The Cadence of Grass Read Online Free PDF Page A

do in these buildings would be work. But it was nice to get some air and see the sky at the top of the alley and enjoy the quiet glee he’d always felt, yes, even in prison where the patterned movements of the men were broken by hot spells of peril that had been, with some awful exceptions, an adventure.
    He kept walking, soaking in the pleasures of what peered at him in the form of nature: mushrooms at the base of steel bins, an effulgent cloudscape way down toward the RV lot, children playing in front of a very run-down day care center, children soon to grow old, wave after wave of them in a town as ordinary as the flat earth, waxing, waning, pushing each other off the edge into the abyss and no God to care. But in the meanwhile, a rather rich and detailed picture! All of this, thought Paul, is why we must hunt down the wherewithal that held irritation at bay, not that it saved so much as an ant from oblivion, but for its anesthetic properties in a phenomenally bleak deal handed down to the human race by the Joker. However, money was another thing: Money brings us closer to nature.
    In his special views of beauty and nature, Paul sought the semi-eternity that helped make up for the security that sort of
atomized
in sixth grade, when his mother told him the disturbing story of his conception involving a father she described as little more than a worthless stranger, an all-consuming vacancy that suddenly gave his young life a cartoonish quality complete with flying faces, dither, interruptions and babble. He also missed the God that had been described in his small-town grade school, a terrible old tyrant who seemed to demand all the wheedlings and importunings mankind could send his way.
    When Paul noticed movement behind the green bin that secured trash for the Marvel Foundry, not far along the alley from the back of his own factory, he suspected it was the striped russet mutt he’d observed lurking around most mornings. He hung over the bin to peer into the space between the Dumpster and the wall, and immediately found himself looking into a bright pair of eyes belonging to the suspected dog. Scouring the garbage, Paul retrieved a burger fragment with matching bun halves and tooth marks. This was all it took to lure out a narrow-faced and expressive mutt, more brindle than anything and possessing an elevated indecisive curlicue tail over its back. Paul gave it the wasted meat and managed to get a hand on its back with only a suggestion of lips raised over teeth before the contact of Paul’s hand and murmuring voice reassured it, “You eat like a cannibal.” Further rummaging produced a length of wrapping twine with which Paul devised a noose and leash and to which he attached the still dining dog. But towing it was not easy as the dog reared back and fishtailed at the end of the twine, revealing an endearingly freckled belly. Paul, obliged to hold the twine with both hands, towed the dog the short distance into the back door of his plant where, in front of all employees, another battle of wills ensued. Once things quieted down, he called out an order to Herman while peeling a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet: “
T-Bone!
” then added, “You may call him Whitelaw!”
     
    “I don’t see how you figured this out on your own,” said Evelyn. She was grilling poor Bill Champion about horses all over again. The first of every month, she helped him update his cattle records. Getting out to this unprofitable little ranch had been the most important part of Evelyn’s life since the days of childhood when her father sent her here to learn to ride. It was an unsurprising piece of short-grass prairie yet had a strange hold upon her imagination.
    “I never said I did. There’s always a lot of folks gone before. And, you know, I had Robert Wood. I don’t know who
he
had, but I’m sure neither one of them made it up either.”
    Evelyn had seen a picture of Robert Wood hanging in a cowboy bar on the south side of Billings.