[Dorothy Parker 04] - Death Rides the Midnight Owl by Agata Stanford

Author:Agata Stanford [Stanford, Agata]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, General
ISBN: 9780982754276
Google: r-83vgAACAAJ
Amazon: B006WSK04A
Barnesnoble: B006WSK04A
Goodreads: 13824481
Publisher: Jenevacris Press
Published: 2011-07-14T23:00:00+00:00

“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks—”

“Oh, for cryin’outloud, Bob!” whined Bunny.

“—Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic—”

“Haven’t we heard enough of ‘Robert’s recitation of all the poems he had to memorize in High School’?” I said.

“When I asked Teacher why I had to put these ‘odes’ to memory,” said Mr. Benchley, interrupting himself, “Teacher said that, like memorizing my multiplication tables, they would come in handy one day, and they have for times like these. Now, where was I?”

Bunny moaned and with resignation said, “Pick it up at, Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers—”

“Yes, that’s it! Thanks for the cue, Bunny: Where is the thatched-roofed village—the home of—”

What was the point of fighting it, Bunny’s expression seemed to say when he turned around to look at me from the passenger seat of the car. He rolled his eyes upon glancing at the sleeping Tallulah, and then offered me a cigarette from his case.

“Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands—”

We’d endured an hour of recital and thought that the program had come to an end with Longfellow’s The Wreck of the Hesperus. We soon discovered that Mr. Benchley could be as longwinded as Longfellow himself, when he began his dramatic recitation of the first two cantos of part one of Evangeline. Happily, he hadn’t put to memory the eight remaining cantos, and when he had finally run out of steam, Mr. Benchley noticed that the car was running out of gas. We drove off the highway past a peeling and punched-out billboard on which remained the depiction of huge, disembodied lips setting off a toothy smile, advertising the “expert dentistry” of Dr. Heckleman, D.D.S. Where the paper had peeled away it left gaps in what was once a perfect smile. And it looked like the work of a bunch of kids out one night with a can of black paint, a brush, and mischief in their hearts that took out a couple more teeth as well. It was funny, as most vandalism is not.

Mr. Benchley stopped at a railroad crossing and then continued on, following the dusty side road that ran parallel to the railroad track. On the other side of the road there wasn’t much more than the occasional wood-framed house gone to seed—mostly ramshackle little buildings, with paint worn down to rotting gray clapboards, given over to hardware supplies, a variety store, a locksmith, and a seedy luncheonette. The landscape was bare and sandy with patches of grass struggling to hold onto the earth. Our car kicked up dust and obscured the road behind us like a past we wanted to forget.

A crosshatch pattern of telephone poles lining the tracks up ahead looked like the grim remains of foliage-ridden trees after a fire. And sitting defiantly in this sad little world was a little pink house that came into view as we rounded the bend, all the more vibrant in this spitefully gray place, its ultimate destiny doomed.

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