Pray, for it was so. A gentle bird, but I was high and flying faster, faster, faster. I traveled light, Donelson said, so I could roll up the moss. To make the most of circumstance, I flew. What was possible was possible in one way only, in a spiraling flight. Who could release more than vague hopes for heaven on a movie screen … Lights!
CHAPTER 5
Now the Senator could hear a voice quietly calling, Bliss? You hear me, Bliss? but was too weary to respond. His lips refused to answer, his throat throbbed with unstated things, the words starting up from deep within his mind and lodging there. He could not make them sound, and he thought, The circuit is out; I’m working with cables like those of Donelson’s lights, scenes go dark and there’s only a sputtering along the wire.
Yet his mind flowed dreamily and deep behind the purple shadows, welling from depths of time he had forgot, one short-lived self mysteriously surviving all the years and turns of face. Once I broke the string I whirled, I scudded the high places, bruised against tree-tops and building spires, snagged here and there for a time but always sailing. But once spring turned me turtle, I tried to sing—that’s a part Daddy Hickman doesn’t know. The old bliss still clung to me; childlike beneath my restlessness, stubborn. Liked the flight of birds then; cardinals streaking red across the fields, redwings on blackbirds and whistling quail at eveningtide. And metal-blue dragonflies and ladybirds in the dust, and catleaps in the sun. Black cat poised on hind feet like a boxer, waiting to receive a squirt of milk from a cow’s teat, the milk white on the whiskers and the flash of small pink tongue.
Inwardly he smiled. Where—Kansas? Bonner Springs, Kansas City, buildings black from the riots. No one would believe it me, not even for that flash of time and pleasure which I have denied on platform and in the Senate a million times by word, gesture and legislation. Now it’s like a remembered dream or screen sequence that—listen to the mockingbird up in his apple tree—that time-slain moment breathed in and cried out and felt ago. This Bliss that passeth understanding you never know, you Reverend H, but still a turn in the dance … Where am I?
Bliss? I say can you hear me, Bliss? You want the nurse? Just move your fingers if you do and I’ll get the girl .
Girl? There was a girl in it, yes. What else? There and then. Out there where they thought the new state a second chance for Eden … Tell it to the Cherokees!
What are you trying to say, Bliss? Take it slow, boy. I’m still with you. I’ll never leave now, so …
… We were under the trees, away from the town, away from Donelson, Karp and the camera. There, how glorious to have been there. Below the park-space showed; shade here, sun there, in a dreamy, dappled mid-afternoon haze. We were there. High up the trees flurried with birdsong, and one clear note sang above the rest, a lucid, soaring strand of sound; while in the grass cicadas dreamed. For a moment we stood there looking down the gentle rising-falling of the land, while far away a cowbell tinkled, small across some hidden field beyond the woods. Milkweed ran across the ground. Imagine to remember—was it ever? Still. Thistle purple-blue, flowersblue, wisteria loud against an old rock wall—was this the season or another time? Certainly there were the early violets among the fallen pine needles—ago too, but that was Alabama and lonesome. Here she was close beside me and as we moved down the grassy slope the touch of her cool sweat-dampened arm came soft against me and went and came coolly again and then again as we went down the hill into the sun. Oh keep coming coming—Then through the sun into the dappled shade. How long ago, this comes comesa fall? Aches here, aches in spring like a lost limb refusing to recognize its dismemberment, no need to deny. Then too, but sweet. Coming just above my shoulder her glossy head,
CHAPTER 5
Now the Senator could hear a voice quietly calling, Bliss? You hear me, Bliss? but was too weary to respond. His lips refused to answer, his throat throbbed with unstated things, the words starting up from deep within his mind and lodging there. He could not make them sound, and he thought, The circuit is out; I’m working with cables like those of Donelson’s lights, scenes go dark and there’s only a sputtering along the wire.
Yet his mind flowed dreamily and deep behind the purple shadows, welling from depths of time he had forgot, one short-lived self mysteriously surviving all the years and turns of face. Once I broke the string I whirled, I scudded the high places, bruised against tree-tops and building spires, snagged here and there for a time but always sailing. But once spring turned me turtle, I tried to sing—that’s a part Daddy Hickman doesn’t know. The old bliss still clung to me; childlike beneath my restlessness, stubborn. Liked the flight of birds then; cardinals streaking red across the fields, redwings on blackbirds and whistling quail at eveningtide. And metal-blue dragonflies and ladybirds in the dust, and catleaps in the sun. Black cat poised on hind feet like a boxer, waiting to receive a squirt of milk from a cow’s teat, the milk white on the whiskers and the flash of small pink tongue.
Inwardly he smiled. Where—Kansas? Bonner Springs, Kansas City, buildings black from the riots. No one would believe it me, not even for that flash of time and pleasure which I have denied on platform and in the Senate a million times by word, gesture and legislation. Now it’s like a remembered dream or screen sequence that—listen to the mockingbird up in his apple tree—that time-slain moment breathed in and cried out and felt ago. This Bliss that passeth understanding you never know, you Reverend H, but still a turn in the dance … Where am I?
Bliss? I say can you hear me, Bliss? You want the nurse? Just move your fingers if you do and I’ll get the girl .
Girl? There was a girl in it, yes. What else? There and then. Out there where they thought the new state a second chance for Eden … Tell it to the Cherokees!
What are you trying to say, Bliss? Take it slow, boy. I’m still with you. I’ll never leave now, so …
… We were under the trees, away from the town, away from Donelson, Karp and the camera. There, how glorious to have been there. Below the park-space showed; shade here, sun there, in a dreamy, dappled mid-afternoon haze. We were there. High up the trees flurried with birdsong, and one clear note sang above the rest, a lucid, soaring strand of sound; while in the grass cicadas dreamed. For a moment we stood there looking down the gentle rising-falling of the land, while far away a cowbell tinkled, small across some hidden field beyond the woods. Milkweed ran across the ground. Imagine to remember—was it ever? Still. Thistle purple-blue, flowersblue, wisteria loud against an old rock wall—was this the season or another time? Certainly there were the early violets among the fallen pine needles—ago too, but that was Alabama and lonesome. Here she was close beside me and as we moved down the grassy slope the touch of her cool sweat-dampened arm came soft against me and went and came coolly again and then again as we went down the hill into the sun. Oh keep coming coming—Then through the sun into the dappled shade. How long ago, this comes comesa fall? Aches here, aches in spring like a lost limb refusing to recognize its dismemberment, no need to deny. Then too, but sweet. Coming just above my shoulder her glossy head,
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