Three Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

seemed to identify Mr. Hincher’s immortality.
    “Darling,” she pronounced simply.
    Mr. Hincher patted his wife’s hand and repeated, “You just stay in bed as long as you like.”
    They seemed to share a moment of profoundest silence. Mrs. Hincher broke it, but apparently only with great reluctance.
    “Darling, there’s just one other thing. Don’t tell anybody. I mean don’t tell anybody that I’m in bed. Say I’ve gone back to New York to stay with my sister. Say my sister’s sick.”
    “But why ?” Hincher inquired gently.
    “They’ll laugh,” said Mrs. Hincher simply. “They’ll all laugh. I know it.”
    “No they won’t,” Hincher denied belligerently.
    “They will. I know they will,” said his wife thoughtfully. “Ruth Simpkins would. I can just hear her laughing at me.”
    “ That fool woman,” dismissed Hincher.
    ‘’Yes, darling, but she’d laugh. They all would. I know it.—Darling, say you’ll tell them I’ve gone to New York to be with my sister. So they won’t know I’m home. You can make believe you’re coming to visit me weekends. You can go drive to the Cape and go fishing. You can go fishing. Sophie can do the marketing. She—”
    Mr. Hincher abruptly held up a hand, mock traffic cop style. “Now wait a minute. Whoa there. Whoa there Nellie.”
    He was a little startled. Mrs. Hincher’s cool, lovely voice had begun to take on excitement. It was strangely unbecoming.
    Abruptly, Mrs. Hincher removed her hand from her husband’s. She neither wrenched it away nor slipped it away. She merely removed it.
    “You are laughing at me, too,” she said dully.
    Hincher was frightened. “ No , honey!” he swore to her. “No, I’m not. I’ll do anything you say, little girl.”
    Quietly, Hincher reclaimed his wife’s hand. “No, no, no, little girl,” he swore to Mrs. Hincher’s sudden profile.
    She turned to him slowly. Hincher waited for exoneration, almost frantically [hoping] for some look, some word of exoneration. Mrs. Hincher’s face conveyed nothing. She looked at her husband and yet beyond him.
    “We’ll have it just the way you want it,” Hincher said. “Just the way you want it.”
    Mrs. Hincher’s eyes gentled into focus.
    “I knew you’d understand,” she said.
    ***
    Almost every weekend Mr. Hincher went fishing off Cape Cod. It usually seemed that he had enjoyed his weekend immensely, for late Sunday nights when he stopped in his wife’s bedroom to let her peek under soggy newspapers at his catch, Hincher’s face under the watty little light of Mrs. Hincher’s bed-lamp was a happy one.
    But it takes five weekdays to make a week-end.
    Hincher was a very poor liar. But fortunately little enough skill was required of him. No one in Otisville doubted that Mrs. Hincher had gone to New York to be with her sick sister. So when Hincher, with awkward gravity, reported his sister-in-law’s condition as Better, or Not Much better, or They Can’t Tell Yet, the usual reply to him was It All Takes Time, or Send Paula Our Love. With practice Hincher’s lying improved. He learned in time that he felt surer of himself when he chuckled out his lies, rather than when he delivered them gravely.
    “Guess I’ll have to get me a new wife,” Hincher innovated one day (with a chuckle).
    “Why don’t you wait till the new models come out,” suggested Bud Montrose.
    Hincher immediately pirated Bud Montrose’s wit. And the standard Hincher Chuckle Lie then sounded in full:
    “Guess I’ll have to get me a new wife.” (Chuckle.) “Waiting for the new models to come out.” (Chuckle, Chuckle.)
    … But he never learned to lie expertly enough to rest assured of no justified, but extremely loud, accusation in a small, crowded room.
    ***
    Evenings, after Hincher had eaten alone in the dining room, he re-joined his wife, and usually they played several games of casino. Mr. Hincher would sit on the edge of Mrs. Hincher’s bed, and a pretty white bedtable was straddled