Free Time and the Riddle: Thirty-One Zen Stories by Howard Fast Page B

“Poor boy, you’ll be despondent tonight. We must dine together. You will be my guest—of course. And to console you—”
    He took out of his inside breast pocket a neatly folded copy of the Wall Street Journal . “For a week from Wednesday—ten days,” he said.

6
A Matter of Size
    M rs. Herbert Cooke—Abigail Cooke—was a woman with a social conscience and a sense of justice. She came from five generations of New Englanders, all of whom had possessed social consciences and devotion to justice, qualities not uncommon in New England once the burning of witches was gotten over with. She lived in a lovely old Colonial house on fifteen acres of land in Redding, Connecticut; she forbade any spraying of her trees, and she gardened ecologically. She believed firmly in mulch, organic fertilizers, and the validity of the New Left; and while she herself lived quietly with her teen-age children—her husband practiced law in Danbury—her heart and small checks went out to a multitude of good causes. She was an attractive woman, still under forty, an occasional Congregationalist, and a firm advocate of civil rights. She was not given to hysterics.
    She sat on her back porch—unscreened—on a fine summer morning and shelled peas and saw something move. Afterward she said that it appeared to be a fly, and she picked up a flyswatter and swatted it. It stuck to the flyswatter, and she looked at it carefully; and then she began to have what amounted to hysterics, took hold of herself, thanked heaven that her children were at day camp, and, still unable to control her sobbing, telephoned her husband.
    â€œI’ve killed a man,” she said to him.
    â€œYou what? Now wait a minute,” he replied. “Get hold of yourself. Are you all right?”
    â€œI’m all right.”
    â€œAre the children all right?”
    â€œThey’re at day camp.”
    â€œGood. Good. You’re sure you’re all right?”
    â€œYes. I’m a little hysterical—”
    â€œDid I hear you say that you killed a man?”
    â€œYes. Oh, my God—yes.”
    â€œNow please get hold of yourself, do you hear me, Abby? I want you to get hold of yourself and tell me exactly what happened.”
    â€œI can’t.”
    â€œWho is this man you think you killed? A prowler?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDid you call the police?”
    â€œNo. I can’t.”
    â€œWhy not? Abby, are you all right? We don’t have a gun. How on earth could you kill someone?”
    â€œPlease—please come home. Now. Please.”
    In half an hour Herbert Cooke pulled into his driveway, leaped out of his car, and embraced his still shivering wife. “Now, what’s all this?” he demanded.
    She shook her head dumbly, took him by the hand, led him to the back porch, and pointed to the flyswatter.
    â€œIt’s a flyswatter,” he said impatiently. “Abby, what on earth has gotten into you?”
    â€œWill you look at it closely, please?” she begged him, beginning to sob again.
    â€œStop crying! Stop it!”
    Convinced by now that his wife was having some kind of nervous breakdown, he decided to humor her, and he picked up the flyswatter and stared at it. He stared at it for a long, long moment, and then he whispered, “Oh, my God—of all the damn things!” And then, still staring, he said to her, “Abby, dear, there’s a magnifying glass in the top drawer of my desk. Please bring it to me.”
    She went into the house and came back with the magnifying glass. “Don’t ask me to look,” she said.
    Herbert placed the flyswatter carefully on the table and held the magnifying glass over it. “My God,” he whispered, “my God almighty. I’ll be damned. A white man, too.” “What difference does that make?”
    â€œNo difference—none at all. Only—my God, Abby, he’s only half