Heed the Thunder Read Free Page B

of his rambling cottage, his Congress gaiters propped against a pillar, his big black hat pulled down upon his graying horseshoe of hair, his bright blue eyes buried in scalene triangles of flesh.
    His seven acres of corn wouldn’t be worth harvesting this year. Which meant that he would have to buy if he was going to feed. But why feed, anyway? A damned nuisance and no money in it.
    Those chickens were a damned nuisance, too. (He swiped at one viciously with his cane.) Always messing up the porch or getting into the garden; too tough to eat and too lazy to lay. But, what the hell? Let the old lady clean the porch; it would take some of the meanness out of her. Let the garden go to hell. It was cheaper to buy canned sass.
    Anyhow, he didn’t care much for eating. You couldn’t gum food and get any fun out of it.
    He had no use for dentists, either.
    Thinking, dreaming, he rolled his long black stogie from one corner of his mouth to another, absent-mindedly cursing the proximity of his nose to the cigar.…Another year or two, by God, he thought, an’ I’ll have to cut a hole in my britches and puff through my arse.…And he laughed scornfully, his accipitrine façade trembling with amusement at the tricks time had played on him.
    It was strange, shocking, the number of things he no longer cared about, could no longer trust. He had seen and had all that was within his power to see and have. He knew the total, the absolute lines of his periphery. Nothing could be added. There was now only the process of taking away. He wondered if it was like that with everyone, and he decided that it must be. And he wondered how they felt, and reasoned that they must feel about as he. That was all there was to life: a gift that was slowly taken away from you. An Indian gift. You started out with a handful of something and ended up with a handful of nothing. The best things were taken away from you last when you needed them worst. When you were at the bottom of the pot, when there was no longer reason for life, then you died. It was probably a good thing.
    He had no use for life. Very little, at any rate.
    He was pretty well stripped, but it had been a good long game and the amusement was worth something. It wasn’t so much the loss as the losing he minded. If there were some way of calling the thing a draw, he would have pulled back his chair willingly enough.
    He supposed he was living on pride. Will power.
    He wondered how long it would be before he had no use for that.
    He decided that it would not be very long.
    The screen door had opened and his son, Grant, had come out.
    “Good afternoon, Pa,” he said.
    “I guess it is afternoon, ain’t it?” said Link.
    He glanced at his son, coughed, removed his feet from the post, and cleared his throat on a passing chicken. Then he leaned back again, looking at Grant slyly from the corner of his eyes.
    The young man took out a package of cigarettes, removed one, and stood tapping it on his wrist. He was aware of his father’s dislike, and it made him uncomfortable. Being Lincoln’s son, he wanted very much to be liked. Unfortunately, he also liked himself very well as he was.
    Grant was the youngest of Lincoln’s four children. Tall and thin, he bore some slight resemblance to Edgar Allan Poe in actuality and a great deal in his own imagination. He wore a pearl-gray derby hat, a box-coated suit with peg legs, and yellow shoes with metal and glass buttons. Attached to his lapel by a black celluloid rosette and a length of black ribbon were pince-nez with window glass lenses. His gates-ajar collar was equipped with a flowing black tie. Under his arm he carried a copy of the Rubáiyát.
    “It looks like it might rain,” he remarked.
    Lincoln spat again. While his son waited, a fixed nervous smile on his pale face, he removed his cigar, trimmed the sodden end from it with his thumbnail and finger, and hurled it into the yard. He chuckled and snorted as a chicken gulped down the doubtful