I Cheerfully Refuse

by Leif Enger

I don’t mean to be such awful company. It’s just the times. The times are so unfriendly.

of people just met. She never let them hear these yet-to-comes, these subsequents, which were

When a flame is lit move toward it.

woman Connor whose people were confused and malformed

O'Conner

By this time of course reading itself was slipping into shadow. There was a sinuous mistrust of text and its defenders. The country had recently elected its first proudly illiterate president, A MAN UNSPOILT as he constantly bellowed, and this chimp was wildly

The perfect book remains unread.

Billy Pilgrim

Allusion

What surprised me wasn’t their spite. Kids can’t always help it. Their souls are new and feeling their way.

of lips and chin, looking down

their flimsy blows—how all I had to do was swing my

O'Conner

tiny interior, its curved coach roof and crazed portlights. “Not yet,” I told him. We sat on low stools under time-darkened timbers, and the steam from our cups rose curling into a sunbeam. I had sailed once with Lark years ago. It sealed us forever, that trip, and also made the sea a thing I loved best at a distance.

The ladder steeper daily.

It is not easy to make a friend let alone lose one.

it from his uncle who died too young of something. This is how you get boats I guess.

it was nearly

Allusion

can bear it, I am suggesting that nothing feels impossible.” “Are you saying she isn’t dead.” “No. I’m asking,

Jablonski. He slowed down on a rough stretch and

and saw him standing at the screen door, hands in his pockets. He looked dressed up,

a literature scholarship that had to be among the last of its kind. This was after library defunding but before the hard-shell patriots got in.

Thought that I was through with loving Cast aside and castaway Now there’s color, now there’s music Ever since you looked my way—

What Song?

hilarious knowledge—had finally died, having persevered through droughts, hungers, university shutdowns, the surge of lunatic creeds and the purchase of cops by astronauts.

rakish volumes that escaped the fundie bonfires.

The grid was reliable except when needed.

began to resemble what I once imagined church might be like, a church you could bear, where people laughed and enjoyed each other and did not care if they were right

legitimate retail, though I didn’t know the label which boasted a haughty gallant with mustache and epaulets.

Captain Morgan rum

we all accepted the grace of the overlooked.

set of subsequents she’d never issued. Never thought to imagine. Our own.

They hit like a slap. When they do you always think the world might not recover. Overhead something bounced on the roof and took flight.

There used to be a wind gauge bolted to the fire station, but it blew off into the lake.

her name but no answer. Maybe still at the shop. The stairs were scattered with pieces of clothing and up I went at a run. More wreckage—dressers turned, closets gutted, our mattress an obscenity. Even the plumbing was sacked. Water pooled, looking for an exit. I found myself in the attic hall. The bedroom door half-open. I saw her foot, twisted and

What Song?

me was nervous and narrow-faced and wouldn’t meet my eyes. I said Do you have questions for me? Apparently not. He paced the kitchen crunching over the littered floor. Bean

through the kitchen out the back door to the

subsequents. “In our own boat. We stayed a month. Now I think we never left.”

A young woman, not Cora, sat at the

to go on. This is because I never saw Lark fearful. I didn’t know how that would look. These pictures now pursued me through my days. The bastard in our house always

change your plans. The rain had started early; now came the wind with winter on its shoulders. Water froze in the

Captain Morgan rum

inside his eyes. I understood too that he

filthy water. Half a foot at least. It slid to and fro over the floor of the

man onshore responded. He’d taken a seat on a driftwood log but now leapt to his feet

shot at me, they put a hole in my sail—” “And they’re on their way here, with others.

knew these earnest kids had a desire to go in search of better.

Not Suicide

wanted to think of Lark in someplace better, I knew from a thousand conversations that she never worried about that place. Maybe it was real and full of saints and poets, or maybe it was poetry itself. Her concern was this place.

bagpipe maestro who didn’t always show up but was thought to be the most proficient rock piper in Canada.

Who will ransom earth and water? What new son or what new daughter? Who will make of many, one? What new daughter? What new son?

I realized he must be the fanatical bass player who’d given it up for whatever basket of snakes he seemed to need.

meet Lark.

Metaphorically?

Evelyn had helpfully

How nice that people try to help .So many dystopian novels are overwhelmed with evil. This book is refreshingly optimostic so far.

Superior had forgot she was a lake at all—no, she was like her sister the North Atlantic and her cousins the hurricanes

lazarettes

She was brown as berries