She gets up and goes to the window, a pretty woman in a yellow no-back sundress. “It’s almost like living it all over again, you know,” she says, not turning around. “I’m all riled up inside again.” She laughs a little and cradles her elbows in her palms.
“Oh, she was so pretty. You’d never know from those pictures.
Cars go by outside, back and forth, and I sit and wait for her to go on. She reminds me of a pole-vaulter eyeing the bar and wondering if it’s set too high.
“My mother brewed us scotch tea, strong, with milk, the way she used to when I was tomboying around and someone would push me in the nettle patch or I’d fall off my bicycle. It was awful but we drank it anyway, sitting across from each other in the kitchen nook. She was in some old housedress with the hem falling down in back, and I was in my Whore of Babylon two-piece swimsuit. I wanted to cry but it was too real to cry about, not like the movies. Once when I was in New York I saw an old drunk leading a little girl in a blue dress by the hand.
The girl had cried herself into a bloody nose. The drunk had goiter and his neck looked like an inner tube. There was a red bump in the middle of his forehead and a long white string on the blue serge jacket he was wearing. Everyone kept going and coming because, if you did, then pretty soon you wouldn’t see them any more. That was real, too.
“I wanted to tell my mother that, and I was just opening my mouth to say it when the other thing happened … the thing you want to hear about, I guess. There was a big thump outside that made the glasses rattle in the china cabinet. It was a feeling as well as a sound, thick and solid, as if someone had just pushed an iron safe off the roof.”
She lights a new cigarette and begins to puff rapidly.
“I went to the window and looked out, but I couldn’t see anything.
Then, when I was getting ready to turn around, something else fell. The sun glittered on it. I thought it was a big glass globe for a second. Then it hit the edge of the Whites’ roof and shattered, and it wasn’t glass at
all. It was a big chunk of ice. I was going to turn around and tell Mom, and that’s when they started to fall all at once, in a shower.
“They were falling on the Whites’ roof, on the back and front lawn, on the outside door to their cellar. That was a sheet-tin bulkhead, and when the first one hit it made a huge bong noise, like a church bell. My mother and I both screamed. We were clutching each other like a couple of girls in a thunderstorm.
“Then it stopped. There was no sound at all from their house. You could see the water from the melting ice trickling down their slate shingles in the sunshine. A great big hunk of ice was stuck in the angle of the roof and their little chimney. The light on it was so bright that my eyes hurt to look at it.
“My mother started to ask me if it was over, and then Margaret screamed. The sound came to us very clearly. In a way it was worse than before, because there was terror in this one. Then there were clanging, banging sounds, as if she was throwing every pot and pan in the house at the girl.
“The back door slammed open and slammed closed. No one came out. More screams. Mom said for me to call the police but I couldn’t move. I was stuck to the spot. Mr. Kirk and his wife Virginia came out on their lawn to look. The Smiths, too. Pretty soon everyone on the street that was home had come out, even old Mrs. Warwick from up the block, and she was deaf in one ear.
‘Things started to crash and tinkle and break. Bottles, glasses, I don’t know what all. And then the side window broke open and the kitchen table fell halfway through. With God as my witness. It was a big mahogany thing and it took the screen with it and it must have weighed three hundred pounds. How could a woman-even a big woman-throw that?” I ask her if she is implying something.
“I’m only telling you,” she insists, suddenly distraught. “I’m not asking you to believe-”
She seems to catch her breath and then goes on flatly:
“There was nothing for maybe five minutes. Water was dripping out of the gutters over there. And there was ice all over the Whites’ lawn. It was melting fast.”
She gives a short, chopping laugh and butts her cigarette.
“Why not? It was August.”
She wanders aimlessly back toward the sofa, then veers away.
“Then the stones. Right out of the blue, blue sky. Whistling and screaming like bombs. My mother cried out, ‘What, in the name of God!’ and put her hands over her head. But I couldn’t move. I watched it all and I couldn’t move. It didn’t matter anyway. They only fell on the Whites’ property.
“One of them hit a downspout and knocked it onto the lawn. Others punched holes right through the roof and into the attic. The roof made a big cracking sound each time one hit, and puffs of dust would squirt up.
The ones that hit the ground made everything vibrate. You could feel them hitting in your feet.
“Our china was tinkling and the fancy Welsh dresser was shaking and Mom’s teacup fell on the floor and broke.
“They made big pits in the Whites’ back lawn when they struck.
Craters. Mrs. White hired a junkman from across town to cart them away, and Jerry Smith from up the street paid him a buck to let him chip a piece off one. He took it to B.U. and they looked at it and said it was ordinary granite.
“One of the last ones hit a little table they had in their back yard and smashed it to pieces.
“But nothing, nothing that wasn’t on their property was hit.”
She stops and turns from the window to look at me, and her face is haggard from remembering all that. One hand plays forgetfully with her casually stylish shag haircut. “Not much of it got into the local paper.
By the time Billy Harris came around-he reported the Chamberlain news-she had already gotten the roof fixed, and when people told him the stones had gone right through it, 1 think he thought we were all pulling his leg.
“Nobody wants to believe it, not even now. You and all the people who’ll read what you write will wish they could laugh it off and call me just another nut who’s been out here in the sun too long. But it happened. There were lots of people on the block who saw it happen, and it was just as real as that drunk leading the little girl with the bloody nose. And now there’s this other thing. No one can laugh that off, either. Too many people are dead.
“And it’s not just on the White’s property any more.”
She smiles, but there’s not a drop of humor in it. She says:
“Ralph White was insured, and Margaret got a lot of money when he died . .. double indemnity. He left the house insured, too, but she never got a penny of that. The damage was caused by an act of God. Poetic justice, huh?”
She laughs a little, but there’s no humor in that, either. .
Found written repeatedly on one page of a Ewen Consolidated High School notebook owned by Carrie White:
Everybody’s guessed/that baby can’t be blessed/’til she finally sees that she’s like all the rest. . . . *
Carrie went into the house and closed the door behind her. Bright daylight disappeared and was replaced by brown shadows, coolness, and the oppressive smell of talcum powder. The only sound was the ticking of the Black Forest cuckoo clock in the living room. Momma had gotten the cuckoo clock with Green Stamps. Once, in the sixth grade, Carrie had set out to ask Momma if Green Stamps weren’t sinful, but her nerve had failed her.
She walked up the hall and put her coat in the closet. A luminous picture above the coat hooks limned a ghostly Jesus hovering grimly over a family seated at the kitchen table. Beneath was the caption (also luminous): The Unseen Guest.
She went into the living room and stood in the middle of the faded, starting-to-be-threadbare rug. She closed her eyes and watched the little dots flash by in the darkness. Her headache thumped queasily behind her temples.