Lancelot

something when Miss So-and-So asks you to, trying to open the door, my face down and getting my shoulder into it.
    I’m sorry, I said, but—
    But when I stood up, she was gone. Not wanting to be a bother, she must have stepped past me.
    I was standing, thinking, and looking down at the knife in my hand. It was three o’clock. There was an orange cannonade of lightning in the southern sky but you couldn’t hear the thunder. As I watched, the last bonfire blew away, a very strong symmetrical one built of heavy notched willows like a log cabin, tapering to a point, the four corners secured by thirty-foot tree trunks as straight as telephone poles. It blew away, exploded silently and slowly, the timber springing apart like a toothpick toy.
    I was sitting at my desk fiddling with the knife. My head felt light and there was the feeling of freedom you have when you recover from a high fever. It is possible, one realizes, to stand up, walk in any direction, and do anything. Did the sensation have something to do with the low pressure? The barometer Margot gave me now read 27.65 inches. That’s very low, I thought, as I fiddled with the pencil. No wonder I felt queer.
    Presently I got up and found a hunting coat with big side pockets and a pouch in the back for game. I put a flashlight in the side pocket. By opening the door a few inches, it was possible to use the knife as a machete and hack through the oak branch sprung against the door. How did the woman get out? The knife flashed gold in the lightning. I felt its edge. It was sharp as a razor. Who had sharpened it? I looked at the knife and put it in the game pouch of the hunting coat, the point of the blade stuck down in a comer, and tied the drawstring tight across the flat of the blade.
    I stepped outside. The noise was bad but the wind was not bad until I reached the corner of the pigeonnier. Then it blew my mouth open, hollowed out my cheek, and made a sound across my mouth as if I were shouting. I fell down. Above me I could hear the organ sounds of the wind in the holes of the loft. The glazing must have blown out. After several tries at getting up, I discovered it was possible to walk by turning sideways to the wind and planting a foot forward. It was like walking down a steep mountain. Something was cutting my cheek. It must have been rain because it was not cold. My mouth blew open and again I fell down but managed to crawl into the lee of a big oak stump. I didn’t remember the stump. The keening and roaring was not a sound any more. It had turned into a lack of pressure, a vacuum, a silence. I sat in the roaring silence for a while. The stump was tall. I didn’t remember the tree. It must have been one of the oaks in the alley. It looked as if it had been sheared off fifteen feet above the ground by an artillery shell. I turned on my flashlight and looked at the sign in the tourist parking area, ADMISSION $5.00. A pine needle had blown through it. I sat for some seconds trying to understand the physics of it, how a limber pine needle can blow through a board.
    The doors to the cellar were on the north lee side of the house, so it was possible to open one. I went down into the darkness, not using the flashlight at first. The two-foot brick walls were like earthworks. The storm died suddenly to a muted uproar, a long steady exhalation. But there was another sound, a creaking and groaning, like the timbers of a ship in a heavy sea. I realized it was the fourteen-by-fourteens in the attic far above.
    Walking slowly toward the Christmas tree, I felt with my foot for the recess. When I reached it. I sat on the edge of the concrete and waited, hoping that dark as it was I might still be able to see something. After a while it became possible to make out a glimmer of pipes against the dark. Standing, I felt for the top pressure gauge and held the flashlight close to it. It read 38 PSI. I closed the valve below it watching the needle fall to zero. I propped the flashlight, slanted up, in the wheel of the bypass valve. The big Stillson wrench wouldn’t move the gauge at first. I was afraid of breaking it off but finally I was able to get a purchase on the fitting below the gauge. It took all I had to start it. When it came off, I tried the three-inch Gerona nipple. That was the trouble. Naturally the plastic nipple didn’t fit the threaded metal sleeve but simply abutted it. The Gerona pipe could not be threaded so there was nothing