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Show •160 home-grown devils; I was self-possessed. I went over to pick up the toaster and in its dented shiny case I saw the reflection of a furious face-my own. I ran outside, leaped over Adam's vegetable patches, trotted past the blackberry bushes, all the way to the very end of my father's property. There I squatted down next to the creek. Cottonwood trees leaned inward over the trickle of water; bamboo planted by a previous owner had grown out of control and spread clattering stalks everywhere; finely-fringed ferns exploded out of the wet black soil like green fireworks. All that remained of my spectacular sunset was a long streak of the deepest purple stretched from one end of the sky to the other; I looked down and saw it reflected in the water at my feet, a winding scarf of heavenly light trapped between two blank shores. What had I done for Carlo since I came home, except watch him and feel puzzled and grieved by his odd behavior? Saving him from his spacy leap down to the top of Mt. Hood was pretty well cancelled by my having lured him up there in the first place. Without my insistence on doing what Adam wanted we could have buried our dad quietly at home. Or I could have gone up alone, if I hadn't been haunted, as I have been since I was a little kid, by this queer tenacious notion of family family family, which made me drag everybody along. |