After they got home from the clinic, Lenore tried to sleep on top of Ike’s bed, but got up after half an hour and showered. She knows the Valium is putting off a real meltdown. That there are still very bad times ahead. Shakes, an inability to get warm, days, maybe weeks, of nausea. Maybe visions. All Ike will say about what’s to come, he said, as she stepped from the bathroom, the new robe warm on her shoulders, a towel wrapped around her head.
He said, “We’ll get through it, sis. You got all the strength in the family.”
Now, watching her brother cut toast up into small squares, she’s not at all sure of the truth of his statement. And she wishes she’d countered with, “And you got all the wisdom.”
Wisdom. It’s a funny word. She doesn’t think she could say it, even without the stitches. Certainly not without laughing.
She lets her head roll across the back of the rocker. She thinks about Cortez, months from now. She imagines him sitting crosslegged, Indian style, in the mouth of some cave, ridiculously high in the face of the Andes, a rare book, a novel, open in his lap. He’s reading it for the third or fourth time. His face is tanned to a leathery cover. In a notch in the rocks below him, the sound of Mingo telling ancient jokes to a silent Jimmy Wyatt, Henny Youngman one-liners, floats up toward him. Echoes. His aides tend the sheep, bring water. He just sits and reads, moves his hands over the covers of the whole ghost library. Halfway through the day, he begins to read aloud. To Max. He tries to discover the boy’s preferences. His likes and dislikes.
She can’t help ask. “What’s going to happen when the shock wears off?”
Ike can’t answer. He’d like to imagine a moment months from now, he and Lenore at the table working out the intricate plot of a mystery. But instead, the image of Eva’s face starts to form. He knocks it away, burns it down, fills himself up with the size of the toast squares, the amount of sage to add, the sound of the parade commentator’s voice.
Though it’s bodiless, detached, it’s filled with such emotion, clearly impressed by this spectacular march down the center of Quinsigamond. It’s a celebration. A tradition. Main Street flooded with row after row of marching bands, fire trucks, elephants, lighter-than-air floats of nylon tethers. It sounds like a marvel of color, music, syncopation. The announcer can barely contain himself.
RAY: How can I tell you all out there, how can I tell you? You’ve got to see it for yourself. Come on down. It’s beyond words.
Acknowledgments
The author is indebted to he following works and wishes to express his gratitude to the authors: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, David Crystal; Bibliography of General Linguistics, Aleksandra K Wawryszko; Semiotic and Significs: The Correspondence Between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby, edited by Charles S. Hardwick; Julio Cortazar, Evelyn Picon Garfield; Into the Mainstream, Luis Harss and Barbara Dohmann.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1992 by Jack O’Connell
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
This edition published in 2011 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
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