Then Martha startles him. She comes right up and kisses his cheek. She hugs his arm. She isn't usually like that. "I left a tuna casserole in the fridge," she says. "I'll call you tomorrow." By the time Howard recovers, she's getting into her car.

The ladder folds up part way, then balks. Howard can't budge it. The hell with it. Damn thing's aluminum, anyway; it can just sit out until tomorrow. He feels like sitting down. It occurs to him that he never had that soup. Good thing Martha didn't notice. He goes into the kitchen, takes out a beer and some cheese.

The cheese slicer. Christ. He throws it into the sink. When a man can't tell a tool from a doohickey, he ought to show cause why they shouldn't take him out behind the barn and shoot him. No wonder Martha got around him about the house. He remembers now, too, that she said she had talked to Pete. "Pete thinks you shouldn't be by yourself out here, Dad. He worries about you." Well, nobody needs to worry for Howard Ackermann. He's plenty worried on his own account.

The doorbell rings. Howard wonders for an instant, then he remembers: Trick or Treaters. He doesn't expect many—it's still a country road, and kids don't go around so much since the world started going to hell in a handbasket. They come earlier every year; their parents want them home before dark.

Howard picks up the bowl of Snickers and opens the door. There is a tall boy with purple hair, and a girl in tight silver pants, with glitter on her eyelids. "The decline and fall of Rome," Howard comments. The kids look at each other, then say "Trick or Treat," to get things back on the right track. Howard holds out the bowl. A younger girl, maybe ten years old, comes up the stairs, complaining. "You guys didn't wait for me." She is draped in a white sheet, but her face is uncovered. Puffing righteously, she reaches for a candy bar.

"Show the man your costume, dummy," says the boy, pulling the hood down over her face.

"Yikes," says Howard. "There's a ghost on my porch!" Everybody laughs, and he gives the girl an extra Snickers for having a real old-fashioned get-up, not something copied from TV.

As the kids go down the steps, the boy says, "We're gonna go past the cemetery now, Jessie. The dead people are gonna come up out of the graves and get you."

"I don't wanna," says the younger girl. "Let's go the other way."

"Shut up, Kevin," says the glitter girl, pulling her sister by the arm. At the end of the driveway they turn left; when they come to the cemetery wall they all start running.