The Lottery and Other Stories

Of Course

MRS. TYLOR, in the middle of a busy morning, was far too polite to go out on the front porch and stare, but she saw no reason for avoiding the windows; when her vacuuming or her dishwashing, or even the upstairs bedmaking, took her near a window on the south side of the house she would lift the curtain slightly, or edge to one side and stir the shade. All she could see, actually, was the moving van in front of the house, and various small activities going on between the movers; the furniture, what she could see of it, looked fine.

Mrs. Tylor finished the beds and came downstairs to start lunch, and in the short space of time it took her to get from the front bedroom window to the kitchen window a taxi had stopped in front of the house next door and a small boy was dancing up and down on the sidewalk. Mrs. Taylor estimated him; about four, probably, unless he was small for his age; about right for her youngest girl. She turned her attention to the woman who was getting out of the taxi, and was further reassured. A nice-looking tan suit, a little worn and perhaps a little too light in color for moving day, but nicely cut, and Mrs. Tylor nodded appreciatively over the carrots she was scraping. Nice people, obviously.

Carol, Mrs. Tylor’s youngest, was leaning on the fence in front of the Tylor house, watching the little boy next door. When the little boy stopped dancing up and down Carol said, “Hi.” The little boy looked up, took a step backward, and said, “Hi.” His mother looked at Carol, at the Tylor house, and down at her son. Then she said, “Hello there” to Carol. Mrs. Tylor smiled in the kitchen. Then, on a sudden impulse she dried her hands on a paper towel, took off her apron, and went to the front door. “Carol,” she called lightly, “Carol, dear.” Carol turned around, still leaning on the fence. “What?” she said uncoöperatively.

“Oh, hello,” Mrs. Tylor said to the lady still standing on the sidewalk next to the little boy. “I heard Carol talking to someone….”

“The children were making friends,” the lady said shyly.

Mrs. Tylor came down the steps to stand near Carol at the fence. “Are you our new neighbor?”

“If we ever get moved in,” the lady said. She laughed. “Moving day,” she said expressively.

“I know. Our name’s Tylor,” Mrs. Tylor said. “This is Carol.”

“Our name is Harris,” the lady said. “This is James Junior.”

“Say hello to James,” Mrs. Tylor said.

“And you say hello to Carol,” Mrs. Harris said.

Carol shut her mouth obstinately and the little boy edged behind his mother. Both ladies laughed. “Children!” one of them said, and the other said, “Isn’t it the way!”

Then Mrs. Tylor said, gesturing at the moving van and the two men moving in and out with chairs and tables and beds and lamps, “Heavens, isn’t it terrible?”

Mrs. Harris sighed. “I think I’ll just go crazy.”

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Mrs. Tylor asked. She smiled down at James. “Perhaps James would like to spend the afternoon with us?”

“That would be a relief,” Mrs. Harris agreed. She twisted around to look at James behind her. “Would you like to play with Carol this afternoon, honey?” James shook his head mutely and Mrs. Tylor said to him brightly, “Carol’s two older sisters might, just might take her to the movies, James. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m afraid not,” Mrs. Harris said flatly. “James does not go to movies.”

“Oh, well, of course,” Mrs. Tylor said, “lots of mothers don’t, of course, but when a child has two older….”

“It isn’t that,” Mrs. Harris said. “We do not go to movies, any of us.”

Mrs. Tylor quickly registered the “any” as meaning there was probably a Mr. Harris somewhere around, and then her mind snapped back and she said blankly, “Don’t go to movies?”

“Mr. Harris,” Mrs. Harris said carefully, “feels that movies are intellectually retarding. We do not go to movies.”

“Naturally,” Mrs. Tylor said. “Well, I’m sure Carol wouldn’t mind staying home this afternoon. She’d love to play with James. Mr. Harris,” she added cautiously, “wouldn’t object to a sandbox?”

“I want to go to the movies,” Carol said.

Mrs. Tylor spoke quickly. “Why don’t you and James come over and rest at our house for a while? You’ve probably been running around all morning.”

Mrs. Harris hesitated, watching the movers. “Thank you,” she said finally. With James following along behind her, she came through the Tylers’ gate, and Mrs. Tylor said, “If we sit in the garden out back we can still keep an eye on your movers.” She gave Carol a small push. “Show James the sandbox, dear,” she said firmly.

Carol took James sullenly by the hand and led him over to the sandbox. “See?” she said, and went back to kick the fence pickets deliberately. Mrs. Tylor sat Mrs. Harris in one of the garden chairs and went over and found a shovel for James to dig with.

“It certainly feels good to sit down,” Mrs. Harris said. She sighed. “Sometimes I feel that moving is the most terrible thing I have to do.”

“You were lucky to get that house,” Mrs. Tylor said, and Mrs. Harris nodded. “We’ll be glad to get nice neighbors,” Mrs. Tylor went on. “There’s something so nice about congenial people right next door. I’ll be running over to borrow cups of sugar,” she finished roguishly.

“I certainly hope you will,” Mrs. Harris said. “We had such disagreeable people next door to us in our old house. Small things, you know, and they do irritate you so.” Mrs. Tylor sighed sympathetically. “The radio, for instance,” Mrs. Harris continued, “all day long, and so loud.”

Mrs. Tylor caught her breath for a minute. “You must be sure and tell us if ours is ever too loud.”

“Mr. Harris cannot bear the radio,” Mrs. Harris said. “We do not own one, of course.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Tylor said. “No radio.”

Mrs. Harris looked at her and laughed uncomfortably. “You’ll be thinking my husband is crazy.”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Tylor said. “After all, lots of people don’t like radios; my oldest nephew, now, he’s just the other way—”

“Well,” Mrs. Harris said, “newspapers, too.”

Mrs. Tylor recognized finally the faint nervous feeling that was tagging her; it was the way she felt when she was irrevocably connected with something dangerously out of control: her car, for instance, on an icy street, or the time on Virginia’s roller skates…. Mrs. Harris was staring absent-mindedly at the movers going in and out, and she was saying, “It isn’t as though we hadn’t ever seen a newspaper, not like the movies at all; Mr. Harris just feels that the newspapers are a mass degradation of taste. You really never need to read a newspaper, you know,” she said, looking around anxiously at Mrs. Tylor.

“I never read anything but the—”

“And we took The New Republic for a number of years,” Mrs. Harris said. “When we were first married, of course. Before James was born.”

“What is your husband’s business?” Mrs. Tylor asked timidly.

Mrs. Harris lifted her head proudly. “He’s a scholar,” she said. “He writes monographs.”

Mrs. Tylor opened her mouth to speak, but Mrs. Harris leaned over and put her hand out and said, “It’s terribly hard for people to understand the desire for a really peaceful life.”

“What,” Mrs. Tylor said, “what does your husband do for relaxation?”

“He reads plays,” Mrs. Harris said. She looked doubtfully over at James. “Pre-Elizabethan, of course.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Tylor said, and looked nervously at James, who was shoveling sand into a pail.

“People are really very unkind,” Mrs. Harris said. “Those people I was telling you about, next door. It wasn’t only the radio, you see. Three times they deliberately left their New York Times on our doorstep. Once James nearly got it.”

“Good Lord,” Mrs. Tylor said. She stood up. “Carol,” she called emphatically, “don’t go away. It’s nearly time for lunch, dear.”

“Well,” Mrs. Harris said. “I must go and see if the movers have done anything right.”

Feeling as though she had been rude, Mrs. Tylor said, “Where is Mr. Harris now?”

“At his mother’s,” Mrs. Harris said. “He always stays there when we move.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Tylor said, feeling as though she had been saying nothing else all morning.

“They don’t turn the radio on while he’s there,” Mrs. Harris explained.

“Of course,” Mrs. Tylor said.

Mrs. Harris held out her hand and Mrs. Tylor took it. “I do so hope we’ll be friends,” Mrs. Harris said. “As you said, it means such a lot to have really thoughtful neighbors. And we’ve been so unlucky.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Tylor said, and then came back to herself abruptly. “Perhaps one evening soon we can get together for a game of bridge?” She saw Mrs. Harris’s face and said, “No. Well, anyway, we must all get together some evening soon.” They both laughed.

“It does sound silly, doesn’t it,” Mrs. Harris said. “Thanks so much for all your kindness this morning.”

“Anything we can do,” Mrs. Tylor said. “If you want to send James over this afternoon.”

“Perhaps I shall,” Mrs. Harris said. “If you really don’t mind.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Tylor said. “Carol, dear.”

With her arm around Carol she walked out to the front of the house and stood watching Mrs. Harris and James go into their house. They both stopped in the doorway and waved, and Mrs. Tylor and Carol waved back.

“Can’t I go to the movies,” Carol said, “please, Mother?”

“I’ll go with you, dear,” Mrs. Tylor said.

Pillar of Salt

FOR SOME REASON a tune was running through her head when she and her husband got on the train in New Hampshire for their trip to New York; they had not been to New York for nearly a year, but the tune was from farther back than that. It was from the days when she was fifteen or sixteen, and had never seen New York except in movies, when the city was made up, to her, of penthouses filled with Noel Coward people; when the height and speed and luxury and gaiety that made up a city like New York were confused inextricably with the dullness of being fifteen, and beauty unreachable and far in the movies.

“What is that tune?” she said to her husband, and hummed it. “It’s from some old movie, I think.”

“I know it,” he said, and hummed it himself. “Can’t remember the words.”

He sat back comfortably. He had hung up their coats, put the suitcases on the rack, and had taken his magazine out. “I’ll think of it sooner or later,” he said.

She looked out the window first, tasting it almost secretly, savoring the extreme pleasure of being on a moving train with nothing to do for six hours but read and nap and go into the dining-car, going farther and farther every minute from the children, from the kitchen floor, with even the hills being incredibly left behind, changing into fields and trees too far away from home to be daily. “I love trains,” she said, and her husband nodded sympathetically into his magazine.

Two weeks ahead, two unbelievable weeks, with all arrangements made, no further planning to do, except perhaps what theatres or what restaurants. A friend with an apartment went on a convenient vacation, there was enough money in the bank to make a trip to New York compatible with new snow suits for the children; there was the smoothness of unopposed arrangements, once the initial obstacles had been overcome, as though when they had really made up their minds, nothing dared stop them. The baby’s sore throat cleared up. The plumber came, finished his work in two days, and left. The dresses had been altered in time; the hardware store could be left safely, once they had found the excuse of looking over new city products. New York had not burned down, had not been quarantined, their friend had gone away according to schedule, and Brad had the keys to the apartment in his pocket. Everyone knew where to reach everyone else; there was a list of plays not to miss and a list of items to look out for in the stores—diapers, dress materials, fancy canned goods, tarnish-proof silverware boxes. And, finally, the train was there, performing its function, pacing through the afternoon, carrying them legally and with determination to New York.

Margaret looked curiously at her husband, inactive in the middle of the afternoon on a train, at the other fortunate people traveling, at the sunny country outside, looked again to make sure, and then opened her book. The tune was still in her head, she hummed it and heard her husband take it up softly as he turned a page in his magazine.

In the dining-car she ate roast beef, as she would have done in a restaurant at home, reluctant to change over too quickly to the new, tantalizing food of a vacation. She had ice cream for dessert but became uneasy over her coffee because they were due in New York in an hour and she still had to put on her coat and hat, relishing every gesture, and Brad must take the suitcases down and put away the magazines. They stood at the end of the car for the interminable underground run, picking up their suitcases and putting them down again, moving restlessly inch by inch.

The station was a momentary shelter, moving visitors gradually into a world of people and sound and light to prepare them for the blasting reality of the street outside. She saw it for a minute from the sidewalk before she was in a taxi moving into the middle of it, and then they were bewilderingly caught and carried on uptown and whirled out on to another sidewalk and Brad paid the taxi driver and put his head back to look up at the apartment house. “This is it, all right,” he said, as though he had doubted the driver’s ability to find a number so simply given. Upstairs in the elevator, and the key fit the door. They had never seen their friend’s apartment before, but it was reasonably familiar—a friend moving from New Hampshire to New York carries private pictures of a home not erasable in a few years, and the apartment had enough of home in it to settle Brad immediately in the right chair and comfort her with instinctive trust of the linen and blankets.

“This is home for two weeks,” Brad said, and stretched. After the first few minutes they both went to the windows automatically; New York was below, as arranged, and the houses across the street were apartment houses filled with unknown people.

“It’s wonderful,” she said. There were cars down there, and people, and the noise was there. “I’m so happy,” she said, and kissed her husband.

They went sight-seeing the first day; they had breakfast in an Automat and went to the top of the Empire State building. “Got it all fixed up now,” Brad said, at the top. “Wonder just where that plane hit.”

They tried to peer down on all four sides, but were embarrassed about asking. “After all,” she said reasonably, giggling in a corner, “if something of mine got broken I wouldn’t want people poking around asking to see the pieces.”

“If you owned the Empire State building you wouldn’t care,” Brad said.

They traveled only in taxis the first few days, and one taxi had a door held on with a piece of string; they pointed to it and laughed silently at each other, and on about the third day, the taxi they were riding in got a flat tire on Broadway and they had to get out and find another.

“We’ve only got eleven days left,” she said one day, and then, seemingly minutes later, “we’ve already been here six days.”

They had got in touch with the friends they had expected to get in touch with, they were going to a Long Island summer home for a week end. “It looks pretty dreadful right now,” their hostess said cheerfully over the phone, “and we’re leaving in a week ourselves, but I’d never forgive you if you didn’t see it once while you were here.” The weather had been fair but cool, with a definite autumn awareness, and the clothes in the store windows were dark and already hinting at furs and velvets. She wore her coat every day, and suits most of the time. The light dresses she had brought were hanging in the closet in the apartment, and she was thinking now of getting a sweater in one of the big stores, something impractical for New Hampshire, but probably good for Long Island.

“I have to do some shopping, at least one day,” she said to Brad, and he groaned.

“Don’t ask me to carry packages,” he said.

“You aren’t up to a good day’s shopping,” she told him, “not after all this walking around you’ve been doing. Why don’t you go to a movie or something?”

“I want to do some shopping myself,” he said mysteriously. Perhaps he was talking about her Christmas present; she had thought vaguely of getting such things done in New York; the children would be pleased with novelties from the city, toys not seen in their home stores. At any rate she said, “You’ll probably be able to get to your wholesalers at last.”

They were on their way to visit another friend, who had found a place to live by a miracle and warned them consequently not to quarrel with the appearance of the building, or the stairs, or the neighborhood. All three were bad, and the stairs were three flights, narrow and dark, but there was a place to live at the top. Their friend had not been in New York long, but he lived by himself in two rooms, and had easily caught the mania for slim tables and low bookcases which made his rooms look too large for the furniture in some places, too cramped and uncomfortable in others.

“What a lovely place,” she said when she came in, and then was sorry when her host said, “Some day this damn situation will let up and I’ll be able to settle down in a really decent place.”

There were other people there; they sat and talked companionably about the same subjects then current in New Hampshire, but they drank more than they would have at home and it left them strangely unaffected; their voices were louder and their words more extravagant; their gestures, on the other hand, were smaller, and they moved a finger where in New Hampshire they would have waved an arm. Margaret said frequently, “We’re just staying here for a couple of weeks, on a vacation,” and she said, “It’s wonderful, so exciting,” and she said, “We were terribly lucky; this friend went out of town just at the right….”

Finally the room was very full and noisy, and she went into a corner near a window to catch her breath. The window had been opened and shut all evening, depending on whether the person standing next to it had both hands free; and now it was shut, with the clear sky outside. Someone came and stood next to her, and she said, “Listen to the noise outside. It’s as bad as it is inside.”

He said, “In a neighborhood like this someone’s always getting killed.”

She frowned. “It sounds different than before. I mean, there’s a different sound to it.”

“Alcoholics,” he said. “Drunks in the streets. Fighting going on across the way.” He wandered away, carrying his drink.

She opened the window and leaned out, and there were people hanging out of the windows across the way shouting, and people standing in the street looking up and shouting, and from across the way she heard clearly, “Lady, lady.” They must mean me, she thought, they’re all looking this way. She leaned out farther and the voices shouted incoherently but somehow making an audible whole, “Lady, your house is on fire, lady, lady.”

She closed the window firmly and turned around to the other people in the room, raising her voice a little. “Listen,” she said, “they’re saying the house is on fire.” She was desperately afraid of their laughing at her, of looking like a fool while Brad across the room looked at her blushing. She said again, “The house is on fire,” and added, “They say,” for fear of sounding too vehement. The people nearest to her turned and someone said, “She says the house is on fire.”

She wanted to get to Brad and couldn’t see him; her host was not in sight either, and the people all around were strangers. They don’t listen to me, she thought, I might as well not be here, and she went to the outside door and opened it. There was no smoke, no flame, but she was telling herself, I might as well not be here, so she abandoned Brad in panic and ran without her hat and coat down the stairs, carrying a glass in one hand and a package of matches in the other. The stairs were insanely long, but they were clear and safe, and she opened the street door and ran out. A man caught her arm and said, “Everyone out of the house?” and she said, “No, Brad’s still there.” The fire engines swept around the corner, with people leaning out of the windows watching them, and the man holding her arm said, “It’s down here,” and left her. The fire was two houses away; they could see flames behind the top windows, and smoke against the night sky, but in ten minutes it was finished and the fire engines pulled away with an air of martyrdom for hauling out all their equipment to put out a ten-minute fire.

She went back upstairs slowly and with embarrassment, and found Brad and took him home.

“I was so frightened,” she said to him when they were safely in bed, “I lost my head completely.”

“You should have tried to find someone,” he said.

“They wouldn’t listen,” she insisted. “I kept telling them and they wouldn’t listen and then I thought I must have been mistaken. I had some idea of going down to see what was going on.”

“Lucky it was no worse,” Brad said sleepily.

“I felt trapped,” she said. “High up in that old building with a fire; it’s like a nightmare. And in a strange city.”

“Well, it’s all over now,” Brad said.

The same faint feeling of insecurity tagged her the next day; she went shopping alone and Brad went off to see hardware, after all. She got on a bus to go downtown and the bus was too full to move when it came time for her to get out. Wedged standing in the aisle she said, “Out, please,” and, “Excuse me,” and by the time she was loose and near the door the bus had started again and she got off a stop beyond. “No one listens to me,” she said to herself. “Maybe it’s because I’m too polite.” In the stores the prices were all too high and the sweaters looked disarmingly like New Hampshire ones. The toys for the children filled her with dismay; they were so obviously for New York children: hideous little parodies of adult life, cash registers, tiny pushcarts with imitation fruit, telephones that really worked (as if there weren’t enough phones in New York that really worked), miniature milk bottles in a carrying case. “We get our milk from cows,” Margaret told the salesgirl. “My children wouldn’t know what these were.” She was exaggerating, and felt guilty for a minute, but no one was around to catch her.

She had a picture of small children in the city dressed like their parents, following along with a miniature mechanical civilization, toy cash registers in larger and larger sizes that eased them into the real thing, millions of clattering jerking small imitations that prepared them nicely for taking over the large useless toys their parents lived by. She bought a pair of skis for her son, which she knew would be inadequate for the New Hampshire snow, and a wagon for her daughter inferior to the one Brad could make at home in an hour. Ignoring the toy mailboxes, the small phonographs with special small records, the kiddie cosmetics, she left the store and started home.

She was frankly afraid by now to take a bus; she stood on the corner and waited for a taxi. Glancing down at her feet, she saw a dime on the sidewalk and tried to pick it up, but there were too many people for her to bend down, and she was afraid to shove to make room for fear of being stared at. She put her foot on the dime and then saw a quarter near it, and a nickel. Someone dropped a pocketbook, she thought, and put her other foot on the quarter, stepping quickly to make it look natural; then she saw another dime and another nickel, and a third dime in the gutter. People were passing her, back and forth, all the time, rushing, pushing against her, not looking at her, and she was afraid to get down and start gathering up the money. Other people saw it and went past, and she realized that no one was going to pick it up. They were all embarrassed, or in too much of a hurry, or too crowded. A taxi stopped to let someone off, and she hailed it. She lifted her feet off the dime and the quarter, and left them there when she got into the taxi. This taxi went slowly and bumped as it went; she had begun to notice that the gradual decay was not peculiar to the taxis. The buses were cracking open in unimportant seams, the leather seats broken and stained. The buildings were going, too—in one of the nicest stores there had been a great gaping hole in the tiled foyer, and you walked around it. Corners of the buildings seemed to be crumbling away into fine dust that drifted downward, the granite was eroding unnoticed. Every window she saw on her way uptown seemed to be broken; perhaps every street corner was peppered with small change. The people were moving faster than ever before; a girl in a red hat appeared at the upper side of the taxi window, and was gone beyond the lower side before you could see the hat; store windows were so terribly bright because you only caught them for a fraction of a second. The people seemed hurled on in a frantic action that made every hour forty-five minutes long, every day nine hours, every year fourteen days. Food was so elusively fast, eaten in such a hurry, that you were always hungry, always speeding to a new meal with new people. Everything was imperceptibly quicker every minute. She stepped into the taxi on one side and stepped out the other side at her home; she pressed the fifth-floor button on the elevator and was coming down again, bathed and dressed and ready for dinner with Brad. They went out for dinner and were coming in again, hungry and hurrying to bed in order to get to breakfast with lunch beyond. They had been in New York nine days; tomorrow was Saturday and they were going to Long Island, coming home Sunday, and then Wednesday they were going home, really home. By the time she had thought of it they were on the train to Long Island; the train was broken, the seats torn and the floor dirty; one of the doors wouldn’t open and the windows wouldn’t shut. Passing through the outskirts of the city, she thought, It’s as though everything were traveling so fast that the solid stuff couldn’t stand it and were going to pieces under the strain, cornices blowing off and windows caving in. She knew she was afraid to say it truly, afraid to face the knowledge that it was a voluntary neck-breaking speed, a deliberate whirling faster and faster to end in destruction.

On Long Island, their hostess led them into a new piece of New York, a house filled with New York furniture as though on rubber bands, pulled this far, stretched taut, and ready to snap back to the city, to an apartment, as soon as the door was opened and the lease, fully paid, had expired. “We’ve had this place every year for simply ages,” their hostess said. “Otherwise we couldn’t have gotten it possibly this year.”

“It’s an awfully nice place,” Brad said. “I’m surprised you don’t live here all year round.”

“Got to get back to the city some time,” their hostess said, and laughed.

“Not much like New Hampshire,” Brad said. He was beginning to be a little homesick, Margaret thought; he wants to yell, just once. Since the fire scare she was apprehensive about large groups of people gathering together; when friends began to drop in after dinner she waited for a while, telling herself they were on the ground floor, she could run right outside, all the windows were open; then she excused herself and went to bed. When Brad came to bed much later she woke up and he said irritably, “We’ve been playing anagrams. Such crazy people.” She said sleepily, “Did you win?” and fell asleep before he told her.

The next morning she and Brad went for a walk while their host and hostess read the Sunday papers. “If you turn to the right outside the door,” their hostess said encouragingly, “and walk about three blocks down, you’ll come to our beach.”

“What do they want with our beach?” their host said. “It’s too damn cold to do anything down there.”

“They can look at the water,” their hostess said.

They walked down to the beach; at this time of year it was bare and windswept, yet still nodding hideously under traces of its summer plumage, as though it thought itself warmly inviting. There were occupied houses on the way there, for instance, and a lonely lunchstand was open, bravely advertising hot dogs and root beer. The man in the lunchstand watched them go by, his face cold and unsympathetic. They walked far past him, out of sight of houses, on to a stretch of grey pebbled sand that lay between the grey water on one side and the grey pebbled sand dunes on the other.

“Imagine going swimming here,” she said with a shiver. The beach pleased her; it was oddly familiar and reassuring and at the same time that she realized this, the little tune came back to her, bringing a double recollection. The beach was the one where she had lived in imagination, writing for herself dreary love-broken stories where the heroine walked beside the wild waves; the little tune was the symbol of the golden world she escaped into to avoid the everyday dreariness that drove her into writing depressing stories about the beach. She laughed out loud and Brad said, “What on earth’s so funny about his Godforsaken landscape?”

“I was just thinking how far away from the city it seems,” she said falsely.

The sky and the water and the sand were grey enough to make it feel like late afternoon instead of midmorning; she was tired and wanted to go back, but Brad said suddenly, “Look at that,” and she turned and saw a girl running down over the dunes, carrying her hat, and her hair flying behind her.

“Only way to get warm on a day like this,” Brad remarked, but Margaret said, “She looks frightened.”

The girl saw them and came toward them, slowing down as she approached them. She was eager to reach them but when she came within speaking distance the familiar embarrassment, the not wanting to look like a fool, made her hesitate and look from one to the other of them uncomfortably.

“Do you know where I can find a policeman?” she asked finally.

Brad looked up and down the bare rocky beach and said solemnly, “There don’t seem to be any around. Is there something we can do?”

“I don’t think so,” the girl said. “I really need a policeman.”

They go to the police for everything, Margaret thought, these people, these New York people, it’s as though they had selected a section of the population to act as problem-solvers, and so no matter what they want they look for a policeman.

“Be glad to help you if we can,” Brad said.

The girl hesitated again. “Well, if you must know,” she said crossly, “there’s a leg up there.”

They waited politely for the girl to explain, but she only said, “Come on, then,” and waved to them to follow her. She led them over the dunes to a spot near a small inlet, where the dunes gave way abruptly to an intruding head of water. A leg was lying on the sand near the water, and the girl gestured at it and said, “There,” as though it were her own property and they had insisted on having a share.

They walked over to it and Brad bent down gingerly. “It’s a leg all right,” he said. It looked like part of a wax dummy, a death-white wax leg neatly cut off at top-thigh and again just above the ankle, bent comfortably at the knee and resting on the sand. “It’s real,” Brad said, his voice slightly different. “You’re right about that policeman.”

They walked together to the lunchstand and the man listened unenthusiastically while Brad called the police. When the police came they all walked out again to where the leg was lying and Brad gave the police their names and addresses, and then said, “Is it all right to go on home?”

“What the hell you want to hang around for?” the policeman inquired with heavy humor. “You waiting for the rest of him?”

They went back to their host and hostess, talking about the leg, and their host apologized, as though he had been guilty of a breach of taste in allowing his guests to come on a human leg; their hostess said with interest, “There was an arm washed up in Bensonhurst, I’ve been reading about it.”

“One of these killings,” the host said.

Upstairs Margaret said abruptly, “I suppose it starts to happen first in the suburbs,” and when Brad said, “What starts to happen?” she said hysterically, “People starting to come apart.”

In order to reassure their host and hostess about their minding the leg, they stayed until the last afternoon train to New York. Back in their apartment again it seemed to Margaret that the marble in the house lobby had begun to age a little; even in two days there were new perceptible cracks. The elevator seemed a little rusty, and there was a fine film of dust over everything in the apartment. They went to bed feeling uncomfortable, and the next morning Margaret said immediately, “I’m going to stay in today.”

“You’re not upset about yesterday, are you?”

“Not a bit,” Margaret said. “I just want to stay in and rest.”

After some discussion Brad decided to go off again by himself; he still had people it was important to see and places he must go in the few days they had left. After breakfast in the Automat Margaret came back alone to the apartment, carrying the mystery story she had bought on the way. She hung up her coat and hat and sat down by the window with the noise and the people far below, looking out at the sky where it was grey beyond the houses across the street.

I’m not going to worry about it, she said to herself, no sense thinking all the time about things like that, spoil your vacation and Brad’s too. No sense worrying, people get ideas like that and then worry about them.

The nasty little tune was running through her head again, with its burden of suavity and expensive perfume. The houses across the street were silent and perhaps unoccupied at this time of day; she let her eyes move with the rhythm of the tune, from window to window along one floor. By gliding quickly across two windows, she could make one line of the tune fit one floor of windows, and then a quick breath and a drop down to the next floor; it had the same number of windows and the tune had the same number of beats, and then the next floor and the next. She stopped suddenly when it seemed to her that the windowsill she had just passed had soundlessly crumpled and fallen into fine sand; when she looked back it was there as before but then it seemed to be the windowsill above and to the right, and finally a corner of the roof.

No sense worrying, she told herself, forcing her eyes down to the street, stop thinking about things all the time. Looking down at the street for long made her dizzy and she stood up and went into the small bedroom of the apartment. She had made the bed before going out to breakfast, like any good housewife, but now she deliberately took it apart, stripping the blankets and sheets off one by one, and then she made it again, taking a long time over the corners and smoothing out every wrinkle. “That’s done,” she said when she was through, and went back to the window. When she looked across the street the tune started again, window to window, sills dissolving and falling downward. She leaned forward and looked down at her own window, something she had never thought of before, down to the sill. It was partly eaten away; when she touched the stone a few crumbs rolled off and fell.

It was eleven o’clock; Brad was looking at blowtorches by now and would not be back before one, if even then. She thought of writing a letter home, but the impulse left her before she found paper and pen. Then it occurred to her that she might take a nap, a thing she had never done in the morning in her life, and she went in and lay down on the bed. Lying down, she felt the building shaking.

No sense worrying, she told herself again, as though it were a charm against witches, and got up and found her coat and hat and put them on. I’ll just get some cigarettes and some letter paper, she thought, just run down to the corner. Panic caught her going down in the elevator; it went too fast, and when she stepped out in the lobby it was only the people standing around who kept her from running. As it was, she went quickly out of the building and into the street. For a minute she hesitated, wanting to go back. The cars were going past so rapidly, the people hurrying as always, but the panic of the elevator drove her on finally. She went to the corner, and, following the people flying along ahead, ran out into the street, to hear a horn almost overhead and a shout from behind her, and the noise of brakes. She ran blindly on and reached the other side where she stopped and looked around. The truck was going on its appointed way around the corner, the people going past on either side of her, parting to go around her where she stood.

No one even noticed me, she thought with reassurance, everyone who saw me has gone by long ago. She went into the drugstore ahead of her and asked the man for cigarettes; the apartment now seemed safer to her than the street—she could walk up the stairs. Coming out of the store and walking to the corner, she kept as close to the buildings as possible, refusing to give way to the rightful traffic coming out of the doorways. On the corner she looked carefully at the light; it was green, but it looked as though it were going to change. Always safer to wait, she thought, don’t want to walk into another truck.

People pushed past her and some were caught in the middle of the street when the light changed. One woman, more cowardly than the rest, turned and ran back to the curb, but the others stood in the middle of the street, leaning forward and then backward according to the traffic moving past them on both sides. One got to the farther curb in a brief break in the line of cars, the others were a fraction of a second too late and waited. Then the light changed again and as the cars slowed down Margaret put a foot on the street to go, but a taxi swinging wildly around her corner frightened her back and she stood on the curb again. By the time the taxi had gone the light was due to change again and she thought, I can wait once more, no sense getting caught out in the middle. A man beside her tapped his foot impatiently for the light to change back; two girls came past her and walked out into the street a few steps to wait, moving back a little when cars came too close, talking busily all the time. I ought to stay right with them, Margaret thought, but then they moved back against her and the light changed and the man next to her charged into the street and the two girls in front waited a minute and then moved slowly on, still talking, and Margaret started to follow and then decided to wait. A crowd of people formed around her suddenly; they had come off a bus and were crossing here, and she had a sudden feeling of being jammed in the center and forced out into the street when all of them moved as one with the light changing, and she elbowed her way desperately out of the crowd and went off to lean against a building and wait. It seemed to her that people passing were beginning to look at her. What do they think of me, she wondered, and stood up straight as though she were waiting for someone. She looked at her watch and frowned, and then thought, What a fool I must look like, no one here ever saw me before, they all go by too fast. She went back to the curb again but the green light was just changing to red and she thought, I’ll go back to the drugstore and have a coke, no sense going back to that apartment.

The man looked at her unsurprised in the drugstore and she sat and ordered a coke but suddenly as she was drinking it the panic caught her again and she thought of the people who had been with her when she first started to cross the street, blocks away by now, having tried and made perhaps a dozen lights while she had hesitated at the first; people by now a mile or so downtown, because they had been going steadily while she had been trying to gather her courage. She paid the man quickly, restrained an impulse to say that there was nothing wrong with the coke, she just had to get back, that was all, and she hurried down to the corner again.

The minute the light changes, she told herself firmly; there’s no sense. The light changed before she was ready and in the minute before she collected herself traffic turning the corner overwhelmed her and she shrank back against the curb. She looked longingly at the cigar store on the opposite corner, with her apartment house beyond; she wondered, How do people ever manage to get there, and knew that by wondering, by admitting a doubt, she was lost. The light changed and she looked at it with hatred, a dumb thing, turning back and forth, back and forth, with no purpose and no meaning. Looking to either side of her slyly, to see if anyone were watching, she stepped quietly backward, one step, two, until she was well away from the curb. Back in the drugstore again she waited for some sign of recognition from the clerk and saw none; he regarded her with the same apathy as he had the first time. He gestured without interest at the telephone; he doesn’t care, she thought, it doesn’t matter to him who I call.

She had no time to feel like a fool, because they answered the phone immediately and agreeably and found him right away. When he answered the phone, his voice sounding surprised and matter-of-fact, she could only say miserably, “I’m in the drugstore on the corner. Come and get me.”

“What’s the matter?” He was not anxious to come.

“Please come and get me,” she said into the black mouthpiece that might or might not tell him, “please come and get me, Brad. Please.”

Men with Their Big Shoes

IT WAS young Mrs. Hart’s first summer living in the country, and her first year being married and the mistress of a house; she was going to have her first baby soon, and it was the first time she had ever had anyone, or thought of having anyone, who could remotely be described as a maid. Young Mrs. Hart spent almost hours every day, while she was resting as the doctor told her to, in peacefully congratulating herself. When she was sitting in the rocking chair on the front porch she could look down the quiet street with the trees and gardens and kind people who smiled at her as they passed; or she could turn her head and look through the wide windows in her own house, into the pretty living-room with the chintz curtains and matching slip-covers and maple furniture; she could raise her eyes a little and look at the ruffled white curtains on the bedroom windows. It was a real house: the milkman left milk there every morning, the brightly painted pots in a row along the porch railing held real plants which grew and needed regular watering; you could cook on the real stove in the kitchen, and Mrs. Anderson was always complaining about the shoe marks on the clean floors, just like a real maid.

“It’s the men who make dirt on the floor,” Mrs. Anderson would say, regarding the print of a heel. “A woman, you watch them, she always puts her feet down quiet. Men with their big shoes.” And she would flick carelessly at the mark with the dustcloth.

Although Mrs. Hart was unreasonably afraid of Mrs. Anderson, she had heard and read so much about how all housewives these days were intimidated by their domestic help that she was never surprised at first by her own timid uneasiness; Mrs. Anderson’s belligerent authority, moreover, seemed to follow naturally from a knowledge of canning and burnt-sugar gravy and setting yeast rolls out to rise. When Mrs. Anderson, all elbows and red face, her hair pulled disagreeably tight, had presented herself first at the back door with an offer to help, Mrs. Hart had accepted blindly, caught between unwashed windows in a litter of unpacking and dust; Mrs. Anderson had started correctly with the kitchen, and made Mrs. Hart a hot cup of tea first thing; “You can’t afford to get too tired,” she said, eyeing Mrs. Hart’s waist, “you got to be careful right along.”

By the time Mrs. Hart discovered that Mrs. Anderson never got anything quite clean, never completely managed to get anything back where it belonged, it was incredible to think of doing anything about it. Mrs. Anderson’s thumbprints were on all the windows and Mrs. Hart’s morning cup of tea was a regular institution; Mrs. Hart put the water on to boil directly after breakfast and Mrs. Anderson made them each a cup of tea when she came at nine. “You need a hot cup of tea to start your day off right,” she said amiably every morning, “it settles your stomach for the day.”

Mrs. Hart never allowed herself to think further about Mrs. Anderson than to feel comfortably proud of having all the housework done for her (“a regular treasure,” she Wrote to her girl friends in New York, “and she fusses over me like I was actually her baby!”); it was not until Mrs. Anderson had been coming dutifully every morning for over a month that Mrs. Hart recognized with sickening conviction that the faint small uneasiness was justified.

It was a warm sunny morning, the first after a week of rain, and Mrs. Hart put on an especially pretty house dress—washed and ironed by Mrs. Anderson—and made her husband a soft-boiled egg for his breakfast, and went down the front walk with him to wave good-bye till he got to the corner and the bus which took him to his job at the bank in the neighboring town. Coming back up the walk to her house, Mrs. Hart admired the sunlight on the green shutters, and spoke affectionately to her next-door neighbor, who was out already sweeping her porch. Pretty soon I’ll have my baby out in the garden in his play pen, Mrs. Hart thought, and left the front door open behind her for the sun to come in and soak into the floor. When she came into the kitchen, Mrs. Anderson was sitting at the table and the tea was poured.

“Good morning,” Mrs. Hart said. “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”

“Morning,” Mrs. Anderson said. She waved at the tea. “I knew you was just out front so I got everything all ready. Can’t start the day off without your cup of tea.”

“I was beginning to think the sun would never come out again,” Mrs. Hart said. She sat down and pulled her cup toward her. “It’s so lovely to be dry and warm again.”

“It settles your stomach, tea does,” Mrs. Anderson said. “I already put the sugar in. You’ll be having trouble with your stomach right along now.”

“You know,” Mrs. Hart said happily, “last summer about this time I was still working in New York and I didn’t think Bill and I were ever going to get married. And now look at me,” she added, and laughed.

“You never know what’s going to happen to you,” Mrs. Anderson said. “When things look worst, you’ll either die or get better. I used to have a neighbor was always saying that.” She sighed and rose, taking her cup with her to the sink. “Of course some of us never get much good coming along,” she said.

“And then everything happened in about two weeks,” Mrs. Hart said. “Bill got this job up here and the girls at the office gave us a waffle iron.”

“It’s up on the shelf,” Mrs. Anderson said. She reached out for Mrs. Hart’s cup. “You sit still,” she said. “You’ll never have another chance to take it easy like this.”

“I can’t remember to sit still all the time,” Mrs. Hart said. “Everything’s too exciting.”

“It’s for your own good,” Mrs. Anderson said. “I’m only thinking of you.”

“You’ve been very nice already,” Mrs. Hart said dutifully, “coming to help every morning like this. And taking such good care of me.”

“I don’t want thanks,” Mrs. Anderson said. “You just come through all right, that’s all I want to see.”

“But I really don’t know what to do without you,” Mrs. Hart said. That ought to be enough for today, she thought suddenly, and laughed aloud at the idea of a portion of gratitude doled out every morning to Mrs. Anderson, like a bonus on her hourly wage. It’s true, though, she thought; I have to say it every day, sooner or later.

“You laughing about something?” Mrs. Anderson said, half-turning with her hard red wrists braced against the sink. “I say something funny?”

“I was just thinking,” Mrs. Hart said quickly, “thinking about the girls I used to be in the office with. They’d be so jealous if they could see me now.”

“Never know when they’re well off,” Mrs. Anderson said.

Mrs. Hart reached out and touched the yellow curtain at the window beside her, thinking of the one-room apartments in New York and the dark office. “I wish I could be cheerful these days,” Mrs. Anderson went on.

Mrs. Hart dropped her hand quickly from the curtain and turned to smile sympathetically at Mrs. Anderson. “I know,” she murmured.

“You never know how bad it can be,” Mrs. Anderson said. She jerked her head toward the back door. “He was at it again. All night long.” By now Mrs. Hart knew how to tell whether “he” meant Mr. Anderson or Mr. Hart; a gesture of Mrs. Anderson’s head toward the back door and the path she took home every day meant Mr. Anderson; the same gesture toward the front door where every night Mrs. Hart met her husband meant Mr. Hart. “Not a minute’s sleep for me,” Mrs. Anderson was saying.

“Isn’t that a shame,” Mrs. Hart said. She stood up quickly and started for the back door. “Dish towels on the line,” she explained.

“I’ll do it, later,” Mrs. Anderson said. “Cursing and yelling,” she went on, “I thought I was going crazy. ‘Why don’t you go on and get out?’ he says to me. Went over and opened the door wide as it would go and yelled so’s all the neighbors could hear him. ‘Why don’t you get out?’ he says.”

“Terrible,” Mrs. Hart said, her hand on the back door knob.

“Thirty-seven years,” Mrs. Anderson said. She shook her head. “And he wants me to get out.” She watched Mrs. Hart light a cigarette and said, “You shouldn’t smoke. You’ll likely be sorry if you go on smoking like that. That’s why I never had any children,” she went on. “What would I do, him acting like that with children around listening?”

Mrs. Hart walked across to the stove and looked into the teapot. “Believe I’ll have another cup,” she said. “Will you have another, Mrs. Anderson?”

“Gives me heartburn,” Mrs. Anderson said. She put the freshly washed cup back on the table. “I just washed this,” she said, “but it’s your cup. And your house. I guess you can do what you want to.”

Mrs. Hart laughed and brought the teapot over to the table. Mrs. Anderson watched her pour the tea and then took the teapot away. “I’ll just wash this,” she said, “before you decide to drink any more.” She dropped her voice. “Too much liquid spoils the kidneys.”

“I always drink a lot of tea and coffee,” Mrs. Hart said.

Mrs. Anderson looked at the dried dishes standing on the drain of the sink, and then picked up three glasses in each great hand. “You sure had a lot of dirty glasses around this morning.”

“I was just too tired last night to clean up,” Mrs. Hart said. Besides, she thought, cleaning up is what I pay her for; and she added, making her voice light, “So I just left everything for you.”

“It’s my job to clean up after people,” Mrs. Anderson said. “Someone always has to do the dirty work for the rest. You have a lot of company?”

“Some people my husband knows in town,” Mrs. Hart said. “About six altogether.”

“He shouldn’t bring his friends home with you like that,” Mrs. Anderson said.

Mrs. Hart thought of the pleasant chatter about the New York theatre and the local roadhouse where they all might go dancing soon, and the pretty compliments on her house, and showing the baby things to the two other young wives, and sighed. She had lost track of what Mrs. Anderson was saying.

“—Right in front of his own wife,” Mrs. Anderson finished, and moved her head significantly toward the front door. “He do much drinking?”

“No, not much,” Mrs. Hart said.

Mrs. Anderson nodded. “I know what you mean,” she said. “You watch them taking one drink after another and you can’t think of any way to tell them to stop. And then something makes them mad and first thing you know they’re telling you to go on and get out.” She nodded again. “There’s nothing any woman can do but make sure when she does have to get out she sure has some place to go.”

Mrs. Hart said carefully, “Now, Mrs. Anderson, I don’t really think that all husbands—”

“You only been married a year,” Mrs. Anderson said dismally, “and no one that’s older around to tell you.”

Mrs. Hart lit a second cigarette from the end of the first. “I’m really not at all worried about my husband’s drinking,” she said formally.

Mrs. Anderson stopped, holding a pile of clean plates. “Other women?” she asked. “Is that what it is?”

“What on earth makes you say that?” Mrs. Hart demanded. “Bill would no more look—”

“You need someone to be looking after you, times like this,” Mrs. Anderson said. “Don’t think I don’t know; you just want to tell someone about it all. I guess all men treat their wives the same, only some of them are drinkers and some of them throw their money away on gambling and some of them chase every young girl they see.” She laughed her abrupt laugh. “And some not so young, if you ask the wives,” she said. “If most women knew how their husbands were going to turn out, there’d be less marrying going on.”

“I think a successful marriage is the woman’s responsibility,” Mrs. Hart said.

“Mrs. Martin now, down at the grocery, she was telling me, the other day, some of the things her husband used to do before he died,” Mrs. Anderson said. “You’d never suspect what some men do.” She looked thoughtfully at the back door. “Some’s worse than others, though. She thinks you’re real sweet, Mrs. Martin does.”

“That’s nice of her,” Mrs. Hart said.

“I didn’t say nothing about him,” Mrs. Anderson said, her head moving toward the front door. “I don’t mention any names, not where anybody’d think I know the people.”

Mrs. Hart thought of Mrs. Martin, keen-eyed and shrill, watching other people’s groceries (“Two loaves of whole wheat today, Mrs. Hart? Company tonight, maybe?”) “I think she’s such a nice person,” Mrs. Hart said, wanting to add, You tell her I said so.

“I’m not saying she isn’t,” Mrs. Anderson said grimly. “You just don’t want to let her figure out anything’s wrong.”

“I’m sure—” Mrs. Hart began.

“I told her,” Mrs. Anderson said, “I said I was sure Mr. Hart never did any running around’s far as I knew. Nor drinking like some. I said I felt like you might be my own daughter sometimes and no man was going to mistreat you while I was around.”

“I wish,” Mrs. Hart began again, a quick fear touching her; her kind neighbors watching her beneath their friendliness, looking out quietly from behind curtains, watching Bill, perhaps? “I don’t think people ought to talk about other people,” she said desperately, “I mean, I don’t think it’s fair to say things when you can’t know for sure.”

Mrs. Anderson laughed again suddenly and went over to open the mop closet. “You don’t want to let anything scare you,” she said, “not right now. Will I do the living-room this morning? I could get the little rugs out to air in the sun. It’s just that he—” the back door “—got me all upset. You know.”

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Hart said. “Isn’t that a shame.”

“Mrs. Martin said why didn’t I come live with you folks,” Mrs. Anderson said, searching violently in the mop closet, her voice sounding muffled and dusty. “Mrs. Martin was saying a young woman like you, just starting out, always needs a friend around.”

Mrs. Hart looked down at her fingers twisting the handle of the cup; she had only drunk half her tea. It’s too late now for me to walk into another room, she thought; I can always say Bill would never allow it. “I met Mrs. Martin in town a few days ago,” she said. “She was wearing an awfully good-looking blue coat.” She smoothed her house dress with her hand, and added irritably, “I wish I could get into a decent dress again.”

“‘Why don’t you get out?’ he says to me.” Mrs. Anderson backed out of the mop closet with a dustpan in one hand and a cleaning cloth in the other. “Drunk and cursing so’s all the neighbors could hear. ‘Why don’t you get out?’ I thought sure you’d hear him even up here.”

“I’m sure he couldn’t mean it,” Mrs. Hart said, trying to make her voice sound final.

“You wouldn’t stand for it,” Mrs. Anderson said. She put the dustpan and cloth down and came over and sat down at the table opposite Mrs. Hart. “Mrs. Martin was thinking if you wanted me to I could come right into your spare room. Do all the cooking.”

“You could,” Mrs. Hart said amiably, “except that I’m going to put the baby in there.”

“We’d put the baby in your room,” Mrs. Anderson said. She laughed and gave Mrs. Hart’s hand a push. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’d keep out of your way. Well, and if you wanted to put the baby in with me then I could get up at night to feed it for you. Guess I could take care of a baby all right.”

Mrs. Hart smiled cheerfully back at Mrs. Anderson. “I’d love to, of course,” she said. “Some day. Right now of course Bill would never let me do it.”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Anderson said. “The men never do, do they? I told Mrs. Martin down at the grocery, she’s the nicest little thing in the world, I said, but her husband wouldn’t let the scrubwoman come live with them.”

“Why, Mrs. Anderson,” Mrs. Hart said, looking horrified, “saying things like that about yourself!”

“And another woman, one who’s older and knows a little more,” Mrs. Anderson said. “She might see a little more, too, maybe.”

Mrs. Hart, her fingers tight on the teacup, caught a quick picture of Mrs. Martin, leaning comfortably across the counter (“I see you’ve got a new star boarder, Mrs. Hart. Mrs. Anderson’ll see that you’re taken good care of!”). And her neighbors, their frozen faces regarding her as she walked down to meet Bill at the bus; the girls in New York, reading her letters together and envying her (“Such a perfect jewel—she’s going to live with us and do all the work!”). Looking up at Mrs. Anderson’s knowing smile across the table, Mrs. Hart realized with a sudden unalterable conviction that she was lost.

The Tooth

THE BUS was waiting, panting heavily at the curb in front of the small bus station, its great blue-and-silver bulk glittering in the moonlight. There were only a few people interested in the bus, and at that time of night no one passing on the sidewalk: the one movie theatre in town had finished its show and closed its doors an hour before, and all the movie patrons had been to the drugstore for ice cream and gone on home; now the drugstore was closed and dark, another silent doorway in the long midnight street. The only town lights were the street lights, the lights in the all-night lunchstand across the street, and the one remaining counter lamp in the bus station where the girl sat in the ticket office with her hat and coat on, only waiting for the New York bus to leave before she went home to bed.

Standing on the sidewalk next to the open door of the bus, Clara Spencer held her husband’s arm nervously. “I feel so funny,” she said.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Do you think I ought to go with you?”

“No, of course not,” she said. “I’ll be all right.” It was hard for her to talk because of her swollen jaw; she kept a handkerchief pressed to her face and held hard to her husband. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” she asked. “I’ll be back tomorrow night at the latest. Or else I’ll call.”

“Everything will be fine,” he said heartily. “By tomorrow noon it’ll all be gone. Tell the dentist if there’s anything wrong I can come right down.”

“I feel so funny,” she said. “Light-headed, and sort of dizzy.”

“That’s because of the dope,” he said. “All that codeine, and the whisky, and nothing to eat all day.”

She giggled nervously. “I couldn’t comb my hair, my hand shook so. I’m glad it’s dark.”

“Try to sleep in the bus,” he said. “Did you take a sleeping pill?”

“Yes,” she said. They were waiting for the bus driver to finish his cup of coffee in the lunchstand; they could see him through the glass window, sitting at the counter, taking his time. “I feel so funny,” she said.

“You know, Clara,” he made his voice very weighty, as though if he spoke more seriously his words would carry more conviction and be therefore more comforting, “you know, I’m glad you’re going down to New York to have Zimmerman take care of this. I’d never forgive myself if it turned out to be something serious and I let you go to this butcher up here.”

“It’s just a toothache,” Clara said uneasily, “nothing very serious about a toothache.”

“You can’t tell,” he said. “It might be abscessed or something; I’m sure he’ll have to pull it.”

“Don’t even talk like that,” she said, and shivered.

“Well, it looks pretty bad,” he said soberly, as before. “Your face so swollen, and all. Don’t you worry.”

“I’m not worrying,” she said. “I just feel as if I were all tooth. Nothing else.”

The bus driver got up from the stool and walked over to pay his check. Clara moved toward the bus, and her husband said, “Take your time, you’ve got plenty of time.”

“I just feel funny,” Clara said.

“Listen,” her husband said, “that tooth’s been bothering you off and on for years; at least six or seven times since I’ve known you you’ve had trouble with that tooth. It’s about time something was done. You had a toothache on our honeymoon,” he finished accusingly.

“Did I?” Clara said. “You know,” she went on, and laughed, “I was in such a hurry I didn’t dress properly. I have on old stockings and I just dumped everything into my good pocketbook.”

“Are you sure you have enough money?” he said.

“Almost twenty-five dollars,” Clara said. “I’ll be home tomorrow.”

“Wire if you need more,” he said. The bus driver appeared in the doorway of the lunchroom. “Don’t worry,” he said.

“Listen,” Clara said suddenly, “are you sure you’ll be all right? Mrs. Lang will be over in the morning in time to make breakfast, and Johnny doesn’t need to go to school if things are too mixed up.”

“I know,” he said.

“Mrs. Lang,” she said, checking on her fingers. “I called Mrs. Lang, I left the grocery order on the kitchen table, you can have the cold tongue for lunch and in case I don’t get back Mrs. Lang will give you dinner. The cleaner ought to come about four o’clock, I won’t be back so give him your brown suit and it doesn’t matter if you forget but be sure to empty the pockets.”

“Wire if you need more money,” he said. “Or call. I’ll stay home tomorrow so you can call at home.”

“Mrs. Lang will take care of the baby,” she said.

“Or you can wire,” he said.

The bus driver came across the street and stood by the entrance to the bus.

“Okay?” the bus driver said.

“Good-bye,” Clara said to her husband.

“You’ll feel all right tomorrow,” her husband said. “It’s only a toothache.”

“I’m fine,” Clara said. “Don’t you worry.” She got on the bus and then stopped, with the bus driver waiting behind her. “Milkman,” she said to her husband. “Leave a note telling him we want eggs.”

“I will,” her husband said. “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” Clara said. She moved on into the bus and behind her the driver swung into his seat. The bus was nearly empty and she went far back and sat down at the window outside which her husband waited. “Good-bye,” she said to him through the glass, “take care of yourself.”

“Good-bye,” he said, waving violently.

The bus stirred, groaned, and pulled itself forward. Clara turned her head to wave good-bye once more and then lay back against the heavy soft seat. Good Lord, she thought, what a thing to do! Outside, the familiar street slipped past, strange and dark and seen, unexpectedly, from the unique station of a person leaving town, going away on a bus. It isn’t as though it’s the first time I’ve ever been to New York, Clara thought indignantly, it’s the whisky and the codeine and the sleeping pill and the toothache. She checked hastily to see if her codeine tablets were in her pocketbook; they had been standing, along with the aspirin and a glass of water, on the dining-room sideboard, but somewhere in the lunatic flight from her home she must have picked them up, because they were in her pocketbook now, along with the twenty-odd dollars and her compact and comb and lipstick. She could tell from the feel of the lipstick that she had brought the old, nearly finished one, not the new one that was a darker shade and had cost two-fifty. There was a run in her stocking and a hole in the toe that she never noticed at home wearing her old comfortable shoes, but which was now suddenly and disagreeably apparent inside her best walking shoes. Well, she thought, I can buy new stockings in New York tomorrow, after the tooth is fixed, after everything’s all right. She put her tongue cautiously on the tooth and was rewarded with a split-second crash of pain.

The bus stopped at a red light and the driver got out of his seat and came back toward her. “Forgot to get your ticket before,” he said.

“I guess I was a little rushed at the last minute,” she said. She found the ticket in her coat pocket and gave it to him. “When do we get to New York?” she asked.

“Five-fifteen,” he said. “Plenty of time for breakfast. One-way ticket?”

“I’m coming back by train,” she said, without seeing why she had to tell him, except that it was late at night and people isolated together in some strange prison like a bus had to be more friendly and communicative than at other times.

“Me, I’m coming back by bus,” he said, and they both laughed, she painfully because of her swollen face. When he went back to his seat far away at the front of the bus she lay back peacefully against the seat. She could feel the sleeping pill pulling at her; the throb of the toothache was distant now, and mingled with the movement of the bus, a steady beat like her heartbeat which she could hear louder and louder, going on through the night. She put her head back and her feet up, discreetly covered with her skirt, and fell asleep without saying good-bye to the town.

She opened her eyes once and they were moving almost silently through the darkness. Her tooth was pulsing steadily and she turned her cheek against the cool back of the seat in weary resignation. There was a thin line of lights along the ceiling of the bus and no other light. Far ahead of her in the bus she could see the other people sitting; the driver, so far away as to be only a tiny figure at the end of a telescope, was straight at the wheel, seemingly awake. She fell back into her fantastic sleep.

She woke up later because the bus had stopped, the end of that silent motion through the darkness so positive a shock that it woke her stunned, and it was a minute before the ache began again. People were moving along the aisle of the bus and the driver, turning around, said, “Fifteen minutes.” She got up and followed everyone else out, all but her eyes still asleep, her feet moving without awareness. They were stopped beside an all-night restaurant, lonely and lighted on the vacant road. Inside, it was warm and busy and full of people. She saw a seat at the end of the counter and sat down, not aware that she had fallen asleep again when someone sat down next to her and touched her arm. When she looked around foggily he said, “Traveling far?”

“Yes,” she said.

He was wearing a blue suit and he looked tall; she could not focus her eyes to see any more.

“You want coffee?” he asked.

She nodded and he pointed to the counter in front of her where a cup of coffee sat steaming.

“Drink it quickly,” he said.

She sipped at it delicately; she may have put her face down and tasted it without lifting the cup. The strange man was talking.

“Even farther than Samarkand,” he was saying, “and the waves ringing on the shore like bells.”

“Okay, folks,” the bus driver said, and she gulped quickly at the coffee, drank enough to get her back into the bus.

When she sat down in her seat again the strange man sat down beside her. It was so dark in the bus that the lights from the restaurant were unbearably glaring and she closed her eyes. When her eyes were shut, before she fell asleep, she was closed in alone with the toothache.

“The flutes play all night,” the strange man said, “and the stars are as big as the moon and the moon is as big as a lake.”

As the bus started up again they slipped back into the darkness and only the thin thread of lights along the ceiling of the bus held them together, brought the back of the bus where she sat along with the front of the bus where the driver sat and the people sitting there so far away from her. The lights tied them together and the strange man next to her was saying, “Nothing to do all day but lie under the trees.”

Inside the bus, traveling on, she was nothing; she was passing the trees and the occasional sleeping houses, and she was in the bus but she was between here and there, joined tenuously to the bus driver by a thread of lights, being carried along without effort of her own.

“My name is Jim,” the strange man said.

She was so deeply asleep that she stirred uneasily without knowledge, her forehead against the window, the darkness moving along beside her.

Then again that numbing shock, and, driven awake, she said, frightened, “What’s happened?”

“It’s all right,” the strange man—Jim—said immediately. “Come along.”

She followed him out of the bus, into the same restaurant, seemingly, but when she started to sit down at the same seat at the end of the counter he took her hand and led her to a table. “Go and wash your face,” he said. “Come back here afterward.”

She went into the ladies’ room and there was a girl standing there powdering her nose. Without turning around the girl said, “Cost’s a nickel. Leave the door fixed so’s the next one won’t have to pay.”

The door was wedged so it would not close, with half a match folder in the lock. She left it the same way and went back to the table where Jim was sitting.

“What do you want?” she said, and he pointed to another cup of coffee and a sandwich. “Go ahead,” he said.

While she was eating her sandwich she heard his voice, musical and soft, “And while we were sailing past the island we heard a voice calling us….”

Back in the bus Jim said, “Put your head on my shoulder now, and go to sleep.”

“I’m all right,” she said.

“No,” Jim said. “Before, your head was rattling against the window.”

Once more she slept, and once more the bus stopped and she woke frightened, and Jim brought her again to a restaurant and more coffee. Her tooth came alive then, and with one hand pressing her cheek she searched through the pockets of her coat and then through her pocketbook until she found the little bottle of codeine pills and she took two while Jim watched her.

She was finishing her coffee when she heard the sound of the bus motor and she started up suddenly, hurrying, and with Jim holding her arm she fled back into the dark shelter of her seat. The bus was moving forward when she realized that she had left her bottle of codeine pills sitting on the table in the restaurant and now she was at the mercy of her tooth. For a minute she stared back at the lights of the restaurant through the bus window and then she put her head on Jim’s shoulder and he was saying as she fell asleep, “The sand is so white it looks like snow, but it’s hot, even at night it’s hot under your feet.”

Then they stopped for the last time, and Jim brought her out of the bus and they stood for a minute in New York together. A woman passing them in the station said to the man following her with suitcases, “We’re just on time, it’s five-fifteen.”

“I’m going to the dentist,” she said to Jim.

“I know,” he said. “I’ll watch out for you.”

He went away, although she did not see him go. She thought to watch for his blue suit going through the door, but there was nothing.

I ought to have thanked him, she thought stupidly, and went slowly into the station restaurant, where she ordered coffee again. The counter man looked at her with the worn sympathy of one who has spent a long night watching people get off and on buses. “Sleepy?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

She discovered after a while that the bus station joined Pennsylvania Terminal and she was able to get into the main waiting-room and find a seat on one of the benches by the time she fell asleep again.

Then someone shook her rudely by the shoulder and said, “What train you taking, lady, it’s nearly seven.” She sat up and saw her pocketbook on her lap, her feet neatly crossed, a clock glaring into her face. She said, “Thank you,” and got up and walked blindly past the benches and got on to the escalator. Someone got on immediately behind her and touched her arm; she turned and it was Jim. “The grass is so green and so soft,” he said, smiling, “and the water of the river is so cool.”

She stared at him tiredly. When the escalator reached the top she stepped off and started to walk to the street she saw ahead. Jim came along beside her and his voice went on, “The sky is bluer than anything you’ve ever seen, and the songs….”

She stepped quickly away from him and thought that people were looking at her as they passed. She stood on the corner waiting for the light to change and Jim came swiftly up to her and then away. “Look,” he said as he passed, and he held out a handful of pearls.

Across the street there was a restaurant, just opening. She went in and sat down at a table, and a waitress was standing beside her frowning. “You was asleep,” the waitress said accusingly.

“I’m very sorry,” she said. It was morning. “Poached eggs and coffee, please.”

It was a quarter to eight when she left the restaurant, and she thought, if I take a bus, and go straight downtown now, I can sit in the drugstore across the street from the dentist’s office and have more coffee until about eight-thirty and then go into the dentist’s when it opens and he can take me first.

The buses were beginning to fill up; she got into the first bus that came along and could not find a seat. She wanted to go to Twenty-third Street, and got a seat just as they were passing Twenty-sixth Street; when she woke she was so far downtown that it took her nearly half-an-hour to find a bus and get back to Twenty-third.

At the corner of Twenty-third Street, while she was waiting for the light to change, she was caught up in a crowd of people, and when they crossed the street and separated to go different directions someone fell into step beside her. For a minute she walked on without looking up, staring resentfully at the sidewalk, her tooth burning her, and then she looked up, but there was no blue suit among the people pressing by on either side.

When she turned into the office building where her dentist was, it was still very early morning. The doorman in the office building was freshly shaven and his hair was combed; he held the door open briskly, as at five o’clock he would be sluggish, his hair faintly out of place. She went in through the door with a feeling of achievement; she had come successfully from one place to another, and this was the end of her journey and her objective.

The clean white nurse sat at the desk in the office; her eyes took in the swollen cheek, the tired shoulders, and she said, “You poor thing, you look worn out.”

“I have a toothache.” The nurse half-smiled, as though she were still waiting for the day when someone would come in and say, “My feet hurt.” She stood up into the professional sunlight. “Come right in,” she said. “We won’t make you wait.”

There was sunlight on the headrest of the dentist’s chair, on the round white table, on the drill bending its smooth chromium head. The dentist smiled with the same tolerance as the nurse; perhaps all human ailments were contained in the teeth, and he could fix them if people would only come to him in time. The nurse said smoothly, “I’ll get her file, doctor. We thought we’d better bring her right in.”

She felt, while they were taking an X-ray, that there was nothing in her head to stop the malicious eye of the camera, as though the camera would look through her and photograph the nails in the wall next to her, or the dentist’s cuff buttons, or the small thin bones of the dentist’s instruments; the dentist said, “Extraction,” regretfully to the nurse, and the nurse said, “Yes, doctor, I’ll call them right away.”

Her tooth, which had brought her here unerringly, seemed now the only part of her to have any identity. It seemed to have had its picture taken without her; it was the important creature which must be recorded and examined and gratified; she was only its unwilling vehicle, and only as such was she of interest to the dentist and the nurse, only as the bearer of her tooth was she worth their immediate and practised attention. The dentist handed her a slip of paper with the picture of a full set of teeth drawn on it; her living tooth was checked with a black mark, and across the top of the paper was written “Lower molar; extraction.”

“Take this slip,” the dentist said, “and go right up to the address on this card; it’s a surgeon dentist. They’ll take care of you there.”

“What will they do?” she said. Not the question she wanted to ask, not: What about me? or, How far down do the roots go?

“They’ll take that tooth out,” the dentist said testily, turning away. “Should have been done years ago.”

I’ve stayed too long, she thought, he’s tired of my tooth. She got up out of the dentist chair and said, “Thank you. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” the dentist said. At the last minute he smiled at her, showing her his full white teeth, all in perfect control.

“Are you all right? Does it bother you too much?” the nurse asked.

“I’m all right.”

“I can give you some codeine tablets,” the nurse said. “We’d rather you didn’t take anything right now, of course, but I think I could let you have them if the tooth is really bad.”

“No,” she said, remembering her little bottle of codeine pills on the table of a restaurant between here and there. “No, it doesn’t bother me too much.”

“Well,” the nurse said, “good luck.”

She went down the stairs and out past the doorman; in the fifteen minutes she had been upstairs he had lost a little of his pristine morningness, and his bow was just a fraction smaller than before.

“Taxi?” he asked, and, remembering the bus down to Twenty-third Street, she said, “Yes.”

Just as the doorman came back from the curb, bowing to the taxi he seemed to believe he had invented, she thought a hand waved to her from the crowd across the street.

She read the address on the card the dentist had given her and repeated it carefully to the taxi driver. With the card and the little slip of paper with “Lower molar” written on it and her tooth identified so clearly, she sat without moving, her hands still around the papers, her eyes almost closed. She thought she must have been asleep again when the taxi stopped suddenly, and the driver, reaching around to open the door, said, “Here we are, lady.” He looked at her curiously.

“I’m going to have a tooth pulled,” she said.

“Jesus,” the taxi driver said. She paid him and he said, “Good luck,” as he slammed the door.

This was a strange building, the entrance flanked by medical signs carved in stone; the doorman here was faintly professional, as though he were competent to prescribe if she did not care to go any farther. She went past him, going straight ahead until an elevator opened its door to her. In the elevator she showed the elevator man the card and he said, “Seventh floor.”

She had to back up in the elevator for a nurse to wheel in an old lady in a wheel chair. The old lady was calm and restful, sitting there in the elevator with a rug over her knees; she said, “Nice day” to the elevator operator and he said, “Good to see the sun,” and then the old lady lay back in her chair and the nurse straightened the rug around her knees and said, “Now we’re not going to worry,” and the old lady said irritably, “Who’s worrying?”

They got out at the fourth floor. The elevator went on up and then the operator said, “Seven,” and the elevator stopped and the door opened.

“Straight down the hall and to your left,” the operator said.

There were closed doors on either side of the hall. Some of them said “DDS,” some of them said “Clinic,” some of them said “X-Ray.” One of them, looking wholesome and friendly and somehow most comprehensible, said “Ladies.” Then she turned to the left and found a door with the name on the card and she opened it and went in. There was a nurse sitting behind a glass window, almost as in a bank, and potted palms in tubs in the corners of the waiting room, and new magazines and comfortable chairs. The nurse behind the glass window said, “Yes?” as though you had overdrawn your account with the dentist and were two teeth in arrears.

She handed her slip of paper through the glass window and the nurse looked at it and said, “Lower molar, yes. They called about you. Will you come right in, please? Through the door to your left.”

Into the vault? she almost said, and then silently opened the door and went in. Another nurse was waiting, and she smiled and turned, expecting to be followed, with no visible doubt about her right to lead.

There was another X-ray, and the nurse told another nurse: “Lower molar,” and the other nurse said, “Come this way, please.”

There were labyrinths and passages, seeming to lead into the heart of the office building, and she was put, finally, in a cubicle where there was a couch with a pillow and a wash-basin and a chair.

“Wait here,” the nurse said. “Relax if you can.”

“I’ll probably go to sleep,” she said.

“Fine,” the nurse said. “You won’t have to wait long.”

She waited probably, for over an hour, although she spent the time half-sleeping, waking only when someone passed the door; occasionally the nurse looked in and smiled, once she said, “Won’t have to wait much longer.” Then, suddenly, the nurse was back, no longer smiling, no longer the good hostess, but efficient and hurried. “Come along,” she said, and moved purposefully out of the little room into the hallways again.

Then, quickly, more quickly than she was able to see, she was sitting in the chair and there was a towel around her head and a towel under her chin and the nurse was leaning a hand on her shoulder.

“Will it hurt?” she asked.

“No,” the nurse said, smiling. “You know it won’t hurt, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said.

The dentist came in and smiled down on her from over her head. “Well,” he said.

“Will it hurt?” she said.

“Now,” he said cheerfully, “we couldn’t stay in business if we hurt people.” All the time he talked he was busying himself with metal hidden under a towel, and great machinery being wheeled in almost silently behind her. “We couldn’t stay in business at all,” he said. “All you’ve got to worry about is telling us all your secrets while you’re asleep. Want to watch out for that, you know. Lower molar?” he said to the nurse.

“Lower molar, doctor,” she said.

Then they put the metal-tasting rubber mask over her face and the dentist said, “You know,” two or three times absent-mindedly while she could still see him over the mask. The nurse said “Relax your hands, dear,” and after a long time she felt her fingers relaxing.

First of all things get so far away, she thought, remember this. And remember the metallic sound and taste of all of it. And the outrage.

And then the whirling music, the ringing confusedly loud music that went on and on, around and around, and she was running as fast as she could down a long horribly clear hallway with doors on both sides and at the end of the hallway was Jim, holding out his hands and laughing, and calling something she could never hear because of the loud music, and she was running and then she said, “I’m not afraid,” and someone from the door next to her took her arm and pulled her through and the world widened alarmingly until it would never stop and then it stopped with the head of the dentist looking down at her and the window dropped into place in front of her and the nurse was holding her arm.

“Why did you pull me back?” she said, and her mouth was full of blood. “I wanted to go on.”

“I didn’t pull you,” the nurse said, but the dentist said, “She’s not out of it yet.”

She began to cry without moving and felt the tears rolling down her face and the nurse wiped them off with a towel. There was no blood anywhere around except in her mouth; everything was as clean as before. The dentist was gone, suddenly, and the nurse put out her arm and helped her out of the chair. “Did I talk?” she asked suddenly, anxiously. “Did I say anything?”

“You said, ‘I’m not afraid,’” the nurse said soothingly. “Just as you were coming out of it.”

“No,” she said, stopping to pull at the arm around her. “Did I say anything? Did I say where he is?”

“You didn’t say anything,” the nurse said. “The doctor was only teasing you.”

“Where’s my tooth?” she asked suddenly, and the nurse laughed and said, “All gone. Never bother you again.”

She was back in the cubicle, and she lay down on the couch and cried, and the nurse brought her whisky in a paper cup and set it on the edge of the wash-basin.

“God has given me blood to drink,” she said to the nurse, and the nurse said, “Don’t rinse your mouth or it won’t clot.”

After a long time the nurse came back and said to her from the doorway, smiling, “I see you’re awake again.”

“Why?” she said.

“You’ve been asleep,” the nurse said. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

She sat up; she was dizzy and it seemed that she had been in the cubicle all her life.

“Do you want to come along now?” the nurse said, all kindness again. She held out the same arm, strong enough to guide any wavering footstep; this time they went back through the long corridor to where the nurse sat behind the bank window.

“All through?” this nurse said brightly. “Sit down a minute, then.” She indicated a chair next to the glass window, and turned away to write busily. “Do not rinse your mouth for two hours,” she said, without turning around. “Take a laxative tonight, take two aspirin if there is any pain. If there is much pain or excessive bleeding, notify this office at once. All right?” she said, and smiled brightly again.

There was a new little slip of paper; this one said, “Extraction,” and underneath, “Do not rinse mouth. Take mild laxative. Two aspirin for pain. If pain is excessive or any hemorrhage occurs, notify office.”

“Good-bye,” the nurse said pleasantly.

“Good-bye,” she said.

With the little slip of paper in her hand, she went out through the glass door and, still almost asleep, turned the corner and started down the hall. When she opened her eyes a little and saw that it was a long hall with doorways on either side, she stopped and then saw the door marked “Ladies” and went in. Inside there was a vast room with windows and wicker chairs and glaring white tiles and glittering silver faucets; there were four or five women around the wash-basins, combing their hair, putting on lipstick. She went directly to the nearest of the three wash-basins, took a paper towel, dropped her pocketbook and the little slip of paper on the floor next to her, and fumbled with the faucets, soaking the towel until it was dripping. Then she slapped it against her face violently. Her eyes cleared and she felt fresher, so she soaked the paper again and rubbed her face with it. She felt out blindly for another paper towel, and the woman next to her handed her one, with a laugh she could hear, although she could not see for the water in her eyes. She heard one of the women say, “Where we going for lunch?” and another one say, “Just downstairs, prob’ly. Old fool says I gotta be back in half-an-hour.”

Then she realized that at the wash-basin she was in the way of the women in a hurry so she dried her face quickly. It was when she stepped a little aside to let someone else get to the basin and stood up and glanced into the mirror that she realized with a slight stinging shock that she had no idea which face was hers!

She looked into the mirror as though into a group of strangers, all staring at her or around her; no one was familiar in the group, no one smiled at her or looked at her with recognition; you’d think my own face would know me, she thought, with a queer numbness in her throat. There was a creamy chinless face with bright blond hair, and a sharp-looking face under a red veiled hat, and a colorless anxious face with brown hair pulled straight back, and a square rosy face under a square haircut, and two or three more faces pushing close to the mirror, moving, regarding themselves. Perhaps it’s not a mirror, she thought, maybe it’s a window and I’m looking straight through at women washing on the other side. But there were women combing their hair and consulting the mirror; the group was on her side, and she thought, I hope I’m not the blonde, and lifted her hand and put it on her cheek.

She was the pale anxious one with the hair pulled back and when she realized it she was indignant and moved hurriedly back through the crowd of women, thinking, It isn’t fair, why don’t I have any color in my face? There were some pretty faces there, why didn’t I take one of those? I didn’t have time, she told herself sullenly, they didn’t give me time to think, I could have had one of the nice faces, even the blonde would be better.

She backed up and sat down in one of the wicker chairs. It’s mean, she was thinking. She put her hand up and felt her hair; it was loosened after her sleep but that was definitely the way she wore it, pulled straight back all around and fastened at the back of her neck with a wide tight barrette. Like a schoolgirl, she thought, only—remembering the pale face in the mirror—only I’m older than that. She unfastened the barrette with difficulty and brought it around where she could look at it. Her hair fell softly around her face; it was warm and reached to her shoulders. The barrette was silver; engraved on it was the name, “Clara.”

“Clara,” she said aloud. “Clara?” Two of the women leaving the room smiled back at her over their shoulders; almost all the women were leaving now, correctly combed and lipsticked, hurrying out talking together. In the space of a second, like birds leaving a tree, they all were gone and she sat alone in the room. She dropped the barrette into the ashstand next to her chair; the ashstand was deep and metal, and the barrette made a satisfactory clang falling down. Her hair down on her shoulders, she opened her pocketbook, and began to take things out, setting them on her lap as she did so. Handkerchief, plain, white, uninitialled. Compact, square and brown tortoise-shell plastic, with a powder compartment and a rouge compartment; the rouge compartment had obviously never been used, although the powder cake was half-gone. That’s why I’m so pale, she thought, and set the compact down. Lipstick, a rose shade, almost finished. A comb, an opened package of cigarettes and a package of matches, a change purse, and a wallet. The change purse was red imitation leather with a zipper across the top; she opened it and dumped the money out into her hand. Nickels, dimes, pennies, a quarter. Ninety-seven cents. Can’t go far on that, she thought, and opened the brown leather wallet; there was money in it but she looked first for papers and found nothing. The only thing in the wallet was money. She counted it; there were nineteen dollars. I can go a little farther on that, she thought.

There was nothing else in the pocketbook. No keys—shouldn’t I have keys? she wondered—no papers, no address book, no identification. The pocketbook itself was imitation leather, light grey, and she looked down and discovered that she was wearing a dark grey flannel suit and a salmon pink blouse with a ruffle around the neck. Her shoes were black and stout with moderate heels and they had laces, one of which was untied. She was wearing beige stockings and there was a ragged tear in the right knee and a great ragged run going down her leg and ending in a hole in the toe which she could feel inside her shoe. She was wearing a pin on the lapel of her suit which, when she turned it around to look at it, was a blue plastic letter C. She took the pin off and dropped it into the ashstand, and it made a sort of clatter at the bottom, with a metallic clang when it landed on the barrette. Her hands were small, with stubby fingers and no nail polish; she wore a thin gold wedding ring on her left hand and no other jewelry.

Sitting alone in the ladies’ room in the wicker chair, she thought, The least I can do is get rid of these stockings. Since no one was around she took off her shoes and stripped away the stockings with a feeling of relief when her toe was released from the hole. Hide them, she thought: the paper towel wastebasket. When she stood up she got a better sight of herself in the mirror; it was worse than she had thought: the grey suit bagged in the seat, her legs were bony, and her shoulders sagged. I look fifty, she thought; and then, consulting the face, but I can’t be more than thirty. Her hair hung down untidily around the pale face and with sudden anger she fumbled in the pocketbook and found the lipstick; she drew an emphatic rosy mouth on the pale face, realizing as she did so that she was not very expert at it, and with the red mouth the face looking at her seemed somehow better to her, so she opened the compact and put on pink cheeks with the rouge. The cheeks were uneven and patent, and the red mouth glaring, but at least the face was no longer pale and anxious.

She put the stockings into the wastebasket and went barelegged out into the hall again, and purposefully to the elevator. The elevator operator said, “Down?” when he saw her and she stepped in and the elevator carried her silently downstairs. She went back past the grave professional doorman and out into the street where people were passing, and she stood in front of the building and waited. After a few minutes Jim came out of a crowd of people passing and came over to her and took her hand.

Somewhere between here and there was her bottle of codeine pills, upstairs on the floor of the ladies’ room she had left a little slip of paper headed “Extraction”; seven floors below, oblivious of the people who stepped sharply along the sidewalk, not noticing their occasional curious glances, her hand in Jim’s and her hair down on her shoulders, she ran barefoot through hot sand.

Got a Letter from Jimmy

SOMETIMES, she thought, stacking the dishes in the kitchen, sometimes I wonder if men are quite sane, any of them. Maybe they’re all just crazy and every other woman knows it but me, and my mother never told me and my roommate just didn’t mention it and all the other wives think I know….

“Got a letter from Jimmy today,” he said, when he was unfolding his napkin.

So you got it at last, she thought, so he finally broke down and wrote you, maybe now it will be all right, everything settled and friendly again…. “What did he have to say?” she asked casually.

“Don’t know,” he said, “didn’t open it.”

My God, she thought, seeing it clearly all the way through right then. She waited.

“Going to send it back to him tomorrow unopened.”

I could have figured that one out by myself, she thought. I couldn’t have kept that letter closed for five minutes. I would have figured out something nasty like tearing it up and sending it back in little pieces, or getting someone to write a sharp answer for me, but I couldn’t have kept it around for five minutes.

“Had lunch with Tom today,” he said, as though the subject were closed, just exactly as though the subject were closed, she thought, just exactly as though he never expected to think about it again. Maybe he doesn’t, she thought, my God.

“I think you ought to open Jimmy’s letter,” she said. Maybe it will all be just as easy as that, she thought, maybe he’ll say all right and go open it, maybe he’ll go home and live with his mother for a while.

“Why?” he said.

Start easy, she thought. You’ll kill yourself if you don’t. “Oh, I guess because I’m curious and I’ll just die if I don’t see what’s in it,” she said.

“Open it,” he said.

Just watch me make a move for it, she thought. “Seriously,” she said, “it’s so silly to hold a grudge against a letter. Against Jimmy, all right. But not to read a letter out of spite is silly.” Oh God, she thought, I said silly. I said silly twice. That finishes it. If he hears me say he’s silly I’m through, I can talk all night.

“Why should I read it?” he said, “I wouldn’t be interested in anything he had to say.”

“I would.”

“Open it,” he said.

Oh God, she thought, oh God oh God, I’ll steal it out of his brief case, I’ll scramble it up with his eggs tomorrow, but I won’t take a dare like that, he’d break my arm.

“Okay,” she said, “so I’m not interested.” Make him think you’re through, let him get nicely settled in his chair, let him get to the lemon pie, get him off on some other subject.

“Had lunch with Tom today,” he said.

Stacking the dishes in the kitchen, she thought, Maybe he means it, maybe he could kill himself first, maybe he really wasn’t curious and even if he were he’d drive himself into a hysterical state trying to read through the envelope, locked in the bathroom. Or maybe he just got it and said, Oh, from Jimmy, and threw it in his brief case and forgot it. I’ll murder him if he did, she thought, I’ll bury him in the cellar.

Later, when he was drinking his coffee, she said, “Going to show it to John?” John will die too, she thought, John will edge around it just like I’m doing.

“Show what to John?” he said.

“Jimmy’s letter.”

“Oh,” he said. “Sure.”

A tremendous triumph captured her. So he really wants to show it to John, she thought, so he just wants to see for himself that he’s still mad, he wants John to say, Really, are you still mad at Jimmy? And he wants to be able to say yes. Out of her great triumph she thought, He really has been thinking about it all this time, too; and she said, before she could stop herself:

“Thought you were going to send it back unopened?”

He looked up. “I forgot,” he said. “Guess I will.”

I had to open my mouth, she thought. He forgot. The trouble is, she thought, he really did forget. It slipped his mind completely, he never gave it a second thought, if it was a snake it would have bit him. Under the cellar steps, she thought, with his head bashed in and his goddam letter under his folded hands, and it’s worth it, she thought, oh it’s worth it.

The Lottery

THE MORNING of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 26th, but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.

The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play, and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands. Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix—the villagers pronounced this name “Dellacroy”—eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys. The girls stood aside, talking among themselves, looking over their shoulders at the boys, and the very small children rolled in the dust or clung to the hands of their older brothers or sisters.

Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes. They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed. The women, wearing faded house dresses and sweaters, came shortly after their menfolk. They greeted one another and exchanged bits of gossip as they went to join their husbands. Soon the women, standing by their husbands, began to call to their children, and the children came reluctantly, having to be called four or five times. Bobby Martin ducked under his mother’s grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones. His father spoke up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and took his place between his father and his oldest brother.

The lottery was conducted—as were the square dances, the teen-age club, the Halloween program—by Mr. Summers, who had time and energy to devote to civic activities. He was a round-faced, jovial man and he ran the coal business, and people were sorry for him, because he had no children and his wife was a scold. When he arrived in the square, carrying the black wooden box, there was a murmur of conversation among the villagers, and he waved and called, “Little late today, folks.” The postmaster, Mr. Graves, followed him, carrying a three-legged stool, and the stool was put in the center of the square and Mr. Summers set the black box down on it. The villagers kept their distance, leaving a space between themselves and the stool, and when Mr. Summers said, “Some of you fellows want to give me a hand?” there was a hesitation before two men, Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, came forward to hold the box steady on the stool while Mr. Summers stirred up the papers inside it.

The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here. Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off without anything’s being done. The black box grew shabbier each year; by now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained.

Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, held the black box securely on the stool until Mr. Summers had stirred the papers thoroughly with his hand. Because so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded, Mr. Summers had been successful in having slips of paper substituted for the chips of wood that had been used for generations. Chips of wood, Mr. Summers had argued, had been all very well when the village was tiny, but now that the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep on growing, it was necessary to use something that would fit more easily into the black box. The night before the lottery, Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves made up the slips of paper and put them in the box, and it was then taken to the safe of Mr. Summers’ coal company and locked up until Mr. Summers was ready to take it to the square next morning. The rest of the year, the box was put away, sometimes one place, sometimes another; it had spent one year in Mr. Graves’s barn and another year underfoot in the post office, and sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there.

There was a great deal of fussing to be done before Mr. Summers declared the lottery open. There were the lists to make up—of heads of families, heads of households in each family, members of each household in each family. There was the proper swearing-in of Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as the official of the lottery; at one time, some people remembered, there had been a recital of some sort, performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory, tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly each year; some people believed that the official of the lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it, others believed that he was supposed to walk among the people, but years and years ago this part of the ritual had been allowed to lapse. There had been, also, a ritual salute, which the official of the lottery had had to use in addressing each person who came up to draw from the box, but this also had changed with time, until now it was felt necessary only for the official to speak to each person approaching. Mr. Summers was very good at all this; in his clean white shirt and blue jeans, with one hand resting carelessly on the black box, he seemed very proper and important as he talked interminably to Mr. Graves and the Martins.

Just as Mr. Summers finally left off talking and turned to the assembled villagers, Mrs. Hutchinson came hurriedly along the path to the square, her sweater thrown over her shoulders, and slid into place in the back of the crowd. “Clean forgot what day it was,” she said to Mrs. Delacroix, who stood next to her, and they both laughed softly. “Thought my old man was out back stacking wood,” Mrs. Hutchinson went on, “and then I looked out the window and the kids was gone, and then I remembered it was the twenty-seventh and came a-running.” She dried her hands on her apron, and Mrs. Delacroix said, “You’re in time, though. They’re still talking away up there.”

Mrs. Hutchinson craned her neck to see through the crowd and found her husband and children standing near the front. She tapped Mrs. Delacroix on the arm as a farewell and began to make her way through the crowd. The people separated good-humoredly to let her through; two or three people said, in voices just loud enough to be heard across the crowd, “Here comes your Missus Hutchinson,” and “Bill, she made it after all.” Mrs. Hutchinson reached her husband, and Mr. Summers, who had been waiting, said cheerfully, “Thought we were going to have to get on without you, Tessie.” Mrs. Hutchinson said, grinning, “Wouldn’t have me leave m’dishes in the sink, now, would you, Joe?,” and soft laughter ran through the crowd as the people stirred back into position after Mrs. Hutchinson’s arrival.

“Well, now,” Mr. Summers said soberly, “guess we better get started, get this over with, so’s we can go back to work. Anybody ain’t here?”

“Dunbar,” several people said. “Dunbar, Dunbar.”

Mr. Summers consulted his list. “Clyde Dunbar,” he said. “That’s right. He’s broke his leg, hasn’t he? Who’s drawing for him?”

“Me, I guess,” a woman said, and Mr. Summers turned to look at her. “Wife draws for her husband,” Mr. Summers said. “Don’t you have a grown boy to do it for you, Janey?” Although Mr. Summers and everyone else in the village knew the answer perfectly well, it was the business of the official of the lottery to ask such questions formally. Mr. Summers waited with an expression of polite interest while Mrs. Dunbar answered.

“Horace’s not but sixteen yet,” Mrs. Dunbar said regretfully. “Guess I gotta fill in for the old man this year.”

“Right,” Mr. Summers said. He made a note on the list he was holding. Then he asked, “Watson boy drawing this year?”

A tall boy in the crowd raised his hand. “Here,” he said. “I’m drawing for m’mother and me.” He blinked his eyes nervously and ducked his head as several voices in the crowd said things like “Good fellow, Jack,” and “Glad to see your mother’s got a man to do it.”

“Well,” Mr. Summers said, “guess that’s everyone. Old Man Warner make it?”

“Here,” a voice said, and Mr. Summers nodded.

A sudden hush fell on the crowd as Mr. Summers cleared his throat and looked at the list. “All ready?” he called. “Now, I’ll read the names—heads of families first—and the men come up and take a paper out of the box. Keep the paper folded in your hand without looking at it until everyone has had a turn. Everything clear?”

The people had done it so many times that they only half listened to the directions; most of them were quiet, wetting their lips, not looking around. Then Mr. Summers raised one hand high and said, “Adams.” A man disengaged himself from the crowd and came forward. “Hi, Steve,” Mr. Summers said, and Mr. Adams said, “Hi, Joe.” They grinned at one another humorlessly and nervously. Then Mr. Adams reached into the black box and took out a folded paper. He held it firmly by one corner as he turned and went hastily back to his place in the crowd, where he stood a little apart from his family, not looking down at his hand.

“Allen,” Mr. Summers said. “Anderson…. Bentham.”

“Seems like there’s no time at all between lotteries any more,” Mrs. Delacroix said to Mrs. Graves in the back row. “Seems like we got through with the last one only last week.”

“Time sure goes fast,” Mrs. Graves said.

“Clark…. Delacroix.”

“There goes my old man,” Mrs. Delacroix said. She held her breath while her husband went forward.

“Dunbar,” Mr. Summers said, and Mrs. Dunbar went steadily to the box while one of the women said, “Go on, Janey,” and another said, “There she goes.”

“We’re next,” Mrs. Graves said. She watched while Mr. Graves came around from the side of the box, greeted Mr. Summers gravely, and selected a slip of paper from the box. By now, all through the crowd there were men holding the small folded papers in their large hands, turning them over and over nervously. Mrs. Dunbar and her two sons stood together, Mrs. Dunbar holding the slip of paper.

“Harburt…. Hutchinson.”

“Get up there, Bill,” Mrs. Hutchinson said, and the people near her laughed.

“Jones.”

“They do say,” Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, “that over in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery.”

Old Man Warner snorted. “Pack of crazy fools,” he said. “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’ First thing you know, we’d all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There’s always been a lottery,” he added petulantly. “Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody.”

“Some places have already quit lotteries,” Mrs. Adams said.

“Nothing but trouble in that,” Old Man Warner said stoutly. “Pack of young fools.”

“Martin.” And Bobby Martin watched his father go forward. “Overdyke…. Percy.”

“I wish they’d hurry,” Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son. “I wish they’d hurry.”

“They’re almost through,” her son said.

“You get ready to run tell Dad,” Mrs. Dunbar said.

Mr. Summers called his own name and then stepped forward precisely and selected a slip from the box. Then he called, “Warner.”

“Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery,” Old Man Warner said as he went through the crowd. “Seventy-seventh time.”

“Watson.” The tall boy came awkwardly through the crowd. Someone said, “Don’t be nervous, Jack,” and Mr. Summers said, “Take your time, son.”

“Zanini.”

After that, there was a long pause, a breathless pause, until Mr. Summers, holding his slip of paper in the air, said, “All right, fellows.” For a minute, no one moved, and then all the slips of paper were opened. Suddenly, all the women began to speak at once, saying, “Who is it?,” “Who’s got it?,” “Is it the Dunbars?,” “Is it the Watsons?” Then the voices began to say, “It’s Hutchinson. It’s Bill,” “Bill Hutchinson’s got it.”

“Go tell your father,” Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son.

People began to look around to see the Hutchinsons. Bill Hutchinson was standing quiet, staring down at the paper in his hand. Suddenly, Tessie Hutchinson shouted to Mr. Summers, “You didn’t give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn’t fair!”

“Be a good sport, Tessie,” Mrs. Delacroix called, and Mrs. Graves said, “All of us took the same chance.”

“Shut up, Tessie,” Bill Hutchinson said.

“Well, everyone,” Mr. Summers said, “that was done pretty fast, and now we’ve got to be hurrying a little more to get done in time.” He consulted his next list. “Bill,” he said, “you draw for the Hutchinson family. You got any other households in the Hutchinsons?”

“There’s Don and Eva,” Mrs. Hutchinson yelled. “Make them take their chance!”

“Daughters draw with their husbands’ families, Tessie,” Mr. Summers said gently. “You know that as well as anyone else.”

“It wasn’t fair,” Tessie said.

“I guess not, Joe,” Bill Hutchinson said regretfully. “My daughter draws with her husband’s family, that’s only fair. And I’ve got no other family except the kids.”

“Then, as far as drawing for families is concerned, it’s you,” Mr. Summers said in explanation, “and as far as drawing for households is concerned, that’s you, too. Right?”

“Right,” Bill Hutchinson said.

“How many kids, Bill?” Mr. Summers asked formally.

“Three,” Bill Hutchinson said. “There’s Bill, Jr., and Nancy, and little Dave. And Tessie and me.”

“All right, then,” Mr. Summers said. “Harry, you got their tickets back?”

Mr. Graves nodded and held up the slips of paper. “Put them in the box, then,” Mr. Summers directed. “Take Bill’s and put it in.”

“I think we ought to start over,” Mrs. Hutchinson said, as quietly as she could. “I tell you it wasn’t fair. You didn’t give him time enough to choose. Everybody saw that.”

Mr. Graves had selected the five slips and put them in the box, and he dropped all the papers but those onto the ground, where the breeze caught them and lifted them off.

“Listen, everybody,” Mrs. Hutchinson was saying to the people around her.

“Ready, Bill?” Mr. Summers asked, and Bill Hutchinson, with one quick glance around at his wife and children, nodded.

“Remember,” Mr. Summers said, “take the slips and keep them folded until each person has taken one. Harry, you help little Dave.” Mr. Graves took the hand of the little boy, who came willingly with him up to the box. “Take a paper out of the box, Davy,” Mr. Summers said. Davy put his hand into the box and laughed. “Take just one paper,” Mr. Summers said. “Harry, you hold it for him.” Mr. Graves took the child’s hand and removed the folded paper from the tight fist and held it while little Dave stood next to him and looked up at him wonderingly.

“Nancy next,” Mr. Summers said. Nancy was twelve, and her school friends breathed heavily as she went forward, switching her skirt, and took a slip daintily from the box. “Bill, Jr.,” Mr. Summers said, and Billy, his face red and his feet overlarge, nearly knocked the box over as he got a paper out. “Tessie,” Mr. Summers said. She hesitated for a minute, looking around defiantly, and then set her lips and went up to the box. She snatched a paper out and held it behind her.

“Bill,” Mr. Summers said, and Bill Hutchinson reached into the box and felt around, bringing his hand out at last with the slip of paper in it.

The crowd was quiet. A girl whispered, “I hope it’s not Nancy,” and the sound of the whisper reached the edges of the crowd.

“It’s not the way it used to be,” Old Man Warner said clearly. “People ain’t the way they used to be.”

“All right,” Mr. Summers said. “Open the papers. Harry, you open little Dave’s.”

Mr. Graves opened the slip of paper and there was a general sigh through the crowd as he held it up and everyone could see that it was blank. Nancy and Bill, Jr., opened theirs at the same time, and both beamed and laughed, turning around to the crowd and holding their slips of paper above their heads.

“Tessie,” Mr. Summers said. There was a pause, and then Mr. Summers looked at Bill Hutchinson, and Bill unfolded his paper and showed it. It was blank.

“It’s Tessie,” Mr. Summers said, and his voice was hushed. “Show us her paper, Bill.”

Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand. It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal-company office. Bill Hutchinson held it up, and there was a stir in the crowd.

“All right, folks,” Mr. Summers said. “Let’s finish quickly.”

Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground with the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box. Mrs. Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs. Dunbar. “Come on,” she said. “Hurry up.”

Mrs. Dunbar had small stones in both hands, and she said, gasping for breath, “I can’t run at all. You’ll have to go ahead and I’ll catch up with you.”

The children had stones already, and someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles.

Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. “It isn’t fair,” she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head.

Old Man Warner was saying, “Come on, come on, everyone.” Steve Adams was in the front of the crowd of villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.

“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.