Page 34
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This closing page gives the draft a simple benediction, lifting Gibbons back into memory, nature, and promise.
After the turbulence of the preceding pages, the plainness matters. The page closes on fate and parental hope without irony.
A short, evenly spaced benediction closes the draft. After the crash, hospital, and bar-room ruin, three plain sentences lift everything back into pastoral promise: 'And the red robin ran across the ridge. And the birds sang in Acron, / Ohio. And I know that the parents of Gibbons had a son that was going / to be a star in the world.' The anaphoric 'And' gives it a scriptural cadence, and the unironic foreknowledge of stardom lands as both prophecy and elegy. The misspelling 'Acron' for Akron is kept as the manuscript's.