Where I'm Calling From

subscribed to that. He just didn’t look the sort who’d do something really criminal. The story most folks seemed to believe, at least the one that got around most, was the most horrible. The woman was a dope addict, so this story went, and the husband had brought her up here to help her get rid of the habit. As evidence, the fact of Sallie Wilson’s visit was always brought up—Sallie Wilson from the Welcome Wagon. She dropped in on them one afternoon and said later that, no lie, there was something funny about them—the woman, particular.
    One minute the woman would be sitting and listening to Sallie run on—all ears, it seemed—and the next she’d get up while Sallie was still talking and start to work on her painting as if Sallie wasn’t there. Also the way she’d be fondling and kissing the kids, then suddenly start screeching at them for no apparent reason. Well, just the way her eyes looked if you came up close to her, Sallie said. But Sallie Wilson has been snooping and prying for years under cover of the Welcome Wagon.
    “You don’t know,” I’d say when someone would bring it up, “Who can say? If he’d just go to work now.”
    All the same, the way it looked to me was that they had their fair share of trouble down there in San Francisco, whatever was the nature of the trouble, and they decided to get clear away from it. Though why they ever picked Arcata to settle in, it’s hard to say, since they surely didn’t come looking for work.
    The first few weeks there was no mail to speak of, just a few circulars, from Sears and Western Auto and the like. Then a few letters began to come in, maybe one or two a week. Sometimes I’d see one or the other of them out around the house when I came by and sometimes not. But the kids were always there, running in and out of the house or playing in the vacant lot next door. Of course, it wasn’t a model home to begin with, but after they’d been there a while the weeds sprouted up and what grass there was yellowed and died. You hate to see something like that. I understand Old Man Jessup came out once or twice to get them to turn the water on, but they claimed they couldn’t buy a hose. So he left them a hose. Then I noticed the kids playing with it over in the field, and that was the end of that. Twice I saw a little white sports car in front, a car that hadn’t come from around here.
    One time only I had anything to do with the woman direct. There was a letter with postage due, and I went up to the door with it. One of the little girls let me in and ran off to fetch her mama. The place was cluttered with odds and ends of old furniture and with clothing tossed just anywhere. But it wasn’t what you’d call dirty. Not tidy maybe, but not dirty either. An old couch and chair stood along one wall in the living room. Under the window was a bookcase made out of bricks and boards, crammed full of little paperback books. In the corner there was a stack of paintings with their faces turned away, and to one side another painting stood on an easel covered over with a sheet.
    I shifted my mail pouch and stood my ground, but starting to wish I’d paid the difference myself. I eyed the easel as I waited, about to sidle over and raise the sheet when I heard steps.
    “What can I do for you?” she said, appearing in the hallway and not at all friendly.
    I touched the brim of my cap and said, “A letter here with postage due, if you don’t mind-”
    “Let me see. Who’s it from? Why it’s from Jer! That kook. Sending us a letter without a stamp. Lee!” she called out. “Here’s a letter from Jerry.” Marston came in, but he didn’t look too happy. I leaned on first one leg, then the other, waiting.
    “I’ll pay it,” she said, “seeing as it’s from old Jerry. Here. Now goodbye.”
    Things went on in this fashion—which is to say no fashion at all. I won’t say the people hereabouts got used to them—they weren’t the sort you’d ever really get used to. But after a bit no one seemed to pay them much mind any more. People might stare at his beard if they met him pushing the grocery cart in Safeway, but that’s about all. You didn’t hear any more stories.
    Then one day they disappeared. In two different directions. I found out later she’d taken off the week before with somebody—a man—and that after a few days he’d taken the kids to his mother’s over to Redding. For six days running, from one Thursday to the following