Status Updates From Everything That Rises Must ...

His body felt like a great heavy bell whose clapper swung from side to side but made no noise. Once up, he remained standing a moment, swaying until he got his balance. A sensation of terror and defeat swept over him. He would never make it. He would never get there dead or alive. He pushed one foot forward and did not fall and his confidence returned. [. . .] He was on his way.

One of the sudden, very occasional, feelings of warmth for the daughter came over Tanner. Every now and then she said something that might make you think she had a little sense stored away somewhere for safe keeping.

Even if I didn’t believe it, it would still be true.

He longed for the time when there would be no one but himself and Norton in the house, when the child’s simple selfishness would be all he had to contend with, and his own loneliness.

After that he had talked to Johnson every Saturday for the rest of the year. He talked at random, the kind of talk the boy would have never heard before. He talked a little above him to give him something to reach for. He roamed from simple psychology and the dodges of the human mind to astronomy and the space capsules that ... would soon encircle the stars. Instinctively he concentrated on the stars.

‘The Lame’

The look that Mrs. Turpin and the pleasant lady exchanged indicated they both understood that you had to have certain things before you could know certain things. But every time Mrs. Turpin exchanged a look with the lady, she was aware that the ugly girl’s peculiar eyes were still on her, and she had trouble bringing her attention back to the conversation.

Sometimes at night when she couldn’t go to sleep, Mrs. Turpin would occupy herself with the question of who she would have chosen to be if she couldn’t have been herself.

‘Revelation’

And you ain’t going to have none of me this near morning,” she said.

“I don’t put tattoos on drunks,” he said.
“You know me!” Parker cried indignantly. “I’m O. E. Parker! You done work for me before and I always paid!”
The artist looked at him another moment as if he were not altogether sure. “You’ve fallen off some,” he said. “You must have been in jail.”
“Married,” Parker said.
“Oh,” said the artist.

‘Parker’s Back’

It was as if a blind boy had been turned so gently in a different direction that he did not know his destination had been changed.

‘Parker’s Back’