The road (23 page)

The woman when she saw him put her arms around him
and held him. Oh, she said, I am so glad to see you. She would talk to him
sometimes about God. He tried to talk to God but the best thing was to talk to
his father and he did talk to him and he didnt forget. The woman said that was
all right. She said that the breath of God was his breath yet though it pass
from man to man through all of time.

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the
mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white
edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your
hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate
patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a
thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens
where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.