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Footsteps came up the stairs. Very slow, very sad footsteps this time. Very slow and soft.
“Quick!” whispered Vivian. She pulled away, smoothing her dress. Like a blind man, fingerless, Chris fumbled with his belt buckle and buttons. “Quick!” whispered Vivian.
She flicked the light on and the world shocked Chris with its unreality. Blank walls staring, wide and senseless after the dark; lovely, soft, moving, and secretive dark. And as the footsteps advanced up the stairs, the four of them were once again solemn ramrods against the wall, and Vivian was retelling her story:
“—now he’s at the top stair—”
The door opened. Auntie stood there, tears on her face. That was enough in itself to tell, to give the message.
“We just received a call from the hospital,” she said. “Your Uncle Lester passed away a few minutes ago.”
They sat there.
“You’d better come downstairs,” said Auntie.
They arose slowly. Chris felt drunk and unsteady and warm. He waited for Auntie to go out and the others to follow. He came last of all, down into the hushed land of weeping and solemn tightened faces.
As he descended the last step he couldn’t help but feel a strange thing moving in his mind. Oh, Uncle Lester, they’ve taken your body away from you, and I’ve got mine, and it isn’t fair! Oh, it isn’t fair, because this is so good!
In a few minutes they would go home. The silent house would hold their weeping a few days, the radio would be snapped off for a week, and laughter would come and be throttled in birth.
He began to cry.
Mother looked at him. Uncle Inar looked at him and some of the others looked at him. Vivian, too. And Leo, so big and solemn standing there.
Chris was crying and everybody looked.
But only Vivian knew that he was crying for joy, a warm good crying of a child who has found treasure buried deep and warm in his very body.
“Oh, Chris,” said Mother, and came to comfort him. “There, there.”
Grand Theft
Emily Wilkes had her eyes pried open by a peculiar sound at three o’clock in the deep morning, with no moon, and only the stars as witness.
“Rose?” she said.
Her sister, in a separate bed not three feet away, already had her eyes wide, so was not surprised.
“You hear it?” she said, spoiling everything.
“I was going to tell you,” said Emily. “Since you already seem to know, there’s no use—”
She stopped and sat up in bed, as did Rose, both pulled by invisible wires. They sat there, two ancient sisters, one eighty, the other eighty-one, both bone-thin and bundles of nerves because they were staring at the ceiling.
Emily Wilkes nodded her head up. “That what you heard?”
“Mice in the attic?”
“Sounds bigger’n that. Rats.”
“Yes, but it sounds like they’re wearing boots and carrying bags.”
That did it. Out of bed, they grabbed their wrappers and went downstairs as fast as arthritis would allow. No one wanted to stay underneath whoever wore those boots.
Below they grab
bed the banister and stared up, whispering.
