The Stories of John Cheever

“Would I do it again? I ask myself,” Greta said. “Now I’m too old. Look at my legs. Varicose veins.” She moved one of her legs out from underneath the table for Agnes to see.

“I have nothing to go back for,” Agnes said. “My brothers are dead, both my brothers. I have nobody on the other side. I wanted to see my father.”

“Oh, that first time I come here,” Greta cried. “It was like a party on that boat. Get rich. Go home. Get rich. Go home.”

“Me, too,” Agnes said. They heard thunder. Mrs. Garrison rang again impatiently.

 

A storm came down from the north then. The wind blew a gale, a green branch fell onto the lawn and the house resounded with cries and the noise of slammed windows. When the rain and the lightning came, Mrs. Garrison watched them from her bedroom window. Carlotta and Agnes hid in a closet. Jim and Ellen and their son were at the beach and they watched the storm from the door of the boathouse. It raged for half an hour and then blew off to the west, leaving the air chill, bitter, and clean; but the afternoon was over.

While the children were having their supper, Jim went up to the corn patch and set and baited his traps. As he started down the hill, he smelled baking cake from the kitchen. The sky had cleared, the light on the mountains was soft, and the house seemed to have all its energies bent toward dinner. He saw Nils by the chicken house and called good evening to him, but Nils didn’t reply.

Mrs. Garrison, Jim, and Ellen had cocktails before they went in to dinner, then wine, and when they took their brandy and coffee onto the terrace, they were slightly drunk. The sun was setting.

“I got a letter from Reno,” Mrs. Garrison said. “Florrie wants me to bring Carlotta to New York when I go down on the twelfth for the Peyton wedding.”

“Shay will die,” Ellen said.

“Shay will perish,” Mrs. Garrison said.

The sky seemed to be full of fire. They could see the sad, red light through the pines. The odd winds that blow just before dark in the mountains brought, from farther down the lake, the words of a song, sung by some children at a camp there:

 

“There’s a camp for girls

On Bellows Lake.

Camp Massasoit’s

Its name.

From the rise of sun

Till the day is done,

There is lots of fun

Down there…”

 

The voices were shrill, bright, and trusting. Then the changing wind extinguished the song and blew some wood smoke down along the slate roof to where the three people sat. There was a rumble of thunder.