He broke into a laugh and opened his eyes.
“Good God,” said Clara, and tried to imagine that.
“On the other hand,” said Mr. Timmons, half-smiling up at that ceiling, “you got a greenhouse up there, or something? Sounds like plants growing. Or a yeast, may be, big as a doghouse, getting out of hand. I heard of a man once, raised yeast in his cellar. It—”
The front screen door slammed.
Clara Feck, outside glaring in at his jokes, said:
“I’ll be back in an hour. Jump!”
She heard his laughter follow her down the walk as she marched. She hesitated only once to look back.
The damn fool was standing at the foot of the ladder, looking up. Then he shrugged, gave a what-the-hell gesture with his hands, and—
Scrambled up the stepladder like a sailor.
When Clara Feck marched back an hour later, the Ratzaway truck still stood silent at the curb. “Hell,” she said to it. “Thought he’d be done by now. Strange man tramping around, swearing—”
She stopped and listened to the house.
Silence.
“Odd,” she muttered.
“Mr. Timmons!?” she called.
And realizing she was still twenty feet from the open front door, she approached to call through the screen.
“Anyone home?”
She stepped through the door into a silence like the silence in the old days before the mice had begun to change to rats and the rats had danced themselves into something larger and darker on the upper attic decks. It was a silence that, if you breathed it in, smothered you.
She swayed at the bottom of the flight of stairs, gazing up, her groceries hugged like a dead child in her arms.
“Mr. Timmons—?”
But the entire house was still.
The portable ladder still stood waiting on the landing.
But the trapdoor was shut.
Well, he’s obviously not up in there! she thought. He wouldn’t climb and shut himself in. Damn fool’s just gone away.
She turned to squint out at his truck abandoned in the bright noon’s glare.
Truck’s broke down, I imagine. He’s gone for help.
She dumped her groceries in the kitchen and for the first time in years, not knowing why, lit a cigarette, smoked it, lit another, and made a loud lunch, banging skillets and running the can opener overtime.
The house listened to all this, and made no response.
By two o’clock the silence hung about her like a cloud of floor polish. “Ratzaway,” she said, as she dialed the phone. The Pest Team owner arrived half an hour later, by motorcycle, to pick up the abandoned truck. Tipping his cap, he stepped in through the screen door to chat with Clara Feck and look at the empty rooms and weigh the silence.
“No sweat, ma’am,” he said, at last. “Charlie’s been on a few benders, lately. He’ll show up to be fired, tomorrow. What was he doing here?”
With this, he glanced up the stairs at the stepladder.