Crane Short Quotes

I started a short story but it was so dreary that even my pen threw up.

Within him, as he hurled himself forward, was born a love, a despairing fondness for this flag which was near him. It was a creation of beauty and invulnerability. It was a goddess, radiant, that bended its form with an imperious gesture to him. It was a woman, red and white, hating and loving, that called him with the voice of his hopes. Because no harm could come to it he endowed it with power. He kept near, as if it could be a saver of lives, and an imploring cry went from his mind.

I had reason to be wary of Rowan Gresham. Crazy doesn't always look crazy. Sometimes it looks like the most handsome and refined gentleman ever encountered in one's short life.

As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors.

A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it. Well men shy from his new and terrible majesty. It is as if the wounded man's hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all existence - the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine, snow, a feather dropped from a bird's wing; and the power of it sheds radiance upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understand sometimes that they are little. His comrades look at him with large eyes thoughtfully. Moreover, they fear vaguely that the weight of a finger upon him might send him headlong, precipitate the tragedy, hurl him at once into the dim, gray unknown. ("An Episode Of War")

Stiles doesn't even know how short of a leash he's on, because he never even tests it.

The human back can become the seat of more aches and pains than are registered in books for the composite anatomy of a regiment.

Memories are short. History plays out in cycles. Tables turn; the sufferers rise and make their oppressors suffer. This is simply human nature.

These happenings had occupied an incredibly short time, yet the youth felt that in them he had been made aged. New eyes were given to him. And the most startling thing was to learn suddenly that he was very insignificant. The officer spoke of the regiment as if he referred to a broom. Some part of the woods needed sweeping, perhaps, and he merely indicated a broom in a tone properly indifferent to its fate. It was war, no doubt, but it appeared strange.

To her the earth was composed of hardships and insults. She felt instant admiration for a man who openly defied it. She thought that if the grim angel of death should clutch his heart, Pete would shrug his shoulders and say, "Oh, ev'ryt'ing goes." She anticipated that he would come again shortly. She spent some of her week's pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for a lambrequin. She made it with infinite care, and hung it to the slightly careening mantel over the stove in the kitchen. She studied it with painful anxiety from different points in the room. She wanted it to look well on Sunday night when, perhaps, Jimmie's friend would come. On Sunday night, however, Pete did not appear. Afterwards the girl looked at it with a sense of humiliation. She was now convinced that Pete was superior to admiration for lambrequins.

The woman was the kind of woman that the British find breathtakingly sexy and I could never figure out why. She had short, dark hair that was a little bit spiky on top and a curvy little body. She was cute, I supposed, but was no goddess. She wasn't worthy of him. And yet Sean looked like he wanted to eat her up.

A life passed amid gangsters, thieves, smugglers, and gamblers had granted Amelia an unerring nose for greed, vanity, and other assorted venal characteristics, and in Miss Sparrow, she smelled rancid pride combined with the bitter char of unrequited love. She smelled the lemon tang of loneliness mingling with despair. Just under Priscilla Sparrow's skin, Amelia could tell, a rosemary blast of judiciousness rippled, followed by the must decay of jealousy and a lingering note of envy - in short (and in spite of all of Miss Sparrow's better attempts with Dick Crane), the odors of a lifelong spinster.

He began as a minor imitator of Fitzgerald, wrote a novel in the late twenties which won a prize, became dissatisfied with his work, stopped writing for a period of years. When he came back it was to BLACK MASK and the other detective magazines with a curious and terrible fiction which had never been seen before in the genre markets; Hart Crane and certainly Hemingway were writing of people on the edge of their emotions and their possibility but the genre mystery markets were filled with characters whose pain was circumstantial, whose resolution was through action; Woolrich's gallery was of those so damaged that their lives could only be seen as vast anticlimax to central and terrible events which had occurred long before the incidents of the story. Hammett and his great disciple, Chandler, had verged toward this more than a little, there is no minimizing the depth of their contribution to the mystery and to literature but Hammett and Chandler were still working within the devices of their category: detectives confronted problems and solved (or more commonly failed to solve) them, evil was generalized but had at least specific manifestations: Woolrich went far out on the edge. His characters killed, were killed, witnessed murder, attempted to solve it but the events were peripheral to the central circumstances. What I am trying to say, perhaps, is that Hammett and Chandler wrote of death but the novels and short stories of Woolrich *were* death. In all of its delicacy and grace, its fragile beauty as well as its finality. Most of his plots made no objective sense. Woolrich was writing at the cutting edge of his time. Twenty years later his vision would attract a Truffaut whose own influences had been the philosophy of Sartre, the French nouvelle vague, the central conception that nothing really mattered. At all. But the suffering. Ah, that mattered; that mattered quite a bit.

Meanwhile, back in Rome, the victory of Antony’s conqueror had been Apollo’s triumph as well. The patching-up of Jupiter’s ancient temple on the Capitol had been as nothing compared to the stupefying redevelopment of the hill on the facing side of the Forum. In 36 BC, shortly after the defeat of Sextus Pompey, lightning had struck the Palatine. A god had spoken – but which god? Augurers sponsored by Rome’s most eminent devotee of Apollo had dutifully served up the answer. For almost a decade, in obedience to their ruling, cranes and scaffolding had crowded the summit of the Palatine. Only by October 28 had the work finally been completed.

— Где лебеди? — А лебеди ушли. — А во́роны? — А во́роны — остались. — Куда ушли? — Куда и журавли. — Зачем ушли? — Чтоб крылья не достались. — А папа где? — Спи, спи, за нами Сон, Сон на степном коне сейчас приедет. — Куда возьмет? — На лебединый Дон. Там у меня — ты знаешь? — белый лебедь… - Where are the swans? - They went away, the swans. - The ravens too? - They stayed behind, the ravens. - Where did they go? - There where the cranes have gone. - Why did they go? - For fear their wings be taken. - And where's papa? - Sleep, sleep, the Sandman on His steppe-steed will be here now very shortly. - Where will he take us? - to the swanly Don. There - fancy! - I've a white swan waiting for me...

My name is Liv Daniels. What’s yours?” He smiled wider, nearly sending my heart into overload. “Liv. That’s a nice name. Is it short for something?” He stood and I craned my neck. He was quite tall. His tailored suit had made him appear far slighter than he was up close. He offered me a hand, again politely. I studied his hand for a moment, before taking it. It was huge and for some reason, I had the strangest feeling I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t touch his hand. I should back away and return to the idiot at my table. Somehow his hand became a fork in a road, and I knew myself; I would take the wrong road. “Olive, but I like Liv.” I reached forward and squeezed his hand, trying desperately not to let go. There was no spark or great event, like I had imagined there might be. It was a simple handshake but my heart was beating a mile a minute. I peered back up at him, overwhelmed by the height difference between us. Maybe he wasn’t my age. He was extremely tall and broad. I had to be at least five foot six in my four-inch heels, but still I craned my neck to stare into his eyes. They were midnight-blue pools that I wanted to swim in. “I’m Briton, Briton Thorlackson.” “It’s nice to meet you, Briton. I’m Liv Daniels.” He smiled and cocked his head to the side. “Yes, I believe we’ve covered that.” I laughed, but it was a strange laugh I didn’t recall laughing before. I felt my face flush red. “Yes, I believe you’re correct.

The best of summer star-gazing is that it is warm enough to fling yourself upon your back and gaze up at the starts without craning the neck. In a short time the sense of intimacy with the stars is established, as it never can be when a man stands erect. You may even lose the sense of gazing up, and enjoy the exciting sensation of gazing *down* into the deep wells of space. Indeed, this is quite as correct as to say that we gaze upward at the stars. In reality there is no up or down in the universe. You are, in point of fact, a creature perpetually hung over the yawning abyss of Everywhere, suspended over it by our tiny terrestrial gravity which clamps you to the side of mother earth while you gaze down on Vega and Deneb and Arcturus and Altair whirling below you.

The general, whom the boys knew as the commander of their division, looked at the other officer and spoke coolly, as if he were criticising his clothes. "Th' enemy's formin' over there for another charge," he said. "It'll be directed against Whiterside, an' I fear they'll break through there unless we work like thunder t' stop them." The other swore at his restive horse, and then cleared his throat. He made a gesture toward his cap. "It'll be hell t' pay stoppin' them," he said shortly. "I presume so," remarked the general. Then he began to talk rapidly and in a lower tone. He frequently illustrated his words with a pointing finger. The two infantrymen could hear nothing until finally he asked: "What troops can you spare?" The officer who rode like a cowboy reflected for an instant. "Well," he said, "I had to order in th' 12th to help th' 76th, an' I haven't really got any. But there's th' 304th. They fight like a lot 'a mule drivers. I can spare them best of any." The youth and his friend exchanged glances of astonishment. The general spoke sharply. "Get 'em ready, then. I'll watch developments from here, an' send you word when t' start them. It'll happen in five minutes." As the other officer tossed his fingers toward his cap and wheeling his horse, started away, the general called out to him in a sober voice: "I don't believe many of your mule drivers will get back." The other shouted something in reply. He smiled. With scared faces, the youth and his companion hurried back to the line. These happenings had occupied an incredibly short time, yet the youth felt that in them he had been made aged. New eyes were given to him. And the most startling thing was to learn suddenly that he was very insignificant. The officer spoke of the regiment as if he referred to a broom. Some part of the woods needed sweeping, perhaps, and he merely indicated a broom in a tone properly indifferent to its fate. It was war, no doubt, but it appeared strange.

The Sandhill Cranes of Nebraska Too bad you weren’t here six months ago, was a lament I heard on my visit to Nebraska. You could have seen the astonishing spectacle of the sandhill cranes, thousands of them feeding and even dancing on the shores of the Platte River. There was no point in pointing out the impossibility of my being there then because I happened to be somewhere else, so I nodded and put on a look of mild disappointment if only to be part of the commiseration. It was the same look I remember wearing about six months ago in Georgia when I was told that I had just missed the spectacular annual outburst of azaleas, brilliant against the green backdrop of spring and the same in Vermont six months before that when I arrived shortly after the magnificent foliage had gloriously peaked, Mother Nature, as she is called, having touched the hills with her many-colored brush, a phenomenon that occurs, like the others, around the same time every year when I am apparently off in another state, stuck in a motel lobby with the local paper and a styrofoam cup of coffee, busily missing God knows what.

Eventually the term ended and I was on the windy mountain road to camp, still slightly worried that I’d made a wrong turn in life. My doubt, however, was short-lived. The camp delivered on its promise, concentrating all the idylls of youth: beauty manifest in lakes, mountains, people; richness in experience, conversation, friendships. Nights during a full moon, the light flooded the wilderness, so it was possible to hike without a headlamp. We would hit the trail at two A.M., summiting the nearest peak, Mount Tallac, just before sunrise, the clear, starry night reflected in the flat, still lakes spread below us. Snuggled together in sleeping bags at the peak, nearly ten thousand feet up, we weathered frigid blasts of wind with coffee someone had been thoughtful enough to bring. And then we would sit and watch as the first hint of sunlight, a light tinge of day blue, would leak out of the eastern horizon, slowly erasing the stars. The day sky would spread wide and high, until the first ray of the sun made an appearance. The morning commuters began to animate the distant South Lake Tahoe roads. But craning your head back, you could see the day’s blue darken halfway across the sky, and to the west, the night remained yet unconquered—pitch-black, stars in full glimmer, the full moon still pinned in the sky. To the east, the full light of day beamed toward you; to the west, night reigned with no hint of surrender. No philosopher can explain the sublime better than this, standing between day and night. It was as if this were the moment God said, “Let there be light!” You could not help but feel your specklike existence against the immensity of the mountain, the earth, the universe, and yet still feel your own two feet on the talus, reaffirming your presence amid the grandeur.

I’m telling you, you bastard, you’re going to pay for that rum. In gold or goods, I don’t care which.” “Captain Mallory.” Gray’s baritone was forbidding. “And I apply that title loosely, as you are no manner of captain in my estimation…I have no intention of compensating you for the loss of your cargo. I will, however, accept your thanks.” “My thanks? For what?” “For what?” Now O’Shea entered the mix. “For saving that heap of a ship and your worthless, rum-soaked arse, that’s what.” “I’ll thank you to go to hell,” the gravelly voice answered. Mallory, she presumed. “You can’t just board a man’s craft and pitch a hold full of spirits into the sea. Right knaves, you lot.” “Oh, now we’re the knaves, are we?” Gray asked. “I should have let that ship explode around your ears, you despicable sot. Knaves, indeed.” “Well, if you’re such virtuous, charitable gents, then how come I’m trussed like a pig?” Sophia craned her neck and pushed the hatch open a bit further. Across the deck, she saw a pair of split-toed boots tied together with rope. Gray answered, “We had to bind you last night because you were drunk out of your skull. And we’re keeping you bound now because you’re sober and still out of your skull.” The lashed boots shuffled across the deck, toward Gray. “Let me loose of these ropes, you blackguard, and I’ll pound you straight out of your skull into oblivion.” O’Shea responded with a stream of colorful profanity, which Captain Grayson cut short. “Captain Mallory,” he said, his own highly polished boots pacing slowly, deliberately to halt between Mallory’s and Gray’s. “I understand your concern over losing your cargo. But surely you or your investor can recoup the loss with an insurance claim. You could not have sailed without a policy against fire.” Gray gave an ironic laugh. “Joss, I’ll wager you anything, that rum wasn’t on any bill of lading or insurance policy. Can’t you see the man’s nothing but a smuggler? Probably wasn’t bound for any port at all. What was your destination, Mallory? A hidden cove off the coast of Cornwall, perhaps?” He clucked his tongue. “That ship was overloaded and undermanned, and it would have been a miracle if you’d made it as far as Portugal. As for the rum, take up your complaint with the Vice Admiralty court after you follow us to Tortola. I’d welcome it.

to look at Louisa, stroked her cheek, and was rewarded by a dazzling smile. She had been surprised by how light-skinned the child was. Her features were much more like Eva’s than Bill’s. A small turned-up nose, big hazel eyes, and long dark eyelashes. Her golden-brown hair protruded from under the deep peak of her bonnet in a cascade of ringlets. “Do you think she’d come to me?” Cathy asked. “You can try.” Eva handed her over. “She’s got so heavy, she’s making my arms ache!” She gave a nervous laugh as she took the parcel from Cathy and peered at the postmark. “What’s that, Mam?” David craned his neck and gave a short rasping cough. “Is it sweets?” “No, my love.” Eva and Cathy exchanged glances. “It’s just something Auntie Cathy’s brought from the old house. Are you going to show Mikey your flags?” The boy dug eagerly in his pocket, and before long he and Michael were walking ahead, deep in conversation about the paper flags Eva had bought for them to decorate sand castles. Louisa didn’t cry when Eva handed her over. She seemed fascinated by Cathy’s hair, and as they walked along, Cathy amused her by singing “Old MacDonald.” The beach was only a short walk from the station, and it wasn’t long before the boys were filling their buckets with sand. “I hardly dare open it,” Eva said, fingering the string on the parcel. “I know. I was desperate to open it myself.” Cathy looked at her. “I hope you haven’t built up your hopes, too much, Eva. I’m so worried it might be . . . you know.” Eva nodded quickly. “I thought of that too.” She untied the string, her fingers trembling. The paper fell away to reveal a box with the words “Benson’s Baby Wear” written across it in gold italic script. Eva lifted the lid. Inside was an exquisite pink lace dress with matching bootees and a hat. The label said, “Age 2–3 Years.” Beneath it was a handwritten note:   Dear Eva, This is a little something for our baby girl from her daddy. I don’t know the exact date of her birthday, but I wanted you to know that I haven’t forgotten. I hope things are going well for you and your husband. Please thank him from me for what he’s doing for our daughter: he’s a fine man and I don’t blame you for wanting to start over with him. I’m back in the army now, traveling around. I’m due to be posted overseas soon, but I don’t know where yet. I’ll write and let you know when I get my new address. It would be terrific if I could have a photograph of her in this little dress, if your husband doesn’t mind. Best wishes to you all, Bill   For several seconds they sat staring at the piece of paper. When Eva spoke, her voice was tight with emotion. “Cathy, he thinks I chose to stay with Eddie!” Cathy nodded, her mind reeling. “Eddie showed me the letter he sent. Bill wouldn’t have known you were in Wales, would he? He would have assumed you and Eddie had already been reunited—that he’d written with your consent on behalf of you both.” She was afraid to look at Eva. “What are you going to do?” Eva’s face had gone very pale. “I don’t know.” She glanced at David, who was jabbing a Welsh flag into a sand castle. “He said he was going to be posted overseas. Suppose they send him to Britain?” Cathy bit her lip. “It could be anywhere, couldn’t it? It could be the other side of the world.” She could see what was going through Eva’s mind. “You think if he came here, you and he could be together without . . .” Her eyes went to the boys. Eva gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod, as if she was afraid someone might see her. “What about Eddie?” “I don’t know!” The tone of her voice made David look up. She put on a smile, which disappeared the

There was a general stir in the room and a craning forward of necks. The seasoned cronies of the Three Peewits had long ago discovered that the most delectable of all social delights was a quarrel that just stopped short of physical violence.

Oh, she’s right,” Thistle said, craning her neck. “We’ve egged all of those cars in that front row.

Howie craned his neck to the heavens and muttered a short prayer to that Egyptian god with the dog’s head whose name he couldn’t quite remember.

As she craned her neck further she finally saw his face. She knew her mouth must have been gaping open like a clown in a ball toss game but she couldn't help it. His face was without a doubt the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. It was the kind of face that should have been gracing the pages of magazines, not the sidewalks of suburban Melbourne. The kind of face that made her yearn for her sketchbook and pencil. He couldn't have been more than a year or two older than Sachi was, with dishwater blonde hair cut short and styled meticulously, a pointed jaw and hollow cheeks. His eyes were the colour of storm clouds and framed by lashes any girl would kill for. He was a contradiction of sharp edges and porcelain smooth. He could have been carved out of marble. He couldn't be real.

She steps into the room and I step in after her, standing against the back wall, behind a few other rows of people, also standing. Violet shoots me another annoyed look, craning her neck to see Montgomery Tanner, our boss, as he goes on about the renovations currently being done at the Bramblebush Inn. Even in heels she’s too short to see over the people in front of us.

Craning his head, he peered at his body and saw himself tied in all manners of cord, from electrical wiring, to strips of cloth and even a short length of chain. Unlike Xarn’s cousin Jaro though, he didn’t wake up naked with a hot female on top of him. Damn Jaro for having all the luck.

Like so much in the centre, it was under construction or reconstruction. Scaffolding, cranes, the temporary business of architects and workmen, the portable toilets, the short-term fencing, the crash-barriers and the skips. Rubble, more rubble. There was a history of Berlin to be written on the topic of rubble.

Nodding, I tried to tell myself how Travis didn’t care about me. He hadn’t come for me all these years and he never would. Wanting to be rational, I still felt his rough hands on me. I hurt between my legs like I did when he was done. He had marked me again in the dream and I would never be free. After a short time, Cooper stood up and walked to the next room. Hating to be alone, I still flinched when he returned. He seemed bigger now. His shoulders wider, his face harsher, his whole demeanor reeked of potential violence. Instead of hitting me, Cooper lowered a blanket behind the chair so I could cover myself. I stared at him as he sat back down. We studied each other for a long time as I waited for something bad to happen or the fear to fade. Neither occurred, leaving me stuck behind the chair for hours. Cooper tried twice to caress my face and both times I jerked back and away from his touch. After the second attempt, he stood up and left the room. I heard the front door open and assumed he was leaving. Then, his big ugly dog Rafe waltzed into the room with Cooper following behind. In his hand, Cooper held a gun and I pushed farther back into the corner. “No one,” he said, kneeling down by the chair, “will come here and take you. If they do, Rafe will wake us up and I’ll kill the fucker. No one is hurting you or taking you away from me. Do you understand?” Staring into his dark eyes, I did understand. I craned my neck so I could see Rafe comfortable in the corner. When I looked back at Cooper, he sighed. “Baby, it’s nearly six in the morning. The sun is coming up and you need to sleep. I need rest too, so let’s go to bed and I’ll keep you safe. I won’t even touch you, but I need you to go to bed.” “You love me,” I said in a rough, exhausted voice. “More than anything else. I will never let that piece of shit or anyone else come here and hurt you. You are mine and that makes you untouchable. Do you understand?” Nodding again, I crawled out from behind the chair and Cooper helped me stand. He stepped back, willing to keep his distance to avoid scaring me. Reaching for him, I knew he would keep me safe. If I couldn’t shake the fear of the dream, I could at least know Cooper was someone Travis wouldn’t screw with. Rationally, I knew Travis likely forgot I existed, but I wasn’t rational. I was primal and the monster was always waiting to ruin me again. With Cooper though, I was safe.

It was worse than she’d expected. “None?” she asked. “No fresh boot prints anywhere around the perimeter of the house,” Sheriff Coughlin confirmed. “It was windy last night. Maybe the drifting snow filled in the prints?” Even before she finished speaking, the sheriff was shaking his head. “With the warm temperatures we’ve been having, the snow is either frozen or wet and heavy. If someone had walked through that yard last night, there would’ve been prints.” Daisy hid her wince at his words, even though they hit as hard as an elbow to the gut, and struggled to keep her voice firm. “There was someone walking around the outside of that house last night, Sheriff. I don’t know why there aren’t any boot prints, but I definitely saw someone.” He was giving her that look again, but it was worse, because she saw a thread of pity mixed in with the condescension. “Have you given more thought to starting therapy again?” The question surprised her. “Not really. What does that have to do…?” As comprehension dawned, a surge of rage shoved out her bewilderment. “I didn’t imagine that I saw someone last night. There really was a person there, looking in the side window.” All her protest did was increase the pity in his expression. “It must get lonely here by yourself.” “I’m not making things up to get attention!” Her voice had gotten shrill, so she took a deep breath. “I even said there was no need for you to get involved. I only suggested one of the on-duty deputies drive past to scare away the kid.” “Ms. Little.” His tone made it clear that impatience had drowned out any feelings of sympathy. “Physical evidence doesn’t lie. No one was in that yard last night.” “I know what I saw.” The sheriff took a step closer. Daisy hated how she had to crane her neck back to look at him. It made her feel so small and vulnerable. “Do you really?” he asked. “Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable. Even people without your issues misinterpret what they see all the time. The brain is a tricky thing.” Daisy set her jaw as she stared back at the sheriff, fighting the urge to step back, to retreat from the man looming over her. There had been someone there, footprints or no footprints. She couldn’t start doubting what she’d witnessed the night before. If she did, then that meant she’d gone from mildly, can’t-leave-the-house crazy, to the kind of crazy that involved hallucinations, medications, and institutionalization. There had to be some other explanation, because she wasn’t going to accept that. Not when her life was getting so much better. She could tell by looking at his expression that she wasn’t going to convince Coughlin of anything. “Thank you for checking on it, Sheriff. I promise not to bother you again.” Although he kept his face impassive, his eyes narrowed slightly. “If you…see anything else, Ms. Little, please call me.” That wasn’t going to happen, especially when he put that meaningful pause in front of “see” that just screamed “delusional.” Trying to mask her true feelings, she plastered on a smile and turned her body toward the door in a not-so-subtle hint for him to leave. “Of course.” Apparently, she needed some lessons in deception, since the sheriff frowned, unconvinced. Daisy met his eyes with as much calmness as she could muster, dropping the fake smile because she could feel it shifting into manic territory. She’d lost enough credibility with the sheriff as it was. The silence stretched until Daisy wanted to run away and hide in a closet, but she managed to continue holding his gaze. The memory of Chris telling her about the sheriff using his “going to confession” stare-down on suspects helped her to stay quiet. Finally, Coughlin turned toward the door. Daisy barely managed to keep her sigh of relief silent. “Ms. Little,” he said with a short nod, which she returned. “Sheriff.” Only when he was through the doorway with the door locked behind him did Daisy’s knees start to shake.

You’re going to what?” It wasn’t anything Sean hadn’t asked himself every five minutes or so since getting sucked into Emma’s plan, but it sounded different when his cousin said it. Or maybe it was Kevin’s subsequent pointing and laughing his ass off that changed the tone. “It’s only a month,” Sean said, maybe a little defensively. The shorter, dark-haired waitress—Darcy, he thought her name was—put a beer in front of him and he took a long pull. He’d been looking forward to it all day. Kevin looked skeptical. “A month of living with a total stranger, pretending you’re so madly in love with her you’re going to marry her? For real?” “No, not for real, moron. For pretend. That’s the point.” His cousin laughed some more, then pulled out his cell phone and started texting. Sean craned his neck, but couldn’t see the screen. “What the hell are you doing?” Kevin chuckled. “Telling my wife.” “You could have waited until I went upstairs.” “No, I really couldn’t.” Kevin shut his phone, but it was only a few seconds before it chimed. He looked at the screen, chuckled, then was texting again. Sean pulled out his phone and opened a new message to Kevin. I’m still here, asshole. Send. A couple minutes later, Kevin grinned and slid his phone back in his pocket. “Beth wants to know the sleeping arrangements since there’s no way even a grandmother will buy a separate-bedrooms story.” “Beth wants to know, huh?” “Trust me, by now the whole family wants to know.” Sean was tempted to bang his head against the bar, but he wouldn’t be able to knock himself out, so he didn’t waste the effort. “There’s a sofa in the bedroom. She’ll sleep on it and I get the bed.” “Chivalrous.” “I’m too tall for a sofa.” “I don’t know Emma well, but I seem to recall she’s not exactly short.” Kevin gave him a knowing look. “Not exactly hard on the eyes, either.” That she wasn’t.

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The day the earth-moving machines arrived, it was as if aliens had invaded Earth. Overnight they appeared, diggers with huge scoops, plodding their slow and ancient ways across the landscape. By the next week they had multiplied and evolved into diverse forms—cranes with long arms, bulldozers and levellers, an assortment of lorries. All day they worked towards some unseen design, creating and removing debris, their latticework of tracks remaking and writing over the space. Untenanted and vulnerable, the attap huts offered no resistance.

Bag that box for me," he called out to Crane as he ran back to the main house with the key, pushing through the group of startled monks. He clambered back down the basement stairs, sneezing again on the way, then poised the key in front of the lock. He slid the key in, finessing it a little side to side, muttering a short prayer to anyone or anything that could turn this damn case around, whether the entity the monks dedicated their lives to, the washing machine daemon, or the minor Sumerian god who lived in Ron Safari's hair.

DRAGONFLY   As my feet take hold of the floor I cling to her lips with the kind of intensity that shakes her entire body with a paralyzing calm. She carefully pushes my shorts down around my thighs while holding on to these lips that have proved perfection to her love. Easing the edge of her skintight shirt up around her frail torso with a steady rise the lower portion of my body eases into hers, she struggling to get her arms around my neck and chest after lifting her shirt over.   Her leg rises up underneath my arm, holding her up as her other leg follows. Like a steady freight crane I carefully move her onto the bed as she holds on to me, falling into her with all of my love. Moving across the surface of her entire body in the way that a dragonfly wets its tail above still water I lie down beside her with one hand moving across her chest. Wishing only to free her I seize her lips with an upward nudge of passion that educes a sort of ethereal beauty as we lie within the soothe of each other’s company. Reaching again for her lips I lean in to kiss her with my pelvis and upper body against hers as our legs intertwine. Aroused beneath my waist comes the part of me that does protrude, causing an effluxion of vitality to commove down my entire vessel in a slow whisper that moves over my entire body towards my legs and toes.

It was a short walk from the bridge to the waterfall, and I heard it long before I actually saw it, a loud, roaring sound that reverberated like rolling thunder. We passed under an outcropping of rock, and then there it was on the other side. Quixotic Falls. It took my breath away. The waterfall was so tall, I had to crane my neck to see the top of it. Shimmers of a rainbow reflected in the mist and sunlight, and the air was cool and damp. It felt good in the humidity of the afternoon. I closed my eyes, and enjoyed the mist that clung to my skin, coagulating into droplets. We walked along the underside of it, and the sunlight hit the falling water like it was glimmers of glass. The tunnel between the rock face and the waterfall was smooth and rounded from thousands of years of erosion. Vines crawled across the rocks--- morning glories and four o'clocks and honeysuckles. The waterfall poured down into a small watering hole that then slowly wormed its way into a larger river down the mountain. I knew this place would feel whimsical. Surrounding the swimming hole, the bright pink heather and stark white yarrow mixed with coneflowers and black-eyed Susans.

There’s a short memoir called The Crane Wife by C. J. Hauser. Hauser had recently broken off an engagement and headed to Texas to study whooping cranes for a novel. This is what she says: Here is what I learned once I began studying whooping cranes: only a small part of studying them has anything to do with the birds. Instead we counted berries. Counted crabs. Measured water salinity. Stood in the mud. Measured the speed of the wind.

There’s a short memoir called The Crane Wife by C. J. Hauser. Hauser had recently broken off an engagement and headed to Texas to study whooping cranes for a novel. This is what she says: Here is what I learned once I began studying whooping cranes: only a small part of studying them has anything to do with the birds. Instead we counted berries. Counted crabs. Measured water salinity. Stood in the mud. Measured the speed of the wind. It turns out, if you want to save a species, you don’t spend your time staring at the bird you want to save. You look at the things it relies on to live instead. You ask if there is enough to eat and drink. You ask if there is a safe place to sleep. Is there enough here to survive? (Author’s emphasis.)

Crazy, insane, gorgeous human. I can’t believe Melody is here. It’s like something out of a dream. She looks amazing, too. The last time I saw her, she was skin and bones, all ribs and bruises. Now she’s filled out and she looks healthy and lovely…all the more reason she doesn’t need to get tangled up with me. I’m not a good male. She deserves better. I stalk away from the edge of the platform, my thoughts whirling, all of them focused around curling hair and a cheery smile. The way she lifted my hand to her mouth and kissed my knuckles as if she were paying homage to me… “Hey, Brux!” Jonnas jogs up to my side as I storm back to the crane I was working on. “Go away.” “You know that female?” He lifts his chin at me, a smirk on his face. “You buy a couple nights with her in some cantina or something? You think she’s still taking clients⁠—” I turn on him so quickly that he stumbles backward. “You do not speak to her,” I snarl. “You do not make eye contact. You do not even look in her direction.” He puts his hands up. “Okay, so she’s yours. I got it.” She’s not mine. She deserves better. She deserves a life without someone like me bothering her, weighing her down… “But we all heard her ask you for dinner. Why’d you turn her down if she’s your female?” “Go back to work,” I tell him, voice flat. And I go back to work myself, trying to concentrate on the dock plans and knowing that I’m going to fail miserably at everything today. I’m going to think about Melody, and that night five years ago. I’m going to think about how sweet her mouth was against mine, and how good her body felt, how soft and fragile she was… And what a mistake it was for us to end up in bed together. So yeah, I turned her down today. Melody deserves better than an ugly alien with no good family name, no credits to speak of, and a criminal history. She deserves better than someone who’s an outcast amongst his own, whose blood isn’t pure mesakkah but might have a bit of moden in it. She deserves better than a broken-horned laborer.

Short of funds, they found that they could bring down the cost of solving myriad design issues by simulating and testing them on computers. Some things, however, had to be done in the real world. They could not afford a multimillion-dollar crash-test facility. Yet they needed to test battery safety. “We realized we could basically simulate this if we just held things up in the air and dropped them,” said Straubel. And so they rented a crane and dropped batteries. “It was really a shoestring way of making it work,” said Straubel. “We were innovating at an amazing pace with a very small team with few resources.” Every system needed to be redesigned and then redesigned again.

In a short time the boys arrived at the waterfront. At least half a dozen freighters were tied up at the long piers that extended like fingers into the waters of Barmet Bay. In front of one vessel huge piles of freight were stacked on the dock in the glare of floodlights. The ship’s cranes were busily swinging more cargo onto the pier. “Must be a rush job,” Frank commented as he parked the car. The boys walked over to watch. There was a cool breeze from the sea and the tangy smell of salt water in the air.

vice president, and secretary of the treasury beam down from the walls. Visitors pass a sequence of photographs and paintings detailing the history of paper money in the United States and culminating with a life-size re-creation of President Lincoln signing the legislation authorizing the federal government to print money. At the end of the long corridor, visitors watch a short video on the history of paper money, after which guides divide them into small groups before they enter the work area. These small groups wend their way through the carefully marked visitors’ corridors past glass-enclosed galleries from which they can watch the sheets of dollars being printed, examined, cut, and stacked as the guides dispense a constant flow of facts about America’s money: The dollar is printed on textile paper made by the Crane Company using a mixture of 75 percent cotton and 25 percent linen with a polyester security thread. The printing machines are made by Germans and Italians. Nearly half of the bills printed in a day are one-dollar notes, and 95 percent of the bills are used to replace worn-out bills. The average life span of a bill varies from eighteen months for the one-dollar note to an ancient nine years for a one-hundred-dollar note. A bill can be folded four thousand times before it tears.

Let me tell you something,” the old man said to the young leader, the only one of the three still conscious, “because I like to aid people in their transitions. Your life, short and pitiful as it is, will be even shorter and more pitiful

Yet another reason Jamie was willing to pay out for expensive, hard-capped boots. You never knew where you’d be stepping. Right in the centre of the settlement a side-path led down a narrow little alley between the backs of two squats made out of shipping pallets, and opened into a little square where three tents all opened towards each other. Two of them looked ancient, propped up by sticks and other rigid objects, tied off and hanging from the bridge overhead with their support strings.  But the third tent looked pretty new.  It was a modest green and orange striped thing — big enough to fit no more than two people. But it matched the description that Reggie had given. He said that it looked too nice to be there, and this one did.  ‘Grace?’ Jamie called softly. Roper was right at her shoulder. She could smell the cigarettes on his breath. There was no answer. She stepped forward a little. ‘Grace? Are you in there? Can you hear me?’ There was an equal chance that the tent was empty, or that Grace was strung out and unresponsive. Either way, she needed to take a look. Jamie glanced at Roper, whose face she couldn’t read. His nose was wrinkled in disgust, but his flushed cheeks told her that he was as nervous as she was.  As much as she hated to generalise — confronting homeless people was never an easy thing to do. They could be unpredictable at best, and it was always smart to tread lightly. She steadied her heart, took a breath and then clenched her hand to stop it from shaking. The zipper toggle hung at the top of the entrance, shimmering gently in the half-light. Jamie couldn’t tell if it was from movement inside, or from vibrations coming through the other squats around them.  She swallowed and reached for it, taking it lightly between her fingers, not wanting to startle whoever was inside. Roper’s breath was short and sharp in her ear. ‘Grace?’ she tried again, but there was no response. She tugged left and the zipper began to unfurl, grinding its way along the teeth. Roper exhaled behind her, filling the already ripe gap with hot air.  Jamie craned her neck to look through the widening gap as the flap began to fold down, but inside was shaded and dark. The smell of urine wafted out and stung her nostrils. She was aware of her boots in the mud, aware of the sounds around her, of the closeness of Roper as he looked over her head.  Everything was still, the zipper not seeming to move at all.

I’ve lived my entire life without the approval of any of these people. I suspect I can live the rest of it the same.” I stabbed another piece of beef. “Especially considering how short it’s likely to be.