Michael Malone - Weebly

oozed shut sprang at the screen door behind which
Miss Lattice's Siamese, Scheherazade, wailed another
of her one thousand and one nights of song, and out
walking alone through Elizabeth Circle, where everyone
had it easier than he did, Limus Barnum was irritated by
the noise. Along the high window ledge of Town Hall a
rustle of feathers shook each pigeon in turn. The rest of
Dingley Falls slept.
Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Ransom slept under queensized
Marimekko sheets without touching. Still
intoxicated, A.A. Hayes slept, at his wife's request, on
the couch in the den. In her sleep the oldest Sister of
Mercy died of heart failure. Beside her spaniel, Joy
Strummer—about whom Luke Packer was dreaming—
slept with her arms outflung, two buttons of her pajama
top sliding open. Evelyn Troyes dreamed, smiling, of
Hugo Eroica and of Father Fields, who was dreaming
of Walter Saar. Sidney Blossom's dream, Kate
Ransom, tightened her fists between her crook'd thighs
and groaned aloud in her sleep. The sound woke her
father. He alone of her family always heard her
nightmares and always hurried to stop them for her. He