‘He’ll be all right!’
‘Oh, God, take care.…’
Thirty seconds.
‘Watch, now.’
Fifteen, ten, five …
‘Watch!’
Four, three, two, one.
‘There! There! Oh, there, there!’
They both cried out. They both stood. The chairs toppled back, fell flat on the lawn. The man and his wife swayed, their hands struggled to find each other, grip hold. They saw the brightening colour in the sky and, ten seconds later, the great uprising comet burn the air, put out the stars, and rush away in firelight to become another star in the returning profusion of the Milky Way. The man and wife held each other as if they had stumbled on the rim of an incredible cliff that faced an abyss so deep and dark there seemed no end to it. Staring up, they heard themselves sobbing and crying. Only after a long time were they able to speak.
‘It got away, it did, didn’t it?’
‘Yes …’
‘It’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘Yes … yes …’
‘It didn’t fall back…?’
‘No, no, it’s all right, Bob’s all right, it’s all right.’
They stood away from each other at last.
He touched his face with his hand and looked at his wet fingers. ‘I’ll be damned,’ he said, ‘I’ll be damned.’
They waited another five and then ten minutes until the darkness in their heads, the retina, ached with a million specks of fiery salt. Then they had to close their eyes.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘now let’s go in.’
He could not move. Only his hand reached a long way out by itself to find the lawnmower handle. He saw what his hand had done and said, ‘There’s just a little more to do.…’
‘But you can’t see.’
‘Well enough,’ he said.’ I must finish this. Then we’ll sit on the porch awhile before we turn in.’
He helped her put the chairs on the porch and sat her down and then walked back out to put his hands on the guidebar of the lawnmower. The lawnmower. A wheel in a wheel. A simple machine which you held in your hands, which you sent on ahead with a rush and a clatter, while you walked behind with your quiet philosophy. Racket, followed by warm silence. Whirling wheel, then soft footfall of thought.
I’m a billion years old, he told himself; I’m one minute old. I’m one inch, not ten thousand miles, tall. I look down and can’t see my feet they’re so far off and gone away below.
He moved the lawnmower. The grass, showering up, fell softly around him; he relished and savoured it and felt that he was all mankind bathing at last in the fresh waters of the fountain of youth.
Thus bathed, he remembered the song again, about the wheels and the faith and the grace of God being way up there in the middle of the sky where that single star, among a million motionless stars, dared to move and keep on moving.
Then he finished cutting the grass.
The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit
IT was summer twilight in the city and out front of the quiet-clicking pool-hall three young Mexican-American men breathed the warm air and looked around at the world. Sometimes they talked and sometimes they said nothing at all, but watched the cars glide by like black panthers on the hot asphalt or saw trolleys loom up like thunderstorms, scatter lightning, and rumble away into silence.
‘Hey,’ sighed Martinez, at last. He was the youngest, the most sweetly sad of the three. ‘It’s a swell night, huh? Swell.’