Fadeaway Girl Read Online Free PDF

understand either of them without much thinking about it. It was rather amazing.
    Their real names were Alonzo and, I think, Robert. They had been christened “Ulub” and “Ubub” by Dodge Haines and Bubby Dubois and the other uncharitable sorts who held up the counter at the Rainbow Café. They’d taken the nicknames from the license plates of “the boys’ ” old pickup trucks: UBB and ULB. But “the boys” were too good-natured to mind this bit of meanness.
    I crossed the highway, waving to them, and on the other side, had to watch Delbert coming back and honking, “shave-and-a-haircut, honk honk!” That was Delbert being funny.
    I didn’t wave. As I went up the grassy embankment where the bench was, I heard Ulub recite:
    Ah unthuse memunse eh ah ah on.
    I liked the way he did this with gestures, arm flung above his head, hand against heart. I didn’t understand a word except for “I” at the beginning and “an” toward the end.
    â€œPretty good, Ulub,” said Mr. Root.
    Actually, Ulub sounded much as he’d always sounded. We’d all spent some time deciding what poet would be the best for this job. One of the first had been a poet I’d never heard of, Vachel something. Ulub came across a poem of his in some old book lying around their house. The poem was “The Congo.” Mr. Root liked it because it had a real beat to it; he could tap his foot to it.
    I recalled that Will had made drums by stretching thin canvas (or was it dead human skin?) over empty beer kegs. I don’t know what they’d used the drums for, but they were still in the Big Garage. So I said we should all troop up there and borrow them. (I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with this request on my own.) When they saw it was all of us, and heard the request, Will actually smiled and let us in. This, I knew, was so they themselves could do the drum beating while Ulub read “The Congo.” Which they did. They were loud and insistent to the point where Ulub forgot the poem and went into a kind of Indian-on-the-warpath dance.
    So we decided “The Congo” was not the best choice for Ulub’s reading. I suggested Shakespeare.
    Mr. Root shook his head. “Too old-timey.”
    Robert Frost?
    Another shake. “Too easy.”
    My storeroom of poets was about as full as my safe-deposit box, but I knew Robert Frost wasn’t “easy.” My mind hunted around for one of his poems. “He can’t be easy, not if he’s considered our greatest living poet.”
    Mr. Root was already thumbing through his battered book and came upon a poem. He read the first lines of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Then he snapped the book shut, as if he’d proven his point.
    â€œMr. Root, that’s one of the most famous poems in the language; that’s the one about the woods—”
    â€œFamous and woods don’t necessarily cut it.”
    Mr. Root was as old as forever but he had a modern way of speaking sometimes.
    He went on: “I’ll bet any one of us could write a poem this good, couldn’t we, boys?”
    Considering who “anyone” was, he’d better not bet too much on it.
    â€œYes sir, we could walk over to the lake and the woods where that Devereau house is and write us a poem right there.” He pounded one small fist into the other hand.
    I said, “Mr. Root, let’s just choose another poet.” Though I couldn’t see what easiness had to do with Ulub’s reading one or another.
    â€œWell . . .” He was miffed but he turned some pages. “Here’s this Wordsworth fellow going on about the daffodils. Try this, Ulub: a host of golden daffodils.”
    Ulub tried it: “Ah ghost uh oldna duvudus.”
    Mr. Root said, “See? Now that’s too easy. It don’t give Ulub enough range.”
    The back of a Rice Krispies box would give Ulub