Page 137

By Jack Joseph Smith

the hell. Give me rest. Gone is the fire and I am only cold. I picked up the telephone and dialed the operator. Would it sound like too strange of a question operator, if I asked you what day it was? She answered me and I said, thank you. I put the receiver down with my eyes staring grimly before me, and walked back through the house and out the front door. The dawn was far away, but coming. I moved along the street, that was now paved through Metzes field. I was watching my figure walking from the past until now. Lawns and houses had taken the place of the ghostly moving wheat of my childhood. For many years there had been no fire on the hill in spring. The wild wheat was left to die on its own now. Before me its image moved in the dawn of a tired meaning. The wheat seemed lower than when I used to run within it in the spring. Sun of the summer beating out your harshness to remind me of a forgotton harvest. My harvest was the fire. So high in the spring. It crackled nicely when my finger tips sang. The wind caries itself in an earthway in the early morning. It is lingering beneath the buds of weeds. I am coming closer now and I can almost see myself standing on the birth of a crawling day. The wheat on the hill is still so wild in wishing thoughts. When I reached the top of the hill, I began walking along the ridge grabbing for thoughts of tomorrow through the rememberience of yesterday. I just couldn't see today as being a part of me. I wondered along seeing dreamy pictures of the girls I had brought to the Kennedy forest side of the hill. Their faces appeared between the weeds and their eyes were dripping with due. The mist was their hair and it was begining to sparkle silver in the coming sun. Only a little touch, did I remember. They were so tender. They were. Surely they were in their wonder. Their eyes open

Original Scan

Page 137

AI Interpretation

GPT

After waking emptied out and cold, the narrator phones the operator to ask what day it is and then walks into the coming dawn across the old hill, where suburban lawns have replaced the wild wheat, the spring fires, and the girls once remembered in Kennedy forest.

The hangover has burned down into a numb, ghostly clarity, so the landscape itself carries the feeling the body no longer can. Childhood fire, wheat, and half-remembered girls turn the hill into a place where the past still moves, but the speaker cannot quite join the present.

Claude

Cold and emptied, the narrator phones the operator to ask 'what day it was', then walks out before dawn along the street 'now paved through Metzes field', where 'Lawns and houses had taken the place of the ghostly moving wheat' of his childhood and there is no longer 'fire on the hill in spring'; on the ridge he sees the faces of girls he once brought to the Kennedy forest side of the hill, their eyes 'dripping with due'.

The page trades the bar's noise for a quiet, dazed walk in which the landscape carries memory the speaker cannot hold in the present, 'I just couldn't see today as being a part of me'. Fire, wheat, and dew-wet faces make childhood and first love feel both vivid and irrecoverable.