An Air That Kills

Twelve

The private day school which the two Galloway boys attended had been closed for two weeks because of an epidemic of measles. One of the ways Esther had devised to keep them busy, and presumably out of mischief, was to give them certain duties and responsibilities previously assigned only to adults. The particular duty the boys enjoyed most, since it involved a rare freedom, was that of collecting the mail. They were allowed to walk all the way down to the end of the driveway, unescorted except by the little dachshund, Petey, and wait at the gate for the postman.

When the postman handed them the day’s mail, they assumed it was a gift, and so they usually took him a gift in return, a cookie coaxed out of the housekeeper, Mrs. Browning, or a new drawing by Marvin or the prize from a box of cereal. On Monday they had a special gift for him, the first angleworm of the season, a scrawny specimen elongated by considerable handling and rather dried out after a time spent in Greg’s shirt pocket.

The boys arrived early and the postman was late, so they had plenty of opportunity to indulge in the usual arguments and fights about who was to present the gift, who was to carry the mail into the house and who was to occupy the place of honor at the top of the iron gate. But on this particular morning neither of the boys seemed inclined to fight. Their energies were directed not against each other but against the mysterious tensions which now seemed to dominate the household. The boys had not been told, or allowed to overhear, anything about their father’s absence. They had no means of understanding their mother’s strange preoccupation, Mrs. Browning’s snappishness, Annie’s sudden lapses into silence, or the unusual permissiveness of old Rudolph, the gardener who lived over the garage. Rudolph, the most continuous male contact the boys had, loomed large in their lives. When the holes Petey, the dachshund, had dug in the rose bed on Sunday afternoon were filled quietly and without comment, both of the boys realized that something was the matter.

Their reaction was instinctive. Instead of remaining brothers, each jockeying for position in the household, they became friends, joined together against the world of adults. They climbed to the top of the iron gate and stuck out their tongues in the direction of the house and chanted derisive insults.

“I’m the king of the castle,” Greg sang, and named individually the people who were dirty rascals: Annie, Mother, old Rudolph, Mrs. Browning. Marvin was all for including Daddy, but Greg reminded him sharply that Daddy had promised to bring them a new dog when he came home, and shouldn’t be listed among the dirty rascals.

“What if he forgets?” Marv said. “He’ll be a dirty rascal, then can we sing him in it too?”

“He won’t forget. He’ll bring something. He always does.”

“A cat maybe, huh? I wouldn’t say no to a cat.”

“Petey would. Petey hates cats. Petey’s a real cat-killer.”

Petey, who had never seen a cat, responded to his new, unearned distinction with a happy yelp. This settled the matter as far as the boys were concerned. They couldn’t possibly keep a cat, and if Ron brought one home by mistake they would simply hand it over to old Rudolph to trade in on a dog. Until the previous day they’d been willing to settle for any kind of dog, but now, sensing that a very large one would be more annoying to the adults, they decided on a Saint Bernard.

“We can teach it to bite Annie,” Greg said. “When she makes us go to bed we’ll say sic ’em, and then boiiing, Annie gets bit.”

Marv laughed so hard at this delightful picture that he nearly fell off the gate. “Boiiing, Annie gets bit. Boiiing, boiiing, Mrs. Browning gets bit. Boiiing, boiiing, everybody gets bit.”

“ ’Cepting us.”

“ ’Cepting us.”

They screamed with laughter and the gate shook and Petey broke into excited yelps. By the time the postman arrived, the boys’ faces were red as tomatoes and Marv had started to hiccough as he always did after a laughing fit.

“Mr. Postman! Hi, Mr. Postman!”

“Hello boys.” The postman was long and lean, with a weather-cracked smile. “How come you’re not in school this morning?”

“Measles.”

“You shouldn’t be out here if you got measles.”

“We don’t got measles,” Marv explained. “The other kids got them.”

“Well, I declare. I was never that lucky when I was a boy. The whole town could be dying of plague but they never closed the school, no sir.” He put down the heavy mail sack, propped it against the fence, and stretched his arms high in the air. “That’s how I got an education. Force. I didn’t want one.”

“What’s a plague?” Greg asked, climbing down from the gate.

“Like measles, only worse.”

“You got something for us in your bag?”

“Sure thing.”

“We got something for you, too.”

“Well, how about that.”

“You want to guess what it is?”

“I guess it’s a cookie.”

“No.”

“An apple.”

“No. You can’t eat it. A human bean can’t eat it, I mean.”

“What does a human bean do with it?”

“Keep it as a pet.”

“Oh. Well, I’m just about ready to give up. What is it?”

“Let me tell him!” Marv shouted. “Let me! It’s an angleworm!”

The postman took off his cap and scratched his head. “An angleworm, eh? Let’s see it.”

The angleworm, now fairly moribund, was duly produced from Greg’s pocket and placed carefully in the postman’s hand.

“Well, now, isn’t he cute? I must admit no one’s ever thought of giving me an angleworm before.”

“You’ll take good care of him?” Greg said anxiously.

“You bet I will. I think I’ll put him in my garden where he’ll find other angleworms to play with. There’s nothing worse than a lonesome angleworm, so I’ve been told.”

“How do you know he’ll meet the kind of angleworms he likes to play with?”

“They’re not fussy.” The postman opened his sack and distributed the mail as impartially as possible to the two boys. “Well, I’ve got to be on my way now.”

“Someday,” Greg said, “can we come with you and carry the sack?”

“Someday, sure. So long, fellows.”

“So long.”

They watched him until he turned the corner, then they set out for the house. Usually they hurried at this point. It made them feel important to hand over the mail to their mother or Mrs. Browning. But this morning their feet lagged and they kept glancing back at the gate as if they half expected the postman to reappear and offer to take them along on his rounds.

Their mother was waiting for them at the front door. “What a lot of mail. It must be heavy.”

“I could carry the whole sack,” Greg said, “if I wanted to. Someday I will, he said I could.”

Marv put up an immediate protest. “He said both of us, me too.”

“That will be very nice, I’m sure,” Esther said and began glancing through the mail, putting the bills in one pile on the hall table and the circulars in another. There was only one letter.

For a long time Esther stood staring down at the handwriting on the envelope. Then she said in a cold, quiet voice, “You boys had better go to Annie.”

They were afraid of this voice, but they couldn’t admit it, to each other or to themselves.

“I hate Annie,” Marv shouted. “I don’t want...”

“Do as I say, Marvin.”

“No! I won’t! I hate Annie!”

“I hate her too,” Greg said. “We’re going to teach the new dog to bite her.”

“Boiiing!”

“Boiiing, boiiing, Annie gets bit.”

“Boiiing, boiiing, old Rudolph gets bit.”

“Stop it,” Esther said. “Please. Please be good boys.”

“Boiiing, boiiing, everybody gets bit.”

“ ’Cepting us.”

“Boiiing...”

“Oh God,” Esther said and turned and ran across the hall into the library.

Her sudden flight and the loud shutting of the door stunned the boys for a minute. Then Marv said, tentatively, “Boiiing?”

“Oh, shut up. You’re such a baby. Shut up.”

Marv began to cry. “I want Mummy. I want my Mummy.”

The letter postmarked Collingwood, was addressed to Esther in Ron’s handwriting.

She knew in advance that it would contain bad news and she tried to prepare herself for it by imagining the worst, that he’d left her for another woman and wasn’t coming back.

She was only half right.

She did not faint, or cry out, or weep. She stood like a stone; only her eyes moved, reading and rereading the words on the page.

She was not aware of the door opening and when she looked up and saw Annie her eyes wouldn’t focus properly. Annie seemed misty and remote as if she were surrounded by ectoplasm.

“Mrs. Galloway?”

“Please don’t — don’t bother me right — right now.”

“But I can’t do a thing with the boys. They’ve both gone wild, screaming and laughing and carrying on. And Marvin just bit me.” Annie exhibited her wounded wrist. “I’m not sure but what they’re coming down with something. Do you think I should phone the doctor?”

“All right.”

“You don’t look so good yourself, Mrs. Galloway. Maybe you’re coming down with the same thing. Can I do anything for you?”

“Yes,” Esther said. “Call the police.”

“The police?”

“I’ve had a letter. From my husband. I think he’s killed himself.”

Marvin came bouncing into the room, screaming, “Boiiing! Boiiing, boiiing!”

Esther turned with a sob and picked him up in her arms and held him tight. Too tight. There seemed to Marvin only one logical thing to do and Marvin did it. He bit her.