The Lottery and Other Stories (15 page)

The next morning when Mrs. Winning reached the cottage on her way down to the store she saw Mr. Jones swinging the scythe expertly against the side of the house, and Billy Jones and Davey sitting on the front steps watching him. “Good morning, Davey,” Mrs. Winning called, “is your mother ready to go downstreet?”

“Where’s Howard?” Davey asked, not moving.

“He stayed home with his grandma today,” Mrs. Winning said brightly. “Is your mother ready?”

“She’s making lemonade for Billy and me,” Davey said. “We’re going to have it in the garden.”

“Then tell her,” Mrs. Winning said quickly, “tell her that I said I was in a hurry and that I had to go on ahead. I’ll see her later.” She hurried on down the hill.

In the store she met Mrs. Harris, a lady whose mother had worked for the elder Mrs. Winning nearly forty years before. “Helen,” Mrs. Harris said, “you get greyer every year. You ought to stop all this running around.”

Mrs. Winning, in the store without Mrs. MacLane for the first time in weeks, smiled shyly and said that she guessed she needed a vacation.

“Vacation!” Mrs. Harris said. “Let that husband of yours do the housework for a change. He doesn’t have nuthin’ else to do.”

She laughed richly, and shook her head. “Nuthin’ else to do,” she said. “The Winnings!”

Before Mrs. Winning could step away Mrs. Harris added, her laughter penetrated by a sudden sharp curiosity: “Where’s that dressed-up friend of yours get to? Usually downstreet together, ain’t you?”

Mrs. Winning smiled courteously, and Mrs. Harris said, laughing again, “Just couldn’t believe those shoes of hers, first time I seen them. Them shoes!”

While she was laughing again Mrs. Winning escaped to the meat counter and began to discuss the potentialities of pork shoulder earnestly with the grocer. Mrs. Harris only says what everyone else says, she was thinking, are they talking like that about Mrs. MacLane? Are they laughing at her? When she thought of Mrs. MacLane she thought of the quiet house, the soft colors, the mother and son in the garden; Mrs. MacLane’s shoes were green and yellow platform sandals, odd-looking certainly next to Mrs. Winning’s solid white oxfords, but so inevitably right for Mrs. MacLane’s house, and her garden…. Mrs. Harris came up behind her and said, laughing again, “What’s she got, that Jones fellow working for her now?”

When Mrs. Winning reached home, after hurrying up the hill past the cottage, where she saw no one, her mother-in-law was waiting for her in front of the house, watching her come the last few yards. “Early enough today,” her mother-in-law said. “MacLane out of town?”

Resentful, Mrs. Winning said only, “Mrs. Harris nearly drove me out of the store, with her jokes.”

“Nothing wrong with Lucy Harris getting away from that man of hers wouldn’t cure,” the elder Mrs. Winning said. Together, they began to walk around the house to the back door. Mrs. Winning, as they walked, noticed that the grass under the trees had greened up nicely, and that the nasturtiums beside the house were bright.

“I’ve got something to say to you, Helen,” the elder Mrs. Winning said finally.

“Yes?” her daughter-in-law said.

“It’s the MacLane girl, about her, I mean. You know her so well, you ought to talk to her about that colored man working there.”

“I suppose so,” Mrs. Winning said.

“You
sure
you told her? You told her about those people?”

“I told her,” Mrs. Winning said.

“He’s there every blessed day,” her mother-in-law said. “And working out there without his shirt on. He goes in the house.”

And that evening Mr. Burton, next-door neighbor to Mrs. MacLane, dropped in to see the Howard Winnings about getting a new lot of shingles at the mill; he turned, suddenly, to Mrs. Winning, who was sitting sewing next to her mother-in-law at the table in the front room, and raised his voice a little when he said, “Helen, I wish you’d tell your friend Mrs. MacLane to keep that kid of hers out of my vegetables.”

“Davey?” Mrs. Winning said involuntarily.

“No,” Mr. Burton said, while all the Winnings looked at the younger Mrs. Winning, “no, the other one, the colored boy. He’s been running loose through our back yard. Makes me sort of mad, that kid coming in spoiling other people’s property. You know,” he added, turning to the Howard Winnings, “you know, that does make a person mad.” There was a silence, and then Mr. Burton added, rising heavily, “Guess I’ll say good-night to you people.”

They all attended him to the door and came back to their work in silence. I’ve got to do something, Mrs. Winning was thinking, pretty soon they’ll stop coming to me first, they’ll tell someone else to speak to
me
. She looked up, found her mother-in-law looking at her, and they both looked down quickly.

Consequently Mrs. Winning went to the store the next morning earlier than usual, and she and Howard crossed the street just above the MacLane house, and went down the hill on the other side.

“Aren’t we going to see Davey?” Howard asked once, and Mrs. Winning said carelessly, “Not today, Howard. Maybe your father will take you out to the mill this afternoon.”

She avoided looking across the street at the MacLane house, and hurried to keep up with Howard.

Mrs. Winning met Mrs. MacLane occasionally after that at the store or the post office, and they spoke pleasantly. When Mrs. Winning passed the cottage after the first week or so, she was no longer embarrassed about going by, and even looked at it frankly once or twice. The garden was going beautifully; Mr. Jones’s broad back was usually visible through the bushes, and Billy Jones sat on the steps or lay on the grass with Davey.

One morning on her way down the hill Mrs. Winning heard a conversation between Davey MacLane and Billy Jones; they were in the bushes together and she heard Davey’s high familiar voice saying, “Billy, you want to build a house with me today?”

“Okay,” Billy said. Mrs. Winning slowed her steps a little to hear.

“We’ll build a big house out of branches,” Davey said excitedly, “and when it’s finished we’ll ask my mommy if we can have lunch out there.”

“You can’t build a house just out of branches,” Billy said. “You ought to have wood, and boards.”

“And chairs and tables and dishes,” Davey agreed. “And walls.”

“Ask your mommy can we have two chairs out here,” Billy said. “Then we can pretend the whole garden is our house.”

“And I’ll get us some cookies, too,” Davey said. “And we’ll ask my mommy and your daddy to come in our house.” Mrs. Winning heard them shouting as she went down along the sidewalk.

You have to admit, she told herself as though she were being strictly just, you have to admit that he’s doing a lot with that garden; it’s the prettiest garden on the street. And Billy acts as though he had as much right there as Davey.

As the summer wore on into long hot days undistinguishable one from another, so that it was impossible to tell with any real accuracy whether the light shower had been yesterday or the day before, the Winnings moved out into their yard to sit after supper, and in the warm darkness Mrs. Winning sometimes found an opportunity of sitting next to her husband so that she could touch his arm; she was never able to teach Howard to run to her and put his head in her lap, or inspire him with other than the perfunctory Winning affection, but she consoled herself with the thought that at least they were a family, a solid respectable thing.

The hot weather kept up, and Mrs. Winning began to spend more time in the store, postponing the long aching walk up the hill in the sun. She stopped and chatted with the grocer, with other young mothers in the town, with older friends of her mother-in-law’s, talking about the weather, the reluctance of the town to put in a decent swimming pool, the work that had to be done before school started in the fall, chickenpox, the P.T.A. One morning she met Mrs. Burton in the store, and they spoke of their husbands, the heat, and the hot-weather occupations of their children before Mrs. Burton said: “By the way, Johnny will be six on Saturday and he’s having a birthday party; can Howard come?”

“Wonderful,” Mrs. Winning said, thinking, His good white shorts, the dark blue shirt, a carefully-wrapped present.

“Just about eight children,” Mrs. Burton said, with the loving carelessness mothers use in planning the birthday parties of their children. “They’ll stay for supper, of course—send Howard down about three-thirty.”

“That sounds so nice,” Mrs. Winning said. “He’ll be delighted when I tell him.”

“I thought I’d have them all play outdoors most of the time,” Mrs. Burton said. “In this weather. And then perhaps a few games indoors, and supper. Keep it simple
—you
know.” She hesitated, running her finger around and around the top rim of a can of coffee. “Look,” she said, “I hope you won’t mind me asking, but would it be all right with you if I didn’t invite the MacLane boy?”

Mrs. Winning felt sick for a minute, and had to wait for her voice to even out before she said lightly, “It’s all right with me if it’s all right with
you
; why do you have to ask
me?
”

Mrs. Burton laughed. “I just thought you might mind if he didn’t come.”

Mrs. Winning was thinking. Something bad has happened, somehow people think they know something about me that they won’t say, they all pretend it’s nothing, but this never happened to me before; I live with the Winnings, don’t I? “Really,” she said, putting the weight of the old Winning house into her voice, “why in the
world
would it bother me?” Did I take it too seriously, she was wondering, did I seem too anxious, should I have let it go?

Mrs. Burton was embarrassed, and she set the can of coffee down on the shelf and began to examine the other shelves studiously. “I’m sorry I mentioned it at all,” she said.

Mrs. Winning felt that she had to say something further, something to state her position with finality, so that no longer would Mrs. Burton, at least, dare to use such a tone to a Winning, presume to preface a question with “I hope you don’t mind me asking.” “After all,” Mrs. Winning said carefully, weighing the words, “she’s like a second mother to Billy.”

Mrs. Burton, turning to look at Mrs. Winning for confirmation, grimaced and said, “Good Lord, Helen!”

Mrs. Winning shrugged and then smiled and Mrs. Burton smiled and then Mrs. Winning said, “I do feel so sorry for the little boy, though.”

Mrs. Burton said, “Such a sweet little thing, too.”

Mrs. Winning had just said, “He and Billy are together
all
the time now,” when she looked up and saw Mrs. MacLane regarding her from the end of the aisle of shelves; it was impossible to tell whether she had heard them or not. For a minute Mrs. Winning looked steadily back at Mrs. MacLane, and then she said, with just the right note of cordiality, “Good morning, Mrs. MacLane. Where is your little boy this morning?”

“Good morning, Mrs. Winning,” Mrs. MacLane said, and moved on past the aisle of shelves, and Mrs. Burton caught Mrs. Winning’s arm and made a desperate gesture of hiding her face and, unable to help themselves, both she and Mrs. Winning began to laugh.

Soon after that, although the grass in the Winning yard under the maple trees stayed smooth and green, Mrs. Winning began to notice in her daily trips past the cottage that Mrs. MacLane’s garden was suffering from the heat. The flowers wilted under the morning sun, and no longer stood up fresh and bright; the grass was browning slightly and the rose bushes Mrs. MacLane had put in so optimistically were noticeably dying. Mr. Jones seemed always cool, working steadily; sometimes bent down with his hands in the earth, sometimes tall against the side of the house, setting up a trellis or pruning a tree, but the blue curtains hung lifelessly at the windows. Mrs. MacLane still smiled at Mrs. Winning in the store, and then one day they met at the gate of Mrs. MacLane’s garden and, after hesitating for a minute, Mrs. MacLane said, “Can you come in for a few minutes? I’d like to have a talk, if you have time.”

“Surely,” Mrs. Winning said courteously, and followed Mrs. MacLane up the walk, still luxuriously bordered with flowering bushes, but somehow disenchanted, as though the summer heat had baked away the vivacity from the ground. In the familiar living-room Mrs. Winning sat down on a straight chair, holding herself politely stiff, while Mrs. MacLane sat as usual in her armchair.

“How is Davey?” Mrs. Winning asked finally, since Mrs. MacLane did not seem disposed to start any conversation.

“He’s very well,” Mrs. MacLane said, and smiled as she always did when speaking of Davey. “He’s out back with Billy.”

There was a quiet minute, and then Mrs. MacLane said, staring at the blue bowl on the coffee table, “What I wanted to ask you is, what on earth is gone wrong?”

Mrs. Winning had been holding herself stiff in readiness for some such question, and when she said, “I don’t know what you mean,” she thought, I sound exactly like Mother Winning, and realized, I’m enjoying this, just as
she
would; and no matter what she thought of herself she was unable to keep from adding, “
Is
something wrong?”

“Of course,” Mrs. MacLane said. She stared at the blue bowl, and said slowly, “When I first came, everyone was so nice, and they seemed to like Davey and me and want to help us.”

That’s wrong, Mrs. Winning was thinking, you mustn’t ever talk about whether people like you, that’s bad taste.

“And the garden was going so well,” Mrs. MacLane said helplessly. “And now, no one ever does more than just speak to us—I used to say ‘Good morning’ over the fence to Mrs. Burton, and she’d come to the fence and we’d talk about the garden, and now she just says ‘Morning’ and goes in the house—and no one ever smiles, or anything.”

This is dreadful, Mrs. Winning thought, this is childish, this is complaining. People treat you as you treat them, she thought; she wanted desperately to go over and take Mrs. MacLane’s hand and ask her to come back and be one of the nice people again; but she only sat straighter in the chair and said, “I’m sure you must be mistaken. I’ve never heard anyone speak of it.”