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Show •120 right hand, his eyebrows and beard were gray with stone-dust. "Where have you been?" he said. He wasn't seeing me clearly; his mind was still on the work. "It's late, isn't it? Where's Jacob?" "How should I know?" I said. "Asleep probably." We contemplated each other-my father wild-eyed, driven by visions, me in my wet school-clothes with wood shavings still clinging to them. Adam's shirt was too small; the sleeves rode high above the powerful bony'wrists. His clever hands hung down as if they too were puzzled by our sudden encounter. After a minute or two the slightly maniacal light dimmed in his eyes and he began to look angry. Remembering that night made me sad. I reached the place where the tracks passed right above our house, along the crest of the ridge. Twenty-five years ago there had been a stand of white fir ninety feet tall guarding the slope down to the road; one afternoon a freight-train hotbox had set the hill on fire. It had grown back in rough grass, clumps of wild rose, vine maple and poison oak; blackberry creepers lay on the ground, long as bullwhips. It was a disorderly savage vegetation, useless to man but beautiful under some lights, in certain seasons. I walked the top of the rail and tried to pretend to myself that it was a tightwire strung a thousand feet up, but there was after all only a six-inch drop to the trackside cinders, and I stepped down again. |