The Field of Vision by Wright Morris

Author:Wright Morris [Morris Wright]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 0803257899
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska
Published: 2017-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

Mrs. McKee

“If anything should happen to that boy—” she said, and saw his mouth pucker, like a hen’s bottom. Into it, like a cork, he put the wet end of his cigar. Before she heard what she knew he was about to say, she pressed the automatic button that rolled up the window. A goldfish, his lips still puckered, he stood there a moment staring at her, then he made a face to indicate he would be right back.

From the rear—the rear of McKee, from the beginning, had been a problem—the way his hands hung down as if his legs, or something, were too short. No hat he ever wore, including this straw one, covered the back of his head as well as the front, but she had never noticed that spot before, the way she did down here. Hair—everybody seemed to have it, nobody ever lived long enough to lose it, and when he had his hat off McKee looked like a person who had just got well. Only nurses, or people who were still sick, ever looked at him. What had Alice Morple said? Honey, anyhow you haven’t had that worry. And she certainly hadn’t. Not once.

Not a suspicion in more than thirty years.

But had it ever crossed the ninny’s mind to have a suspicion himself? Boyd? No, he called that something else. He left her alone in such places as Sanborn’s. He let her sit in the parks. And here in the very shadow of the bullring, he let her wait in the car. Alone—if she brought it up he would say it had a heater and radio in it—when she had had young men, in the Sanborn’s lobby, take her arm like a tomato they were feeling to see if it was ripe. McKee smiling. The way he did that night on the porch.

When Mr. Arnold Clokey, the science teacher from Red Wing, Minnesota, took a liking to her, McKee had actually egged the poor man on. A giant of a man—with whatever it is that made such big men have smooth, baby faces—Mr. Clokey liked the same sort of things in Mexico she liked herself. Pottery, baskets, and those strawberries with the thick sweet cream. McKee seemed to think that any man his own age would feel the same way he did, or at least feel that way about his own wife.

“You two go ahead and fool around—” he said, when they met at that place in Cuernavaca, and just sat there in the square while they went off to fool around. Mr. Clokey had colored to the roots of his hair, which he at least had, and which made him quite attractive, and they had actually fooled around in some of those side streets until nearly dark. Mr. Clokey knew a little more Spanish than she did, having been down once before, in the ’30’s, and in the course of their walk she got to know him fairly well. He confided in her—as he

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