Dandelion Wine (23 page)

“Here's your house, Francine. Good night.”

“Lavinia, Helen, stay here tonight. It's late, almost midnight now. You can sleep in the parlor. I'll make hot chocolate—it'll be such fun!” Francine was holding them both now, close to her.

“No, thanks,” said Lavinia.

And Francine began to cry.

“Oh, not again, Francine,” said Lavinia.

“I don't want you dead,” sobbed Francine, the tears running straight down her cheeks. “You're so fine and nice, I want you alive. Please, oh, please!”

“Francine, I didn't know how much this has done to you. I promise I'll phone when I get home.”

“Oh, will you?”

“And tell you I'm safe, yes. And tomorrow we'll have a picnic lunch at Electric Park. With ham sandwiches I'll make myself, how's that? You'll see, I'll live forever!”

“You'll phone, then?”

“I promised, didn't I? ”

“Good night, good night!” Rushing upstairs, Francine whisked behind a door, which slammed to be snap-bolted tight on the instant.

“Now,” said Lavinia to Helen, “I'll walk
you
home.”

 

T
he courthouse clock struck the hour. The sounds blew across a town that was empty, emptier than it had ever been. Over empty streets and empty lots and empty lawns the sound faded.

“Nine, ten, eleven, twelve,” counted Lavinia, with Helen on her arm.

“Don't you feel funny?” asked Helen.

“How do you mean?”

“When you think of us being out here on the sidewalks, under the trees, and all those people safe behind locked doors, lying in their beds. We're practically the only walking people out in the open in a thousand miles, I bet.”

The sound of the deep warm dark ravine came near.

In a minute they stood before Helen's house, looking at each other for a long time. The wind blew the odor of cut grass between them. The moon was sinking in a sky that was beginning to cloud. “I don't suppose it's any use asking you to stay, Lavinia?”

“I'll be going on.”

“Sometimes—”

“Sometimes what?”

“Sometimes I think people
want
to die. You've acted odd all evening.”

“I'm just not afraid,” said Lavinia. “And I'm curious, I suppose. And I'm using my head. Logically, the Lonely One can't be around. The police and all.”

“The police are home with their covers up over their ears.”

“Let's just say I'm enjoying myself, precariously, but safely. If there was any real chance of anything happening to me, I'd stay here with you, you can be sure of that.”

“Maybe part of you doesn't want to live anymore.”

“You and Francine. Honestly!”

“I feel so guilty. I'll be drinking some hot cocoa just as you reach the ravine bottom and walk on the bridge.”

“Drink a cup for me. Good night.”

Lavinia Nebbs walked alone down the midnight street, down the late summer-night silence. She saw houses with the dark windows and far away she heard a dog barking. In five minutes, she thought, I'll be safe at home. In five minutes I'll be phoning silly little Francine. I'll—”

She heard the man's voice.

A man's voice singing far away among the trees.

“Oh, give me a June night, the moonlight and you …”

She walked a little faster.

The voice sang, “In my arms … with all your charms …”

Down the street in the dim moonlight a man walked slowly and casually along.

I can run knock on one of these doors, thought Lavinia, if I must.

“Oh, give me a June night,” sang the man, and he carried a long club in his hand. “The moonlight and you. Well, look who's
here!
What a time of night for you to be out, Miss Nebbs!”

“Officer Kennedy!”

And that's who it was, of course.

“I'd better see you home!”

“Thanks, I'll make it.”

“But you live across the ravine....”

Yes, she thought, but I won't walk through the ravine with any man, not even an officer. How do I know who the Lonely One is? “No,” she said, “I'll hurry.”

“I'll wait right here,” he said. “If you need any help, give a yell. Voices carry good here. I'll come running.”

“Thank you.”

She went on, leaving him under a light, humming to himself, alone.

Here I am, she thought.

The ravine.

She stood on the edge of the one hundred and thirteen steps that went down the steep hill and then across the bridge seventy yards and up the hills leading to Park Street. And only one lantern to see by. Three minutes from now, she thought, I'll be putting my key in my house door. Nothing can happen in just one hundred eighty seconds.

She started down the long dark-green steps into the deep ravine.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten steps,” she counted in a whisper.

She felt she was running, but she was not running.

“Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty steps,” she breathed.

“One fifth of the way!” she announced to herself.

The ravine was deep, black and black, black! And the world was gone behind, the world of safe people in bed, the locked doors, the town, the drugstore, the theater, the lights, everything was gone. Only the ravine existed and lived, black and huge, about her.

“Nothing's happened, has it? No one around, is there? Twenty-four, twenty-five steps. Remember that old ghost story you told each other when you were children?”

She listened to her shoes on the steps.

“The story about the dark man coming in your house and you upstairs in bed. And now he's at the first step coming up to your room. And now he's at the second step. And now he's at the third step and the fourth step and the fifth! Oh, how you used to laugh and scream at that story! And now the horrid dark man's at the twelfth step and now he's opening the door of your room and now he's standing by your bed. ‘I GOT YOU!'”

She screamed. It was like nothing she'd ever heard, that scream. She had never screamed that loud in her life. She stopped, she froze, she clung to the wooden banister. Her heart exploded in her. The sound of the terrified beating filled the universe.

“There,
there
!” she screamed to herself. “At the bottom of the steps. A man, under the light! No, now he's gone! He was
waiting
there!”

She listened.

Silence.

The bridge was empty.

Nothing, she thought, holding her heart. Nothing. Fool! That story I told myself. How silly. What shall I do?

Her heartbeats faded.

Shall I call the officer—did he hear me scream?

She listened. Nothing. Nothing.

I'll go the rest of the way. That silly story.

She began again, counting the steps.

“Thirty-five, thirty-six, careful, don't fall. Oh, I am a fool. Thirty-seven steps, thirty-eight, nine and forty, and two makes forty-two—almost halfway.”

She froze again.

Wait, she told herself.

She took a step. There was an echo.

She took another step.

Another echo. Another step, just a fraction of a moment later.

“Someone's following me,” she whispered to the ravine, to the black crickets and dark-green hidden frogs and the black stream. “Someone's on the steps behind me. I don't dare turn around.”

Another step, another echo.

“Every time I take a step, they take one.”

A step and an echo.

Weakly she asked of the ravine, “Officer Kennedy, is that
you?”

The crickets were still.

The crickets were
listening.
The night was listening to
her.
For a change, all of the far summer-night meadows and close summer-night trees were suspending motion; leaf, shrub, star, and meadow grass ceased their particular tremors and were listening to Lavinia Nebbs's heart. And perhaps a thousand miles away, across locomotive-lonely country, in an empty way station, a single traveler reading a dim newspaper under a solitary naked bulb, might raise up his head, listen, and think, What's that? and decide, Only a wood-chuck, surely, beating on a hollow log. But it was Lavinia Nebbs, it was most surely the heart of Lavinia Nebbs.

Silence. A summer-night silence which lay for a thousand miles, which covered the earth like a white and shadowy sea.

Faster, faster! She went down the steps.

Run!

She heard music. In a mad way, in a silly way, she heard the great surge of music that pounded at her, and she realized as she ran, as she ran in panic and terror, that some part of her mind was dramatizing, borrowing from the turbulent musical score of some private drama, and the music was rushing and pushing her now, higher and higher, faster, faster, plummeting and scurrying, down, and down into the pit of the ravine.

Only a little way, she prayed. One hundred eight, nine, one hundred ten steps! The bottom! Now, run! Across the bridge!

She told her legs what to do, her arms, her body, her terror; she advised all parts of herself in this white and terrible moment, over the roaring creek waters, on the hollow, thudding, swaying, almost alive, resilient bridge planks she ran, followed by the wild footsteps behind, behind, with the music following, too, the music shrieking and babbling.

He's following, don't turn, don't look, if you see him, you'll not be able to move, you'll be so frightened. Just run, run!

She ran across the bridge.

Oh, God, God, please, please let me get up the hill! Now up the path, now between the hills, oh God, it's dark, and everything so far away. If I screamed now it wouldn't help; I can't scream anyway. Here's the top of the path, here's the street, oh, God, please let me be safe, if I get home safe I'll never go out alone; I was a fool, let me admit it, I was a fool, I didn't know what terror was, but if you let me get home from this I'll never go without Helen or Francine again! Here's the street. Across the street!

She crossed the street and rushed up the sidewalk.

Oh God, the porch! My house! Oh God, please give me time to get inside and lock the door and I'll be safe!

And there—silly thing to notice—why did she notice, instantly, no time, no time—but there it was anyway, flashing by—there on the porch rail, the half-filled glass of lemonade she had abandoned a long time, a year, half an evening ago! The lemonade glass sitting calmly, imperturbably there on the rail … and …

She heard her clumsy feet on the porch and listened and felt her hands scrabbling and ripping at the lock with the key. She heard her heart. She heard her inner voice screaming.

The key fit.

Unlock the door, quick, quick!

The door opened.

Now, inside. Slam it!

She slammed the door.

“Now lock it, bar it, lock it!” she gasped wretchedly.

“Lock it, tight,
tight!”

The door was locked and bolted tight.

The music stopped. She listened to her heart again and the sound of it diminishing into silence.

Home! Oh God, safe at home! Safe, safe and safe at home! She slumped against the door. Safe, safe. Listen. Not a sound. Safe, safe, oh thank God, safe at home. I'll never go out at night again. I'll stay home. I won't go over that ravine again ever. Safe, oh safe, safe home, so good, so good, safe! Safe inside, the door locked. Wait.

Look out the window.

She looked.

Why, there's no one there at all! Nobody. There was nobody following me at all. Nobody running after me. She got her breath and almost laughed at herself. It stands to
reason.
If a man
had
been following me, he'd have
caught
me! I'm not a fast runner.... There's no one on the porch or in the yard. How silly of me. I wasn't running from anything. That ravine's as safe as anyplace. Just the same, it's nice to be home. Home's the really good warm place, the only place to be.

She put her hand out to the light switch and stopped.

“What?” she asked. “What,
What
?”

Behind her in the living room, someone cleared his throat.

“G
ood grief, they ruin everything!”

“Don't take it so hard, Charlie.”

“Well, what're we going to talk about now? It's no use talking the Lonely One if he ain't even alive! It's not scary anymore!”