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heard themselves sobbing and crying. Only after a long time were they able to speak.
«It got away, it did, didn't it?»
«Yes…»
«It's all right, isn't it?»
«Yes… yes…»
«It didn't fall back…?»
«No, no, it's all right, Bob's all right, it's all right.»
They stood away from each other at last.
He touched his face with his hand and looked at his wet fingers. «I'll be damned,» he said. «I'll be damned.»
They waited another five and then ten minutes until the darkness in their heads, the retina, ached with a million specks of fiery salt. Then they had to close their eyes.
«Well,» she said, «now let's go in.»
He could not move. Only his hand reached a long way out by itself to find the lawn-mower handle. He saw what his hand had done and said, «There's just a little more to do…»
«But you can't see.»
«Well enough,» he said. «I must finish this. Then we'll sit on the porch awhile before we turn in.»
He helped her put the chairs on the porch and sat her down and then walked back out to put his hands on the guide bar of the lawn mower. The lawn mower. A wheel in a wheel. A simple machine which you held in your hands, which you sent on ahead with a rush and a clatter while you walked behind with your quiet philosophy. Racket, followed by warm silence. Whirling wheel, then soft footfall of thought.
I'm a billion years old, he told himself; I'm one minute old. I'm one inch, no ten thousand miles, tall. I look down and can't see my feet they're so far off and gone away below.
He moved the lawn mower. The grass showering up fell softly around him; he relished and savoured it and felt that he was all mankind bathing at last in the fresh waters of the fountain of youth.
Thus bathed, he remembered the song again about the wheel and the faith and the grace of God being way up there in the middle of the sky where that single star, among a million motionless stars, dared to move and keep on moving.
Then he finished cutting the grass.
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