| OCR Text |
Show 124 and the cadence was unprepared and perfunctory. Scoffer though he was, Lorin's great-uncle was a l e r t to the mystic rhythm of threes. His very bones t o ld him there wouldn't be another repetition of the melody, and he lay on his side in despair, watching sideways as the young man stood up, cast him a pale glance, and began to change. Lorin's great-uncle didn't want to watch t h i s , but he was too frightened to close his eyes. The young man's fingertips began to run, and presently resolved themselves into the strings of goo that had hardened months ago on the wall after dripping from the impact. The partitioned quarters of his face separated into the edge and corner of a picture frame whose glass sheet, covering a landscape of cypresses, glinted around clustered flyspecks; a torn edge of wallpaper, disclosing brown streaks; the wrinkled flue of a heating stove where it bent to enter the c e i l i n g ; and a pale eye that burned cold against the top panel of the door. His high collar and frock coat hardened into moonlight etched with shadows of spattered mud on the window, and the coat's buttons f l i t t e d back and forth over the garbage, droning f r a n t i c a l l y . The horn had uncurled and now proceeded smoothly down the wall ahead of a silvery t r a i l, i ts soft l i t t l e horns veering gently l e f t and r i g h t. Lorin had always regretted that the story didn't end well. His great-uncle did not open his confectionery or his barber shop the next day. He remained in his house with the doors locked while his wife crept from room to room wringing her hands and l i s t e n i ng to the melodeon as again and again he assaulted i t , picking out notes only to discard them, singing in a cracked baritone until he had committed to memory a melodic phrase she had never heard before, only to shake his head, get up and pound his f i s t into the w a l l , s i t down and start again. By midnight, having eaten nothing all day but drunk an alarming amount, he had reconstructed the hymn-it was a |
