Celebration by Harry Crews

Author:Harry Crews [Crews, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction; General
ISBN: 0684848104
Google: GSKIsEQjvwIC
Amazon: B004JZWP7I
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 1998-01-28T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

When she had felt her grandfather stretch rigid and the shudder take him and the last long breath start to explode from his mouth, she bent to cover his mouth with her mouth and take his dying breath into her lungs. It had all been done as he had instructed her to do it, and it had all been as he had said it would be, the breath strong and sour and long, but the act itself so personal and, by its nature, unique that she would never forget even the tiniest detail of it, so indelibly was it impressed upon her memory.

She was walking now directly toward the courtyard, toward the courtyard where Ted had killed himself at the base of a tree that was now only a ragged stump eight inches high where Justice had cut it down before the Old Ones could pull him off it with their mouths.

A black cross was painted on the top of the gummy surface of the stump. Too Much did not know who had painted it there and did not care. The cross could just as well have been a swastika. They were both signs of allegiance and fidelity. Both were misguided, failed, and fucked-up. As much blood had been spilled under one sign as under the other by fools with neither particularly good nor particularly bad hearts, only particularly human hearts.

The lines of the cross, thick and uneven, had been done with an unsteady hand. It was probably the work of one of the Old Ones, although Too Much wondered at times how much the Old Ones understood of what was going on around them. And she wondered, too, about their memories, especially the memories they would go on talking about at great length—the Old Ones who could talk—telling of the world and the way it had been forty or fifty or more years ago, while a week ago or even yesterday or the day before was a totally blank page to them. The best they could give you about what had happened in the last few days was a dead, bewildered stare. Too Much had always been concerned about them, and now that she was manager of Forever and Forever, they were her responsibility, and she intended to make some changes. She couldn’t make them live any longer—which she would not have done had she been able—but she could make the time they had left a little easier for them, which, in her own way, she had been trying to do all along.

She turned from the cross on the stump and looked long and hard toward Ted’s trailer, which was—even at this early hour—a shimmering of the sun, as were the Old Ones, and Johnson and Justice, who moved among them, starting them at tasks, closely directing them, and then stopping them in time to keep them from ruining something.

At first Johnson had come to her and complained that they only got in his way. “With the time

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