Lightfall Read Free Page B

couldn’t say. As she drove downhill, she passed beneath an arch of leafless elms, most of which were cut to the bone to halt the spread of blight. They stood like broken sentries, handing in their arms.
    She turned in at a red-brick bank designed to look like a sweetshop. The young teller didn’t bat an eye when she wrote out a check for fifteen hundred, cash. All he said was: “Getting an early start on Christmas, are you, Dr. Ammons?”
    To which she replied she would have it in hundreds. She would not stop to small talk. The kid got very apologetic, counting out her bills. As if he’d gone too far, somehow, and feared she’d turn him in.
    Across the square, outside the drugstore, Iris slipped into a phone booth to call in her reservation. “Where to?” the airline clerk asked patiently. “San Francisco,” said Iris like a dutiful child. Till she spoke the name, she had no clue where she was meant to go. She mulled it over as the airline man rang off to consult his computer. She’d been there once before, of course, when she was … twenty, twenty-five. One of her summers in college, perhaps. A flattish sort of travelogue ran dully in her mind. Did she have some friend there? Some connection?
    She looked across the street to the village grocery. A portly man in a spotless apron pyramided his bins of fruit. Two old women picked through a burlap sack of onions. A small child, too young to go to school, toddled in the doorway. It wasn’t clear who he belonged to, but he seemed to sense that nobody here was watching. He reached inside the grocer’s open toolbox. He brought out a pair of steel-gray shears that would have cut a chicken up like paper. Iris stared with growing fury, but made no move to stop him. He pulled the scissors open. The blades were as long as his arms.
    â€œThe four o’clock is filled,” announced the tight-lipped clerk. “I have a space on the five-fifteen.”
    â€œThe five-fifteen is perfect,” Iris said. She felt a thrill of power to think there were systems out of their control. The forces still had limits. Remember that, she thought.
    The little boy stood at the grocer’s knee, holding up the slack-jawed shears. He only wished to be helpful. He did a sort of jig, to get the other’s attention. The blade points grazed the belly of his parka.
    â€œJust one way,” she told the clerk.
    As she hung up the phone, the grocer turned and nearly stumbled. The child fell back, the shears beneath him. Iris cocked an ear for the cry and watched for the gout of blood. But it seemed the deadly drift of things had not caught on in the country towns, or not around these parts, at least. The blades fell flat, so he fell without harm. The grocer stooped and heaved the child up, laughing. No one took note of the shears at all. Now the two went barreling through the door to fetch the boy a chocolate bar. The elderly ladies clucked at the price of tangerines. In the grocery window, the hands on the clock met tight at noon, and all the shadows vanished.
    Why was it, then, that Iris shook with horror, if all the danger was safely passed? Couldn’t she see how solidly the bricks were mortared here? The circle of shops that bordered the square took care of the people’s every need. The village streets connected each to each, so no one even had to turn around. In the center of the square, a polished granite obelisk rose out of a boxwood hedge. It bore the names of the town’s war dead—four wars, one to a side—and showed they were ever mindful of the sacrifice that kept them safe. The wells were deep with water sweet as honey. The school won all the tournaments. The taxes were a song.
    How could she blame them for feeling secure? They’d made a collective stand against eventuality, just being here. They had the deeds to prove it.
    Yet the feeling was so strong she could not keep it checked. A tightness gripped her