed to have leaped off the roof right over their heads. They bent as if burdened, ducked under the drum of beating wings. Then they stopped, their mouths surprised. What they heard was only the pure sound of panic, their hearts in their chests.... Above the uproar, they tried to make themselves heard.
"What've we done! Poor Mister Quartermain!"
"We must've killed him. And someone must've seen and followed us. Look ..."
Miss Fern and Miss Roberta peered from the cobwebbed attic window. Below, as if no great tragedy had occurred, the oaks and elms continued to grow in fresh sunlight. A boy strolled by on the sidewalk, turned, strolled by again, looking up.
In the attic the old women peered at each other as if trying to see their faces in a running stream.
"The police!"
But no one hammered the downstairs door and cried, "In the name of the law!"
"Who's that boy down there?"
"Douglas, Douglas Spaulding! Lord, he's come to ask for a ride in our Green Machine. He doesn't know. Our pride has ruined us. Pride and that electrical contraption!"
"That terrible salesman from Gumport Falls. It's his fault, him and his talking."
Talking, talking, like soft rain on a summer roof.
Suddenly it was another day, another noon. They sat with white fans and dishes of cool, trembling lime Jell-O on their arbored porch.
Out of the blinding glare, out of the yellow sun, glittering, splendid as a prince's coach ...
THE GREEN MACHINE!
It glided. It whispered, an ocean breeze. Delicate as maple leaves, fresher than creek water, it purred with the majesty of cats prowling the noontide. In the machine, his Panama hat afloat in Vaseline above his ears, the salesman from Gumport Falls! The machine, with a rubber tread, soft, shrewd, whipped up their scalded white sidewalk, whirred to the lowest porch step, twirled, stopped. The salesman leaped out, blocked off the sun with his Panama. In this small shadow, his smile flashed.
"The name is William Tara! And this--" He pinched a bulb. A seal barked. "--is the horn!" He lifted black satin cushions. "Storage batteries!" A smell of lightning blew on the hot air. "Steering lever! Foot rest! Overhead parasol! Here, in toto, is The Green Machine!"
In the dark attic the ladies shuddered, remembering, eyes shut.
"Why didn't we stab him with our darning needles!"
"Shh! Listen."
Someone knocked on the front door downstairs. After a time the knocking stopped. They saw a woman cross the yard and enter the house next door.
"Only Lavinia Nebbs, come with an empty cup, to borrow sugar, I guess."
"Hold me, I'm afraid."
They shut their eyes. The memory-play began again. An old straw hat on an iron trunk was suddenly flourished, it seemed, by the man from Gumport Falls.
"Thanks, I will have some iced tea." You could hear the cool liquid shock his stomach, in the silence. Then he turned his gaze upon the old ladies like a doctor with a small light, looking into their eyes and nostrils and mouths. "Ladies, I know you're both vigorous. You look it. Eighty years"--he snapped his fingers--"mean nothing to you! But there are times, mind, when you're so busy, busy, you need a friend indeed, a friend in need, and that is the two-seater Green Machine."
He fixed his bright, stuffed-fox, green-glass-eyed gaze upon that wonderful merchandise. It stood, smelling new, in the hot sunlight, waiting for them, a parlor chair comfortably put to wheels.