Canoerebel
Posts: 21100
Joined: 12/14/2002 From: Northwestern Georgia, USA Status: offline
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A brief break from the game to share with you the strangest passage of fiction I've ever read. The story is set in a small town in the South circa 1940s. One day, a forlorn "hunchback" comes to town. His cousin, an eccentric woman who owns a store, befriends him. Years later, the woman's ex-husband, her mortal enemy, is released from jail and shows up in town. The hunchback witnesses his arrival, is taken with him, and shows it this way: "The hunchback stood at the end of the [barbecue] pit, his pale face lighted by the soft glow from the smoldering oak fire. He had a very peculiar accomplishment, which he used whenever he wished to ingratiate himself with someone. He would stand very still, and with just a little concentration, he could wiggle his large pale ears with marvelous quickness and ease. This trick he always used when he wanted to get something special out of Miss Amelia [his cousin], and to her it was irresistible. Now, as he stood there the hunchback's ears were wiggling furiously on his head, but it was not Miss Amelia at whom he was looking his time. The hunchback was smiling at Marvin Macy [Amelia's ex-husband and mortal enemy] with an entreaty that was near to desperation. At first Marvin Macy paid no attention to him, and when he did finally glance at the hunchback it was without any appreciation whatsoever. "'What ails this Brokeback?' he asked with a rough jerk of his thumb. "No one answered. And [the hunchback], seeing that his accomplishment was getting him nowhere, added new efforts of persuasion. He fluttered his eyelids, so that they were like pale, trapped moths in his sockets. He scraped his feet around on the ground, waved his hands about, and finally began doing a little trotlike dance. In the last gloomy light of the winter afternoon he resembled the child of a swamphaunt." This is from "The Ballad of the Sad Café" by Carson McCullers.
< Message edited by Canoerebel -- 1/11/2018 3:48:14 AM >
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