Suddenly I heard the dogs barking furiously across the dark, and then I heard the faint clip-clop of a horses hooves. It came closer and closer. What kind of mad rider in the night would this be? Then I saw an apparition: a wild horse, white as a ghost, came trotting down the road directly toward Dean. Behind him t canada goose moosejaw he dogs yammered and contended. I couldnt see them, they were dirty old jungle dogs, but the horse was white as snow and immense and almost phosphorescent and easy to see. I felt canada goose moosejaw no panic for Dean. The horse saw him and trotted right by his head, passed the car like a ship, whinnied softly, and continued on through town, bedeviled by the dogs, and clip-clopped back to the jungle on the other side, and all I heard was the faint hoofbeat fading away in the woods. The dogs subsided
stops at a gas station for two dollars worth of regular. What he really wants is another map. He unfolds it standing by a Coke machine and reads it in the light coming through a window stained green by stacked cans of liqu canada goose moosejaw id wax. His problem is to get west and free of Baltimore-Washington, which like a two-headed dog guards the coastal route to the south. He doesnt want to go down along the water anyway; his image is of himself going right down the middle, right into the canada goose moosejaw broad soft belly of the land, surprising the dawn cottonfields with his northern plates. Now he is somewhere here. Further on, then, a road numbered 23 will go off to his leftno, his right. That goes up and over and back into Pennsylvania but at this place, Shawsville, he can take a little narrow blue road without a number.
undo them easily; his hands come at them reversed. Let me do it. Dont be in such a hurry; Ill do it. Youre supposed to enjoy this. This is our wedding night. Say, I think youre sick. H canada goose moosejaw e turns her roughly and falls again into a deep wish to give comfort. He touches her caked cheeks; she seems small as he looks down into the frowning planes of her set, shadowed face. He moves his lips into one eye socket, gently, trying to canada goose moosejaw say this night has no urgency in it, trying to listen through his lips to the timid pulse beating in the bulge of her lid. With a careful impartiality he fears she will find comic, he kisses also her other eye; then, excited by the thought of his own tenderness, his urgency spills; his mouth races across her face, nibbling, licking, so that she does laugh, tickled, and
his church from going under to the Unitarians by becoming almost Unitarian himself. He used to call himself a Darwinian Deist. My father, in reaction I suppose, became very orthodox; almost Anglo-Catholic. He loved Belloc and Chesterton. In fact he used to read to us those poems you heard my wife objecting to. About the lion? Yes. Belloc has this bitter mocking streak my wife cant appreciate. He mocks children, which she cant forgive. Its her psychology. Children ar canada goose moosejaw e very sacred in psychology. Where was I? Yes; along with his watered-down theology my grandfather had kept in his religious practicea certain color and a, a rigorthat my father had lost. Grandpa felt Daddy wasextremelyremiss in not having a fam canada goose moosejaw ily worship service every night. My father would say he didnt want to bore his
stiller. Hypocrisy, he says mildly. You have no seriousness. Dont you believe in damnation canada goose moosejaw ? Didnt you know when you put that collar on, what you risked? In the brick skin of his face his eyes seem small imperfections, pink and glazed with water as if smarting in intense heat. He turns without waiting for Jack to answer and goes downstairs for supper. Jack descends behind him and continues out the door. His heart is beating like a scolded childs and his knees are weak with fury. He had come for an exchange of information and been flagellated with an insane spiel. Unctuo canada goose moosejaw us old thundering Hun, no conception of the ministry as a legacy of light, probably himself scrambled into it out of a butchers shop. Jack realizes that these are spiteful and unworthy thoughts but he cant stop them. His
forced voice meant to carry through glass, but the nurse is already returning his daughter to her supermarket basket. Rabbit turns the wrong way, into the sleepless face of the canada goose moosejaw father next in line, and laughs outright. He goes back to Janice with the wind swirling through him and fire the red of the babys skin blazing. In the soap-scented hall he gets the idea: they should call the girl June. This is June, she was born in June. Hes never known a June. It will please Janice because of the J. But Janice has been thinking about names canada goose moosejaw too and wants to call her after her mother. Harry never thinks of Mrs. Springer as having a first name. It is Rebecca. His warm gust of pride in his child mollifies Janice, and he in turn is touched by her daughterly wish; it worries him at times that she does
Harrys absence, she runs to the crib and nightmarishly finds it smeared with orange canada goose moosejaw mess. Damn you, damn you, she moans to Rebecca, and lifts the little filthy thing out and wonders where to carry her. She takes her to the armchair and biting her lips unpins the diaper. Oh you little shit, she murmurs, feeling that the sound of her voice is holding off the other person who is gathering in the room. She takes the soaked daubed diaper to the bathroom and drops it in the toilet and dropping to her knees fumbles the bathtub plug into its hole. She pulls on both handles as wide as they will go, knowing from experiment that both opened wide make the right te canada goose moosejaw pid mixture. The water bangs out of the faucet like a fist. She notices the glass of watery whisky she left on the top of the toilet and
is light, though, in the streetlights; muffled by trees their mingling cones retreat to the unseen end of Summer Street. Nearby, to his left, directly under one, the rough asphalt looks like dimpled snow. He decides to walk around the block, to clear his head and pick his path. Funny, how wha canada goose moosejaw t makes you move is so simple and the field you must move in is so crowded. His legs take strength from the distinction, scissor along evenly. canada goose moosejaw Goodness lies inside, there is nothing outside, those things he was trying to balance have no weight. He feels his inside as very real suddenly, a pure blank space in the middle of a dense net. Idontknow, he kept telling Ruth; he doesnt know, what to do, where to go, what will happen, the thought that he doesnt know seems to make him infinitely small and