“It may have been that summer, or perhaps it was the next, we had the elegant funeral.”
A Little Better Than Plumb
INTO THE SILENCE of the sunny morning, into the peace of the petunia bed, bedlam suddenly broke. From the orchard there came the variously pitched yells, screams, shrieks and whoops of several children, the deep ragged howling of a dog and the ear-splitting, yowling squalls of an enraged cat.
Miss Em’s reflexes were good. They caused her to yank so vigorously at the weed she was pulling that it was suddenly uprooted and she was sent reeling back into the thorny embrace of the rambler rose. “Drat!” she said vehemently. Then, plucking herself loose from the rose’s prickly clutches, she marched to the orchard.
Three round-eyed little boys watched her coming. They were lined up like stair steps, their faces apprehensive. “Seth — Paul — Jimmy,” she said, calling the roll down the line from the tallest to the shortest, “I’ve told you about teasing Augustine.”
It was a ridiculous name for a cat, but she had had no choice in the matter. It had been given her by the German yard man, who when in his cups had a sentimental fondness for singing “Ach, du lieber Augustin.” She had no great love for the animal, but she was afraid it would come to harm if she turned it out.
“Yes ma’am, Miss Em, but we weren’t teasing him. Ring was chasing him and we were trying to make him stop,” the oldest boy explained.
Miss Em reflected that their efforts would have been confusing to a dog of more intelligence than Ring. With him, she was certain they had been an encouragement. “Can’t you keep your dog tied up?”
Reproachfully the three stared at her. “He likes to play with us,” the smallest boy offered.
Of course he did. Miss Em sighed. When you took in little boys you invariably took in a dog, though nothing had been said about a dog when she had rented the orchard to the pipeliner and his family.
It had been a mistake, she thought, to let him put his trailer in the orchard. But money was so short, and the orchard was so shady and quiet, and people had to live somewhere. Her conscience would have disturbed her if she had refused the man.
“We won’t bother a thing,” he had promised, looking longingly at the big, tree-shaded space. “It’s so far from the house you’ll never know we’re there. It would be such a fine place for the boys.”
“All right,” she had agreed reluctantly. It was a fine place for boys and the Chamber of Commerce said the townspeople must all be hospitable to the pipeline crew. After all, they were bringing thousands of dollars’ worth of business to the town, as well as a natural-gas line. “But it’s just for the summer,” she reminded him. “Three months is all we want, ma’am. We’ll be moving on then.” They had arrived only a week ago. She remembered how all three of the boys lined up behind the fence the day they had moved in, solemn, curious and watchful as she trimmed the grass edges of the walk. Forty years of teaching school had given her a considerable knowledge of children. She worked on quietly, ignoring them, giving them time to absorb her and the white house and the big lawn. Suddenly, solemnly and in order they proffered their names.
“I’m Seth.”
“I’m Paul.”
“I’m Jimmy.”
“How do you do?” she had said, turning to look at them. “I’m Miss Em.”
“I’m seven.”
“I’m six.”
Five pudgy brown fingers went up from Jimmy. “I’m five.”
They waited, two pairs of blue eyes, one of brown, fixed on her expectantly. Miss Em cleared her throat.
Jimmy, whose thumb was hovering near his mouth, asked, “How old are you?”
Paul, the middle one, nudged him and hissed, “Sh-h-h! You not s’posed to ask ladies how old they are.”
Jimmy’s eyes had widened. “Why?”
“They don’t like to tell.”
The big brown eyes had come round to rest fearfully on her, conscious of having sinned.
She had relieved him by sensibly explaining to them that they could play in the orchard but not in the yard. They must not tease the cat. They must not bother the garden tools in the shed. They could hang a swing from one of the apple trees but not the peach. They could sail their boats in the little pond at the foot of the orchard, but they must not wade in it because it grew deep at one end. Then she had given them cookies, and after thanking her gravely and meticulously they had marched off home.
Their mother was a harried, tense young woman — harried and tense not only from the constant coping with their boundless energy but from the necessity of moving every few months. She had sighed her dislike of it to Miss Em the first day. “It’s no way for children to live, and I know it. But Harry’s always been a pipeliner and I guess he always will be. I just have to make the best of it.”
Miss Em supposed she did try, and it was not really her fault that in one week the boys had broken a limb from an apple tree, smashed the window of the tool shed, torn three palings from the fence and reduced Augustine to a quivering mass of nerves. Three times in three days she had rescued him. The boys must learn there were consequences.
She faced the stair steps. Seth and Paul were very blond and their eyes brilliantly blue. Jimmy had brown eyes and a wide smile that made dimples under his ears. His thumb sought his mouth in his uncertainty now, and his brown eyes were almost liquid with anxiety.
She must seem an ogre to him, she thought, an old-maid ogre who measured out nothing but scolding words. She knew their mother must have threatened them with, “If you don’t be good Miss Em will make us move.”
She wanted to reassure him; she could never bear to see a child frightened. But the schoolroom had taught her that discipline, to be effective, must be stern. Smiles were for rewards. She kept her face sober. “You’ll have to get Augustine down from that tree,” she said.
Three pairs of eyes turned to look at the tree. The lowest limb was far from the ground. Three pairs of eyes, full of misgiving, turned then to look at her. “Gosh, Miss Em,” said Seth, “it’s too big a tree to climb.”
Paul, who had freckles and big ears, eyed the tree measuringly. “I can shinny up it if you’ll give me a boost.”
She shook her head. “You’re too heavy for me to lift.”
Jimmy’s eyes rested on her swimmingly. “Am I too heavy?”
He’s afraid to climb, she thought, but he will, if necessary. “You’re too heavy, too. You’ll have to think.”
“Daddy can get him down when he comes home tonight.”
“No, you must get him down yourselves. It’s only fair. Your dog chased him up the tree. I expect you to bring him home by lunchtime.” She walked away, leaving them with their problem. Was it too big? she wondered.
It was very quiet in the orchard for perhaps fifteen minutes; then there was a great banging and clattering, a few shouted orders, excitement in uplifted voices, a yell or two, a squeak of some kind, then quiet again. After a few moments it started all over, and it continued, off and on, for perhaps an hour. Miss Em went on with her weeding. They’re building a ladder, she told herself, and a very sensible thing it was of them to do, too. Give a child a task and leave him alone with it. It had been a maxim of hers.
She dug out dandelions, uprooted crabgrass, stung her hands on thistle and dock, conscious of the noises in the orchard but not at all apprehensive about them. The sun was almost directly overhead when she heard them coming. She could not have missed hearing, for they were chattering loudly in their excitement. They rounded the corner and broke into a run. “Hey, Miss Em! We got him!”
She straightened to look. They were grimy, their shirttails were out, there was a big rent in Seth’s pants, but they did indeed have Augustine. Jimmy was carrying him, cradling him gently as if he were a baby. Proudly he handed him over.
“Fine,” she said calmly, stroking the cat. “How did you manage?”
“Oh, we built a ladder. Come see, Miss Em. We built a dandy tree ladder.”
She put the cat in the house and followed the boys to the orchard. She stared in amazed dismay. Marching rakishly up the trunk of the tree, no two slanted alike, were four palings from the fence. The fence, she saw, was now gap-toothed on both sides of the gate. She might as well, she thought bitterly, take the gate down, too. Nothing could be more unnecessary. Dear Lord, she thought, just let me get through this summer! Just give me patience for the next three months!
The boys were looking at her expectantly, waiting for her praise. “Isn’t it a dandy ladder, Miss Em? Look, you can go up in a zip! Watch me, Miss Em!” Paul’s legs twinkled up the slats and he straddled the lowest limb.
“Move over. I’m coming up too!” Seth scrambled up the slats and joined him. “It’s easy, Miss Em. You could do it, too.”
“I doubt it,” she said dryly. Jimmy stood, his thumb in his mouth, watching. “Did you get Augustine down for me, Jimmy?”
The thumb popped out. “Didn’t any of us. He jumped down by hisself when Seth went up after him. But I caught him when he tried to run away.”
“That was very thoughtful of you.” She measured him a wan smile and was rewarded with an ear-dimpling grin. Well, she was hoist with her own petard. And they had used initiative, even if at the expense of her fence. She must be fair. “It’s a fine ladder, boys,” she called up the tree. “Come down now and I’ll give you some lemonade and cookies.”
They drank a gallon of lemonade and ate a whole batch of cookies, then wandered aimlessly over the house. In a schoolroom Miss Em knew what to do with children. In her own home she was at a loss. She let them wander. They ended up in the living room, gazing around curiously. “You’ve got a guitar,” Seth pointed out.
“Yes.”
“Do you know how to play it?”
It was her one musical accomplishment, though it had been years since she had touched the instrument. She picked it up. As a girl she had played, and the feel of the instrument in her hands now brought back memories of summer picnics on the river; of boys and girls long since grown, married, many of them dead; of the one man she might herself have married, given a few more moonlit nights — but there had been a death in his family and he had had to go away. She thought of the skating in the winter and hay rides and the taffy pulls. The guitar had accompanied them all. “Play something for us,” Jimmy urged.
Self-consciously, she tried to think of a song and came up with a ballad, a very slow and sad one. She sang all its verses, gathering courage as she went along, while the boys stood in front of her, watching her hands, listening respectfully. “Gee,” they said when she had finished, “that was pretty, Miss Em.”
“We know a song,” Seth volunteered.
“Do you? If you’ll sing it, I’ll try to accompany you.”
“It’s ‘The Chisholm Trail.’ ”
She had never heard of it. “Start singing and I’ll pick it up.”
They lined up and cleared their throats. A little shyly they looked at one another, then Paul nudged Seth. “You start off.”
Seth stared at his feet a moment, then lifted his head and began singing. The other boys chimed in. “Come along, boys, and I’ll tell you my tale; I’ll tell you my troubles on the old Chisholm Trail. Come a ki-yi-yippee, yippee-ay, come a ki-yi-yippee, yippee-ay!”
My goodness, Miss Em thought, a cowboy song! Valiantly she struggled to find the key and keep the rhythm. It was difficult, because as verse followed verse and the boys gained confidence they increased the speed of the song, until at the end they were racing madly and her fingers were having to fly.
“Well,” she said, feeling out of breath, “that was fine, wasn’t it?”
In a way it had been fine. Their voices were small, but sweet and very true, and they had swung along very gallantly. She put the guitar away. “I think you’d better run along now. Your mother probably has your lunch ready.”
Without question they accepted the suggestion, flung themselves out of the house, banging the screen door behind them, calling back over their shoulders, ”Adios, Miss Em. Adios. We’ll come to see you again sometime.”
Adios? Then she remembered they were from Texas.
She hadn’t expected them back so soon, however. At what seemed the crack of dawn the next morning she was roused by a loud knocking at her back door. Who in the world? she wondered, reaching for a robe and trying to wedge her feet into mismatched slippers. Only half awake, she fumbled toward the door. The knocking was very insistent. “I’m coming! I’m coming!” she shouted impatiently.
In sleepy disenchantment she eyed them as they stood lined up on her steps. “What are you boys doing here at this time of day?”
“We aren’t boys, ma’am,” Seth told her sternly. “We’re the men from the zoo. We’ve come to build a cage for your tiger. I’m Mr. White.”
“I’m Mr. Brown.”
Jimmy giggled. “I’m Mr. Black.”
“We heard your tiger is giving you a lot of trouble and we’ve come to fix a cage for him.”
“For heaven’s sake, Seth,” she began.
“Miss Em, a tiger is a very dangerous animal,” he interrupted her eagerly. “And they shouldn’t be allowed to run loose. Besides,” he warned her, “it’s against the law.”
She saw that they had dragged along a wooden orange crate. “Oh, all right,” she said. It was probably the quickest way to be rid of them.
“Where do you want to build it?”
“Here on the back porch, where you can watch him.” Seth gave her a winsome smile. “You’ll have to feed him and it’ll be handy.”
They dragged in the crate and she wondered what more they could do to it. It looked very substantial as it was. Then she saw they had other tools besides a hammer and some nails. Seth had a can opener and a screwdriver. Jimmy had a burned-out radio tube and a discarded wire sieve. They clustered around the crate, examining it in detail. “We’d better fix the spurlix first,” Seth said, nodding his head wisely. “The konker has come unkonked.”
Spurlix? Konker? Miss Em sat on a stool, curious now. They went to work, banging, measuring, attaching things, bending, listening, frowning, their hands flying about. “Hand me the bixter,” Seth said to Jimmy. “Not the big bixter, the little one.”
“We didn’t bring the little bixter. Here’s the skootak.”
Jimmy handed him the wire sieve. There was a silence and then Seth said, “The squamlet won’t do, either. What about the sticklebit?”
Paul handed over the screwdriver. Seth shook his head. “The sticklebit is too little. Mr. Black, you’ll just have to go back and get the little bixter.”
Jimmy hustled out the door, giving her a grin as he passed. He came back with an old toothpaste tube, thrust it at Seth. “Here, Mr. White.”
Seth took it, dropped it in the tomato can, tied one end of the electric cord around the can and the other around the can opener, poked the can opener through the wire sieve and attached the whole to a crack in the wooden crate. He buzzed like a saw for a moment, then Paul began buzzing and finally Jimmy started buzzing, too. They buzzed at different speeds and in different keys for several minutes; then Seth nodded his head. “It’s okay, men. Miss Em, I think your tiger will be perfectly comfortable in this nice cage.”
They gathered up the hammer and nails and filed past her to the door. Dazedly, she watched them. As they reached the door, Jimmy turned around and gave her a seraphic smile. “If you have any trouble, Miss Em, just call us. Our telephone number is eleven-twenty-thirty.”
She nodded, speechless.
They were halfway across the lawn before an uncontrollable impulse struck her. “Boys,” she called, “just what did you do to the cage?”
Over the stretch of lawn, over the rosebushes, over the petunias, came Seth’s clear, looping answer. “Why, Miss Em, we put in an air conditioner.”
As the summer wore on she became accustomed to their visits at any hour of the day. She became accustomed to all their whimsical pretend games and learned to take her part in them easily and deftly. She was once an admiral when an expedition sailed for the North Pole. Earnestly, Seth explained that the North Pole had come loose and the President wanted them to go find it. “It won’t do to have it floating loose in the ocean, Miss Em.”
“Of course not,” she agreed.
Feeling not the least bit silly, she stood at the helm of a tin washtub while Paul, in the crow’s nest on the stepladder, called down sailing directions to her.
Once she was a policeman looking for stolen jewels, flashing a cereal-box-top badge. Handsomely, they let her shoot the robbers when they were tracked down, and, flushed and excited, she pulled the trigger on Jimmy’s water pistol too soon and got them all wet.
Once she was a spaceman, a cut-out plastic vegetable bag over her head for a helmet. Once she died dramatically, hanged as a cattle rustler. That was when she had objected to riding a wooden sawhorse on the range. “You can be the cattle rustler,” they had said. She had a rope burn on her neck for a week from the hanging. The boys’ mother was aghast.
“Miss Em, don’t let them bother you so much.”
“Oh,” she said vaguely, “they don’t bother me. I send them along home when they make little nuisances of themselves.”
But she didn’t fool even herself. She did not know when they had ceased being three little boys who threatened the peace and quiet of her first summer of retirement and became instead three good friends. She did not know when she began to know them as persons, know that Seth was tense, nervous, sensitive and brilliant; that Paul was clever, loyal and determined; that Jimmy was docile, sweet, even-tempered. It just happened very gradually, until she found she was taking care with each, remembering his own personality, his own individuality.
Little by little she got used to them, to their casual “Hi, Miss Em” when they came, and their equally casual “Adios, Miss Em” when they left, to their noise and their games, until one day when their mother took them away for the day she had an odd feeling of loneliness in the big house. It was too quiet. The silence itself was very loud, and she realized that she had become so accustomed to their noise that it was like the birds in the trees, the jar flies humming their endless songs all the long, hot days, the tree frogs croaking hoarsely at night. It was strange, she thought, what one could get used to. She was used to children, of course, but not in her home. Her home had always been a cool, lofty retreat for her, her own quiet domain. Now it was the domain of the boys.
Not that they were always noisy. They came quietly sometimes, and she fed them and played the guitar for them. And they played with Augustine.
She had kept him in the house since the adventure with the dog, in the beautifully air-conditioned wooden crate. The boys all adored him, played with him, stroked him, held him, petted him, fed him. “Isn’t he soft?” they said, rubbing their hands down his fur.
“Doesn’t he make a funny noise inside?” holding him close to their ears.
They felt they owned him since they had rescued him from a tree and made him a cage.
So it was with a guilty feeling Miss Em had to tell them one morning that he had gone away for a little while. “Just on a little adventure,” she said reassuringly. “He’ll be home tonight.”
Fervently, she hoped he would. He had been so restless the night before, mewing uneasily and scratching at the door, refusing his food and pacing from his box to the door. Finally she had let him out. “It’s very silly of you,” she told him. “You’ll just get into a fight. You’d better stay home where you belong.”
But he had been off like a shot, leaving her only a wave of his tail in gratitude.
He did not come home that night, however, though she called and the boys called. Nor the next day, nor the next night. They went to look for him. They looked in every tree in the orchard, in the long grass beside the pond, in the woods and meadows beyond the orchard.
“He’s just gone, Miss Em,” Jimmy said tearfully. “He’s been kilt, I betcha.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said, trying to comfort him. “He’ll come home by and by.”
Each day they looked, the boys mournful and disconsolate, Miss Em increasingly anxious. He had never stayed away so long before. She grew to dread the mornings when the boys appeared, hope on their faces that she had to watch fade as she shook her head.
“Drat the animal,” she said to herself. “Where can he have got to?”
It was a week to the day that she found him in the back yard, alive, but only barely. One ear was almost torn off; he was tattered and torn, bloody and clawed. Her first thought was, the boys mustn’t see him like this.
She took him in the house, cleaned him up, bandaged the worst places and had him in his box on a bed of clean rags by the time they came. They were overjoyed that he had come home, hung over his box and crooned to him, but they were horrified at the sight of his condition.
“Was he in a fight, Miss Em?”
Grimly she said he must have been. The nature of tomcats was best left unexplained, she thought.
“Will he get well?”
“I hope so, but he’s very sick.”
They suggested remedies. “Maybe he needs a shot of penicillin.”
“Maybe he needs a tetanus shot.”
“Maybe if you gave him a vitamin pill?”
“We’ll call the vet,” she promised.
They hovered when the man came, watching his face for a clue. “He’s injured internally, Miss Em,” he said finally. “He’s slowly bleeding to death. Shall I put him away easily?”
Her heart thumped. Death, she thought. Do they know about it?
“What does he mean, Miss Em?” It was Jimmy tugging at her skirt.
Well, it had to be faced. “He means perhaps he should put Augustine to sleep quietly, since he can’t live.”
“Kill him?” Seth asked quickly.
“Well, yes . . .”
Like an explosion it came from all three. “No! He can’t kill him, Miss Em. He might live.”
The man looked at her and she shook her head. The boys had decided.
They were tireless in their efforts to help the cat, lifting him, turning him, trying to get him to eat. They all were beside him when the end came on a hot, sultry afternoon. It was Paul who said quietly, “I think he’s died, Miss Em.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s stopped breathing.”
Strangely enough, there were no tears now. They had agonized over his illness, hung over him, wept over him, but quite calmly they accepted his death. Even Jimmy only stroked the silky fur and said, “Poor Augustine, poor Augustine. You’re dead now, Augustine.”
She had expected tears and tantrums. Instead, Seth said gently, “We have to have the funeral now.”
“What do you know about funerals?”
“Oh, on TV they have them. We can put him in a box and dig a grave, Miss Em.”
Well, he had to be buried. She rummaged around and found a box, lined it with tissue paper, lifted Augustine into it. Gravely the boys took it outside and she showed them where to dig. “Back of the tool shed,” she said. She left them then, thinking perhaps they would rather have their funeral alone.
It was Jimmy who appeared at the door. “You’d better come now. We’re ready.”
She followed him. They had dug a deep hole, which they had lined with grass. The box was covered with flowers. It lay beside the open hole. The three boys stood solemnly at one side. They had gone home, she saw, and put on their best clothes, washed their hands and faces, wet down their hair. Seth was officiating. When she joined them, he said, “Bow your heads. We’ve got to pray. You want to say the blessing, Jimmy?”
Three crew-cut heads and Miss Em’s own iron-gray were soberly bent while Jimmy’s sweetest, most innocent voice chanted, “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest; let this food by Thee be blessed. Amen.”
Miss Em gulped. But a table grace wasn’t the worst graveside prayer that could be said, she supposed.
Seth took charge again authoritatively. “Now we got to sing. All join hands.”
Obediently they made a circle around the grave. Seth cleared his throat and hummed a note or two. Then he started the song, “Come along, boys, and I’ll tell you my tale . . .” The others chimed in generously. “ I’ll tell you my troubles on the old Chisholm Trail. Come a ki-yi-yippee, yippee-ay, yippee-ay, come a ki-yi-yippee, yippee-ay.”
“You’re not singing, Miss Em,” Jimmy accused her at the end of the first chorus. “Everybody’s got to sing, don’t they, Seth?”
Solemnly, Seth nodded.
Miss Em sang, “Come a ki-yi-yippee, yippee-ay.”
Augustine was being gathered to the last corral, where no doubt he would join Old Paint. She might as well help herd him on his way.
For some reason they didn’t want to go home that evening. She fed them and then they all sat on the wide front porch and watched the first stars come out, listened to the whippoorwills, looked at the fireflies lighting the early dark. Jimmy crawled into Miss Em’s lap, put his thumb in his mouth and sleepily snuggled against her. They wanted to talk, and they talked about death and God and day and night and fairy princesses and airplanes and diesel locomotives. Then they wanted stories and Miss Em told them until her throat ached.
Jimmy was asleep when their father came for them, and he lifted the little boy gently from Miss Em’s lap. It felt empty and cold where he had been.
“Come on, boys. It’s nearly bedtime.”
Drowsily, the other two boys clambered down from the swing where they had been flanking Miss Em, began to say good night.
“We’ll be pulling out tomorrow, Miss Em,” their father said. “The job’s finished here.”
“So soon?” she said, startled.
“The summer’s over, Miss Em. I expect you’ll be glad to see us go, at that. These boys have been a bother to you, I know.”
Oh, no, she cried silently, one hand reaching out to touch a bristly young head. Bothered me? Not ever. Why, what would she do without them? How would the days ever be filled again?
“Good night.”
They were swallowed up in the dark.
She didn’t sleep that night. He had taken her by surprise. Of course, it was the first of September. He had said three months when he rented the orchard. It had been three months, but she was still unprepared for it. It had seemed no time at all. She had almost lost count of the days, so busy the summer had been, so full, so very full. She counted over the days and the memories. Yes, the three months were gone. Ruefully she remembered asking the Lord to give her patience to get through the time. She wished she could ask him now to give her just one more golden day.
She was up before the sun, made her coffee and sat and watched out the window. She wanted to see the boys once more, but she didn’t know whether she should or not. She hadn’t said goodbye. She had been too stunned. Perhaps it was better this way. Just let them slip out of her life. It would do no good to tell them goodbye. This summer would fade from their memories — they were so young. They would not long remember Miss Em. Seth might, and maybe Paul, but Jimmy? She remembered how soft and snuggly he had been in her lap last night. In forty years of teaching she had often comforted a hurt child, a sick child, a bewildered child; but never, not once, had one crawled into her lap and gone to sleep there, as if she had been his mother. Jimmy was too little — he would not remember her.
Unhappily, she stared out the window, and then she saw them coming, as they had so often come early in the morning, Seth leading, Paul following, Jimmy bringing up the rear. She met them at the door.
“We brought you some presents.” Seth offered his.
“We made ’em.” Paul offered his.
“But you’re not s’posed to open ’em till we’re gone.” It was Jimmy offering his.
They were flat, thin little packages, wrapped in grocery paper, tied with dirty twine. Gravely she accepted them. “Thank you very much.”
In a quick, smothering flurry of wiry arms, she was hugged and wetly kissed; their heels flashed over the grass and they were gone. From the orchard their voices floated back. “Adios, Miss Em. We’ll come back and see you sometime.” Oh, do, her heart wept, do! But she knew they never would.
Inside, she waited until her eyes had stopped blurring before opening their gifts. On a shirt cardboard each had drawn a picture and colored it with crayons. Seth’s was a flowery wreath, with “To Miss Em from Seth” lettered in red inside. Paul’s was a heart, thrust through with an arrow, also inscribed, “To Miss Em.” Jimmy’s was a very stark and realistic picture of a cat, stiff and dead. “Augustine,” he had labeled it simply.
She heard a motor start and went to the door. The trailer was swinging around, battened down now, empty, headed home to Texas. The boys were on the back seat of the car that was pulling the trailer. Catching a glimpse of her, they waved hysterically, kept waving until they disappeared at last down the drive.
Miss Em waved, too, as long as she could see them, and just as the car turned onto the highway called, although they could not hear, “Goodbye! Goodbye!” Then fiercely, lovingly, she whispered, “Adios . . . Oh, adios, amigos.”
(This story was published originally in McCall’s, February 1959.)