in his creeping despair, the boy marveled a little at how these people spoke. When he tried, it was poor at best. All his words were poor clattery English like a stutterrer at the front of the class. He didn't even know how to begin, where was the whurl of his ignorant tongue. A spidery despair loomed over him. It seemed as if all the worlds ills and evils had come screaming into his head. Forboding seaped from all the gouls and hags and multy eyed creatures of his dark dreams. His dreams were heavy things. He imagined another world, peaceful and trankwel. The prairie was all around him. True there is always a creature out there that will be happy to lick and saver the curious wandrer. Bull elk roamed the plains and there were coogar to be seen in the hilly places if the roomers were correct. However this story captured a lot of disbelief in some places to be sure. 'Not a coogar been seen here abouts in fifty year' remarked the old timers. But the boy did not fear any animal. This was the country of his heart. He had a personal treasure he loved, which were black leather boots with canvis lining, a gift from the big hearted Lonnie Wright, who's strange fait we have seen earlier. 'A smigen a' bad news, lad' grinning sheepily. And in his boots he was a little of the full man he was yet to become, roaming the prairie and learning its ways, which were the ways of the horned lark and the rodent hunting hawk, the wild flowers and the sun hovering heavenly on the wheat. He had seen the small horned lark in its nest in the grass and weeds when it was just hatched even before it had its flight feathers when it was in danger from the natural hunger of others. But these thoughts of pity toward things that are less powerful than our selvs would not over power the shadowy rememberance of terrour. Through field and forest, dale and mountain, always on the move, like an Indian, like a short legged dwarf hidden in the tall grass, he wanted to feel the morning dew on his face and neck, he wanted to see the smokey stones of camp fires in the dawn. 'A still pool' they said to him. Were they being kindly or mean? The terrible truth is that it didn't matter. A still pool was a still pool. He dumb foundedly tried to speak. He listened, he heard, and he tried again. A strange laps of ability kept ocurring. It was like the depths of a failed skeem. 'Another hair brained skeem of yours, Orville!' This was his mother's voice echoing in his head. A good woman for all of that! It was the father eating a naw a' cheese he did not understand. It was the rath of a father for his only son, who's only crime was being there, doing his chors around the house and in the fields, the same ruteen day in and out. These were the careless wants of his boyhood. What things awaited? He neither knew nor cared to wonder. He only wished to free himself from this dredful woe of incomprehenshun. They spoke all around him and he couldn't make real sense of it. He wanted freely to yeeld but he couldn't get there or go across to them. The preacherman's anger was stamped in his eyes. He could read it like a book. It was the ominus stamp of doom. Not fury or natural pain did this straw haired boy fear but the doom of the night and the specters. Psyhcology! 'When you die you go away' his mother told him, but his father had a rigamaroll of dying, with specters and surprising visits. He tried to stiful his sobbs. He felt done in and then some. It was a dream but not a dream. The gift was not his, the whole language of the spirit which was greater than Latin or French was not to be seized in his pityfull mouth. His tongue was a rock, his ears were rocks.This was his queer discription of the situation, mumbled in his mind. He wanted to strike himself silly, but his hand was stade by the rathful look of the preacher. His arms and legs had gone to the wind, he was deaf and dumb. A jolting urge said 'Run!' His legs suddenly stirred up into speed not consulting his brain in the matter of where he should go. He sped out the creakey door and into the pouring rain. Streaks of lightning leaped across the sky. A terrible energy burst through him, the energy of panick and fear. He was a strong enough boy for his age and his legs took him capably over the sogging turf. All the land was gray. The sky was black. No where did he see the gentle prairie of his careless days. Lonnie Wright was long gone. He would have opened his door to any young wafe, even a bad one. There was no where to run but he ran. The farm to market road was mud itself. His shoes squished and the lumpy mud flew onto his clothes and hands. He looked in vane for familiar signs and safe places. No where did he see what he expected. Why couldn't he understand and speak? There was no answer that the living could give. Tongue tied! His fait was signed. He ran into the rainy distance, smaller and smaller. This was worse than a retched nightmare. It was the nightmare of real things, the fallen wonder of the world.
About the Author
Don DeLillo, who was born in 1936 in New York, is the author of nine highly acclaimed novels including
