Page 30

By Jack Joseph Smith

6 When they hit the steel pole at ninety miles an hour Gibbons didn't know what hit him. John on the other hand knew one of his legs was finished. When the doctors came they called a prist from the Jesuit because Gibbons was dead until he decided not to be. "Let's drink to the rich Harry. After all it's nice to know about banks and revolution when you stand to inheart both." The pause was maybe the crash. Where the madness unfolds from an ending. "Smart hungh Harry?" "Vicious Hanch. Vicious." Fife stood on the long green. His blue eyes were that of the black raven. The blue that has never been in water. His shoulders were that of the stories told about wild boars that leap the long run. He was from Nabraska. "Alright. Let's settle it down. Gibbons was never going to be a quarterback here anyway. He's alive. He is not coming back to us. I am going to see him. The entire team is invited except for the rest of the quarterbacks. Hit it." Fife got into a car latter than it's own time, put in a gear and drove toward the hospitle. He was deeply saddened. Fife did not like this at all. Many times he had beat men and women half to death over drinking, but maybe because he refused to deal with accidents interr- fering with his necessary madness he was twisted in his head like a grandfather wheet left to accomidate the last place where one can accomidate one's incect groves. When he got there Gibbons mother had death in her hands. Fife told her of course not and muttered on his way through the halls that "it was just a matter of time till he woke up to get worse."

Original Scan

Page 30

AI Interpretation

GPT

John and Gibbons hit a steel pole at ninety miles an hour. John loses use of a leg, Gibbons survives, and Fife visits the hospital.

Fife excludes the other quarterbacks from the team visit. His history of violence and Gibbons's mother's fear complicate the narrator's account of the crash.

Claude

The car hits 'the steel pole at ninety miles an hour': John knows one leg 'was finished' and Gibbons 'was dead until he decided not to be.' Hanch toasts 'the rich', Fife from 'Nabraska' tells the team Gibbons 'was never going to be a / quarterback here anyway', and he drives to the 'hospitle' where Gibbons' mother 'had death in her hands'.

The crash is told almost offhand, then refracted through a drinking toast, a coach's cold speech and a strange portrait of Fife as raven-eyed and boar-shouldered. The long sentence comparing him to 'a grandfather wheet' shows the draft's habit of piling images past sense, and the page ends on a bitter joke about waking 'up to get worse.'