DONALD BARTHELME
511
-Much like that. Every day. 1 don't mind doing the work if
1 get the results.
-We had a dog because we thought it would keep us
together. A plain dog.
-Did it?
-Naw it was just another of those dumb ideas we had we
thought would keep us together.
-Bone ignorance.
-Saw him once more, he was at a meeting I was at, had
developed an annoying habit of coughing into his coat collar
whenever he-
-Coughed.
- Yes he'd lift his coat collar and cough into it odd
.
.
mannensm very annoymg.
-Then the candles going out one by one-
-The last candle hidden behind the altar-
-The tabernacle door ajar-
-The clapping-shut of the book.
-I got ready for the great day. The great day came, several
times in fact.
-Each time with memories of the last time.
-No. These do not in fact intrude. Maybe as a slight
shimmer of the over-and-done-with. Each great day is itself, with
its own war machines, rattles, and green lords. There is the
hesitation that the particular day won't be what it is meant to be.
Mostly it is. That's peculiar.
-Well , it's a clean afternoon, heavy on the azaleas.
-He told me terrible things in the evening of that day as we
sat side by side waiting for the rain to wash his watercolor paper
clean. Waiting for the rain to wash the watercolors from his
watercolor paper.
-About me?
-Oh, everything.
