‘On the in-migration of the French during the seventeenth century,’ John agreed. ‘Word sure gets around, doesn’t it?’
‘It do travel,’ the old party agreed. ‘Small town, don’tcha know.’ He stuck the cigarette in his mouth, where it promptly fell apart, sprinkling tobacco all over his legs and the dog’s limp hide.
The dog didn’t stir. ‘Aw, flapdoodle,’ the old man said, and peeled the uncoiling paper from his lower lip. ‘Wife doesn’t want me to smoke nummore anyway. She says she read it’s givin her cancer as well as m’ownself.’
‘We came into town to get a few supplies,’ Elise said. ‘It’s a wonderful old house, but the cupboard is bare.’
‘Ayuh,’ the old man said. ‘Good to meet you folks. I’m Henry Eden.’ He hung one bunched hand out in their direction. John shook with him, and Elise followed suit. They both did so with care, and the old man nodded as if to say he appreciated it. ‘I expected you half an hour ago.
Must have taken a wrong turn or two, I guess. Got a lot of roads for such a small town, you know.’ He laughed. It was a hollow, bronchial sound that turned into a phlegmy smoker’s cough.
‘Got a power of roads in Willow, oh, ayuh!’ And laughed some more.
John was frowning a little. ‘Why would you be expecting us?’
‘Lucy Doucette called, said she saw the new folks go by,’ Eden said. He took out his pouch of Top tobacco, opened it, reached inside, and fished out a packet of rolling papers. ‘You don’t know Lucy, but she says you know her grandniece, Missus.’
‘This is Milly Cousins’s great-aunt we’re talking about?’ Elise asked.
‘Yessum,’ Eden agreed. He began to sprinkle tobacco. Some of it landed on the cigarette paper, but most went onto the dog below. Just as John Graham was beginning to wonder if maybe the dog was dead, it lifted its tail and farted. So much for that idea, he thought. ‘In Willow, just about everybody’s related to everybody else. Lucy lives down at the foot of the hill. I was gonna call you m’self, but since she said you was comin in anyway . . . ‘
‘How did you know we’d be coming here?’ John asked.
Henry Eden shrugged, as if to say Where else is there to go?
‘Did you want to talk to us?’ Elise asked.
‘Well, I kinda have to,’ Eden said. He sealed his cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. John waited to see if it would fall apart, as the other one had. He felt mildly disoriented by all this, as if he had walked unknowingly into some bucolic version of the CIA.
The cigarette somehow held together. There was a charred scrap of sandpaper tacked to one of the arms of the rocker. Eden struck the match on it and applied the flame to his cigarette, half of which incinerated on contact.
‘I think you and Missus might want to spend tonight out of town,’ he finally said.
John blinked at him. ‘Out of town? Why would we want to do that? We just got here.’
‘Good idea, though, mister,’ a voice said from behind Eden.
The Grahams looked around and saw a tall woman with slumped shoulders standing inside the Mercantile’s rusty screen door. Her face looked out at them from just above an old tin sign advertising Chesterfield cigarettes — TWENTY-ONE GREAT TOBACCOS MAKE TWENTY WONDERFUL
SMOKES. She opened the door and came out on the porch. Her face looked sallow and tired but not stupid. She had a loaf of bread in one hand and a six-pack of Dawson’s Ale in the other.
‘I’m Laura Stanton,’ she said. ‘It’s very nice to meet you. We don’t like to seem unsociable in Willow, but it’s the rainy season here tonight.’
John and Elise exchanged bewildered glances. Elise looked at the sky. Except for a few small fair-weather clouds, it was a lucid, unblemished blue.
‘I know how it looks,’ the Stanton woman said, ‘but that doesn’t mean anything, does it, Henry?’
‘No’m,’ Eden said. He took one giant drag on his eroded cigarette and then pitched it over the porch rail.
‘You can feel the humidity in the air,’ the Stanton woman said. ‘That’s the key, isn’t it, Henry?’
‘Well,’ Eden allowed, ‘ayuh. But it is seven years. To the day.’
‘The very day,’ Laura Stanton agreed.
They both looked expectantly at the Grahams.
‘Pardon me,’ Elise said at last. ‘I don’t understand any of this. Is it some sort of local joke?’
This time Henry Eden and Laura Stanton exchanged the glances, then sighed at exactly the same moment, as if on cue.
‘I hate this,’ Laura Stanton-said, although whether to the old man or to herself John Graham had no idea.
‘Got to be done,’ Eden replied.
She nodded, and then sighed. It was the sigh of a woman who has set down a heavy burden and knows she must now pick it up again.
‘This doesn’t come up very often,’ she said, ‘because the rainy season only comes in Willow every seven years — ‘
‘June seventeenth,’ Eden put in. ‘Rainy season every seven years on June seventeenth. Never changes, not even in leap-year. It’s only one night, but rainy season’s what it’s always been called. Damned if I know why. Do you know why, Laura?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘and I wish you’d stop interrupting, Henry. I think you’re getting senile.’
‘Well, pardon me for livin, I just fell off the hearse,’ the old man said, clearly nettled.
Elise threw John a glance that was a little frightened. Are these people having us on? it asked.
Or are they both crazy?
John didn’t know, but he wished heartily that they had gone to Augusta for their supplies; they could have gotten a quick supper at one of the clam-stands along Route 17.
‘Now listen,’ the Stanton woman said kindly. ‘We reserved a room for you at the Wonderview Motel out on the Woolwich Road, if you want it. The place was full, but the manager’s my cousin, and he was able to clear one room out for me. You could come back tomorrow and spend the rest of the summer with us. We’d be glad to have you.’
‘If this is a joke, I’m not getting the point,’ John said.
‘No, it’s not a joke,’ she said. She glanced at Eden, who gave her a brisk little nod, as if to say Go on, don’t quit now. The woman looked back at John and Elise, appeared to steel herself, and said, ‘You see, folks, it rains toads here in Willow every seven years. There. Now you know.’
‘Toads,’ Elise said in a distant, musing, Tell-me-I’m-dreaming-all-this voice.
‘Toads, ayuh!’ Henry Eden affirmed cheerfully.
John was looking cautiously around for help, if help should be needed. But Main Street was utterly deserted. Not only that, he saw, but shuttered. Not a car moved on the road. Not a single pedestrian was visible on either sidewalk.
We could be in trouble here, he thought. If these people are as nutty as they sound, we could be in real trouble. He suddenly found himself thinking of Shirley Jackson’s short story ‘The Lottery’ for the first time since he’d read it in junior high school.
‘Don’t you get the idea that I’m standin here and soundin like a fool ’cause I want to,’ Laura Stanton said. ‘Fact is, I’m just doin my duty. Henry, too. You see, it doesn’t just sprinkle toads. It pours. ‘
‘Come on,’ John said to Elise, taking her arm above the elbow. He gave them a smile that felt as genuine as a six-dollar bill. ‘Nice to meet you folks.’ He guided Elise down the porch steps, looking back over his shoulder at the old man and the slump-shouldered, pallid woman two or three times as he did. It didn’t seem like a good idea to turn his back on them completely.
The woman took a step toward them, and John almost stumbled and fell off the last step.
‘It is a little hard to believe,’ she agreed. ‘You probably think I am just as nutty as a fruitcake.’
‘Not at all,’ John said. The large, phony smile on his face now felt as if it were approaching the lobes of his ears. Dear Jesus, why had he ever left St. Louis? He had driven nearly fifteen hundred miles with a busted radio and air-conditioner to meet Farmer Jekyll and Missus Hyde.
‘That’s all right, though,’ Laura Stanton said, and the weird serenity in her face and voice made him stop by the ITALIAN SANDWICHES sign, still six feet from the Ford. ‘Even people who have heard of rains of frogs and toads and birds and such don’t have a very clear idea of what happens in Willow every seven years. Take a little advice, though: if you are going to stay, you’d be well off to stay in the house. You’ll most likely be all right in the house.’