The chances are so good that it was nothing but a daydream that I haven’t told the others … at least, not yet.
In the manager’s apartment I found a large batteryoperated multiband radio. From the back of it, a flat antenna wire led out through the window. I turned it on, switched over to BAT., fiddled with the tuning dial, with the SQUELCH knob, and still got nothing but static — dead silence.
And then, at the far end of the AM band, just as I was reaching for the knob to turn it off, I thought I heard, or dreamed I heard, one single word.
There was no more. I listened for an hour, but there was no more. If there was that one word, it came through some minute shift in the damping mist, an infinitesimal break that immediately closed again.
One word.
I’ve got to get some sleep … if I can sleep and not be haunted until daybreak by the faces of Ollie Weeks and Mrs. Carmody and Norm the bag-boy … and by Steff’s face, half-shadowed by the wide brim of her sunhat.
There is a restaurant here, a typical HoJo restaurant with a dining room and a long, horseshoe- shaped lunch counter. I am going to leave these pages on the counter and perhaps someday someone will find them and read them.
One word.
If I only really heard it. If only.
I’m going to bed now. But first I’m going to kiss my son and whisper two words in his ear. Against the dreams that may come, you know.
Two words that sound a bit alike.
One of them is Hartford.
The other is hope.