My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead Read Online Free PDF

out. Everyone turned. “Then you’d have some crow handy whenever you had to eat some,” Joel said.
“Take a lap,” Mackyz bawled, his leathery face turning red up to the roots of his iron-gray hair.
“He was only kidding,” I said, appalled at Mackyz’s hurt.
Mackyz looked at me and scowled, “You can take a lap too, and don’t talk so much.”
I took off my sweatshirt and dropped it on the grass and set off around the track. As soon as I started running, the world changed. The bodies sprawled out across the green of the football field were parts of a scene remembered, not one real at this moment. The whole secret of effort is to keep on, I told myself. Not for the world would I have stopped then, and yet nothing—not even if I had been turned handsome as a reward for finishing—could have made up for the curious pain of the effort.
About halfway around the track, Joel caught up to me, and then he slowed down and ran alongside. “Mackyz isn’t watching,” he said. “Let’s sneak up the hill.” I looked and saw that Mackyz was lining up the team for high-jump practice. Joel sailed up over the crest of the hill, and I followed him.
“He’s getting senile,” Joel said, dropping to a sitting position, sighting over the crest of the hill at Mackyz, and then lying down. “Come on, jerk, lie down. You want Mackyz to see you?”
I was uneasy; this sort of fooling was all right for Joel, because he “made the effort,” but if Mackyz caught me, he’d kick me off the team. I pointed this out to Joel.
“Aw, Mackyz takes everything too seriously. That’s his problem,” Joel said. “He’s always up in the air about something. I don’t see why he makes so much fuss. You ever notice how old men make a big fuss over everything?”
“Mackyz’ not so old.”
“All right, you ever notice how middle-aged men make a big fuss over everything?” A few seconds later, he said casually, his gaze resting on the underside of the leaves of the oak tree, “I got laid last night.”
“No kidding?” I said.
He spread his fingers over his face, no doubt to see them turn orange in the sunlight, as children do. “Yeah,” he said.
From the football field came the sounds of high-jump practice starting. Mackyz was shouting, “Now, start with your left foot—one, two, three—take off! TAKE OFF, GODDAMN IT! Spread your Goddamned legs, spread’em. You won’t get ruptured. There’s sand to catch you, for Christ’s sake.” The jumper’s footsteps made a series of thuds, there was a pause, and then the sound of the landing in the sand. Lifting my head, I could see the line of boys waiting to jump, the lead boy breaking into a run, leaping from the ground, and spreading his arms in athletic entreaty.
“It was disappointing,” Joel said.
“How?” I asked.
“It’s nothing very special.”
I was aroused by this exposé. “You mean the books—”
“It’s not like that at all.” He turned sullenly and scrabbled with his fingers in the dirt. “It’s like masturbation, kind of with bells.”
“Maybe the girl didn’t know how to do it.”
“She was a grown woman!”
“Yeah, but—”
“She was a fully grown woman! She knew what she was doing!”
“Oh,” I said. Then, after a minute, “Look, would you mind telling me what you said to her? If I ever had a chance, I wouldn’t know what to say. I . . .”
“I don’t remember,” Joel said. “We just looked at each other, and then she got all tearful, and she told me to take my clothes off.”
We lay there a moment, in the late afternoon sunshine, and then I said we’d better be getting back. We walked around behind the hill, and waited until Mackyz wasn’t looking before we sprinted out onto the track.
The jumping went on for fifteen or twenty minutes more; then Mackyz raised his arms in a gesture of benediction. “All right, you squirts—all out on the track for a fast lap. And that includes you, goldbrick,” he said to me, wagging his finger.
All the