peculiar motions of his long arms to relieve his inner enjoyment.
The carriages and most of the crowd were gone back to town when John Donner started to follow. Near the cemetery gate boys were playing, leaping over tombstones, rolling andtumbling on grassy graves, seeing nothing frightening in this calamitous place. One of them looked up and noticed him.
“There’s that crazy old man that hollered at Mrs. Flail!” he yelled.
The cub pack came after him hooting and jeering. In the cemetery there was little to pick up and throw but once they came to the road, shale pebbles showered after him. He remembered how he had seen Mike Whalen trying to maintain his dignity under attacks like this. Aunt Teresa in her red petticoat had been of more help than he thought.
“Aunty! Where are you now?” he cried.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Source
He felt a little shaken when he got downtown. His tormentors left off here but a few shale fragments had found their mark and drawn blood. He stared at the sight of red rubbed off on his hand. Well, anyway, he was not an insubstantial figure of the imagination. He was real. He could bleed.
But now that it was over he felt singularly faint. He noticed that only a few of the teams on Kronos Street had gone. Horses buried their noses in feedbags or in corn-stained wooden boxes. Most of them were farm horses in blinders with the motherly look of a farmwife with glasses whose work was never done. Up the street he found country folk sitting out on the benches and chairs provided in the roped-off square, open baskets by their feet, the younger ones crowdingthe curb, most of them with fried chicken in their fingers. This was a holy day set aside for the funeral of their spiritual ruler and pastor, a day like Sunday in which “thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.” At the same time, having paid their respect, they meant now to take advantage of their holiday, enjoy these unaccustomed privileges, talk with relatives and friends, laugh and joke, for the solemnities were over and behind them now, buried like the corpse and not to be exhumed.
“You can’t live with the dead,” John Donner had heard them say more than once when a widow or widower remarried within the year. And the first remark when one of their own died, hardly waiting for the last breath, was often a matter-of-fact “You got to think of the living now.”
Standing by the church, he could hear above the murmur of dialect a sound of rushing like the wind in the trees. It was weakness, he told himself, a lack of food. But he thought the roaring in his ears grew louder and on the end knew it for what it must be, Kronos rising in its banks. A kind of terror seized him. Strange that these country folk did not notice. Perhaps they did not want to hear it. They wouldnever believe that where they stood at this moment was to be buried beneath tons of flood and ooze.
The sound of chaos was plainer now. He remembered he had not as yet got to the heart of the great secret. He had not even spoken to his mother or heard her voice. He had not seen her except at a distance blurred by the impenetrable veil.
He made hurried steps to the parsonage yard. At the open window he could hear them at the funeral dinner, his grandfather’s table extended by every board, groaning with meat and potatoes, jarred fruits and vegetables, with pies and cakes, with sweets and sours, not a sad occasion but a celebration of victory over life and the grave. He could hear his great-uncles holding forth at the table, striving to be heard above the other, not on their deceased brother-in-law. Due praise and ceremony had been paid him. It was time for the living now. Even Aunt Jess could scarcely get a word in and he didn’t hear his mother try. She would brood most over her father’s passing. She was the youngest, his favorite. The story went that
The carriages and most of the crowd were gone back to town when John Donner started to follow. Near the cemetery gate boys were playing, leaping over tombstones, rolling andtumbling on grassy graves, seeing nothing frightening in this calamitous place. One of them looked up and noticed him.
“There’s that crazy old man that hollered at Mrs. Flail!” he yelled.
The cub pack came after him hooting and jeering. In the cemetery there was little to pick up and throw but once they came to the road, shale pebbles showered after him. He remembered how he had seen Mike Whalen trying to maintain his dignity under attacks like this. Aunt Teresa in her red petticoat had been of more help than he thought.
“Aunty! Where are you now?” he cried.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Source
He felt a little shaken when he got downtown. His tormentors left off here but a few shale fragments had found their mark and drawn blood. He stared at the sight of red rubbed off on his hand. Well, anyway, he was not an insubstantial figure of the imagination. He was real. He could bleed.
But now that it was over he felt singularly faint. He noticed that only a few of the teams on Kronos Street had gone. Horses buried their noses in feedbags or in corn-stained wooden boxes. Most of them were farm horses in blinders with the motherly look of a farmwife with glasses whose work was never done. Up the street he found country folk sitting out on the benches and chairs provided in the roped-off square, open baskets by their feet, the younger ones crowdingthe curb, most of them with fried chicken in their fingers. This was a holy day set aside for the funeral of their spiritual ruler and pastor, a day like Sunday in which “thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.” At the same time, having paid their respect, they meant now to take advantage of their holiday, enjoy these unaccustomed privileges, talk with relatives and friends, laugh and joke, for the solemnities were over and behind them now, buried like the corpse and not to be exhumed.
“You can’t live with the dead,” John Donner had heard them say more than once when a widow or widower remarried within the year. And the first remark when one of their own died, hardly waiting for the last breath, was often a matter-of-fact “You got to think of the living now.”
Standing by the church, he could hear above the murmur of dialect a sound of rushing like the wind in the trees. It was weakness, he told himself, a lack of food. But he thought the roaring in his ears grew louder and on the end knew it for what it must be, Kronos rising in its banks. A kind of terror seized him. Strange that these country folk did not notice. Perhaps they did not want to hear it. They wouldnever believe that where they stood at this moment was to be buried beneath tons of flood and ooze.
The sound of chaos was plainer now. He remembered he had not as yet got to the heart of the great secret. He had not even spoken to his mother or heard her voice. He had not seen her except at a distance blurred by the impenetrable veil.
He made hurried steps to the parsonage yard. At the open window he could hear them at the funeral dinner, his grandfather’s table extended by every board, groaning with meat and potatoes, jarred fruits and vegetables, with pies and cakes, with sweets and sours, not a sad occasion but a celebration of victory over life and the grave. He could hear his great-uncles holding forth at the table, striving to be heard above the other, not on their deceased brother-in-law. Due praise and ceremony had been paid him. It was time for the living now. Even Aunt Jess could scarcely get a word in and he didn’t hear his mother try. She would brood most over her father’s passing. She was the youngest, his favorite. The story went that
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