He took a breath and went on, his head down. At the corner he stopped, holding on to a lamp-post. The sky was quite dark, the street lights were beginning to come on. At last he went on, walking as best he could.
"Where is that boy?" May Surle said, going out on the porch for the tenth time. Ralf flicked on the light and they stood together. "What an awful wind."
The wind whistled and lashed at the porch. The two of them looked up and down the dark street, but they could see nothing but a few newspapers and trash being blown along.
"Let's go inside," Ralf said. "He sure is going to get a licking when he gets home."
They sat down at the dinner table. Presently May put down her fork. "Listen! Do you hear something?"
Ralf listened.
Outside, against the front door, there was a faint sound, a tapping sound. He stood up. The wind howled outside, blowing the shades in the room upstairs. "I'll go see what it is," he said.
He went to the door and opened it. Something gray, something gray and dry was blowing up against the porch, carried by the wind. He stared at it, but he could not make it out. A bundle of weeds, weeds and rags blown by the wind, perhaps.
The bundle bounced against his legs. He watched it drift past him, against the wall of the house. Then he closed the door again slowly.
"What was it?" May called.
"Just the wind," Ralf Surle said.
Beyond the Door
That night at the dinner table he brought it out and set it down beside her plate. Doris stared at it,