With
the window display finally complete, the long and parallel strips of text
hanging from the ceiling and subsequently each other, the distorted portraits
descending both side panels, and the paperbacks themselves, Brother Skunk scans
again the whole from the outside for its balance, and finds it.
cog
(returning to the bookshop at the close of her lunch-hour): That’s it? Tha-
and
then seeing the look on his face
cog:
I’m only joking. It looks great, really. I think it’s, the... what did you call
that stuff, the
Skunk:
I think it’s called seagrass, it’s sort of like ehm, like raffia, you know what
raffia is, but, it’s like that but a
lot coarser.
cog:
Right, but it has that kind of a rustic
look, the whole Faulkner thing, and it looks good with the paper and the
She
stands reading through the text again, which the last time she’d seen lying
stretched out and loose on the floor of the backshop area.
cog:
“the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday
pass”
and
then laughing.
Skunk:
Is that funny?
cog:
Well, not, it reminds me of this thing when I was a kid and I had, my sister
and I went, we were on holiday with our parents and I had this dream about the
plane crashing, and this was, we were actually on the fucking plane when I had the dream, so you can imagine what
it was like waking up and being on a
plane after this nightmare, but I dreamt that the plane had exploded in the air
or something, or there was, but the the, I remember I was falling through the
sky, no parachute or anything, and there was a wall, kind of
movements
with her hands
cog:
I was falling towards the ground, and this was a wall across the sky, but
horizontally, and I realised I was going to hit that and keep going through, or
I’d just burst when I hit it.
Skunk:
Jesus. What age was this?
rubbing
at his forearms; the warmth has gone out of the day. The bookstore cog
continues to look at the window, her eyes moving about the suspended words.
cog:
I was, what, I must’ve been about seven or eight, something like that. My
sister was really young, and she was,
she had none of that thing about the excitement
of flying, I mean, she was terrified,
and another
laughing
Skunk:
I thank God I’m not a member of your family. Is this some kind of genetic thing you’ve been, that you’ve
inherited? Are your
cog:
No, God no, my dad flies all the time. But, they gave my sister some, she had,
they got her stuff out, um, her crayons and some paper just to keep her quiet,
or to calm her down a bit anyway, and told her to draw a hundred pictures.
That’s what my mum said to her, “draw a hundred pictures”, because she loved
drawing
Skunk:
Oh hang on, this is the sister that’s at the
cog
(nodding): Yeah, that’s where it all
started, and the weird thing is that now,
when I smell crayons, I get a kind of shiver, look
indicating
the fine hairs on her arms that are indeed raised out of gooseflesh
cog:
and that’s just with thinking about
it, but um, my sister, these hundred drawings that she was supposed to do, the
first one she did was of a plane on fire, then she did one of her standing on
the ground while me and my mum and dad were all in another plane that was on fire
Skunk
laughs out loud.
cog:
and then at that point, my mum just decided that two was more than enough.
Skunk:
No wonder you were having nightmares.
They
are distracted by the arrival of the mail van.
cog:
Shit! I’d better get back in.
Skunk:
Yeah, oop
a
minute impact of water upon his arm.
Skunk:
That’s the rain on.
