Horace Afoot by Frederick Reuss

Author:Frederick Reuss
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: M P Publishing
Published: 2009-12-01T21:00:00+00:00

I haven’t set foot outside for days except to bring in wood from the porch. It is quiet. The only sounds are water dripping from the roof, the crackle of the stove, the occasional hiss of car tires on the street. The snow and muck and damp air aren’t really what has kept me indoors these several days. I am afraid to go out—afraid of stumbling onto more contingencies. And the longer I remain inside the greater my fear seems to grow. I’m not sure I understand completely, but I think it’s fairly common—the disinclination to participate in the riot of unintended incidentals and possibilities and truth values derived apart from propositions and conditionalities and the general roaring in the ears of all the finite facts of the world.

Standing on the front porch, I listen to the water trickling from the roof, a load of musty wood bundled under one arm. Damp air and a falling barometer have affected the functioning of the stove, and the raw, sodden smell of creosote and smoke permeates the air inside the house. After stoking the fire I go back outside and slog through wet snow to the side of the house to check on the chimney. Rather than rising in columns or plumes, the smoke merely oozes asthmatically into the atmosphere and hangs in the air above the house. I can’t tell what is causing the problem—if the chimney is blocked or if it has something to do with changing barometric pressure. As long as smoke is coming out, I figure there is nothing to worry about.

A quiet knock sounds at the door. It is the kid from next door. He is standing on the porch holding a snow shovel that is almost as tall as he is. “Want your walk shoveled?” he asks timidly.

I motion him inside. He leans the shovel against the side of the house and enters cautiously. He stands just inside the door and glances tentatively at my living room quarters as though captive on foreign soil. I judge him to be about ten or eleven. He has the idle air of a young boy with a secret or two tucked under his belt. He didn’t expect to be invited inside and is already formulating his description of the weirdo neighbor’s house, which he will relate to Mom and Dad at dinnertime.

“How much do you charge?”

“Ten dollars.”

“It looks pretty deep. Can you do it alone?”

“I did our walkway in less than an hour. My dad did the driveway. He has a plow.”

I pull the curtain aside and look over. The riot of plowing that has been going on every morning for the past three days has created a high mound of snow that rises up at the end of the neighbor’s driveway. Dad’s truck with the snowplow attachment is parked before it in an attitude of casual victory. Mom’s car is parked just behind, beneficiary of the big-boy violence of snow moving. The boy snuffles, swipes his nose with a torn glove, and stands on the mat with blank preadolescent insolence.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.