He owed her more than an action, then. But of course words in their profusion had always smothered their meanings too. There was no love word still innocent enough to serve.
But then he thought he had it, absolutely pure and sufficient. He found the tone from nowhere of much importance—from the retreating and already spoiled memory of a life he wished to reject. A straw. An afternoon so little worth remembering that he might have lost it years ago in the shuffle of larger things, but just hadn’t.
It was an afternoon in a Flushing movie theater, and he was there as much to kill time as for any other reason. Twelve years old and already too sophisticated for the Grade B western that was playing. He had come to the theater in a peculiar lassitude, no doubt led by the fact that even in summer when there was no school, Saturday afternoons bothered him with their vacuity. They were the times when something still seemed to whipsaw him between what Aunt Peg said he was not to remember and what he thought a boy ought to remember if he hoped to become a real man. The movies were a time-killing compromise. Only that.
But there’d been this moment of the pointless afternoon when the good guys were surrounded by bad guys plus some renegade Indians. Somebody had to get through to the fort or it was all up for the settlers. So the bearded sergeant and the wounded guide were looking for who to send, someone who was willing to make the run for the others.
Ben knew who ought to go. He sat forward on his sliding cushioned seat, crouching and tense, waiting for the minute when the Indians came closest and then stupidly walked right past the gap in the weeds above the riverbank. The camera showed the emptiness of the sky up there beyond the weeds where he had to run. He felt himself about to cry, but he took a big breath instead and crouched forward in the seat, searching with his toes for the purchase he needed. Ready for a bursting start, knowing, just knowing he could make it through because they counted on him. Knowing also that he wouldn’t run because there was nowhere real to run to.
“Leslie,” he said. Then he said what he was condemned to say out of loyalty to the good women who always tried to make him believe in happy endings. “Leslie … go!”
About the Author
R. V. Cassill (1919–2002) was a prolific and award-winning author and a highly regarded writing teacher. Among his best-known works are the novels Clem Anderson and Doctor Cobb’s Game and the short stories “The Father” and “The Prize,” the latter of which won him an O. Henry Award. At the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Purdue University, and Brown University, Cassill taught many acclaimed authors, including Joy Williams and Raymond Carver. He founded the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) in 1967 and after his retirement became the editor of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, a position he held for nearly a quarter century.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof 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, events, 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 © 1963 by R. V. Cassill
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8515-4
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Pretty Leslie Page 37