excerpt
ENGINE FRED DROPPED, cleared the
gondola car in stride and came to a
stop 30 yards beyond his pack and
bedroll. Not bad form for an old man,
he thought. He acknowledged the
brakeman’s wave as the caboose passed and turned to find himself
in front of the jungle he had not seen for 15 years. Beyond were
sagebrush and bunch grass where he remembered orchard. A
chimney rose above the farmhouse’s tumble of charcoal debris.
The outbuildings were falling down. The only intact structure in
sight was a pickers cabin with a few apple trees around it. Among
the rocks and bushes of the jungle, Fred found the ashes of a bonfire,
a can with evidence of beans, a six-month-old Saturday Evening
Post and a lean-to of scrap lumber and flattened cans.
Darkness was falling. He retrieved his pack and set about gathering
wood.
Poodie sat in the doorway of his cabin with his back against the
frame and watched the moon begin to float up, big and white as a
dish pan, behind the plateau east of the river. Look at my apples.
He liked the thought. My apples. The moonlight is washing over
my apples. In the field that had been the orchard, a cat prowled,
crouched rigid as stone, sprang, held a mouse between its paws and
began to worry it. Nighthawks made their final sorties of the evening.
Ripples on the river ran silvery with moonlight. Poodie wondered
what the sounds were and was glad to be without them.
Tonight, what I see is enough. He closed his eyes, suspended in …
Manolis Aligizakis 