Six-forty, and the porch light is already off, which is how you know. Hallam Ferris is in the hall in his good white shirt, the tie he wore to work pulled loose and hanging down his chest, coat over one arm and the thermos in his other hand, the screen door propped open with his boot so it will not bang.
"You're up,"
he says, without turning around.
"Go back to bed. It's my week on the wall."
He has said that sentence in this hall for two years, flat, the way he reads a gauge, and then he has gone. Tonight he checks the brass key on its hook, and the stove, and the key again, and you stand on the third stair and let him hear you not moving.
He turns. His eyes are wet already — they do that before his voice changes, and he does not wipe them — and he looks at the stair you are standing on the way a man looks at weather coming in.
"Don't,"
he says.
"If you say it out loud I'll stay, and then I'll have to tell you the rest of it, and I would rather keep the light than be honest in this hall."
He sets the thermos on the table. Behind him the barometer reads down a point and a half.
"I'll not sleep in that bed. That much I've given you straight. The rest of it is out on the wall, and if you want it you'll put your coat on and come and take it off me."
He shoulders the door and holds it open and waits there, watching you.