Long After Midnight (37 page)

 
          
Marion
stood by the slide. "Here we go,"
he said, and picked her up.

 
          
They
sat in a vast circle in the cellar. Warmth came from the distant bulk of the
furnace. The chairs stood in a long line along each wall, twenty squealing
children, twelve rustling relatives, alternately spaced, with Louise down at
the far end,
Mich
up at this end, near the stairs. He peered
but saw nothing. They had all grouped to their chairs, catch-as-you-can in the
blackness. The entire program from here on was to be enacted in the dark, he as
Mr. Interlocutor. There was a child scampering, a smell of damp cement, and the
sound of the wind out in the October stars.

 
          
"
Nowl
" cried the husband in the dark cellar.
"Quiet!"

 
          
Everybody
settled.

 
          
The
room was black
black
. Not a light, not a shine, not a
glint of an eye.

 
          
A
scraping of crockery, a metal rattle.

 
          
"The
witch is dead," intoned the husband.

 
          
"
Eeeeeeeeeeeee
," said the children.

 
          
"The
witch is dead, she has been killed, and here is the knife she was killed
with."

 
          
He
handed over the knife. It was passed from hand to hand, down and around the
circle, with chuckles and little odd cries and comments from the adults.

 
          
"The
witch is dead, and this is her head," whispered the husband, and handed an
item to the nearest person.

 
          
"Oh,
I know how this game is played," some child cried, happily, in the dark.
"He gets some old chicken innards from the icebox and hands them around
and says, 'These are her innards!' And he makes a clay head and passes it for
her head, and passes a soup bone for her arm. And he take a marble and says,
'This is her eye!' And he takes some corn and says, 'This is her teeth!' And he
takes a sack of plum pudding and gives that and says, 'This is her stomach!' I
know how
this is
played!"

 
          
"Hush,
you'll spoil everything," some girl said.

 
          
"The
witch came to harm, and this is her arm," said
Mich.

 
          
"
Eeeee
!" -

 
          
The
items were passed and passed, like hot potatoes, around the circle. Some
children screamed, wouldn't touch them. Some ran from their chairs to stand in
the center of the cellar until the grisly items had passed.

 
          
"Aw,
it's only chicken insides," scoffed a boy. "Come back, Helen!"

 
          
Shot
from hand to hand, with small scream after scream, the items went down, down,
to be followed by another and another.

 
          
"The
witch cut apart, and this is her heart," said the husband.

 
          
Six
or seven items moving at once through the laughing, trembling dark.

 
          
Louise
spoke up. "
Marion
, don't be afraid; it's only play."

 
          
Marion
didn't say anything.

 
          
"
Marion
?" asked Louise. "Are you
afraid?"

 
          
Marion
didn't speak.

 
          
"She's
all right," said the husband. "She's not afraid."

 
          
On
and on the passing, the screams, the hilarity.

 
          
The
autumn wind sighed about the house. And he, the husband, stood at the head of
the dark cellar, intoning the words, handing out the items.

 
          
"
Marion
?" asked Louise again, from far across
the cellar.

 
          
Everybody
was talking.

 
          
"
Marion
?" called Louise.

 
          
Everybody
quieted.

 
          
"
Marion
, answer me, are you afraid?"

 
          
Marion
didn't answer.

 
          
The
husband stood there, at the bottom of the cellar steps.

 
          
Louise
called, "
Marion
, are you there?"

 
          
No
answer. The room was silent.

 
          
"Where's
Marion
?" called Louise.

 
          
"She
was here," said a boy.

 
          
"Maybe
she's upstairs."

 
          
"
Marion
!"

 
          
No
answer. It was quiet.

 
          
Louise
cried out, "Marion,
Marion
!"

 
          
"Turn
on the lights," said one of the adults.

 
          
The
items stopped passing. The children and adults sat with the witch's items in
their hands.

 
          
"No."
Louise gasped. There was a scraping of her chair, wildly, in the dark.
"No. Don't turn on the lights, oh, God, God, God, don't turn them on,
please, please
don't
turn on the
lights,
don't!"
Louise was
shrieking now. The entire cellar froze with the scream.

 
          
Nobody
moved.

 
          
Everyone
sat in the dark cellar, suspended in the suddenly frozen task of this October game;
the wind blew outside, banging the house, the smell of pumpkins and apples
filled the room with the smell of the objects in their fingers while one boy
cried, "I'll go upstairs and look!" and he ran upstairs hopefully and
out around the house, four times around the house, calling, "Marion,
Marion, Marion!" over and over and at last coming slowly down the stairs
into the waiting breathing cellar and saying to the darkness, "I can't
find her." Then . .. some idiot turned on the lights.

 
          
Mr.
and Mrs.
Welles
walked away from the movie theater
late at night and went into the quiet little store, a combination restaurant
and delicatessen. They settled in a booth, and Mrs.
Welles
said, "Baked ham on pumpernickel." Mr.
Welles
glanced toward the counter, and there lay a loaf of pumpernickel.

 
          
"Why,"
he murmured, "pumpernickel . . .
Druce's
Lake
..."

 
          
The
night, the late hour, the empty restaurant—by now the pattern was familiar.
Anything could set him off on a tide of reminiscences. The scent of autumn
leaves, or
midnight
winds blowing, could stir him from himself, and memories would pour around him.
Now in the unreal hour after the theater, in this lonely store, he saw a loaf
of pumpernickel bread and, as on a thousand other nights, he found himself
moved into the past.

 
          
"
Druce's
Lake
,"
he said again.

 
          
"What?"
His wife glanced up.

 
          
"Something
I'd almost forgotten," said Mr.
Welles
. "In
1910, when I was twenty, I nailed a loaf of pumpernickel to the top of my
bureau mirror. . . ."

 
          
In
the hard, shiny crust of the bread, the boys at
Druce's
Lake
had cut their names:
Tom, Nick, Bill, Alec, Paul, Jack.
The finest picnic in history!
Their faces tanned as they rattled down the dusty roads. Those were the days
when roads were
redly
dusty; a fine brown talcum floured up
after your car. And the lake was always twice as good to reach as it would be
later in life when you arrived immaculate, clean, and un-rumpled.

 
          
"That
was the last time the old gang got together," Mr.
Welles
said.

 
          
After
that, college, work, and marriage separated you. Suddenly you found yourself
with some other group. And you never felt as comfortable or as much as ease
again in all your life.

 
          
"I
wonder," said Mr.
Welles
. "I like to think
maybe we all
knew,
somehow, that this
picnic might be the last we'd have. You first get that empty feeling the day
after high-school graduation. Then, when a little time passes and no one
vanishes immediately, you relax. But after a year you realize the old world is
changing. And you want to do some one last thing before you lose one another.
While you're all still friends, home from college for the summer, this side of
marriage, you've got to have something like a last ride and a swim in the cool
lake."

 
          
Mr.
Welles
remembered that rare summer morning, he and
Tom lying under his father's Ford, reaching up their hands to adjust this or
that, talking about machines and women and the future. While they worked, the
day got warm. At last Tom said, "Why don't we drive out to
Druce's
Lake
?"

 
          
As
simple as that.

 
          
Yet,
forty years later, you remember every detail of picking up the other fellows,
everyone yelling under the green trees.

 
          
"Hey!"
Alec beating everyone's head with the pumpernickel and laughing. "This is
for extra sandwiches, later."

 
          
Nick
had made the sandwiches that were already in the hamper—the garlic kind they
would eat less of as the years passed and the girls moved in.

 
          
Then,
squeezing three in the front, three in the rear, with their arms across one
another's shoulders, they drove through the boiling; dusty countryside, with a
cake of ice in a tin washtub to cool the beer they'd buy.

 
          
What
was the special quality of that day that it should focus like a stereoscopic
image, fresh and clear, forty years later? Perhaps each of them had had an
experience like his own. A few days before the picnic, he had found a
photograph of his father twenty-five years younger, standing with a group of
friends at college. The photograph had disturbed him, made him aware as he had
not been before of the passing of time, the swift flow of the years away from
youth. A picture taken of him as he was now would, in twenty-five years, look
as strange to his own children as his father's picture did to him—unbelievably
young, a stranger out of a strange, never-returning time.

 
          
Was
that how the final picnic had come about— with each of them knowing that in a
few short years they would be crossing streets to avoid one another, or, if
they met, saying, "We've
got
to
have lunch sometime!" but never doing it? Whatever the reason, Mr.
Welles
could still hear the splashes as they'd plunged off
the pier under a yellow sun. And then the beer and sandwiches underneath the
shady trees.

 
          
We
never ate that pumpernickel, Mr.
Welles
thought.
Funny, if we'd been a bit hungrier, we'd have cut it up, and I wouldn't have
been reminded of it by the loaf there on the counter.

 
          
Lying
under the trees in a golden peace that came from beer and sun and male
companionship, they promised that in ten years they would meet at the
courthouse on New Year's Day, 1920, to see what they had done with their lives.
Talking their rough easy talk, they carved their names in the pumpernickel.

 
          
"Driving
home," Mr.
Welles
said, "we sang '
Moonlight
Bay
'."

 
          
He
remembered motoring along in the hot, dry night with their swimsuits damp on
the jolting floorboards. It was a ride of many detours taken just for the hell
of it, which was the best reason in the world.

 
          
"Good
night." "So long." "Good night."

 
          
Then
Welles
was driving alone, at
midnight
, home to bed.

 
          
He
nailed the pumpernickel to his bureau the next day.

 
          
"I
almost cried when, two years later, my mother threw it in the incinerator while
I was off at college."

 
          
"What
happened in 1920?" asked his wife. "On New Year's Day?"

 
          
"Oh,"
said Mr.
Welles
. "I was walking by the
courthouse, by accident, at
noon
. It was snowing. I heard the clock strike.
Lord, I thought, we were supposed to meet here today! I waited five minutes.
Not right in front of the courthouse, no. I waited across the street." He
paused. "Nobody showed up."

 
          
He
got up from the table and paid the bill. "And I'll take that loaf of
unsliced
pumpernickel there," he said.

 
          
When
he and his wife were walking home, he said, "I've got a crazy idea. I
often wondered what happened to everyone."

 
          
"Nick's
still in town with his cafe."

 
          
"But
what about the others?" Mr.
Welles's
face was
getting pink and he was smiling and waving his hands. "They moved away. I
think Tom's in
Cincinnati
." He looked quickly at his wife. "Just for the heck of it,
I'll send him this pumpernickel!"

 
          
"Oh,
but-"

 
          
"Sure!"
He laughed, walking faster, slapping the bread with the palm of his hand.
"Have him carve his name on it and mail it on to the others if he knows
their addresses. And finally back to me, with all their names on it!"

 
          
"But,"
she said, taking his arm, "it'll only make you unhappy. You've done things
like this so many times before and . . ."

 
          
He
wasn't listening. Why do I never get these ideas by day? he thought. Why do I
always get them after the sun goes down?

 
          
In
the morning, first thing, he thought, I'll mail this pumpernickel off, by God,
to Tom and the others. And when it comes back I'll have the loaf just as it was
when it got thrown out and burned! Why not?

 
          
"Let's
see," he said, as his wife opened the screen door and let him walk into
the stuffy-smelling house to be greeted by silence and warm emptiness.
"Let's see. We also sang 'Row Row
Row
Your
Boat,' didn't we?"

 
          
In
the morning, he came down the hall stairs and paused a moment in the strong
full sunlight, his face shaved, his teeth freshly brushed. Sunlight brightened
every room. He looked in at the breakfast table.

 
          
His
wife was busy there. Slowly, calmly, she was slicing the pumpernickel.

 
          
He
sat down at the table in the warm sunlight, and reached for the newspaper.

 
          
She
picked up a slice of the newly cut bread, and kissed him on the cheek. He
patted her arm.

 
          
"One
or two slices of toast, dear?" she asked gently.

 
          
"Two,
I think," he replied.