A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories by Ray Bradbury Page A

my eyes and looked at her is all and then she hit me with that hammer. Oh, Lord.”
    â€œBut why?” asked Miss Fremwell.
    â€œFor no reason, no reason at all. Oh, what an ornery woman.”
    â€œBut why should she do a thing like that?” said Miss Fremwell.
    â€œI told you: for no reason.”
    â€œWas she crazy?”
    â€œMust of been. Oh, yes, she must of been.”
    â€œDid you prosecute her?”
    â€œWell, no, I didn’t. After all, she didn’t know what she was doing.”
    â€œDid it knock you out?”
    Mr. Lemon paused and there it was again, so clear, so tall, in his mind, the old thought of it. Seeing it there, he put it in words.
    â€œNo, I remember just standing up. I stood up and I said to her, ‘What’d you do?’ and I stumbled toward her. There was a mirror. I saw the hole in my head, deep, and blood coming out. It made an Indian of me. She just stood there, my wife did. And at last she screamed three kinds of horror and dropped that hammer on the floor and ran out the door.”
    â€œDid you faint then?”
    â€œNo. I didn’t faint. I got out on the street some way and I mumbled to somebody I needed a doctor. I got on a bus, mind you, a bus! And paid my fare! And said to leave me by some doctor’s house downtown. Everybody screamed, I tell you. I got sort of weak then, and next thing I knew the doctor was working on my head, had it cleaned out like a new thimble, like a bunghole in a barrel …”
    He reached up and touched that spot now, fingers hovering over it as a delicate tongue hovers over the vacated area where once grew a fine tooth.
    â€œA neat job. The doctor kept staring at me too, as if he expected me to fall down dead any minute.”
    â€œHow long did you stay in the hospital?”
    â€œTwo days. Then I was up and around, feeling no better, no worse. By that time my wife had picked up and skedaddled.”
    â€œOh, my goodness, my goodness,” said Miss Fremwell, recovering her breath. “My heart’s going like an egg beater. I can hearand feel and see it all, Mr. Lemon. Why, why, oh, why did she do it?”
    â€œI already told you, for no reason I could see. She was just took with a notion, I guess.”
    â€œBut there must have been an argument—?”
    Blood drummed in Mr. Lemon’s cheeks. He felt that place up there on his head glow like a fiery crater. “There wasn’t no argument. I was just sitting, peaceful as you please. I like to sit, my shoes off, my shirt unbuttoned, afternoons.”
    â€œDid you—did you know any other women?”
    â€œNo, never none!”
    â€œYou didn’t—drink?”
    â€œJust a nip once in a while, you know how it is.”
    â€œDid you gamble?”
    â€œNo, no, no!”
    â€œBut a hole punched in your head like that, Mr. Lemon, my land, my land! All over nothing?”
    â€œYou women are all alike. You see something and right off you expect the worst. I tell you there was no reason. She just fancied hammers.”
    â€œWhat did she say before she hit you?”
    â€œJust ‘Wake up, Andrew.’”
    â€œNo, before that.”
    â€œNothing. Not for half an hour or an hour, anyway. Oh, she said something about wanting to go shopping for something or other, but I said it was too hot. I’d better lie down, I didn’t feel so good. She didn’t appreciate how I felt. She must have got mad and thought about it for an hour and grabbed that hammer and come in and gone kersmash. I think the weather got her too.”
    Miss Fremwell sat back thoughtfully in the lattice shadow, her brows moving slowly up and then slowly down.
    â€œHow long were you married to her?”
    â€œA year. I remember we got married in July and in July it was I got sick.”
    â€œSick?”
    â€œI wasn’t a well man. I worked in a garage. Then I got these backaches so I couldn’t work and had to lie down