Its great nose pushed through the troubled
air of the quiet roads, frightening horses, breaking the silence with its
persistent purring, drowning the song of insects. The headlights also
disturbed the slumbers of the night. They flashed into barnyards where
fowls slept on the lower branches of trees, played on the sides of barns
sent the cattle in fields galloping away into darkness, and frightened
horribly the wild things, the red squirrels and chipmunks that live in
wayside fences in the Ohio country. Clara hated the machine and began to
hate all machines. Thinking of machinery and the making of machines had,
she decided, been at the bottom of her husband's inability to talk with
her. Revolt against the whole mechanical impulse of her generation began to
take possession of her.
And as she rode another and more terrible kind of revolt against the
machine began in the town of Bidwell. It began in fact before Tom with his
new motor left the Butterworth farm, it began before the summer moon came
up, before the gray mantle of night had been laid over the shoulders of the
hills south of the farmhouse.
Jim Gibson, the journeyman harness maker who worked in Joe Wainsworth's
shop, was beside himself on that night. He had just won a great victory
over his employer and felt like celebrating. For several days he had been
telling the story of his anticipated victory in the saloons and store, and
now it had happened.
Pages:
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364