ragged, mangy thing, with a bald patch running from its snout to between its eye sockets, which either had been pitted of their original glass eyes or simply left empty. The previous winter, George had inserted marbles in the sockets, one a milky green with gold sparkles, the other obsidian black. The black eye made the bear look alive. The milky green eye made her look as if she were half-blind, or as if she had one eye on another world, since the gold sparkles in the green looked like a tiny whirlpool of stars spinning inside a cataract. George took a bite of his apple and watched Joe, who jumped on the rug and pretended he was riding the bear and then rolled off it as if it had bucked him.
Stop that fussing around, Joe, Kathleen said.
Joe sprang up, smiling, and stepped toward George. He pointed back to the rug and said, George, that Ursula looks like she's fixing for to bite me!
George waited until Saturday to run away. He hitched Prince Edward to his father's wagon and led the animal and wagon out to the road, holding the reins tightly and walking right next to the mule and whispering to it, urging it, shushing it. When he was out of sight of the house, he mounted the wagon and snapped the reins and said, Hya, boy, not in the manner of his father, who merely flicked the leather leads and made a clicking sound with his tongue against his back teeth, but of his friend Ray Morrell's father, who talked with a strange accent George had never heard before and would never hear again, and who seemed to have stepped out of some bank of mist on the other side of which was, perfectly preserved-or, not even preserved, but still actual -the previous century. Ray's father Ezra, owned sixteen oxen. When he drove them, he said, Hya, hya, boys or, Work it, ye dogs. Mr. Morrell was the only person George ever knew who used the word ye.
So George said, Hya, boy, and Prince Edward barely noticed and started to walk at a pace a little slower than usual, as if registering his awareness that this was not his usual route, not his usual driver, not his usual cue. The sunny weekend morning, the lackadaisical mule, and the extra heaviness of the slow rate imparted by the bulk of the wagon conspired to dilute George's half notions of speed and flight and pursuit and evasion. In his mind, he, during school the previous days, had seen trees flying by, alternating trunks and light flicking by. He saw hounds baying and scrambling past a thicket of reeds and cat-o'-nine-tails at the edge of water and, after they had passed, the stalks parting and his own head rising half out of the water, alert, sharp, animallike. Now, he inched along in full daylight atop a wagon as big as a house and as noisy as a suitcase full of Turkish cymbals. For the first time, he wondered about what all of those drawers were packed with. He realized that he had formed a vague conception of the wagon's inventory-brushes, mops, pots, pipes, socks, suspenders, polish-a single picture that appeared in his mind whenever he thought about the wagon. It came up like a road sign, a billboard, or an advertisement-simple and all-encompassing and, he now understood, cursory and distorted. He peered over the side of the wagon. I couldn't even say what wood the drawers are made from, he thought.
When the turnoff to his friend Ray Morrell's farm came up, George took it without thinking. He was nearly at the old curing house, now a toolshed, or at least shed for odd planks and hoops and handles and blades of wood and iron for which there was no longer use, each artifact having split or worn out or dulled to the very end of usefulness, so that not even Ray's father, the most frugal farmer in a countryside of frugal and impoverished farmers, could nail it, tie it, or hammer it back into place and eke out one more execution of whatever task the piece of wood or metal was supposed to perform. The curing house was at the end of another turnoff along the dirt tracks that led from the main road
Stop that fussing around, Joe, Kathleen said.
Joe sprang up, smiling, and stepped toward George. He pointed back to the rug and said, George, that Ursula looks like she's fixing for to bite me!
George waited until Saturday to run away. He hitched Prince Edward to his father's wagon and led the animal and wagon out to the road, holding the reins tightly and walking right next to the mule and whispering to it, urging it, shushing it. When he was out of sight of the house, he mounted the wagon and snapped the reins and said, Hya, boy, not in the manner of his father, who merely flicked the leather leads and made a clicking sound with his tongue against his back teeth, but of his friend Ray Morrell's father, who talked with a strange accent George had never heard before and would never hear again, and who seemed to have stepped out of some bank of mist on the other side of which was, perfectly preserved-or, not even preserved, but still actual -the previous century. Ray's father Ezra, owned sixteen oxen. When he drove them, he said, Hya, hya, boys or, Work it, ye dogs. Mr. Morrell was the only person George ever knew who used the word ye.
So George said, Hya, boy, and Prince Edward barely noticed and started to walk at a pace a little slower than usual, as if registering his awareness that this was not his usual route, not his usual driver, not his usual cue. The sunny weekend morning, the lackadaisical mule, and the extra heaviness of the slow rate imparted by the bulk of the wagon conspired to dilute George's half notions of speed and flight and pursuit and evasion. In his mind, he, during school the previous days, had seen trees flying by, alternating trunks and light flicking by. He saw hounds baying and scrambling past a thicket of reeds and cat-o'-nine-tails at the edge of water and, after they had passed, the stalks parting and his own head rising half out of the water, alert, sharp, animallike. Now, he inched along in full daylight atop a wagon as big as a house and as noisy as a suitcase full of Turkish cymbals. For the first time, he wondered about what all of those drawers were packed with. He realized that he had formed a vague conception of the wagon's inventory-brushes, mops, pots, pipes, socks, suspenders, polish-a single picture that appeared in his mind whenever he thought about the wagon. It came up like a road sign, a billboard, or an advertisement-simple and all-encompassing and, he now understood, cursory and distorted. He peered over the side of the wagon. I couldn't even say what wood the drawers are made from, he thought.
When the turnoff to his friend Ray Morrell's farm came up, George took it without thinking. He was nearly at the old curing house, now a toolshed, or at least shed for odd planks and hoops and handles and blades of wood and iron for which there was no longer use, each artifact having split or worn out or dulled to the very end of usefulness, so that not even Ray's father, the most frugal farmer in a countryside of frugal and impoverished farmers, could nail it, tie it, or hammer it back into place and eke out one more execution of whatever task the piece of wood or metal was supposed to perform. The curing house was at the end of another turnoff along the dirt tracks that led from the main road
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