swelling, swelling, swelling, to a scream. “Stop!”
Lilt. And the surf around them feathered out all white-edged rose, their motion faded to an end as gradual and even as the close of slow music.
For a long while Sarah stood in the surf seeing only where the water broke silver and red around the upright spear. Then she drew out the spear and facing the sea, she felt the tremor beneath her feet as the weight was dragged away along the sand, under the water. And she was alone.
Back at the house she worked in the patch until night, then she went to bed.
Before dawn she awoke, while the moon was still high and there was no sound except the stirring of the night wind in the patch. But beyond the patch and past the field, from down at the sea, she could hear something like the surf on rock cliffs, and above this, the listening that came up through the night.
She got out of bed and dressed, walked through the kitchen and out the door. Near the back steps, struck straight in the ground was the hoe handle that had been fashioned into a spear. Sarah would know as she passed, from the way its shadow fell under the moon, just how early or late the morning was.
She crossed the patch and was into the field before she could remember and touch the pocket of her thin dress. There were two coins there: a nickel and a quarter. She stiffened a little and stood still, holding the coins in her hand. A small cloud passed under the moon, and for an instant on the left the dirt road to Fly was only a twisting shadow. Then the cloud was gone, the road to Fly was clear. She realized that the man who sold the tickets would give her the change himself, and she started to walk.
She walked very slowly, her mind flowing a train of smoothly veiled thought as straight and dark as the narrow road before her.
The moon had waned and the sun risen by the time Sarah reached the square at Fly. Because she had never been to the Tuesday matinee, she did not know when it began, and so had come early as an assurance. Standing before the plain-front cinema, she saw at once that the glassed box was empty, and in place of the man was a sign reading:
SHOW—1:00
OPEN—12:30
For a long while she stood looking at the display stills that were attached to a kind of wooden bulletin board. Once, after glancing at the glassed box and around the desolate bleak-light square, she slowly raised her hand and touched one of the photographs. She drew her hard-pressing finger across the middle of it, then she went out to the curb and sat down.
She sat there until noon, then joined the line of children as it began to form.
When she reached the box, she gave the man the quarter and the nickel.
“Two?” he asked.
“One,” said Sarah.
“Fifteen cents,” said the man, returning her nickel and a dime.
She picked up the coins and turned aside. But when her eye fell again on the display stills, her brow assumed a crinkle of knowing and she turned back to the man in the glassed box, her face a serious frown.
“Goin’ to be a reel-less? ” she asked.
The Night the Bird Blew for Doctor Warner
“I ’LL HAVE TO BE a hipster ,” Doctor Warner said leaning toward them from out of billowing dark leather while behind this great chair, where study lamplight softened to haze on a thousand grains of dullest panel, there danced in points of twos the refracted amber of glassed cubed-ice in the hands of his two friends opposite—danced, it seemed, on an opaque screen which could measure the wildness of thought and the tedium of conversation.
“A very hip hipster,” he continued genially, and withdrew himself slightly, for emphasis, “if not, indeed, something more. ”
Dr. Ralph Warner was fifty-five, gray and distinguished, a man of remarkable vigor and personality. He was not a physician, but a learned man of music, who had received many public and institutional honors. An established author and critic, past conductor of the San Francisco, Boston and Denver symphony
Lilt. And the surf around them feathered out all white-edged rose, their motion faded to an end as gradual and even as the close of slow music.
For a long while Sarah stood in the surf seeing only where the water broke silver and red around the upright spear. Then she drew out the spear and facing the sea, she felt the tremor beneath her feet as the weight was dragged away along the sand, under the water. And she was alone.
Back at the house she worked in the patch until night, then she went to bed.
Before dawn she awoke, while the moon was still high and there was no sound except the stirring of the night wind in the patch. But beyond the patch and past the field, from down at the sea, she could hear something like the surf on rock cliffs, and above this, the listening that came up through the night.
She got out of bed and dressed, walked through the kitchen and out the door. Near the back steps, struck straight in the ground was the hoe handle that had been fashioned into a spear. Sarah would know as she passed, from the way its shadow fell under the moon, just how early or late the morning was.
She crossed the patch and was into the field before she could remember and touch the pocket of her thin dress. There were two coins there: a nickel and a quarter. She stiffened a little and stood still, holding the coins in her hand. A small cloud passed under the moon, and for an instant on the left the dirt road to Fly was only a twisting shadow. Then the cloud was gone, the road to Fly was clear. She realized that the man who sold the tickets would give her the change himself, and she started to walk.
She walked very slowly, her mind flowing a train of smoothly veiled thought as straight and dark as the narrow road before her.
The moon had waned and the sun risen by the time Sarah reached the square at Fly. Because she had never been to the Tuesday matinee, she did not know when it began, and so had come early as an assurance. Standing before the plain-front cinema, she saw at once that the glassed box was empty, and in place of the man was a sign reading:
SHOW—1:00
OPEN—12:30
For a long while she stood looking at the display stills that were attached to a kind of wooden bulletin board. Once, after glancing at the glassed box and around the desolate bleak-light square, she slowly raised her hand and touched one of the photographs. She drew her hard-pressing finger across the middle of it, then she went out to the curb and sat down.
She sat there until noon, then joined the line of children as it began to form.
When she reached the box, she gave the man the quarter and the nickel.
“Two?” he asked.
“One,” said Sarah.
“Fifteen cents,” said the man, returning her nickel and a dime.
She picked up the coins and turned aside. But when her eye fell again on the display stills, her brow assumed a crinkle of knowing and she turned back to the man in the glassed box, her face a serious frown.
“Goin’ to be a reel-less? ” she asked.
The Night the Bird Blew for Doctor Warner
“I ’LL HAVE TO BE a hipster ,” Doctor Warner said leaning toward them from out of billowing dark leather while behind this great chair, where study lamplight softened to haze on a thousand grains of dullest panel, there danced in points of twos the refracted amber of glassed cubed-ice in the hands of his two friends opposite—danced, it seemed, on an opaque screen which could measure the wildness of thought and the tedium of conversation.
“A very hip hipster,” he continued genially, and withdrew himself slightly, for emphasis, “if not, indeed, something more. ”
Dr. Ralph Warner was fifty-five, gray and distinguished, a man of remarkable vigor and personality. He was not a physician, but a learned man of music, who had received many public and institutional honors. An established author and critic, past conductor of the San Francisco, Boston and Denver symphony
Similar Books
