OCR Text |
Show 43 free of whatever had jammed it, the giraffe across the street had resolved into pockets of ivy clinging to a pair of brick walls. He stood up straight and walked with his head high across the remaining few feet of sidewalk into the street and through the hot rush of noontime traffic. He stopped when he had reached the middle of the far lane and looked back at the crumpled heap on the sidewalk. The two elderly women had reached it while he was not looking One of them was bending over it, her hands pressed to the sides of her wrinkled face, while the other continued to lean on the handle of her shopping cart and stared, her head trembling with a palsy. A green Studebaker pulled out of the line of traffic and slammed to a stop at the curb, forcing the car behind it to swerve into the path of cars in the adjacent lane. A man jumped out and rushed over to the inert form and knelt beside it while the women asked him what had happened to that young man. Several people came running across the park. Lorin drifted back to watch. He found himself feeling faintly embarrassed at the fatuous smile he saw on his face when they rolled him onto his back, so he turned his attention to the crowd of onlookers who had gathered. Two other cars had stopped at the curb and their drivers were running over, and a little old man from one of the houses where the giraffe had been was hobbling across the street, holding up a frail hand to stop the cars bearing down on him. Sooner or later Lorin expected to see someone he knew, but so far they were all faces of strangers. Three teenage girls wearing shorts and halters came through the trees to look at him. Two of them were smoking cigarettes and the other was ugly and chewed gum. He didn't know any of them either. The man who had stopped first told them to find a telephone somewhere in the park and call the fire department and they drifted away. One of them looked back. Lorin didn't think they were going to look for a phone at all. A police car went by without stopping. Some men in service station uniforms |