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38
u/iiti
January, 1949
"Platform shoes,'' Hunter said. "That was five years ago. Fve been to several doctors since then. All of them prescribed the same thing."
"Have you engaged the services of a competent psychiatrist?"
"Last year — at my wife's sugges' tion. I must say, his diagnosis made a good deal of sense."
"Something in your youth?" I murmured. "A complex, perhaps?"
"Really, Smithfield!" Hunter said with more curtness than one usually hears in the club. "Let's not be snide. I attach considerable importance to this loss of height."
Rebuked thoroughly, I colored somewhat. Still, I managed to say, "Forgive me. But the psychiatrist — ?"
"He said I was geared to the moon. Like the tide, you know. A certain seasonal rise and fall. I don't profess to understand it, but the evidence is conclusive."
The explanation was so ridiculously simple that I lost all interest in the conversation. I found an excuse to leave Hunter. At the door, I glanced back. He was standing somberly at the window, his face a mask of deep melancholy. It seemed to me that he was taking this much too hard. It wasn't as if his loss of height were permanent. I made up my mind to keep a watchful eye on him. To the best of my knowledge, no one in the club had ever had quite the same com' plaint as his, and I was afraid he would bother the others with his troubles. As Chairman of the House Committee, I couldn't permit that.
A (ew weeks passed before Hunter made another appearance at the club.
Then, one sunny afternoon, he stopped at my chair. The date was the twenty-first of June.
"Do you have a few moments, Smithfield?" he asked.
I looked him over carefully. He seemed as always. "Of course," I said. "How is your height?"
"Do you notice anything?"
"I can't say that I do."
"But it's gone," he said. "An inch is gone. I tell you, I'll be glad when this day is over! It's the longest day of the year, you know. Today, I'm at my shortest. Tomorrow, I hope to start back to where I belong."
"Who's to say v^fhere you belong? Perhaps you have no normal height."
"Don't tell me that!" he cried, gripping my arm.
"Steady, Hunter. Steady does it."
"But suppose something went wrong?"
"What could go wrong? Tomorrow will see you through it."
He shook his head ruefully. "Take 1947, for example. That year, I got through the twenty-first, all right, and I counted on growing the next day — but if anything, I got a little shorter. You see, I had forgotten that in the year preceding a leap year, the longest day is the twenty-second, not the twenty-first. I had to wait a day."
"But," I reminded him, "you're safe this year."
"Let's hope so, Smithfield, but I'm like the tide. All kinds of things af' feet the tide. Severe storms are an influence — and, Smithfield, storm warnings went up all along the coast today!"
"It won't last long. A few days at most."