Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
This is a property of type Text.
F
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<p>"No. I'm quite all right. I did feel frightfully strong-minded as long as there was any use of it. It kept me going. But now I might just as well be cheerful, because we're stuck, and we're probably going to stay stuck for the rest of this care-free summer day."
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<p>Her smile was warm and real. "No. I'm a fool. You told me to put on chains. I didn't. I deserve it."
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<p>Her father was silent, a misty figure in a lap-robe. The rain streaked the mica lights in the side-curtains. A distant train whistled desolately across the sodden fields. The inside of the car smelled musty. The quiet was like a blanket over the ears. Claire was in a hazy drowse. She felt that she could never drive again.
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<p>She tiptoed to the tool-box and took out a folding canvas bucket. She edged down to the trickling stream below. She was miserably conscious of a pastoral scene all gone to mildew--cows beneath willows by the creek, milkweeds dripping, dried mullein weed stalks no longer dry. The bank of the stream was so slippery that she shot down two feet, and nearly went sprawling. Her knee did touch the bank, and the skirt of her gray sports-suit showed a smear of yellow earth.
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<p>Claire was dainty of habit. She detested untwisted hair, ripped gloves, muddy shoes. Hesitant as a cat by a puddle, she stepped down on the bridge. Even on these planks, the mud was three inches thick. It squidged about her low, spatted shoes. "Eeh!" she squeaked.
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<p>She had ten more minutes of it before she reached a combination of bridge and culvert, with a plank platform above a big tile drain. With this solid plank bottom, she could stop. Silence came roaring down as she turned the switch. The bubbling water in the radiator steamed about the cap. Claire was conscious of tautness of the cords of her neck in front; of a pain at the base of her brain. Her father glanced at her curiously. "I must be a wreck. I'm sure my hair is frightful," she thought, but forgot it as she looked at him. His face was unusually pale. In the tumult of activity he had been betrayed into letting the old despondent look blur his eyes and sag his mouth. "Must get on," she determined.
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<p>But suppose the engine overheated, ran out of water? Anxiety twanged at her nerves. And the deep distinctive ruts were changing to a complex pattern, like the rails in a city switchyard. She picked out the track of the one motor car that had been through here recently. It was marked with the swastika tread of the rear tires. That track was her friend; she knew and loved the driver of a car she had never seen in her life.
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<p>"Yes. But don't mind me. You're doing very well," her father sighed.
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<p>The guiding tread of the previous car was suddenly lost in a mass of heaving, bubble-scattered mud, like a batter of black dough. She fairly picked up the car, and flung it into that welter, through it, and back into the reappearing swastika-marked trail.
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<div class="poem">
<p>But the Gomez-Dep roadster had seventy horsepower, and sang songs. Since she had left Minneapolis nothing had passed her. Back yonder a truck had tried to crowd her, and she had dropped into a ditch, climbed a bank, returned to the road, and after that the truck was not. Now she was regarding a view more splendid than mountains above a garden by the sea--a stretch of good road. To her passenger, her father, Claire chanted:
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<p>She again followed the swastika tread. To avoid a hole in the road ahead, the unknown driver had swung over to the side of the road, and taken to the intensely black earth of the edge of an unfenced cornfield. Flashing at Claire came the sight of a deep, water-filled hole, scattered straw and brush, débris of a battlefield, which made her gaspingly realize that her swastikaed leader had been stuck and--
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<div class="poem">
<p>It was her first really bad stretch of road. She was frightened. Then she was too appallingly busy to be frightened, or to be Miss Claire Boltwood, or to comfort her uneasy father. She had to drive. Her frail graceful arms put into it a vicious vigor that was genius.
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<p>In alarm she thought, "How long does it last? I can't keep this up. I--Oh!"
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<p>When the wheels struck the slime, they slid, they wallowed. The car skidded. It was terrifyingly out of control. It began majestically to turn toward the ditch. She fought the steering wheel as though she were shadow-boxing, but the car kept contemptuously staggering till it was sideways, straight across the road. Somehow, it was back again, eating into a rut, going ahead. She didn't know how she had done it, but she had got it back. She longed to take time to retrace her own cleverness in steering. She didn't. She kept going.
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<div class="poem">
<p>Fluid the world flowed under us: the hills,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"> Billow on billow of umbrageous green,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"> Heaved us, aghast, to fresh horizons, seen</span><br />
One rapturous instant, blind with dash of rills<br />
And silver rising storms and dewy stills<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"> Of dripping boulders, then the dim ravine</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"> Drowned us again in leafage, whose serene</span><br />
Coverts grew loud with our tumultuous wills.
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<p>Then all of nature’s old amazement<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"> Sudden to ask us: "Is this also Man?</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"> This plunging, volant land-amphibian—</span><br />
What Plato mused and Paracelsus dreamed?<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"> Reply!" And piercing us with ancient scan,</span><br />
The shrill primeval hawk gazed and screamed.
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<div class="poem">
<p>Nor speech is close nor fingers numb, <br />
If love not seldom has received <br />
An unjust answer, was deceived. <br />
I, decent with the seasons, move <br />
Different or with a different love, <br />
Nor question overmuch the nod, <br />
The stone smile of this country god <br />
That never was more reticent, <br />
Always afraid to say more than it meant.
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<div class="poem">
<p>From the very first coming down <br />
Into a new valley with a frown <br />
Because of the sun and a lost way, <br />
You certainly remain: to-day <br />
I, crouching behind a sheep-pen, heard <br />
Travel across a sudden bird, <br />
Cry out against the storm, and found <br />
The year’s arc a completed round <br />
And love’s worn circuit re-begun, <br />
Endless with no dissenting turn. <br />
Shall see, shall pass, as we have seen <br />
The swallow on the tile, spring’s green <br />
Preliminary shiver, passed <br />
A solitary truck, the last <br />
Of shunting in the Autumn. But now <br />
To interrupt the homely brow, <br />
Thought warmed to evening through and through <br />
Your letter comes, speaking as you, <br />
Speaking of much but not to come.
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