a literary commonplace

Here was a yellow and blue, glass and steel machine, belching popcorn into a cauldron of butter and salt. Enoch approached, already with his purse out, sorting his money. His purse was a long gray leather pouch, tied at the top with a drawstring. It was one he had stolen from his daddy and he treasured it because it was the only thing he owned now that his daddy had touched (besides himself).

And what then? For she felt that he was still looking at her, but that his look had changed. He wanted something—wanted the thing she always found it so difficult to give him; wanted her to tell him that she loved him. And that, no, she could not do. He found talking so much easier than she did. He could say things—she never could. So naturally it was always he that said the things, and then for some reason he would mind this suddenly, and would reproach her. A heartless woman he called her; she never told him that she loved him. But it was not so—it was not so. It was only that she never could say what she felt. Was there no crumb on his coat?Nothing she could do for him? Getting up, she stood at the window with the reddish-brown stocking in her hands, partly to turn away from him, partly because she remembered how beautiful it often is—the sea at night. But she knew that he had turned his head as she turned; he was watching her. She knew that he was thinking, You are more beautiful than ever. And she felt herself very beautiful. Will you not tell me just for once that you love me? He was thinking that, for he was roused, what with Minta and his book, and its being the end of the day and their having quarrelled about going to the Lighthouse. But she could not do it; she could not say it. Then, knowing that he was watching her, instead of saying anything she turned, holding her stocking, and looked at him. And as she looked at him she began to smile, for though she had not said a word, he knew, of course he knew, that she loved him. He could not deny it. And smiling she looked out of the window and said (thinking to herself, Nothing on earth can equal this happiness)— "Yes, you were right. It's going to be wet tomorrow. You won't be able to go." And she looked at him smiling. For she had triumphed again. She had not said it: yet he knew.

His grandfather had traveled three counties in a Ford automobile. Every fourth Saturday he had driven into Eastrod as if he were just in time to save them all from Hell, and he was shouting before he had the car door open. People gathered around his Ford because he seemed to dare them to. He would climb up on the nose of it and preach from there and sometimes he would climb onto the top of it and shout down at them. They were like stones! he would shout. But Jesus had died to redeem them! Jesus was so soul-hungry that He had died, one death for all, but He would have died every soul’s death for one! Did they understand that? Did they understand that for each stone soul, He would have died ten million deaths, had His arms and legs stretched on the cross and nailed ten million times for one of them?

He had a seductive touch; she moved closer to him and he put his arms around her. He caressed her as if he were trying to discover the places she most inhabited — not romantically, but tenderly, with a sense of exploration. She was not aroused, exactly, but it was pleasant; it had been a long time since anyone had touched her like this. She murmured, "The way you touch reminds me of my mother." "How so?" "Her touch is very seductive. I don't even like her, but when she starts to touch me, I suddenly become totally vulnerable to her. It's frightening." He liked this a lot. "That's beautiful," he said.

“I was after a seventeen-year-old belly dancer who was always in the company of a boy who claimed to be her brother, but he wasn't her brother, he was just somebody who was in love with her, and she let him hang around because life can be that way. I was in love with her, too. But she was still in love with a man who'd recently gone to prison.”

“Exhausted, his feet clotted with pain, he sat down at the curbside to take off his shoes. He closed his eyes to avoid seeing his hands and fumbled with the laces of the heavy high-topped shoes. The nurse had tied them into a double knot, the way one does for children, and Shadrack, long unaccustomed to the manipulation of intricate things, could not get them loose. Uncoordinated, his fingernails tore away at the knots. He fought a rising hysteria that was not merely anxiety to free his aching feet; his very life depended on the release of the knots. Suddenly without raising his eyelids, he began to cry. Twenty-two years old, weak, hot, frightened, not daring to acknowledge the fact that he didn’t even know who or what he was…with no past, no language, no tribe, no source, no address book, no comb, no pencil, no clock, no pocket handkerchief, no rug, no bed, no can opener, no faded postcard, no soap, no key, no tobacco pouch, no soiled underwear and nothing nothing nothing to do…he was sure of one thing only: the unchecked monstrosity of his hands. He cried soundlessly at the curbside of a small Midwestern town wondering where the window was, and the river, and the soft voices just outside the door…"

Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead. We knew. That's what gave her such power over us. The doctor took her into a room with a desk at the end of the hall, and from under the closed door a slab of brilliance radiated as if, by some stupendous process, diamonds were being incinerated in there. What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere.

The shooter let himself into our elementary school through the open side door. Marching, serious, rifles and ammunition packed on his shoulders. Marisol hid in the art room closet with three other kids—they told me that later. Then the colors of the kids get smeared together in my head. Miss Evans was shot too.

What he’d got was too much love in his heart and too much love even yet to deliver. His capacities were in this way overburdened, he told the girl. An excess of feeling was the most terrible curse. He had sold himself to emotion young and never found the receipt. He was essentially in a type of eternal adolescence. He was susceptible to a heated glance across the room—even still—and to the potency of cheap music. The world was full of these enticements if you knew where to look for them. He was too old for all of it now, he said, and please don’t protest the fact. He wondered if he had not in some fundamental ways laid waste to his life. He was not a serious man, he said. And yes sometimes it all became very bleak, especially in the small hours, and sometimes, in truth, he could only see one way out.

You can always find pain and suffering in this life, but why look for it? Before you went to college and got them degrees I had no idea there was something called women's studies that would teach you to poke around under the skin of women. Don't you know we need our skin to cover what's underneath, to protect us from the burn of air and sunlight? Women get themselves hurt every day—men mess with girls in this life, they always have, always will—but there's no sense making hard luck and misery your life's work.

I’d wound Big Hans up tight. I was ready to jump but when ma said she’d get the whiskey it surprised him like it surprised me, and he ran down. Ma never went near the old man when he was sleeping it off. Not any more. Not for years. The first thing every morning when she washed her face she could see the scar on her chin where he’d cut her with a boot cleat, and maybe she saw him heaving it again, the dirty sock popping out as it flew. It should have been nearly as easy for her to remember that as it was for Big Hans to remember going after the ax while he was still spattered with Pa’s sour yellow sick insides. No you won’t, Big Hans said. Yes, Hans, if they’re needed, ma said. Hans shook his head but neither of us tried to stop her. If we had, then one of us would have had to go instead. Hans rubbed the kid with more snow . . . rubbed . . . rubbed. I’ll get more snow, I said. I took the pail and shovel and went out on the porch. I don’t know where ma went. I thought she’d gone upstairs and expected to hear she had. She had surprised Hans like she had surprised me when she said she’d go, and then she surprised him again when she came back so quick like she must have, because when I came in with the snow she was there with a bottle with three white feathers on its label and Hans was holding it angrily by the throat. Oh he was being queer and careful, pawing about in the drawer and holding the bottle like a snake at the length of his arm. He was awful angry because he’d thought ma was going to do something big, something heroic even, especially for her —I know him . . . I know him . . . we felt the same sometimes—while ma wasn’t thinking about that at all, not anything like that. There was no way of getting even. It wasn’t like getting cheated at the fair. They were always trying, so you got to expect it. Now Hans had given ma something of his—we both had when we thought she was going straight to Pa—something valuable, a piece of better feeling; but since she didn’t know we’d given it to her, there was no easy way of getting it back.

“We’re exhausted. It’s good-night time,” Allison said. “Don’t blow out the candles. I’ll put in new ones tomorrow.” In her bedroom, a few weeks earlier in her life than had been predicted, she began to die. “Don’t look at me if my wig comes off,” she told Clark. “Please.” Her pulse cords were fluttering under his fingers. She raised her knees and kicked away the comforter. She said something to Clark about the garage being locked. At the telephone, Clark had a clear view out back and down to the porch. He wanted to get drunk with his wife once more. He wanted to tell her, from the greater perspective he had, that to own only a little talent, like his, was an awful, plaguing thing; that being only a little special meant you expected too much, most of the time, and like yourself too little. He wanted to assure her that she had missed nothing. Clark was speaking into the phone now. He watched the jack-o’-lanterns. The jack-o’-lanterns watched him.