Summer Morning, Summer Night

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 knew 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.