Postcards by Annie Proulx Read Free Book Online

and he backed across the gravel, out onto the lonely road past the waves of spruce and fir, the nicked driveways leading to dark, mosquito-stitched camps in the forest.
    As he pulled out onto the road something moved near the woodpile. He thought it was a falling block, but it was the yellow cat, the same color as the fresh wood. They’d had a barn cat once, the same butterscotch fur. He remembered how it favored his mother, sat on the porch gazing up at her. She had called it Spotty and fed it cream. It made the mistake of rubbing against Mink’s leg when his temper was up, shoveling manure out of the gutter and he’d broken its back with a swipe of the shovel.
    In an hour he could breathe more easily. The front seat was strewn with postcards, seventy or eighty postcards all showing the same thick-bodied bear with a red snout coming out of the black trees. ‘Must be worth about eight dollars,’ he said aloud and took a cold pleasure in the minute gain.

4
What I See
    The land levels as he comes down out of the trees and into miles of vineyards, the crooked branches crucified on wires. The Coach jars along a road knotted with tar patches, unraveled along the edges, the crumbling asphalt mixing with the gravel, weeds, rows of creosoted posts with winking reflectors, angled tops. But the land as monotonous as a lawn, and on he goes past the tourist cabins with their tiny porches and metal chairs, the gas pumps and whirligig ducks, the metal signs saying Nehi.
    The sky grows. Yellow dirt roads cut away to the north and south. Plaster ducks on withered lawns, snapping flags in the wind coming down the flat rows. A dog races beside the car for a hundred feet.
    In the steamy warmth of the Olympia Cafe he eats thick pancakes with Karo. The coffee is heavy with chicory. He leans his elbows on the counter watching the cook. A kid parks his Indian motorcycle and comes in. He pulls up his goggles, exposing white circles of skin.
    ‘Dogs’ he says to the cook. ‘Dogs gonna dump me yet. I hit one son of a bitch come out and went for my leg.’
    ‘That right.’ The cook presses the potato with his crusted spatula. ‘It better not a been my Irish setter. Rusty, just up the road here at my place.’
    ‘Might a been,’ says the kid. ‘No, no, I’m just kidding you. It was a black one about five mile back. Big son of a bitch. Size of a cow, damn near. It wasn’t no Irish setter.’
    In Pennsylvania the vineyards are spaced farther apart. The grapevines fade, cornfields swell up. The levelness of the land disturbs him with its easiness. The road is a slab seamed with asphaltridges that strike the worn tires, jar his hands and shoulders, on and on. Cars turn off the highway onto side roads ahead of him, raise dusty billows. The radio is nothing but static and broken voices crying out a few words. ‘Jimmy Rodgers … pray to God … happy birthday… in the European theater … goodby folks … Pillsbury … organ inter … Duz does … the story of a … oh … hello folks … Jesus said … our listeners write in …’
    He passes old trucks humping along on bald treads. He is worried about his own tires. He turns off onto a gravel road but the stones fly up, dust chokes him. Grit in his mouth. When he rubs his fingers against the ball of his thumb he feels hard grit. And turns back onto the concrete.
    Miles of snow fence. A peregrine falcon balances on a forgotten hay bale. The flatness changes, the earth’s color changes, darker, darker. Prayers and long silences out of the dusty radio. In the autumn rain the houses become trailers among the trees. Oaks come at him, flash, burst into thickets, into woods. H&C Café, EATS, Amoco, GAS 3 MI. AHEAD. Fog. A little night fog. The sod in Indiana a deep brown-black. The cattle sink into its blackness. Southering geese spring up from the sloughs and ponds, scissor over him in the hundreds. The water is streaked with the lines of their angular necks, fractioned by dipping