Lamma's Night (anthology)

the scuffed linoleum checkerboard of the soda shop floor like tombstones impervious to the chrome and the jukebox; all the colder, perhaps, because of that, and therefore all the more attractive to Mrs. Gavin who was obviously hot and upset. And Mrs. Gavin sat down in the wrought iron chair and stared at the cool marble tabletop as though she would have liked to have laid her flushed face against it and rolled it from side to side so as to bring her sweating cheeks to its cool, polished surface but could not because she was a lady, childless but a lady. Instead, she reached into her purse and extracted a handkerchief that could not have been more than eight inches on a side, dabbing thereafter at her temples like one who wished that she could just damn all and swipe at her dripping, fevered forehead like a convict on a summer labor gang might swipe at his forehead with a bandanna that had perhaps eight times the area of Mrs. Gavin's embroidered and lace-work instrument.

And Greta brought her a glass of ice water because Mr. McCoy had said that that was good business (though not for the boys and girls attending summer school down the street who came in at 3:15 sharp every day with nickels and dimes and quarters, clamoring for Cokes and Pepsis and 7-Ups and some cherry syrup with that and some chocolate in that because they were just children and Mrs. Gavin was a lady), and Mrs. Gavin ordered a strawberry phosphate as though she were herself a girl in school, (though not from any school now, a school, rather, that gave its lessons fifty years ago, when no one had heard of any such thing as an atomic bomb, and people still believed that world wars did not need numbers after them so that you could tell them apart); Greta taking her order with respect but thereafter hurrying to the big book of recipes that Mr. McCoy kept in the back room because for the life of her she did not know what a strawberry phosphate was much less how to make it, which was doubtless because this was only her first summer in the shop, a first job fresh out of high school with nothing before her but a looking forward to—

But she found the book and the recipe, and repeating the litany of ingredients and quantities to herself silently, she went behind the counter and spooned and pulled levers and pushed plungers and mixed until the strawberry phosphate was finished. Then, conscious that Mrs. Gavin's eyes were on her (seemingly looking at her a little more than one might ordinarily look at someone, as though she were, with sixty childless years behind her, seeing something that might have remained... no, probably did [no, more than that, probably had to] remain hidden from most people in the town, remain hidden from all who knew nothing of April evenings and scratchings at windows and the stunned disbelief that gave way to an incontrovertible reality that had to be because it was as no cat paws but the hands of a man grasped the sill and a foot swung over and a face followed it in; remain hidden because, alien thing that it was, it could not be grasped, remain hidden because she was Greta Harlow, remain hidden because her father was respectable and worked at the bank, remain hidden because her mother was respectable and kept house like a proper woman), she brought the strawberry phosphate to the table, and, setting it down before Mrs. Gavin, heard her ask

'Did you hear the news?' And Greta, having knelt at the shrine of her nausea and stood at the employ of the soda store all that afternoon, unable to eat for the first and hoping all the time that she did not have to think for the second, said

'No, ma'am.' 'I saw it,' said Mrs. Gavin. 'Terrible. Just terrible. But I always knew he was going to end up that way.'

'Ma'am?'

'Sheriff Wallace kept me there because I was a witness.' And then Mrs. Gavin took a sip of her strawberry phosphate that became more than a sip, became, in fact, a large swallow that set her coughing for the better part of a minute before she found her voice again. 'Terrible. Just terrible. He came out on the highway without a thought, and that big truck ran right over him. The driver stopped, of course. And he had one of those... what do you call them? The radios?'

'CB radios, ma'am.'

'Yes, and he called the sheriff and the sheriff came, and I stayed because I'd seen the accident and I didn't want the driver to get into trouble even though I probably didn't have to. Everybody knows how Jimmy White drove.'

The night: a smoldering hot thing that hung about the town as a dipsomaniac vagrant might linger on the corner of an otherwise unremarkable neighborhood. But she did not notice the heat, for across the town square that was deserted but for those few who had come through the simmering night to see the last showing at the movie theater and who were now returning to their cars to go home to outlying towns even smaller than this one and to the tiny farms that dotted most of Oktibushubee County (their size both a relic of the Reconstruction that had burst the wide plantations asunder and a defiance to the agricultural practices of the future which would see those same plantations reestablished under different names), visible through the lamp and firefly-lit darkness was the library, itself deserted because not even the cool floors and the vaulted ceilings that held the heat high and away from the books and the reading tables could tempt the town from its televisions and its air conditioning and its fans and along through the July heat that was slowly preparing to transform itself into August heat (there being but a few hours now remaining before the shops and the homes and even the library itself would tear one more page from the calendars that were both almanac and advertisement for a hundred things, from motor oil to shoe polish to light bulbs to insurance).

'It was Jimmy White, wasn't it?' Mrs. Gavin had said, and Greta, on the other side of the marble table that Mrs. Gavin had made her sit down at because there were no other customers in the soda shop (and if Mr. McCoy wanted to say anything about it he would have to say it to Mrs. Gavin, and anyone who knew either Mr. McCoy or Mrs. Gavin would know that he would therefore not say anything at all, even if he had at that instant walked into the soda shop, which he did not), broke down because Mrs. Gavin had looked at her and had, with sixty years of childlessness behind her, known.

'Yes, ma'am.'

'About four months ago.'

'How...?'

'I know,' Mrs. Gavin had said. 'I know.'

And into the library now: past the front desk with its own marble top that had been set upon its oaken pedestal at least one hundred years before the electronic things that now occupied its surface, that scanned magnetic strips and bar codes with sensors and lights, had been thought or even dreamed of; the librarian looking up first at her and then at the big clock that registered twenty minutes to closing time (and that was all the hint that she was going to give and she assumed that it would be enough), across the floor that had, years ago, been wood but which now was linoleum because the wood had stained and warped with the heavy rains coming in through the roof during the big storm when she was a girl and there had not been enough money in the town to redo it properly, up to the ranked rows of the card catalog that was much larger than might have been expected just as the library was much larger than might have been expected, but the town was the county seat and had wanted a big library to rival the one going up in Magdalene on the other side of the county line.

And Greta had looked at Mrs. Gavin, and then she had understood.

And Mrs. Gavin had nodded.