‘Are you all right?’
‘So far, so good. I’m locked in the kitchen now. The front wall of the house just blew in. But I planned my retreat. When the kitchen door gives, I’m heading for the cellar. If I’m lucky I may hold out there until morning. It’ll have to tear the whole damned house down to get to me, and the cellar floor is pretty solid. I have a shovel and I may dig — deeper. . .’
It sounded like a lot of other voices on the phone.
‘What’s that?’ Herb Thompson demanded, cold, shivering.
‘That?’ asked the voice on the phone. ‘Those are the voices of ten thousand killed in a typhoon, seven thousand killed by a hurricane, three thousand buried by a cyclone. Am I boring you? It’s a long list. That’s what the wind is, you know. It’s a lot of spirits, a lot of people dead. The wind killed them and took their intellects, their spirits, to give itself intelligence. It took all their voices and made them into one voice. Interesting, isn’t it? All those millions of peoples killed in the past centuries, twisted and tortured and taken from continent to continent on the backs and in the bellies of monsoons and whirlwinds. I get very poetic at a time like this.’
The phone echoed and rang with voices and shouts and whinings.
‘Come on back, Herb,’ said his wife, at the card table.
‘That’s how the wind gets more intelligent each year, it adds to its intellect, body by body, life by life, death by death.’
‘We’re waiting for you, Herb,’ called his wife.
‘Damn it!’ he turned, almost snarling. ‘Wait just a moment, won’t you!’ Back to the phone. ‘Allin, if you want me to come out there now, I will, if you need help.’
‘Wouldn’t think of it. This is a grudge fight, wouldn’t do to have you in it. Well, I’d better hang up. The kitchen door looks very weak and I’ll have to get into the cellar.’
‘Call me back, later?’
‘Maybe, if I’m lucky. I don’t think I’ll make it this time. I slipped away and escaped in the Celebes that time, but I think it has me now. I hope I haven’t bothered you too much, Herb.’
‘You haven’t bothered anyone, damn it. Call me back.’
‘I’ll try. . .’
Herb Thompson went back into the card game. His wife glared at him. ‘How’s Allin, your friend?’ she asked, ‘Is he sober?’
‘He’s never taken a drink in his life,’ said Thompson, sullenly, sitting down. ‘I should have gone out there earlier.’
‘But he’s called every night for six weeks and you’ve been out there at least ten nights to sleep with him and nothing was wrong.’
‘He needs help. He might hurt himself.’
‘You were just out there, two nights ago, you can’t always be running after him.’
‘First thing in the morning I’ll move him into a sanatorium. Didn’t want to. He seems so reasonable, so sane.’
They played out the games. At ten-thirty coffee was served. Herb Thompson drank his slowly, looking at the phone. I wonder if he’s in the cellar now, he thought.
Herb Thompson walked to the phone, called long-distance, put through a call.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the operator. ‘The lines are down in that district. When the lines are repaired, we will put your call through.’
‘Then the telephone lines are down!’ cried Thompson, slamming down the phone. Turning, he ran down the hall, opened the closet, pulled out his hat and coat. ‘Excuse me,’ he shouted. ‘You will excuse me, won’t you? I’m sorry,’ he said, to his amazed guests and his wife with the coffee urn in her hand. ‘Herb!’ she cried at him. ‘I’ve got to get out there!’ he said, in return. He slipped into his coat.
There was a soft, faint stirring at the door.
Everybody in the room tensed and straightened up.
‘Who could that be?’ asked his wife.
The soft stirring was repeated, very quietly.
Thompson hurried down the hall where he stopped, alert.
Outside, faintly, he heard laughter.
‘I’ll be damned,’ said Thompson. He put his hand on the doorknob, pleasantly shocked and relieved. ‘I’d know that laugh anywhere. It’s Allin. He came on over in his ear, after all. Couldn’t wait until morning to tell me his confounded tall tales.’ Thompson chuckled weakly. ‘Probably brought some friends with him. Sounds like a lot of other people. . .’
He opened the front door.
The porch was vacant.
Thompson showed no surprise, his face grew amusedly sly. He laughed. ‘Allin? None of your tricks now! Come on.’ He switched on the porch-light and peered out and around. ‘Where are you, Allin? Come on, now.’
A little breeze blew into his face.
Thompson waited a moment, suddenly chilled to his marrow. He stepped out on the porch and looked uneasily about, very carefully.
A sudden wind caught and whipped his coat flaps, dishevelled his hair. He thought he heard laughter again. The wind suddenly rounded the house and was at pressure everywhere at once, and then, storming for a full minute, passed on.
The wind died down, sad, mourning in the high trees, passing away; going back out to the sea, to the Celebes, to the Ivory Coast, to Sumatra and Cape Horn, to Cornwall and the Philippines. Fading, fading, fading.
Thompson stood there, cold. He went in and closed the door and leaned against it, and didn’t move, eyes closed.
‘What’s wrong. . .?’ asked his wife.
The Night
YOU are a child in a small town. You are, to be exact, eight years old, and it is growing late at night. Late, for you, accustomed to bedding in at nine or nine-thirty; once in a while perhaps begging Mom or Dad to let you stay up later to hear Sam and Henry on that strange radio that is popular in this year of 1927. But most of the time you are in bed and snug at this time of night.
It is a warm summer evening. You live in a small house on a small street in the outer part of town where there are few street lights. There is only one store open, about a block away; Mrs. Singer’s. In the hot evening Mother has been ironing the Monday wash and you have been intermittently begging for ice-cream and staring into the dark.
You and your mother are all alone at home in the warm darkness of summer. Finally, just before it is time for Mrs. Singer to close her store, Mother relents and tells you:
‘Run get a pint of ice-cream and be sure she packs it tight.’
You ask if you can get a scoop of chocolate ice-cream on top, because you don’t like vanilla, and mother agrees. You clutch the money and run barefooted over the warm evening cement pavement, under the apple trees and oak trees, towards the store. The town is so quiet and far off, you can only hear the crickets sounding in the spaces beyond the hot indigo trees that hold back the stars.
Your bare feet slap the pavement, you cross the street and find Mrs. Singer moving ponderously about her store, singing Yiddish melodies.
‘Pint ice-cream?’ she says. ‘Chocolate on top? Yes!’
You watch 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!’ You give the money, receive the chill, icy pack, and rubbing it across your brow and cheek, laughing, you thump barefootedly homeward. Behind you, the lights of the lonely little store blink out and there is only a street light shimmering on the corner, and the whole city seems to be going to sleep. . .
Opening the screen door you find Mom still ironing. She looks hot and irritated, but she smiles just the same.
‘When will Dad be home from lodge-meeting?’ you ask.
‘About eleven-thirty or twelve,’ Mother replies. She takes the ice-cream to the kitchen, divides it. Giving you your special portion of chocolate, she dishes out some for herself and the rest is put away, ‘For Skipper and your father when they come.’
Skipper is your brother. He is your older brother. He’s twelve and healthy, red-faced, hawk-nosed, tawny-haired, broad-shouldered for his years, and always running. He is allowed to stay up later than you.
Not much later, but enough to make him feel it is worth while having been born first. He is over on the other side of town this evening to a game of kick-the-can and will be home soon. He and the kids have been yelling, kicking, running for hours, having fun. Soon he will come clomping in, smelling of sweat and green grass on his knees where he fell, and smelling very much in all ways like Skipper; which is natural.
You sit enjoying the ice-cream. You are at the core of the deep quiet summer night. Your mother and yourself and the night all around this small house on this small street. You lick each spoon of ice-cream thoroughly before digging for another, and Mom puts her ironing-board away and the hot iron in its case, and she sits in the armchair by the phonograph, eating her dessert and saying, ‘My lands, it was a hot day today. It’s still hot. Earth soaks up all the heat and lets it out at night. It’ll be soggy sleeping.’
You both sit there listening to the summer silence. The dark is pressed down by every window and door, there is no sound because the radio needs a new battery, and you have played all the Knickerbocker Quartet records and Al Jolson and Two Black Crows records to exhaustion; so you just
