and slowly approached, watching the shower of sparks shooting into the air.
“Missy,” Tamar Penrose called insistently, but the child paid no attention as Jack put his thumb to the blade to test it. “Hot damn, now that’s sharp, Will.” The blade glistened like a silver crescent.
“Pretty good,” the farmer agreed.
“Good, hell! It’s perfect! There y’are, Will, sharp as a dime and no charge.” He handed over the implement, leaped onto the saddle of his rig, and started off.
“Jack,” I called, hoping for the rest of his story, but he only shook his head and, without a backward look, pedaled away into the crowd.
When Tamar came to take Missy’s hand, the child hung back for an instant, her bleak eye lingering on the gleaming sickle blade in Will Jones’s hand. Turning, her look fell on me; she gazed for a long silent moment, and I suddenly felt the hairs on the back of my neck tingle as she continued to stare, her body a trifle stiff, her mouth slack. Then she permitted herself to be led away.
I stood alone for a moment, trying to examine the sensation I had felt, a fugitive feeling I could scarcely define. I moved into the crowd, my eye on the tree where Beth was already laying out the picnic things. Though I saw Beth plainly, it was the child’s face that hovered before me; and it was perhaps for this reason alone that I forgot to take Kate’s Medihaler from the glove compartment of the car.
7
“An elegant repast, my dear,” Professor Dodd said to Beth, wiping his lips with one of the checkered napkins. “You have found the way to my heart. Now if you’re truly good, Margaret will give you her recipe for old New England succotash. Most people use salt pork, but she makes it the old Indian way.”
“How did they do it?”
“They baked a dog with it.”
“Oh, Robert, really, the Constantines aren’t going to believe a thing you tell them if you keep that up.” Maggie Dodd took a cigar from Robert’s breast pocket, rolled it between her palms, clipped the end, and held the match while he lighted it.
“I assure you the Indians considered it a great delicacy,” Robert continued. Having finished our picnic lunch, we were sitting under the tree—Robert Dodd in a lawn chair, Worthy Pettinger close to Kate—eating Maggie’s chocolate mousse. Beth, who was wearing my gift of the bone earrings, stretched and lay back on the grass, looking up at the sky.
“It’s hard to believe places like this exist any more. It seems like a—” She groped for the word.
“Throwback,” Maggie supplied.
“No such thing,” said Robert.
“I mean someone found it and forgot to throw it back.”
“Margaret’s always making jokes at the village’s expense,” Robert said.
I was quick to recognize the flash of intimate response between the couple as Maggie leaned and took Robert’s napkin, shaking off the crumbs and folding it. Watching them, I felt we truly had found friends. To me, Maggie personified that thing I had been trying to express to myself about the villagers, an air of simple, placid grace, with her unmade-up features, her still-clear skin and eyes, her neatly coiffed hair whose style I was sure had not changed since she was a young woman. Her voice was low and serene, with a kind of easy, humorous lilt to it: an imperturbable woman.
“What Robert means,” she went on, “is just what you’re trying to say: there’s a sort of timelessness about Cornwall Coombe that often strikes outsiders—or even newcomers—as unusual.”
Beth lighted a cigarette and blew smoke through her nose. “What does it mean—Coombe?”
“It’s an English word—Celtic, actually,” Robert explained. “Means a valley or a sort of hollow. I suppose it implies a certain remoteness, which we are given to hereabouts. Margaret’s partially correct: there are a number of ‘throwbacks’ around here, like certain of the names which have an ancient and venerable history. Take the Lost Whistle
“Missy,” Tamar Penrose called insistently, but the child paid no attention as Jack put his thumb to the blade to test it. “Hot damn, now that’s sharp, Will.” The blade glistened like a silver crescent.
“Pretty good,” the farmer agreed.
“Good, hell! It’s perfect! There y’are, Will, sharp as a dime and no charge.” He handed over the implement, leaped onto the saddle of his rig, and started off.
“Jack,” I called, hoping for the rest of his story, but he only shook his head and, without a backward look, pedaled away into the crowd.
When Tamar came to take Missy’s hand, the child hung back for an instant, her bleak eye lingering on the gleaming sickle blade in Will Jones’s hand. Turning, her look fell on me; she gazed for a long silent moment, and I suddenly felt the hairs on the back of my neck tingle as she continued to stare, her body a trifle stiff, her mouth slack. Then she permitted herself to be led away.
I stood alone for a moment, trying to examine the sensation I had felt, a fugitive feeling I could scarcely define. I moved into the crowd, my eye on the tree where Beth was already laying out the picnic things. Though I saw Beth plainly, it was the child’s face that hovered before me; and it was perhaps for this reason alone that I forgot to take Kate’s Medihaler from the glove compartment of the car.
7
“An elegant repast, my dear,” Professor Dodd said to Beth, wiping his lips with one of the checkered napkins. “You have found the way to my heart. Now if you’re truly good, Margaret will give you her recipe for old New England succotash. Most people use salt pork, but she makes it the old Indian way.”
“How did they do it?”
“They baked a dog with it.”
“Oh, Robert, really, the Constantines aren’t going to believe a thing you tell them if you keep that up.” Maggie Dodd took a cigar from Robert’s breast pocket, rolled it between her palms, clipped the end, and held the match while he lighted it.
“I assure you the Indians considered it a great delicacy,” Robert continued. Having finished our picnic lunch, we were sitting under the tree—Robert Dodd in a lawn chair, Worthy Pettinger close to Kate—eating Maggie’s chocolate mousse. Beth, who was wearing my gift of the bone earrings, stretched and lay back on the grass, looking up at the sky.
“It’s hard to believe places like this exist any more. It seems like a—” She groped for the word.
“Throwback,” Maggie supplied.
“No such thing,” said Robert.
“I mean someone found it and forgot to throw it back.”
“Margaret’s always making jokes at the village’s expense,” Robert said.
I was quick to recognize the flash of intimate response between the couple as Maggie leaned and took Robert’s napkin, shaking off the crumbs and folding it. Watching them, I felt we truly had found friends. To me, Maggie personified that thing I had been trying to express to myself about the villagers, an air of simple, placid grace, with her unmade-up features, her still-clear skin and eyes, her neatly coiffed hair whose style I was sure had not changed since she was a young woman. Her voice was low and serene, with a kind of easy, humorous lilt to it: an imperturbable woman.
“What Robert means,” she went on, “is just what you’re trying to say: there’s a sort of timelessness about Cornwall Coombe that often strikes outsiders—or even newcomers—as unusual.”
Beth lighted a cigarette and blew smoke through her nose. “What does it mean—Coombe?”
“It’s an English word—Celtic, actually,” Robert explained. “Means a valley or a sort of hollow. I suppose it implies a certain remoteness, which we are given to hereabouts. Margaret’s partially correct: there are a number of ‘throwbacks’ around here, like certain of the names which have an ancient and venerable history. Take the Lost Whistle
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