Page 10 - Contrast1968

The night was in, the Christmas beer advertisements in the
long porch windows were on, and the chess game was out. It was
Kelly's week to win~ (Ebony and ivory, male and female, war and
peace on a board after the dogwood and before the bomb. The barn
burned in the night the year King Uzziah died and palm trees
swaying sighed young men can be prophets.)

Johnny WaS getting drunk, writing blank verse on a napkin
between moves; knights riding through green valleys under dripping
spigots and the King was in the civil service of Sweden chewing
Mail Pouch; the Queen wore a faded orange bonnet as she fed chick-
ens in the Chinese compound. Spilled rice beer rusted ber
Canterbury armour and dripped on the floor splashing over the
King's Jesus feet. There was still hope for the bomb sometime to

purge all except Johnny and Kelly, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza '1

would endure; "in last year's nests there are no birds this year.

Outside the storm cascaded down upon the tar-paper roof,
forceful and sudden as an ocean wave. They said the area needed
flood control. An old iron fan revolved slowly, suspended from
the cracked plaster ceiling of the taproom (heavy wings of a
Gargantuan dragonfly used for a pinwheel); it could have been a
tropical bar on a Caribbean island during the rainy season, the
night before a revolution.

Roxy whined and Kelly shelled a few peanuts, dropping the-
on the floor in front of her. Johnny leaned over and awkwardly

untied the cord around the old pillowcase he used for a knapsack;

he brought out two whiskey bottles replete with red fluid and a
package wrapped in newspaper.

"You can send this to New York, it will be the last, you
can tell them. I didn't plant as much this summer, it doesn't
interest lieanymore and I won't be needing the money. This sumaC
wine is something else, thought you might like some. Itfelici-
tates things, I lived on it for a week after I made the first

batch." He pushed the package and one of the bottles acroSS the
table to Kelly and started to shell a peanut.

the va 1T1heey warm rain was leaking into the dilapidated houses along
and the chickens in their rotten coops were gett1"n9"5wet.

RiVUlets of mud stre~ed down across fossil slide washing debr1
out into the road.

~he action at Camelot dwindled. The black queen was raped

b~ a wh1te knight but the forces of evil prevail; a dark bishOP"er
~1th a broken crucifix takes an ivory pawn. The water snake cO s
w1antehriss. grotto avoiding the flotsam swept along by the rising creek