556
THALIA SELZ
I tend to sneer at that Lawrencian image of the sturdy Peasant
Woman: poor and sexually satisfied!) Together, these blankets
were enough to endow any two-dimensional stray with all the
length, breadth, depth, and momentous history he could use,
and by god we were there to see that he didn't shirk. All of us,
dead and alive, whooping him on. No chance to let go and
die happy!
I offer as proof that in all those years from the crash till
the war we had only three cases of theft and one instance of
bedbugs.
But Mr. X is no ordinary stray. At first, indeed, he looks
like one of many usual types of strays. I see him tread hesitantly
in the back door after my father, and because he is sure of
his
shabbiness and unsure of his welcome he sets the heel of one
shoe awkwardly down on the toe of the other. This makes
him collapse almost to his knees at the next step, and my cruel,
insensitive, unfeeling eight-year-old brother laughs. But Jason
has a soul like an armadillo's back, anyhow. I am twelve and
have not laughed in six months. It is unlikely that anything will
ever be able to make me laugh again. I am setting plates for
dinner, and I look gravely across the kitchen into those rich,
innocent, madman's eyes, as they wash over me without seeing
me at all really, only feeling Watchers, Warm, Food, Place.
"This is Joshua X.," says my father; "he is an artist."
Simple declarative, like a royal sentence of death.
At once I am in love. Without transition, conscious memory,
or anticipation. But this has happened so often before that
unconsciously I am quite used to it. Gently I set his place between
my mother's and mine; deliberately I single out the best piece
of everyday California Friarware: without chip or crack,
an
heraldic orange. My mother and I of necessity-by
rights–
get the two unmatched, most nicked plates. I am subtly aware
that my little brother is beginning to be on to me, but I would
no more
think
of setting at his place, and in revenge, my chipped
