Assorted Prose by Updike John

Author:Updike, John [Updike, John]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780679645832
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-09-17T16:00:00+00:00

The Enormous Cloud

Strange, that I remember it. One day, playing roof ball—and I could be six, nine, or twelve when it happened—my head was tipped back and there was an enormous cloud. Someone, maybe I, even called, “Look at the cloud!” It was a bright day; out of nowhere had materialized a cloud, roughly circular in shape, as big as a continent, leaden-blue in the mass, radiant silver along the edges. Its size seemed overwhelming; it was more than a portent, it was the fulfillment of one. I had never seen, and never saw again, such a big cloud.

For of course what is strange is that clouds have no size. Moving in an immaterial medium at an indeterminate distance, they offer no hold for measurement, and we do not even judge them relative to each other. Even, as on a rainy day, when the sky is filled from horizon to horizon, we do not think, “What an enormous cloud.” It is as if the soul is a camera shutter customarily set at “ordinary”; but now and then, through some inadvertence, it is tripped wide open and the film is flooded with an enigmatic image.

Another time the sky spoke at the playground, telling me that treachery can come from above. It was our Field Day. One of the events was a race in which we put our shoes in a heap, lined up at a distance, ran to the heap, found our shoes, put them on, and raced back. The winner got a ticket to the Shillington movie theatre. I was the first to find my shoes, and was tying my laces when, out of the ring of adults and older children who had collected to watch, a voice urged, “Hurry! Don’t tie the laces.” I didn’t, and ran back, and was disqualified. My world reeled at the treachery of that unseen high voice: I loved the movies.

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