The Best American Short Stories 2019 by Anthony Doerr

Author:Anthony Doerr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HMH Books

Rae was in the doorway, bright-eyed, half laughing. Cowper waved his left hand like a choirmaster and sang on.

Deep in unfathomable mines

Of never failing skill,

He treasures up His bright designs

And works His sov’reign will.

He stopped and looked at her. “Cowper’s Hymn,” he said.

“Go on!”

“That’s the part I like. It’s in the book, if you want to read it.” He reached for the smaller book that she had fetched from his trunk along with Little Dorrit. She had put them both on his crate-table, and the smaller one had stayed there. He held it out to her. She was shy about taking it from him, so he opened it to the title page. Before that was the flyleaf, with the inscription on it in spidery legal writing, To my dear young friend and namesake of the Poet, William Cowper, on the occasion of his matriculation. May you find Honor and Contentment in your chosen profession. September 1889. R. E. Bendischer. He knew it without reading it. He showed Rae the title page, and then turned to the hymn. It took a while, one-handed, but he knew the page. He knew all the pages.

“He called it ‘Light Shining out of Darkness,’ but mostly it gets called ‘Cowper’s Hymn.’”

She took the book from him at last.

“I never heard you sing,” she said.

“I didn’t feel much like it lately.”

“I guess not.” She was still shy, not looking at the book, or at him. He never could figure out her shynesses, her embarrassments. They were mysteries. The more he knew Rae, the more her mysteries. Endless. Unfathomable.

“I like that word,” she said. She was blushing some, but went ahead. She was looking down at the open book now. “It’s a grand word. Unfathomable.”

After a while Cowper said, “It is.”

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