hospital; Dr. Angelo was begged from Health and Medicine; there had been painting and building and bustle the first summer, and into the whiter. But over two years had passed; this was his third fair. Many of those who had greeted him here (how assiduously he had attempted to learn the names of that first batch!) were gone now, but the population of the place had grown and was growing. There were rational causes: lengthened lives, smaller domiciles, the break-up, with traditional religion, of the family. The pamphlets and pronunciamentos he daily received in the mail, from official, semi-official, and unofficial bureaus, made it clear and reasonable. Swelling poorhouses had a necessary place in the grand process of Settling--an increasingly common term that covered the international stalemate, the general economic equality, the population shifts to the "vacuum states," and the well-publicized physical theory of entropia, the tendency of the universe toward eventual homogeneity, each fleck of energy settled in seventy cubic miles of otherwise vacant space. This end was inevitable, no new cause for heterogeneity being, without supernaturalism conceivable.
Despite these assurances, however, the limits of being a poorhouse prefect chafed a man dedicated to a dynamic vision: that of Man living healthy and unafraid beneath blank skies, "integrated," as the accepted phrase had it, "with his fulfilled possibilities." Conner was bored. He yearned for some chance to be proven; he envied the first rationalists their martyrdoms and the first reformers their dragons of reaction and selfishness. Two years remained before automatic promotion. The chief trouble with the job was the idleness; not merely that there was so little to do, and that he had to make work, concocting schemes like tagging chairs, but that idleness became his way of life. He was infected with the repose that was only suitable to inmates waiting out their days.
The very way, for instance, he had rather enjoyed the balm of standing by Hook's side for those moments this morning. Or the way he stood by this window content to gaze at nothing, or what amounted to nothing--the red-tin roof of the west wing, the sheds and pig buildings below, segments of west wall showing in the intervals between trees, and the little gate to Andrews, unlocked today for the fair. Someone was passing through, tacking from wall to bush: Lucas. He was sure it was Lucas, even from this distance. He was carrying something in a small paper bag, too big for candy, too small for food. While Conner was trying to make it out Lucas passed from sight beneath the guttered edge of the red roof.
On the glossy varnish of the window sill the canted pane of glass installed to minimize drafts laid a peculiar patina, a hard pale color neither brown nor blue.
Conner had chosen to stand by the west window because the spectacle of preparation on the east lawn scratched his eyes; he didn't wish to be made to feel that he should go down and play shepherd. Buddy was with them; little could go wrong. It was futile anyway; the coming rain cancelled everything. The western sector of the sky was as yet unclouded. Between the tops of the trees and the upper edge of his window oblivious blue held the firmament. Then a cumbersome tumble and crash resounded, and Conner witnessed an appearance of the phenomenon which two millenia before had convinced the poet Horace that gods do exist: thunder from a clear sky.
DOWN FRONT Buddy was arranging with Ted that Pepsi-Cola would pay for repairing the wall--there was no cause for tears. Everybody had insurance. As he could see, the wall was rotten anyway. Buddy, dropping the shovel with which he had not yet begun to dig, had rushed to the accident and found its perpetrator oddly child-like. In a voice husky with apprehension the boy insisted that it had not been his fault and that he had to get to Newark in a matter of minutes or lose his job. The driver was rather handsome, in
Despite these assurances, however, the limits of being a poorhouse prefect chafed a man dedicated to a dynamic vision: that of Man living healthy and unafraid beneath blank skies, "integrated," as the accepted phrase had it, "with his fulfilled possibilities." Conner was bored. He yearned for some chance to be proven; he envied the first rationalists their martyrdoms and the first reformers their dragons of reaction and selfishness. Two years remained before automatic promotion. The chief trouble with the job was the idleness; not merely that there was so little to do, and that he had to make work, concocting schemes like tagging chairs, but that idleness became his way of life. He was infected with the repose that was only suitable to inmates waiting out their days.
The very way, for instance, he had rather enjoyed the balm of standing by Hook's side for those moments this morning. Or the way he stood by this window content to gaze at nothing, or what amounted to nothing--the red-tin roof of the west wing, the sheds and pig buildings below, segments of west wall showing in the intervals between trees, and the little gate to Andrews, unlocked today for the fair. Someone was passing through, tacking from wall to bush: Lucas. He was sure it was Lucas, even from this distance. He was carrying something in a small paper bag, too big for candy, too small for food. While Conner was trying to make it out Lucas passed from sight beneath the guttered edge of the red roof.
On the glossy varnish of the window sill the canted pane of glass installed to minimize drafts laid a peculiar patina, a hard pale color neither brown nor blue.
Conner had chosen to stand by the west window because the spectacle of preparation on the east lawn scratched his eyes; he didn't wish to be made to feel that he should go down and play shepherd. Buddy was with them; little could go wrong. It was futile anyway; the coming rain cancelled everything. The western sector of the sky was as yet unclouded. Between the tops of the trees and the upper edge of his window oblivious blue held the firmament. Then a cumbersome tumble and crash resounded, and Conner witnessed an appearance of the phenomenon which two millenia before had convinced the poet Horace that gods do exist: thunder from a clear sky.
DOWN FRONT Buddy was arranging with Ted that Pepsi-Cola would pay for repairing the wall--there was no cause for tears. Everybody had insurance. As he could see, the wall was rotten anyway. Buddy, dropping the shovel with which he had not yet begun to dig, had rushed to the accident and found its perpetrator oddly child-like. In a voice husky with apprehension the boy insisted that it had not been his fault and that he had to get to Newark in a matter of minutes or lose his job. The driver was rather handsome, in
Similar Books
