Page 96
By Jack Joseph Smith
The men, who are seated at oppisite ends. She walks
to the arch enterance-exit of the dining room and
smiles. Her teeth are white, and exactly long.
"I am going out to leave you men to your plans
and schemes,"
On the walls were paintings placed. They explored
past paint grasping for the matter of sculpture. In
his own eyes Blankname recognized his creative atte-
empt to push the retina through the myth. His father
was dead in memory and distant today; not always, but he endured
the repeated resurrection without realization of his
fathers hands in his work.
Blankname was looking through the expensive redness
of glass and liquid to the doily lace; which seemed
not to belong to a table and pieces, but to a mourn-
ing womans face. Jacob had been speaking in a
vagueness, suggestive to the only real quality avail-
able to them. Blankname had been away for a long time
and Jacob had to work up through his abstraction
as if Blankname were a returned son.
"May I tell you a story," Jacob was going on
"Certainly."
"Although you may know the story; I like it very
much, and it is always worth a lesson."
Outside, in the heavens the clouds relaxed into a