LITMIR.BIZ

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rising, round and full, the light from it freezing all of the town in late summer time. Her heart raced.

      She rose swiftly to look down on the empty avenues, the dark and silent lawns. Below, the porch swing creaked ever so little in the wind.

      She saw the long, dark rush of her hair in the mirror as she unknotted the tight schoolteacher’s bun and let it fall loose to her shoulders. Wouldn’t her pupils be surprised, she thought; so long, so black, so glossy. Not too bad for a woman of thirty-five. From the closet, her hands trembling, she dug out hidden parcels. Lipstick, rouge, eyebrow pencil, nail polish. A pale blue negligee, like a breath of vapor. Pulling off her cotton nightgown, she stepped on it, hard, even while she drew the negligee over her head.

      She touched her ears with perfume, used the lipstick on her nervous mouth, penciled her eyebrows, and hurriedly painted her nails.

      She was ready.

      She let herself out into the hall of the sleeping house. She glanced fearfully at three white doors. If they sprang open now, then what? She balanced between the walls, waiting.

      The doors stayed shut.

      She stuck her tongue out at one door, then at the other two.

      She drifted down the noiseless stairs onto the moonlit porch and then into the quiet street.

      The smell of a September night was everywhere. Underfoot, the concrete breathed warmth up along her thin white legs.

      “I’ve always wanted to do this.” She plucked a blood rose for her black hair and stood a moment smiling at the shaded windows of her house. “You don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispered. She swirled her negligee.

      Down the aisle of trees, past glowing street lamps, her bare feet were soundless. She saw every bush and fence and wondered, “Why didn’t I think of this a long time ago?” She paused in the wet grass just to feel how it was, cool and prickly.

      The patrolman, Mr. Waltzer, was wandering down Glen Bay Street, singing in a low, sad tenor. As he passed, Hattie circled a tree and stood staring at his broad back as he walked on, still singing.

      When she reached the courthouse, the only noise was the sound of her bare toes on the rusty fire escape. At the top of the flight, on a ledge under the shining silver clock face, she held out her hands.

      There lay the sleeping town!

      A thousand roofs glittered with snow that had fallen from the moon.

      She shook her fists and made faces at the town. She flicked her negligee skirt contemptuously at the far houses. She danced and laughed silently, then stopped to snap her fingers in all four directions.

      A minute later, eyes bright, she was racing on the soft lawns of the town.

      She came to the house of whispers.

      She paused by a certain window and heard a man’s voice and a woman’s voice in the secret room.

      Hattie leaned against the house and listened to whispering, whispering. It was like hearing two tiny moths fluttering gently inside on the window screen. There was a soft, remote laughter.

      Hattie put her hand to the screen above, her face the face of one at a shrine. Perspiration shone on her lips.

      “What was that?” cried a voice inside.

      Like mist, Hattie whirled and vanished.

      When she stopped running she was by another house window.

      A man stood in the brightly lighted bathroom, perhaps the only lighted room in the town, shaving carefully around his yawning mouth. He had black hair and blue eyes and was twenty-seven years old and every morning carried to his job in the railyards a lunch bucket packed with ham sandwiches. He wiped his face with a towel and the light went out.

      Hattie waited behind the great oak in the yard, all film, all spiderweb. She heard the front door click, his footsteps down the walk, the clank of his lunch pail. From the odors of tobacco and fresh soap, she knew, without looking, that he was passing.

      Whistling between his teeth, he walked down the street toward the ravine. She followed from tree to tree, a white veil behind an elm, a moon shadow behind an oak. Once, he whirled about. Just in time she hid from sight. She waited, heart pounding. Silence. Then, his footsteps walking on.

      He was whistling the song “June Night.”

      The high arc light on the edge of the ravine cast his shadow directly beneath him. She was not two yards away, behind an ancient chestnut tree.

      He stopped but did not turn. He sniffed the air.

      The night wind blew her perfume over the ravine, as she had planned it.

      She did not move. It was not her turn to act now. She simply stood pressing against the tree, exhausted with the shaking of her heart.

      It seemed an hour before he moved. She could hear the dew breaking gently under the pressure of his shoes. The warm odor of tobacco and fresh soap came nearer.

      He touched one of her wrists. She did not open her eyes. He did not speak.

      Somewhere, the courthouse clock sounded the time as three in the morning.

      His mouth fitted over hers very gently and easily.

      Then his mouth was at her ear and she was held to the tree by him. He whispered. So she was the one who’d looked in his windows the last three nights! He kissed her neck. She, she had followed him, unseen, last night! He stared at her. The shadows of the trees fell soft and numerous all about, on her lips, on her cheeks, on her brow, and only her eyes were visible, gleaming and alive. She was lovely, did she know that? He had thought he was being haunted. His laughter was no more than a faint whisper in his mouth. He looked at her and made a move of his hand to his pocket. He drew forth a match, to strike, to hold by her face, to see, but she took his hand and held it and the unlit match. After a moment, he let the matchstick drop into the wet grass. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

      She did not look up at him. Silently he took her arm and began to walk.

      Looking at her pale feet, she went with him to the edge of the cool ravine and down to the silent flow of the stream, to the moss banks and the willows.

      He hesitated. She almost looked up to see if he was still there. They had come into the light, and she kept her head turned away so that he saw only the blowing darkness of her hair and the whiteness of her arms.

      He said, “You don’t have to come any further, you know. Which house did you come from? You can run back to wherever it is. But if you run, don’t ever come back; I won’t want to see you again. I couldn’t take any more of this, night after night. Now’s your chance. Run, if you want!”

      Summer night breathed off her, warm and quiet.

      Her answer was to lift her hand to him.

      NEXT MORNING, as Hattie walked downstairs, she found Grandma, Aunt Maude, and Cousin Jacob with cold cereal in their tight mouths, not liking it when Hattie pulled up her chair. Hattie wore a grim, highnecked dress, with a long skirt. Her hair was a knotted, hard bun behind her ears, her face was scrubbed pale, lean of color in the cheeks and lips. Her painted eyebrows and eyelashes were gone. Her fingernails were plain.

      “You’re late, Hattie,” they all said, as if an agreement had been made to say it when she sat down.

      “I know.” She did not move in her chair.

      “Better not eat much,” said Aunt Maude. “It’s eight-thirty. You should’ve been at school. What’ll the superintendent say? Fine example for a teacher to set her pupils.”

      The three stared at her.

      Hattie was smiling.

      “You haven’t been late in twelve years, Hattie,” said Aunt Maude.

      Hattie did not move, but continued smiling.

      “You’d

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