Bliss by Elizabeth Gundy

Author:Elizabeth Gundy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 1977-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Leona stood in her doorway and admitted the possibility that the friendly interest she had in her carpenter was not altogether business.

In fact, he was looming so large in her life, she had little interest in anything else.

How could such a thing have happened?

She was a woman of culture. More—a scholar whose star was the intellect, intricate and wonderful; her sport was Shakespeare’s flash of wit, the breathtaking turn of an image, Donne’s metaphysics. She understood Christopher Smart, for God’s sake!

Bliss was one step from illiterate. He was a bumpkin, a brute, a hillbilly. He was married. His front tooth was missing.

The Bluebird chugged down the lane. The bumpkin lumbered out with a long tube of rolled-up paper.

“What did you bring?”

“It’s an inch-to-the-mile map I got on my lunch hour.” He unrolled it on the grass, and she crouched down beside him, on her hands and knees.

“This here’s Micwam Brook. I’ll be fishing it next week.” He broke into a dazzling grin. “I been thinking on it for years; I figure I might as well try it.” He fixed himself a cigarette.

“It looks like it’s all woods there.” She ran her hand over the paper. “I hope you carry a compass.”

“I don’t need no compass.” He laughed through his smoke. “And don’t go calling the boy scouts up to find me if I’m late.”

“What will you fish for?”

“Trout.” They examined the map. “I bet you’d like fishing, Leona.”

“I’ve never tried it.”

“You just set and listen to the birds, and sometimes you see a fish flashing his colors, and if you catch him you can eat him, and if you don’t, it don’t matter, cause you like it just being out there.... You’d be good too. You ain’t one to fidget and yak all the time.”

She smiled. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about fishing.

“You wouldn’t have to. I’d show you everything.”

The inch-to-the-mile map swam before her eyes.

“What I mean”—he was coughing and swatting flies— “is if we was kids together, like back in home, then I would’ve showed you everything. That’s what I meant.”

“If we were kids?”

“Like if you was my sister Patsy.”

“Did you show her how to fish?”

“She never fished much, Patsy.”

“Did Sally?”

“No.”

She put the tip of her finger on the Micwam. “What else would we do?”

“You could pick raspberries if you wanted. They’d be out now. Raspberries is easier to pick than strawberries.”

“And if it stormed while we were fishing?”

“If it stormed”—he had some trouble with his ash, which ended up on the Micwam—”we’d have to stay at the camp.”

They remained hunched side by side, like a pair of greyhounds waiting for the signal to start.

It came with a gust of wind, blowing the paper up against them.

“Here’s our storm.” He rolled the map back into a tube. “I’d best get to work.”

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