Every Third Thought by John Barth Read Free Book Online Page B

stock market went down and up and down, but the price of food and fuel went up up up—the more it appeared to him that those ascending levels of the South Neck fire-watchtower, with their “incremental perspective” of the surrounding scene, could be said to correspond not only to the successive years of his and Ned Prosper’s then-so-young lives, but also to the successive stages, or extended “seasons,” of Narrator’s much longer Story Thus Far. The first of which (“Platform Number One!”) might be thought of as the Depression-era “Winter” of their Bridgetown childhood. Ages zero through thirteen, say: birth
to adolescence. Or better, kindergarten through “junior high,” as middle school was called back then: the period of “Gee” Newett’s developing buddyhood with (the late) “Nedward” Prosper, whose never-published (because never finished) magnum opus this “seasons” thing ought properly to have been and might somehow yet manage to become, if Ned’s old and still aging pal can bring it off.
    The late . . . We’ll get to that.
    “So you’re hooked. Netted. Hung up. Whatever,” said Poet/Professor/Helpmeet Amanda Todd. “So haul in your catch, even if it’s yourself. As your friend’s parents said back in 1936 and Pete Seeger sang in the 1950s, To everything there is a season , right? Me, I’ve got Shakespeare’s sonnets to teach tomorrow morning and their author to learn from tonight, so if it’s okay by you we’ll do the dishes now and I’ll join you later.”
    We did that, as is our custom: cleaned up together what we’d together prepared and enjoyed, then withdrew to separate rooms, not this time for our usual postprandial hour or so of undistracted leisure reading, but Wife instead to work in Her makeshift home-office workspace, and Hubby—most unusual for him at this hour—to do likewise in His: to make a few reminder-notes, at least, of some further Kids-in-Bridgetown recollections triggered by his “vision” of that long-ago fire-tower climb. E.g.:
    — Their high-spirited street and sidewalk games : “Gee,” “Nedward,” Ruthie, and a couple of Ruth’s girl friends, maybe. Hopscotch , played with oyster shells tossed onto the chalked
diagram. Jump rope : the girls only, as he recollects, but he and Ned sometimes spun the longer rope for them, duly calling “I see Christmas!” if occasion warranted. Kick the Can : rules forgotten, but not the satisfaction of being first to reach the empty quart-sized food tin standing inverted in mid-Water Street (the low-traffic side road on which both families lived, just off busier Bridge Street) and send it clanking down the macadam, sometimes under a parked car. Backyard Hide-and-Seek —or Hide and Go Seek, as they customarily called it, perhaps preferring the rhythm of that extra syllable; or Hide and No Seek, as they’d call it when whoever was “It” decided as a prank to go sit on the front-porch steps and wait with amusement for the hiders to realize that they weren’t being sought—with one of the neighborhood’s great maples (all now dead and gone, like the original residents of its two-storey clapboard houses) designated as Home.
    — Fishing (apropos of his and Mandy’s recent talk of his “being hooked” and “hauling in the catch”) in Avon Creek with Ned and Dad Prosper, off the concrete seawall at the foot of the Bridgetown-to-Stratford drawbridge, a few blocks from their houses. No rods and reels for the youngsters, but long bamboo poles rigged by Mr. P. with hooks, lines, bobbers, and sinkers, and baited with bits of peeler-crab meant to snag, with luck, perch and “hardheads” barely large enough to be Keepers, but sometimes eels (a slimy nuisance to untangle and unhook) or inedible, bait-wasting toadfish, which one simply whacked to death on the seawall-top and tossed back. Although the Keepers generally yielded no more than a few forkfuls each,
Mrs. Prosper and even Ma Newett, when not in one of