The Huge Season by Wright Morris

Author:Wright Morris [Morris, Wright]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4962-0257-4
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska
Published: 2017-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

FOLEY: 7

As he crossed Twenty-third Street a few drops of rain fell on his sleeve. He tipped back his head and a drop splashed on his face. A swirl of wind lifted the curb dust into the air, a cloud shadow darkened the corner, and east from the Hudson, like a jet diving, came the rolling sound of thunder. Big drops, widely spaced, puffed the dust at his feet. Paper boy on the corner slipping tarpaulin over his magazines. Afternoon editions featured tear-stained divorcée moment after her child, kidnaped by husband, reported safe. In pocket of blouse she was wearing Foley could see king-size pack of cigarettes and make out that she was smoking choice of discriminating people, Herbert Tareytons. Proctor gone from the headlines. Flood of news, like river of silt, left deposit over what had been news in the morning.

“Journal?” said the boy.

Foley dropped a coin on the pile, slipped one from beneath the weight, raised it over his head. Wind-whipped sheet of rain, as he walked south, hit him like spray of machine-gun bullets. Or did it? Stopped a moment to consider if that was right. Read it somewhere. Had never been hit by spray of bullets, but as very small boy stray jet from a fire hose had struck him like a wet sandbag in the chest. Rolled back his eyelids. Torn the flesh at the corners of his mouth.

Foley held the paper over his head and cold trickle of rain ran down sleeve of his trench coat. Felt the coolness where the wet knees of his pants rubbed on his legs. Rain falling in wind-blown sheets with big hollows, puffed out like a sail. Summer squall. He ran along the wall of windows to the first open doorway, ducked inside. Art shop, cards, reproductions along the walls. Remembered how he used to send Lou Baker every new Matisse. Did not remember stopping. But he hadn’t sent her anything for five or six years.

He stopped to look at the cards displayed in racks, one rack labeled MODERN, mostly French, Gauguin, Cézanne, Seurat, and Picasso, vest-pocket reminders of reproductions that hung in bus stations, lounge cars, bedrooms for guests, hallways that were dark and needed brightening up, dress shops that were chic, coffee shops that were smart, bathrooms with color matching shower curtains, and homes where the hair-oil stains on the paper simply had to be covered with something. And so they were. The French masters had anticipated the need.

He found nothing there, but in a box on the counter, as if it had been painted over the weekend, a pair of haggard lovers floating in a murky, grape-colored space. The woman bore a certain likeness to Lou Baker, the woman of sorrows, the Deirdre of Montana, and the man bore a striking resemblance to Proctor, the eroded saint. It was called “The Tempest,” by Kokoschka—and was one of those things. A somewhat unpleasant expressionistic piece—if you thought, as Foley did, of the pair of them as lovers—with the flesh daubed on carelessly as if it were peeling off.

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