Charles L. Grant - Temperature Days on Hawthorne Street

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Temperature Days on Hawthorne Street

by Charles L. Grant

The half-moon porch was partially masked by untrimmed arms of fully green forsythia and

juniper dying at the tips. What breeze there was in pressing heat only caused to quaver the

languid drone of hunting bees. A spider, working steadily in the shaded corner of a peeling

post and sloping roof, ambushed a fly while a mantis lurking on the lattice flanking the steps

watched, praying. There were ants, marching, but the man on the bottom step ignored their

parade, waiting instead for the sounds of anger to drain from the house. He rubbed his face,

tugged at his chin, blaming the summer-long heat for the pots he heard slamming onto the stove,

the crack of cabinet doors, the thud and hollow roll of an empty can on the linoleum floor. He

hunched at the sharp noises and glanced up the block, wondering why none of the houses to the

top of the gentle hill had emptied at the aftermath of the fight.

Sounds carried on a street like this, he thought, like the night the week before when Casper

Waters had ordered his wife to pack and leave just before the late evening news. By the time

she had limped with a suitcase to her car and had driven around the corner, not a porch was

deserted, not a lawn with flickering flashlights carried by men ostensibly searching for lost

tools. So now where are they, he wondered at the blank facades of Hawthorne Street. They're

no better than I am. Why the hell don't they come out?

The milkman, he answered himself. They've figured the bogeyman milkman has done it

again, and some of them believe it, and they're as afraid as I am.

A robin landed silently beneath one of the front yard's two ancient willows and cocked a

brown eye toward the lawn.

"Gerry?"

It pecked twice and fluttered, hopping rapidly across the slate walk to the other side, where

it pecked twice again and flew off.

"Gerry?"

He leaned backward, feeling the ragged edge of the step pressing against his spine, and

tilted his head until his neck stretched close to choking. Ruth, her night-soft hair twisted back to

a ponytail and wisping around her temples, looked down at him, trying to manipulate muscles

that once made her smile. One softly tanned hand lay flat against her stomach, and he suddenly

wished the baby would hurry up and show itself; his first daughter had kept Ruth slim, and had

died before birth. He closed his eyes briefly, then stretched up a palm, holding it open until she

covered it and came down beside him.

"They must be tired of men beating their wives," he said quietly, waving his free hand

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Charles L. Grant - Temperature Days on Hawthorne Street

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