every current-events reprise; it was always there as threat, and
now it was going to happen, that day, then, there, to us. The
school bus was bright yellow with black markings on the outside, just the way they are now, but everything was different because we were kids who knew that we were going to be
cremated and killed in the same split second. I could see my
arm withered, the flesh coming off in paper-thin layers, while
my chest was already ash, and there’d be no blood - it would
evaporate before we’d even be dead. Inside the bus the boys
were up front, boisterous, fil ed with bravado. I guess they
expected to pull the missiles out of the air one by one, new
superheroes. The girls were serious and upset. Even those who
didn’t like each other talked quietly and respectful y. There
was one laugh: a joke about the only girl in the school we
were sure was no virgin. She was famous as the school whore,
and she was widely envied though shunned on a normal day,
since she knew the big secret; but on this day, the last day, she
could have been crowned queen, sovereign of the girls. She
represented everything we wanted: she knew how to do it and
how it felt; she knew a lot of boys; she was really pret y and
laughed a lot, even though the other girls would not talk to
her. She had beautiful y curly brown hair and an hourglass
figure, but thin. She was Eve’s true descendant, the symbol of
what it meant to bite the apple. Tomorrow she would go back
to being the local slut, but on the day we were al going to die
she was Cinderel a an hour before midnight. I wished that
I could grow up, but I could not entirely remember why. I
waited with my schoolmates to die.
David Smith
He was one of the United States' greatest sculptors, not paid
attention to now but in my high school and college years he
was a giant of an artist. He was especially at ached to
Bennington College, where he had taught and near where he
lived. One night I went to a lecture by art critic Clement
Greenberg, probably the most famous visual arts writer of his
time. Greenberg was a name-dropping guy, and most of his
lecture was about the habits of his bet ers, the artists he
deigned to crown king or prince. At some point during the
lecture, Greenberg said that great sculptors never drew. A
huge man stood up, overshadowing the audience, and in a
deep bass said, “I do. ' While Greenberg turned beet red and
apologized, the big guy talked about how important drawing
was, how sensual it was; he gave specifics about how it felt to
draw; he said that drawing taught one how to see and that
