Laura send the little ones away & see that they cannot hear what comes next.
I consorted with the smaller of the two. I did. In that rude Hamlet. Consorted with the smaller of the two and she asked after the Loket you had given me and asked Is she a good wife? even as she, atop me, gave a little thrust of the hips and looked me in the eye as to disgrace yr Honor but I assure you that (even as she thrust twise more, eyes still loked on mine) I did not give her that satisfaction, did not sully Yr name or memory, although to serve TRUTH (& thereby escape this place) I feel I must freely confess that as she bent low to proffer her womanly Charms, one of them and then the other to my mouth, asking did my wife do this was my wife as wild? I made an expulsion of breath that we both understood to mean NO my wife does not, my wife is not as Free. And all the further time we consorted there in that dirty leaning shed where her 3 babes did sleep on in there crude crib & her 2 pale Sisters and her Mother did kakle from the Yard, she kept the loket clenched in one hand and, when done, asked could she keep it? But my foul lust now rung out of me, I answered sharply that she could not. And took me to the woods. Where I wept. And there thought with true Tenderness of you. And desided it was kinder to deceive.
To deceive you.
captain william prince
He was pacing a wide stumbling circle now, head in hands.
roger bevins iii
The Moon was high and I said to myself sometimes a man must preserve the peace & spare the One he loves. Which I have done. Until now. I planned to tell you this not in a leter but in person. When perhaps the warmth of the telling might soften the blow. But my situation appearing hopeless in the extreme, my homecoming now never to occur, I tell all to you, cry out to you, in truest voice (I fuked the smaller of the 2, I did, I did it), in hopes that you, and He who hears & forgives all, will hear & forgive all and allow me now to leave this wretched—
captain william prince
Then a blinding flash of light came from near the obelisk, and the familiar, yet always bone-chilling, firesound associated with the matterlightblooming phenomenon.
roger bevins iii
And he was gone.
hans vollman
His shabby uniform pants raining down, and his shirt, and his boots, and his cheap iron wedding ring.
roger bevins iii
Some of the lesser members of the gathered crowd now began running amok, mocking at the soldier, inflicting various perverse and disrespectful postures upon his sick-mound—not out of meanness, for there is no meanness in them; but rather from excess of feeling.
In this they can be like wild dogs let into a slaughterhouse—racing about upon the spilled blood, driven mad by the certainty that some sort of satisfaction must be near at hand.
hans vollman
My goodness, I thought, poor fellow! You did not give this place a proper chance, but fled it recklessly, leaving behind forever the beautiful things of this world.
And for what?
You do not know.
A most unintelligent wager.
Forgoing eternally, sir, such things as, for example: two fresh-shorn lambs bleat in a new-mown field; four parallel blind-cast linear shadows creep across a sleeping tabby’s midday flank; down a bleached-slate roof and into a patch of wilting heather bounce nine gust-loosened acorns; up past a shaving fellow wafts the smell of a warming griddle (and early morning pot-clangs and kitchen-girl chatter); in a nearby harbor a mansion-sized schooner tilts to port, sent so by a flag-rippling, chime-inciting breeze that causes, in a port-side schoolyard, a chorus of childish squeals and the mad barking of what sounds like a dozen—
roger bevins iii
Friend.
Now is hardly the time.
hans vollman
Many apologies.
But (as I believe you must know) the thing is not entirely under my control.
roger bevins iii
The crowd, having suspended its perversities, stood gaping at Mr. Bevins, who had acquired, in the telling, such a bounty of extra eyes, ears, noses, hands, etc., that he now resembled some overstuffed fleshly bouquet.
Bevins applied his usual remedy (closing the eyes and stopping as many of the noses and ears as he could with the various extra hands, dulling, thereby, all sensory intake, thus quieting the mind) and multiple sets of the eyes, ears, noses, and hands retracted or vanished (I could never tell which).
The crowd returned to its abuse of the soldier’s sick-mound, “Badger” Muller pretending to piss upon it, Mrs. Sparks squatting over it, screwing her face into an ugly grimace.
Look here, she grunted. I leave the coward a gift.
hans vollman
XLII.
And we proceeded on.
roger bevins iii
Walk-skimming between (or over, when unavoidable) the former home-places of so many fools no longer among us.
hans vollman
Goodson, Raynald, Slocum, Mackey, VanDycke, Piescer, Sliter, Peck, Safko, Swift, Roseboom.
roger bevins iii
For example.
hans vollman
Simkins, Warner, Persons, Lanier, Dunbar, Schuman, Hollingshead, Nelson, Black, VanDuesen.