The October Country

He stood very straight and thought of nothing, or at least thought of thinking nothing.

Anna said, “Must they have a reason?”

“No, not if they’re insane, no,” said Juliet. “In that case no reasons are necessary.”

All the sadder that Stone, on the brink of his greatest work, turned one day and went off to live in a town we shall call Obscurity by the sea best named The Past.

“It will only take a minute,” said Uncle Einar’s sweet wife.

“I refuse,” he said. “And that takes but a second.”

“Don’t these people ever get lonely?”

“They’re used to it this way.”

“Don’t they get afraid, then?”

”They have a religion for that.”

“I wish I had a religion.”

“The minute you get a religion you stop thinking,” he said. “Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.”

“Oh,” said Brunilla, the cow-searcher. “A man with wings.”

That was how she took it. She was startled, yes, but she had never been hurt in her life, so she wasn’t afraid of anyone, and it was a fancy thing to see a winged man and she was proud to meet him.

THE OCTOBER COUNTRY …that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…

More murders are committed at ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit than any other temperature. Over one hundred, it’s too hot to move. Under ninety, cool enough to survive. But right at ninety-two degrees lies the apex of irritability, everything is itches and hair and sweat and cooked pork. The brain becomes a rat rushing around a red-hot maze. The least thing, a word, a look, a sound, the drop of a hair and—irritable murder.