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Show 88 Hall is not Hunt. He is Hunt's imagining. Hall is a person coming of age in a cocoon of mystery. And what Hall has sought, in Hunt's history, is to find some remarkable power JJT_ that mystery: some beauty, a joining. Hunt imagines Florida, though, giving Hall only hints. A moment, playing football, where he became the contact. The anesthesia of ocean salt, inhaled, striking his brain. The morning songs of wild birds. And Hunt knows, beyond imagining, that when Hall first touched a woman, gravity suspended: Hall felt more touched than touching; Hall felt electrocuted. Hunt imagines Hall with a history, from that point, of migrain headaches. Then Hunt imagines Hall at Florida State. Leah opens her mouth, beside Hunt, as if to speak; as though, in sleep, to make more room for her breathing. But Hunt imagines Hall and science, hypnotized almost by the equation signa-ture:^.: parts, becoming whole while the whole becomes parts, equilibria. Hunt imagines Hall writing equation after equation. He even imagines Hall writing a.poem about a wild parrot: ". . . in sweet, painless equilibrium with your color and song." Then, on the June night of Hall's graduation, Hall uses a key he's been given as an honors student and lets himself into the chemistry building. In the lab, with only the familiar quadrangle lights outside shedding visibility (like the motel lights now in Benton Harbor), Hall moves besfde long reagen-bottle shelves, touching not so much their labels as their seasoned glass, breathing acetone, so sweet and thick amdist the equipment shadows of the space. And Hall, Hunt knows, feels himself trapped, uneducated and on the edge of tears. So Hall begins a journey. He goes to Atlanta and works in an optics lab. Nights, he visits disco bars. Hall has few friends and gets confused about |
