Da Vinci's Bicycle - Guy Davenport (e novels to read TXT) 📗

— I once saw a philosopher, he said, who had just left his house one morning, get wedged between two fat men who were walking deep in conversation, so that he was rolled right around to the opposite direction in the squeeze, and soon found himself at home again. Short day! he said to his good wife.

Pappas covered his face with his hands.

— Who was this? Mamma asked.

Krousithyros, our steward, fixed his distant look on his face, his whole thought on the elk of Thessaly.

— Order and chance, I said. But before I could explain myself Pappos was off again, and nothing takes priority over a grandfather except the drum of the militia in time of invasion.

— Then, he said, there was the philosopher who boiled his waterclock in the pot and timed it by the octopus he had bought for his dinner.

— Whatever! Mamma said.

Krousithyros whisked Pappos’ eel pie away and gave him a compote of figs and curds, thinking even harder of elk.

— Pappas ka’ Pappos, I said, will you come see the dove when it flies? It will go whoosh, and circle, they say, and then nobody knows what it will do. What if it flies out of sight, like a real dove?

SHE HAD COME UP to the house past the pigpen and the barn, past Scissor whisking out the buckboard for Uncle Billy, through the kitchen garden, and stood at the back steps, her moccasined feet together, her red hands crossed on her stomach. She wore a black derby with a jay’s feather stuck in its band, a fringed shawl, a polka-dot dress over a blue gingham dress, the inmost skirts hanging lowest down her stout shins, which were wrapped in military leggings.

— How do, Breadcrust! Hanna said to her.

House niggers were on speaking terms with the Indians down to the creek, but that was all. Didn’t they sit around the skillet in the middle of the floor, Tillman the dog and Okra the cat shoving in as members of the family in good standing, Anne and Jack and Tommy, all eating a stew maybe of squirrel poured piping hot over the hoecake, maybe of rabbit or even mush rat? And whatever it was, you could be sure it was as salty as brine. Or if it was hominy, they would have muscavados over the lot, and Dovey at it too, best she could.

— Hearn the hickwall, Anne Breadcrust said to Hanna, who was dashing slop over the hollyhocks.

— Hearn the ile.

— Do tell, Hanna said, putting her apron up over her mouth.

— Body die.

— Jesus take care of his own, Hanna said. I pay no tention to peckerwood. Huhu talk, she added.

Then she glanced over her shoulder into the kitchen, to see who might be listening, and leaned over the bannister. Anne Breadcrust stepped closer.

— Mpatabiribiri wulisa kpang kpang! Hanna said quickly, and showed her blue gums in a falsetto laugh.

Anne Breadcrust stood motionless, displeased.

— Huh! Hanna grunted, and went with dignity into the kitchen.

— Miss Fanny, Anne said, you reckon she come out?

She was speaking to whoever might hear her in the kitchen, where she saw the Medusa on the oven door, a churn, a safe with pitchers and bowls wrapped in cheesecloth. She put her feet together. She would wait.

— You say you hear an old owl? a voice came through the door.

— Hearn the peckerwood, too.

She would speak as they spoke, in their words. The voice was that of Aunt Amanda, a woman with more sense than Hanna and a witch to her people.

— Missy Manda, Anne Breadcrust called, I have a word for Miss Fanny, do you not mind.

She heard Hanna laughing, and a ringing of skillets. That comfortable, chucking sound was the meal sifter, and that slide and tap was the big knife cutting fatback for the whippoorwill peas, the hulls of which she could see in a dishpan on the porch.

And then there was Miss Fanny, six tortoise-shell combs in her hair. She had been transplanting cuttings, as it was time for the porch flowers to come inside, some to the root cellar, some to the dining room. She carried a cane geranium in one hand, a bent spoon in the other. Her hair was as black as a Cherokee’s, she was fond of Dovey, and had often kindly asked how she did.

— Anne? she said, looking through the top of her gold-rimmed bifocals. Fall’s coming on right fast, don’t you think?

— A hard winter, Miss Fanny, she said quietly. See it in the stinkweed.

— Jack say so?

— See it in the squirrel tail.

Miss Fanny waited patiently for Anne to get around to what she had come to say. The silence was long.

— If you could let me have it, Anne said at last, I’d thank you for the matchbox.

— The matchbox! Miss Fanny said. What matchbox?

— The matchbox on the shelf in the kitchen.

— Whatever in the world for? Miss Fanny laughed, resettling her specs.

— Dovey dead.

She said it as if Miss Fanny ought to have known.

A ringdove, this Dovey, Miss Fanny knew, the kind that chimes before a shower and ruckles afterwards. Dovey had been presented to Miss Fanny on Jack Frost’s finger, and it had cooed in her face. She had seen it looking out of the bib of Tommy’s overalls with its button eyes. Silk Deer fed it from her hand with chickenfeed that she had given her.

— Did the dog get it? The cat?

— Tillman and Okra never bother Dovey, Miss Fanny.

She did not try to explain that Rattlesnake had been paid to take hunger for a dove from the dog and the cat. Those who were not the people could not understand.

— Wind blow the door to on Dovey, Miss Fanny. She die in my hands. Most pitiful sight you ever see.

— The door! Miss Fanny said.

— She was about to fly out, got out of Tommy’s hand, flying up near the top and the door come to and catch