![]() It was like one of those big cast-iron dishes with an electric clapper that send schoolchildren into the street in fire drills. Ringing throughout the house was an alarm bell that no one but Alfred and Enid could hear directly. ![]() He struggled to his feet and stood by the Ping-Pong table, listening in vain for Enid. Two empty hours were a sinus in which infections, bred. ![]() He'd had his nap and there would be no local news until five o'clock. Alfred had awakened in the great blue chair in which he'd been sleeping since lunch. Three in the afternoon was a time of danger in these gerontocratic suburbs of St. And the drone and hiccup of a clothes dryer, the nasal contention of a leaf blower, the ripening of local apples in a paper bag, the smell of the gasoline with which Alfred Lambert had cleaned the paintbrush from his morning painting of the wicker love seat. ![]() Storm windows shuddered in the empty bedrooms. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. ![]() The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The Madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. ![]()
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