A Safe Place for Dying by Jack Fredrickson

workmen in pale blue coveralls. All three were staring into a hole in the ground like they were discussing planting a tree. They looked relaxed. I tapped my horn and waved to Stanley, swung around, and parked fifty feet down along the grass shoulder. He hurried up to the Jeep before I could get out.
    â€œChernek’s office told me to get right over here,” I said through the open side window. “What’s the rumpus?”
    Stanley leaned closer to be heard above the traffic going past. “Something blew that lamppost out of the ground, but I don’t think it’s related to our problem.”
    He opened my door before I could stop him. I got out.

    â€œThose workers don’t know about the note,” he said, closing the door.
    â€œMum’s the word.”
    We started toward the two workers.
    The hole was rough-edged, three feet in diameter and three feet deep. Next to it, a black metal lamppost, jagged at the base where it had been ripped from its cement footing, lay on the grass like an uprooted tree.
    The taller workman was down on his knees, sniffing inside the hole. “I still don’t smell anything,” he said, getting up. He looked at Stanley. “Best we call the gas company.” Next to him, the other worker nodded.
    I bent down. The inside of the hole was strewn with chunks of broken cement. I couldn’t smell anything except the sweetness of freshly cut grass.
    â€œGet your shovels and poke down in there first,” Stanley said quickly. “See if you can locate the pipe.”
    Both workers looked at him, surprised. I did, too. “The shovels might give a spark,” the taller one said.
    â€œUse the wood handles, then. Let’s make sure there’s a gas pipe down there before we call the gas company.”
    Neither of the workmen moved.
    â€œLook,” Stanley said to the tall workman, “after the explosion at Sixteen Chanticleer, any reporter getting hold of this will see it as the same kind of explosion, and then it will hit television or the papers. Let’s be sure it’s gas, is all I’m saying.”
    The tall workman looked back at Stanley. “What else could it be?”
    â€œKids, with a coffee can full of cherry bombs.” Stanley turned and touched my elbow, ending the discussion. We started walking back to the Jeep.
    I waited until we were out of earshot. “You really think that big iron lamppost was toppled by kids with fireworks?”
    â€œFourth of July was last week. Kids here, their parents buy them
cherry bombs, M-80s, skyrockets. Put enough of that stuff together, you can blow up anything.”
    We leaned against the hood of the Jeep and watched the workmen pull blue-handled shovels from their pickup truck. It occurred to me then that everything matched in Gateville: the truck, the workers’ coveralls, Stanley’s uniform shirt, even the shovel handles. It was all pale blue, the color of a clear sky, as if serenity could be painted on.
    â€œTell me what happened.”
    Stanley looked at his watch. “Four hours ago, at two thirteen, I was making my rounds.”
    I remembered the way he cruised Chanticleer Circle in his blue station wagon, lap after lap, scanning the empty lawns and the shut-tight houses for movement that didn’t belong. I used to wonder how he stood the monotony, because hardly anything ever moved in Gateville. The residents were never out. The women didn’t talk across hedges, their kids didn’t toss footballs on the lawns, their toddlers didn’t wobble big-wheeled tricycles down the sidewalk. The hedges had been grown tall, to seclude, not to talk over. There were no sidewalks. And the kids were shadows, invisible, gone after school to supervised activities and then later whisked down to basements, to numb themselves with home theaters and video games. What movement there was in Gateville came from landscapers pushing lawnmowers, house painters carrying