‘I drew five hundred dollars from the bank yesterday. I’ve been thinking about this. And then when
it happened, well … Cora …’ He shoved his eager hand down. ‘For the last time, will you come along with me?’
‘In the attic? Hand down that step-ladder, William Finch. I’ll climb up there and run you out of that filthy place!’
‘I’m going to Hannahan’s Pier for a bowl of Clam Chowder,’ he said. ‘And I’m requesting the brass band to play Moonlight Bay. Oh, come on, Cora….’ He motioned his extended hand.
She simply stared at his gentle, questioning face.
‘Good-bye,’ he said.
He waved gently, gently. Then his face was gone, the straw hat was gone.
‘William!’ she screamed.
The attic was dark and silent.
Shrieking, she ran and got a chair and used it to groan her way up into the musty darkness. She flourished a flashlight. ‘William! William!’
The dark spaces were empty. A winter wind shook the house.
Then she saw the far west attic window, ajar.
She fumbled over to it. She hesitated, held her breath. Then, slowly, she opened it. The ladder was placed outside the window, leading down on to a porch roof.
She pulled back from the window.
Outside the opened frame the apple trees were lush green, it was twilight of a summer day in July. Faintly, she heard explosions, firecrackers going off. She heard laughter and distant voices. Rockets burst in the warm air, softly, red, white, and blue, fading.
She slammed the window and stood reeling. ‘William!’
Wintry November light glowed up through the trap in the attic floor behind her. Bent to it, she saw the snow whispering against the cold clear panes down in that November world where she would spend the next thirty years.
She did not go near the window again. She sat alone in the black attic, smelling the one smell that did not seem to fade. It lingered like a gentle sigh of satisfaction, on the air. She took a deep, long breath.
The old, the familiar, the unforgettable scent of drug-store sarsaparilla.
And the Rock Cried Out
THE raw carcasses, hung in the sunlight, rushed at them, vibrated with heat and red colour in the green jungle air, and were gone. The stench of rotting flesh gushed through the car windows, and Leonora Webb quickly pressed the button that whispered her door window up.
‘Good Lord,’ she said, ‘those open-air butcher’s shops.’
The smell was still in the car, a smell of war and horror.
‘Did you see the flies?’ she asked.
‘When you buy any kind of meat in those markets,’ John Webb said, ‘you slap the beef with your hand. The flies lift from the meat so you can get a look at it.’
He turned the car around a lush bend in the green rain-jungle road.
‘Do you think they’ll let us into Juatala when we get there?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Watch out!’
He saw the bright things in the road too late, tried to swerve, but hit them. There was a terrible sighing from the right front tyre, the car heaved about and sank to a stop. He opened his side of the car and stepped out. The jungle was hot and silent and the highway empty, very empty and quiet at noon.