She crossed the street and rushed up the sidewalk.
Oh, God, the porch! My house!
In the middle of her running, she saw the half-filled lemonade glass where she had left it hours before, in the good easy lazy time, left it on the railing. She wished she was back in that time now, drinking from it, the night still young and not begun.
“Oh, please, please, give me time to get inside and lock the door and I’ll be safe!”
She heard her clumsy feet on the porch, felt her hands scrabbling and ripping at the lock with the key. She heard her heart. She heard her inner voice screaming.
The key fit.
“Unlock the door, quick, quick!”
The door opened.
“Now, inside. Slam it!”
She slammed the door.
“Now lock it, bar it, lock it!” she cried. “Lock it tight!”
The door was locked and barred and bolted.
The music stopped. She listened to her heart again and the sound of it diminishing into silence.
Home.
Oh, safe at home! Safe, safe and safe at home! She slumped against the door. Safe, safe. Listen. Not a sound. Safe, safe, oh, thank God, safe at home. I’ll never go out at night again. Safe, oh, safe, safe, home, so good, so safe. Safe inside, the door locked. Wait. Look out the window.
She looked. She gazed out the window for a full half-minute.
“Why, there’s no one there at all! Nobody! There was no one following me at all. Nobody running after me.” She caught her breath and almost laughed at herself. “It stands to reason. If a man had been following me, he’d have caught me. I’m not a fast runner. There’s no one on the porch or in the yard. How silly of me! I wasn’t running from anything except me. That ravine was safer than safe. Just the same, though, it’s nice to be home. Home’s the really good warm safe place, the only place to be.
She put her hand out to the light switch and stopped.
“What?” she asked. “What, what?”
Behind her, in the black living room, someone cleared his throat.…
At Midnight, In the Month of June
He had been waiting a long, long time in the summer night, as the darkness pressed warmer to the earth and the stars turned slowly over the sky. He sat in total darkness, his hands lying easily on the arms of the Morris chair. He heard the town clock strike nine and ten and eleven, and then at last twelve. The breeze from an open back window flowed through the midnight house in an unlit stream that touched him like a dark rock where he sat silently watching the front door—silently watching.
At midnight, in the month of June.…
The cool night poem by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe slid over his mind like the waters of a shadowed creek.
The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
He moved down the black shapeless halls of the house, stepped out of the back window, feeling the town locked away in bed, in dream, in night. He saw the shining snake of garden hose coiled resiliently in the grass. He turned on the water. Standing alone, watering the flower bed, he imagined himself a conductor leading an orchestra that only night-strolling dogs might hear, passing on their way to nowhere with strange white smiles. Very carefully he planted both feet and his tall weight into the mud beneath the window, making deep, well-outlined prints. He stepped inside again and walked, leaving mud, down the absolutely unse
en hall, his hands seeing for him.
Through the front porch window he made out the faint outline of a lemonade glass, half full, sitting on the porch rail where she had left it. He trembled quietly.
Now, he could feel her coming home. He could feel her moving across town, far away, in the summer night. He shut his eyes and put his mind out to find her, and felt her moving along in the dark; he knew just where she stepped down from a curb and crossed a street, and up on a curb and tack-tacking, tack-tacking along under the June elms and the last of the lilacs, with a friend. Walking the empty desert of night, he was she. He felt a purse in his hands. He felt long hair prickle his neck, and his mouth turn greasy with lipstick. Sitting still, he was walking, walking, walking on home after midnight.