The Sky Trail was steep and it was too late to walk two hours down Bear Valley to the coast. By taking the Limantour Road, Walter could get his mother to the top of the ridge, then walk with her through the huckleberry thickets and the Douglas firs. It was an easy path.
Somehow, they were swimming in the canals. Later this part seemed hazy, but somehow they were all there: Lila, her little boy, and James, a former student.
Autumn arrived with a general spray of autumn color. It wasn’t winter yet, but it would be; there was a hint in the air of the cold to follow.
The moist cheese on his blue-and-white porcelain, the Pinot.
I had been told that the interviewer was waiting for me outside in the hotel garden. The muffled oceanic roar of traffic rose steadily from the nearby road.
In the crucible of our family my sister burned like molten steel. Once I saw her arms outspread her legs hanging limp and useless wet saliva dripping from her tongue.
This would have been her favorite season in the Allegheny woods. The shadows of the trees were rickety, and the wind had sap in its scent. But last week, Ty had left; now one day decayed into the next.
The driver and I got a late start. I usually decide on these excursions the night before, but it was late in the morning when I informed the friend who was coming to visit me for the weekend that I had to cancel, it was absolutely necessary for me to cancel.
The party was a failure. I can’t even tell you what a failure it was. There are no words. Only a great pain in my chest when I wake up. On the veranda. It’s better when I sit in the chair.
I woke to several different noises, something being picked up and put down, a tap being turned on and off. What time is it? I said. It’s four a.m., said Mim. For a moment she was silhouetted in the bathroom door before the light went off and she was reabsorbed into the dark.
The last ones to work for dollars aroused hatred in the town, and some were subjected to regrettable acts of retribution. In our defense, it was an unusual time.