There
was a family in St. Louis I lived with, sleeping with their divorced
mother. ...The daughter, every day on
the backseat of the car as she was taken to school, said, demanding: “Turn on
the radio, please.” The please just an
irony in her mouth, in a flat, mean voice.
The mother obliged as if hypnotized, never pausing to find that
rock-and-roll button for the brat. One
day I couldn’t bear it any longer, but when she was out of the car to school I
did not attack. Rather I started weeping
because of the sadness of being around this hugely indulged vixen, and I knew
love would die soon because I couldn’t stand the home life that made her
possible.*
*[Excerpted from "Through Sunset into the Raccoon Night," in High Lonesome, by Barry Hannah.]
I finished the book yesterday and thought I should put it out "there" because Hannah is such a good writer, and he can make you laugh as well as push your head through a wall. Sometimes we need that.
Here's another...
She came out into the driveway wailing as I’ve never
heard a white person wail. But you see a
whole tree go over like that, and your grip on the universe goes. A small mob of slackers came down the block
and stood around the big tree over the Mercedes. They grinned, sort of worshipping the event. But the woods running down a hill to the east
went into an exploding mutual collapse too much like the end of the world, and
everyone fled back inside.
All
these old trees were like family in the act of dying; their agony was more
terrible than the storm itself. We had
been confident, even arrogant, with them around us, I realized. They’d been comforting brothers and
sisters. Now the town was suddenly half
as tall.****["The Ice Storm," from High Lonesome, by Barry Hannah.]
