because of the sudden rush, tried to gain a moment. “When would be the best time to call?”
“You’ll know. Hurry, now. I have things to do.”
Through the closing door, Peg got a last glimpse of Robin’s face, distorted and handsome, slipping into an inward-turning relaxation as he let go the concentration that he had assumed shortly after she had arrived.
Like a man leaving children
, she thought.
In the elevator, with wonder in his voice, Mel said, “He thinks he’s mature. He’s just—just sick. Sick and old.”
“I don’t know what he is,” Peg said wearily. “Some of what he said sounded like a delirium. And yet—I suppose a discussion of the Döppler shift would sound fairly delirious to a fourth-grade child.I don’t know, Mel, I just don’t know. I can’t think.… He seems—quite sure.…”
“We’ll do what we can,” said Mel. The doors slid open. “Peg—”
“Shh.” She took his arm.
Robin English had talents and, lately, skills.
His will divided a large fortune between Drs. Wenzell and Warfield. His body and his brain were a mystery and a treasure to the institute to which he donated them. The mystery lay in the cause of death; the body was aberrated but still healthy, and it had simply stopped. A skill … Robin English was not the first man in the world to have that power, nor the only one. All men have it to a degree; the will to live is its complement, and daily works greater miracles than this simple thing of saying “Stop.”
There was a terrible time when Peg and Mel burst back into the apartment on Riverside Drive, and after. But when enough time had gone by, it was all part of the many things they shared, and sharing is good. They shared their pain and their pleasure in their memories of him, as they shared an ineradicable sense of guilt. In due season they shared an understanding of Robin’s death; it came to them that his decision to die had been made with his frightening burst of laughter, that day. Later still they understood his reason, though that took longer, in spite of the fact that he had written it on the paper he had tucked into Peg’s handbag.
And they share, now, the simple wisdom he wrote; not a definition of maturity, but a delineation of the Grail in which it is contained:
“Enough is maturity—”
Tiny and the Monster
S HE
had
TO find out about Tiny—
everything
about Tiny.
They were bound to call him Tiny. The name was good for a laugh when he was a pup, and many times afterward.
He was a Great Dane, unfashionable with his long tail, smooth and glossy in the brown coat which fit so snugly over his heavily muscled shoulders and chest. His eyes were big and brown and his feet were big and black; he had a voice like thunder and a heart ten times his own great size.
He was born in the Virgin Islands, on St. Croix, which is a land of palm trees and sugar, of soft winds and luxuriant undergrowth whispering with the stealthy passage of pheasant and mongoose. There were rats in the ruins of the ancient estate houses that stood among the foothills—ruins with slave-built walls forty inches thick and great arches of weathered stone. There was pasture land where the field mice ran, and brooks asparkle with gaudy blue minnows.
But where in St. Croix had he learned to be so strange?
When Tiny was a puppy, all feet and ears, he learned many things. Most of these things were kinds of respect. He learned to respect that swift, vengeful piece of utter engineering called a scorpion when one of them whipped its barbed tail into his inquiring nose. He learned to respect the heavy deadness of the air about him that preceded a hurricane, for he knew that it meant hurry and hammering and utmost obedience from every creature on the estate. He learned to respect the justice of sharing, for he was pulled from the teat and from the trough when he crowded the others of his litter. He was the largest.
These things, all of them, he learned as respects. He was
“You’ll know. Hurry, now. I have things to do.”
Through the closing door, Peg got a last glimpse of Robin’s face, distorted and handsome, slipping into an inward-turning relaxation as he let go the concentration that he had assumed shortly after she had arrived.
Like a man leaving children
, she thought.
In the elevator, with wonder in his voice, Mel said, “He thinks he’s mature. He’s just—just sick. Sick and old.”
“I don’t know what he is,” Peg said wearily. “Some of what he said sounded like a delirium. And yet—I suppose a discussion of the Döppler shift would sound fairly delirious to a fourth-grade child.I don’t know, Mel, I just don’t know. I can’t think.… He seems—quite sure.…”
“We’ll do what we can,” said Mel. The doors slid open. “Peg—”
“Shh.” She took his arm.
Robin English had talents and, lately, skills.
His will divided a large fortune between Drs. Wenzell and Warfield. His body and his brain were a mystery and a treasure to the institute to which he donated them. The mystery lay in the cause of death; the body was aberrated but still healthy, and it had simply stopped. A skill … Robin English was not the first man in the world to have that power, nor the only one. All men have it to a degree; the will to live is its complement, and daily works greater miracles than this simple thing of saying “Stop.”
There was a terrible time when Peg and Mel burst back into the apartment on Riverside Drive, and after. But when enough time had gone by, it was all part of the many things they shared, and sharing is good. They shared their pain and their pleasure in their memories of him, as they shared an ineradicable sense of guilt. In due season they shared an understanding of Robin’s death; it came to them that his decision to die had been made with his frightening burst of laughter, that day. Later still they understood his reason, though that took longer, in spite of the fact that he had written it on the paper he had tucked into Peg’s handbag.
And they share, now, the simple wisdom he wrote; not a definition of maturity, but a delineation of the Grail in which it is contained:
“Enough is maturity—”
Tiny and the Monster
S HE
had
TO find out about Tiny—
everything
about Tiny.
They were bound to call him Tiny. The name was good for a laugh when he was a pup, and many times afterward.
He was a Great Dane, unfashionable with his long tail, smooth and glossy in the brown coat which fit so snugly over his heavily muscled shoulders and chest. His eyes were big and brown and his feet were big and black; he had a voice like thunder and a heart ten times his own great size.
He was born in the Virgin Islands, on St. Croix, which is a land of palm trees and sugar, of soft winds and luxuriant undergrowth whispering with the stealthy passage of pheasant and mongoose. There were rats in the ruins of the ancient estate houses that stood among the foothills—ruins with slave-built walls forty inches thick and great arches of weathered stone. There was pasture land where the field mice ran, and brooks asparkle with gaudy blue minnows.
But where in St. Croix had he learned to be so strange?
When Tiny was a puppy, all feet and ears, he learned many things. Most of these things were kinds of respect. He learned to respect that swift, vengeful piece of utter engineering called a scorpion when one of them whipped its barbed tail into his inquiring nose. He learned to respect the heavy deadness of the air about him that preceded a hurricane, for he knew that it meant hurry and hammering and utmost obedience from every creature on the estate. He learned to respect the justice of sharing, for he was pulled from the teat and from the trough when he crowded the others of his litter. He was the largest.
These things, all of them, he learned as respects. He was
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