to the country,and dreamt. Anything could happen,this was America.He gave himself up anymore if he came or not.He lay waiting to see what happened. had stopped going to work;as much as he hoped anything,he 器 Broom,he thought.He needed a broom,with a handle "Oh!Oh!Oh!!" "Oh Sonya sugar,Sonya sweet,Sonya sugar pie!" More hailstones. "Sonya love,Sonya baby,baby." Sonya,Sonya,"he heard."Sonya,Sonya,Sonya.' It is a luxury to despair in peace.Who doesn't know it?Now Through the ceiling came moaning,unmistakable. A sprinkle more,seeking him;he plugged his ear with his pinky. He turned on his side.Dust rained in his ear.He ignored it. Dust rained in his hair. He turned over. Dust rained in his eyes. Time spooled itself fat.Still Ralph slept.The sky cracked TIME spun on.Ralph slept. DELIVERANCE
Ketchup.Another step.Relish.Pickle slices.Even the paper Hot dogs!A step. Rice,but no place to cook it. no place to cook it.Bread. false spring. He was not to be mocked. winking sun. white too.His clothes. Shoes. bare feet. From an open door,the smell of hot dogs. He thought.At the grocery he planned to buy what.Rice,but This was February.This was not spring.This spring was a a sweet cake.Ralph wished he'd been even ruder. "Oh!Oh!" sively on,stealing a look at the boy's surprised face-pink as Do you have the time?"Not answering,Ralph shuffled aggres- dripping from a pipe.A boy accosted him."Excuse me,mister? hat and gloves on,studiously ignoring the broad blue sky,the made for throwing off jackets.He trudged through the streets, And outside,white.A conspiracy.White but warm,a day In the bathroom mirror,he saw that his hair had been streaked tried to clean them off.The dust hung on,streaking.So what He looked for his black shoes,found them plaster-dust white, He rubbed his face with his hands.What now?He walked his slowly,blinked.Swallowed.Dust in his mouth.He tried to spit. stomach burned.And his bladder-the old facts.He sat up And now that he was awake,he was hungry,he realized.His Pie.It was daytime. amid powdery fallout.He lay back down,tried to sleep.Sugar. He threw one of his shoes at the noise.A smile of lath opened discovers a figure of some dignity.At the same time he wondered, man who,catching a chance glimpse of himself in a mirror, the girl teeter on. family,no visa. So.He'd passed the test.He felt momentarily pleased,like a out of the air.Instead Ralph pressed his fingers together and let swooped by again.How easy it would be to pluck it-quick!- as a frying pan;Ralph watched as she took two steps,gazed up a red coat.For contrast the girl wore a large blue hat,fetching dollars and sixteen cents-more than he thought he had.He arm.The snow fell heavily,in a long pile like a sinking mountain A park.He cleared the wet snow from a bench with his fore- Relaxing.For good? tracting,relaxing,contracting. Eighty cents!He swallowed manfully,and as the man behind His stomach started to heave. cents each,he couldn't afford it.Still he had another.Another. he gulped down;the second,savored.Sweet,salty,juicy,soft, pockets for change.Everything,he told the man,yes.The first over condiment and grease.Then he was there,fumbling in his boat began to seem appetizing,glistening in his mind with left-
never let her go. as delivered. same-hugging her,by Someone's ironic grace,as though to would have thought.But,heart burning,there he was just the he should find himself lying in coin-spangled ice slosh,in Amer- his voice all that the word meant to him--rocks burst into acle!"And even so many years later,anyone could still hear in "Was miracle."This was Ralph's version of the story."Mir- Luck?How could it be only luck? and then they were both crying and not knowing what to do. fell to the sidewalk and sprained her ankle.Then he slipped too; springing up to welcome her,he knocked her over,so that she Ralph was so astounded he couldn't talk,so astounded that in could have turned it right before his eyes into a sister,his sister? made it stop-could have made it talk Shanghainese,no less, But what earthly luck could have produced this black coat, of over the hill... easily gone left instead of right,back around the pond instead "So lucky!"Theresa said later.After all,she could've just as on that park bench,Ralph believed himself not so much rescued and months of calling,Theresa finally found him slumped there believed himself a subject of interest;so that when,after months and prod,others to look in on him.Interested in himself,he general,but in times of hardship,gods grew up,some to test whole peoples have found shelter.Ralph was not religious in be chosen for it,special-these are houses of the mind,in which That there should be a purpose to suffering,that a person should way,like an answer slow in coming.He squinted at it. of all people,him.From up the path,a black coat migrated his tered rooms before she did.Her mother,who regarded her Theresa turned out a giantess- -five seven!With feet that en- in her chest,and she was homely as a pig head three,like her THERESA
to see her. married first. imagining. her movements. Their father dropped his observation like a bomb."Modern "Since when do boys come look?"fretted their mother. ternaturally agreeable. by the carp pond,composing replies.Her sister read poetry, No one would hear her.Her sister spent hours in the pavilion arrive.Theresa tried to hint-she wouldn't mind if her sister anyone matchmaking,and her lover's letters were permitted to allowed to marry.No one had actually said so;but neither was seemed that Theresa's sister and her beau were going to be mate's brother,a man gentle,handsome,and intelligent past the school play;and in return was introduced to that school- harelipped schoolmate with her homework,wrote her a part in to be,so in tune with her time and place that though she gave him.Wasn't she a misfit too!By day they shook their heads in some sphere.When Ralph laughed at her,she laughed with But Theresa would not care,being almost glad to be all wrong and-chalk contraption that was supposed to help her attend to made her quit,sent her for dance lessons,strapped her to a stick- he saw. small,the idea being not so much to make her feet more ac- shell-pink parasol,but also a new pair of silk shoes,a size too "she said,"no parasol."" called to her,a voice like her own.Meimei- study she could find. Theresa refused to walk anywhere. "A parasol?" hundred feet away,carrying a parasol. Theresa walk past a window. The go-between apologized,explained. glimpse Theresa as she drove by in a'car. Younger Sister. this he meant,she knew,that she too should retreat to what To protect her complexion from the sun.Their mother held by a certain park gate as Theresa strolled down a path some Then,her final position.The young man could station himself Their mother compromised.The young man could watch changing.She pressed delicately.Of course he would like what But in the city:as the go-between pointed out,things were
to dare hope! Her instep rose. right. Her feet throbbed. discreet stand of sycamores,peeling. Ahead,Theresa could see a bit of sky-a sheer blue wall, A modern type. Sweating,she thought of her sister.How much easier for her A modern type. feel the ground radiating up through her finespun cloth soles. And how her feet were swelling.One step,one step.She could servation.The female of the species performs her mating dance. she was,caught in these cross beams!She was under fiery ob- through her thin silk shade like a second solar power.How hot And yet so,paradoxically,did her left,her fiance's gaze boring Her right shoulder burned. toward the gate and ber fiance,though the sun inflames her her mating dance.This specimen carries her parasol on her left, as if in a textbook.Instinct.The female of the species performs sliding on their stomachs in the snow when a thaw was too around her,stickily intimate.No danger of bounding.Ther- path,she was alone.This was August.The heat wound itself dismissed as too complicated.And so,as she started down the accompanying her on blocks,but that scheme was quickly for scale.Someone had proposed something about her sister nothing small in the picture-no flowers,no low walls,nothing The path had been chosen so as to ensure that there would be She placed her new shoes by her bed. Did that make him her type? She turned. throat. step. pered! the banker's son would be unable to marry for some years.In The report came back that due to an unspecified family crisis, its wings flashing black,then white. What now?A bird shrieked.She saw it fly out from nowhere But still he gazed,only gazed.Waiting. He should say something. back.She tried to say something,but her voice dried in her behind her.A gaze,cool as the round marble inlay of a chair Nothing.Was it her imagination?Still she felt it,a presence Then:What had she done?What-She tensed. Shade.She rested,her head spinning.So! toward the peeling sycamores. the path.She did not look back to the gate,but only forward, Brave,she folded her parasol,hobbled off to the right,leaving see her!Let renegade not miss renegade for sheer lack of daring! decision,when it came,opened suddenly,a crevasse.So let him A cane.She should fold up the parasol,use it for a cane.The Still she took another step. She could not go on. whose grand ambition was to become a Shanghai banker. Of course,he was more probably a Shanghai banker's son with his father,his mother.A capable girl,and so sweet-tem- country miss?Of such fine family!What then?He'd sit down A modern type. Or so she'd heard.Sweat pooled between her fingers. There were radical thinkers in the city these days