The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection

Miriam stopped to wipe the perspiration from her brow. There were two more shirts to iron. Harry was due home tonight, and he’d ask about them first thing. He had a lot of shirts, enough to last him four weeks on the road while an equal number were being done up at home. A salesman had to be well-groomed, Harry always said. Still, it seemed that he took more shirts than necessary. Miriam, after her first blunder, never mentioned it when she found lipstick or powder smudges on any of them.

She looked fearfully at the clock over the kitchen sink. Why had she waited until the last minute? Well, it had been a difficult month. Bobby had been sick, and then she’d had so many of those awful headaches. Ever since Harry had knocked her against the stove the last time he’d been home, she had been bothered by the headaches and that funny confused feeling that came over her from time to time. She put down the iron and rubbed her head. She didn’t mind the headaches so much, but worried about the confused feeling. She wondered if she blacked out at such times and fervently hoped not. Bobby was pretty self-sufficient for a four-year-old, but who could tell what he would do if he found his mother unconscious someday?

Fortunately she had just put the final touches on the last shirt when she heard Harry’s car drive into the old barn behind the house. He came banging in—a big man, a good twenty years older than Miriam—set down his luggage without an answer to her quavering “hello,” and went out again. He returned with a couple of paper bags which he carefully placed on the kitchen table. Miriam’s heart sank. It hadn’t been a good trip, then. She could always tell by the amount of whisky he brought back with him to ease the few days’ rest at home before he started off again.

“I have your supper all ready,” said Miriam, poking at the pots on the stove.

Harry, fussing with the seal on one of the whisky bottles, stopped only long enough to glare at her. “My shirts done?”

“Yes—oh, yes—all of them. Now just you sit down and I’ll dish out your supper. ”

He grunted and seated himself heavily at the wooden table.

Two hours later he was wildly drunk.

He would not allow her to go to bed, and although she was able to avoid his drunken lunges for a while, he finally had her backed into a corner. The whisky fumes of his breath and the feel of his fumbling hands at her clothes sickened her. “No, no, H-Harry ...” Her voice involuntarily rose in a crescendo.

Then there were other hands plucking at her, and she looked down at Bobby. Aroused by the noise, he had come weeping into the kitchen. “Mama, Mama,” he said, trying to pull her away.

Miriam swallowed and tried to speak calmly. “You must go back to bed, Bobby. Come, I’ll take you.”

But Harry held her firm. “You’ll do no such thing. You can just stop being the damn mother for once. When a man comes home from the road he wants a little comfort—a little wifely comfort.” Then to the child, who still clung, “G’wan, dammit. Get to bed.”