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At last he stu around the cellar with dull, unwitting eyes The giant was gone And the cat The side of the water heater was fastened back in place Everything was as it had been; the vast, piled objects, the heavy silence, the iaze moved slowly to the steps and up the eled in vain once s and clih inky tunnel twists had been in vain His eyes closed He swayed weakly on the hill of rocks, one throbbing length of pain It sees and trunk Inside, too, in his throat and chest and sto headache He didn’t know if he were starving or nauseous His hands shook fitfully He shuffled back to the heater
The thi in it he drank like a thirsty ani them up from the cuplike indentations It hurt to s
When he had finished the water, he climbed with slow, exhaustedplace was coe, handkerchief, cracker bundle, the box top all gone He stue of the block and saw the box top across the floor He hadn’t the strength to lift it
He re, weaving a little, staring out at the darkening cellar Another day ending Wednesday Three days left
His storily Slowly he tilted his head back and looked up to where he put the few soggy cracker cru of the water heater and cli the cracker pieces They were still day, his eyes staring straight ahead He was so tired he could hardly eat He knew he should go down and get the box top to sleep under in case the spider caht But he was too weary He’d sleep up here on the shelf If the spider came Well, what did itbefore, when he had been with the Infantry in Gerone to sleep without digging a foxhole, knowing itthe shelf until he came to a walled-in area, then climbed over the wall and sank down in the darkness, his head resting on a screw head
He lay there on his back, breathing slowly, barely able to suht, Little hting with the stones and the straw, he iant’s slack cuff and been carried from the cellar in a moment The only indication of the self-fury he felt was a sudden bunching of skin around his closed eyes, asound as his lips pulled back suddenly froht seeging lines
Another question Why hadn’t he tried to coht didn’t anger him It was so alien it only surprised him Was that because he was so small, because he felt that he was in another world and there could be no communication? Or was it that, as in all decisions now, he counted on only himself for any desired accoht bitterly He was as helpless and ineffectual as ever, , that was all
In the darkness he felt experi, raw-fleshed scrape on his right fore-arht hand, nudged an elbow against the swelling, purplish bruise on his right side He ran a finger over the jagged laceration across his forehead He prodded at his sore throat He reared up a trifle and felt the shoot of pain in his back Finally he let the separate aches sink back again into the general, coalescent pain His eyes opened, the lids seehtlessly at the darkness He re consciousness in the sepulcher of rocks; remembered the horror that had almost driven him insane until he realized that there was air to breathe and he had to keep his et out
But that first instant of realizing that he was sealed in a black crypt and still alive had been the lowest point
He wondered why the phrase occurred to hiht be othersaround the next corner, if he stayed alive
But he couldn’t think of anything else It was the lowest point, the nadir of his existence in the cellar It made him think of another lowest point, in the other life he had once led
When they got ho room hile Lou carried Beth to bed He didn’t offer to help He knew he couldn’t lift his daughter now
When Lou ca there
"Aren’t you going to take off your hat and coat?" she asked She went into the kitchen before he could answer He stood in his boy’s jacket and his Alpine hat with the red feather stuck in the band hearing her open the refrigerator He stared out at the dark street and heard the nerve twisting crunch of ice cubes being freed in their tray, the le of soda being poured
"Want some Coke?" she called to him
He shook his head
"Scott?"
"No," he said He felt a throbbing at his wrists
She ca to take off your things?" she asked
"I don’t know," he said
She sat down on the couch and kicked off her shoes "Another day," she said He didn’t reply He felt as if she were trying toinconsequential, while she patiently hurily at her, but there wasn’t any opening
"Are you just going to stand there?" she asked
"If I choose," he said
She looked at him for a moment, blank-faced He saw the reflection of her face in theThen she shrugged "Go ahead," she said
"No skin off your nose," he said
"What?" There was a sad, weary s" Now he did feel like a boy
Her drinking and sing sounded noisy to hirimaced irritably Don’t slurp, his
"Oh, co won’t help" She sounded faintly bored He closed his eyes and shuddered It has coone; she was inured He had expected it, but it was still a shock to find it happening He was her husband He had been over six feet tall Noas s in front of her, grotesque in his little boy’s clothes, and there was nothing but a faint boredom in her voice It was a horror beyond horror
His eyes were bleak as he stared out at the street, listening to the trees rustle in the night wind like a wo an endless stairway
He heard her drink again and he stiffened angrily
"Scott," she said Falsely applied affection, he thought "Sit down Staring out the on’t help Marty’s business"
He spoke without turning "You think that’s what I’m worried about?"
"Isn’t it? Isn’t it e’re both-"
"It isn’t" he cut her off coldly Coldness in a little boy’s voice sounded bizarre, as if he were acting out a part in a grade school play, unconvincing and laughable
"What, then?" she asked
"If you don’t know by now"
"Oh, co"
He picked on that "Takes a little straining to call ht across his small face "Takes a little-"
"Oh, stop it, Scott Aren’t there enough troubles without your irew shrill "Sure I’’s just the saination!"
"You’ll wake Beth up"
Too ed words filled his throat at once They choked each other and he could only stand fu iain
Then, abruptly, he headed for the front door
"Where are you going?" she asked, sounding alarmed
"For a walk! Do you mind?"
"You mean down the street?"
He wanted to screaer, "down the street"
"You think you should?"
"Yes, I think I should!"
"Scott, I’ of you!" she burst out "Can’t you see that?"
"Sure Sure you are" He jerked at the front door, but it stuck Colour sprouted in his cheeks and he jerked harder, a curse muffled on his lips
"Scott, what have I done?" she asked "Did I make you this way? Did I take that contract away frooddaainst the wall
"What if so up fro the door behind him And even that was ineffective because the jamb was too warped and the door wouldn’t slam, only crunch into its frame
He didn’t look back He started down the block with quick, agitated strides, heading for the lake He was about twenty yards from the house when the front door opened
"Scott?"
He wasn’t going to answer at first Then, grudgingly, he stopped and spoke over his shoulder
"What?" he asked, and he could have wept at the thin, ineffectual sound of his voice
She hesitated a moment, then asked, "Shall I coer nor despair
He stood there aif she would insist on co But she only stood there, a ," she said
He had to bite off the sob that tore up through hi around, he hurried quickly down the dark street He never heard her close the door
This is the botto lower than for a man to becoer, and castigation; but pity, never When a s
Walking on the treadmill of the world, he tried to blank his h the patches of street lights and into darkness again, trying not to think His mind would not cooperate; it was typical of introspective minds What he told it not to think about it dwelt on What he delike It was the way Suhts on the lake were sometimes chilly He drew up the collar of his jacket and walked on, looking ahead at the dark, shifting waters Since it was a week night, the cafes and taverns along the shore were not open Approaching the dark lake, he began to hear the slapping of water on the pebbled beach
The sidewalk ended Heunder his tread like things alive There was a cold wind blowing off the lake It cut through his jacket, chilling him He didn’t care
About a hundred yards from the sidewalk, he ca It was a German cafe and tavern, next to it a few dozen tables and benches for outdoor eating and drinking Scott threaded his way a theh, pocked surface of a bench
He sat staring gri down in it forever Was it so fantastic?
The sa to him now No, he would hit botto in another way
They had moved to the lake six weeks before, because Scott had felt trapped in the apartment If he went out, people stared at him With the first week and a half of the Globe-Post series already in print and reprint, he had become a national celebrity Requests still poured in for personal appearances Reporters came endlessly to the door
Butpeople anted to look at the shrinking man and think, Thank God, I’m normal
So they had et there without anyone’s finding out
Life there, he discovered, was no i of it hatwent on day by day, never noticeable, never ceasing, an inch a week like hideous clockwork And all the hu with it in inexorablein hi out wildly The subject didn’tthat counted
Like the cat:
"I swear to God, if you don’t get rid of that goddam cat, I’ll kill it!" Fury from a doll, his voice not
"Scott, she’s not hurting you"
He dragged up a sleeve "What’s that? Ihtened when she did that"
"Well, I’htened too! What does she have to do, rip open et rid of her?" And the two beds:
"What are you trying to do, humiliate me?"
"Scott, it was your idea"
"Only because you couldn’t stand to touch me"
"That’s not true!"
"Isn’t it?"
"No! I tried everything I could to-"
"I’m not a boy! You can’t treat my body like a little boy’s!" And Beth:
"Scott, can’t you see she doesn’t understand?"
"I’m still her father, da to the cool cellar, standing down there, leaning on the refrigerator, breath a rasping sound in hiritted, hands clenched Days passed, one torture on another Clothes were taken in for higer Financial worries got bigger
"Scott, I hate to say it, but I don’t see hoe can go on er on fifty dollars a week With all of us to feed and clothe and house" Her voice trailed off; she shook her head in distress
"I suppose you expect o back to the paper"
"I didn’t say that I merely said-"
"I knohat you said"
"Well, if it offends you, I’h What about inter comes?
What about winter clothes, and oil?"
He shook his head as if he were trying to shake away the need to think of it
"Do you think Marty would-"
"I can’t ask Marty for more money," he said curtly