Shirley Jackson - The Summer People

Shirley Jackson - The Summer People

Shirley Jackson - The Summer People

The Allisons’ country cottage, seven miles from the nearest town, was set prettily on a hill; from three sides it looked down on soft trees and grass that seldom, even at midsummer, lay still and dry. On the fourth side was the lake, which touched against the wooden pier the Allisons’ had to keep repairing, and which looked equally well from the Allisons’ front porch, their side porch, or any spot on the wooden staircase leading from the porch down to the water. Although the Allisons’ loved their summer cottage, looked forward to arriving in the early summer and hated to leave in the fall, they had not troubled themselves to put in any improvements, regarding the cottage itself and the lake as improvement enough for the life left to them. The cottage had no heat, no running water except the precarious supply from the backyard pump, and no electricity. For seventeen summers, Janet Allison had cooked on a kerosene stove, heating all their water; Robert Allison had brought buckets full of water daily from the pump and read his paper by kerosene light in the evenings and they had both, sanitary city people, become stolid and matter-of-fact about their backhouse. In the first two years they had gone through all the standard vaudeville and magazine jokes about backhouses and by now, when they no longer had frequent guests to impress, they had subsided to a comfortable security which made the backhouse, as well as the pump and the kerosene, an indefinable asset to their summer life.

In themselves, the Allisons’ were ordinary people. Mrs Allison was fifty-eight years old and Mr Allison sixty; they had seen their children outgrow the summer cottage and go on to families of their own and seashore resorts; their friends were either dead or settled in comfortable year-round houses, their nieces and nephews vague. In the winter they told one another they could stand their New York apartment while waiting for the summer; in the summer they told one another that the winter was well worthwhile, waiting to get to the country.

Since they were old enough not to be ashamed of regular habits, the Allisons’ invariably left their summer cottage the Tuesday after Labor Day, and were as invariably sorry when the months of September and early October turned out to be pleasant and almost insufferably barren in the city; each year they recognized that there was nothing to bring them back to New York, but it was not until this year that they overcame their traditional inertia enough to decide to stay at the cottage after Labor Day.

“There isn’t really anything to take us back to the city,” Mrs Allison told her husband seriously, as though it were a new idea, and he told her, as though neither of them had ever considered it, “We might as well enjoy the country as long as possible.” Consequently, with much pleasure and a slight feeling of adventure, Mrs Allison went into their village the day after Labor Day and told those natives with whom she had dealings, with a pretty air of breaking away from tradition, that she and her husband had decided to stay at least a month longer at their cottage. “It isn’t as though we had anything to take us back to the city,” she said to Mr Babcock, her grocer. “We might as well enjoy the country while we can.”

“Nobody ever stayed at the lake past Labor Day before,” Mr Babcock said. He was putting Mrs Allison’s groceries into a large cardboard carton, and he stopped for a minute to look reflectively into a bag of cookies. “Nobody,” he added. “But the city!” Mrs Allison always spoke of the city to Mr Babcock as though it were Mr Babcock’s dream to go there. “It’s so hot-you’ve really no idea. We’re always sorry when we leave.”

“Hate to leave,” Mr Babcock said. One of the most irritating native tricks Mrs Allison had noticed was that of taking a trivial statement and rephrasing it downward, into an even more trite statement. “I’d hate to leave myself,” Mr Babcock said, after deliberation, and both he and Mrs Allison smiled. “But I never heard of anyone ever staying out at the lake after Labor Day before.” “Well, we’re going to give it a try,” Mrs Allison said, and Mr

Babcock replied gravely, “Never know till you try.” Physically, Mrs Allison decided, as she always did when leaving the grocery after one of her inconclusive conversations with Mr Babcock, physically, Mr Babcock could model for a statue of Daniel Webster, but mentally…it was horrible to think into what old New England Yankee stock had degenerated. She said as much to Mr Allison when she got into the car, and he said, “It’s generations of inbreeding. That and the bad land.”

Since this was their big trip into town, which they made only once every two weeks to buy things they could not have delivered, they spent all day at it, stopping to have a sandwich in the newspaper and soda shop, and leaving packages heaped in the back of the car. Although Mrs Allison was able to order groceries delivered regularly, she was never able to form any accurate idea of Mr Babcock’s current stock by telephone, and her lists of odds and ends that might be procured was always supplemented, almost beyond their need, by the new and fresh local vegetables Mr Babcock was selling temporarily, or the packaged candy which had just come in. This trip Mrs Allison was tempted, too, by the set of glass baking dishes that had found themselves completely by chance in the hardware and clothing and general store, and which had seemingly been waiting there for no one but Mrs Allison, since the country people, with their instinctive distrust of anything that did not look as permanent as trees and rocks and sky, had only recently begun to experiment in aluminum baking dishes instead of ironware, and had, apparently within the memory of local inhabitants, discarded stoneware in favor of iron.

Mrs Allison had the glass baking dishes carefully wrapped, to endure the uncomfortable ride home over the rocky road that led up to the Allisons’ ‘ cottage, and while Mr Charley Walpole, who, with his younger brother Albert, ran the hardware-clothing-general store (the store itself was called Johnson’s, because it stood on the site of the old Johnson cabin, burned fifty years before Charley Walpole was born), laboriously unfolded newspapers to wrap around the dishes, Mrs Allison said, informally, “Course, I could have waited and gotten those dishes in New York, but we’re not going back so soon this year.”

“Heard you was staying on,” Mr Charley Walpole said. His old fingers fumbled maddeningly with the thin sheets of newspaper, carefully trying to isolate only one sheet at a time, and he did not look up at Mrs Allison as he went on, “Don’t know about staying on up there to the lake. Not after Labor Day.” “Well, you know,” Mrs Allison said, quite as though he deserved an explanation, “it just seemed to us that we’ve been hurrying back to New York every year, and there just wasn’t any need for it. You know what the city’s like in the fall.” And she smiled confidingly up at Mr Charley Walpole.

Rhythmically he wound string around the package. He’s giving me a piece long enough to save, Mrs Allison thought, and she looked away quickly to avoid giving any sign of impatience. “I feel sort of like we belong here, more,” she said. “Staying on after everyone else has left.” To prove this, she smiled brightly across the store at a woman with a familiar face, who might have been the woman who sold berries to the Allisons’ one year, or the woman who occasionally helped in the grocery and was probably Mr Babcock’s aunt. “Well,” Mr Charley Walpole said. He shoved the package a little across the counter, to show that it was finished and that for a sale well made, a package well wrapped, he was willing to accept pay. “Well,” he said again. “Never been summer people before, at the lake after Labor Day.”

Mrs Allison gave him a five-dollar bill, and he made change methodically, giving great weight even to the pennies. “Never after Labor Day,” he said, and nodded at Mrs Allison, and went soberly along the store to deal with two women who were looking at cotton housedresses.

As Mrs Allison passed on her way out she heard one of the women say acutely, “Why is one of them dresses one dollar and thirty nine cents and this one here is only ninety-eight?” “They’re great people,” Mrs Allison told her husband as they went together down the sidewalk after meeting at the door of the hardware store. “They’re so solid, and so reasonable, and so honest.” “Makes you feel good, knowing there are still towns like this,” Mr Allison said.

“You know, in New York,” Mrs Allison said, “I might have paid a few cents less for these dishes, but there wouldn’t have been anything sort of personal in the transaction.”

“Staying on to the lake?” Mrs Martin, in the newspaper and sandwich shop, asked the Allisons’ . “Heard you was staying on.” “Thought we’d take advantage of the lovely weather this year,” Mr Allison said.

Mrs Martin was a comparative newcomer to the town; she had married into the newspaper and sandwich shop from a neighboring farm, and had stayed on after her husband’s death. She served bottled soft drinks, and fried egg and onion sandwiches on thick bread, which she made on her own stove at the back of the store. Occasionally when Mrs Martin served a sandwich it would carry with it the rich fragrance of the stew or the pork chops cooking alongside for Mrs Martin’s dinner.

“I don’t guess anyone’s ever stayed out there so long before,” Mrs Martin said. “Not after Labor Day, anyway.” “I guess Labor Day is when they usually leave,” Mr Hall, the Allisons’ ‘ nearest neighbor, told them later, in front of Mr Babcock’s store, where the Allisons’ were getting into their car to go home. “Surprised you’re staying on.”

“It seemed a shame to go so soon,” Mrs Allison said. Mr Hall lived three miles away; he supplied the Allisons’ with butter and eggs, and occasionally, from the top of their hill, the Allisons’ could see the lights in his house in the early evening before the Halls went to bed.

“They usually leave Labor Day,” Mr Hall said. The ride home was long and rough; it was beginning to get dark, and Mr Allison had to drive very carefully over the dirt road by the lake. Mrs Allison lay back against the seat, pleasantly relaxed after a day of what seemed whirlwind shopping compared with their day-to-day existence; the new glass baking dishes lurked agreeably in her mind, and the half bushel of red eating apples, and the package of colored thumbtacks with which she was going to put up new shelf edging in the kitchen. “Good to get home,” she said softly as they came in sight of their cottage, silhouetted above them against the sky.

“Glad we decided to stay on,” Mr Allison agreed. Mrs Allison spent the next morning lovingly washing her baking dishes, although in his innocence Charley Walpole had neglected to notice the chip in the edge of one; she decided, wastefully, to use some of the red eating apples in a pie for dinner, and, while the pie was in the oven and Mr Allison was down getting the mail, she sat out on the little lawn the Allisons’ had made at the top of the hill, and watched the changing lights on the lake, alternating gray and blue as clouds moved quickly across the sun. Mr Allison came back a little out of sorts; it always irritated him to walk the mile to the mailbox on the state road and come back with nothing, even though he assumed that the walk was good for his health. This morning there was nothing but a circular from a New York department store, and their New York paper, which arrived erratically by mail from one to four days later than it should, so that some days the Allisons’ might have three papers and frequently none. Mrs Allison, although she shared with her husband the annoyance of not having mail when they so anticipated it, pored affectionately over the department store circular, and made a mental note to drop in at the store when she finally went back to New York, and check on the sale of wool blankets; it was hard to find good ones in pretty colors nowadays. She debated saving the circular to remind herself, but after thinking about getting up and getting into the cottage to put it away safely somewhere, she dropped it into the grass beside her chair and lay back, her eyes half closed.

“Looks like we might have some rain,” Mr Allison said, squinting at the sky.

“Good for the crops,” Mrs Allison said laconically, and they both laughed.

The kerosene man came the next morning while Mr Allison was down getting the mail; they were getting low on kerosene and Mrs Allison greeted the man warmly; he sold kerosene and ice, and, during the summer, hauled garbage away for the summer people. A garbage man was only necessary for improvident city folk; country people had no garbage.

“I’m glad to see you,” Mrs Allison told him. “We were getting pretty low.”

The kerosene man, whose name Mrs Allison had never learned, used a hose attachment to fill the twenty-gallon tank which supplied light and heat and cooking facilities for the Allisons’ ; but today, instead of swinging down from his truck and unhooking the hose from where it coiled affectionately around the cab of the truck, the man stared uncomfortably at Mrs Allison, his truck motor still going. “Thought you folks’d be leaving,” he said.

“We’re staying on another month,” Mrs Allison said brightly.

“The weather was so nice, and it seemed like-“

“That’s what they told me,” the man said. “Can’t give you no oil, though.”

“What do you mean?” Mrs Allison raised her eyebrows. “We’re just going to keep on with our regular-” “After Labor Day,” the man said. “I don’t get so much oil myself after Labor Day.”

Mrs Allison reminded herself, as she had frequently to do when in disagreement with her neighbors, that city manners were no good with country people; you could not expect to overrule a country employee as you could a city worker, and Mrs Allison smiled engagingly as she said, “But can’t you get extra oil, at least while we stay?”

“You see,” the man said. He tapped his finger exasperatingly against the car wheel as he spoke. “You see,” he said slowly, “I order this oil. I order it down from maybe fifty, fifty-five miles away. I order back in June, how much I’ll need for the summer. Then I order again…oh, about November. Round about now it’s starting to get pretty short.” As though the subject were closed, he stopped tapping his finger and tightened his hands on the wheel in preparation for departure.

“But can’t you give us some?” Mrs Allison said. “Isn’t there anyone else?”

“Don’t know as you could get oil anywheres else right now,” the man said consideringly. “I can’t give you none.” Before Mrs Allison could speak, the truck began to move; then it stopped for a minute and he looked at her through the back window of the cab. “Ice?” he called. “I could let you have some ice.”

Mrs Allison shook her head; they were not terribly low on ice, and she was angry. She ran a few steps to catch up with the truck, calling, “Will you try to get us some? Next week?” “Don’t see’s I can,” the man said. “After Labor Day, it’s harder.” The truck drove away, and Mrs Allison, only comforted by the thought that she could probably get kerosene from Mr Babcock or, at worst, the Halls, watched it go with anger. “Next summer,” she told herself, “just let him trying coming around next summer!” There was no mail again, only the paper, which seemed to be coming doggedly on time, and Mr Allison was openly cross when he returned. When Mrs Allison told him about the kerosene man he was not particularly impressed.

“Probably keeping it all for a high price during the winter,” he commented. “What’s happened to Anne and Jerry, do you think?”

Anne and Jerry were their son and daughter, both married, one living in Chicago, one in the far west; their dutiful weekly letters were late; so late, in fact, that Mr Allison’s annoyance at the lack of mail was able to settle on a legitimate grievance. “Ought to realize how we wait for their letters,” he said. “Thoughtless, selfish children. Ought to know better.”

“Well, dear,” Mrs Allison said placatingly. Anger at Anne and Jerry would not relieve her emotions toward the kerosene man. After a few minutes she said, “Wishing won’t bring the mail, dear. I’m going to go call Mr Babcock and tell him to send up some kerosene with my order.”

“At least a postcard,” Mr Allison said as she left. As with most of the cottage’s inconveniences, the Allisons’ no longer noticed the phone particularly, but yielded to its eccentricities without conscious complaint. It was a wall phone, of a type still seen in only few communities; in order to get the operator, Mrs Allison had first to turn the side-crank and ring once. Usually it took two or three tries to force the operator to answer, and Mrs Allison, making any kind of telephone call, approached the phone with resignation and a sort of desperate patience. She had to crank the phone three times this morning before the operator answered, and then it was still longer before Mr Babcock picked up the receiver at his phone in the corner of the grocery behind the meat table. He said “Store?” with the rising inflection that seemed to indicate suspicion of anyone who tried to communicate with him by means of this unreliable instrument.

“This is Mrs Allison, Mr Babcock. I thought I’d give you my order a day early because I wanted to be sure and get some-” “What say, Mrs Allison?”

Mrs Allison raised her voice a little; she saw Mr Allison, out on the lawn, turn in his chair and regard her sympathetically. “I said, Mr Babcock, I thought I’d call in my order early so you could send me-” “Mrs Allison?” Mr Babcock said. “You’ll come and pick it up?” “Pick it up?” In her surprise Mrs Allison let her voice drop back to its normal tone and Mr Babcock said loudly, “What’s that, Mrs Allison?”

“I thought I’d have you send it out as usual,” Mrs Allison said. “Well, Mrs Allison,” Mr Babcock said, and there was a pause while Mrs Allison waited, staring past the phone over her husband’s head out into the sky. “Mrs Allison,” Mr Babcock went on finally, “I’ll tell you, my boy’s been working for me went back to school yesterday, and now I got no one to deliver. I only got a boy delivering summers, you see.”

“I thought you always delivered,” Mrs Allison said. “Not after Labor Day, Mrs Allison,” Mr Babcock said firmly, “you never been here after Labor Day before, so’s you wouldn’t know, of course.”

“Well,” Mrs Allison said helplessly. Far inside her mind she was saying, over and over, can’t use city manners on country folk, no use getting mad.

“Are you sure?” she asked finally. “Couldn’t you just send out an order today, Mr Babcock?”

“Matter of fact,” Mr Babcock said, “I guess I couldn’t, Mrs Allison.

It wouldn’t hardly pay, delivering, with no one else out at the lake.” “What about Mr Hall?” Mrs Allison asked suddenly, “the people who live about three miles away from us out here? Mr Hall could bring it out when he comes.”

“Hall?” Mr Babcock said. “John Hall? They’ve gone to visit her folks upstate, Mrs Allison.”

“But they bring all our butter and eggs,” Mrs Allison said, appalled. “Left yesterday,” Mr Babcock said. “Probably didn’t think you folks would stay on up there.”

“But I told Mr Hall…” Mrs Allison started to say, and then stopped. “I’ll send Mr Allison in after some groceries tomorrow,” she said.

“You got all you need till then,” Mr Babcock said, satisfied; it was not a question, but a confirmation.

After she hung up, Mrs Allison went slowly out to sit again in her chair next to her husband. “He won’t deliver,” she said.

“You’ll have to go in tomorrow. We’ve got just enough kerosene to last till you get back.”

“He should have told us sooner,” Mr Allison said. It was not possible to remain troubled long in the face of the day; the country had never seemed more inviting, and the lake moved quietly below them, among the trees, with the almost incredible softness of a summer picture. Mrs Allison sighed deeply, in the pleasure of possessing for themselves that sight of the lake, with the distant green hills beyond, the gentleness of the small wind through the trees.

The weather continued fair; the next morning Mr Allison, duly armed with a list of groceries, with “kerosene” in large letters at the top, went down the path to the garage, and Mrs Allison began another pie in her new baking dishes. She had mixed the crust and was starting to pare the apples when Mr Allison came rapidly up the path and flung open the screen door into the kitchen. “Damn car won’t start,” he announced, with the end-of-the-tether voice of a man who depends on a car as he depends on his right arm.

“What’s wrong with it?” Mrs Allison demanded, stopping with the paring knife in one hand and an apple in the other. “It was all right on Tuesday.”

“Well,” Mr Allison said between his teeth, “it’s not all right on Friday.”

“Can you fix it?” Mrs Allison asked.

“No,” Mr Allison said, “I can not. Got to call someone, I guess.”

“Who?” Mrs Allison asked.

“Man runs the filling station, I guess.” Mr Allison moved purposefully toward the phone. “He fixed it last summer one time.” A little apprehensive, Mrs Allison went on paring apples absentmindedly, while she listened to Mr Allison with the phone, ringing, waiting, ringing, waiting, finally giving the number to the operator, then waiting again and giving the number again, giving the number a third time, and then slamming down the receiver.

“No one there,” he announced as he came into the kitchen. “He’s probably gone out for a minute,” Mrs Allison said nervously; she was not quite sure what made her so nervous, unless it was the probability of her husband’s losing his temper completely. “He’s there alone, I imagine, so if he goes out there’s no one to answer the phone.”

“That must be it,” Mr Allison said with heavy irony. He slumped into one of the kitchen chairs and watched Mrs Allison paring apples. After a minute, Mrs Allison said soothingly, “Why don’t you go down and get the mail and then call him again?” Mr Allison debated and then said, “Guess I might as well.” He rose heavily and when he got to the kitchen door he turned and said, “But if there’s no mail-” and leaving an awful silence behind him, he went off down the path.

Mrs Allison hurried with her pie. Twice she went to the window to glance at the sky to see if there were clouds coming up. The room seemed unexpectedly dark, and she herself felt in the state of tension that precedes a thunderstorm, but both times when she looked the sky was clear and serene, smiling indifferently down on the Allisons’ ‘ summer cottage as well as on the rest of the world. When Mrs Allison, her pie ready for the oven, went a third time to look outside, she saw her husband coming up the path; he seemed more cheerful, and when he saw her, he waved eagerly and held a letter in the air. “From Jerry,” he called as soon as he was close enough for her to hear him, “at last-a letter!” Mrs Allison noticed with concern that he was no longer able to get up the gentle slope of the path without breathing heavily; but then he was in the doorway, holding out the letter. “I saved it till I got here,” he said.

Mrs Allison looked with an eagerness that surprised her on the familiar handwriting of her son; she could not imagine why the letter excited her so, except that it was the first they had received in so long, it would be a pleasant, dutiful letter, full of the doings of Alice and the children, reporting progress with his job, commenting on the recent weather in Chicago, closing with love from all; both Mr and Mrs Allison could, if they wished, recite a pattern letter from either of their children. Mr Allison slit the letter open with great deliberation, and then he spread it out on the kitchen table and they leaned down and read it together.

“Dear Mother and Dad,” it began, in Jerry’s familiar, rather childish

handwriting, “Am glad this goes to the lake as usual, we always thought you came back too soon and ought to stay up there as long as you could. Alice says that now that you’re not as young as you used to be and have no demands on your time, fewer friends, etc., in the city, you ought to get what fun you can while you can. Since you two are both happy up there, it’s a good idea for you to stay.”

Uneasily Mrs Allison glanced sideways at her husband; he was reading intently, and she reached out and picked up the empty envelope, not knowing exactly what she wanted from it. It was addressed quite as usual, in Jerry’s handwriting, and was postmarked Chicago. Of course it’s postmarked Chicago, she thought quickly, why would they want to postmark it anywhere else? When she looked back down at the letter, her husband had turned the page, and she read on with him: “-and of course if they get measles, etc., now, they will be better off later. Alice is well, of course, me too. Been playing a lot of bridge lately with some people you don’t know, named Carruthers. Nice young couple, about our age. Well, will close now as I guess it bores you to hear about things so far away. Tell Dad old Dickson, in our Chicago office, died. He used to ask about Dad a lot. Have a good time up at the lake, and don’t bother about hurrying back. Love from all of us, Jerry.”

“Funny,” Mr Allison commented.

“It doesn’t sound like Jerry,” Mrs Allison said in a small voice.

“He never wrote anything like…” she stopped. “Like what?” Mr Allison demanded. “Never wrote anything like what?”

Mrs Allison turned the letter over, frowning. It was impossible to find any sentence, any word, even, that did not sound like Jerry’s regular letters. Perhaps it was only that the letter was so late, or the unusual number of dirty fingerprints on the envelope. “I don’t know,” she said impatiently.

“Going to try that phone call again,” Mr Allison said. Mrs Allison read the letter twice more, trying to find a phrase that sounded wrong. Then Mr Allison came back and said, very quietly, “Phone’s dead.”

“What?” Mrs Allison said, dropping the letter.

“Phone’s dead,” Mr Allison said.

The rest of the day went quickly; after a lunch of crackers and milk, the Allisons’ went to sit outside on the lawn, but their afternoon was cut short by the gradually increasing storm clouds that came up over the lake to the cottage, so that it was as dark as evening by four o’clock. The storm delayed, however, as though in loving anticipation of the moment it would break over the summer cottage, and there was an occasional flash of lightning, but no rain. In the evening Mr and Mrs Allison, sitting close together inside their cottage, turned on the battery radio they had brought with them from New York. There were no lamps lighted in the cottage, and the only light came from the lightning outside and the small square glow from the dial of the radio.

The slight framework of the cottage was not strong enough to withstand the city noises, the music and the voices, from the radio, and the Allisons’ could hear them far off echoing across the lake, the saxophones in the New York dance band wailing over the water, the flat voice of the girl vocalist going inexorably out into the clean country air. Even the announcer, speaking glowingly of the virtues of razor blades, was no more than an inhuman voice sounding out from the Allisons’ ‘ cottage and echoing back, as though the lake and the hills and the trees were returning it unwanted. During one pause between commercials, Mrs Allison turned and smiled weakly at her husband. “I wonder if we’re supposed to…do anything,” she said.

“No,” Mr Allison said consideringly. “I don’t think so. Just wait.” Mrs Allison caught her breath quickly, and Mr Allison said, under the trivial melody of the dance band beginning again, “The car had been tampered with, you know. Even I could see that.” Mrs Allison hesitated a minute and then said very softly, “I suppose the phone wires were cut.”

“I imagine so,” Mr Allison said.

After a while, the dance music stopped and they listened attentively to a news broadcast, the announcer’s rich voice telling them breathlessly of a marriage in Hollywood, the latest baseball scores, the estimated rise in food prices during the coming week. He spoke to them, in the summer cottage, quite as though they still deserved to hear news of a world that no longer reached them except through the fallible batteries on the radio, which were already beginning to fade, almost as though they still belonged, however tenuously, to the rest of the world.

Mrs Allison glanced out the window at the smooth surface of the lake, the black masses of the trees, and the waiting storm, and said conversationally, “I feel better about that letter of Jerry’s.” “I knew when I saw the light down at the Hall place last night,” Mr Allison said.

The wind, coming up suddenly over the lake, swept around the summer cottage and slapped hard at the windows. Mr and Mrs Allison involuntarily moved closer together, and with the first sudden crash of thunder, Mr Allison reached out and took his wife’s hand. And then, while the lightning flashed outside, and the radio faded and sputtered, the two old people huddled together in their summer cottage and waited.

Table of Contents

Part 1