A World Lost: A Novel (Port William) Read Online Free PDF Page B

behind her ears."
    And then he mimed the whole procedure, whooping and making
raspberries, laughing at himself, until it was funny even to us.

    Sometimes, for reasons unclear to us then, he would feel bad and need to
sleep. In Jake Branch's yard under the big white oak, or in the woods at
the Bower Place, or on the shady side of one or another of the barns, he
would open both doors of the car, stretch out on the front seat, and sleep
an hour or two, or all afternoon. I would be utterly mystified and even
offended. How could anybody sleep when there were so many things
to do?
    Or Henry and I would bring Bubby Kentfield and Noah Burk and
maybe two or three more around to the apartment on a Sunday afternoon and find him asleep on the couch.
    We would tramp into the room in a body, like a delegation, assuming
that if he was not in a good mood, we could get him into one. We
believed that there was strength in numbers.
    "Uncle Andrew, we was wondering if you'd take us swimming."
    "Yeah, Uncle Andrew, we want to go to the quarry."
    He would turn his head reluctantly and look at us. "Aw God, boys,
you all don't need to go swimming."
    "Yes, we do. It's hot."
    "Well, go on then!"
    "Well, we need you to go with us."
    "No, you don't."
    "Yes, we do. Mother said if you went, we could go."

    "Suppose you drown."
    "She thinks you won't let us drown."
    "The hell I won't!"
    "Well, are you coming?"
    "Go on, now, damn it! Get out of here! Go do something else."
    He would fold his hands and shut his eyes, the picture of hope
defeated.
    Sometimes he would be quiet and sad-seeming. Always at those times
he sang the same song:

    Was there, somewhere, a woman he missed, or was he mindful that
he was getting older, or did he just like the song? He had a good voice,
and he sang well.

    For fifty years and more I have been asking myself, What was he? What
manner of a man? For I have never been sure. There are things that I
remember, things that I have heard, and things that I am able (a little) to
imagine. But what he was seems always to be disappearing a step or two
beyond my thoughts.
    He was, for one thing, a man of extraordinary good looks. He had
style, not as people of fashion have it (though he had the style of fashion
when he wanted it), but as, for example, certain horses have it: a selfawareness so complete as to be almost perfectly unconscious, realized in
acts rather than thoughts. He wore his clothes with that kind of style. He
looked as good in work clothes, I thought, as he did dressed up. Clothes
did not matter much to me, and yet I remember being proud to be with
him when he was dressed up-in a light summer suit, say, and a straw
boater-for I thought he looked better than anybody. He was a big man,
six feet two inches tall and weighing a hundred and eighty pounds. He
had a handsome, large-featured face with a certain fineness or sensitivity that suggested possibilities in him that he mainly ignored. His eyes, as
Grandma loved to say, were "hazel," and they were very expressive, as
responsive to thought as to sight. He loved ribaldry, raillery, impudence.
He spoke at times a kind of poetry of vulgarity.

    And yet there was something dark or troubled in him also, as though
he foresaw his fate; I felt it even then. I have a memory of him with a certain set to his mouth and distance in his eyes, an expression of difficult
acceptance, as if he were resigned to being himself, as if perhaps he saw
what it would lead to. His silences, though never long, were sometimes
solemn and preoccupied. When he was still in his twenties, his hair had
begun to turn gray.
    For another thing, he was as wild, probably, as any human I have ever
known. He was a man, I think, who was responsive mainly to impulses:
desire, affection, amusement, self abandon, sometimes anger.
    When he felt good, he would be laughing, joking, mocking, mimicking, singing, mouthing a whole repertory of subverbal noises. He would
say-and as