Page 19
By Jack Joseph Smith
Page 2
Albright Harkins is young. Around eight years. It is about nineteen
forty nine. The lake and the lodge are huge. I will have to trace
down time with Rusty, the gypsy farmer father, when he returns, in
order to find out their names. There is no waiting while I see the
high waves chopping. They live. They have thin and long white straight
teeth; with long gray throats that curve out to the air. They are in
the thousands dancing as chains, as links changing yet in the same family
under the shadows of the clouds and the distant while the while surround-
ing trees, across the utter expance, reaching up from under this wilder-
ness.
Big Bear Lodge. Trout and potato pancakes, Before daylight. The
windows in the dining hall. High and wooden and thin all along the line.
The mists black sleep stiring within the great lake from the non-colored
shafts of light. Pre mortal; wonderfully different. You see the light
struggling. It is saying very quietly that it has come from some place
where you have never been. You can breath it, but you can't touch it.
The child's heart resists trying to grab the light; it just makes him
wonder.
Standing on the dock the adventure is done. Though no one else knows
how still the world is; the wind turns once again to sing the end of
this song.
After this, all will be easy.
He does remember how he got to the beginning. There in the middle
is what is vivid. The oar snapped in the Indian man's hands. His buffed
white shirt alive in the movie with Rusty and enormous
me.