Tales for a Stormy Night Read Online Free Page A

a length of hose anyway. Or do you think you’ll be taken for a fool riding in on a wagon?”
    “It won’t be the first time,” she said. “My life is full of foolishness.”
    “It’s a wise fool who laughs at his own folly. We’ve that in common, you and me. Where’ll we take our supper tonight?”
    He was sharp as mustard.
    “You’re welcome to come over,” she said.
    He nodded. “I’ll fetch us a steak, and we’ll give Micky his heels again after.”
    Sarah got off at the post office and stayed in the building until Joyce was out of sight—Joyce and the gapers who had stopped to see her get out of the wagon. Getting in was one thing, getting out another. A bumblebee after a violet. It was time for this trip. She walked to the doctor’s office and waited her turn among the villagers.
    “I thought I’d come in for a check-up, Dr. Philips,” she said at his desk. “And maybe you’d give me a diet?”
    “A diet?” He took off his glasses and measured her with the naked eye.
    “I’m getting a little fat,” she said. “They say it’s a strain on the heart at my age.”
    “Your heart could do for a woman of twenty,” he said, “but we’ll have a listen.”
    “I’m not worried about my heart, Doctor, you understand. I just feel that I’d like to lose a few pounds.”
    “Uh-huh,” he said. “Open your dress.” He got his stethoscope.
    Diet, apparently, was the rarest of his prescriptions. Given as a last resort. She should have gone into town for this, not to a country physician who measured a woman by the children she bore. “The woman next door to us died of a heart condition,” she said, as though that should explain her visit.
    “Who’s that?” he asked, putting away the instrument.
    “Mrs. Joyce. Some years ago.”
    “She had a heart to worry about. Living for years on stimulants. Yours is as sound as a bullet. Let’s have your arm.”
    She pushed up her sleeve as he prepared the apparatus for measuring her blood pressure. That, she felt, was rising out of all proportion. She was ashamed of herself before this man, and angry at herself for it, and at him for no reason more than that he was being patient with her. “We’re planning insurance,” she lied. “I wanted our own doctor’s opinion first.”
    “You’ll have no trouble getting it, Mrs. Shepherd. And no need of a diet.” He grinned and removed the apparatus. “Go easy on potatoes and bread, and on the sweets. You’ll outlive your husband by twenty years. How is he, by the way?”
    “Fine. Just fine, Doctor, thank you.”
    What a nice show you’re making of yourself these days, Sarah, she thought, outdoors again. Well, come in or go out, old girl, and slam the door behind you…
    Micky took to his heels that night. He had had a day of ease, and new shoes were stinging his hooves by nightfall. The skipping of Joyce with each snap of the harness teased him, the giggling from the rig adding a prickle. After the wagon, the rig was no more than a fly on his tail. He took the full reins when they slapped on his flanks and charged out from the laughter behind him. It rose to a shriek the faster he galloped and tickled his ears like something alive that slithered from them down his neck and his belly and into his loins. Faster and faster he plunged, the sparks from his shoes like ocean spray. He fought a jerk of the reins, the saw of the bit in his mouth a fierce pleasure. He took turns at his own fancy and only in sight of his own yard again did he yield in the fight, choking on the spume that lathered his tongue.
    “By the holy, the night a horse beats me, I’ll lie down in my grave,” Joyce cried. “Get up now, you buzzard. You’re not turning in till you go to the highway and back. Are you all right, Sarah?”
    Am I all right, she thought. When in years had she known a wild ecstasy like this? From the first leap of the horse she had burst the girdle of fear and shame. If the wheels had spun out from beneath them,