'Oh, frot,' I said. 'Oh, Jesus, Sig.'
And just as he chunked the bike in gear, the thin little girl came up to us from nowhere and touched Siggy's hand with her licorice stick - touched him lightly and magically, as if her licorice were the Good Fairy's wand.
The notebook records it in poetry: Oh, the things you want
Are very private--
Private, private,
Very private.
Oh, the only ways there are
To get them
Are very public--
Public, public,
Very ugly-public.
So God help us, Graff.
Great Bear, Big Dipper,
Help us both.
Which must be one of his worst poems.
The Second Sweet Act of God
FROM ST LEONHARD THE road turned steeply downhill, cutting high-banked and gravelly switchbacks to where the Ybbs would spill out of the mountain at Waidhofen. The gravel was soft and loose in the banks, and we tried to stay near the middle of the road; our rear wheel moved us all aslither, and we rode with our weight off the seat, pushed forward on the foot pedals.
The first of the orchards began less than a mile below St Leonhard - apple orchards, the tree rows stretching on both sides of the road, the young trees snappy in the wind and the old twisties squatting immovable; the grass between the tree rows was mown and lumped, smelling sickish-sweet in the sun. The apple buds were coming to blossom.
Now we posted on the foot pedals and let the bike scatter under us like a horse; it was some road, all right, the way it dropped and bent, giving us a flash of trees on one side and then the other; the raspy grasshoppers snapping out of the ditches, and the blackbirds swooping to near-collision.
Then the girl's braid seemed to whip out at us as she flung her head round to our noise and skipped herself out of the road. It was a thick auburn braid, waist-length, with the end of it flicking her high, swinging rump, and there was more wind filling her skirt than hips. The gravel was too loose for braking, so we had just this flash of her - her long brown legs, and her long fingers flicking down to her knees, pinching her skirt safe around her. Then I was looking over my shoulder, and she was turning her face away - tossing her braid out beside her; it did a snake dance in the sun while the wind held it up. I could almost have reached it, but the wind dropped it on her shoulder and she tugged it roughly to her cheek; that was all I saw of her, except for a laundry bag adangle from one of her arms.
She straightened her brown leather jacket with a tug as rough as she gave to her braid. Then we lost her in a switchback.
'Did you see her face, Sig?'
'You weren't looking at her face, either.'
'When I turned around, I was. She hid it from me.'
'Ah,' said Siggy. 'She feels guilty about it. An ill omen, Graff.'
But I looked for more of her along the road, as if girls with braids so auburn and rich were as prolific as apple buds and grasshoppers.
Great Bear, Big Dipper, Thy Ways Are Strange Indeed
WELL, UNDER THE apple trees there was deadfall and winter pruning that the firewood men had missed. The low boughs with blossoms and buds; the bee boxes propped on apple crates, the bee abodes painted white and set high up so the tractors and horsecarts wouldn't bump them over and spill the hives. It was all bees' work in the orchards now; the bees were out opening the apple buds, from blossom to blossom - oh, the friend of the flower and fertilization, the polliniferous bee!
'Isn't fertilization grand?' said Siggy.
And the deadwood under the trees was easy to snap up small - was making a quick-hot coal bed for us; we sprinkled the coals with water to put the flame down. Then we set the pan on the fired rocks and popped our butter pat into the pan. Siggy crumbed the crust of the bread loaf, and we rolled the wet trout until they were furry with crumbs.