Muttering to herself, the young woman turned and opened the back door of her house. This excited Sandra O’Connell; she’d opened the back door without a key. The house had been left unlocked.
The back door was still open now, and no noises issued from the screen. The placed looked a little big for just one person, but she dared to hope. Reservists would be off on security duty now; it was just possible that, for one reason or another, the woman was alone in that house.
She waited and watched through the hot, muggy afternoon. Twice the woman in the house emerged for one thing or another, but nobody else. Finally, after a long and hard wait, in which the temptation to return to the vineyards or find a brook for a drink was almost overpowering, the woman of the house left again, entered the school bus and, making a three-point turn, started off down the hill again.
She had to take the chance, she decided. Had to. There was no choice in the matter. Later, when she could—if she could—she would pay this woman back somehow.
Just when she was preparing to make her move, the back door of the house next door opened and a middle-aged woman emerged, dressed in a skimpy garden-type suit that made her look ridiculous.
Sandra O’Connell watched nervously, knowing that precious minutes were being lost, while the woman pulled open an aluminum-framed lawn recliner, lay down, slapped on some tanning lotion, and relaxed.
It seemed like forever until the old bag fell asleep. There was the sound of gentle snoring, and her mouth was open.
Sandra saw that the woman with the bus hadn’t closed the back door; there was only the screen door to contend with, and without waking up the sleeping neighbor.
Cautiously but deliberately Sandra stepped out of the bushes and walked toward the door. The little dog saw her and ran to her, running around her playfully. She was almost to the back door when the dog started after a butterfly, went over into the next yard, and almost ran into the sleeping woman there.
Silently the amateur burglar opened the kitchen door and closed it quietly behind her, and just in time, too. The dog had made one leap too many at the butterfly, started barking, and awakened the matronly sunbather.
Once inside the house Sandra didn’t worry about what was happening outside; time was pressing.
The house was smaller than it seemed: a one-story affair with a large kitchen, a dining room, a small living room, and two bedrooms, one of which was made up to look like a tiny den.
The bedroom contained a queen-sized bed and some dressers. A photo next to the bed of a man in uniform confirmed her belief that the woman’s husband was, in fact, away.
Sandra couldn’t get her own makeshift garment untied, and finally ripped it off. She opened a closet, and came face to face with a full-length mirror which startled her.
She looked a mess, it was true, but still somehow young and attractive, far younger than her years, although the image remained slightly blurry to her.
Finding a perfect fit was something she didn’t expect and didn’t achieve, either. She rejected a lot of clothing that would fit, though, simply because it required some kind of undergarments, and those definitely would not fit.
An old, ragged, washed-out and faded pair of jeans proved a tight fit, but she managed to pull them around her thighs and zip them up, although it took tremendous effort and more precious time. She felt like she had a tightening noose around her waist.
The woman had some shirts but they didn’t fit; she found under a pile of old clothing some white tee shirts that were obviously destined for a rag bin. They were the man’s shirts, or undershirts, but they had shrunk in the wash. One of them went on all right, but felt wrong in the shoulders and didn’t go all the way down to her jeans, exposing her navel. She looked at herself in the mirror. A bad fit, with the very short haircut setting it all off wrong.
She looked like an overage high-schooler on the make.
Well, it would have to do. None of the shoes or sandals fit; she was in a hurry and decided to abandon them. She took a few precious seconds to put everything back in an undisturbed condition, hoping that it would be some time if ever before the theft was noticed. The remains of the gown she picked up and took with her; it would be discarded outside later, perhaps in a convenient garbage can.
Going back to the kitchen, she noticed, on the small dining table, a purse. She couldn’t resist. Looking in, she spotted the wallet with several bills inside. She took them and a little change and squeezed the money into a front pocket of her incredibly tight and uncomfortable jeans. She went back to the kitchen, looked in the refrigerator, and grabbed a piece of cake from a half-finished store-bought creation. Now she went back to the back door, looking out.
The matronly woman was awake and petting the dog. A middle-aged man farther down was mowing his lawn.
Panicked, she walked to the front door, opened it carefully, and looked out. Nobody was in sight, although, down the road, she could see a yellow school bus pulling into the lot and she was pretty sure who was driving. She decided to chance it, walked out the front door, closed it firmly, and went out to the street and slowly started walking down. She was still holding the remains of the gown, and when she got near the bottom of the hill, at a little bridge over a brook leading to the river, she walked down, shoved a rock into the cloth, and pushed it down into the wet stream bottom. A couple of rocks on top finished the job.
And now, for the first time, feeling satisfied with herself, she suddenly realized that what she’d done meant very little. Up on the overpass to her left was a military checkpoint; to her right and ahead was a small town where a stranger, particularly now, during the emergency, would stand out like a sore thumb.
She didn’t care immediately. She was hungry, and there seemed to be a drive-in food stand a couple of blocks away. She headed toward it, thankful at least that she could now walk in civilized company. Even barefoot and in painfully tight old clothing, she no longer felt like a wild beast, naked in the wilderness.
There were three trucks stopped at the drive-in, big, long-distance rigs. She considered it. Trucks and military vehicles were obviously the only things that moved without a lot of official help these days.
She still felt uncoordinated and distant, but she had to risk it. She went up to the drive-in, a little two-person shack, really, and looked at the hand-lettered menu. Nervousness started to creep in again; she couldn’t keep it down. The jittery feeling seemed to affect her thinking; it muddied, and she felt confusion where, minutes before, she’d been thinking fairly clearly.
She couldn’t read the menu. That hadn’t changed. But she could see a small grill near the window, and smell hamburgers cooking. It was irresistible.
She went up to the window. A girl who looked young enough to be in high school stared at her curiously and asked, “Yes ma’am?”
Sandra started to say something, suddenly realizing that these would be the first words uttered since she woke up in the boathouse, and she stammered. She wanted to say, “I’ll have a hamburger, please,” but she couldn’t seem to get it up. Finally she pointed to a picture of a hamburger on the side of the service window and asked, “How much is one of those?”
The girl gave her something of a pitying look, and she suddenly realized that she must have looked and sounded like a retarded person.
“Two dollars with a Coke thrown in,” the girl told her.
Sandra reached into her pocket and brought out the bills. She was suddenly doubly confused, and the more confused and frustrated she was the more so she became. She took one of the five crumpled bills and handed it with some difficulty to the girl.