leaving the grocery after one of her inconclusive conversa
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tions with Mr. Babcock, physically, Mr. Babcock could
model for a statue of Daniel Webster, but mentally . . . it
was horrible to think into what old New England Yankee
stock had degenerated. She said as much to Mr. Allison when
she got into the car, and he said, “ It’s generations of inbreeding. That and the bad land.”
Since this was their big trip into town, which they made
only once every two weeks to buy things they could not have
delivered, they spent all day at it, stopping to have a sandwich in the newspaper and soda shop, and leaving packages heaped in the back of the car. Although Mrs. Allison was
able to order groceries delivered regularly, she was never able
to form any accurate idea of Mr. Babcock’s current stock by
telephone, and her lists of odds and ends that might be procured was always supplemented, almost beyond their need, by the new and fresh local vegetables Mr. Babcock was selling temporarily, or the packaged candy which had just come in. This trip Mrs. Allison was tempted, too, by the set of
glass baking dishes that had found themselves completely by
chance in the hardware and clothing and general store, and
which had seemingly been waiting there for no one but Mrs.
Allison, since the country people, with their instinctive distrust of anything that did not look as permanent as trees and rocks and sky, had only recently begun to experiment in aluminum baking dishes instead of ironware, and had, apparently within the memory of local inhabitants, discarded stoneware in favor of iron.
Mrs. Allison had the glass baking dishes carefully wrapped,
to endure the uncomfortable ride home over the rocky road
that led up to the Allisons’ cottage, and while Mr. Charley
Walpole, who, with his younger brother Albert, ran the
hardware-clothing-general store (the store itself was called
Johnson’s, because it stood oh- the site of the old Johnson
cabin, burned fifty years before Charley Walpole was bom),
laboriously unfolded newspapers to wrap around the dishes,
Mrs. Allison said, informally, “ Course, I could have waited
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and gotten those dishes in New York, but we’re not going
back so soon this year.”
‘‘Heard you was staying on,” Mr. Charley Walpole said.
His old fingers fumbled maddeningly with the thin sheets of
newspaper, carefully trying to isolate only one sheet at a
time, and he did not look up at Mrs. Allison as he went on,
‘‘Don’t know about staying on up there to the lake. Not after
Labor Day.”
‘‘Well, you know,” Mrs. Allison said, quite as though he
deserved an explanation, ‘‘it just seemed to us that we’ve
been hurrying back to New York every year, and there just
wasn’t any need for it. You know what die city’s like in the
fall.” And she smiled confidingly up at Mr. Charley Walpole.
Rhythmically he wound string around the package. He’s
giving me a piece long enough to save, Mrs. Allison thought,
and she looked away quickly to avoid giving any sign of impatience. “ I feel sort of like we belong here, m ore,” she said. “ Staying on after everyone else has left.” To prove this,
she smiled brightly across the store at a woman with a familiar face, who might have been the woman who sold berries to the Allisons one year, or the woman who occasionally helped in the grocery and was probably Mr. Babcock’s aunt.
“ Well,” Mr. Charley Walpole said. He shoved the package a little across the counter, to show that it was finished and that for a sale well made, a package well wrapped, he
was willing to accept pay. “ Well,” he said again. “ Never
been summer people before, at the lake after Labor Day.”
Mrs. Allison gave him a five-dollar bill, and he made
change methodically, giving great weight even to the pennies.
“ Never after Labor Day,” he said, and nodded at Mrs. Allison, and went soberly along the store to deal with two women who were looking at cotton house dresses.
As Mrs. Allison passed on her way out she heard one of
the women say acutely, “ Why is one of them dresses one
dollar and thiriy-nine cents and this one here is only ninety-
eight?”
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“ They’re great people,” Mrs. Allison told her husband as
they went together down the sidewalk after meeting at the
door of the hardware store. “ They’re so solid, and so reasonable, and so honest.”
“ Makes you feel good, knowing there are still towns like
this,” Mr. Allison said.
“ You know, in New York,” Mrs. Allison said, “ I might
have paid a few cents less for these dishes, but there wouldn’t
have been anything sort of personal in the transaction.”
“ Staying on to the lake?” Mrs. Martin, in the newspaper
and sandwich shop, asked the Allisons. “ Heard you was
staying on.”
“ Thought we’d take advantage of the lovely weather this
year,” Mr. Allison said.
Mrs. Martin was a comparative newcomer to the town; she
had married into the newspaper and sandwich shop from a
neighboring farm, and had stayed on after her husband’s
death. She served bottled soft drinks, and fried egg and onion
sandwiches on thick bread, which she made on her own stove
at the back of the store. Occasionally when Mrs. Martin
served a sandwich it would carry with it the rich fragrance
of the stew or the pork chops cooking alongside for Mrs.
Martin’s dinner.
“ I don’t guess anyone’s ever stayed out there so long before,” Mrs. Martin said. “ Not after Labor Day, anyway.”
“ I guess Labor Day is when they usually leave,” Mr. Hall,
the Allisons’ nearest neighbor, told them later, in front of
Mr. Babcock’s store, where the Allisons were getting into
their car to go home. “ Surprised you’re staying on.”
“ It seemed a shame to go so soon,” Mrs. Allison said.
Mr. Hall lived three miles away; he supplied the Allisons
with butter and eggs, and occasionally, from the top of their
hill, the Allisons could see the lights in his house in the early
evening before the Halls went to bed.
“ They usually leave Labor Day,” Mr. Hall said.
The ride home was long and rough; it was beginning to
get dark, and Mr. Allison had to drive very carefully over the
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167
dirt road by the lake. Mrs. Allison lay back against the seat,
pleasantly relaxed after a day of what seemed whirlwind
shopping compared with their day-to-day existence; the new
glass baking dishes lurked agreeably in her mind, and the
half bushel of red eating apples, and the package of colored
thumbtacks with which she was going to put up new shelf
edging in the kitchen. “ Good to get home,” she said softly
as they came in sight of their cottage, silhouetted above them
against the sky.
“ Glad we decided to stay on,” Mr. Allison agreed.
Mrs. Allison spent the next morning lovingly washing her
baking dishes, although in his innocence Charley Walpole
had neglected t
o notice the chip in the edge of one; she decided, wastefully, to use some of the red eating apples in a pie for dinner, and, while the pie was in the oven and Mr.
Allison was down getting the mail, she sat out on the little
lawn the Allisons had made at the top of the hill, and watched
the changing lights on the lake, alternating gray and blue as
clouds moved quickly across the sun.
Mr. Allison came back a little out of sorts; it always irritated him to walk the mile to the mail box on the state road and come back with nothing, even though he assumed that
the walk was good for his health. This morning there was
nothing but a circular from a New York department store,
and their New York paper, which arrived erratically by mail
from one to four days later than it should, so that some days
the Allisons might have three papers and frequently none.
Mrs. Allison, although she shared with her husband the annoyance of not having mail when they so anticipated it, pored affectionately over the department store circular, and made a
mental note to drop in at the store when she finally went back
to New York, and check on the sale of wool blankets; it was
hard to find good ones in pretty colors nowadays. She debated saving the circular to remind herself, but after thinking about getting up and getting into the cottage to put it away
safely somewhere, she dropped it into the grass beside her
chair and lay back, her eyes half closed.
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Shirley Jackson
“ Looks like we might have some rain,’’ Mr. Allison said,
squinting at the sky.
“ Good for the crops,” Mrs. Allison said laconically, and
they both laughed.
The kerosene man came the next morning while Mr. Allison was down getting the mail; they were getting low on kerosene and Mrs. Allison greeted the man warmly; he sold
kerosene and ice, and, during the summer, hauled garbage
away for the summer people. A garbage man was only necessary for improvident city folk; country people had no garbage.
“ I ’m glad to see you,” Mrs. Allison told him. “ We were
getting pretty low.”
The kerosene man, whose name Mrs. Allison had never
learned, used a hose attachment to fill the twenty-gallon tank
which supplied light and heat and cooking facilities for the
Allisons; but today, instead of swinging down from his truck
and unhooking the hose from where it coiled affectionately
around the cab of the truck, the man stared uncomfortably at
Mrs. Allison, his truck motor still going.
“ Thought you folks’d be leaving,” he said.
“ We’re staying on another month,” Mrs. Allison said
brightly. “ The weather was so nice, and it seemed like—”
“ That’s what they told m e,” the man said. “ Can’t give
you no oil, though.”
“ What do you mean?” Mrs. Allison raised her eyebrows.
“ We’re just going to keep on with our regular—”
“ After Labor Day,” the man said. “ I don’t get so much
oil myself after Labor Day.”
Mrs. Allison reminded herself, as she had frequently to do
when in disagreement with her neighbors, that city manners
were no good with country people; you could not expect to
overrule a country employee as you could a city worker, and
Mrs. Allison smiled engagingly as she said, “ But can’t you
get extra oil, at least while we stay?”
“ You see,” the main said. He tapped his finger exasper-
atingly against the car wheel as he spoke. “ You see,” he said
The Summer People
169
slowly, “ I order this oil. I order it down from maybe fifty,
fifty-five miles away. I order back in June, how much I ’ll
need for the summer. Then I order again . . . oh, about November. Round about now it’s starting to get pretty short.”
As though the subject were closed, he stopped tapping his
finger and tightened his hands on the wheel in preparation
for departure.
“ But can’t you give us someV' Mrs. Allison said. “ Isn’t
there anyone else?”
“ Don’t know as you could get oil anywheres else right
now,” the man said consideringly. “ / can’t give you none.”
Before Mrs. Allison could speak, the truck began to move;
then it stopped for a minute and he looked at her through the
back window of the cab. “ Ice?” he called. “ I could let you
have some ice.”
Mrs. Allison shook her head; they were not terribly low
on ice, and she was angry. She ran a few steps to catch up
with the truck, calling, “ Will you try to get us some? Next
week?”
“ Don’t see’s I can,” the man said. “ After Labor Day, it’s
harder.” The truck drove away, and Mrs. Allison, only comforted by the thought that she could probably get kerosene from Mr. Babcock or, at worst, the Halls, watched it go with
anger. “ Next summer,” she told herself, “just let him trying
coming around next summer!”
There was no mail again, only the paper, which seemed
to be coming doggedly on time, and Mr. Allison was openly
cross when he returned. When Mrs. Allison told him about
the kerosene man he was not particularly impressed.
“ Probably keeping it all for a high price during the winter,” he commented. “ What’s happened to Anne and Jerry, do you think?”
Anne and Jerry were their son and daughter, both married,
one living in Chicago, one in the far west; their dutiful weekly
letters were late; so late, in fact, that Mr. Allison’s annoyance
at the lack of mail was able to settle on a legitimate griev
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ance. “ Ought to realize how we wait for their letters,” he
said. “ Thoughtless, selfish children. Ought to know better.”
“ Well, dear,” Mrs. Allison said placatingly. Anger at Anne
and Jerry would not relieve her emotions toward the kerosene
man. After a few minutes she said, “ Wishing won’t bring
the mail, dear. I ’m going to go call Mr. Babcock and tell
him to send up some kerosene with my order.”
“ At least a postcard,” Mr. Allison said as she left.
As with most of the cottage’s inconveniences, the Allisons
no longer noticed the phone particularly, but yielded to its
eccentricities without conscious complaint. It was a wall
phone, of a type still seen in only few communities; in order
to get the operator, Mrs. Allison had first to turn the side-
crank and ring once. Usually it took two or three tries to
force the operator to answer, and Mrs. Allison, making any
kind of telephone call, approached the phone with resignation
and a sort of desperate patience. She had to crank the phone
three times this morning before the operator answered, and
then it was still longer before Mr. Babcock picked up the
receiver at his phone in the comer of the grocery behind the
meat table. He said “ Store?” with the rising inflection that
seemed to indicate suspicion of anyone who tried to communicate with him by means of this unreliable instrument.
“ This is Mrs. Allison, Mr. Babcock. I thought I ’d give
you my order a day early because I wanted to be sure and
> get some—”
“ What say, Mrs. Allison?”
Mrs. Allison raised her voice a little; she saw Mr. Allison,
out on the lawn, turn in his chair and regard her sympathetically. “ I said, Mr. Babcock, I thought I ’d call in my order early so you could send me—”
“ Mrs. Allison?” Mr. Babcock said. “ You’ll come and
pick it up?”
“ Pick it up?” In her surprise Mrs. Allison let her voice
drop back to its normal tone and Mr. Babcock said loudly,
“ What’s that, Mrs. Allison?”
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171
“ I thought I ’d have you send it out as usual,” Mrs. Allison
said.
“ Well, Mrs. Allison,” Mr. Babcock said, and there was
a pause while Mrs. Allison waited, staring past the phone
over her husband’s head out into the sky. “ Mrs. Allison,”
Mr. Babcock went on finally, “ I ’ll tell you, my boy’s been
working for me went back to school yesterday, and now I got
no one to deliver. I only got a boy delivering summers, you
. » >
see.
“ I thought you always delivered,” Mrs. Allison said.
“ Not after Labor Day, Mrs. Allison,” Mr. Babcock said
firmly, “ you never been here after Labor Day before, so’s
you wouldn’t know, of course.”
“ Well,” Mrs. Allison said helplessly. Far inside her mind
she was saying, over and over, can’t use city manners on
country folk, no use getting mad.
“ Are you sure?” she asked finally. “ Couldn’t you just
send out an order today, Mr. Babcock?”
“ Matter of fact,” Mr. Babcock said, “ I guess I couldn’t,
Mrs. Allison. It wouldn’t hardly pay, delivering, with no one
else out at the lake.”
“ What about Mr. Hall?” Mrs. Allison asked suddenly,
“ the people who live about three miles away from us out
here? Mr. Hall could bring it out when he comes.”
“ Hall?” Mr. Babcock said. “ John Hall? They’ve gone to
visit her folks upstate, Mrs. Allison.”
“ But they bring all our butter and eggs,” Mrs. Allison
said, appalled.
“ Left yesterday,” Mr. Babcock said. “ Probably didn’t
think you folks would stay on up there.”
“ But I told Mr. Hall . . . ” Mrs. Allison started to say,
The Color of Evil - The Dark Descent V1 (1991) Page 21
