ASLEEP A KING
33
shoulders. Does Mrs. Aldington use nothing but sheets? Who am I?
What am I using my legs for? What have I got to do with all the
people in this town?
As
his car turned into the road he had an impulse
to stop, run back quickly, and bury himself miles deep in his bed.
The impulse came again during the morning, grew, as he piled
groceries into HURLBUT'S CRUISING STORE, to something like a con–
viction. His motions seemed useless and strange, the brilliance and
urgency of the sun exasperated him, as if he had been up all night.
He felt it beating on his bronzed neck and arms but he was stiff
against it, he could not think clearly about anything but sleep. And
it had been the same in other years, in his teens: June was too much
for him. Everything heaving into flower; girls swinging along the
state road hand in hand; women dragging their bright colours out of
trunks and rushing somewhere, anywhere, to meet. There on the
porch steps at mail time: Where have we been all this time? Peaches!
the first of the season. We'll have a party Saturday and ask everyone
in town. Even the old-time old maid opens her purse a little wider
on a day like this. And the sun throbs more and more until noon
comes like a trumpet over the hills. Everyone but Mark, it seemed,
had some secret understanding with the month of June.
He went on stacking groceries in the truck.
"Take this!"
It was Jake Hurlbut speaking.
Mark looked up as from a hidden vice and saw his employer–
his employer's son-rolling like a mountain out the back door, a case
of canned food leaning on his chest. Where did he get all that power?
Is it just from eating? He was six feet four and walked with huge
tough-muscled majesty, his girth bulging before him like an over–
stuffed sack. He had pale chicken-down hair and once in a long while
-for girls only- the moist pink smile of a baby. They had been in
school and high-school together.
Mark took the case.
"And hurry up there. We got to get going."
"O.K."
He would have liked to get tough with Jake, he dreamed of it
sometimes, but there was no use. Jake had everything well in hand.
There were plenty of boys hanging around the gas-stand who would
have jumped at Mark's job, plenty more on the road gang. They were
almost in awe of Mark because he worked at the store. Nobody could
tell Jake what to do. Even his father was dependent on him since they
moved into the new building. He was still longing for the old store,
the little one-room thing with a stove in the middle, and couldn't get
