WILLIAM GASS
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noisy as Niagara, day-mist and light spatter , they were welcome as
HolyWater because she sensed the presence of the Sacred Word in bird
whistle , rain plop-noises natural and noises not-squirrel chatter,
pipe rattle, buzz , bloom , shadow ; she parsed them all as easily as he
read Dick and Jane-St . Francis couldn ' t hold a sparrow to her-and
she had for each of this world's blurtS a warm greeting , not for him ,
though , just for the holing of moles and earth-eating worms, just for
the paths, traps, and caches of beetles and spiders , for ants, wasps,
cicadas-veterans as jovial in their cosy halls of relaxation as members
of the American Legion . She'd have an immediate sympathy for the
growth of roots, too, Hess was prepared to bet, their efforts, the
energy , life's task, how it was ... like fingers sttuggling into gloves . It
was a contradiction he couldn't countenance or fathom , because for all
her foreknowledge, he still had to yoo-hoo when he came round a
corner , and without that cheerful next door warning, or the boop–
boop-boop of a rubber horn he'd filched from the handlebars of a
neighbor tike 's bike-ha , oh lord , ha ha , ha ha-she'd startle like a
sparkler , burn with indignation briefly, and darken on the wire.
Otherwise she was stoical. She was patient. Rapt , she waited for
erosion, rust, chip , flake , craze, settle , since slowness didn't faze her ,
accumulations of the gradual , the thick that gets there bit by bit the
way fog sags in a hollow, little reiterations, all the overtolc! anecdotes of
the actual , same upon same , she said, were satisfying, though her face
did not betray her pleasure , if, in fact , she felt some , giving away only
what a dial would , so he sometimes knew where his wife was tuned
withour any sense for the source or substance of the signal, and because
she was a stranger to class and its consequent snobbery , she listened
equally to gravel scatter or the incontinent wetting of basement walls.
The further within she went , the more numerous the noises , an
orchestra hot for its A couldn't compete for cacophany , and they
delivered her news as diverse as the dailies . To tap drip , naturally, she
bowed like a rod ; to knuckle pop and cloth scrape, she was a wand. . .
how do you stand it , Hess often said , with so much going on, if it's as
you say, and there are vibrations in ethers as yet unimagined, sounds
exceeding sound even in the customary shoe squeak and silk slither , or
from drapes , morose and heavy , hanging in a skin of dust , there comes
the prolonged metal shudder of a gong? Of course , it 's only me who
has the wonder , and who am I- so dull, so down ; but I think it's
