the afternoon, my sister was somebody who could never have passed through such a danger. It was absurd. We swung together in the hammock, one of us at either end.
It was in that hammock that I spent much of the days, and that may have been the simple reason for my not getting to sleep at night. And since I did not speak of my night difficulties, nobody came up with the simple information that I’d be better to get more action during the daytime.
My troubles returned with the night, of course. The demons grabbed hold of me again. And in fact it got worse. I knew enough to get up and out of my bunk without any pretending that things would get better and I would go to sleep if I just tried hard enough. I made my way as carefully out of the house as I had done before. I became able to find my way around more easily; even the inside of those rooms became more visible to me and yet more strange. I could make out the tongue-and-groove kitchen ceiling put in when the house was built maybe a hundred years ago, and the northern window frame partly chewed away by a dog that had been shut in the house one night long before I was born. I remembered what I had completely forgotten—that I used to have a sandbox there, placed where my mother could watch me out the north window. A great bunch of golden glow was flowering in its place now; you could hardly see out of that window at all.
The east wall of the kitchen had no windows in it, but it had a door opening on a stoop where we stood to hang out the heavy wet washing and haul it in when it was dry and smelling fresh and triumphant, from white sheets to dark heavy overalls.
At that stoop I sometimes halted in my night walks. I never sat down, but it eased me to look toward town, maybe just to inhale the sanity of it. All the people getting up before long, having their shops to go to, their doors to unlock and window arrangements to see to, their busyness.
One night—I can’t say whether it was the twentieth or the twelfth or only the eighth or the ninth that I had got up and walked—I got a sense, too late for me to change my pace, that there was somebody around the corner. There was somebody waiting there and I could do nothing but walk right on. I would be caught if I turned back.
Who was it? Nobody but my father. He too was looking toward town and that improbably faint light. He was dressed in his day clothes—dark work pants, the next thing to overalls but not quite, and dark shirt and boots. He was smoking a cigarette. A roll-your-own, of course. Maybe the cigarette smoke had alerted me to another presence, though it’s possible that in those days the smell of tobacco smoke was everywhere, inside and out.
He said good morning, in what might have seemed a natural way except that there was nothing natural about it. We weren’t accustomed to giving such greetings in our family. There was nothing hostile about this—it was just thought unnecessary, I suppose, to give a greeting to somebody you would be seeing off and on all day long.
I said good morning back. And it must have really been getting toward morning or my father would not have been dressed for a day’s work in that way. The sky may have been whitening but hidden still between the heavy trees. The birds singing too. I had taken to staying away from my bunk till later and later, even though I didn’t get comfort from doing that as I had at first. The possibilities that had once inhabited only the bedroom, the bunk beds, were taking up the corners everywhere.
Now that I come to think of it, why wasn’t my father in his overalls? He was dressed as if he had to go into town for something, first thing in the morning.
I could not continue walking, the whole rhythm of it had been broken.
“Having trouble sleeping?” he said.
My impulse was to say no, but then I thought of the difficulties of explaining that I was just walking around, so I said yes.
He said that was often the case on summer nights.
“You go
It was in that hammock that I spent much of the days, and that may have been the simple reason for my not getting to sleep at night. And since I did not speak of my night difficulties, nobody came up with the simple information that I’d be better to get more action during the daytime.
My troubles returned with the night, of course. The demons grabbed hold of me again. And in fact it got worse. I knew enough to get up and out of my bunk without any pretending that things would get better and I would go to sleep if I just tried hard enough. I made my way as carefully out of the house as I had done before. I became able to find my way around more easily; even the inside of those rooms became more visible to me and yet more strange. I could make out the tongue-and-groove kitchen ceiling put in when the house was built maybe a hundred years ago, and the northern window frame partly chewed away by a dog that had been shut in the house one night long before I was born. I remembered what I had completely forgotten—that I used to have a sandbox there, placed where my mother could watch me out the north window. A great bunch of golden glow was flowering in its place now; you could hardly see out of that window at all.
The east wall of the kitchen had no windows in it, but it had a door opening on a stoop where we stood to hang out the heavy wet washing and haul it in when it was dry and smelling fresh and triumphant, from white sheets to dark heavy overalls.
At that stoop I sometimes halted in my night walks. I never sat down, but it eased me to look toward town, maybe just to inhale the sanity of it. All the people getting up before long, having their shops to go to, their doors to unlock and window arrangements to see to, their busyness.
One night—I can’t say whether it was the twentieth or the twelfth or only the eighth or the ninth that I had got up and walked—I got a sense, too late for me to change my pace, that there was somebody around the corner. There was somebody waiting there and I could do nothing but walk right on. I would be caught if I turned back.
Who was it? Nobody but my father. He too was looking toward town and that improbably faint light. He was dressed in his day clothes—dark work pants, the next thing to overalls but not quite, and dark shirt and boots. He was smoking a cigarette. A roll-your-own, of course. Maybe the cigarette smoke had alerted me to another presence, though it’s possible that in those days the smell of tobacco smoke was everywhere, inside and out.
He said good morning, in what might have seemed a natural way except that there was nothing natural about it. We weren’t accustomed to giving such greetings in our family. There was nothing hostile about this—it was just thought unnecessary, I suppose, to give a greeting to somebody you would be seeing off and on all day long.
I said good morning back. And it must have really been getting toward morning or my father would not have been dressed for a day’s work in that way. The sky may have been whitening but hidden still between the heavy trees. The birds singing too. I had taken to staying away from my bunk till later and later, even though I didn’t get comfort from doing that as I had at first. The possibilities that had once inhabited only the bedroom, the bunk beds, were taking up the corners everywhere.
Now that I come to think of it, why wasn’t my father in his overalls? He was dressed as if he had to go into town for something, first thing in the morning.
I could not continue walking, the whole rhythm of it had been broken.
“Having trouble sleeping?” he said.
My impulse was to say no, but then I thought of the difficulties of explaining that I was just walking around, so I said yes.
He said that was often the case on summer nights.
“You go
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