S Is for Space

“He murdered Mrs. Kelly. He buried her here, after he strangled her, in a box, but she came to. Why, he stood right here and she screamed and he wouldn’t pay any attention.”

  “Hey,” said Dippy. “That’s right. He stood right here and lied to us.”

  “There’s only one thing to do,” I said. “Call the police and have them come arrest Mr. Kelly.”

  We ran for the corner store telephone.

  The police knocked on Mr. Kelly’s door five minutes later. Dippy and I were hiding in the bushes, listening.

  “Mr. Kelly?” said the police officer.

  “Yes, sir, what can I do for you?”

  “Is Mrs. Kelly at home?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “May we see her, sir?”

  “Of course. Hey, Anna!”

  Mrs. Kelly came to the door and looked out. “Yes, sir?”

  “I beg your pardon,” apologized the officer. “We had a report that you were buried out in an empty lot, Mrs. Kelly. It sounded like a child made the call, but we had to be certain. Sorry to have troubled you.”

  “It’s those blasted kids,” cried Mr. Kelly, angrily. “If I ever catch them, I’ll rip ’em limb from limb!”

  “Cheezit!” said Dippy, and we both ran.

  “What’ll we do now?” I said.

  “I got to go home,” said Dippy. “Boy, we’re really in trouble. We’ll get a licking for this.”

  “But what about the Screaming Woman?”

  “To heck with her,” said Dippy. “We don’t dare go near that empty lot again. Old man Kelly’ll be waitin’ around with his razor strap and lambast heck out’n us. An’ I just happened to remember, Maggie. Ain’t old man Kelly sort of deaf, hard-of-hearing?”

  “Oh, my gosh,” I said. “No wonder he didn’t hear the screams.”

  “So long,” said Dippy. “We sure got in trouble over your darn old ventriloquist voice. I’ll be seeing you.”

  I was left all alone in the world, no one to help me, no one to believe me at all. I just wanted to crawl down in that box with the Screaming Woman and die. The police were after me now, for lying to them, only I didn’t know it was a lie, and my father was probably looking for me, too, or would be once he found my bed empty. There was only one last thing to do, and I did it.

  I went from house to house, all down the street, near the empty lot. And I rang every bell and when the door opened I said: “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Griswold, but is anyone missing from your house?” or “Hello, Mrs. Pikes, you’re looking fine today. Glad to see you home.” And once I saw that the lady of the house was home I just chatted a while to be polite, and went on down the street.

  The hours were rolling along. It was getting late. I kept thinking, oh, there’s only so much air in that box with that woman under the earth, and if I don’t hurry, she’ll suffocate, and I got to rush! So I rang bells and knocked on doors, and it got later, and I was just about to give up and go home, when I knocked on the last door, which was the door of Mr. Charlie Nesbitt, who lives next to us. I kept knocking and knocking.

  Instead of Mrs. Nesbitt, or Helen as my father calls her, coming to the door, why it was Mr. Nesbitt, Charlie, himself.

  “Oh,” he said. “It’s you, Margaret.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Good afternoon.”

  “What can I do for you, kid?” he said.

  “Well, I thought I’d like to see your wife, Mrs. Nesbitt,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “May I?”

  “Well, she’s gone out to the store,” he said.

  “I’ll wait,” I said, and slipped in past him.

  “Hey,” he said.

  I sat down in a chair. “My, it’s a hot day,” I said, trying to be calm, thinking about the empty lot and air going out of the box, and the screams getting weaker and weaker.

  “Say, listen, kid,” said Charlie, coming over to me, “I don’t think you better wait.”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “Why not?”

  “Well, my wife won’t be back,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “Not today, that is. She’s gone to the store, like I said, but, but, she’s going on from there to visit her mother. Yeah. She’s going to visit her mother, in Schenectady. She’ll be back, two or three days, maybe a week.”

  “That’s a shame,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to tell her something.”

  “What?”

  “I just wanted to tell her there’s a woman buried over in the empty lot, screaming under tons and tons of dirt.”

  Mr. Nesbitt dropped his cigarette.

  “You dropped your cigarette, Mr. Nesbitt,” I pointed out, with my shoe.

  “Oh, did I? Sure. So I did,” he mumbled. “Well, I’ll tell Helen when she comes home, your story. She’ll be glad to hear it.”

  “Thanks. It’s a real woman.”

  “How do you know it is?”

  “I heard her.”

  “How, how you know it isn’t, well, a mandrake root.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You know. A mandrake. It’s a kind of a plant, kid. They scream. I know, I read it once. How you know it ain’t a mandrake?”

  “I never thought of that.”

  “You better start thinking,” he said, lighting another cigarette. He tried to be casual. “Say, kid, you, eh, you say anything about this to anyone?”

  “Sure, I told lots of people.”

  Mr. Nesbitt burned his hand on his match.

  “Anybody doing anything about it?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “They won’t believe me.”

  He smiled. “Of course. Naturally. You’re nothing but a kid. Why should they listen to you?”

  “I’m going back now and dig her out with a spade,” I said.

  “Wait.”

  “I got to go,” I said.

  “Stick around,” he insisted.

  “Thanks, but no,” I said, frantically.

  He took my arm. “Know how to play cards, kid? Black jack?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He took out a deck of cards from a desk. “We’ll have a game.”

  “I got to go dig.”

  “Plenty of time for that,” he said, quiet. “Anyway, maybe my wife’ll be home. Sure. That’s it. You wait for her. Wait a while.”

  “You think she will be?”

  “Sure, kid. Say, about that voice; is it very strong?”

  “It gets weaker all the time.”

  Mr. Nesbitt sighed and smiled. “You and your kid games. Here now, let’s play that game of black jack, it’s more fun than Screaming Women.”

  “I got to go. It’s late.”

  “Stick around, you got nothing to do.”

  I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to keep me in his house until the screaming died down and was gone. He was trying to keep me from helping her. “My wife’ll be home in ten minutes,” he said. “Sure. Ten minutes. You wait. You sit right there.”

  We played cards. The clock ticked. The sun went down the sky. It was getting late. The screaming got fainter and fainter in my mind. “I got to go,” I said.

  “Another game,” said Mr. Nesbitt. “Wait another hour, kid. My wife’ll come yet. Wait.”

  In another hour he looked at his watch. “Well, kid, I guess you can go now.” And I know what his plan was. He’d sneak down in the middle of the night and dig up his wife, still alive, and take her somewhere else and bury her, good. “So long, kid. So long.” He let me go, because he thought that by now the air must all be gone from the box.

  The door shut in my face.

  I went back near the empty lot and hid in some bushes. What could I do? Tell my folks? But they hadn’t believed me. Call the police on Mr. Charlie Nesbitt? But he said his wife was away visiting. Nobody would believe me!

  I watched Mr. Kelly’s house. He wasn’t in sight. I ran over to the place where the screaming had been and just stood there.

  The screaming had
stopped. It was so quiet I thought I would never hear a scream again. It was all over. I was too late I thought.

  I bent down and put my ear against the ground.

  And then I heard it, way down, way deep, and so faint I could hardly hear it.

  The woman wasn’t screaming any more. She was singing.

  Something about, “I loved you fair, I loved you well.”

  It was sort of a sad song. Very faint. And sort of broken. All of those hours down under the ground in that box must have sort of made her crazy. All she needed was some air and food and she’d be all right. But she just kept singing, not wanting to scream any more, not caring, just singing.

  I listened to the song.

  And then I turned and walked straight across the lot and up the steps to my house and I opened the front door.

  “Father,” I said.

  “So there you are!” he cried.

  “Father,” I said.

  “You’re going to get a licking,” he said.

  “She’s not screaming any more.”

  “Don’t talk about her!”

  “She’s singing now,” I cried.

  “You’re not telling the truth!”

  “Dad,” I said. “She’s out there and she’ll be dead soon if you don’t listen to me. She’s out there, singing, and this is what she’s singing.” I hummed the tune. I sang a few of the words. “I loved you fair, I loved you well …”

  Dad’s face grew pale. He came and took my arm.

  “What did you say?” he said.

  I sang it again, “I loved you fair, I loved you well.”

  “Where did you hear that song?” he shouted.

  “Out in the empty lot, just now.”

  “But that’s Helen’s song, the one she wrote, years ago, for me!” cried Father. “You can’t know it. Nobody knew it, except Helen and me. I never sang it to anyone, not you or anyone.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Oh, my God!” cried Father and ran out the door to get a shovel. The last I saw of him he was in the empty lot, digging, and lots of other people with him, digging.

  I felt so happy I wanted to cry.

  I dialed a number on the phone and when Dippy answered I said, “Hi, Dippy. Everything’s fine. Everything’s worked out keen. The Screaming Woman isn’t screaming any more.”

  “Swell,” said Dippy.

  “I’ll meet you in the empty lot with a shovel in two minutes,” I said.

  “Last one there’s a monkey! So long!” cried Dippy.

  “So long, Dippy!” I said, and ran.

  The Smile

  In the town square the queue had formed at five in the morning while cocks were crowing far out in the rimed country and there were no fires. All about, among the ruined buildings, bits of mist had clung at first, but now with the new light of seven o’clock it was beginning to disperse. Down the road, in twos and threes, more people were gathering in for the day of marketing, the day of festival.

  The small boy stood immediately behind two men who had been talking loudly in the clear air, and all of the sounds they made seemed twice as loud because of the cold. The small boy stomped his feet and blew on his red, chapped hands, and looked up at the soiled gunny sack clothing of the men and down the long line of men and women ahead.

  “Here, boy, what’re you doing out so early?” said the man behind him.

  “Got my place in line, I have,” said the boy.

  “Whyn’t you run off, give your place to someone who appreciates?”

  “Leave the boy alone,” said the man ahead, suddenly turning.

  “I was joking.” The man behind put his hand on the boy’s head. The boy shook it away coldly. “I just thought it strange, a boy out of bed so early.”

  “This boy’s an appreciator of arts, I’ll have you know,” said the boy’s defender, a man named Grigsby. “What’s your name, lad?”

  “Tom.”

  “Tom here is going to spit clean and true, right, Tom?”

  “I sure am!”

  Laughter passed down the line.

  A man was selling cracked cups of hot coffee up ahead. Tom looked and saw the little hot fire and the brew bubbling in a rusty pan. It wasn’t really coffee. It was made from some berry that grew on the meadowlands beyond town, and it sold a penny a cup to warm their stomachs; but not many were buying, not many had the wealth.

  Tom stared ahead to the place where the line ended, beyond a bombed-out stone wall.

  “They say she smiles,” said the boy.

  “Aye, she does,” said Grigsby.

  “They say she’s made of oil and canvas.”

  “True. And that’s what makes me think she’s not the original one. The original, now, I’ve heard, was painted on wood a long time ago.”

  “They say she’s four centuries old.”

  “Maybe more. No one knows what year this is, to be sure.”

  “It’s 2061!”

  “That’s what they say, boy, yes. Liars. Could be 3000 or 5000, for all we know. Things were in a fearful mess there for a while. All we got now is bits and pieces.”

  They shuffled along the cold stones of the street.

  “How much longer before we see her?” asked Tom uneasily.

  “Just a few more minutes. They got her set up with four brass poles and velvet rope, all fancy, to keep folks back. Now mind, no rocks, Tom; they don’t allow rocks thrown at her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The sun rose higher in the heavens, bringing heat which made the men shed their grimy coats and greasy hats.

  “Why’re we all here in line?” asked Tom at last. “Why’re we all here to spit?”

  Grigsby did not glance down at him, but judged the sun. “Well, Tom, there’s lots of reasons.” He reached absently for a pocket that was long gone, for a cigarette that wasn’t there. Tom had seen the gesture a million times. “Tom, it has to do with hate. Hate for everything in the past. I ask you, Tom, how did we get in such a state, cities all junk, roads like jigsaws from bombs, and half the cornfields glowing with radioactivity at night? Ain’t that a lousy stew, I ask you?”

  “Yes, sir, I guess so.”

  “It’s this way, Tom. You hate whatever it was that got you all knocked down and ruined. That’s human nature. Unthinking, maybe, but human nature anyway.”

  “There’s hardly nobody or nothing we don’t hate,” said Tom.

  “Right! The whole blooming kaboodle of them people in the past who run the world. So here we are on a Thursday morning with our guts plastered to our spines, cold, live in caves and such, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t nothing except have our festivals, Tom, our festivals.”

  And Tom thought of the festivals in the past few years. The year they tore up all the books in the square and burned them and everyone was drunk and laughing. And the festival of science a month ago when they dragged in the last motorcar and picked lots and each lucky man who won was allowed one smash of a sledge-hammer at the car.

  “Do I remember that, Tom? Do I remember? Why, I got to smash the front window, the window, you hear? My Lord, it made a lovely sound! Crash!”

  Tom could hear the glass fall in glittering heaps.

  “And Bill Henderson, he got to bash the engine. Oh, he did a smart job of it, with great efficiency. Wham!

  “But best of all,” recalled Grigsby, “there was the time they smashed a factory that was still trying to turn out airplanes.

  “Lord, did we feel good blowing it up!” said Grigsby. “And then we found that newspaper plant and the munitions depot and exploded them together. Do you understand, Tom?”

  Tom puzzled over it. “I guess.”

  It was high noon. Now the odors of the ruined city stank on the hot air and things crawled among the tumbled buildings.

  “Won’t it ever come back, mister?”

  “What, civilization? Nobody wants it. Not me!”

  “I could stand a bit of it,” said the man behind another man. “There were a f
ew spots of beauty in it.”

  “Don’t worry your heads,” shouted Grigsby. “There’s no room for that, either.”

  “Ah,” said the man behind the man. “Someone’ll come along someday with imagination and patch it up. Mark my words. Someone with a heart.”

  “No,” said Grigsby.

  “I say yes. Someone with a soul for pretty things. Might give us back a kind of limited sort of civilization, the kind we could live in in peace.”

  “First thing you know there’s war!”

  “But maybe next time it’d be different.”

  At last they stood in the main square. A man on horseback was riding from the distance into the town. He had a piece of paper in his hand. In the center of the square was the roped-off area. Tom, Grigsby, and the others were collecting their spittle and moving forward—moving forward prepared and ready, eyes wide. Tom felt his heart beating very strongly and excitedly, and the earth was hot under his bare feet.

  “Here we go, Tom, let fly!”

  Four policemen stood at the corners of the roped area, four men with bits of yellow twine on their wrists to show their authority over other men. They were there to prevent rocks being hurled.

  “This way,” said Grigsby at the last moment, “everyone feels he’s had his chance at her, you see, Tom? Go on, now!”

  Tom stood before the painting and looked at it for a long time.

  “Tom, spit!”

  His mouth was dry.

  “Get on, Tom! Move!”

  “But,” said Tom, slowly, “she’s beautiful!”

  “Here, I’ll spit for you!” Grigsby spat and the missile flew in the sunlight. The woman in the portrait smiled serenely, secretly, at Tom, and he looked back at her, his heart beating, a kind of music in his ears.

  “She’s beautiful,” he said.

  “Now get on, before the police—”

  “Attention!”

  The line fell silent. One moment they were berating Tom for not moving forward, now they were turning to the man on horseback.

  “What do they call it, sir?” asked Tom, quietly.

  “The picture? Mona Lisa, Tom, I think. Yes, the Mona Lisa.”

  “I have an announcement,” said the man on horseback. “The authorities have decreed that as of high noon today the portrait in the square is to be given over into the hands of the populace there, so they may participate in the destruction of—”