Free Dinner Along the Amazon by Timothy Findley Page B

waiting.
    What he was waiting for he did not know—but he felt that there was action coming. This action, whatever it might be, could, he began to suspect, come from any side, even from some inanimate object right there in his own room.
    The windows might fly open of their own accord—(they were shut because the summer rain had finally come in a great cloudburst)—or the bureau might topple, or the pictures fall. God might put his hand into the room, even, and take him away and leave him somewhere on a hilltop or in the middle of some foreign and frightening field.
    If only he knew, or if he could at least guess, what it was that he was waiting for he might be able to prepare himself for defence. He could barricade the door or hide in the cupboard. He could even leave the room and ask to sleep with Bertha, his distrust of her aside. But he sensed that all of these resorts would be utterly useless, because he knew that what was there, waiting to happen, would happen in spite of anything that he could do to prevent it.
    He tried to think about Woolworth’s and about all the jewelry he had seen there. He pictured the prices and carefully went over, again, his accounts from the bazaar sales of the afternoon. He thought about the pane of glass from his mother’s window and knew that he must pay for that as well. He thought about Jo-Jo in Miss Kennedy’s lap and about his father’s umbrella.
    Above him in the attic Bertha shunted her flat form across dry sheets, grating it, as she did, to a sitting position on the edge of her bed. Harper listened to her crossing over to her bedroom door and heard her open it and descend to the second floor. She came and stood outside his door and he coughed to let her know that he was still awake. Then she went down the hall and stood outside his mother’s door listening, he could tell, to some mysterious noises beyond it, because she spoke, very quietly, Mrs Dewey’s name.
    Apparently, however, she was satisfied that all was reasonably well, because she came back down the hall and went downstairs to the kitchen, probably, Harper decided, to brew herself another of the inevitable cups of coffee.
    Harper began a half sleep. He was still aware of his room and of the storm beyond it and of his arms resting against the cold sheets, and yet he slept. He slept and he dreamed.
    Again, as in Miss Kennedy’s oak tree, he dreamt of his father and of his ‘Duty Letter’ and of his father’s voice. But this time instead of offering Harper the letter his father took it away from him and tore it up so that the pieces blew about in a funnel of wind just between them—obscuring and disfiguring his father’s face.
    After that he had a dream about ‘The War.’
    ‘The War,’ to Harper, was a big city where there were men running and also men driving in jeeps and men riding on horses—and all of them, all of these men, made wild shouts into the air and their faces were all puffed out with this shout.
    There were men, too, who were silent, but these men were lying on the ground or they were standing against the walls of the city with blood running from their eyes like tears and they moved their lips silently as though they were beggars who had voiced their cry so often that they had no voices left.
    ‘The War’ was very noisy though, all about these silent soldiers, and the noise was of running feet, and galloping horses, and of cars being driven so fast that you couldn’t see them, and of aeroplanes that flew so low that you could reach up and touch them with your hand. The noise was of a rushing—of everything being rushing onwards and there was no end, neither to the noise nor to the rushing.
    Then into the midst of this noise and into the motion of the rushing, came again the picture of his father’s face. Harper could see both his father’s face and also his father’s body—the face close to him and the body far away. Harper was trying to get past his face to the body but the face kept