Night Freight

Tomorrow?

Please, he thought as he began to masturbate, please let it be tomorrow.

Some titles are irresistible. Or rather; from a writer's perspective, some lines and phrases are such perfect titles that they cry out for stories to be created for them. "Skeleton Rattle Your Mouldy Leg," for instance, a don marquis quote that inspired a "Nameless Detective" novelette. "The Mayor of Asshole Valley "—I haven't found the right story for that one yet, but I will eventually. And "I Think I Will Not Hang Myself Today," all thanks to G. K Chesterton. As I wrote in an earlier headnote, fictioneers are notoriously poor judges of their own work; so I realize I'm inviting disagreement when I say that this little title-generated tale is among the two or three best, if not the best, of the three-hundred-plus shorts I've written. So be it. That's the reason I've saved it as the final entry in these pages.

I Think I Will Not Hang Myself Today

The leaves on the trees were dying.

She had noted that before, of course; neither her mind nor her powers of observation had been eroded by the passing years. But this morning, seen from her bedroom window, it seemed somehow a sudden thing, as if the maples and Japanese elms had changed color overnight, from bright green to red and brittle gold. Just yesterday it had been summer, now all at once it was autumn.

John had been taken from her on an October afternoon. It would be fitting if autumn were her time, too.

Perhaps today, she thought. Why not today?

For a while longer, Miranda stood looking out at the cold morning, the sky more gray than blue. Wind rattled the frail leaves, now and then tore one loose and swirled it to the ground. Even from a distance, the maple leaves resembled withered hands, their veins and skeletal bone structure clearly visible. The wind, blowing from east to west, sent the fallen ones skittering across the lawn and its bordering flower beds, piled them in heaps along the wall of the old barn.

Looking at the barn this morning filled her with sadness. Once, when John was alive, the skirling whine of his power saws and the fine, fresh smells of sawdust and wood stain and lemon oil made the barn seem alive, as sturdy and indestructible as the beautiful furniture that came from his workshop. Now it was a sagging shell, a lonely place of drafts and shadows and ghosts, its high center beam like the crosspiece of a gallows.

So little left, she thought as she turned from the window. John gone these many years. Moira gone—no family left at all. Lord Byron gone six months, and as much as she missed the little Sealyham's companionship, she hadn't the heart to replace him with another pet. Gone, too, were most of her friends. And the pleasures of teaching grammar and classic English literature, the satisfaction that came from helping to shape young minds. ("We're sorry, Mrs. Halliday, but you know the mandatory retirement age in our district is sixty-five.") For a time there had been a few students to privately tutor, but none had come since last spring. County library cutbacks had ended her volunteer work at the local branch. The arthritis made it all but impossible for her to continue her sewing projects for homeless children. Even Mrs. Boyer in the next block had found someone younger and stronger to babysit her two preschoolers.

The loneliness had been endurable when she was needed, really needed. Being able to help others had given some meaning and purpose to her life. Now, though, she had become the needy one, requiring help with the cleaning, the yardwork, her weekly grocery shopping. All too soon, she would no longer be able to drive her car, and then she would be housebound, totally dependent on others. If that happened...

No, she thought, it mustn't. I'm sorry, John, but it mustn't.

She thought again of the old barn, his workshop, the long, high rafter beam. When it had become clear and irrefutable what she must one day do, there had never been any question as to the method. Mr. Gilbert Chesterton had seen to that. She had bought the rope that very day, and it was still out there waiting. She would have to stand on a ladder in order to loop it around the beam—not an easy task, even though the knot had long ago been tied. But she would manage. She had always managed, hadn't she? Supremely capable, John had called her. That, and the most determined woman he had ever known; once her mind was made up, nothing would change it. Yes, and the end would be quick and she would not suffer. No one should ever have to suffer when the time came.

Chesterton's lines ran through her mind again:

The strangest whim has seized me.

. . . After all

I think I will not hang myself today.

She had first come across "A Ballade of Suicide," one of his minor works, when she was a girl, and there had been something so haunting in those three lines that she had never forgotten them. One day, she would alter the last of the lines by deleting the word "not." This day, perhaps...

Miranda bathed and dressed and brushed her hair, which she kept short and wavy in the fashion John had liked. Satisfied with her appearance, she made her way downstairs and fixed a somewhat larger breakfast than usual—a soft-boiled egg to go with her habitual tea and toast. Then she washed the dishes—her hands were not paining too badly this morning—and entered the living room.

John had built every stick of furniture in there, of cherry wood and walnut. Tables, chairs, sofa and loveseat, sideboard, the tall cabinet that contained his collection of rifles and handguns. (She hated guns, but she had been unable to bring herself to rid the house of anything that had belonged to him.) Handcrafted furniture had been both his vocation and his hobby. An artist with wood, John Halliday. Everyone said so. She had loved to watch him work, to help him in his shop and to learn from him some of the finer points of his craft.

The photograph of John in his Navy uniform was centered on the fireplace mantel. She picked it up, looked at it until his lean, dark face began to blur, then replaced it. She dried her eyes and peered at the other framed photos that flanked his.

Mother, so slender and fragile, the black velvet-banded cameo she'd always worn hiding the grease burn on her throat. Father in cap and gown at one of his college graduation ceremonies, looking as young as one of his students. Moira and herself at ages four and seven, all dressed up for some occasion or other, and wasn't it odd how much prettier she had been as a child, when it was Moira who had grown into such a beautiful woman? Uncle Leon, his mouth full of the foul pipe he favored, and Aunt Gwen as round and white as the Pillsbury Doughboy. Gone, all gone. Dust. Sweet-sad memories and scattered specks of dust.

Miranda moved to the bookcases on the near side of the fireplace. Her domain; John had never been much of a reader, despite her best efforts. Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Shakespeare, Chaucer. Scott, Dickens, Hawthorne, the Brontë sisters, Stevenson. Browning and Byron and Eliot and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Nearly a dozen volumes of fiction and nonfiction by Chesterton, always her favorite. Oscar Wilde, so amusing and ironic—

The phone was ringing.

She may have heard the first ring, or the bell may have sounded two or three times before she grew aware of it; she wasn't quite sure. She went to answer it.

"Miranda, dear, how are you?"

"Oh, hello, Patrice."

"You sound a bit melancholy this morning. Is everything all right?"