by Max Brand
“Well,” said Pepillo, “is that all?”
“Now, Blue Jay,” I said, looking up to her and shaking my head, “what the devil else could there be to write about? Ain’t I said nearly everything that there is in the world?”
“Silly Big Boy! Don’t you see that you’ve left the most important thing of all out?”
“What might that be?”
She only laughed at me, saying, “Listen!”
I listened, and off in the distance there was the yapping of a couple of kids on the lawn, where they’re rolling, and getting covered with sunburn, and dust, and dead leaves, and whatnot—and the growl of Shorty, which is music to them and to Pepillo, too.
“There! Put that in, won’t you, please?”
But how can I put it in, as I sit here looking up to her, and studying how much happiness and brightness there is in her, and how much sadness, too, in loving a girl that is so far beyond me. But these here things that are gifts from the gods, they ain’t given according to merit, but just according to chance, of course.
The wind blows the lowing of the cows up Sour Creek Valley, and the wind stirs the vine that climbs across the window, but I think that nothing that it carries to me means so much as the breath of the jasmine that we’ve planted there below, in the garden.
THE END
About the Author
Max Brand is the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, creator of Dr. Kildare, Destry, and many other fictional characters popular with readers and viewers worldwide. Faust wrote for a variety of audiences in many genres. His enormous output, totaling approximately thirty million words or the equivalent of five hundred thirty ordinary books, covered nearly every field: crime, fantasy, historical romance, espionage, Westerns, science fiction, adventure, animal stories, love, war, and fashionable society, big business and big medicine. Eighty motion pictures have been based on his works along with many radio and television programs. For good measure, he also published four volumes of poetry. Perhaps no other author has reached more people in such a variety of different ways.
Born in Seattle in 1892, orphaned early, Faust grew up in the rural San Joaquin Valley of California. At Berkeley he became a student rebel and one-man literary movement, contributing prodigiously to all campus publications. Denied a degree because of unconventional conduct, he embarked on a series of adventures culminating in New York City where, after a period of near starvation, he received simultaneous recognition as a serious poet and successful author of fiction. Later, he traveled widely, making his home in New York, then in Florence, Italy, and finally in Los Angeles.
Once the United States entered the Second World War, Faust abandoned his lucrative writing career and his work as a screenwriter to serve as a war correspondent with the infantry in Italy, despite his fifty-one years and a bad heart. He was killed during a night attack on a hilltop village held by the German army. New books based on magazine serials or unpublished manuscripts or restored versions continue to appear so that, alive or dead, he has averaged a new book every six months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world. A great deal more about this author and his work can be found in The Max Brand Companion (Greenwood Press, 1997) edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski. His website is www.MaxBrandOnline.com.