The Folk Of The Air

The day that he quit his job at Thumper’s—early spring and a new entree called Hippety Haunches proving an irresistible combination—Farrell spent looking desultorily for construction work and for someone who might be able to build a wooden case for the lute. By five o’clock he had come conditionally to terms with a cheerful Bengali cabinetmaker and he was feeling lazily adventurous and pleased with himself when he wandered down to the South Forty for coffee and baklava, a Holborne tune he had never been able to finger correctly suddenly begi

There never were any empty tables at this time of day. He sat at a table near the door, next to a young man wearing white chinos, Hush-Puppies, and a purple shirt with a map of the Hawaiian islands on it. The sky was full of little shadow-bellied clouds, but the air was honey-warm and seemed to have golden bubbles in it, like honey; and everyone walking on Parnell, from the backpacking Amazons to the tattooed, expectant motorcyclists, moved as lingeringly as if they were journeying through honey, in that hour.

The young man in the Hawaiian shirt had not even turned his head when Farrell sat down at his table; but when Farrell went inside and returned with a glass of water, the young man looked sharply round at him, saying in a hoarse Kentucky voice, “I hope you aren’t pla

“As a matter of fact, I was,” Farrell said. “Got some baklava stuck in my throat.”

The young man shook his head violently and actually moved the glass away from Farrell. “Don’t you do it, sir. That water is poison. That water is nothing but plain poison.”

I still pick them out, Farrell thought. That hasn’t changed, anyway. There could be one Ancient Mariner on the 747, and I’d sit down by him four out of five times, by independent laboratory test. He said “Oh, I know that, but everything’s poison these days. I surrendered way back when they were just painting the oranges.”

“No, don’t give up,” the young man said earnestly. “Look, when you want some water, I’ll tell you the best place to go to. Inverness.”

He sat back loosely and gri

“Go up there all the time,” the young man said. “Gilroy too. Gilroy’s not as good as Inverness, but it’s all right. And Arnold. There’s a little town called Arnold, they’ve got great water, better than Gilroy.” His eyes were dark blue, u

For the first time Farrell noticed the empty glass on the young man’s side of the table. He raised his eyebrows at it, but the other only smiled more candidly than ever. “I didn’t drink any water out of that. You look and you’ll see it’s dry. I just come here for the glasses.”

He looked warily to left and right; then, with a clumsy slapping motion, he swept the glass off the table. Farrell heard it break, not on asphalt but on other glass. He glanced down to see a wrinkled paper shopping bag squatting openmouthed by the young man’s foot. In the sunlight the gleaming curved fragments were heaped as close and as brightly as snow. The young man said, “See, I eat glass. I’ll eat all the glass there in two days, maybe three days.”

Two feet away from them, three children were haggling loudly over the price of a drug designed to sedate the larger carnivores. A white man and a black woman, both middleaged, strolled very slowly by, formally arm-in-arm, nodding slightly to acquaintances. Farrell saw them on Parnell every day, invariably dressed alike, whether in frayed suits of red velvet or in bib overalls faded to the color of nursing-home mattresses. He knew them to be direly poor and mad; and yet each afternoon at this time, the man’s pace and ma

“This place has the worst water in Avice

Farrell cleared his throat. “You know, I really wouldn’t eat all that glass. I really don’t think you should.”

The young man said, “I been struck by lightning two times.” Farrell looked up and down Parnell, wishing with a sudden aching fierceness to see someone he knew coming along. “Once in the back, and once right in the back of the head,” the young man said. “Two times.” He was leaning across the table again, his meaty breath damp on Farrell’s cheek. “That’s why I eat glass. Good glass, colored glass a lot, like wine bottles. Desert glass, them old mason jars been out in the sun for years and years. I eat all that stuff.”

The mention of wine bottles reminded Farrell that it was Thursday, his usual day to pick up some small di