The Bookman's Tale by Berry Fleming Read Free Book Online

away.
    The thought bringing back a childish instant in a swimming pool foreseeing the withdrawal of a hand from under his chin; could he stay afloat through a solitary afternoon and evening in a strange island he had no interest in until a distant “lunchtime tomorrow”? But if, instead of merely thanking her at the hotel steps, he asked her in for a drink he could certainly expect a transparent excuse coated with a film of youth-to-age; and if she came in, sat a while on the broad porch, the result would be worse, so far apart in years their voices would hardly carry, assuredly wouldn’t carry the overtones they started with, references, opinions, standards, beliefs all lost in the valleys. Contemporary with the two young women on the ship but different in a way as hard to define as the differences, for Western eyes, in the faces of Orientals; all three with layers of individuality like undercurrents in a stream but a suggestion in this one of levels, or just a level, under the others, the stream not quite so clear, maybe no deeper but the depth obscured, indeterminate. For him. Hazy as a page of manuscript without his glasses—that really did’t appeal to him enough to make him put them on.
    He said, “How do you like living on an island?” (just to bring up something to interest her—a little sorry that it came out suggesting a ball tossed underhand for a child to catch).
    She skipped answering in a way she seemed to have of going on as if she had answered. “Jerry once sent us out to cover one of their get-togethers in the back country. ‘Cain and Abel,’ it seemed to me. No words I understood, but I could follow. No pictures though. They took the camera. Gave it back.”
    He said, “Cain and Abel?” watching for the white front of the Princess Ann .
    â€œGran Met, they say, is the Creator of heaven and earth but the Almighty Master created the Universe. He’s too busy to bother with daily problems down here, has delegated spirits to help him—Loa. They say a man searching for a lost horse saw a flash of light in a palm grove and looking up saw a Loa nestled in the palms pointing into the woods. He crossed himself and called to her to thank her and she flew away in the shape of a pigeon—Here we are.”
    â€œWill you come in?” still expecting an excuse—and rather hoping—the invitation escaping like the Loa, she accepting without a word in a movement of locking the ignition and opening her door.
    She might have been the one to invite him, more at home in the hotel than he was, speaking to ‘Thomas” who took their order and brought it out to porch chairs with wide flat arms like schoolroom chairs but cushioned and with slanted backs suggestive of heat and loose clothes and easy-does-it. She waved at a crooked little sign across the street (that he was glad to realize he could read at this distance): “‘ 22 Taxis Facing West .’ Usually two, sometimes one,” pausing for a moment then going on with what he came to think was really on her mind. “Peter wanted to drop you off on the way in and save you a wait at the airport. I said, No. But you’d never guess why.”
    He said he hadn’t minded waiting.
    â€œYou wouldn’t guess I was a writer, would you?”
    He was mean enough to say it was never safe to assume a lady wasn’t, laughing a little not to hurt her feelings but seeing ahead of him the probability of having to read something and contrive a kindly negative; he had faced other over-the-transoms but none that landed more unexpectedly than the one he could foresee.
    She had written some poetry that “Jerry” had printed in the Islander when she was on the paper. “Second grade, I’m sure. Or third. Anyway, no pay. Somebody said only a blockhead would write without pay, but I think only a blockhead would say such a thing.” He mumbled something about “Dr.