The October Country

panes, the different worlds; Mr. Koberman had said so himself.

So this was why the colored window had been broken.

'Mr. Koberman, wake up!'

No answer.

'Mr. Koberman, where do you work at night? Mr. Koberman, where do you work?'

A little breeze stirred the blue window shade.

'In a red world or a green world or a yellow one, Mr. Koberman?'

Over everything was a blue glass silence.

'Wait there,' said Douglas.

He walked down to the kitchen, pulled open the great squeaking drawer and picked out the sharpest, biggest knife.

Very calmly he walked into the hall, climbed back up the stairs again, opened the door to Mr. Koberman's room, went in, and closed it, holding the sharp knife in one hand.

Grandma was busy fingering a piecrust into a pan when Douglas entered the kitchen to place something on the table.

'Grandma, what's this?'

She glanced up briefly, over her glasses. 'I don't know.'

It was square, like a box, and elastic. It was bright orange in color. It had four square tubes, colored blue, attached to it. It smelled funny.

'Ever see anything like it, Grandma?'

'No.'

'That's what I thought.'

Douglas left it there, went from the kitchen. Five minutes later he returned with something else. 'How about this?'

He laid down a bright pink linked chain with a purple triangle at one end.

'Don't bother me,' said Grandma. 'It's only a chain.'

Next time he returned with two hands full. A ring, a square, a triangle, a pyramid, a rectangle, and-other shapes. All of them were pliable, resilient, and looked as if they were made of gelatin. 'This isn't all,' said Douglas, putting them down. 'There's more where this came from.'

Grandma said, 'Yes, yes,' in a far-off tone, very busy.

'You were wrong, Grandma.'

'About what?'

'About all people being the same inside.'

'Stop talking nonsense.'

'Where's my piggy-bank?'

'On the mantel, where you left it.'

'Thanks.'

He tromped into the parlor, reached up for his piggy-bank. Grandpa came home from the office at five. 'Grandpa, come upstairs.'

'Sure, son. Why?'

'Something to show you. It's not nice; but it's interesting.' Grandpa chuckled, following his grandson's feet up to Mr. Koberman's room. 'Grandma mustn't know about this; she wouldn't like it,' said Douglas. He pushed the door wide open. 'There.'

Grandfather gasped.

Douglas remembered the next few hours all the rest of his life. Standing over Mr. Koberman's naked body, the coroner and his assistants. Grandma, downstairs, asking somebody, 'What's going on up there?' and Grandpa saying, shakily, 'I'll take Douglas away on a long vacation so he can forget this whole ghastly affair. Ghastly, ghastly affair!'

Douglas said, 'Why should it be bad? I don't see anything bad. I don't feel bad.'

The coroner shivered and said, 'Koberman's dead, all right.'

His assistant sweated. 'Did you see those things in the pans of water and in the wrapping paper?'

'Oh, my God, my God, yes, I saw them.'

'Christ.'

The coroner bent over Mr. Koberman's body again. 'This better be kept secret, boys. It wasn't murder. It was a mercy the boy acted. God knows what might have happened if he hadn't.'

'What was Koberman? A vampire? A monster?'

'Maybe. I don't know. Something-not human.' The coroner moved his hands deftly over the suture.

Douglas was proud of his work. He'd gone to much trouble. He had watched Grandmother carefully and remembered. Needle and thread and all. All in all, Mr. Koberman was as neat a job as any chicken ever popped into hell by Grandma.

'I heard the boy say that Koberman lived even after all those things were taken out of him.' The coroner looked at the triangles and chains and pyramids floating in the pans of water. 'Kept on living. God.'

'Did the boy say that?'

'He did.'

'Then, what did kill Koberman?'

The coroner drew a few strands of sewing thread from their bedding.

'This…' he said.

Sunlight blinked coldly off a half-revealed treasure trove; six dollars and seventy cents' worth of silver dimes inside Mr. Koberman's chest.

'I think Douglas made a wise investment,' said the coroner, sewing the flesh back up over the 'dressing' quickly.

There Was an Old Woman

'No, there's no lief arguin'. I got my mind fixed. Run along with your silly wicker basket. Land, where you ever get notions like that? You just skit out of here; don't bother me, I got my tattin' and knittin' to do, and no never minds about tall, dark gentlemen with fangled ideas.'

The tall, dark young man stood quietly, not moving. Aunt Tildy hurried on with her talk.

'You heard what I said! If you got a mind to talk to me, well, you can talk, but meantime I hope you don't mind if I pour myself coffee. There. If you'd been more polite, I'd offer you some, but you jump in here high and mighty and you never rapped on the door or nothin'. You think you own the place.'

Aunt Tildy fussed with her lap. 'Now, you made me lose count! i'm makin' myself a comforter. These winters get on mighty chill, and it ain't fittin' for a lady with bones like rice-paper to be settin' in a drafty old house without warmin' herself.'

The tall, dark man sat down.

'That's an antique chair, so be gentle,' warned Aunt Tildy. 'Start again, tell me things you got to tell, I'll listen respectful. But keep your voice in your shoes and stop starin' at me with funny lights in your eyes. Land, it gives me the collywobbles.'

The bone-porcelain, flowered clock on the mantel finished chiming three. Out in the hail, grouped around the wicker basket, four men waited, quietly, as if they were frozen.

'Now, about that wicker basket,' said Aunt Tildy. 'It's past six feet long, and by the look, it ain't laundry. And those four men you walked in with, you don't need them to carry that basket-why, it's light as thistles. Eh?'

The dark young man was leaning forward on the antique chair. Something in his face suggested the basket wouldn't be so light after a while.

'Pshaw,' Aunt Tildy mused. 'Where've I seen a wicker like that before? Seems it was only a couple years ago. Seems to me-oh! Now I remember. It was when Mrs. Dwyer passed away next door.'