And cursed be he that moves my bones.
Youth—
Was there youth?
I sometimes think of the Avon that summer, thunderstorms booming, the river very high. Cousin Will was trying to yank a calf out of the water, when the river sucked him under. Kathlene Hamlett played at Ophelia—letting defeat suck her down. That was a summer of defeats for most of us, the loss of my father’s property, theatres closed because of official disapproval, weeks of suffocating heat, the sun caught in the trees, frying our brains, flies buzzing...
Cousin Will was a cheery, responsible boy, with a pitiful limp. Good at lots of jobs, he was thinking of marrying. Fishing was his love...poaching too. Kathlene was good and capable but tried making love before she was old enough...
I miss their smiling faces.
Ben writes such an elegant hand: he has that Italian influence to perfection: his scripts are damnatory of my provincial scrawl, I who can’t remember whether to write Willm, Will or William...thank God for copyists, those drones, our skull-down, penny-quill calligraphists. Too bad someone is not dotting this.