The Story of a Marriage by Greer Andrew Sean

Author:Greer, Andrew Sean [Greer, Andrew Sean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571246090
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2008-09-03T18:30:00+00:00

“It was a dull, strange kind of life,” Buzz said.

The day began with the yelling of the night watchman to head to the work trucks. Work was pulling stumps from a field, and Buzz’s job was to coil the chain around the stump before another man turned on the winch to haul it away. The only satisfying moment of the day came when that stump would pop out, like a rotten tooth, and a secret hell of worms and Paleolithic beetles would gape before them. The stumps were chopped up into firewood, and stacked in a long wall in the woods, where they rotted all through the war; nobody used them. The field was never plowed. It was the kind of work you imagine angels devising for uncertain souls, endlessly raking the clouds.

Men went insane from the monotony, the wormy sky, and the wormy oatmeal, but mostly they went insane from the sense that they did not matter. The earth was burning itself to the ground, east and west of America, and they took no part in it. It drove some men to go AWOL, and some to join the army and go to war, or to sail away and die out on an ocean. Many others, including Buzz, sought another way out. It is surprising, he said, to learn that a man needs to matter.

A chorus of screams silenced Buzz’s story; the ride had come to an end. Buzz crossed his arms and looked away. I wanted to say something to him, but the noise overwhelmed any talk, so we merely stood and watched them together: William laughing with just his top teeth showing, eyes hidden under the shadows of his thick eyebrows, arm now around his girl (it must have happened at a turn in the track), and Annabel slumped in hysterical false terror beside him.

“Take your girl to the Limbo ride!” the barker beside us comically cried.

“Yes,” said Buzz quietly. “She’s the marrying kind.”

As the operator let them out of the gate, Annabel stumbled and grasped at William for support, holding his right arm, laughing, for once forgetting the cares of her father, her future. No one could ever wish her harm.

“Come see Limbo!”

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