Benjamin De Molt
THE SENSE THAT IN THE SCENE DELIGHTS
For most of the afternoon it was a soft spring rain that
slipped lightly through the leaves and soundlessly drenched the earth.
In
the bunched heads of short grass and in the ruts that the car had
gouged as
it
crossed to the grove, puddles filled and overflowed in
quick eddies that vanished in the blackness of the lower marsh.
Sometimes a squally wind bulled across the meadows and tossed
itself noisily in this corridor of the forest, and then the rain swept
in
harder, and the branches of the small pines and the frail trunks
of the weed-birches quavered, and the forest clutched its slick new
greenness to itself. But at dusk the wind stilled and they noticed, as
they sat in the police car with the windows shut, that the rain was
thinning to mist.
There were only three of them here-the woman had returned
to the village in the cab of the tow truck. The driver had refused
to cross the marshy bottom that separated the cart road from the
grove where the abandoned car was, so the Chief, after standing
patiently in the rain and arguing with him, sent him hack. Then
the police officer named Charlie called the firehouse and asked for
another truck. And now they were waiting-the finder, the Chief,
and Charlie-for that truck, and also for the arrival of the doctor.
The soporific washing sounds of the rain in the leaves, and the
gentle hum of the open radio band had eased them; they were al–
most startled when the finder spoke.
"Look, Chief," he began. He was a round-faced, light-complex–
ioned man with close-cropped hair and an expression of uncompli–
cated earnestness; he was probably not thirty-five. He wore a gray
tweed suit and a red and black striped tie.
