The world seemed a place of improbable wild hope. I told my father I will run his business—my business—and all I see, all I can hold probable about that, is gathering these fools together and seeing how far we can go on two million dollars. Bonaparte washes trucks, whistling shrilly all the live-long day, and drives. Wallace dispatches trucks by heaving darts into the territory board. The Veteran watches the grounds at night. My bus driver takes a load of oil pipe, and another, here, and there, and never has to return. When I get ambitious, I’ll have Tunkie Friedeman come down and formulate a revolutionary synthetic that will set the pace for the next generation of pipe.
And Mary. I resolve, in the morning, to drop by. One does not, when calling on Mary, need pause to buy flowers.
About the Author
Padgett Powell is the author of six novels, including The Interrogative Mood and You & Me. His novel Edisto was a finalist for the National Book Award. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Little Star, and the Paris Review, and he is the recipient of the Rome Fellowship in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the Whiting Writers’ Award. He lives in Gainesville, Florida, where he teaches writing at MFA@FLA, the writing program of the University of Florida.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1987 by Padgett Powell
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
978-1-4804-4162-0
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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