COMING WITH THE news, she was - rubber-legged from running uphill since Waidhofen. Gallen brought the news of Siggy's great return for his toothbrush, how he swung apelike from ivy vine to the window's grate to gain another entrance, how he bleated down the hall, rode the banister to the lobby, spoke the epitaphs for them all - for Auntie Tratt, who clucked like a tupping hen in her nook under the stairwell; and for my Gallen too, he gave some screaming metaphor of shattered maidenhood. And for me, he had also spoken for me - Gallen told - a diatribe, a prophecy of my eventual castration.

'Oh, crazy!' she gasped. 'Oh he was, Graff. And he pawed up the garden, he threw mud on the castle walls!'

Well, the bees heard it all; they hummed against her where she slumped against them - the bee boxes propping her up all along her long, slight back.

'Don't let her lean too heavy,' said Keff. 'Don't have her tip a hive, smarty.'

Oh, enough of you, Keff. Isn't it entirely enough now? I thought.

'They'll get him for sure,' said Keff.

'Oh, he's wild,' Gallen said. 'Graff, the whole town is out for him. I don't know where he's gone.'

'They should box him in,' said Keff - and down the road behind him the crazy-twisted headlight startled the trees crouched against the switchbacks. The town blinked noiselessly beyond the dent-shapes and reliefs of round tree clumps balled against the night sky.

'Oh, Graff,' said Gallen. 'I'm so sorry. Please, I am sorry, Graff - if he's your friend,' she said.

'Listen,' said Keff, but I heard nothing. 'Listen, smarty' - down in the town, winding up our way but just a murmur yet - 'do you hear the car?'

And some of the tree clumps caught the blinking-blue light, flashing above the road and changing sides with the turn of the switchbacks.

'Listen,' said Keff. 'That's a Volkswagen. That's the police, for sure.'

For sure. Sirenless and stealthy.

There were two in the car, and they didn't stay long.

'We're making a roadblock at the top!' said one

, and a black glove snapped its fingers.

'At St Leonhard!' said the other. 'If he comes this way.'

And the bees heard; the diminishing blue blinked away from their box houses; they stirred against my poor, propped Gallen, who for the second time this evening had been reduced to a heap on account of me.

And I could only think: For sure, he's not going to try riding that bike out of town. Oh, for sure - at least - he won't be coming this way.

And Keff said, 'Smarty, we can't just be gawking here all night. If the girl won't fall off, I'd like to get across the road.'

'I'll be all right,' said Gallen, but her voice shivered as if some kind of wind down the mountains had blown all the way from the Raxalpe, all the way from last January, and caught her warm and precious and vulnerable, just waking up in the morning, coverless. She was so hurt, really, and there was nothing I could think clearly.

'Let's listen, then,' said Keff, mounting the great spring-back seat, settling among his iron-clanking parts. We listened and he wrenched the housing for the headlight around, so we were pointed and lit straight across the road. Then he came up with a heavy foot on each wheel brake; he rocked and struggled the tractor out of gear. The trailer shifted; the bees sang.

'I don't hear anything,' I said.

'No, nothing,' said Keff, and he reached for the start-rod.

He was reaching; I said, 'Keff?'

'Smarty?' he said, and his hand stopped in air.

'Listen,' I said. 'Do you hear?'

And he froze himself still, not squeaking the tractor's parts, not gusting his own breath.

'Oh yes,' he said.

Maybe not even out of the town yet, but coming - and maybe not even coming our way. In those close arches, maybe - maybe that's what brought on the sound and then suddenly shut it off. Off and on again.

Tags: John Irving Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net