belly-buster trying to jackknife off the high board to impress a girl, coming out of the water stinging and crimson from the impact. Circling through streets that were quiet now and almost deserted, I went past the high school and the football field, remembering October afternoons and the sweat and the dry taste in the mouth like copper pennies and the way the ground jarred, tilting crazily against your face. The old grammar school had burned, and there was a box factory there now, but I could see the corner where she had waited while I chased the dog, trying to get the paper from his mouth, and I could hear the school bell ringing, telling us we were late. I’ll never see any of this again, I but it’s all gone now anyway.
It was midnight when I put the car in the garage and walked through the hot, dead air in the kitchen, hearing my footsteps echo through the house. I had changed into pajamas and was sitting on the side of the bed smoking a cigarette and wondering whether there would be any use in trying to sleep when it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. I padded barefoot out into the kitchen and started looking through the refrigerator, finding nothing except a bottle of milk that had been there for two weeks and was sour. In a cupboard I came across a can of salmon. I opened it and had started to dig it out onto a plate when the telephone rang. I started a little, surprised at the unexpected sound. Buford, I thought. My God, has something else happened? I went down the hall to the stand.
“Hello,” I said.
“Mr. Marshall?” It was a girl’s voice.
“Yes. Who is it?”
“Dinah Weatherford. I tried to get you a while ago, but I guess you were out. You haven’t gone to bed have you?”
“No,” I said. “Not quite. Has something happened?”
“Not exactly. But could I come over for a minute? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“Why yes,” I said, wondering. “Do you know how to find the place?”
“I think so. You’re sure it’s all right?”
“Sure. I was just opening a can of salmon. I’ll find you a clean fork.”
She laughed. “I’ll have you know I’m not a cat. Or am I?”
She hung up and I went back to the bedroom and put on a dressing gown and some slippers. It was hot, and I turned on the electric fan in the kitchen, sitting under it with my elbows on the table. What did Dinah have on her mind? I wondered if Buford had asked her to tell me something.
Glancing up at the clock, I saw it was nearly half past twelve and knew Doris would be at the hotel now. I thought of her alone and scared and tried to imagine what she would be doing at this moment. Was she trying to sleep, with a light on in the bathroom to drive away the dark? Was she standing at the window staring out into the streets at busses and neon signs and the hot bright lights of restaurant fronts and the people going home from shows, feeling the strangeness of it after a year of living burial in that swamp? Was she counting the hours, as I was? Tomorrow, and tomorrow night, I thought, and part of another day…
I heard the car pull up and stop in front of the garage. When I went outside she had cut the lights, but I heard the car door slam shut and she came toward me out of the darkness in the yard. I followed her into the kitchen. She had changed into a white linen skirt and a Russian-looking sort of blouse with long, full sleeves quite tight at the wrists, and when she turned under the light and smiled at me her eyes were alight with that excitement I had seen in them before.
“Let’s go into the living room,” I said. She shook her head. “This is all right. I just wanted to tell you something.”
I pulled out a chair and she sat down at the table. I sat down across from her, watching the play of light against the burnished copper hair and the audacious tilt of the head. “What’s up?” I asked.
“I think I can help you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “How?”
“I got to thinking about it after you left and after Buford went home. This thing you’re doing, I mean. It