Polly is not full of wind like the Judge. You ought
to see. We have come upon them now. Sweat like
white soupbeans pops out over Polly's face. Sweat
drips from the end of my nose. That's where I ai-
.ways sweat. On the end of the nose. The Judge has
a cool, mossy-looking face. He doesn't sweat. He is
on the bank under a shade tree. The Judge has his
hat in his hand. His old, bald, mushmellon head is
shining in the May sunlight like a peeled onion. His
ears stand up, like two wild lettuce leaves under a
shade tree. His little blue-veined hands dilly-dally
with the wind. They are talking about a bridge to
the wind. His eyes are blue snake-eyes looking at
the wind.
I could say to Polly: "There's the members of
the Judge's Court in the woods. We ought to feed
them some roasted snake eggs and see how they'd
like a new brand of food. There is the Judge. If he
did not wear clothes, his belly would be shapeless
as a puffy mushroom on a rotten beech stump. I
could tell the Judge this. What would the Judge say?
This is what I think anyway."
Polly could tell me: "The members of his Fiscal
Court are full of wind. We vote for bags of wind.
One is full of North Wind. One is full of East Wind.
One is full of West Wind. One is full of South
Wind. One is full of wind from the mushrooms.
The Judge is full of all these winds. But I am not.
I am filled with a new life, a new spirit."
Polly and me look through the hazel thicket. It
is just beginning to leaf. Thin leaves flutter in the
Spring wind. They are very pretty, above the water.
The Judge does not see them. He looks into the wind.
A
crow flies over the Judge. I wish it would deposit
its bank roll on his bald head and cover up the rays
of sun bouncing from that onion-peeled rock.
Polly whispers to me: "Thorpin, an old sow and
four pigs."
"Shhhhhh-shhhhhh-shhhhhh."
I hold my fin-
ger over my mouth and point to her. "Shhhhhh-
shhhhhh. Be quiet. We have to have bread. We must
eat. You know that. We got to buy a plow. We got
to get seeds to put in the ground. You can't use a
little paper pad and a pencil out here like you used
to use. You used to wear a white shirt and a neck-
tie when I checked cars at the Wimple ton Railroad
yards. Now get quiet, please. You must not whisper
loud as the wind in the hazel bushes . .The Judge
will hear."
The Judge talks with his hands. The court mem-
bers smoke. They smoke cigars big as grapevines cut
up in sticks of stovewood. Each cigar is big as a
grapevine stick. I wish you could see the smoke go-
ingup into the pretty sunlit air of May. They laugh.
They talk to the Judge. The crow flies over again.
Birds sing on the boughs. There is a nest on a bent-
over-the-creek waterbirch. It has four blue eggs in
it. The mother bird sings. The male bird sings.
Spring again. Life. Here is Polly. Six birds in the
PARTISAN
REVIEW
nest at home. She talks. I talk. We are together. It
is Spring. Birds dig in the earth. They catch in the
air. They have to eat. We dig in the earth. We
must see the Judge first. He is our catch. We have
to eat.
I say to Polly: "I don't give a damn, I'm going
over and speak to the Judge and his court. I don't
care if I didn't vote for him. I'll tell him, if he asks.
He knows, anyway. My pockets are full of south
wind. I must have something in my pockets besides
the wind. Spring is here. You are here. Birds have
nests with eggs in them. They bring life into the
world. You are here. You are not full of wind. You
bring life into the world. Summer will be here after
while. It will be too late to plant. We need seeds.
We need grub. We need mule power. We need a
few days of work. Autumn will trail summer, you
know-and snow will follow autumn. Life goes in
a cycle, like the seasons. We are in our summer now.
I must speak to the Judge. A pocket full of wind
won't help in the winter."
Leaves are slippery under my feet. I have a funny
feeling. But it goes in this game of voting. You
never know which way you are voting bread-to
you or away from you. It is uncertain as the wind
blows. One side will get the bread. One must bow.
One must ask of the other side. What will one do if
one doesn't. I hate to ask. Hell, yes, I do. I hate
to stoop. I hate to be the conquered. But I am the
conquered. You are the conquered. We are all
defeated. We are all conquered after all-after any
way we vote.
"And you did not," says the Judge.
"No," I say, "I did not."
"Th·"
h
J
d "
f'
d
en, says t e u ge, go to your own nen s.
Go to your rolled-in-the-mud friends. We beat to the
roll. We got you first. If you'd a got us, what would
we have done. Without, of course. Go to your de-
feated friends. They can give you a sack of beans,
maybe-a pick, a shovel, a sack of flour. They can
give you a loan on your farm. They can put two
hams in your smoke house, where you didn't have
but one under our administration. Isn't that what
your man said, when we rolled him under? Who's
putting hams in the smokehouse now?"
I do not speak. But I could say: "They do not put
anything in my pockets. What I had in my pockets
is all gone. I used to take green paper every Satur-
day to the hole-in-the-wall. It was something to have.
A wind crept in overnight and blew it away, or the
mice cut it up. I don't know. That was security. It
was secu:rity against old age, time, death, grub,
taxes."
"And, now," said South Wind, with his belly
working up and down when he gruntingly laughed,
his head up in the wind like the little end of a pop
bottle, "we eat our own wind. We grind it in a
sausage mill. That gives it flavor, you know. Did
you ever taste the wind? Tastes fine, don't it? Well,
