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Show 429 One of her legs had dropped out of the skirt and lay thrashing on the ground, while the other one, no longer able to carry the body in the normal way, bent at the knee once and took a weak little hop, and suddenly one arm dropped off at the elbow, and the fingers scattered from the hand like seeds. The torso wrenched apart at the line marked by the belt of her skirt, and while the skirt itself flapped off toward the trees the pelvis toppled from the leg that held it up and bounched away like a furry soccer ball. Her thorax, with its remaining arm and the stub of another, hung motionless while the wind ripped the blouse from it, and then splintered into ribs and dropped to the grass, spread too far apart to come together again. Two bent little old men came out from under the apron of low branches on the spruce trees and hobbled over. One of them carried a short spade and began digging a hole in the lawn while the other one hobbled back and forth picking up the arm and head, a leg, a handful of phalanges, and dropped them in the hole. They pushed the dirt back into place and adjusted the turf, and then, after peering into the gathering darkness in every direction, they bent low and embraced each other around the shoulders, their foreheads and noses together, and danced a fast jig on the spot where they had dug, and ran off into the trees again, holding the spade between them. He waited a while longer, until the line of cars had loosened and thinned out, and then went back to his Volkswagen and drove home to his secret life. * * * * * * It was an unimportant gallery on Crenshaw, and he had to share it with two other painters, and his first name had been misspelled on the mailed invitations, but it was his first exhibition, and it lasted for a |