by Jane Smiley
At last he was able to speak, and in a very sensible voice, as if he had not clung sobbing to some girl. “Well,” he said, “it was really weird. I wasn’t as happy about going as I thought I would be, but that was O.K. After I got started I was pretty hot, but I thought I would stop at the drugstore when I got to town, and then it would be afternoon and I could go some more after it cooled off. I didn’t miss the horses or anything, or mom, or dad, or Peter, or even you, really.” He looked quickly at her. “A little, maybe.” She smiled and shrugged slightly.
“So I went to the drugstore and had a Coke and a doughnut and looked at the comic books for a while. I guess it was pretty neat to be in town by myself, except that I didn’t have a lock for my bike and I kept having to stand by the window and watch it.” He sniffed in spite of himself. “I had lots of plans. I mean, I was going to go down to the hardware store and buy a lock, and then maybe a Thermos, you know, and I thought about getting a couple of comic books to read in case I had to. I wasn’t going to travel in the middle of days. They say that saps your strength, so I thought I would stop in some shady spots and stuff, and I thought I might want something to read then, and comics are very light and can be rolled up so they don’t take too much room.” He coughed. “Anyway, I was thinking about all that, and it was real hot, and I didn’t really feel like doing anything. It was weird, because I hadn’t been that tired when I got there, but then it just seemed liked every little thing was a big chore, so I had another Coke.” He began to sniffle again, but fidgeted when she tried to touch him. She took her hand back to herself. “So anyway, I was sitting there and sipping my Coke, to make it last, and I asked the guy for more ice, and he gave it to me, and all of a sudden I started thinking about Jo . . . um, him, and I really missed him. I mean, he was pretty funny sometimes, you know?” Margaret nodded. Henry went on, with some difficulty. “But I thought it would go away, and just sort of kept sipping my Coke and kind of wiping my mouth to take up time. I tried to decide what comics to buy, and everything, and then I just got up and came home. And it was because I missed . . . I missed . . . And then . . .” He looked right at her, sucking his lips into his mouth and biting them in an effort not to cry. She nodded, and it was on her tongue to say that it hadn’t happened, that John was asleep in his bed and would be there, grumpy and sarcastic, in the morning.
She shook her head, mostly at herself, but he took it as some sort of sign: the imminent tears dissipated in a deep, halting sigh, then Margaret wrestled into her mind the smooth, shimmering thought of all the things that there were, and said, “Yes, well, sit with me for a minute or so,” but thinking of John, and Harrison, and everything else, she spoke so softly that Henry didn’t even hear her.
By Jane Smiley
The Last Hundred Years Trilogy
Some Luck
Early Warning
Golden Age
Fiction
Private Life
Ten Days in the Hills
Good Faith
Horse Heaven
The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton
Moo
A Thousand Acres
Ordinary Love and Good Will
The Greenlanders
The Age of Grief
Duplicate Keys
At Paradise Gate
Barn Blind
Non-fiction
The Man Who Invented the Computer
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel
A Year at the Races
Charles Dickens
Catskill Crafts
For Young Adults
Gee Whiz
Pie in the Sky
True Blue
A Good Horse
The Georges and the Jewels
Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, as well as five works of non-fiction and a series of books for young adults. In 2001 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2006 she received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. Her novel Horse Heaven was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2002, and her novel Private Life was chosen as one of the best books of 2010 by The Atlantic, The New Yorker and The Washington Post. She lives in northern California.
This electronic edition published 2017 by Mantle
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ISBN: 978-1-5098-4418-0
Copyright © 1980 by Jane Graves Smiley
Cover images: Christopher Daniel / EyeEm / Getty Images
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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