Status Updates From Everything That Rises Must ...

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’

Ten days before the festival began, a man named Singleton had been tried by a mock court ... for not buying an Azela Festival Badge. During the trial he had been imprisoned in a pair of stocks and when convicted, he had been locked in the “jail” together with a goat ... Ten days later, Singleton had appeared in a side door of the courthouse porch and with a silent automatic pistol, had shot five of the dignitaries ..

. . . Thomas touched it. She stood with her head cocked on one side in an attitude of disbelief. “Oh boy, “ she said slowly, “is he a case.”
At that instant Thomas damned not only the girl but the entire order of the universe that made her possible.
“Thomas wouldn’t put a gun in your bag, “ his mother said. “Thomas is a gentleman.”
The girl made a chortling noise.

‘The Comforts of Home’

It’s so nice to have you come, Asbury said. “This place is incredibly dreary. There’s no one here an intelligent person can talk to. I wonder what you think of Joyce, Father?”
The priest lifted his chair and pushed closer. “You’ll have to shout,” he said. “Blind in one eye and deaf in one ear.”
“What do you think of Joyce?” Asbury said louder
“Joyce? Joyce who?” asked the priest
“James Joyce,” Asbury said and laughed

The moon came up and Asbury was aware of a presence bending over him and a gentle warmth on his cold face. He knew that this was Art come to wake him and he sat up and opened his eyes. Across the hill all the lights were on in his mother’s house. The black pond was speckled with little nickel-colored stars. All around him the cows were spread out grazing ... and one ... violently spotted, was softly licking his head

Howcome you let him drink that milk every day?”
“What he do is him,” Randall said, “What I do is me.”
“Howcome he talks so ugly about his ma?”
“She ain’t whup him enough when he was little,” Randall said.

Asbury lay with a rigid outraged stare while the privacy of his blood was invaded by this idiot.