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first task was to sort the papers of the Talbo estate, and among Verena's private possessions, her
keys, her pictures of Maudie Laura Murphy, I found a postcard. It was dated two months after
Dolly died, at Christmas, and it was from Paraguay: As we say down here, Feliz Navidad. Do
you miss me? Morris. And I thought, reading it, of how her eyes had come permanently to have
an uneven cast, an inward and agonized gaze, and I remembered how her eyes, watering in the
brassy sunshine of Riley's wedding day, had straightened with momentary hope: "It could be a
long trip. I've considered selling a few-a few properties. We might take a boat; you've never
seen the ocean." I picked a sprig of honeysuckle from the vine flowering on the garden fence,
and she watched me shred it as if I were pulling apart her vision, the voyage she saw for us.
"Oh," she brushed at the mole that spotted her cheek like a tear, "well," she said in a practical
voice, "what are your ambitions?"
So it was not until September that I called upon the Judge, and then it was to tell him good-
bye. The suitcases were packed, Amos Legrand had cut my hair ("Honey, don't you come back
here baldheaded. What I mean is, they'll try to scalp you up there, cheat you every way they
can."); I had a new suit and new shoes, gray fedora ("Aren't you the cafs pajamas, Mr. Collin
Fenwick?" Mrs. County exclaimed. "A lawyer you're going to be? And already dressed like one.
No, child, I won't kiss you. I'd be mortified to dirty your finery with my bakery mess. You write
us, hear?"): that very evening a train would rock me northward, parade me through the land to a
city where in my honor pennants flurried.
At Miss Bell's they told me the Judge had gone out I found him on the square, and it gave me
a twinge to see him, a spruce sturdy figure with a Cherokee rose sprouting in his buttonhole,
encamped among the old men who talk and spit and wait. He took my arm and led me away
from them; and while he amiably advised me of his own days as a law student, we strolled past
the church and out along the River Woods road. This road or this tree; I closed my eyes to fix
their image, for I did not believe I would return, did not foresee that I would travel the road and
dream the tree until they had drawn me back.
It was as though neither of us had known where we were headed. Quietly astonished, we
surveyed the view from the cemetery hill, and arm in arm descended to the summer-burned,
September-burnished field. A waterfall of color flowed across the dry and strumming leaves;
and I wanted then for the Judge to hear what Dolly had told me: that it was a grass harp,
gathering, telling, a harp of voices remembering a story. We listened. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]