LITMIR.BIZ

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itself up, who could tell? But many nights, listening, he decided first one way and then the other …

      The shocks of life, he thought, biking along, what were they? Getting born, growing up, growing old, dying. Not much to do about the first. But – the other three?

      The wheels of his Happiness Machine spun whirling golden light spokes along the ceiling of his head. A machine, now, to help boys change from peach fuzz to briar bramble, girls from toadstool to nectarine. And in the years when your shadow leaned clear across the land as you lay abed nights with your heartbeat mounting to the billions, his invention must let a man drowse easy in the falling leaves like the boys in autumn who, comfortably strewn in the dry stacks, are content to be a part of the death of the world …

      ‘Papa!’

      His six children, Saul, Marshall, Joseph, Rebecca, Ruth, Naomi, all ages from five to fifteen, came rushing across the lawn to take his bike, each touching him at once.

      ‘We waited. We got ice cream!’

      Moving toward the porch, he could feel his wife’s smile there in the dark.

      Five minutes passed in comfortable eating silence, then, holding a spoonful of moon-colored ice cream up as if it were the whole secret of the universe to be tasted carefully he said, ‘Lena? What would you think if I tried to invent a Happiness Machine?’

      ‘Something’s wrong?’ she asked quickly.

      Grandfather walked Douglas and Tom home. Halfway there, Charlie Woodman and John Huff and some other boys rushed by like a swarm of meteors, their gravity so huge they pulled Douglas away from Grandfather and Tom and swept him off toward the ravine.

      ‘Don’t get lost, son!’

      ‘I won’t … I won’t …’

      The boys plunged into darkness.

      Tom and Grandfather walked the rest of the way in silence, except when they turned in at home and Tom said, ‘Boy, a Happiness Machine – hot diggety!’

      ‘Don’t hold your breath,’ said Grandpa.

      The courthouse clock struck eight.

      The courthouse clock struck nine and it was getting late and it was really night on this small street in a small town in a big state on a large continent on a planet earth hurtling down the pit of space toward nowhere or somewhere and Tom feeling every mile of the long drop. He sat by the front-door screen looking out at that rushing blackness that looked very innocent, as if it was holding still. Only when you closed your eyes and lay down could you feel the world spinning under your bed and hollowing your ears with a black sea that came in and broke on cliffs that weren’t there.

      There was a smell of rain. Mother was ironing and sprinkling water from a corked ketchup bottle over the crackling dry clothes behind Tom.

      One store was still open about a block away – Mrs Singer’s.

      Finally, just before it was time for Mrs Singer to close her store, Mother relented and told Tom, ‘Run get a pint of ice cream and be sure she packs it tight.’

      He asked if he could get a scoop of chocolate on top, because he didn’t like vanilla, and Mother agreed. He clutched the money and ran barefooted over the warm evening cement sidewalk, under the apple and oak trees, toward the store. The town was so quiet and far off you could hear only the crickets sounding in the spaces beyond the hot indigo trees that hold back the stars.

      His bare feet slapped the pavement. He crossed the street and found Mrs Singer moving ponderously about her store, singing Yiddish melodies.

      ‘Pint ice cream?’ she said. ‘Chocolate on top? Yes!’

      He watched her fumble the metal top off the ice-cream freezer and manipulate the scoop, packing the cardboard pint chock-full with ‘chocolate on top, yes!’ He gave the money, received the chill, icy pack, and rubbing it across his brow and cheek, laughing, thumped barefootedly homeward. Behind him the lights of the lonely little store blinked out and there was only a street light shimmering on the corner, and the whole city seemed to be going to sleep.

      Opening the screen door, he found Mom still ironing. She looked hot and irritated but she smiled just the same.

      ‘When will Dad be home from lodge meeting?’ he asked.

      ‘About eleven or eleven-thirty,’ Mother replied. She took the ice cream to the kitchen, divided it. Giving him his special portion of chocolate, she dished out some for herself and the rest was put away, ‘for Douglas and your father when they come.’

      They sat enjoying the ice cream, wrapped at the core of the deep quiet summer night. His mother and himself and the night all around their small house on the small street. He licked each spoonful of ice cream thoroughly before digging for another, and Mom put her ironing board away and the hot iron in its open case cooling, and she sat in the armchair by the phonograph, eating her dessert and saying, ‘My land, it was a hot day today. Earth soaks up all the heat and lets it out at night. It’ll be soggy sleeping.’

      They both sat listening to the night, pressed down by every window and door and complete silence because the radio needed a new battery, and they had played all the Knickerbocker Quartet records and Al Jolson and Two Black Crows records to exhaustion; so Tom just sat on the hardwood floor and looked out into the dark dark dark, pressing his nose against the screen until the flesh of its tip was molded into small dark squares.

      ‘I wonder where Doug is? It’s almost nine-thirty.’

      ‘He’ll be here,’ Tom said, knowing very well that Douglas would be.

      He followed Mom out to wash the dishes. Each sound, each rattle of spoon or dish was amplified in the baked evening. Silently they went to the living room, removed the couch cushions and, together, yanked it open and extended it down into the double bed it secretly was. Mother made the bed, punching pillows neatly to flump them up for their heads. Then, as he was unbuttoning his shirt, she said, ‘Wait awhile, Tom.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because I say so.’

      ‘You look funny, Mom.’

      Mom sat down a moment, then stood up, went to the door and called. He listened to her calling and calling, ‘Douglas, Douglas, oh Doug! Douglasssssss!’ over and over. Her calling floated out into the summer warm dark and never came back. The echoes paid no attention.

      Douglas. Douglas. Douglas.

      Douglas!

      And as he sat on the floor, a coldness that was not ice cream and not winter, and not part of summer’s heat, went through Tom. He noticed Mom’s eyes sliding, blinking; the way she stood undecided and was nervous. All of these things.

      She opened the screen door. Stepping out into the night, she walked down the steps and down the front sidewalk under the lilac bush. He listened to her moving feet.

      She called again.

      Silence.

      She called twice more. Tom sat in the room. Any moment now, Douglas would answer from down the long long narrow street, ‘All right, Mom! All right, Mother! Hey!’

      But he didn’t answer. And for two minutes Tom sat looking at the made-up bed, the silent radio, the silent phonograph, at the chandelier with the crystal bobbins gleaming quietly, at the rug with the scarlet and purple curlicues on it. He stubbed his toe on the bed purposely to see if it hurt. It did.

      Whining, the screen door opened and Mother said, ‘Come on, Tom. We’ll take a walk.’

      ‘Where to?’

      ‘Just down the block. Come on.’

      He took her hand. Together they walked down St James Street. Underfoot the concrete was still warm, and the crickets were sounding louder against the darkening dark. They reached a corner, turned, and walked toward the West Ravine.

      Off somewhere a car floated

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