S Is for Space

Tom, a gardener’s wooden flat in his arms, stepped out on the porch.

“Sorry,” he said. “What’s wrong, Dad?”

“Nothing,” Fortnum stood up, glad to be moving. “Is that the crop?”

Tom moved forward, eagerly. “Part of it. Boy, they’re doing great. In just seven hours, with lots of water, look how big the darn things are!” He set the flat on the table between his parents.

The crop was indeed plentiful. Hundreds of small grayish brown mushrooms were sprouting up in the damp soil.

“I’ll bek....” said Fortnum, impressed.

Cynthia put out her hand to touch the flat, then took it away uneasily.

“I hate to be a spoilsport, but … there’s no way for these to be anything else but mushrooms, is there?”

Tom looked as if he had been insulted. “What do you think I’m going to feed you? Poison fungoids?”

“That’s just it,” said Cynthia quickly. “How do you tell them apart?”

“Eat ’em,” said Tom. “If you live, they’re mushrooms. If you drop dead—well!”

He gave a great guffaw, which amused Fortnum, but only made his mother wince. She sat back in her chair.

“I—I don’t like them,” she said.

“Boy, oh, boy.” Tom seized the flat angrily. “When are we going to have the next Wet Blanket Sale in this house!?”

He shuffled morosely away.

“Tom—” said Fortnum.

“Never mind,” said Tom. “Everyone figures they’ll be ruined by the boy entrepreneur. To heck with it!”

Fortnum got inside just as Tom heaved the mushrooms, flat and all, down the cellar stairs. He slammed the cellar door and ran angrily out the back door.

Fortnum turned back to his wife, who, stricken, glanced away.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why, I just had to say that to Tom.”

The phone rang. Fortnum brought the phone outside on its extension cord.

“Hugh?” It was Dorothy Willis’s voice. She sounded suddenly very old and very frightened. “Hugh … Roger isn’t there, is he?”

“Dorothy? No.”

“He’s gone!” said Dorothy. “All his clothes were taken from the closet.” She began to cry softly.

“Dorothy, hold on, I’ll be there in a minute.”

“You must help, oh, you must. Something’s happened to him, I know it,” she wailed. “Unless you do something, we’ll never see him alive again.”

>

Very slowly, he put the receiver back on its hook, her voice weeping inside it. The night crickets, quite suddenly, were very loud. He felt the hairs, one by one, go up on the back of his neck.

Hair can’t do that, he thought. Silly, silly. It can’t do that, not in real life, it can’t!

But, one by slow pricking one, his hair did.