Invasion

grouping.
        Connie sensed the new tension that blossomed inside of me. "What is it?"
        I said, "Come and look."
        She came; I showed her.
        "Was it that animal again?" Toby asked. He crowded in between us, pressing his nose to the glass. He had stopped crying.
        "I think it was," I said.
        "Oh, that's all right then," he said.
        "It is, huh?"
        "Oh, sure. I thought it was something a whole lot worse than just some old animal." He was actually smiling now. Looking up at Connie, he said, "Can I have another piece of cake, Mom? My piece at supper wasn't very big."
        She looked at him closely. "Are you feeling okay, Toby?"
        "Just hungry," he said. The fear had dissipated like an electrical charge. He said, "It was only that animal. When the snow stops, tomorrow maybe, Dad and I are going to put on our snowshoes and track it down and find out what it is." When neither of us could think of a reply to that, Toby said, "Mom? The cake?"
        "To be ten again," I said.
        Connie laughed. She put one hand in Toby's mop of hair and messed it up, a show of affection he stolidly endured. "Come into the kitchen, me lad, where you can eat it without getting crumbs over everything."
        I let them go. The whole time that Toby had his cake, I stood at the window and looked at those queer prints as the wind and the snow erased them.

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    5.
        
        Later, when Toby was upstairs taking a bedtime bath and we were sitting on the sofa before the fireplace, Connie said, "Do you think you should-load the gun?"
        When I had been drafted into the Army, Connie had purchased a.38 automatic which she had kept in the house for protection against burglars. We still had the pistol and the box of ammunition. In the army I had learned how to handle a gun; therefore, we weren't exactly unprepared.
        "Load it?" I said. "Well
        … Not just yet."
        "When?"
        "Maybe it won't be necessary."
        "But this animal might be dangerous."
        "I don't think so," I said. "And even if it is dangerous, it can't get in the house all that easily."
        "Well…"
        "I don't like having a loaded gun lying around."
        "I suppose you're right."
        "It's not that I'm afraid to load the gun, Connie. If a time comes when I have to use it, I will. I'll be able to use it. I no longer feel that a gun, of itself, is evil. I've spent hundreds of hours with Dr. Cohen, you know. I can use a gun again without going to pieces."
        "I know you can." She looked away from the crackling flames that enshrouded the birch logs. Her face was flushed and pretty.
        "I think the first thing I should do is call Sam Caldwell and see if he can help me."
        "Now?"
        "It's as good a time as any."
        "I'd better go up and see how Toby's getting along, make sure he brushes his teeth." When she reached the bottom of the stairs she looked back at me and said, "Don, you mustn't worry so much about what we think of you.
        We love you. We always will. We love you and trust you to take good care of us."
        I nodded, and she smiled at me. I watched her climb the steps until she was out of sight, and I wished that I could trust myself as much as she trusted me.
        Would I, could I, load and use the pistol if the time came for that sort of action-or would the weapon remind me of the war, Southeast Asia, all of those things that I had fled into catatonia in order to forget? Would I be able to defend my family -or would I back off from the gun like a man backing off from a rattlesnake? I simply didn't know; and until I did know, I didn't deserve her smile.
        In the den I dialed Sam Caldwell's number. It rang four times before he answered.
        "Sam? Don Hanlon."
        "You ready to be snowbound?" he asked.
        "You think it'll come to that?"
        "Sure do. Looks to me like we're in for the first big fall of the year."
        "Well, I'm kind of looking forward to it."
        "That's the proper attitude. Being snowbound is restful, peaceful."
        I decided that was enough
        Smalltalk. Neither of us cared much for long discussions about the weather, politics, or religion. Sam, especially, was scornful of wasted words; he was very much a taciturn, friendly, but totally self-sufficient and self-contained
        New Englander.
        He had come to the same