Night My Friend by Edward D. Hoch Page A

with me, pulling me back from the edge.
    “Somebody call the police!”
    “Hold him down! Hold him!”
    “He’s cracked up—really crazy.”
    And Laura, screaming. “God, he would have killed her! He wanted to kill her!”
    I didn’t struggle. I looked up into the fearful eyes of Charlie Thames, sitting on my chest, holding me down. O.K., Charlie, but I gave you a scare, didn’t I? Didn’t I?
    And above me the trees whispered in the wind, the clouds… what did the clouds do…?

Day for a Picnic
    I SUPPOSE I REMEMBER it better than the other, countless other, picnics of my childhood, and I suppose the reason for that is the murder. But perhaps this day in mid-July would have stood out in my mind without the violence of sudden death. Perhaps it would have stood out simply because it was the first time I’d ever been out alone without the everwatching eyes of my mother and father to protect me. True, my grandfather was watching over me that month while my parents vacationed in Europe, but he was more a friend than a parent—a great old man with white hair and tobacco-stained teeth who never ceased the relating of fascinating tales of his own youth out west. There were stories of Indians and warfare, tales of violence in the youthful days of our nation, and at that youthful age I was fully content in believing that my grandfather was easily old enough to have fought in all those wars as he so claimed.
    It was not the custom in the Thirties, as it is today, for parents to take their children along when making their first tour of Europe, and so as I’ve said I was left behind in grandfather’s care. It was really a month of fun for me, because the life of the rural New York town is far different from the bustle of the city, even for a boy of nine or ten, and I was to spend endless days running barefoot along dusty roads in the company of boys who never—hardly ever—viewed me strangely because of my city background. The days were sunny with warmth, because it had been a warm summer even here on the shores of a cooling lake. Almost from the beginning of the month my grandfather had spoken with obvious relish of the approach of the annual picnic, and by mid-month I was looking forward to it also, thinking that here would be a new opportunity of exploring the byways of the town and meeting other boys as wild and free as I myself felt. Then too, I never seemed to mind at that time the company of adults. They were good people for the most part, and I viewed them with a proper amount of childish wonder.
    There were no sidewalks in the town then, and nothing that you’d really call a street. The big touring cars and occasional late model roadsters raised endless clouds of dust as they roared (seemingly to a boy of ten) through the town at fantastic speeds unheard of in the city. This day especially, I remember the cars churning up the dust. I remember grandfather getting ready for the picnic, preparing himself with great care because this was to be a political picnic and grandfather was a very important political figure in the little town.
    I remember standing in the doorway of his bedroom (leaning, really, because boys often never stood when they could lean), watching him knot the black string tie that made him look so much like that man in the funny movies. For a long time I watched in silence, seeing him scoop up coins for his pockets and the solid gold watch I never tired of seeing, and the little bottle he said was cough medicine even in the summer, and of course his important speech.
    “You’re goin’ to speak, Gramps?”
    “Sure am, boy. Every year I speak. Give the town’s humanitarian award. It’s voted on by secret ballot of all the townspeople.”
    “Who won it?”
    “That’s something no one knows but me, boy. And I don’t tell till this afternoon.”
    “Are you like the mayor here, Gramps?”
    “Sort of, boy,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m what you call a selectman, and since I’m the oldest