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By Root 4413 0

as feathers. The trees in small leaf dust the half-bare ground with shadow. Sticks and strings protect the newly seeded margins of the unraked gravel walks. The breeze, flowing steadily down the slope from the empty bandshell, is cool out of the sun. Pigeons with mechanical heads flee on pink legs from their shoetips and resettle, chuffling, near their heels. A derelict stretches an arm along the back of a bench to dry, and out of a gouged face sneezes petitely, catlike. A few toughs, fourteen or younger, smoke and jab near the locked equipment shed of a play pavilion on whose yellow boards someone has painted with red paint Tex & Josie, Rita & Jay. Where would they get red paint? Threads of green poke up through matted brown. He takes her hand. The ornamental pool in front of the bandshell is drained and scum-stained; they move along a path parallel to the curve of its cold lip, which echoes back the bandshell’s silence. A World War II tank, made a monument, points its guns at far-off tennis courts. The nets are not up, the lines unlimed.

Trees darken; pavilions slide downhill. They walk through the upper region of the park, which thugs haunt at night, scattering candy-bar wrappers. The beginning of the steps is almost hidden in an overgrowth of great bushes tinted dull amber with the first buds. Long ago, when hiking was customary entertainment, people built stairs up the Brewer side of the mountain. They are made of six-foot tarred logs with dirt filled in flat behind them. Iron pipes have since been driven, to hold these tough round risers in place, and fine blue gravel scattered over the packed dirt they dam. The footing is difficult for Ruth; Rabbit watches her body struggle to propel her weight on the digging points of her heels. They catch and buckle on an unevenness hidden below the coating of gravel. Her backside lurches, her arms grab out for balance.

He tells her, “Take off your shoes.”

“And kill my feet? You’re a thoughtful bastard”

“Well then, let’s go back down.”

“No, no,” she says. “We must be halfway.”

“We’re nowhere near half up. Take off your shoes. These blue stones are stopping; it’ll just be mashed-down dirt.”

“With chunks of glass in it.”

But further on she does take off her shoes. Bare of stockings, her white feet lift lightly under his eyes; the yellow skin of her heels flickers. Thin ankles under the swell of calf. In a gesture of gratitude he takes off his shoes, to share whatever pain there is. The dirt is trod smooth, but embedded pebbles negligible to the eye do stab the skin, with the force of your weight. Also the ground is cold. “Ouch,” he says. “Owitch.” “Come on, soldier,” she says, “be brave.”

They learn to walk on the grass at the ends of the logs. Tree. branches overhang part of the way, making it an upward tunnel. At other spots the air is clear behind them, and they can look over the rooftops of Brewer into the twentieth story of the courthouse, the city’s one skyscraper. Concrete eagles stand in relief, wings flared, between its top windows. Two middle-aged couples in plaid scarves, birdwatchers, pass them on the way down; as soon as they have descended out of sight behind the gnarled arm of an oak, Rabbit hops up to Ruth’s step and kisses her, hugs her hot bulk, tastes the salt in the sweat on her face, which is unresponsive. She thinks that is a silly time; her one-eyed woman’s mind is intent on getting up the hill. But the thought of her city girl’s paper-pale feet bare on the stones for his sake makes his heart, fevered with exertion, sob, and he clings to her tough body with the weakness of grief. An airplane goes over, rapidly rattling the air.

“My queen,” he says, “my good horse.”

“Your what?”

“Horse.”

Near the top, the mountain rises sheer in a cliff, and here modern men have built concrete stairs with an iron railing that in a Z of three flights reach the macadam parking lot of the Pinnacle Hotel. They put their shoes back on and climb the stairs and watch the city slowly flatten under them.

Rails guard the cliff edge. He grips one white beam, warmed by the