508
JONATHAN
BAUMBACH
him. One's grandparents are more important in every way than one's
parents.
As an old man of nea rly eighty Burton went to visit one of his
married daughters in Kent. It couldn 't have been too long before
he went back to Nottingham and died , though there was no sign
of it until very close to the end. One day in Kent he stood with
another of his grandsons watching men cutting the wheat, and
when the field was small some bystanders began throwing missiles
at the rabbits that started to run for safety. Burton saw one in the
chaff within hand 's reach, and made a grab for it. :\t that moment
a piece of slate smashed into the back of his hand , inadvertently
thrown by someone who did not see him.
Burton did not make any complaint, because he had kept his
grip on the rabbit, which he hit at the back of the neck and killed.
He stood up and said nothing, but walked off with his grandson to
the doctor's house a few miles away to get his hand put right, blood
trailing on the ground from his shattered veins, the dead rabbit
swinging from his pocket.
Jonathan Baumbach
DROOL
There is at the moment a baby with bowlegs standing on
my lap.
Quel chance!
He has been in the same position for hours,
tilted forward like a figurehead.
It
is what he likes to do and I
am
not, though my knees begin to ache, unappreciative of the honor.
"Don't you have anything else to do?" I ask him. The question slides
by him like a greased pig. I was meditating when he arrived, trying
to come to terms with feelings of failure and emptiness, and have lost
concentration, have fallen into vagueness. Why don 't I lift him off
my lap and return him to the floor? It hurts his feelings. :\nd he is
tenacious and will, if removed, find his way back.
