I Cheerfully Refuse

by Leif Enger

we were also, as Lark liked to whisper in the dark, quixotes, by which she meant not always sensible. Open to the wondrous. Curious in the manner of those lucky so far.

We whispered back and forth. There’s a pleasant whirr you get when your favorite person wants to stay awake with you but can’t.

Accepting a few dollars he passed it to me in a crinkled brown bag, looking at my eyes with suspicion. 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 popular everywhere he went.

The perfect book remains unread.

“You’re a man who stops and listens. If that’s not the definition of friendship, it’s close enough for now.”

Easy with everyone he also looked through them as if into the next room. He was like a man waiting who enjoys the wait.

Sol had made the liar’s classic error of overstatement followed by insistence.

She said Pastor Leake was a decent man who often mistook his worldview for the world, a common churchman’s error. She said the church was a broken compass. That our job always and forever was to refuse Apocalypse in all its forms and work cheerfully against it.

problem was that when he turned, and the world turned round him, he could not adjust. The evidence was not enough. He had no compass of his own, yet wouldn’t follow the one before him, its trembling needle pointing out directions for anyone with eyes.

What scares me is the notion we are all one rotten moment, one crushed hope or hollow stomach from stuffing someone blameless in a cage.

I am always last to see the beauty I inhabit.