Sarah came out with the cream, saw the abandoned basket of food, a cat within three feet of it, and her husband walking quickly down the road, crossing over a fence, off into a field, looking every once in a while into space with his binoculars.“Get out of here,” she yelled, rescuing the basket and sending the cat off down below the fence. Sarah secretly didn’t like cats and felt they were much too sneaky, and where some people thought they were independent and cunning, she thought they were stupid, vile, insensitive and cowardly. She threw a stick at it and it went across the road; then she looked around quickly for fear Mrs. Miller might have seen her. Satisfied, she went over to John’s Ford, put the basket and blanket in the rumble seat and got into the passenger’s side, easing herself down onto the soft leather. Wearing blue jeans was fun. She tied her scarf more tightly under her chin and just sat. No thoughts came to her, or pictures. She could see her husband coming back down the road, feel the warm sun, smell fall, hear noises and find small prism colors in the windshield; but vacantly, taking a mild pleasure in through all her senses, passively enjoying being alive—taking a vacation from motivation, interest and control.
John got in and started the motor. “What’s up, fat-face?” he asked, easing out of the driveway, smiling inwardly at the sound of his mellow-toned muffler.
“Just sitting,” said Sarah, putting her feet up on the glove compartment and accepting her whole self back. They almost never rode in the old Ford and when they did it was a pleasant novelty. It was a convertible with running boards, mechanical brakes and red paint. It made her feel important to ride in it, and waving at people from it was especially nice.
Still, she couldn’t bring herself to wave at Ronny McClean, who stood in the ditch in front of his parents’ house at the edge of Sharon. John would. She looked into her faded denim knees and put her feet down.
“I wonder what it’s like to be like that,” asked John.
“Don’t talk about it. I’ll get upset.”
“One day he rode his bicycle over to Frytown and they finally found him in Lloyd Brenneman’s fruit cellar, eating a little banquet he had spread out on the floor. That’s the farthest he’s beenfrom home in forty years. That was . . . let’s see . . . thirty or thirty-two years ago.”
“Don’t talk about it, John. It’s awful.”
“No it isn’t. At least, if you grew up with him. He’s never been any different.”
“That makes it worse.”
“It doesn’t. I kind of like him. He’s all right.”
“ You don’t like him. You just say that because you think that’d be good to feel that way—I’m sure you have a secret ambition to be a saint.”
“Sarah, that’s unfair. I only—”
“I know,” she said, and moved over closer to him. “It’s just, you know, how you are. Being bad isn’t so serious.”
“Yes it is.”
“You worry too much.”
“Besides, I do like him.”
“Why can’t you just accept that a madman gives you the creeps? You never learned to accept things and forget them.”
John’s voice rose to nearly an argumentative level. “It’d make more sense for you to learn to accept that there’re people like Ronny, and accept that it’s not so bad if there are. It’s possible to like someone for—”
“John, let’s don’t talk about it.”
“Not talking about it doesn’t solve anything.”
“There isn’t anything to be solved.” Both sat in a gloomy silence. John felt the beginning of what could materialize into a roaring headache. The air seemed too wet, too hot, and his most cherished car seemed made of wood and corrugated fasteners. He drove faster. They turned off the blacktop onto gravel, and the dust flew.
Two hundred feet in the air a large bird looked down on them. At that height the wind covered all the noise from the ground, and he could not hear the muffler or the popping of the gravel against the tires. Only the motion, and the dust stretching out behind the red car like so many giant balloons. He was toohigh to be hunting, cruising in long circles. He veered slightly to intersect with a lesser angel, the sensation passing through him in all its colors, and quite out of his own control he let out a joyful krreeeee. Below, the car slowed down and stopped, the dust catching up with it and blowing on ahead. Lights flashing: two tiny glass reflections. He swung off toward the west, the hayfields and long-grass pasture.
“It’s a broad-wing! I’m sure of it. Look at him—just look at him! Oh man, can you imagine him up there, the wind and—There he goes. Just look at him.”
Sarah was turned, unhurriedly going through the basket, looking for her own pair of field glasses, wondering if she hadn’t forgotten them.
“Here, take these, quick, look at him!”
Sarah adjusted the left eyepiece one half a digit to the plus side.
“Hurry up!”
She put them to her eyes, couldn’t find the bird, took them down, relocated it and brought the glasses back up.
“That’s nice,” she said.
“He’s too far gone now,” said
