Page:Jay Little - Maybe—Tomorrow.pdf/335

 shone of fresh paint, fronted with porches, some screened, crowded behind dark shrubbery and soft light. A few of them were set back in large spaces of grassed earth enclosed by a painted picket fence covered with honeysuckle and wisteria vines. Here and there a chinaberry or cottonwood tree offered its shadows but to Gaylord the whole combination was nothing. Only when he heard, from somewhere out of the still dusk air, a child's penetrating cry, "Mother … Mother … can I go to the show with Chuck?" did he feel some of the frozen tension leave him. Even then he could not turn to Blake and pour out upon him what was tumbling about within his brain. Looking at him sitting sunken behind the wheel, he knew that he could tell nothing; and he wondered if the time would ever come when he could tell him everything again.

The line of houses on either side broke away; they were on an open road. A bug hit the windshield, making a loud thump, but this time it didn't change the expression of Gaylord's eyes or frighten him. He felt only sad and drowned in compassion for both of them sitting there alone under the metal top, oblivious, farther apart than all the changes, the complexities, that had mazed them in and engrossed them during the past weeks had placed them. He knew now. He had begun knowing from the minute Blake had spoken his name and then he had entered the car, and then Blake had spoken again, coming toward him like an enemy. Four such simple and inconsequential things considered apart. Placed side by side they answered a lot of things. In fact, they answered the whole mystery that had tormented him from the time he had heard his name called. He did not even yet know the answer. He only knew … and knew hard … that he had lost.

Gaylord cringed at the fantasy he had worked up for himself. Why … why … he cried within himself …

Behind them lay the town, and ahead a blank space of open fields, poles and billboards. A hidden bird gave out with a melodious chirping. A butterfly hit, close where the bug had, splashing the windshield with a dirty yellowish film, obstructing and making the moving pattern before him blurred … more indistinct than before. His face was without emotion, frozen motionless. His hands clutched tragically together. His short span of happiness was over. Past. He 325