Then, just like Christmas lights, thoughts came on in Sally’s head, twinkling, twinkling. Just as one went off, another came on. “Why, she’s no older than Lauren!” one thought twinkled. Then “She’s the same age I was all those years ago at the Ship Ahoy!” lit up and was gone. There was a twinkle, and Dave was on the roof of the lunchroom with the gleam of the sheet metal lighting up his golden hair. Another twinkle and there was Dave in a field of broom sedge hollering, “Whoa!” to a long-legged dog named Leroy. One more twinkle and they were in the emergency room with Addie. Then there was nothing left but Dave in his easy chair, and the redheaded girl from True Value draping herself over him. All the twinkling lights were gone, and instead there was just a comforting darkness, and a wonderful weightless feeling, as if all this time up until right now that snake had been on her shoulders.

“Give me that rat,” Sally said, and she stepped out of the car, opened the back door, and slid the trap out. Straight, tall, and strong, she strode up the front walkway, knelt down at the camellia hedge, and lifted the trapdoor. The rat, confused and disoriented, scrabbled against the back of the trap for just a second. Then he righted himself, made a brief assessing pause, and darted out of the trap. Across the strip of lawn he ran, sleek and fast, and disappeared under the White Emperor camellia at the corner of the front steps.

The Telephone Man

ESSIE AND HELEN were two old sisters who lived together in their childhood home, and Arthur was a man with only one hand who had been in love with Essie for as long as anyone could remember.

“You know that one hand can do almost anything,” he said to Helen. They were in the house, rolling out the living room rug, and Essie was out in the yard trying to mow a clearing in the tall weeds beyond the bird feeder with a little push mower. She wanted a vista, just like the one she had seen at Birdsong Nature Center. But the grass was too thick, and the lawn mower kept choking down.

“The one hand has nothing to do with it, Arthur,” said Helen. “You know that. It’s just Essie. She’s not a marrying woman.”

“And what the hand can’t do, the knob can do,” said Arthur. Instead of the hook so famous in jokes and horror stories, Arthur had a wooden knob he had carved himself out of a live-oak knot. “I can drive nails with it.”

“It’s not the knob or the hand or anything at all to do with you, Arthur.” Helen was the sweet one. Essie did everything the same way she mowed that grass, straight ahead and all screwed up with concentration.