A small big world

“I told her about the fluff. She rolled her eyes and ducked her mouth to laugh in her fist when I told her how it was like looking at her face out on a misty morning duck-hunting. And she said,“Now what in the everlovin’ world would you want with me out alone in a duck blind?” I told her she could take care of my gun, and the girls all over the mill went to giggling in their fists. I laughed a little myself, seeing how clever I’d been. We were still talking and laughing when she grabbed both my wrists and dug in. The features of her face snapped into brilliant focus; I saw she was terrified of something.“Do,” she said to me in a whisper, “do take me, big boy. Outta this here mill, outta this town, outta this life. Take me to some ol’ duck blind someplace. Someplace else . Huh, big boy, huh?”Her dark, pretty face glittered there in front of me. I stood with my mouth open, trying to think of some way to answer her. We were locked together this way for maybe a couple of seconds; the sound of the mill jumped a hitch, and something commenced to draw her back away from me. A string somewhere I didn’t see hooked on that flowered red skirt and was tugging her back. Her fingernails peeled down my hands and as soon as she broke contact with me her face switched out of focus again, became soft and runny like melting chocolate behind that blowing fog of cotton. She laughed and spun around and gave me a look of her yellow leg when the skirt billowed out. She threw me a wink over her shoulder as she ran back to her machine where a pile of fiber was spilling off the table to the floor; she grabbed it up and ran feather-footed down the aisle of machines to dump the fiber in a hopper; then she was out of sight around the corner.”

“ Lord, Thou didst answer stern and low: Child, I will hearken to thy prayer, And thy unconquered soul shall know All passionate rapture and despair. Thou shalt drink deep of joy and fame, And love shall burn thee like a fire, And pain shall cleanse thee like a flame, To purge the dross from thy desire. So shall thy chastened spirit yearn To seek from its blind prayer release, And spent and pardoned, sue to learn The simple secret of My peace. I, bending from my sevenfold height, Will teach thee of My quickening grace, Life is a prism of My light, And Death the shadow of My face ”