Larque on the Wing Read Online Free PDF Page A

white cotton blouse and overfull skirt, like the sensible shoes, had been bought large for grow room and made Sky look tiny and twiggy inside them, a mayfly dwarfed by her own wings. “Straight hair cut short. Scabby knees. You seen her?”
    â€œDon’t you have a photo or nothing?” the woman complained.
    â€œNo. She might have been looking for a cowboy. Anybody dress like a cowboy around here?”
    â€œThat guy on Popular Street.”
    Larque had never heard of Popular Street. “Where is it?”
    â€œA ways from here.”
    â€œWhich way?”
    â€œAny which way.” But the woman pointed toward the west. Larque walked on. Black children playing on the sidewalk giggled and ran from her to hang on to parental legs. The people atop the legs had not seen any funny-looking little girl.
    â€œCan you tell me how to get to Popular Street?”
    â€œNo ma’am. Never heard of it.”
    She went on, asking sometimes for the skinny child in the out-of-date clothes, sometimes for the cowboy. More and more she sensed, and felt with a queasiness in her chest, that a part of her was gone as surely as if she had lost a leg or a breast. Everything about this part of town was new to her, yet her eyes were not taking in the details of dormers and breezeway gates, broken shingles and the look of graffiti on brickwork. Her mind was not recording the slant of the morning light on disjointed concrete. The camera wasn’t working.
    God. She’d forgotten. When she was Sky, she used to pretend there was a camera built in behind her eyes, catching everything she saw on film so that someday she would be able to make people understand important things: how a penny can be pounded thin and made into a dime for the soda machine, the way cats pant during the dog days, how black telephone wires swooping up toward the sky shine white.
    â€œHave you seen a funny-looking little girl?”
    Leaning in her doorway, which was probably the entry to her place of business, a miniskirted bimbo in fishnet stockings laughed in Larque’s face and wouldn’t answer her questions. Half a block later, an old man with a garbage bag full of aluminum cans told her, “Ask around on Popular Street.”
    â€œWhere is it?”
    â€œI ain’t exactly sure. Somewheres around here.”
    She found herself more and more keeping her eyes on the ground, walking slowly. Her feet hurt unbelievably. If she could just find a truthteller, she could ask him the way. She remembered about truthtellers now, too. They were people sometimes, animals sometimes, but if they were people, they had to carry something in their hands like an offering. Animals too, for that matter. She used to draw pictures of people and animals on their hind legs, swarms of them around a big rock like a monolith. The ones carrying something in their outstretched paws were truthtellers. The others were not. Truthtellers spoke only to truthtellers. Or if they spoke to someone who was not a truthteller, then that person would be changed.
    She began to look for something to carry in her hand so that the truthteller would know her when he saw her.
    It had to be something a little special. A good, shapely piece of stick, or something shiny from a gutter, though not just a dirty piece of gum wrapper. It had been quite a while since she had wanted to talk to a truthteller or had gone hunting for Popular Street or looked for anything in a gutter. It felt good to get back to the real business of life.
    For no reason at all she found herself singing—out loud, on the street—a stupid song she had not thought about in years, a cowboy song she had learned as a kid.
    â€œ Gypsy Davy roams the range
    Playing on his big guitar .
    Gypsy Davy camps in a canyon ,
    Gypsy Davy sings to a star ,
    And all the rancher’s daughters
    Look out the window and sigh ,
    Hello, Gypsy Davy .
    They told me a gypsy would lie .”
    Larque saw it.
    In the gray