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The next morning, shortly after she rose, she told me that she was going to call Birge.

“No,” I said emphatically. “You will not.”

“Why—Why, in the name of God? Will you tell me why?”

Her voice rose and I hushed her, for he was undoubtedly below in the crawl straining to hear everything we said. She started again. This time more softly: “Tell me why?”

It was an answer I felt I owed her, and so I set out to make my case. “In the first place, I will not put that boy into Birge’s hands, because he means to kill him—”

She started to protest, but I waved her to silence. “Don’t ask me how I know that or even dare to think it. But I know just as surely as I’m talking to you this moment that if I turn that boy over to Birge, it’d only be a matter of days until we’d hear that he was dead. Quite accidentally, mind you. Terrible tragedy, and all that, but the boy brought it on himself. That sort of thing.”

She stared at me a little queerly, half believing what I’d said.

“In the second place, if we turn the boy over to Birge, and it turns out I’m wrong—that Birge doesn’t kill him but merely chases him out of the county—where do you think that leaves us?”

“Leaves us,” she murmured, confused by thoughts moving too fast for her.

“Yes,” I said, a little cruelly. “Where do you s’pose that leaves us?”

She saw where the line of thought was going, but refused to pursue it. I pursued it for her.

“Suppose Birge runs him out of the county. Knowing Richard and what he is, how long do you think he’d stay out? And if he were to come back here some dark night—show up on your doorstep, or even better, get back into your cellar—how do you think things would go for us then, my dear? How much charity do you think he’d be prepared to show his old benefactors who’d crossed him? About as much as he showed Petrie when they crossed him.”

“You don’t think he’d—”

“Kill us?” I said almost charmingly. “I most certainly do.”

I had to laugh a little at the neatness of the dilemma I’d just posed. But Alice didn’t laugh. She just stared at me, a kind of sick, idiotic expression on her face. I was about to turn and leave, but she caught my arm. “Then let’s go ourselves.”

She whispered it at me with a kind of hissing desperation. “Yes. Why not? Why not just drive off ourselves?” Her eyes implored me. “At least for a while.”

“You won’t find a house here when you get back.”

“I’m willing to take the loss. At least then he’d be gone.”

There was a kind of bold, if not desperate, logic about it. And I must confess the idea was not totally unappealing. Perhaps it was an easy way out, but it seemed so drastic a step. Like burning down a house to get rid of a rat.

“He can’t keep it up much longer,” I said, finally. “Soon he’ll go himself. Of his own accord.”

“Of his own accord?” She said the words over again, as if she hadn’t quite under stood them the first time. “Is that what we’re waiting around here for?”

She didn’t wait for my answer. She gave a short, mocking little laugh. “Poor Albert.” She laughed again. “Poor. Poor. Sweet. Simple Albert.” Gales of laughter were suddenly pealing from her.

“Don’t talk to me that way.”

“What way?”

“In that tone of voice. As if you pitied me.”

“I do pity you, Albert,” she said, her eyes all wet, and red in the face from laughing. “I pity us. You and I for what we are.”

“And what are we?” I shouted.

“Ssh,” she whispered and winking, pointed with her finger to the kitchen floor.

“What are we?” I shouted again.

“The meek of the earth,” she whispered and then she was gone.

The following morning the stench was unbearable. We opened all the windows wide and got out of the house as early as we could. We stayed out all morning and came back at noon only to get a bit of food and carry it back outside to eat it. In the afternoon we went walking in the woods. I don’t know how long we stayed out there. It was already September and the days were beginning to grow cool and shorter.

We argued back and forth. It’s useless to recount the nasty scenes and the bitchy sentiments of that afternoon, but at the end of our walk in the woods, we had come to a decision. We would go ourselves. Not permanently, to be sure. Just a short trip of an indefinite length, without any fixed destination, so as to make it very difficult for us to be followed. Perhaps we would be gone two months, maybe three—at the end of which time, he would surely be gone, and we would move back in. Assuming, that is, that we still had a house to move into.

That night was the first night of the phone calls. They were ugly things. We’ve all had them from time to time—the phone ringing later than it should, and nothing but heavy breathing on the other end. We had one of those the first night; two or three the second. Then nearly a dozen the night after.

Then the calls began to come earlier—usually just about the time we’d finish supper—and then continued right up until about bedtime. They were always the same thing—no words and a lot of heavy breathing.

At first we tried to pay no attention, but after the calls continued for several nights, it began to grow unbearable. At first I thought it was the bunch that had come out to the house that night several weeks back. It occurred to me that by these calls they were watching our movements, staking us out, as it were, for yet another nocturnal assault.

But after that I began to think that it was Richard Atlee (at this point we never knew if he was in the house or not), and for some unaccountable reason I found this second possibility more plausible than the first. It suddenly occurred to me that what he was doing was trying to make us believe that the calls, by their frequency and number, were the work of the same vile bunch that had visited us before. By doing this he meant to frighten us, to drive us out, leaving him behind as the heir apparent to all our possessions. Right then and there I decided, come hell or high water, I would not leave the house, with all our possessions and everything we’d accumulated over the years, to Richard Atlee. Not to him and not to any pack of roving vandals whose only purpose was to loot and mutilate.

One night we thought we heard someone prowling around outside in the dark, near the house. It might have simply been imagination or a case of badly frayed nerves. By that time we were pretty rattled. Also the phone calls that night had grown so frequent and jarring that, much against my better instincts, I called Birge’s office.

The phone was answered by a deputy or some assistant. I told this person who I was and asked to speak with Birge. He promptly informed me that Birge was out and very politely asked if he could be of any assistance. I explained our situation—told him about the calls and the noises about the house. I started to tell him about our prowlers of several weeks earlier, but “Of course,” he said, he’d heard all about it already. I asked him when Birge was expected back, and he said not that night, and even as he was saying it I heard Birge’s soft, mocking laughter in the background.

The deputy assured me that he would send a patrol car out to the house immediately, and with a sinking heart I hung up the phone.

Alice did a curious thing that night. Just prior to going to bed, she went into Richard’s room, which had remained shut for several weeks. She put on the lights, poked her head in the door, and gazed quickly around. She stood there a moment, then crossed quickly to the bed, sat down and fingered the edge of the blanket thoughtfully. Then she rose, flicked off the lights, and closed the door of the room behind her. It all must have taken no more than a minute or two, but it left a very strong impression—almost as if she were certain, poor woman, that if she’d only open the door and look, she’d find the sweet, lambish infant she’d lost somewhere, curled safely in its bed.

After that we locked all the doors, turned out the lights, and went upstairs to get ready for bed.

I undressed swiftly and got into pajamas. All the while that we were undressing the phone kept ringing, but now we didn’t even bother answering it. In the next moment, Alice slipped despairingly into bed.

But I didn’t get into bed. I went to the closet and took out the rifle along with several boxes of cartridges. Alice watched me with an expression of tired resignation on her face. She knew now I would never leave the house until the situation was resolved one way or another.

“What are you going to do with that?” she asked, looking blankly at the gun.

“Don’t worry.”

I flicked out the lights, then walked to the window and opened it as softly as I could. Next I drew up a chair and placed the rifle with the safety catch on across my lap.

There was no moon, but there were innumerable stars such as there are in early autumn. Outside the window I could see nothing but an inky curtain of blackness. I sat there listening to the night sounds, letting them flow in upon me—the cicadas, and the late peepers, an owl hooting in the branches of the witch hazel, and a chorus of bullfrogs intoning down along the bog. It was the sort of night that ought to bring peace and deep, healing rest to any man. Only a year ago, I could’ve felt that such a night was a sure sign of God and His infinite benevolence. Now the very lushness of that night, heavy with the scent of pine and twice-bloomed sweet pea, only seemed like evidence of some universal treachery. The night cast a protective shawl over the furtive movements of the intruder. The night was the friend of the thief and the murderer.

Alice called me softly from the bed. “Albert.”

“Go to bed.”

“Albert.”

“Go to bed now. I just want to sit here a while and see if I can see anything.”

“Do you think they’ll send someone out to help us?”

“Didn’t you just hear Birge’s man say they were sending someone out? Go to bed. I’ll be along soon.”

I wasn’t very convincing, nor did I try to be. By this time, she knew as well as I did just precisely what could be expected of Birge and his deputies.

“No, they won’t,” she said softly. “They won’t send anyone at all.”

The phone rang again—a jarring rattle beside the bed. We listened to it ring insistently for nearly a quarter of an hour; then suddenly and ominously it stopped altogether.

Once again I peered out into the darkness and thought about all the hours that lay between us and dawn—like a weary, shipwrecked man swimming doggedly along, thinking of all the dark, cold water between himself and shore.

“Albert.”

“Go to bed, dear. I’ll take the phone off the hook.”

“No—Come here.”

“I will. In a few minutes. Go to bed now.”

“Albert. Please.”

Sighing, I leaned the rifle against the window sash, stood up, and made my way across to her in the dark.

When I reached her she thrust her hand out from beneath the blanket and snatched mine. So suddenly old and withered that hand felt to me in the dark.

“Now, now, now.” I patted her hand reassuringly.

She looked up at me through the darkness. “We never really wanted him, did we, dear?”

“Not quite so deeply as he wanted us.”

“We led him on, didn’t we?”

“Yes. I think that too, now.”

“It wasn’t really his fault—any of it.”

“It wasn’t anyone’s fault,” I said, still patting her hand. “And all the good work he’s done for us,” she went on. “The stone fence and the painting, and the electrical wiring, and all the other little attentions. The suppers and the laundry.”

“He was trying so hard to please.”

I could sense her studying me in the dark. “It is,” she went on, “a kind of love. Isn’t it?” She had to hesitate and swallow before she could bring herself to say the word.

“You mean all this clawing and clinging? The refusal to go?”

“Yes,” she said. “Even the smell. That, too.”

“Yes,” I said, suddenly feeling sorry for her. Sorry that she had not had more love in her life. And sorry that she had not had an opportunity to give more love, for surely no one had a greater capacity to give love than Alice. And my fault, I suppose, had always been a kind of unresponsiveness to that. While loving her in my fashion, I’d always kept her somewhat at a distance. And wasn’t it sad, I thought, that now, at this late period in her life, when this boy, this lonely and graspingly possessive creature hungering for affection, comes along to her, isn’t it sad that he should turn out to be like Richard Atlee—a creature who could not take or give love with any moderation or balance? Only with insane excesses? And just as sad for Richard Atlee. Just as sad for him, given his ungovernable hunger to be loved, that he had to stumble into a household where demonstrations of affection, when on those rare occasions they occurred, could only be described, at best, as restrained.

“I’m only sorry it didn’t work out,” I said.

She started to cry softly to herself. I took her in my arms and held her there, rocking her back and forth as if she were an infant.

“Will we be lonely, again?” she asked.

“A little perhaps, at first.”

“We weren’t lonely while he was here, were we?”

“No,” I said wearily. “Not in the way we were. But in a different way.”

“In a different way?” she asked, peering up at me. “I don’t understand that.”

“Neither do I,” I said and laughed. And for a brief moment we were like that, holding each other and laughing softly together in the dark.

While I held her thus, the silence of the night was suddenly broken by the sound of the cellar door squealing open.

Alice suddenly clung to me.

“Yes,” I said, still patting her hand. “He’s on his way out again.”

Shortly after, we were asleep. I dreamed about my father, who’d been dead nearly fifty years. He appeared to me as a young man—in the full glow of health and vigor, a shock of splendid black hair atop his head, and the brown, gentle eyes I recall so well. We were sitting in a canoe far out on a lake, fishing and laughing, and eating sandwiches, the way we had so often, so many years ago. It was a sad, strange dream.

But the dream didn’t last very long, and I was awake an hour or so after I’d retired—awakened by the sound of a car rattling up the drive.