Summer Morning, Summer Night

the shadows and said, “Good night.”

He was almost out of sight, running, when she, in turn, said good night.

IN THE middle of the night, a sound wakened her.

She half sat up in bed, trying to hear it again. The folks were home, everything was locked and secure, but it hadn’t been them. No, this was a special sound. And, lying there, looking out at the summer night that had, not long ago, been a summer day, she heard the sound again, and it was a sound of hollowing warmth and moist bark and empty, tunnelled tree, and rain outside but comfortable dryness and secretness inside, and it was the sound of bees come home from distant fields, moving upward in the flue of summer into wonderful darkness.

And this sound, she realized, putting her hand up in the summer night room to touch it, was coming from her sleepy, half-smiling mouth.

And it was this sound, eventually, which sang her to sleep.

AUTUMN AFTERNOON

“IT’S A VERY sad time of year to be cleaning out the attic,” said Grandma. “I don’t like autumn, sometimes. Don’t like the way the trees get empty. And the sky always looks like the sun had bleached it out.” She stood hesitantly at the bottom of the attic stairs, her gray head moving from side to side, her pale gray eyes uncertain. “But no matter what you do, here comes September,” she said. “So tear August off the calendar!”

“Can I have August?” Tom stood holding the torn month in his hands.

“I don’t know what you’ll do with it,” said Grandma.

“It isn’t really over, it’ll never be.” Tom held the paper up. “I know what happened on every day of it.”

“It was over before it began.” Grandma’s eyes grew remote. “I don’t remember a thing that happened.”

“On Monday I roller-skated at Chessman Park; on Tuesday I had chocolate cake at home; on Wednesday I fell in the crick.” Tom put the calendar in his blouse. “That was this week. Last week I caught crayfish, swung on a vine, hurt my hand on a nail, and fell off a fence. That takes me up until last Friday.”

“Well, it’s good somebody’s doing some thing,” said Grandma.

“And, I’ll remember today,” said Tom, “because the oak leaves turned all red and yellow and fell down and I made a big fire out of them. And this afternoon I’m going to Colonel Quartermain’s for a big birthday party.”

“You just run and play,” said Grandma. “I’ve got this job in the attic.”

She was breathing hard when she climbed into the musty garret. “Meant to do this last spring,” she murmured. “Here it is coming on winter and I don’t want to go all through the snow, thinking about this stuff up here.” She peered about in the attic gloom, saw the huge trunks, the spider webs, the stacked newspapers. There was a smell of ancient wooden beams.

She opened a dirty window that looked out on the apple trees far below. The smell of autumn came in, cool and sharp.

“Look out below!” cried Grandma, and began heaving old magazines and yellow trash down into the yard. “Better than carrying it downstairs.”

Old wire frame dressmaker’s dummies went careening down, followed by silent parrot cages and riffling encyclopaedias. A faint dust rose in the air and her heart was giddy in a few minutes. She had to pick her way over to sit down on a trunk, laughing breathlessly at her own inadequacy.

“More stuff, more junk!” she cried. “How it does pile up. What’s this now?”

She picked up a box of clippings and cut-outs and buttons. She dumped them out on the trunk top beside her and pawed through them. There were three neat small bundles of old calendar pages clipped together.

“Some more of Tom’s nonsense,” she sniffed. “Honestly, that child! Calendars, calendars, saving calendars.”

She picked up one of the calendars and it said OCTOBER, 1887. And on the front of it were exclamation marks and red lines under certain days, and childish scribbles: “This was a special day!” or “A wonderful day!”

She turned the calendar over with suddenly stiffening fingers. In the dim light her head bent down and her quiet eyes squinted to read what was written on the back:

“Elizabeth Simmons, aged 10, low fifth in school.”

She held the faded calendars in her cold hands and looked at them. She looked at the dates and the year and the exclamation marks and red circles around each special day. Slowly her brows drew together. Then her eyes became quite blank. Silently she lay back where she sat on the trunk, her eyes looking out at the autumn sky. Her hands dropped away, leaving the calendars yellow and faded on her lap. July 8th, 1889 with a red circle scribbled round it! What had happened on that day? August 28th, 1892; a blue exclamation point! Why? Days and months and years of marks and red circles, and that was all.

She closed her eyes and her breathing came swiftly in and out of her mouth.

Below, on the brown lawn, Tom ran, yelling.

Miss Elizabeth Simmons aroused herself after a time, and got herself over the window. For a long moment she looked down at Tom tumbling in the red leaves. Then she cleared her throat and called out, “Tom!”

“Grandma! You look so funny in the attic!”

“Tom, I want you to do me a favor!”

“What is it?”

“Tom, I want you to do me the favor of throwing away that nasty old piece of calendar you’re saving.”

“Why?” Tom looked up at her.

“Well, because. I don’t want you saving them any more,” said the old woman. “It’ll only make you feel bad later.”

“When, Grandma? How? I don’t understand!” cried Tom back up at her, hurt. “I’ve just got to keep every week, every month. There’s so much happening, I never want to forget!”

Grandma looked down and the small round face looked up through the empty apple tree branches. Finally Grandma sighed, “All right.” She looked off. She threw the box away through the autumn air to thump upon the ground. “I guess I can’t make you stop collecting if you really want to.”

“Thanks, Grandma!” Tom put his hand to his breast pocket where the month of August was tucked. “I’ll never forget today, I’ll always remember, I know!”

Grandma looked down through the empty autumn branches stirring in the cold wind. “Of course you will, child, of course you will,” she said.

ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE

NO DAY IN all of time began with nobler heart or fresher spirit. No morn had ever chanced upon its greener self as did this morn discover spring in every aspect and every breath. Birds flew about, intoxicated, and moles and all things holed up in earth and stone, ventured forth, forgetting that life itself might be forfeit. The sky was a Pacific, a Caribbean, an Indian Sea, hung in a tidal outpouring over a town that now exhaled the dust of winter from a thousand windows. Doors slammed wide. Like a tide moving into a shore, wave after wave of laundered curtains broke over the piano-wire lines behind the houses.

And at last the wild sweetness of this particular day summoned forth two souls, like wintry figures from a Swiss clock, hypnotized, upon their porch. Mr. and Mrs. Alexander, twenty-four months locked deep in their rusty house, felt long-forgotten wings stir in their shoulder-blades as the sun rekindled their bones.

“Smell that!”