He listened.
There was the calling again. Like the last cricket of the year, like the last rustle of the last oak leaf of the season. At the front door, at the back, at the bay windows. Oh, there would be a million slow footprints in the meadow lawn tomorrow when the sun rose.
Was she listening?
“Ann, Ann, oh, Ann!” Was that what he called? “Ann, can you hear me, Ann?” Was that what you called when you came back very late in the day?
And then, suddenly, Mr. Widmer stood up.
SUPPOSE SHE didn’t hear him! How could he be sure she was still able to hear? Seventy years make for spider webs in the ears, gray waddings of time which dull everything for some peop
le until they live in a universe of cotton and wool and silence. Nobody had spoken to her in thirty years, save to open their mouths to say hello. What if she were deaf, lying there in her cold bed now like a little girl playing out a long and lonely game, never even aware someone was calling through her flake-painted door, someone was walking on the soft grass around her locked house? Perhaps not pride but a physical inability prevented her from answering!
In the living room, Mr. Widmer quietly took the phone off the hook, watching the bedroom door to be certain he hadn’t wakened his wife. To the operator he said, “Helen? Give me 729.”
“That you, Mr. Widmer? Funny time of night to call her.”
“Never mind.”
“All right, but she won’t answer. Never has. Don’t recall she ever has used her phone in all the years after she had it put in.”
The phone rang. It rang six times, and nothing happened.
“Keep trying, Helen.”
The phone rang twelve times more. His face was streaming perspiration. Someone picked up the phone at the other end.
“Miss Bidwell!” cried Mr. Widmer, almost collapsing in relief. “Miss Bidwell?” he lowered his voice. “This is Mr. Widmer, the grocer, calling.”
No answer. She was on the other end, in her house, standing in the dark. Through his window he could see that her house was still unlit. She hadn’t switched on any lights to find the phone.
“Miss Bidwell, do you hear me?” he asked.
Silence.
“Miss Bidwell, I want you to do me a favor,” he said.
Click.
“I want you to open your front door and look out,” he said.
“She’s hung up,” said Helen. “Want me to call her again?”
“No thanks.”
He put the receiver back on the hook.
There was the house, in the morning sun, in the afternoon sun, and in the twilight—silent. Here was the grocery, with Mr. Widmer in it, thinking: She’s a fool. No matter what, she’s a fool! It’s never too late. No matter how old, wrinkled hands are better than none. He’s travelled a long way around, and by his look, he’s never married, but always travelled, as some men do, crazy to change their scenery every week, every month, every year, until they reach an age where they find they are collecting nothing at all but a lot of empty trips and a lot of towns with no more substance to them than movie sets and a lot of people in those towns who are about as real as wax dummies seen in lighted windows late at night as you pass by on a slow, black train. He’s been living with a world of people who didn’t care about him because he never stayed anywhere long enough to make anyone worry whether he would arise in the morning or whether he had turned to dust. And then he got to thinking about “her” and decided she was the one real person he’d ever known. And just a little too late, he took a train and got off and walked up here, and there he is on her lawn, feeling like a fool, and one more night of this and he won’t come back at all.
This was the third night. Mr. Widmer thought of going over, of breaking the glass in the firebox, of setting fire to the porch of Miss Bidwell’s house, and of causing the firemen to roar up. That would bring her out, right into the old man’s arms, by Jupiter!
But wait! Ah, but wait.
Mr. Widmer’s eyes went to the ceiling. Up there, in the attic—wasn’t there a weapon there to be used against pride and time? In all that dust, wasn’t there something with which to strike out? Something as old as all of them—Mr. Widmer, the old man, the old lady? How long since the attic has been cleaned out? Never.
But it was too ridiculous. He wouldn’t dare!
And yet, this was the last night. A weapon must be provided.