Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
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F
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<p>Greet naïvely—yet intrepidly<br />
New soothings, new amazements<br />
That cornets introduce at every turn—<br />
And you may fall downstairs with me<br />
With perfect grace and equanimity.<br />
Or, plaintively scud past shores<br />
Where, by strange harmonic laws<br />
All relatives, serene and cool,<br />
Sit rocked in patent armchairs.
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<p>There is some way, I think, to touch<br />
Those hands of yours that count the nights<br />
Stippled with pink and green advertisements.<br />
And now, before its arteries turn dark,<br />
I would have you meet this bartered blood.<br />
Imminent in his dream, none better knows<br />
The white wafer cheek of love, or offers words<br />
Lightly as moonlight on the eaves meets snow.
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<p>The mind has shown itself at times<br />
Too much the baked and labeled dough<br />
Divided by accepted multitudes.<br />
Across the stacked partitions of the day—<br />
Across the memoranda, baseball scores,<br />
The stenographic smiles and stock quotations <br />
Smutty wings flash out equivocations.
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<p>Anchises’ navel, dripping of the sea,—<br />
The hands Erasmus dipped in gleaming tides,<br />
Gathered the voltage of blown blood and vine;<br />
Delve upward for the new and scattered wine,<br />
O brother-thief of time, that we recall.<br />
Laugh out the meagre penance of their days<br />
Who dare not share with us the breath released,<br />
The substance drilled and spent beyond repair<br />
For golden, or the shadow of gold hair.<br />
Distinctly praise the years, whose volatile<br />
Blamed bleeding hands extend and thresh the <br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">height</span><br />
The imagination spans beyond despair,<br />
Outpacing bargain, vocable and prayer.
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<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 10em;">II</span>
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<p>Milt was the most prosperous young man in the village of Schoenstrom. Neither the village itself nor the nearby <i>Strom</i> is really <i>schoen</i>. The entire business district of Schoenstrom consists of Heinie Rauskukle's general store, which is brick; the Leipzig House, which is frame; the Old Home Poolroom and Restaurant, which is of old logs concealed by a frame sheathing; the farm-machinery agency, which is galvanized iron, its roof like an enlarged washboard; the church; the three saloons; and the Red Trail Garage, which is also, according to various signs, the Agency for Teal Car Best at the Test, Stonewall Tire Service Station, Sewing Machines and Binders Repaired, Dr. Hostrum the Veterinarian every Thursday, Gas Today 27c.
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<div class="poem">
<p>Claire roused; wanted to shout. She was palsied afraid that Milt would leave them. The last time she had seen him, she had suggested that leaving them would be a favor.
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<div class="poem">
<p>"But oh, what's the use? I can't ever be anything but a dub! Cleaning my nails, to make a hit with a girl that's got hands like hers! It's a long trail to Seattle, but it's a darn sight longer one to being—being—well, sophisticated. Oh! And incidentally, what the deuce am I going to do in Seattle if I do get there?"
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<p>"Gee, you know, I thought he probably did have one. I was scared blue. I had a wrench to throw at him though," confided Milt.
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<p>The farmer merely grunted. To Claire, "Yuh, four dollars. Dot's what I usually charge sometimes."
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<p>"There's something mysterious the matter with my car. The engine will start, after it's left alone a while, but then it stalls. Do you suppose you could tell what it is?"
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<p>"Though I s'pose I'd have to eat—what is it?—pickled fish? There's a woman from near my town went to the Orient as a missionary. From what she says, I guess all you need in Japan to make a house is a bottle of mucilage and a couple of old newspapers and some two-by-fours. And you can have the house on a purple mountain, with cherry trees down below, and——" He put his clenched hand to his lips. His head was bowed. "And the ocean! Lord! The ocean! And we'll see it at Seattle. Bay, anyway. And steamers there—just come from India! Huh! Getting pretty darn<br />
poetic here! Eggs are done."
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<div class="poem">
<p>"Yes. She's the captain of the boat. I'm just the engineer."
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<p>The windows of the deserted house stared at him; a splintered screen door banged in every breeze. Lichens leered from the cracks of the porch. The yard was filled with a litter of cottonwood twigs, and over the flower garden hulked ragged weeds. In the rank grass about the slimy green lip of the well, crickets piped derisively. The barn-door was open. Stray kernels of wheat had sprouted between the spokes of a rusty binder-wheel. A rat slipped across the edge of the shattered manger. As dusk came on, gray things seemed to slither past the upper windows of the house, and somewhere, under the roof, there was a moaning. Milt was sure that it was the wind in a knothole. He told himself that he was absolutely sure about it. And every time it came he stroked Vere de Vere carefully, and once, when the moaning ended in the slamming of the screen door, he said, "Jiminy!"
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<p>"Aw, you're the limit, Milt. Always looking for something new."
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<p>"Small? Why, there's darn near five thousand people there!"
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<p>And she was finding the one secret of long-distance driving—namely, driving; keeping on, thinking by fifty-mile units, not by the ten-mile stretches of Long Island runs; and not fretting over anything whatever. She seemed charmed; if she had a puncture—why, she put on the spare. If she ran out of gas—why, any passing driver would lend her a gallon. Nothing, it seemed, could halt her level flight across the giant land.
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<div class="poem">
<p>Gopher Prairie has all of five thousand people. Its commercial club asserts that it has at least a thousand more population and an infinitely better band than the ridiculously envious neighboring town of Joralemon. But there were few signs that a suite had been engaged for the Boltwoods, or that Prince Collars and Cuffs had on his royal tour of America spent much time in Gopher Prairie. Claire reached it somewhat before seven. She gaped at it in a hazy way. Though this was her first prairie town for a considerable stay, she could not pump up interest.
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