@@@@@A dull pain and hatred beat through his 363
@@@@@A dull pain and hatred beat through his head
On the beach giant kelp had washed ashore, and he walked down to the water's edge and looked at itIt was dark brown and very long, perhaps fifty feet, and its dark rubbery skin glistened like snakes, and gave him a jolt of horrorHe was remembering the bodies in the cave"What drunken bastards we were," he saidHe was remorseful, or more correctly he generated remorse in himself because he felt he had done something badThe kelp frightened him -- he walked away
After a few hundred yards, he sat down on the top of a dune which looked out to seaA storm was coming up, and he felt suddenly cold; a great cloud perhaps thirty miles long, shaped like a flat fish and very dark, had covered most of the skyA wind had sprung up and was lashing the sand in horizontal sheets along the beachGallagher sat there and waited for the rain that did not comeHe was feeling pleasurably moody, he was enjoying the barrenness and brooding of the scene, the remote froth of the waves against the shoreWithout quite realizing it, he began to draw a woman in the sandShe had great breasts and a narrow waist and very wide full hipsHe looked at it soberly, and remembered that Mary was very ashamed of her tiny breastsShe had said once, "I wish they were big
"Why?"
"I know you like them better that way"Naw, they're just right the way they are
An eddy of tenderness wound through himShe had been very small, and he thought of how she had seemed like a little girl to him at times, and how he had been amused at her seriousnessHe laughed softly, and then abruptly, with no defenses raised, he realized that she was utterly dead and he would never see her any moreThe knowledge flowed through him without resistance, like a torrent of water when a floodgate is loweredHe heard himself sob, and then was no longer conscious of the choking sounds of his anguishHe felt only a vast grief which mellowed him, dissolved the cysts of his bitterness and resentment and fear, and left him spent and weeping on the sandThe softer gentler memories of Mary were coming back to him; he recalled the sweltering liquid rhythms of their bodies against each other in heat and love, he felt dumbly the meaning of her smile when she handed him his lunch box as he went to work in the morning; he recalled the sad clinging tenderness they had felt for each other on the last night of his last furlough before he went overseas
