Ray Bradbury - Summer Morning, Summer Night

Was that how the final picnic had come about—with each of them knowing that in a few short years they would be crossing streets to avoid one another, or, if they met, saying, “We’ve got to have lunch sometime!” but never doing it? Whatever the reason, Mr. Welles could still hear the splashes as they’d plunged off the pier under a yellow sun. And then the beer and sandwiches underneath the shady trees.

We never ate that pumpernickel, Mr. Welles thought. Funny, if we’d been a bit hungrier, we’d have cut it up, and I wouldn’t have been reminded of it by that loaf there on the counter.

Lying under the trees in a golden peace that came from beer and sun and male companionship, they promised that in ten years they would meet at the courthouse on New Year’s Day, 1920, to see what they had done with their lives. Talking their rough easy talk, they carved their names in the pumpernickel.

“Driving home,” Mr. Welles said, “we sang ‘Moonlight Bay’.”

He remembered motoring along in the hot, dry night with their swim suits damp on the jolting floor boards. It was a ride of many detours taken just for the hell of it, which was the best reason in the world.

“Good night.” “So long.” “Good night.”

Then Welles was driving alone, at midnight, home to bed.

He nailed the pumpernickel to his bureau the next day.

“I almost cried when, two years later, my mother threw it in the incinerator while I was off at college.”

“What happened in 1920?” asked his wife. “On New Year’s Day?”

“Oh,” said Mr. Welles. “I was walking by the courthouse, by accident, at noon. It was snowing. I heard the clock strike. Lord, I thought, we were supposed to meet here today! I waited five minutes. Not right in front of the courthouse, no. I waited across the street.” He paused. “Nobody showed up.”

He got up from the table and paid the bill. “And I’ll take that loaf of unsliced pumpernickel there,” he said.

When he and his wife were walking home, he said, “I’ve got a crazy idea. I often wondered what happened to everyone.”

“Nick’s still in town with his café.”

“But what about the others?” Mr. Welles’s face was getting pink and he was smiling and waving his hands. “They moved away. I think Tom’s in Cincinnati. He looked quickly at his wife. “Just for the heck of it, I’ll send him this pumpernickel!”

“Oh, but—”

“Sure!” He laughed, walking faster, slapping the bread with the palm of his hand. “Have him carve his name on it and mail it on to the others if he knows their addresses. And finally back to me, with all their names on it!”

“But,” she said, taking his arm, “it’ll only make you unhappy. You’ve done things like this so many times before and...”

He wasn’t listening. Why do I never get these ideas by day? he thought. Why do I always get them after the sun goes down?

In the morning, first thing, he thought, I’ll mail this pumpernickel off, by God, to Tom and the others. And when it comes back I’ll have the loaf just as it was when it got thrown out and burned! Why not?

“Let’s see,” he said, as his wife opened the screen door and let him into the stuffy-smelling house to be greeted by silence and warm emptiness. “Let’s see. We also sang ‘Row Row Row Your Boat’, didn’t we?”

IN THE morning, he came down the hall stairs and paused a moment in the strong full sunlight, his face shaved, his teeth freshly brushed. Sunlight brightened every room. He looked in at the breakfast table.

His wife was busy there. Slowly, calmly, she was slicing the pumpernickel.

He sat down at the table in the warm sunlight and reached for the newspaper.

She picked up a slice of the newly cut bread, and kissed him on the cheek. He patted her arm.

“One or two pieces of toast, dear?” she asked gently.

“Two, I think,” he replied.

MY NAME IS Margaret Leary and I’m ten years old and in the fifth grade at Central School. I haven’t any brothers or sisters, but I’ve got a nice father and mother except they don’t pay much attention to me. And anyway, we never thought we’d have anything to do with a murdered woman. Or almost, anyway.

When you’re just living on a street like we live on, you don’t think awful things are going to happen, like shooting or stabbing or burying people under the ground, practically in your back yard. And when it does happen you don’t believe it. You just go on buttering your toast or baking a cake.

I got to tell you how it happened. It was a noon in the middle of July. It was hot and Mama said to me, “Margaret, you go to the store and buy some ice cream. It’s Saturday, Dad’s home for lunch, so we’ll have a treat.”

I ran out across the empty lot behind our house. It was a big lot, where kids had played baseball, and broken glass and stuff. And on my way back from the store with the ice cream I was just walking along, minding my own business, when all of a sudden it happened.

I heard the Screaming Woman.

I stopped and listened.

It was coming up out of the ground.

A woman was buried under the rocks and dirt and glass, and she was screaming, all wild and horrible, for someone to dig her out.

I just stood there, afraid. She kept screaming, muffled.

Then I started to run. I fell down, got up, and ran some more. I got in the screen door of my house and there was Mama, calm as you please, not knowing what I knew, that there was a real live woman buried out in back of our house, just a hundred yards away, screaming bloody murder.

“Mama,” I said.

“Don’t stand there with the ice cream,” said Mama.

“But, Mama,” I said.

“Put it in the icebox,” she said.

“Listen, Mama, there’s a Screaming Woman in the empty lot.”

“And wash your hands,” said Mama.

“She was screamin’ and screamin’...”

“Let’s see now, salt and pepper,” said Mama, far away.

“Listen to me,” I said, loud. “We got to dig her out. She’s buried under tons and tons of dirt and if we don’t dig her out, she’ll choke up and die.”

“I’m certain she can wait until after lunch,” said Mama.

“Mama, don’t you believe me?”

“Of course, dear. Now wash your hands and take this plate of meat in to your father.”

“I don’t even know who she is or how she got there,” I said. “But we got to help her before it’s too late.”

“Good gosh,” said Mama. “Look at this ice cream. What did you do, just stand in the sun and let it melt?”

“Well, the empty lot...”

“Go on, now, scoot.”

I went into the dining room.

“Hi, Dad, there’s a Screaming Woman in the empty lot.”

“I never knew a woman who didn’t,” said Dad.

“I’m serious,” I said.

“You look very grave,” said Father.

“We’ve got to get picks and shovels and excavate, like for an Egyptian mummy,” I said.

“I don’t feel like an archaeologist, Margaret,” said Father. “Now, some nice cool October day, I’ll take you up on that.”

“But we can’t wait that long,” I almost screamed. My heart was bursting in me. I was excited and scared and afraid and here was Dad, putting meat on his plate, cutting and chewing and paying me no attention.

“Dad?” I said.

“Mmmm?” he said, chewing.

“Dad, you just gotta come out after lunch and help me,” I said. “Dad, Dad, I’ll give you all the money in my piggy bank!”

“Well,” said Dad, “so it’s a business proposition, is it? It must be important for you to offer your perfectly good money. How much money will you pay, by the hour?”