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Show page 17 time to shoot two games of Kelly pool before returning. Thereafter he displayed enough charm to assure himself frequent use of Edith's car. And he took her on several long rides in his ox-7n. The last ride with Junior left Edith with a sense of fulfillment, beautiful and starry-eyed. In the next two weeks she wrote Junior note after note begging him to see her again, a l l sad and hopeless u n t i l she ran into Mollie Pvice. One Eye Cato, in his one room tarpaper shack, sopped with a cold biscuit the last globule of fat from his plate, pushed the olate aside and nicked his teeth with a pine s p l i n t e r . The > vacant hole of his left eye gave a puckered, squinty look to that side of his face. His age, knowledge, wisdom, x-zere immeasurably indeterminate. He was as dark and as devious in his ways as a night prowling raccoon. He knew herbs, how to mix and prescribe: May apple, pokeroot, sassafras, wild elder, cherry bark. Herbs and t h e i r potency were his living; Cato reached to the far side of the table and pulled High John toward him. He had washed the root and had placed i t on the t a b l e to dry. It was small, nutbrox-m, the size and shape of a f i e l d mouse, with bumps and knots a l l over i t , as though something inside was trying to push out. I t had txvo tentacular sprouts near the bottom, like prongs of a clothespin. Odder than the r o o t ' s formation was the fact that nowhere on i t s surface was there evidence of a stem, nothing to indicate that it had ever borne a plant or a flower above ground. |
