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Show 65 Leah spoke to the birds. What caused weather like this? Leah wondered. What was the source? What had to happen in the atmosphere for it to turn then turn again with this kind of randomness, this kind of fierce intent? Leah thought about her body. About her fingers. She stood in the weather just a brief moment looking at her fingers, saying to herself that there was no feeling in them, but thinking at the same time of all the work, all the yes-loving, very dutiful tasks, those same fingers had done. She reached up. She tried to knot. The twine shivered, twisted. The foodball started to drop; she caught it, hoisted it up again, talked angrily at her fingers: "Tie . . .. tie . . . stop it! ... tie this." Somehow her fingers obeyed. She ran to the house. She stood inside and shook her hands out, shook and shook them again to get feeling back, to feel circulation. "Hunt, I hate you; Hunt, I hate you," she repeated. Outside she-could see the birds, swarmed around her caring for them, swarmed around her bound creation of seed and food. It made her blood open. Made her heart yield. She could feel the passage of her pulse, from her wrist to her fingers and back again. And then spreading out. And she could see that the temperature was now below forty: thirty eight; no, thirty-seven. Leah watched the birds feeding, looked with immense pleasure: grossbeaks, towhees, chickadees, jays. "Oh, I just love you," she said; "I really love you. I do." The thermometer, just outside her window was at thirty-six. Climbing their wide, hardwood stairs, she played a conversation back from the morning. -Why Rye? What made you think of this? 'Seaside Hotels'? --I was just thinking. |
