certain that this must be the man, the last one in the house.
“There you are,” said Mr. Britz, blinking. “Hey, you smell good. I never knew you used scent.” He leered at her.
“Someone gave me a gift.”
“Well, that’s fine.” And Mr. Britz did a little dance going down the porch steps, his cane jauntily flung over his shoulder. “See you later, Miss W.” He marched off.
Miss Welkes sat, and Douglas hung in the cooling tree. The kitchen sounds were fading. In a moment, Grandma would come out, bringing her pillow and a bottle of mosquito oil. Grandpa would cut the end off a long stogie and puff it to kill his own particular insects, and the aunts and uncles would arrive for the Independence Evening Event at the Spaulding House, the Festival of Fire, the shooting stars, the Roman Candles so diligently held by Grandpa, looking like Julius Caesar gone to flesh, standing with great dignity on the dark summer lawn, directing the setting off of fountains of red fire, and pinwheels of sizzle and smoke, while everyone, as if to the order of some celestial doctor, opened their mouths and said Ah! their faces burned into quick colors by blue, red, yellow, white flashes of sky bomb among the cloudy stars. The house windows would jingle with concussion. And Miss Welkes would sit among the strange people, the scent of perfume evaporating during the evening hours, until it was gone, and only the sad, wet smell of punk and sulfur would remain.
THE CHILDREN screamed by on the dim street now, calling for Douglas, but, hidden, he did not answer. He felt in his pocket for the remaining dollar and fifty cents. The children ran away into the night.
Douglas swung and dropped. He stood by the porch steps.
“Miss Welkes?”
She glanced up. “Yes?”
Now that the time had come he was afraid. Suppose she refused, suppose she was embarrassed and ran up to lock her door and never came out again?
“Tonight,” he said, “there’s a swell show at the Elite Theater. Harold Lloyd in WELCOME, DANGER. The show starts at eight o’clock, and afterward we’ll have a chocolate sundae at the Midnight Drug Store, open until eleven forty-five. I’ll go change clothes.”
She looked down at him and didn’t speak. Then she opened the door and went up the stairs.
“Miss Welkes!” he cried.
“It’s all right,” she said. “Run and put your shoes on!”
IT WAS seven thirty, the porch filling with people, when Douglas emerged, in his dark suit, with a blue tie, his hair wet with water, and his feet in the hot tight shoes.
“Why, Douglas!” the aunts and uncles and Grandma and Grandpa cried, “Aren’t you staying for the fireworks?”
“No.” And he looked at the fireworks laid out so beautifully crisp and smelling of powder, the pinwheels and sky bombs, and the Fire Balloons, three of them, folded like moths in their tissue wings, those balloons he loved most dearly of all, for they were like a summer night dream going up quietly, breathlessly on the still high air, away and away to far lands, glowing and breathing light as long as you could see them. Yes, the Fire Balloons, those especially would he miss, while seated in the Elite Theater tonight.
There was a whisper, the screen door stood wide, and there was Miss Welkes.
“Good evening, Mr. Spaulding,” she said to Douglas.
“Good evening, Miss Welkes,” he said.
She was dressed in a gray suit no one had seen ever before, neat and fresh, with her hair up under a summer straw hat, and standing there in the dim porch light she was like the carved goddess on the great marble library clock come to life.
“Shall we go, Mr. Spaulding?” and Douglas walked her down the steps.
“Have a good time!” said everyone.
“Douglas!” called Grandfather.
“Yes, sir?”
“Douglas,” said Grandfather, after a pause, holding his cigar in his hand, “I’m saving one of the Fire Balloons. I’ll be up when you come home. We’ll light her together and send her up. How’s that sound, eh?”
“Swell!” said Douglas.
“Good night, boy.” Grandpa waved him quietly on.
“Good night, sir.”
He took Miss Eleanora Welkes down the street, over the sidewalks of the summer evening, and they talked about Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Whittier and Mr. Poe all the way to the Elite Theater. …
OLD MISS BIDWELL used to sit with a lemonade glass in her hand in her squeaking rocker on the porch of her house on Saint James Street every summer night from seven until nine. At nine, you could hear the front door tap shut, the brass key turn in the lock, the shades rustle down, and the lights click out.
Her routine varied in no detail. She lived alone with a house full of rococo pictures, a dusty library, a yellow-mouthed piano, and a music box which, when she ratcheted it up and set it going, prickled the air like the bubbles from lemon soda pop. Miss Bidwell had a nod for everyone walking by, and it was interesting that her house had no front steps leading up to its wooden porch. No front steps, and no back steps, for Miss Bidwell hadn’t left her house in forty years. In the year 1909, she had had the back and the front steps completely torn down and the porches railed in.
In the autumn—the closing-up, the nailing-in, the hiding-away time—she would have one last lemonade on her cooling, bleak porch; then she would carry her wicker chair inside, and no one would see her again until the next spring.
“There she goes,” said Mr. Widmer, the grocer, pointing with the red apple in his hand. “Take a good look at her.” He tapped the wall calendar. “Nine o’clock of an evening in the month of September, the day after Labor Day.”
Several customers squinted over at Miss Bidwell’s house. There was the old lady, looking around for a final time; then she went inside.
“Won’t see her again until May first,” said Mr. Widmer. “There’s a trap door in her kitchen wall. I unlock that trap door and shove the groceries in. There’s an envelope there, with money in it and a list of the things she wants. I never see her.”
“What does she do all winter?”
“Only the Lord knows. She’s had a phone for forty years and never used it.”
Miss Bidwell’s house was dark.
Mr. Widmer bit into his apple, enjoying its crisp succulence. “Forty years ago, she had the front steps taken away.”
“Why? Folks die?”
“They died before that.”
“Husband or children die?”
“Never had no husband nor children. She held hands with a young man who had all kinds of notions about travelling.
