[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
aren't..."
Page 55
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Puss hugged her and said, "Honey, if you put the knock on them you'll feel
like a traitor. Everybody has people, and their people don't want to let them
go or admit they're gone when they're gone. They love you. That's good enough.
Right?"
"Should I have brought the boys? That's what I keep wondering."
"Ask each one of them when he gets to be twentyone, dear. Ask them if they
felt as if they had been left out of anything," Puss said.
So they sat, holding hands, and Jan fell asleep. Puss gave me a sleepy wink
and then she was gone too. I looked out of the jet at December gray, at cloud
towers reaching up toward us. Tush was gone, and too many others were gone,
and I sought chill comfort in an analogy of -death that has been with me for
years. It doesn't explain or justify. It just seems to remind me how things
are.
Picture a very swift torrent, a river rushing down between rocky walls. There
is a long, shallow bar of sand and gravel that runs right down the middle of
the river. It is under water. You are born and you have to stand on that
narrow, submerged bar, where everyone stands. The ones born before you, the
ones older than you, are upriver from you. The younger ones stand braced on
the bar downriver. And the whole long bar is slowly moving down that river of
time, washing away at the upstream end and building up downstream.
Your time, the time of all your contemporaries, schoolmates, your loves and
your adversaries, is that part of the shifting bar on which you stand. And it
is crowded at first. You can see the way it thins out, upstream from you. The
old ones are washed away and their bodies go swifdy by, like logs in the
current. Downstream where the younger ones stand thick, you can see them
flounder, lose footing, wash away. Always there is more room where you stand,
but always the swift water grows deeper, and you feel the shift of the sand
and the gravel under your feet as the river wears it away. Someone looking for
a safer place can nudge you off balance, and you are gone. Someone who has
stood beside you for a long time gives a forlorn cry and you reach to catch
their hand, but the fingertips slide away and they are gone. There are the
sounds in the rocky gorge, the roar of the water, the shifting, gritty sound
of sand and gravel underfoot, the forlorn cries of despair as the nearby ones,
and the ones upstream, are taken by the current. Some old ones who stand on a
good place, well braced, understanding currents and balance, last a long time.
A Churchill, fat cigar atilt, sourly amused at his own endurance and, in the
end, indifferent to rivers and the rage of waters. Far downstream from you are
the thin, startled cries of the ones who never got planted, never got set,
never quite understood the message of the torrent.
Tush was gone, and our part of the bar was emptier, and the jet raced from the
sunset behind us to the night ahead, and beside me slept the two women, hand
in hand, their lashes laying against the high flesh of their cheeks with a
heartbreaking precision, a childish surrender, an inexpressible vulnerability.
By Saturday, the next to the last day of the year, I was beginning to feel
surly and uneasy. I held a slack line. I felt that I had deftly pulled the
barbed hook through the underlip of one Preston LaFrance, and that boating him
was inevitable. He had to come aboard the Flush, flapping, gills working. The
name McGee had suddenly cropped up at too many points in his life. McGee at
the bank with the widow. McGee at Ingledine's, making the arrangements about
the hoody. McGee out at the old shack, souring his deal with old D. J. Carbee.
McGee, the new owner of the property he wanted.
But the line lay slack on the water, without the slightest twitch or tension.
Page 56
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Puss and I drove up to Broward Beach early Saturday morning, turned the car
in, and came back down the Waterway in the Muneguita. I made a fast run,
thinking I might find LaFrance when I got back to the Busted Flush. Nothing.
Puss was withdrawn, remote, and did not help my mood by telling me she was
going away Monday morning for a little while. A few days. No clue as to where
or why. And be damned if I'd ask. As she packed a bag it seemed a gratuitous
affront that she should hum to herself. What was she so cheery about?
And why didn't Meyer phone from New York? Too busy having a fine time with old [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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aren't..."
Page 55
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Puss hugged her and said, "Honey, if you put the knock on them you'll feel
like a traitor. Everybody has people, and their people don't want to let them
go or admit they're gone when they're gone. They love you. That's good enough.
Right?"
"Should I have brought the boys? That's what I keep wondering."
"Ask each one of them when he gets to be twentyone, dear. Ask them if they
felt as if they had been left out of anything," Puss said.
So they sat, holding hands, and Jan fell asleep. Puss gave me a sleepy wink
and then she was gone too. I looked out of the jet at December gray, at cloud
towers reaching up toward us. Tush was gone, and too many others were gone,
and I sought chill comfort in an analogy of -death that has been with me for
years. It doesn't explain or justify. It just seems to remind me how things
are.
Picture a very swift torrent, a river rushing down between rocky walls. There
is a long, shallow bar of sand and gravel that runs right down the middle of
the river. It is under water. You are born and you have to stand on that
narrow, submerged bar, where everyone stands. The ones born before you, the
ones older than you, are upriver from you. The younger ones stand braced on
the bar downriver. And the whole long bar is slowly moving down that river of
time, washing away at the upstream end and building up downstream.
Your time, the time of all your contemporaries, schoolmates, your loves and
your adversaries, is that part of the shifting bar on which you stand. And it
is crowded at first. You can see the way it thins out, upstream from you. The
old ones are washed away and their bodies go swifdy by, like logs in the
current. Downstream where the younger ones stand thick, you can see them
flounder, lose footing, wash away. Always there is more room where you stand,
but always the swift water grows deeper, and you feel the shift of the sand
and the gravel under your feet as the river wears it away. Someone looking for
a safer place can nudge you off balance, and you are gone. Someone who has
stood beside you for a long time gives a forlorn cry and you reach to catch
their hand, but the fingertips slide away and they are gone. There are the
sounds in the rocky gorge, the roar of the water, the shifting, gritty sound
of sand and gravel underfoot, the forlorn cries of despair as the nearby ones,
and the ones upstream, are taken by the current. Some old ones who stand on a
good place, well braced, understanding currents and balance, last a long time.
A Churchill, fat cigar atilt, sourly amused at his own endurance and, in the
end, indifferent to rivers and the rage of waters. Far downstream from you are
the thin, startled cries of the ones who never got planted, never got set,
never quite understood the message of the torrent.
Tush was gone, and our part of the bar was emptier, and the jet raced from the
sunset behind us to the night ahead, and beside me slept the two women, hand
in hand, their lashes laying against the high flesh of their cheeks with a
heartbreaking precision, a childish surrender, an inexpressible vulnerability.
By Saturday, the next to the last day of the year, I was beginning to feel
surly and uneasy. I held a slack line. I felt that I had deftly pulled the
barbed hook through the underlip of one Preston LaFrance, and that boating him
was inevitable. He had to come aboard the Flush, flapping, gills working. The
name McGee had suddenly cropped up at too many points in his life. McGee at
the bank with the widow. McGee at Ingledine's, making the arrangements about
the hoody. McGee out at the old shack, souring his deal with old D. J. Carbee.
McGee, the new owner of the property he wanted.
But the line lay slack on the water, without the slightest twitch or tension.
Page 56
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Puss and I drove up to Broward Beach early Saturday morning, turned the car
in, and came back down the Waterway in the Muneguita. I made a fast run,
thinking I might find LaFrance when I got back to the Busted Flush. Nothing.
Puss was withdrawn, remote, and did not help my mood by telling me she was
going away Monday morning for a little while. A few days. No clue as to where
or why. And be damned if I'd ask. As she packed a bag it seemed a gratuitous
affront that she should hum to herself. What was she so cheery about?
And why didn't Meyer phone from New York? Too busy having a fine time with old [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]