they smiled pleasantly when I walked past. Further down was a family with a wicker hamper settling in for a long trip. I balanced my way to the next car and sat on the left so I could watch the river. For a long time I was convinced the train must be headed north, not south, the land seemed so empty and forgotten. A half hour after we left I was further from home than I had ever been before and yet it looked scarcely different. Solitary farm houses set high against the hillsides. Forests that had been cut down to stumps. Now and then a little village, nestled inside a bend in the river or perched above a falls. All the way to Brattleboro I saw only one single person, an ice fisherman in a red parka hunched motionless over his hole.
And yet this could have been France, I was so fascinated. I sat with my face touching the window and kept twisting around since I wanted to see everything, not miss a single detail. The valley spread apart when we got close to Brattleboro, the train slowed down, and between one moment and the next there were people everywhere. Hobos warming their hands over a fire. A gang of workers repairing the tracks. Boys out with their slingshots, aiming good-naturedly at the coal car. Autos waiting at crossings for us to pass—more autos than I had ever seen before and trucks that made Alan’s look tiny.
When the train stopped I climbed down onto the platform and asked a newspaper boy which way Elm Street was. It had begun snowing and the streets were slippery, but the town was crowded with shoppers getting ready for Christmas. Walking up Main Street I saw my first negro man ever and just beyond him my first Chinese man and then my first flapper, her hair bobbed and shiny, her dress stopping just above her knees, a cigarette jaunty in her heavily rouged lips. A policeman dressed like an admiral directed traffic and seeing me put his hand up imperiously and made everyone stop so I could cross. I felt self-conscious, Alan’s coat was so long and heavy, but then I realized that no one could really see me, that there were so many people on the street I passed unnoticed. I liked that feeling. It made me think I had been dropped invisibly into a magic city that I could enjoy all I wanted without having to explain.
Elm Street was three blocks off Main, lined with small shops. All the display windows were decorated for Christmas, with wooden trains or hand-carved creches and tinsel-covered trees— the falling snow touched their glass with a delicate, fleecy pat. I stared in at all of them but they were nothing compared to the window of the last shop. I had to rub the frost with my glass to see inside. There was nothing displayed there but books and yet they were more colorful and happier looking than anything in the other windows, with their different sizes and shapes, the way they slanted against each other, supported each other, propped each other up. Some covers were coral and others were butter-colored or a very deep rose, and they blended into one long extravagant mural that ran right along the glass. By walking down it I could make out an ocean liner and doughboys and Lillian Gish and a man leading a camel and girls with parasols and an old woman walking hunched through a picket fence and a man with his hands on his hips staring defiantly from a cliff and President Harding and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding four skeleton steeds. The authors’ names made a flowing scroll of their own and I smiled when I found one I recognized. I had never seen so many books in one place at one time and when I considered that this was only the display window, that there were likely to be hundreds more inside, I felt dizzy from happiness and shyness combined.
The bell tinkled when I opened the door. I stamped my shoes on the mat, shook back my hair to make sure no flakes would fall on the books. A round turtle of a man was down on his knees searching a shelf near the cash register and a pleasant looking woman
And yet this could have been France, I was so fascinated. I sat with my face touching the window and kept twisting around since I wanted to see everything, not miss a single detail. The valley spread apart when we got close to Brattleboro, the train slowed down, and between one moment and the next there were people everywhere. Hobos warming their hands over a fire. A gang of workers repairing the tracks. Boys out with their slingshots, aiming good-naturedly at the coal car. Autos waiting at crossings for us to pass—more autos than I had ever seen before and trucks that made Alan’s look tiny.
When the train stopped I climbed down onto the platform and asked a newspaper boy which way Elm Street was. It had begun snowing and the streets were slippery, but the town was crowded with shoppers getting ready for Christmas. Walking up Main Street I saw my first negro man ever and just beyond him my first Chinese man and then my first flapper, her hair bobbed and shiny, her dress stopping just above her knees, a cigarette jaunty in her heavily rouged lips. A policeman dressed like an admiral directed traffic and seeing me put his hand up imperiously and made everyone stop so I could cross. I felt self-conscious, Alan’s coat was so long and heavy, but then I realized that no one could really see me, that there were so many people on the street I passed unnoticed. I liked that feeling. It made me think I had been dropped invisibly into a magic city that I could enjoy all I wanted without having to explain.
Elm Street was three blocks off Main, lined with small shops. All the display windows were decorated for Christmas, with wooden trains or hand-carved creches and tinsel-covered trees— the falling snow touched their glass with a delicate, fleecy pat. I stared in at all of them but they were nothing compared to the window of the last shop. I had to rub the frost with my glass to see inside. There was nothing displayed there but books and yet they were more colorful and happier looking than anything in the other windows, with their different sizes and shapes, the way they slanted against each other, supported each other, propped each other up. Some covers were coral and others were butter-colored or a very deep rose, and they blended into one long extravagant mural that ran right along the glass. By walking down it I could make out an ocean liner and doughboys and Lillian Gish and a man leading a camel and girls with parasols and an old woman walking hunched through a picket fence and a man with his hands on his hips staring defiantly from a cliff and President Harding and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding four skeleton steeds. The authors’ names made a flowing scroll of their own and I smiled when I found one I recognized. I had never seen so many books in one place at one time and when I considered that this was only the display window, that there were likely to be hundreds more inside, I felt dizzy from happiness and shyness combined.
The bell tinkled when I opened the door. I stamped my shoes on the mat, shook back my hair to make sure no flakes would fall on the books. A round turtle of a man was down on his knees searching a shelf near the cash register and a pleasant looking woman
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