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He brushed his free hand across her door, disturbing little more than dust.
‘Miss Fremwell?’
He looked to see if there were too many lamps lit under her doorsill, the light of which might strike out at him when she swung the door wide. The very thrust of lamplight alone might knock his hand away, and reveal that sunken wound. Then mightn’t she peer through it like a keyhole, into his life?
The light was dim under the doorsill.
He made a fist of one hand and brought it down gently, three times, on Miss Fremwell’s door.
The door opened and moved slowly back.
Later, on the front porch, feverishly adjusting and re-adjusting his senseless legs, perspiring, he tried to work around to asking her to marry him. When the moon rose high, the hole in his brow looked like a leaf-shadow fallen there. If he kept one profile to her, the crater did not show, it was hidden away over on the other side of his world. It seemed that when he did this, though, he only had half as many words and felt only half a man.
‘Miss Fremwell,’ he managed to say, at last.
‘Yes?’ She looked at him as if she didn’t quite see him.
‘Miss Naomi, I don’t suppose you ever really noticed me, lately.’
She waited. He went on.
‘I’ve been noticing you. Fact is, well, I might as well put it right out on the line and get it over with. We been sitting out here on the porch for quite a few months. I mean we’ve known each other a long time. Sure, you’re good fifteen years younger than me, but would there be anything wrong with our getting engaged, do you think?’
‘Thank you very much, Mr Lemon,’ she said quickly. She was very polite. ‘But –’
‘Oh, I know,’ he said, edging forward with the words. ‘I know! It’s my head, it’s always this darn thing up here on my head!’
She looked at his turned-away profile in the uncertain light.
‘Why, no, Mr Lemon, I don’t think I would say that, I don’t think that’s it at all. I have wondered a bit about it, certainly, but I don’t think it’s an interference in any way. A friend of mine, a very dear friend, married a man once, I recall, who had a wooden leg. She told me she didn’t even know he had it, after a while.’
‘It’s always this darn hole,’ cried Mr Lemon bitterly. He took out his plug of tobacco, looked at it as if he might bite it, decided not to and put it away. He formed a couple of fists and stared at them bleakly as if they were big rocks. ‘Well, I’ll tell you all about it, Miss Naomi. I’ll tell you how it happened.’
‘You don’t have to if you don’t want.’
‘I was married once. Miss Naomi. Yes, I was, darn it. And one day my wife she just took hold of a hammer and hit me right on the head!’
Miss Fremwell gasped. It was as if she had been struck herself.
Mr Lemon brought one clenching fist down through the warm air.
‘Yes, ma’am, she hit me straight-on with that hammer, she did. I tell you, the world blew up on me. Everything fell down on me. It was like the house coming down in one heap. That one little hammer buried me, buried me! The pain? I can’t tell you!’
Miss Fremwell turned in on herself. She shut her eyes and thought, biting her lips. Then she said, ‘Oh, poor Mr Lemon.’
‘She did it so calm,’ said Mr Lemon, puzzled. ‘She just stood over me where I lay on the couch and it was a Tuesday afternoon about two o’clock and she said, “Andrew, wake up!” and I opened my eyes and looked at her is all and then she hit me with that hammer. Oh, Lord.’
‘But why?’ asked Miss Fremwell.
‘For no reason, no reason at all. Oh, what an ornery woman.’
‘But why should she do a thing like that?’ said Miss Fremwell.
‘I told you: for no reason.’
‘She was crazy?’
