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Show In November it became more fierce, a frigid penetrating wetness which blew against the windows and worked its way straight into stone. Yet the morning skies were clear, a fresh laundered blue; the sun a little farther away than the morning before, but always there, and shining. Then one afternoon Talma asked me if I would like to come to her house, her parents' house, for dinner. We were cleaning our tools so they wouldn't be clotted with clay the next morning, and Talma was smiling her usual shy smile. I told her I had already made plans to go to Ramala with some friends. She said she didn't mean tonight, but sometime. I said sure, of course, sometime. It got colder. One night, in early December, it snowed. It melted on the ground, and the next morning was the same as always, by noon I was down to one shirt, but it reminded me that the worst of winter was yet to come. When Talma again invited me to her house I said I was just getting a bad cold and felt I shouldn't expose anyone. The first time I ever saw her anyplace other than at work was on a Friday afternoon in the middle of December. We had quit at noon as we did each Friday, and I had gone to see a movie in New Jerusalem. It was a rerun of The Longest Day, and it had drawn a huge crowd even through a freezing rain which lashed sideways in the wind. I had arrived late, and was stuck outside getting soaked; I didn't see her until I found myself protected by her umbrella. "Ian Alden, you will be more sick." She was with three or four friends, from school she said, and |
