The Big Front Yard and Other Stories Read Free Page A

the others ever do is laugh at me or shout.”
    Abbie’s voice came bellowing down the stairs. “Beasly, are you coming? Don’t go standing there all day. I have rugs to beat.”
    â€œYes’m,” said Beasly, starting up the stairs.
    At the truck, Abbie turned on Taine with determination: “You’ll get that set fixed right away? I’m lost without it.”
    â€œImmediately,” said Taine.
    He stood and watched them off, then looked around for Towser, but the dog had disappeared. More than likely he was at the woodchuck hole again, in the woods across the road. Gone off, thought Taine, without his breakfast, too.
    The teakettle was boiling furiously when Taine got back to the kitchen. He put coffee in the maker and poured in the water. Then he went downstairs.
    The ceiling was still there.
    He turned on all the lights and walked around the basement, staring up at it.
    It was a dazzling white material and it appeared to be translucent – up to a point, that is. One could see into it, but he could not see through it. And there were no signs of seams. It was fitted neatly and tightly around the water pipes and the ceiling lights.
    Taine stood on a chair and rapped his knuckles against it sharply. It gave out a bell-like sound, almost exactly as if he’d rapped a fingernail against a thinly blown goblet.
    He got down off the chair and stood there, shaking his head. The whole thing was beyond him. He had spent part of the evening repairing Banker Stevens’ lawn mower and there’d been no ceiling then.
    He rummaged in a box and found a drill. He dug out one of the smaller bits and fitted it in the drill. He plugged in the cord and climbed on the chair again and tried the bit against the ceiling. The whirling steel slid wildly back and forth. It didn’t make a scratch. He switched off the drill and looked closely at the ceiling. There was not a mark upon it. He tried again, pressing against the drill with all his strength. The bit went ping and the broken end flew across the basement and hit the wall.
    Taine stepped down off the chair. He found another bit and fitted it in the drill and went slowly up the stairs, trying to think. But he was too confused to think. That ceiling should not be up there, but there it was. And unless he went stark, staring crazy and forgetful as well, he had not put it there.
    In the living room, he folded back one corner of the worn and faded carpeting and plugged in the drill. He knelt and started drilling in the floor. The bit went smoothly through the old oak flooring, then stopped. He put on more pressure and the drill spun without getting any bite.
    And there wasn’t supposed to be anything underneath that wood! Nothing to stop a drill. Once through the flooring, it should have dropped into the space between the joists.
    Taine disengaged the drill and laid it to one side.
    He went into the kitchen and the coffee now was ready. But before he poured it, he pawed through a cabinet drawer and found a pencil flashlight. Back in the living room he shined the light into the hole that the drill had made.
    There was something shiny at the bottom of the hole.
    He went back to the kitchen and found some day-old doughnuts and poured a cup of coffee. He sat at the kitchen table, eating doughnuts and wondering what to do.
    There didn’t appear, for the moment at least, much that he could do. He could putter around all day trying to figure out what had happened to his basement and probably not be any wiser than he was right now.
    His money-making Yankee soul rebelled against such a horrid waste of time.
    There was, he told himself, that maple four-poster that he should be getting to before some unprincipled city antique dealer should run afoul of it. A piece like that, he figured, if a man had any luck at all, should sell at a right good price. He might turn a handsome profit on it if he only worked it right.
    Maybe, he thought, he could turn a