narrow walk beside the highway, I wondered what to do. I could, I supposed, take a look at this Lonemeadow Road (if I could find it), but I still wouldn’t know if the people living in the end house were Tidewaters, since no one in the Windy Run Diner had agreed upon that point.
The diner, as I said, is one of the few businesses at the Junction; the train tracks ran at an angle a little farther past, cutting across one of the two “highways” (not much wider than wide roads), and as I stood there, looking off in the direction away from the station, I could see and hear the next train (probably a freight train) coming along. I walked up the road a bit, a little closer to the tracks, for I have always loved trains, the mournful sound of them, and guess everybody does. As it clattered on by, the conductor looked out, saw me and waved. I waved back. I felt strange, for I would imagine he took me for a resident of Cold Flat Junction, assigning to me a new place, a new identity.
I walked back up the road, aimlessly, seeing no one except a woman coming out of the door of a house set quite far back from the road, coming out and tossing dirty water from a pail and going back in.
A short distance later I came to a small schoolhouse of white clapboard. It was the sort you see represented in paintings in the same way village churches are—bell tower, steeple. School didn’t seem to be in session, which was peculiar, as it was only May. I never pay much attention to school holidays, as I usually have to leave school wherever we are most winters to return to open up the hotel in spring.There were still a few kids at the other end of the schoolyard shoving a ball through a basket and dribbling away. And there was one girl standing behind a chainlink fence, doing nothing but staring out, one hand locked in the fence and the other holding a sort of tube against her face which I recognized, as I got closer, as pick-up-sticks. She was simply staring out. I mistook her attitude as interest in me, but I was wrong, for she was looking right past me. Everything about her looked washed out: her jeans were faded; her eyes were a queer clear gray, without depth; her skin was pale; her hair looked rinsed in Clorox. There was this disturbing colorlessness to her, as if she were a piece of the Judgment sky.
Knowing pretty much I wouldn’t get an answer, I went up close to the fence and asked her if she knew where the Tidewaters lived. Her fingers moved, curling and uncurling in the webbing of the fence, but she did not reply. I leaned against the fence and put my hand up there too, curling my fingers in and around the metal as she was doing. I don’t know why I did this. But it worked almost like a secret sign, and she asked me if I wanted to play pick-up-sticks in a voice as small as any I’ve ever heard. I said sure, even though I think I am a little old for pick-up-sticks. (I have always had a secret liking for the game.)
So I walked to the end of the fence and through a gate, and we both sat down on a grassy verge and let the colored sticks fall on the concrete. She held them in a bundle and released them, letting them lie where they fell. She was very good at this game, better than I was. It’s not a hard game, but it takes concentration and patience and coordination, for you have to be careful when lifting one stick with another that you don’t touch a third. She was able to lift, without touching, half the sticks in one turn. I managed about a half a dozen, and then she picked up the rest. After a game, she put the sticks back in the tube. I left. She never did tell me her name; for all I knew, she could have been a Tidewater.
Beyond the school sat a post office. It was a gray cinderblock building with an American flag drooping high on its flagpole. I thought how stupid I’d been not to come here first off: the post office would clearly know the whereabouts of the Tidewater family. Or families, for there appeared to be more than
The diner, as I said, is one of the few businesses at the Junction; the train tracks ran at an angle a little farther past, cutting across one of the two “highways” (not much wider than wide roads), and as I stood there, looking off in the direction away from the station, I could see and hear the next train (probably a freight train) coming along. I walked up the road a bit, a little closer to the tracks, for I have always loved trains, the mournful sound of them, and guess everybody does. As it clattered on by, the conductor looked out, saw me and waved. I waved back. I felt strange, for I would imagine he took me for a resident of Cold Flat Junction, assigning to me a new place, a new identity.
I walked back up the road, aimlessly, seeing no one except a woman coming out of the door of a house set quite far back from the road, coming out and tossing dirty water from a pail and going back in.
A short distance later I came to a small schoolhouse of white clapboard. It was the sort you see represented in paintings in the same way village churches are—bell tower, steeple. School didn’t seem to be in session, which was peculiar, as it was only May. I never pay much attention to school holidays, as I usually have to leave school wherever we are most winters to return to open up the hotel in spring.There were still a few kids at the other end of the schoolyard shoving a ball through a basket and dribbling away. And there was one girl standing behind a chainlink fence, doing nothing but staring out, one hand locked in the fence and the other holding a sort of tube against her face which I recognized, as I got closer, as pick-up-sticks. She was simply staring out. I mistook her attitude as interest in me, but I was wrong, for she was looking right past me. Everything about her looked washed out: her jeans were faded; her eyes were a queer clear gray, without depth; her skin was pale; her hair looked rinsed in Clorox. There was this disturbing colorlessness to her, as if she were a piece of the Judgment sky.
Knowing pretty much I wouldn’t get an answer, I went up close to the fence and asked her if she knew where the Tidewaters lived. Her fingers moved, curling and uncurling in the webbing of the fence, but she did not reply. I leaned against the fence and put my hand up there too, curling my fingers in and around the metal as she was doing. I don’t know why I did this. But it worked almost like a secret sign, and she asked me if I wanted to play pick-up-sticks in a voice as small as any I’ve ever heard. I said sure, even though I think I am a little old for pick-up-sticks. (I have always had a secret liking for the game.)
So I walked to the end of the fence and through a gate, and we both sat down on a grassy verge and let the colored sticks fall on the concrete. She held them in a bundle and released them, letting them lie where they fell. She was very good at this game, better than I was. It’s not a hard game, but it takes concentration and patience and coordination, for you have to be careful when lifting one stick with another that you don’t touch a third. She was able to lift, without touching, half the sticks in one turn. I managed about a half a dozen, and then she picked up the rest. After a game, she put the sticks back in the tube. I left. She never did tell me her name; for all I knew, she could have been a Tidewater.
Beyond the school sat a post office. It was a gray cinderblock building with an American flag drooping high on its flagpole. I thought how stupid I’d been not to come here first off: the post office would clearly know the whereabouts of the Tidewater family. Or families, for there appeared to be more than
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