Charles Frazier's "Cold Mountain" Chapter 1 262 words

His spirit, he feared, had been blasted away so that he had become lonesome and estranged from all around him as a sad old heron standing pointless watch in the mudflats of a pond lacking frogs.

At a stationer's, he bought a pen with a gold nib and a bottle of ink and a few sheets of writing paper.

Before it started scabbing, it spit out a number of things: a collar button and a piece of wool collar from the shirt he had been wearing when he was hit, a shard of soft grey metal as big as a quarter dollar piece, and, unaccountably, something th

He jostled the cup to break the spell and looked out along the street.

It landed far out across the playground at the edge of the hayfield and rested there black as the shadow of a crow squatted on the ground.

Inman watched the window as he ate his breakfast of boiled oats and butter, and shortly he saw the blind man come trudging up the road, his back humped against the weight of the cart he pushed, little twin clouds of dust rising from beneath the tur

It was not a book that required following from front to back, and Inman simply opened it at random, as he had done night after night in the hospital to read until he was calm enough for sleep.

The top of the first page said Fragments, and the word was underscored three times.

He had pulled it from a box of books donated by ladies of the capital eager for the intellectual as well as physical improvement of the patients.

An old woman sat inside, her hair in a wild tangle, face stricken.

After a time, though, Inman found that he had left the book and was simply forming the topography of home in his head.

All were mottled ankle to hip with blue and green bruises from the racquets.

The blind man twisted a square of newsprint up into a cone and then dipped with a riddly spoon into the pot and filled the cone with wet peanuts.

And beyond them to a sweep of fields and flat piney woods that stretched to the western horizon.

Troubling as well were the deep pains on humid days from the hip wound he had taken at Malvern Hill years ago.

He flipped his wrist, and the hat skimmed out the window and caught an updraft and soared.

Nevertheless the beautiful and familiar tune was impervious to poor performance, and Inman thought how painfully young it sounded, as if the pattern of its notes allowed no room to imagine a future clouded and tangled and diminished.

Nevertheless the beautiful and familiar tune was impervious to poor performance, and Inman thought how painfully young it sounded, as if the pattern of its notes allowed no room to imagine a future clouded and tangled and diminished.

There were three or four brick houses scattered out through the field, and after a time the Federals crowded up behind them in such numbers that they looked like the long blue shadows of houses at sunrise.

About all he could remember of the trip was the heat and the odors of blood and of shit, for many of the wounded had the flux.

He ran a comb through his black hair, which hung lank below his jaw and was cut square around.

Such images made Inman happy, as did the following pages wherein Bartram, ecstatic, journeyed on to the Vale of Cowee deep in the mountains, breathlessly describing a world of scarp and crag, ridge after ridge fading off blue into the distance, chanting a

Inman never did know what seized him at that moment, but he stepped out the door and set the hat on his head at a dapper rake and walked away, never to return.

It was as if all the world might be composed of nothing but valley and ridge.

As recompense and memento, though, Swimmer had given Inman a fine ball racquet of hickory with bat whiskers twisted into the squirrel-skin lacing.

Before it started scabbing, it spit out a number of things: a collar button and a piece of wool collar from the shirt he had been wearing when he was hit, a shard of soft grey metal as big as a quarter dollar piece, and, unaccountably, something that clos

Inman drank all but the dregs of his coffee and then took up his paper, hoping that something in it would engage him and turn his thoughts elsewhere.

His eyelids, though, were dead as shoe leather and were sunken into puckered cups where his eyeballs had been.

The man had a big paddleboard with holes augured in it, and he liked to use it.

His spirit, he feared, had been blasted away so that he had become lonesome and estranged from all around him as a sad old heron standing pointless watch in the mudflats of a pond lacking frogs.

From inside the tavern came the sounds of a fiddle being tuned, various plucks and tentative bowings, then a slow and groping attempt at Aura Lee, interrupted every few notes by unplanned squeaks and howls.

They cut and split green saplings to make their own ball racquets, strung them with strips of hide and bootlace.

The black flecks swirled, found a pattern, and settled.

By now he had stared at the window all through a late summer so hot and wet that the air both day and night felt like breathing through a dishrag, so damp it caused fresh sheets to sour under him and tiny black mushrooms to grow overnight from the limp

He flapped the flies away with his hands and looked across the foot of his bed to an open triple-hung window.

What troubled Inman most, though, was that Lee made it clear he looked on war as an instrument for clarifying God's obscure will.

Though his own boots were in fair shape, Inman made a late-night foray onto the field simply to see what the day's effort had accomplished.

It was simple enough to tell fortunes if a man dedicated himself to the idea that the future will inevitably be worse than the past and that time is a path leading nowhere but a place of deep and persistent threat.

He knew their names and said them to himself like the words of spells and incantations to ward off the things one fears most.

Then, still in his nightshirt, he went to his table and began working at a pile of papers.

The men behind the wall were firing at such close range that one man remarked on what a shame it was that they had paper cartridges, for if they had the separate makings--powder, ball, and wadding--they could tamp in thrifty little loads and thus s

He went hatless, even in the heat, and his cropped hair was thick and grey, coarse-textured as the bristles to a hemp brush.

The handwriting was spidery, thin and angular.

He flapped again at the flies and looked out the window at the first smear of foggy dawn and waited for the world to begin shaping up outside.

They jounced off one another, butting bloody cleft heads in their stupor.

The work seemed a confusing mess.

A hickory limb that overhung the lane, and from which he often watched his father driving cows down to the barn at dusk.

He finally threw it out the window but then had troubling dreams that it had taken root and grown, like Jack's bean, into something monstrous.

Apparently, the book had been given away because it had lost its front cover, so Inman, in an effort toward symmetry, had torn the back cover off as well, leaving only the leather spine.

From inside the tavern came the sounds of a fiddle being tuned, various plucks and tentative bowings, then a slow and groping attempt at Aura Lee, interrupted every few notes by unplanned squeaks and howls.

Uktena with coil and fang.

As Inman's view through the window solidified, the dark trunks of the oak trees showed themselves first, then the patchy lawn, and finally the red road.

Pigeon River, Little East Fork, Sorrell Cove, Deep Gap, Fire Scald Ridge.

The passage he turned to that morning became a favorite, and the first sentence that fell under his eye was this: Continued yet ascending until I gained the top of an elevated rocky ridge, when appeared before me a gap or opening between other yet

Who could you strike for retribution other than yourself?

All that night the aurora flamed and shimmered lurid colors across the sky to the north.

Had it not been too dim, Inman would have read to pass the time until breakfast, for the book he was reading had the effect of settling his mind.

After Inman's regiment had formed up, they dropped over the brow of the hill and into the withering fire of the Federals.

All that night the aurora flamed and shimmered lurid colors across the sky to the north.

At a general mercantile he bought a stiff pair of indigo denim britches, a cream-colored wool shirt, two pairs of socks, a clasp knife, a sheath knife, a little pot and cup, and all the loads and round tins of caps for his pistol that they had in s

That took Inman aback, for his imagination had worked in the belief that they had been plucked out in some desperate and bloody dispute, some brute fraction.

Balls whistled all about the man, and he jumped back down into the ditch behind the wall and danced a jig.

Inman worried that following such logic would soon lead one to declare the victor of every brawl and dogfight as God's certified champion.

By the time he was done shopping, he had spent a pile of near-worthless paper money big enough to kindle a fire from green wood.

As recompense and memento, though, Swimmer had given Inman a fine ball racquet of hickory with bat whiskers twisted into the squirrel-skin lacing.

Inman's eyes and the long wound at his neck drew them, and the sound of their wings and the touch of their feet were soon more potent than a yardful of roosters in rousing a man to wake.

For a while there was only the sound of Balis's pen scratching, pages turning.

It landed far out across the playground at the edge of the hayfield and rested there black as the shadow of a crow squatted on the ground.

It was this: "The comeliest order on earth is but a heap of random sweepings."

He had taken a packhorse loaded with cooking tools, side meat, meal, fishing gear, a shotgun, quilts, and a square of waxed canvas for tent.

The passage he turned to that morning became a favorite, and the first sentence that fell under his eye was this: Continued yet ascending until I gained the top of an elevated rocky ridge, when appeared before me a gap or opening between other yet

Dull as Longstreet looked, he had a mind that constancy sought ground configured so a man could hunker down and do a world of killing from a position of relative safety.

Such images made Inman happy, as did the following pages wherein Bartram, ecstatic, journeyed on to the Vale of Cowee deep in the mountains, breathlessly describing a world of scarp and crag, ridge after ridge fading off blue into the distance, chanting a

But he could not abide by a universe composed only of what he could see, especially when it was so frequently foul.

Swimmer described it as a far and inaccessible region, but he said the highest mountains lifted their dark summits into its lower reaches.

They jounced off one another, butting bloody cleft heads in their stupor.

Mountains did not get much higher than those, and Inman had seen no upper realm from their summits.

Those already there had trenched along the tightly built wall so that you could stand up comfortably and still be in its shelter.

Unless someone came to buy something, he rested as still as a stuffed man with his hands together in his lap.

He would set up his business under an oak tree across the road, lighting a fire in a ring of stones and boiling peanuts over it in an iron pot.

Signs and wonders both large and small did sometimes make transit from that world to our own.

It was only a scant shade darker than the high clouds through which the sun shone as a grey disc already declining to the west.

The man fell backward, and the rod stood from his body and quavered about with the last of his breathing as if he had been pierced by an unfletched arrow.

All through the mess of the field hospital and the long grim train ride south in a boxcar filled with wounded, he had agreed with his friends and the doctors.

Plenty, I bet.

Compared to the other two men, Longstreet looked like a stout hog drover.

When the Federals charged, the men behind the wall held their fire and taunted them and one called out, Come on closer, I want them boots.

Nevertheless, he was glad to be a man of leisure as long as he was careful not to look too vigorous in front of a doctor.

To this accompaniment, the poorly shod of Inman's party climbed over the wall to yank the boots off the dead.

He expected solitude and self-reliance.

He owned but one rusty black suit of clothes and a pair of old overlarge dress boots that curled up at the toes and were so worn down that the heels were wedgelike.

Late in the afternoon the Federals quit coming and the shooting tapered off.

There were broken fingers and noses, sundry flesh rents.

As the two camps parted ways, Inman's heifer was still walking, but various of the Cherokee had claim to its many partitions.

Somewhere above them on the hill a fiddle struck up the sad chords of Lorena.

He raised his coffee cup to his lips and found it cold and nearly empty, and he put it down.

At a hatmaker's, he bought a black slouch hat with a grey ribbon band; then, back out on the street, he took off his greasy old one and skimmed it away to land among the bean rows of somebody's garden They might find use for it as scarecrow attire.

Inman had been given the happy job of escorting a few heifers to graze the last grass of summer in the high bards on Balsam Mountain.

Nevertheless the beautiful and familiar tune was impervious to poor performance, and Inman thought how painfully young it sounded, as if the pattern of its notes allowed no room to imagine a future clouded and tangled and diminished.

Swimmer described it as a far and inaccessible region, but he said the highest mountains lifted their dark summits into its lower reaches.

Inman suspected that after such long examination, the grey window had finally said about all it had to say.

Some of the dead had papers pinned to their clothing to say who they had been, and the rest were just anonymous.

Inman sat through the tales and spells, watching the rill in the water where current fell against his dipped line, Swimmer's voice a rush of sound, soothing as creek noise.

A dire mistake!

Eventually the light swelled so that all the lines of the varnished beadboard walls stood clear, and Inman could cock back on the chair's hind legs and count the flies on the ceiling.

He tucked the long front pieces of hair behind his ears and put on his spectacles of smoked glass, which he wore even in the dim of morning, his eyes apparently too weak for the wannest form of light.

By now he had stared at the window all through a late summer so hot and wet that the air both day and night felt like breathing through a dishrag, so damp it caused fresh sheets to sour under him and tiny black mushrooms to grow overnight from the

Such a rare event was seen as an omen by the men up and down the line, and they vied to see who could most convincingly render its meaning down into plain speech.

It told that out in the borderlands of the state's western mountains, Thomas and his Cherokee troops had fought numerous skirmishes with Federals.

Every vile deed he had witnessed lately had been at the hand of a human agent, so he had about forgot that there was a whole other order of misfortune.

That last he set on the nightstand and studied for some days.

And beyond them to a sweep of fields and flat piney woods that stretched to the western horizon.

But what Inman did not tell the blind man was that no matter how he tried, the field that night would not leave him but had instead provided him with a recurring dream, one that had visited him over and over during his time in the hospital.

As Inman watched, the birds did not strike a wingbeat but nonetheless climbed gradually, riding a rising column of air, circling higher and higher until they were little dashes of black on the sky.

Then they ran toward the wall leaning forward with their shoulders hunched, a posture that reminded many witnesses that day of men seeking headway against a hard blowing rain.

They waved their assorted arms in the air, and few of the hands made convincing pairs.

The passage he turned to that morning became a favorite, and the first sentence that fell under his eye was this: Continued yet ascending until I gained the top of an elevated rocky ridge, when appeared before me a gap or opening between other yet more lo

Periodically they were driven from behind the houses by their own cavalry, who beat at them with the flats of their sabers like schoolteachers paddling truants.

Major weather changes did--the sun coming out, fresh rain--but shadows of passing clouds did not.

The doctors now claimed he was healing quickly, but he still felt he could poke a stick in there and push it out the other side with no more resistance offered than might a rotted pumpkin.

Many wore homemade uniforms in the mute colors that plant dyes make.

But he had burned up the last of his own candles reading to bring sleep the night before, and lamp oil was too scarce to be striking the hospital's lights for mere diversion.

His spells portrayed the spirit as a frail thing, constantly under attack and in need of strength, always threatening to die inside you.

He flapped the flies away with his hands and looked across the foot of his bed to an open triple-hung window.

He went hatless, even in the heat, and his cropped hair was thick and grey, coarse-textured as the bristles to a hemp brush.

Which was fine with him, for he had seen the metal face of the age and had been so stunned by it that when he thought into the future, all he could vision was a world from which everything he counted important had been banished or had willingly fle

Inman had been given the happy job of escorting a few heifers to graze the last grass of summer in the high bards on Balsam Mountain.

They would pass underneath him, and then he would close his eyes and listen as the cupping sound of their hooves in the dirt grew fainter and fainter until it vanished into the calls of katydids and peepers.

The Indians made their camp a short distance away and then cut tall pines and crafted goals from them and marked off boundaries for their vicious ball game.

They jounced off one another, butting bloody cleft heads in their stupor.

The room was black, and the only sounds were those of men breathing and snoring and shifting about in their beds.

Without pausing even for salutation Inman said, Who put out your pair of eyes?

So he rose and dressed and sat in a ladderback chair, putting the gloomy room of beds and their broken occupants behind him.

Though Inman could not recall whether Swimmer had told him what else might be involved in reaching that healing realm, Cold Mountain nevertheless soared in his mind as a place where all his scattered forces might gather.

It was simple enough to tell fortunes if a man dedicated himself to the idea that the future will inevitably be worse than the past and that time is a path leading nowhere but a place of deep and persistent threat.

At the end of the day the faces of the men around him were caked with blown-back powder so that they were various shades of blue, and they put Inman in mind of a great ape with a bulbous colorful ass he had seen in a traveling show once.

Such images made Inman happy, as did the following pages wherein Bartram, ecstatic, journeyed on to the Vale of Cowee deep in the mountains, breathlessly describing a world of scarp and crag, ridge after ridge fading off blue into the distance, chanting a

He flapped again at the flies and looked out the window at the first smear of foggy dawn and waited for the world to begin shaping up outside.

The two groups camped side by side for two weeks, the younger men playing the ball game most of the day, gambling heavily on the outcomes.

Inman's regiment was called to join the men already behind the wall, and they had quickly formed up alongside the big white house at the top of Maryes Heights.

He had attended to the man's movements for some weeks, and now that he had healed enough to be numbered among the walking, Inman was determined to go out to the cart and speak to the man, for Inman figured him to have been living with a wound for a

Inman found this notion dismal indeed, since he had been taught by sermon and hymn to hold as truth that the soul of man never dies.

Nevertheless the beautiful and familiar tune was impervious to poor performance, and Inman thought how painfully young it sounded, as if the pattern of its notes allowed no room to imagine a future clouded and tangled and diminished.

The passage he turned to that morning became a favorite, and the first sentence that fell under his eye was this: Continued yet ascending until I gained the top of an elevated rocky ridge, when appeared before me a gap or opening between other yet more lo

Painter with tooth and claw.

That morning, though, it surprised him, for it brought to mind a lost memory of sitting in school, a similar tall window beside him framing a scene of pastures and low green ridges terracing up to the vast hump of Cold Mountain.

Some days he'd get up in the thousands before there was any allowable alteration in the elements of the picture.

He commenced working on a letter.

The Federals were arrayed on the field before them, all newly outfitted.

Many wore homemade uniforms in the mute colors that plant dyes make.

Such images made Inman happy, as did the following pages wherein Bartram, ecstatic, journeyed on to the Vale of Cowee deep in the mountains, breathlessly describing a world of scarp and crag, ridge after ridge fading off blue into the distance, cha

Swimmer claimed that above the blue vault of heaven there was a forest inhabited by a celestial race.

Inman's eyes and the long wound at his neck drew them, and the sound of their wings and the touch of their feet were soon more potent than a yardful of roosters in rousing a man to wake.

Feeling empty, however, as the core of a big black-gum tree.

A sentiment that struck Inman's eye as he leafed through the pages was this: "We mark some days as fair, some as foul, because we do not see that the character of every day is identical."

He might have been mistaken for a man sitting suspended during a long daguerreotype exposure, a subject who had become dazed and disoriented as the clock ticked away and the slow plate soaked up his image and fixed for all time a portion of his sou

By now he had stared at the window all through a late summer so hot and wet that the air both day and night felt like breathing through a dishrag, so damp it caused fresh sheets to sour under him and tiny black mushrooms to grow overnight from the

It was simple enough to tell fortunes if a man dedicated himself to the idea that the future will inevitably be worse than the past and that time is a path leading nowhere but a place of deep and persistent threat.

Inman's eyes and the long wound at his neck drew them, and the sound of their wings and the touch of their feet were soon more potent than a yardful of roosters in rousing a man to wake.

Inman worried that following such logic would soon lead one to declare the victor of every brawl and dogfight as God's certified champion.

At a tailor's he found a black suitcoat of tightly woven wool that fit him perfectly, despite having been cut to the measure of a man who had died during its making.

The metal table was rusting in a powdery orange rind around its edges, and Inman had to take care not to scrub the sleeves of his new coat against the decay as he returned his coffee cup to its saucer.

But he lived as far as the field hospital, and there the doctors had taken a similar attitude.

So he held to the idea of another world, a better place, and he figured he might as well consider Cold Mountain to be the location of it as anywhere.

That morning, though, it surprised him, for it brought to mind a lost memory of sitting in school, a similar tall window beside him framing a scene of pastures and low green ridges terracing up to the vast hump of Cold Mountain.

He had taken a packhorse loaded with cooking tools, side meat, meal, fishing gear, a shotgun, quilts, and a square of waxed canvas for tent.

Which was fine with him, for he had seen the metal face of the age and had been so stunned by it that when he thought into the future, all he could vision was a world from which everything he counted important had been banished or had willingly fle

The passage he turned to that morning became a favorite, and the first sentence that fell under his eye was this: Continued yet ascending until I gained the top of an elevated rocky ridge, when appeared before me a gap or opening between other yet

In the haze the capitol seemed to rise impossibly high, its bulk large as a medieval tower in a dream of siege.

This sign, though, as best he could tell, spoke of nothing but strife, danger, grief.

He talked at length through the morning about history, teaching the older students of grand wars fought in ancient England.

Their names would be put on a list, and the Home Guard would be on alert in every county, patrolling night and day.

Which was fine with him, for he had seen the metal face of the age and had been so stunned by it that when he thought into the future, all he could vision was a world from which everything he counted important had been banished or had willingly fle

He sat with his head tipped down and appeared to be somewhat in a muse, but he raised up as Inman approached, like he was really looking.

They waved their assorted arms in the air, and few of the hands made convincing pairs.

The Federals had been arranged in an order, with their heads all pointing one way, and the man moved briskly down the row, making a clear effort to let one strike apiece do.

Such images made Inman happy, as did the following pages wherein Bartram, ecstatic, journeyed on to the Vale of Cowee deep in the mountains, breathlessly describing a world of scarp and crag, ridge after ridge fading off blue into the distance, cha

He stared into it and watched the dark grounds sink in the remaining quarter inch of liquid.

Though Inman could not recall whether Swimmer had told him what else might be involved in reaching that healing realm, Cold Mountain nevertheless soared in his mind as a place where all his scattered forces might gather.

Inman drank all but the dregs of his coffee and then took up his paper, hoping that something in it would engage him and turn his thoughts elsewhere.

Wind came in the windows, and the pages of dead Balis fluttered on the table and a few of them curled back and half stood so that they caught the faint window light through their backsides and glowed like runtish ghosts come haunting.

Nature, Inman was fully aware, sometimes calls attention to its special features and recommends them for interpretation.

The passage he turned to that morning became a favorite, and the first sentence that fell under his eye was this: Continued yet ascending until I gained the top of an elevated rocky ridge, when appeared before me a gap or opening between other yet more lo

So delightful was the spot that one man jumped onto the wall and hollered out, You are all committing a mistake.

He told of ways to produce misfortune, sickness, death, how to return evil by way of fire, how to protect the lone traveler on the road at night, and how to make the road seem short.

Inman had sometimes counted off slow numbers in his head to see how long it would be before anything of significance altered.

The Catalooch party had lost to the Indians everything they could do without and some things they couldn't--fry pans and dutch ovens, sacks of meal, fishing poles, rifles and pistols.

That morning, though, it surprised him, for it brought to mind a lost memory of sitting in school, a similar tall window beside him framing a scene of pastures and low green ridges terracing up to the vast hump of Cold Mountain.

Soon, a band of Cherokee from Cove Creek had come up the other side of the divide with a rawboned herd of spotted cows of no singular breed.

He handed it to Inman and said, Come on, cite me one instance where you wished you were blind.

Inman sat through the tales and spells, watching the rill in the water where current fell against his dipped line, Swimmer's voice a rush of sound, soothing as creek noise.

He expected solitude and self-reliance.

Swimmer claimed that above the blue vault of heaven there was a forest inhabited by a celestial race.

Money had come from home and a portion of back pay had been handed out, so he walked about the streets and shopped in the red-brick and white-frame shops.

He sat with his head tipped down and appeared to be somewhat in a muse, but he raised up as Inman approached, like he was really looking.

Inman did not consider himself to be a superstitious person, but he did believe that there is a world invisible to us.

The paper opined that though the practice might be barbarous, it would serve as harsh warning that invasion carried a stiff price.

And anyway, he knew about all there was to say on that topic.

Nevertheless, he was glad to be a man of leisure as long as he was careful not to look too vigorous in front of a doctor.

Inman had sometimes counted off slow numbers in his head to see how long it would be before anything of significance altered.

What troubled Inman most, though, was that Lee made it clear he looked on war as an instrument for clarifying God's obscure will.

It was humorous in a way, those pale mill workers coming down so confident to steal land and yet losing the tops of their heads out in the woods.

That morning, though, it surprised him, for it brought to mind a lost memory of sitting in school, a similar tall window beside him framing a scene of pastures and low green ridges terracing up to the vast hump of Cold Mountain.

Inman had been given the happy job of escorting a few heifers to graze the last grass of summer in the high bards on Balsam Mountain.

It was as if all the world might be composed of nothing but valley and ridge.

He had taken a packhorse loaded with cooking tools, side meat, meal, fishing gear, a shotgun, quilts, and a square of waxed canvas for tent.

His neck hurt as if a red cord running from it to the balls of his feet were yanked quivering tight at each step.

Inman never did know what seized him at that moment, but he stepped out the door and set the hat on his head at a dapper rake and walked away, never to return.

All his waking time was now spent trying to render ancient scribble from a fat little book into plain writing anyone could read.

The passage he turned to that morning became a favorite, and the first sentence that fell under his eye was this: Continued yet ascending until I gained the top of an elevated rocky ridge, when appeared before me a gap or opening between other yet more lo

Nevertheless the beautiful and familiar tune was impervious to poor performance, and Inman thought how painfully young it sounded, as if the pattern of its notes allowed no room to imagine a future clouded and tangled and diminished.

Nevertheless, he was glad to be a man of leisure as long as he was careful not to look too vigorous in front of a doctor.

The corner of a meadow favored by brown-and-black caterpillars in the fall.

He sat a bit formally, back straight, fisted hands resting on his thigh tops.

Inman worried that following such logic would soon lead one to declare the victor of every brawl and dogfight as God's certified champion.

The two generals spent the afternoon up on the hill coining fine phrases like a pair of wags.

Inman did not consider himself to be a superstitious person, but he did believe that there is a world invisible to us.

They cut and split green saplings to make their own ball racquets, strung them with strips of hide and bootlace.

Animals, Swimmer said, were its primary messengers.

The blind man said, It might have been worse had I ever been given a glimpse of the world and then lost it.

In the haze the capitol seemed to rise impossibly high, its bulk large as a medieval tower in a dream of siege.

He might have been mistaken for a man sitting suspended during a long daguerreotype exposure, a subject who had become dazed and disoriented as the clock ticked away and the slow plate soaked up his image and fixed for all time a portion of his sou

But he had burned up the last of his own candles reading to bring sleep the night before, and lamp oil was too scarce to be striking the hospital's lights for mere diversion.

Before it started scabbing, it spit out a number of things: a collar button and a piece of wool collar from the shirt he had been wearing when he was hit, a shard of soft grey metal as big as a quarter dollar piece, and, unaccountably, something th

Though what would you pay right now to have your eyeballs back for ten minutes?