— Look! Christina look!
— Or an ambulance if you have to, you can find one in the phone book it will do you so much good. Can't you stop him? what? In court again tomorrow? No, pry his jaws open and push it to the back of his throat and then hold them closed till he… oh! did it break the skin? I'd better hang up yes, whenever you can, I'll get things ready, now. Did you have to turn that thing up while I was…
— But look! And surely enough, there looming over this dark tale with a happy ending the jagged planes of Cyclone Seven shed its scarred benisons down upon the wedding of Billy Pinks and Millie Kalikow, her fifth grade classmates clutching bouquets of bluebonnets side by side with the groom's ushers buoyed by the bonhomie of his colleagues on the loading docks at Miller Feed Co. drawn up at the patio entrance to the newly inaugurated Mel's Motel to be followed by the numerous guests into the generous dining area where the bride cut a cake topped by a spun sugar approximation of the towering artifact beyond the glass where their romance had first been kindled amid the passions that had blazed forth here on a darker occasion as the screen revisited the floodlit melee of flying rocks and beer cans, Stars, Bars and Stripes asunder, signs and placards brandished and trampled GOD IS JUDGE aloft and IMPEACH smouldering on the judicial robes of controversy lately put to rest by the conciliatory visit of Senator — wait stop it, what are you doing!
— I'm turning it off, what does it look like I'm doing.
— No but didn't you hear what he…
— I don't care what he's saying, my God do we have to go through that scene again? What time is it.
— Didn't you hear what he started to say about the…
— Please! before we, it's too late to go shopping isn't it, will you write down chicken? Lily? have you got a pencil, juices, soup, something bland, sole, plain flounder if they don't have it, rice, beef broth and, oh and do we have a heating pad Oscar? one that works?
— Yes but I've been using it for my…
— I'm sure you can manage without it for a few days, there's no sense filling the house with them, there's that old hot water bottle Father had for his gout you can find that and, yes and some gauze bandage she may forget to bring any she's been so distracted, this commotion over her daughter's breakdown when she cut her wrists last night and little T J called the doctor going to court like that all day or they might have thrown out this fight over her mother's will if she hadn't shown up and this sanctimonious idiot who threw catsup on her fur coat in a courtroom right down the hall where she has to show up tomorrow for that revolting boy with his absurd paternity suit when the whole thing literally went down the drain weeks ago my God she's so brave, if you could have heard her just now. Bright, cheerful, she even thought of you Oscar, the midst of all she's going through asking if it would upset you if she comes out?
— But, well no but how long do you think she would…
— For as long as she wants to! I've never heard anything so selfish even from you, we've taken your friend here in haven't we? She can sleep right there in the library, I think you're able to start staggering up the stairs to your own room again aren't you? You can help me air it out after supper Lily and get rid of those stacks of newspapers, they can go right down to the laundry room Oscar if you can't bear to part with them, it's not as though you're being asked to actually do anything my God, I'm the one who'll be waiting on both of you aren't I? And that little phone stand right there Lily, it can go in the library where you can take her tea in the morning, or coffee, write down some sort of muffins will you? or those frozen croissants though God knows she may just want to sleep, is that asking too much?
— No but listen, Christina…
— Is it? in a cry taken up next morning before a drop of coffee — or just tea Lily, and you can sleep on that couch in the sunroom can't you, I've napped there and it's quite comfortable, do you have that list? I'd like to get down there when the stores open, we'll have plenty to do here, will you try to pick up your things in the library while we're gone Oscar? that's not too much to ask is it?
— No but Christina, listen… but the doors down the hall clattered closed behind them, the car's engine thumped, thundered, and they were gone leaving him to falter his way back from the kitchen splashing tea in the saucer where he set it down, gathering up pages, clearing his throat, the words coming hit or miss, coming in chirps, descending for — Ahhh!
must a man be scourged then, and racked, have his eyes burnt out and then be set up on a pole, to know that he should wish, not to be just, but to seem it? plaintive now, almost a bleat, was it the words? his choice of them? or the very words themselves, the strongest words in the finest language in man's history, God what they could accomplish with the simplest of lumber, the mansions they had built: Now he belongs to the ages! Maintenant il appartient a 1'histoire, sheer tissue paper. Jetzt der gehört er der Welt? Geschichte? like a cow backing into a stall. Let them look up at the sky then! if they must be so blind… He stood gazing out over the pond where each branch on the leafless trees standing out sharply on the opposite bank blurred into a dull strip of grey without a cloud in the sky, putting down the pages to steady himself as the whole middle distance seemed to come closer and fall away, abruptly seizing up some pages he'd left on the sill there and bracing himself as though facing an audience intent for the facts not the words, not the sound of the language but its straightforward artless function, — Grant's army ascending the Tennessee River to disembark at Pittsburg Landing where Buell's divisions were to join it, the Confederate army deployed in battle lines near the Shiloh church barely two miles away in the gloom that had descended out there over the pond where the few isolated houses and the wide lawn below seemed to slip into the water as though the pond were flooding, and he took out the last Home Run to smoke on the veranda before he brought in the newspaper, settling back in the familiar embrace of his immobilized chair to fold back its pages in wide sweeps and mutterings, guttural sounds of impatience, aversion, an occasional mmmph of satisfaction, a gasp, ha! just as the sharp clack of heels down the hall brought him to his feet.
— Oscar? can you help us here?
— Listen to this! Listen. A new court case surfaced today in the boiling controversy that has engulfed the notorious outdoor steel sculpture known as Cyclone Seven since the initial uproar that greeted its first appearance in this sleepy rural hamlet, far from…
— Put some water on to boil will you Lily? in the big pot with a cover, will you help her with those bags Oscar?
— In a minute listen, made headlines recently when a small dog named Spot, trapped in its interstices, was killed when the towering structure was struck by lightning, provoking a nationwide outpouring of grief. The dog's body was accidentally disposed of, and its owner, a boy named James B acting through his guardian, has now brought suit against an enterprising glover for appropriating the dog's name in connection with a new line marketed as Hiawatha's Magic Mittens, which…
— Lily? The chickens are all cut up, just put them in to simmer and chop up a few onions, will you? and those carrots left from last night, have you picked up in the library Oscar? If that bag is too heavy for you let her come back for it, maybe you can help her in the kitchen?
— Yes in a minute, listen. Charging misappropriation of the dog's name for commercial exploitation in captioning the mittens Genuine Simulated Spotskin, Wear 'Em With The Skinside Inside, the boy's lawyer, J Harret Ruth, cites the provision governing false description and false designation of origin in the Lanham Trade-Mark Act, claiming unspecified damages for trade-mark infringement and of the rights of publicity and privacy. The community has been in turmoil since…