Red Wagon Quotes

Love is like the little red toy wagon you get for your Christmas or your sixth birthday. It makes you deliriously happy and you just can't leave it alone. But sooner or later the wheels come off. Then you leave it in a corner and forget it. Falling in love is great. Being in love is a disaster

Little red wagon, little red bike, I ain’t no monkey but I know what I like.

I think some weirdo with a little red wagon is the last thing you need to be worried about in these hills

The day will come, brothers and sisters, when we will have other books of scripture which will emerge to accompany the Holy Bible and the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. Presently you and I carry our scriptures around in a “quad”; the day will come when you’ll need a little red wagon.

Let me drive," she said, reaching for the reins. He turned to her in disbelief. "This is a phaeton, not a single-horse wagon." Sophie fought the urge to throttle him. His nose was running, his eyes were red, he couldn't stop coughing, and still he found the energy to act like an arrogant peacock. "I assure you," she said slowly, "that I know how to drive a team of horses.

Society has three stages: Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence. The great rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall because of their own Decadence." He tells how the Persians were felled, how the Romans collapsed because their rulers forgot how their parents gained them an empire. He prattles about Muslim dynasties and European effeminacy and Chinese regionalism and American self-loathing and self-neutering. All the ancient names. "Our Savagery began when our capital, Luna, rebelled against the tyranny of Earth and freed herself from the shackles of Demokracy, from the Noble Lie - the idea that men are brothers and are created equal." Augustus weaves lies of his own with that golden tongue of his. He tells of the Goldens' suffering. The Masses sat on the wagon and expected the great to pull, he reminds. They sat whipping the great until we could no longer take it. I remember a different whipping. "Men are not created equal; we all know this. There are averages. There are outliers. There are the ugly. There are the beautiful. This would not be if we were all equal. A Red can no more command a starship than a Green can serve as a doctor!" There's more laughter across the square as he tells us to look at pathetic Athens, the birthplace of the cancer they call Demokracy. Look how it fell to Sparta. The Noble Lie made Athens weak. It made their citizens turn on their best general, Alcibiades, because of jealousy. "Even the nations of Earth grew jealous of one another. The United States of America exacted this idea of equality through force. And when the nations united, the Americans were surprised to find that they were disliked! The Masses are jealous! How wonderful a dream it would be if all men were created equal! But we are not. It is against the Noble Lie that we fight. But as I said before, as I say to you now, there is another evil against which we war. It is a more pernicious evil. It is a subversive, slow evil. It is not a wildfire. It is a cancer. And that cancer is Decadence. Our society has passed from Savagery to Ascendance. But like our spiritual ancestors, the Romans, we too can fall into Decadence.

I determinedly weaved my way through the crowd, hauling my medical apparatus behind me like my little red wagon.

There’s nothing to be scared of.” Instead of taking Charlie’s pulse – there was really no point – he took one of the old man’s hands in his. He saw Charlie’s wife pulling down a shade in the bedroom, wearing nothing but the slip of Belgian lace he’d bought her for their first anniversary; saw how the ponytail swung over one shoulder when she turned to look at him, her face lit in a smile that was all yes. He saw a Farmall tractor with a striped umbrella raised over the seat. He smelled bacon and heard Frank Sinatra singing ‘Come Fly with Me’ from a cracked Motorola radio sitting on a worktable littered with tools. He saw a hubcap full of rain reflecting a red barn. He tasted blueberries and gutted a deer and fished in some distant lake whose surface was dappled by steady autumn rain. He was sixty, dancing with his wife in the American Legion hall. He was thirty, splitting wood. He was five, wearing shorts and pulling a red wagon. Then the pictures blurred together, the way cards do when they’re shuffled in the hands of an expert, and the wind was blowing big snow down from the mountains, and in here was the silence and Azzie’s solemn watching eyes.

The roses started him thinking, how the oddity of them was beautiful and how that oddity was contrived to give them value. “It just struck me – clear and complete all at once – no long figuring about it.” He realized that children could be designed. “And I thought to myself, now that would a rose garden worthy of a man’s interest.” We children would smile and hug him and he would grin around at us and send the twins for a pot of cocoa from the drink wagon and me for a bag of popcorn because the red-haired girls would just throw it out when they finished closing the concession anyway. And we would all be cozy in the warm booth of the van, eating popcorn and drinking cocoa and feeling like Papa’s roses.

I’m glad to report that even now, at this late day, a blank sheet of paper holds the greatest excitement there is for me—more promising than a silver cloud, prettier than a little red wagon. It holds all the hope there is, all fears. I can remember, really quite distinctly, looking a sheet of paper square in the eyes when I was seven or eight years old and thinking, 'This is where I belong, this is it'.

….but at the same time, they got a miracle. It wasn’t the kind that comes on a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day float. And it wasn’t the one that they wanted, where God would reach down from the sky and touch their girl with a magic wand and restore her to perfect health. Maybe that will still happen-who knows? I wouldn’t put anything past God, because he or she is one crafty mother. Still, they did get a miracle, one of those dusty little red-wagon miracles, and they understand this.

[excerpt] The usual I say. Essence. Spirit. Medicine. A taste. I say top shelf. Straight up. A shot. A sip. A nip. I say another round. I say brace yourself. Lift a few. Hoist a few. Work the elbow. Bottoms up. Belly up. Set ‘em up. What’ll it be. Name your poison. I say same again. I say all around. I say my good man. I say my drinking buddy. I say git that in ya. Then a quick one. Then a nightcap. Then throw one back. Then knock one down. Fast & furious I say. Could savage a drink I say. Chug. Chug-a-lug. Gulp. Sauce. Mother’s milk. Everclear. Moonshine. White lightning. Firewater. Hootch. Relief. Now you’re talking I say. Live a little I say. Drain it I say. Kill it I say. Feeling it I say. Wobbly. Breakfast of champions I say. I say candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. I say Houston, we have a drinking problem. I say the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. I say god only knows what I’d be without you. I say thirsty. I say parched. I say wet my whistle. Dying of thirst. Lap it up. Hook me up. Watering hole. Knock a few back. Pound a few down. My office. Out with the boys I say. Unwind I say. Nurse one I say. Apply myself I say. Toasted. Glow. A cold one a tall one a frosty I say. One for the road I say. Two-fisted I say. Never trust a man who doesn’t drink I say. Drink any man under the table I say. Then a binge then a spree then a jag then a bout. Coming home on all fours. Could use a drink I say. A shot of confidence I say. Steady my nerves I say. Drown my sorrows. I say kill for a drink. I say keep ‘em comin’. I say a stiff one. Drink deep drink hard hit the bottle. Two sheets to the wind then. Knackered then. Under the influence then. Half in the bag then. Out of my skull I say. Liquored up. Rip-roaring. Slammed. Fucking jacked. The booze talking. The room spinning. Feeling no pain. Buzzed. Giddy. Silly. Impaired. Intoxicated. Stewed. Juiced. Plotzed. Inebriated. Laminated. Swimming. Elated. Exalted. Debauched. Rock on. Drunk on. Bring it on. Pissed. Then bleary. Then bloodshot. Glassy-eyed. Red-nosed. Dizzy then. Groggy. On a bender I say. On a spree. I say off the wagon. I say on a slip. I say the drink. I say the bottle. I say drinkie-poo. A drink a drunk a drunkard. Swill. Swig. Shitfaced. Fucked up. Stupefied. Incapacitated. Raging. Seeing double. Shitty. Take the edge off I say. That’s better I say. Loaded I say. Wasted. Off my ass. Befuddled. Reeling. Tanked. Punch-drunk. Mean drunk. Maintenance drunk. Sloppy drunk happy drunk weepy drunk blind drunk dead drunk. Serious drinker. Hard drinker. Lush. Drink like a fish. Boozer. Booze hound. Alkie. Sponge. Then muddled. Then woozy. Then clouded. What day is it? Do you know me? Have you seen me? When did I start? Did I ever stop? Slurring. Reeling. Staggering. Overserved they say. Drunk as a skunk they say. Falling down drunk. Crawling down drunk. Drunk & disorderly. I say high tolerance. I say high capacity. They say protective custody. Blitzed. Shattered. Zonked. Annihilated. Blotto. Smashed. Soaked. Screwed. Pickled. Bombed. Stiff. Frazzled. Blasted. Plastered. Hammered. Tore up. Ripped up. Destroyed. Whittled. Plowed. Overcome. Overtaken. Comatose. Dead to the world. The old K.O. The horrors I say. The heebie-jeebies I say. The beast I say. The dt’s. B’jesus & pink elephants. A mindbender. Hittin’ it kinda hard they say. Go easy they say. Last call they say. Quitting time they say. They say shut off. They say dry out. Pass out. Lights out. Blackout. The bottom. The walking wounded. Cross-eyed & painless. Gone to the world. Gone. Gonzo. Wrecked. Sleep it off. Wake up on the floor. End up in the gutter. Off the stuff. Dry. Dry heaves. Gag. White knuckle. Lightweight I say. Hair of the dog I say. Eye-opener I say. A drop I say. A slug. A taste. A swallow. Down the hatch I say. I wouldn’t say no I say. I say whatever he’s having. I say next one’s on me. I say bottoms up. Put it on my tab. I say one more. I say same again

The sand lay blue in the moonlight and the iron tires of the wagons rolled among the shapes of the riders in gleaming hoops that veered and wheeled woundedly and vaguely navigational like slender astrolabes and the polished shoes of the horses kept hasping up like a myriad eyes winking across the desert floor. They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing.

I climbed into the honey wagon with my hair uncombed, with May handing me buttered toast and orange juice through the window and Rosaleen sticking in thermoses of water, both of them practically running alongside the truck while August rolled out of the driveway. I felt like the Red Cross springing to action to save the bee queendom.

It was an old hunter in camp and the hunter shared tobacco with him and told him of the buffalo and the stands he'd made against them, laid up in a sag on some rise with the dead animals scattered over the grounds and the herd beginning to mill and the riflebarrel so hot the wiping patches sizzled in the bore and the animals by the thousands and the tens of thousands and the hides pegged out over actual square miles of ground the teams of skinners spelling one another around the clock and the shooting and shooting weeks and months till the bore shot slick and the stock shot loose at the tang and their shoulders were yellow and blue to the elbow and the tandem wagons groaned away over the prairie twenty and twenty-two ox teams and the flint hides by the hundred ton and the meat rotting on the ground and the air whining with flies and the buzzards and ravens and the night a horror of snarling and feeding with the wolves half-crazed and wallowing in the carrion. I seen Studebaker wagons with six and eight ox teams headed out for the grounds not hauling a thing but lead. Just pure galena. Tons of it. On this ground alone between the Arkansas River and the Concho there were eight million carcasses for that's how many hides reached the railhead. Two years ago we pulled out from Griffin for a last hunt. We ransacked the country. Six weeks. Finally found a herd of eight animals and we killed them and come in. They're gone. Ever one of them that God ever made is gone as if they'd never been at all. The ragged sparks blew down the wind. The prairie about them lay silent. Beyond the fire it was cold and the night was clear and the stars were falling. The old hunter pulled his blanket about him. I wonder if there's other worlds like this, he said. Or if this is the only one.

How much such a little moon can do. There are days when everything about one is bright, light, scarcely stated in the clear air and yet distinct. Even what lies nearest has tones of distance, has been taken away and is only shown, not proffered; and everything related to expanse–the river, the bridges, the longs streets, and the squares that squander themselves–has taken that expanse in behind itself, is painted on it as on silk. It is not possible to say what a bright green wagon on the Pont-Neuf can then become, or some red that is not to be held in, or even a simple placard on the party wall of a pearl-grey group of houses. Everything is simplified, brought into a few right, clear planes, like the face in a Manet portrait. And nothing is trivial and superfluous. The booksellers on the quai open their stalls, and the fresh or worn yellow of their books, the violet brown of the bindings, the bigger green of an album–everything harmonizes, counts, takes part, creating a fulness in which nothing lacks

In Loving Memory Winifred Foster Jackson Dear Wife Dear Mother 1870--1948 “So,” said Tuck to himself. “Two years. She’s been gone two years.” He stood up and looked around, embarrassed, trying to clear the lump from his throat. But there was no one to see him. The cemetery was very quiet. In the branches of a willow behind him, a red-winged blackbird chirped. Tuck wiped his eyes hastily. Then he straightened his jacket again and drew up his hand in a brief salute. “Good girl,” he said aloud. And then he turned and left the cemetery, walking quickly. Later, as he and Mae rolled out of Treegap, Mae said softly, without looking at him, “She’s gone?” Tuck nodded. “She’s gone,” he answered. There was a long moment of silence between them, and then Mae said, “Poor Jesse.” “He knowed it, though,” said Tuck. “At least, he knowed she wasn’t coming. We all knowed that, long time ago.” “Just the same,” said Mae. She sighed. And then she sat up a little straighter. “Well, where to now, Tuck? No need to come back here no more.” “That’s so,” said Tuck. “Let’s just head on out this way. We’ll locate something.” “All right,” said Mae. And then she put a hand on his arm and pointed. “Look out for that toad.” Tuck had seen it, too. He reined in the horse and climbed down from the wagon. The toad was squatting in the middle of the road, quite unconcerned. In the other lane, a pickup truck rattled by, and against the breeze it made, the toad shut its eyes tightly. But it did not move. Tuck waited till the truck had passed, and then he picked up the toad and carried it to the weeds along the road’s edge. “Durn fool thing must think it’s going to live forever,” he said to Mae. And soon they were rolling on again, leaving Treegap behind, and as they went, the tinkling little melody of a music box drifted out behind them and was lost at last far down the road.

Adventure is a great thing," said Simple, "which should be in everybody's life. According to 'The Late Late Show' on TV, in the old days when Americans headed West in covered wagons, they was almost sure to run into adventure--at the very least a battle with the Red Skins. Nowadays, if you want to run into adventure, go to Alabama or Mississippi, where you can battle with the White Skins.

And no one could have known if he had ever looked at her either as, without any semblance of progress in either of them, they draw slowly together as the wagon crawls terrifically toward her in its slow palpable aura of somnolence and red dust in which the steady feet of the mules move dreamlike and punctuate by the sparse jingle of harness and the limber bobbing of jackrabbit ears, the mules still neither asleep nor awake as he halts them.

A massive ball of brown water, uprooted tree trunks, sheared rooftops, bloated horses, stiff dogs and cats, shattered church windows, broken pews, sodden Bibles, Memorial Day flags, busted brick walls, twisted train cars, splintered rail lines, bowed streetlamps, upturned carriages, naked dolls, bent tin soldiers, dented red wagons, books, black stoves, beds, tables, armchairs, mantels, photographs, love letters, wedding dresses, baby booties, and masses of drowned humanity careens straight for us. Neither Eugene Eggar nor I can move.

They began to come upon chains and packsaddles, singletrees, dead mules, wagons. Saddletrees eaten bare of their rawhide coverings and weathered white as bone, a light chamfering of miceteeth along the edges of the wood. They rode through a region where iron will not rust nor tin tarnish. The ribbed frames of dead cattle under their patches of dried hide lay like the ruins of primitive boats upturned upon that shoreless void and they passed lurid and austere the black and desiccated shapes of horses and mules that travelers had stood afoot.

One day, soon after her disappearance, an attack of abominable nausea forced me to pull up on the ghost of an old mountain road that now accompanied, now traversed a brand new highway, with its population of asters bathing in the detached warmth of a pale-blue afternoon in late summer. After coughing myself inside out I rested a while on a boulder and then thinking the sweet air might do me good, walked a little way toward a low stone parapet on the precipice side of the highway. Small grasshoppers spurted out of the withered roadside weeds. A very light cloud was opening its arms and moving toward a slightly more substantial one belonging to another, more sluggish, heavenlogged system. As I approached the friendly abyss, I grew aware of a melodious unity of sounds rising like vapor from a small mining town that lay at my feet, in a fold of the valley. One could make out the geometry of the streets between blocks of red and gray roofs, and green puffs of trees, and a serpentine stream, and the rich, ore-like glitter of the city dump, and beyond the town, roads crisscrossing the crazy quilt of dark and pale fields, and behind it all, great timbered mountains. But even brighter than those quietly rejoicing colors - for there are colors and shades that seem to enjoy themselves in good company - both brighter and dreamier to the ear than they were to the eye, was that vapory vibration of accumulated sounds that never ceased for a moment, as it rose to the lip of granite where I stood wiping my foul mouth. And soon I realized that all these sounds were of one nature, that no other sounds but these came from the streets of the transparent town, with the women at home and the men away. Reader! What I heard was but the melody of children at play, nothing but that, and so limpid was the air that within this vapor of blended voices, majestic and minute, remote and magically near, frank and divinely enigmatic - one could hear now and then, as if released, an almost articulate spurt of vivid laughter, or the crack of a bat, or the clatter of a toy wagon, but it was all really too far for the eye to distinguish any movement in the lightly etched streets. I stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries with a kind of demure murmur for background, and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord.

On either side of them the essence of honky tonk beach resort had now enclosed them: gas stations, fried clam stands, Dairy Treets, motels painted in feverish pastel colors, mini golf. Larry was drawn two painful ways by these things. Part of him clamored at their sad and blatant ugliness and at the ugliness of the minds that had turned this section of a magnificent, savage coastline into one long highway amusement park for families in station wagons. But there was a more subtle, deeper part of him that whispered of the people who had filled these places and this road during other summers. Ladies in sunhats and shorts too tight for their large behinds. College boys in red and black striped rugby shirts. Girls in beach shifts and thong sandals. Small screaming children with ice cream spread over their faces. They were American people, and there was a kind of dirty, compelling romance about them whenever they were in groups never mind if the group was in an Aspen ski lodge or performing their prosaic/ arcane rites of summer along Route 1 in Maine. And now all these Americans were gone.

Months later, when I rarely saw the Angels, I still had the legacy of the big machine -- four hundred pounds of chrome and deep red noise to take out on the Coast Highway and cut loose at three in the morning, when all the cops were lurking over on 101. My first crash had wrecked the bike completely and it took several months to have it rebuilt. After that I decided to ride it differently: I would stop pushing my luck on curves, always wear a helmet and try to keep within range of the nearest speed limit ... my insurance had already been canceled and my driver's license was hanging by a thread. So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head ... but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz ... not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-night diner down around Rockaway Beach. There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip.

Tomino’s Hell Elder sister vomits blood, younger sister’s breathing fire while sweet little Tomino just spits up the jewels. All alone does Tomino go falling into that hell, a hell of utter darkness, without even flowers. Is Tomino’s big sister the one who whips him? The purpose of the scourging hangs dark in his mind. Lashing and thrashing him, ah! But never quite shattering. One sure path to Avici, the eternal hell. Into that blackest of hells guide him now, I pray— to the golden sheep, to the nightingale. How much did he put in that leather pouch to prepare for his trek to the eternal hell? Spring is coming to the valley, to the wood, to the spiraling chasms of the blackest hell. The nightingale in her cage, the sheep aboard the wagon, and tears well up in the eyes of sweet little Tomino. Sing, o nightingale, in the vast, misty forest— he screams he only misses his little sister. His wailing desperation echoes throughout hell— a fox peony opens its golden petals. Down past the seven mountains and seven rivers of hell— the solitary journey of sweet little Tomino. If in this hell they be found, may they then come to me, please, those sharp spikes of punishment from Needle Mountain. Not just on some empty whim Is flesh pierced with blood-red pins: they serve as hellish signposts for sweet little Tomino. —translated by David Bowles June 29, 2014

She could stand anything. Tara was worth it all. For a brief moment, it was mid-summer and the afternoon skies were blue and she lay drowsily in the thick clover of Tara's lawn, looking up at the billowing cloud castles, the fragrance of white blossoms in her nose and the pleasant humming of bees in her ears. Afternoon and hush and the far-off sounds of the wagons coming in from the spiraling red fields. Worth it all, worth more.

Look, Pa, look!” Laura said. “A wolf!” Pa did not seem to move quickly, but he did. In an instant he took his gun out of the wagon and was ready to fire at those green eyes. The eyes stopped coming. They were still in the dark, looking at him. “It can’t be a wolf. Unless it’s a mad wolf,” Pa said. Ma lifted Mary into the wagon. “And it’s not that,” said Pa. “Listen to the horses.” Pet and Patty were still biting off bits of grass. “A lynx?” said Ma. “Or a coyote?” Pa picked up a stick of wood; he shouted, and threw it. The green eyes went close to the ground, as if the animal crouched to spring. Pa held the gun ready. The creature did not move. “Don’t, Charles,” Ma said. But Pa slowly walked toward those eyes. And slowly along the ground the eyes crawled toward him. Laura could see the animal in the edge of the dark. It was a tawny animal and brindled. Then Pa shouted and Laura screamed. The next thing she knew she was trying to hug a jumping, panting, wriggling Jack, who lapped her face and hands with his warm wet tongue. She couldn’t hold him. He leaped and wriggled from her to Pa to Ma and back to her again. “Well, I’m beat!” Pa said. “So am I,” said Ma. “But did you have to wake the baby?” She rocked Carrie in her arms, hushing her. Jack was perfectly well. But soon he lay down close to Laura and sighed a long sigh. His eyes were red with tiredness, and all the under part of him was caked with mud. Ma gave him a cornmeal cake and he licked it and wagged politely, but he could not eat. He was too tired. “No telling how long he kept swimming,” Pa said. “Nor how far he was carried downstream before he landed.” And when at last he reached them, Laura called him a wolf, and Pa threatened to shoot him. But Jack knew they didn’t mean it. Laura asked him, “You knew we didn’t mean it, didn’t you, Jack?” Jack wagged his stump of a tail; he knew.

In two days they began to come upon bones and cast-off apparel. They saw halfburied skeletons of mules with the bones so white and polished they seemed incandescent even in that blazing heat and they saw panniers and packsaddles and the bones of men and they saw a mule entire, the dried and blackened carcass hard as iron. They rode on. The white noon saw them through the waste like a ghost army, so pale they were with dust, like shades of figures erased upon a board. The wolves loped paler yet and grouped and skittered and lifted their lean snouts on the air. At night the horses were fed by hand from sacks of meal and watered from buckets. There was no more sickness. The survivors lay quietly in that cratered void and watched the whitehot stars go rifling down the dark. Or slept with their alien hearts beating in the sand like pilgrims exhausted upon the face of the planet Anareta, clutched to a namelessness wheeling in the night. They moved on and the iron of the wagontires grew polished bright as chrome in the pumice. To the south the blue cordilleras stood footed in their paler image on the sand like reflections in a lake and there were no wolves now. They took to riding by night, silent jornadas save for the trundling of the wagons and the wheeze of the animals. Under the moonlight a strange party of elders with the white dust thick on their moustaches and their eyebrows. They moved on and the stars jostled and arced across the firmament and died beyond the inkblack mountains. They came to know the nightskies well. Western eyes that read more geometric constructions than those names given by the ancients. Tethered to the polestar they rode the Dipper round while Orion rose in the southwest like a great electric kite. The sand lay blue in the moonlight and the iron tires of the wagons rolled among the shapes of the riders in gleaming hoops that veered and wheeled woundedly and vaguely navigational like slender astrolabes and the polished shoes of the horses kept hasping up like a myriad of eyes winking across the desert floor. They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing.

The clack of fangs and the soft swift pad of stealthy feet tell you that the Warhounds are closing in. You look up to see a man running towards you from the barricade. He has a shield in one hand and a longbow in the other; it is Guard Captain D’Val. He reaches you, breathless from his run, and draws an arrow from his quiver. D’Val aims and fires, drawing another arrow from his quiver as soon as the first is loosed. The Warhounds tumble and crash to the ground around you, felled by D’Val’s deadly shafts. Eight lie dead before his quiver is empty. The captain grabs you by the arm and, swinging you over his shoulder in one swift motion, carries you back towards the barricade. Others run forward to help you, but the bandit archers are now in range and your men are forced back by a hail of arrows. The red shafts of the enemy whistle past on all sides. You reach the barricade, a wagon is pulled aside, and you are carried in through the gap. Captain D’Val is close to exhaustion; he staggers, and his men rush to catch him before he drops to the ground.

BURNT KABOB Last year, I admired wines. This, I’m wandering inside the red world. Last year, I gazed at the fire. This year I’m burnt kabob. Thirst drove me down to the water where I drank the moon’s reflection. Now I am a lion staring up totally lost in love with the thing itself. Don’t ask questions about longing. Look in my face. Soul drunk, body ruined, these two sit helpless in a wrecked wagon. Neither knows how to fix it. And my heart, I’d say it was more like a donkey sunk in a mudhole, struggling and miring deeper. But listen to me: for one moment, quit being sad. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you. God.

Last year I admired wines. This year I am wandering inside the red world. Last year I gazed at the fire. This year I am burnt kabob. Thirst drove me down to the water, where I drank the moon's reflection. Now I am a lion staring up totally lost in love with the thing itself. Do not ask questions about longing. Look in my face. Soul-drunk, body-ruined, these two sit helpless in a wrecked wagon. Neither knows how to fix it. And my heart, I would say it is more like a donkey sunk in a mudhole, strugglings and miring deeper. But listen to me. For one moment quit being sad. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you. God.

Camelot—Camelot," said I to myself.  "I don't seem to remember hearing of it before.  Name of the asylum, likely." It was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream, and as lonesome as Sunday.  The air was full of the smell of flowers, and the buzzing of insects, and the twittering of birds, and there were no people, no wagons, there was no stir of life, nothing going on.  The road was mainly a winding path with hoof-prints in it, and now and then a faint trace of wheels on either side in the grass—wheels that apparently had a tire as broad as one's hand. Presently a fair slip of a girl, about ten years old, with a cataract of golden hair streaming down over her shoulders, came along. Around her head she wore a hoop of flame-red poppies. It was as sweet an outfit as ever I saw, what there was of it.  She walked indolently along, with a mind at rest, its peace reflected in her innocent face.  The circus man paid no attention to her; didn't even seem to see her.  And she—she was no more startled at his fantastic make-up than if she was used to his like every day of her life.  She was going by as indifferently as she might have gone by a couple of cows; but when she happened to notice me, then there was a change!  Up went her hands, and she was turned to stone;

I jumped then. It seemed I heard a child laugh. My imagination, of course. And then, when I should have known better, I headed for the closet and the high and narrow door at the very back end and the steep and narrow dark stairs. A million times I’d ascended these stairs. A million times in the dark, without a candle, or a flashlight. Up into the dark, eerie, gigantic attic, and only when I was there did I feel around for the place where Chris and I had hidden our candles and matches. Still there. Time did stand still in this place. We’d had several candle holders, all of pewter with small handles to grasp. Holders we’d found in an old trunk along with boxes and boxes of short, stubby, clumsily made candles. We’d always presumed them to be homemade candles, for they had smelled so rank and old when they burned. My breath caught! Oh! It was the same! The paper flowers still dangled down, mobiles to sway in the drafts, and the giant flowers were still on the walls. Only all the colors had faded to indistinct gray—ghost flowers. The sparkling gem centers we’d glued on had loosened, and now only a few daisies had sequins, or gleaming stones, for centers. Carrie’s purple worm was there only now he too was a nothing color. Cory’s epileptic snail didn’t appear a bright, lopsided beach ball now, it was more a tepid, half-rotten squashy orange. The BEWARE signs Chris and I had painted in red were still on the walls, and the swings still dangled down from the attic rafters. Over near the record player was the barre Chris had fashioned, then nailed to the wall so I could practice my ballet positions. Even my outgrown costumes hung limply from nails, dozens of them with matching leotards and worn out pointe shoes, all faded and dusty, rotten smelling. As in an unhappy dream I was committed to, I drifted aimlessly toward the distant schoolroom, with the candelight flickering. Ghosts were unsettled, memories and specters followed me as things began to wake up, yawn and whisper. No, I told myself, it was only the floating panels of my long chiffon wings . . . that was all. The spotted rocking-horse loomed up, scary and threatening, and my hand rose to my throat as I held back a scream. The rusty red wagon seemed to move by unseen hands pushing it, so my eyes took flight to the blackboard where I’d printed my enigmatic farewell message to those who came in the future. How was I to know it would be me? We lived in the attic, Christopher, Cory, Carrie and me— Now there are only three. Behind the small desk that had been Cory’s I scrunched down, and tried to fit my legs under. I wanted to put myself into a deep reverie that would call up Cory’s spirit that would tell me where he lay.

It was an old hunter in camp and the hunter shared tobacco with him and told him of the buffalo and the stands he’d made against them, laid up in a sag on some rise with the dead animals scattered over the grounds and the herd beginning to mill and the riflebarrel so hot the wiping patches sizzled in the bore and the animals by the thousands and tens of thousands and the hides pegged out over actual square miles of ground and the teams of skinners spelling one another around the clock and the shooting and shooting weeks and months till the bore shot slick and the stock shot loose at the tang and their shoulders were yellow and blue to the elbow and the tandem wagons groaned away over the prairie twenty and twenty-two ox teams and the flint hides by the ton and hundred ton and the meat rotting on the ground and the air whining with flies and the buzzards and ravens and the night a horror of snarling and feeding with the wolves half crazed and wallowing in the carrion. I seen Studebaker wagons with six and eight ox teams headed out for the grounds not haulin a thing but lead. Just pure galena. Tons of it. On this ground alone between the Arkansas River and the Concho there was eight million carcasses for that’s how many hides reached the railhead. Two year ago we pulled out from Griffin for a last hunt. We ransacked the country. Six weeks. Finally found a herd of eight animals and we killed them and come in. They’re gone. Ever one of them that God ever made is gone as if they’d never been at all.

In the distance I can see a group of figures marching in a long row. As they come closer I can see that they are mostly women, loaded down with bundles. Some men are walking along carrying nothing. Hans Weichert gets annoyed with the men for allowing the women to carry the heavy loads while they just walk along beside them. Our wagon chief, the Obergefreiter, explains: ‘In this part of Russia that’s normal. The pajenkas, the girls, and the mattkas, the mothers or women, are from childhood taught to do what the pan, or man, tells them to do. The men are real layabouts: they decide what’s to be done. Whenever you see them they are always walking alongside the women. Indoors they are usually to be found lying on the clay ovens asleep. Nowadays you mostly see only old men—all the youngsters have gone off to the war.

As the dawn was just breaking he found himself close to Covent Garden. The darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed itself into a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies rumbled slowly down the polished empty street. The air was heavy with the perfume of the flowers, and their beauty seemed to bring him an anodyne for his pain. He followed into the market, and watched the men unloading their wagons. A white-smocked carter offered him some cherries. He thanked him, and wondered why he refused to accept any money for them, and began to eat them listlessly. They had been plucked at midnight, and the coldness of the moon had entered into them. A long line of boys carrying crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red roses, defiled in front of him, threading their way through the huge, jade-green piles of vegetables.

...the marchers appear four abreast. Dressed in clothing of every description, all wearing red scarves at their necks. Red or orange, as close to red as they could find. . . . He wallowed on the ground and lay watching across his forearm. An army in tennis shoes, tramping. Carrying three-foot lengths of pipe with leather wrappings. Lanyards at the wrist. Some of the pipes were threaded through with lengths of chain fitted at their ends with every manner of bludgeon. They clanked past, marching with a swaying gait like wind-up toys. Bearded, their breath smoking through their masks. Shh, he said. Shh. The phalanx following carried spears or lances tasseled with ribbons, the long blades hammered out of trucksprings in some crude forge upcountry. The boy lay with his face in his arms, terrified. They passed two hundred feet away, the ground shuddering lightly. Tramping. Behind them came wagons drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the women, perhaps a dozen of them, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites, illclothed against the cold and fitted in dogcollars and yoked each to each.

build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar--except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole. When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else. When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. The sun and wind had changed her, too. They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from her cheeks and lips, and they were gray also. She was thin and gaunt, and never smiled now. When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child's laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Dorothy's merry voice reached her ears; and she still looked at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything to laugh at. Uncle Henry never laughed. He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was. He was gray also, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke. It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings. Toto was not gray; he was a little black dog, with long silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled merrily on either side of his funny, wee nose. Toto played all day long, and Dorothy played with him, and loved him dearly. Today, however, they were not playing. Uncle Henry sat upon the doorstep and looked anxiously at the sky, which was even grayer than usual. Dorothy stood in the door with Toto in her arms, and looked at the sky too. Aunt Em was washing the

The stormy black sky had faded to dark gray, and in the distance white, billowing clouds blew across the prairie. They began racing one another, tossed by the wind, and the sun shining on them made them appear a brilliant white against the evening sky. Memories crowded about her:a French trader with laughing eyes; a long ride into Fort Kearney; and somewhere, far back,a little mound of stones receding into the wide plain as a wagon rumbled away.Then he came, a Lakota brave, one with his snow white pony. They bounded together across the sky,and with each leap Jesse's heart fluttered.She stood on the prairie,her long red braides decorated with feathers, the part dusted with ochre. She raised a trembling hand in greeting, but he was gone. Her hand fell back against the quilt, and Jesse saw the clouds again and realized it had only been a memory. She was an old woman,too tired to help with the supper,perhaps even too tired to be of use to Lisbeth. The clouds outside came closer,and the old heart fluttered at the memory of a man who rode on the wind long ago.Now it seemed that the rode again across the sky,into the room.He raised one hand in greeting. "I will ask the Father," he had said, "and I will come for you." Jesse sat up in bed,her face alive with a new light.Rides the Wind smiled and reached out to sweep her up behind him. And the Father said, "Come home. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yes,I have a goodly heritage. Psalm 16:6

The Story of the Moon Once, night, unchallenged, extended its dark grace across the sky. To the credit of the town, the stars at night had been enough, though sometimes the townspeople went about bumping their heads in sleep. Eventually, three brothers, traveling through a foreign town, found an evening that did not disappear behind the mountains, for a shining globe sat in an oak tree. The brothers stopped. That one is the moon, said a man from the foreign town. The brothers conferred. They could make a certain use of it. The brothers stole the moon down and put it in their wagon. Seized it. Thieved its silver. Altogether greedy. The wagon shining brights. At home: the moon delivered. Then, celebration: dancing in red coats on the meadow. Number four brother smiling wide. The moon installed--it extended its silver calculations. Time and more time. The brothers aged, took sick, petitioned the town that each quarter of the moon, as it was their property, be portioned out to share their graves. Done, and the light of the moon diminished in fractions. They had extinguished it, part for part, and night, unimpeded, fell. Altogether lanternless. The people were silent. The dark rang loud. Underground: cold blazing. The dead woke, shivering in the light. Some went out to play and dance, others hastened to the taverns to drink, quarrel, and brawl. Noise and more noise. Noise up to heaven. Saint Peter took his red horse through the gates and came down. The moon, for the third time, taken. The dead bidden back into their graves. One wonders why a story like this exists.

So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head. . . but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz. . . not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-​night diner down around Rockaway Beach. There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip. Then into first gear, forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out. . . thirty-​five, forty-​five. . . then into second and wailing through the light at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals, but only some other werewolf loony who might be pulling out, too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of these. . . and with three lanes on a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get around almost anything. . . then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-​five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water off a high board. Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. Taillights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly -- zaaapppp -- going past and leaning down for a curve near the zoo, where the road swings out to sea. The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the highway, piling up in thick drifts as deadly as any oil-​slick. . . instant loss of control, a crashing, cartwheeling slide and maybe one of those two-​inch notices in the paper the next day: “An unidentified motorcyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn on Highway I.” Indeed. . . but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there's no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind-​burned eyeballs strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes. But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right. . . and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it. . . howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica. . . letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge. . . The Edge. . . There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others -- the living -- are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

Snorri stood with one thick arm gripping the wagon bed, arresting its motion. 'Come.' I hadn’t the breath to tell him that's what I was trying to do. Instead I slipped out, lacing up what needed to be laced.

ay cheese!" If you're like most women I know, you have at least one family and friends photo area in your home. My entire home is practically a photo gallery! Walls, tabletops, and my refrigerator door are all crowded with the faces of people I love. My husband, Bob, my children, grandchildren, new friends, old friends you name 'em and I've displayed 'em. How precious are these gatherings of faces to us. And it's so fitting, isn't it? Because our family and friends' pictures tell the story of their lives.. .and ours! Cherish your family and friends and those priceless moments. Hold them close. Seek out your friends and enjoy their company more often. Treasure their faces, their characteristics, their uniqueness. But also make room for new people.. .and add them to the gallery in your heart. ant to hold a spring garden party? It can be a birthday, a graduation, or just a celebration. For invitations, glue inexpensive packets of seeds to index cards and write in your party information. Pass them out or stick them in envelopes and mail them. Decorate a picnic table with an umbrella and bright floral sheets or vinyl cloths. Why not decorate the awnings and porch posts to make it even more festive? Flowers, flowers, and flowers everywhere create a bright, aromatic space. If you're limber and energetic or you're inviting kids, spread sheets on the ground for an authentic, old-fashioned picnic. A little red wagon or painted tub with a potted plant makes a fun off-to-the-side "centerpiece." Use a clean watering can for your lemonade pitcher. Engage your imagination and have fun entertaining.

The ride to Mineral Point, usually so enjoyable, had turned into a trip through Hell itself. Jake had done well, finding every soft, thick blanket he could find and making a decent bed in the wagon, but the journey was still tortuous for Kate. Every time the wheel hit a bump in the road, bouncing the passengers like dice in a cup, she cried out. While Mary and Becky tended to her in the back, constantly replacing the cold compress on her forehead and shielding her from the early morning sun, Sam drove the horses as hard as he dared. On the rare moments when he did throw a quick glance back at the women, Kate was obscured by the red parasol that Mary held over her. It was probably for the best. He already had a hard enough time trying to concentrate on the road, what with the memory of his girl convulsing on the dirt floor of his cabin.

You can pull a little red wagon to a stream, but you cannot teach it to swim in it.

Stablehands ran to the bridles and led the horses to a picket as Nessaren and I walked into the tent. Inside was a kind of controlled pandemonium. Scribes and runners were everywhere that low tables and cushions weren’t. Atop the tables lay maps and piles of papers, plus a number of bags of coinage. In a corner was stacked a small but deadly arsenal of very fine swords. Seated in the midst of the chaos was Shevraeth, dressed in the green and gold of Remalna, with a commander’s plumed and coroneted helm on the table beside him. He appeared to be listening to five people, all of whom were talking at once. One by one they received from him quick orders, and they vanished in different directions. Then he saw us, and his face relaxed slightly. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized he was tense. Meanwhile the rest of his people had taken note of our arrival, and all were silent as he rose and came around the table to stand before us. “Twenty wagons, Lady Meliara?” he said, one brow lifting. I shrugged, fighting against acute embarrassment. “We’ve a wager going.” His neatly gloved hand indicated the others in the tent. “How many, do you think, would have been too many for you to take on single-handed?” “My thinking was this,” I said, trying to sound casual, though by then my face felt as red as a glowing Fire Stick. “Two of them could trounce me as easy as twenty wagons’ worth. The idea was to talk them out of trying. Luckily Nessaren and the rest of the wing arrived when they did, or I suspect I soon would have been part of the road.” Shevraeth’s mouth was perfectly controlled, but his eyes gleamed with repressed laughter as he said, “That won’t do, my lady. I am very much afraid if you’re going to continue to attempt heroic measures you will have to make suitably heroic statements afterward--” “If there is an afterward,” I muttered, and someone in the avidly watching group choked on a laugh. “--such as are written in the finest of our histories.” “Huh,” I said. “I guess I’ll just have to memorize a few proper heroic bombasts, rhymed in three places, for next time. And I’ll also remember to take a scribe to get it all down right.” He laughed--they all did. They laughed much harder than the weak joke warranted, and I realized that events had not been so easy here. I unclasped his cloak and handed it over. “I’m sorry about the hem,” I said, feeling suddenly shy. “Got a bit muddy.” He slung the cloak over one arm and gestured to a waiting cushion. “Something hot to drink?” A young cadet came forward with a tray and steaming coffee. I busied myself choosing a cup, sitting down, and striving to reestablish within myself a semblance of normalcy. While I sipped at my coffee, one by one the staff finished their chores and vanished through the tent flaps, until at last Shevraeth and I were alone.

Boy, I told you to stay away from the Thorpe wagon. If that unreasonable woman wants to do everything herself, then so be it.” Ezra spat out a wad of tobacco from the side of his mouth. Hands fisted at his hips, Davis glared at the wagon master. “This can’t continue. That woman is worn out.” “That woman is stubborn, is what she is.” Ezra’s face took on a red hue. “So what are we going to do, let her kill herself trying to do it all?” Davis leaned in, his jaw clenching.  “She’s the one who decided she could do it all by herself. Let her stew a bit,” Ezra shouted back. “Stewing is one thing, this is inhuman.” “Why are you so all fired up about her? It’s you she’s refused to marry.” “Did you ever think it was too soon after her husband’s death? Maybe she just needs a breather.” “When we’re out here on the trail, there’s no time for breathers. She needs a man to help her with that wagon, and until it sinks in, you stay away from her.

THE RECKONING BROTHER’S KEEPER SINS OF THE FATHER THE BURNING THE DODGE CITY MASSACRE HELL HATH NO FURY THE RIVER RUNS RED DEATH DANCE BLOOD TRAIL BADGE OF HONOR LONG GUNS WANTED TIN MAN RETRIBUTION HIRED GUN HUNTED RESURRECTION IN COLD BLOOD REAGAN’S RIDERS THE BOUNTY WAGON TRAIN THE KILLING HOMBRE BODY COUNT HUNT DOWN FROM THE GRAVE BLACK RAVEN THE BOUNTY HUNTERS TO HELL AND BACK MACHETE STREETS OF LAREDO RIDE OF REVENGE COLD JUSTICE GOD’S GUN DARK CLOUD REDEMPTION TROUBLE IN NAVARRO BLACK HEART COMING SOON… THE 39TH BOOK IN THE JESS WILLIAMS WESTERN SERIES

The woman was tall, wearing stretch leggings and a big red bulky sweater. Even though it was thick, it left no doubt that she filled it out a lot better than I filled out mine. Dolly Parton to my . . . well, let’s just say that the greatly endowed wagon had passed me by. Her blonde hair was cascading in glorious waves around her shoulders instead of hanging in tight curls like mine. She no doubt knew her way around a curling iron. She was resting a hand on Aunt Sue’s shoulders like they were the very best of friends. I couldn’t explain it, but I took an immediate dislike to her. Probably because Brad couldn’t take his eyes off her and was starting to drool. “Hey, everyone, this is Cynthia,” Aunt Sue announced, like we should all care when I definitely did not. “She’s staying at the condo next to yours. This is my niece, Kate, my nephew, Sam, and their friends.” “It’s great to meet you all,” Cynthia said a little too breathlessly, her voice having a little squeal to it, like she was trying really hard to sound sexy but she just came across sounding like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.

Rio Bravo is an answer to the lionization of the lone town marshal, portrayed so powerfully by Gary Cooper in High Noon, but Rio Bravo is also a deft remake of Red River, one that highlights Brennan’s role as a moral authority and a witness to history central to the ethos of Howard Hawks’s Westerns. But heretofore the Brennan persona rarely displaced that of the stars he supported. That would happen when, in the television age, the actor became, like Ward Bond in Wagon Train (1957–61), the locus of the action, the center around which the family and the nation revolved.

In an age of extreme automation and globalization, how can the 90 percent for whom income is stagnant or falling respond? For the Tea Party, the answer is to circle the wagons around family and church, and to get on bended knee to multinational companies to lure them to you from wherever they are. This is the strategy Southern governors have used to lure textile firms from New England or car manufacturers from New Jersey and California, offering lower wages, anti-union legislation, low corporate taxes, and big financial incentives. For the liberal left, the best approach is to nurture new business through a world-class public infrastructure and excellent schools. An example is what many describe as the epicenter of a new industrial age: Silicon Valley—with Google, Twitter, Apple, and Facebook—and its environs, as well as the electric car and solar industries. The reds might be the Louisiana model, and to some degree, the blues are the California one.

wagon trains. Today, the West is still full of such places, creating an interesting political irony. Some of the most conservative, red-state bastions in America—Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho—are the most park-rich states of all, with rodeo corrals, state fairgrounds, and free or inexpensive municipal campgrounds nearly everywhere. Untold millions in tax dollars were spent to build these national assets, and millions of dollars of public funds are spent every year to maintain them. The public corrals and parks measurably improve the quality of life and the local economies. But this region is also the Tea Party belt, where the central ideological pretense of the day is that government is the enemy and that every penny of taxes collected is a political crime.

Josie said. “We almost gave up several times,” Dora admitted, shaking her head.  “But maybe the quilt did keep us from going home earlier than we had planned.” “I like the name Rolling Stones,” Josie commented. “Hey, that’s kind of like us. We didn’t use wagons, but we managed to tour part of the country.” “You’re right. I believe we should just keep the quilt.” “Won’t it remind us of all the anxious moments?” “Maybe, but we showed courage and persevered,” Dora said, soundly.  “Hey, where’s the bonus they promised us?” “Well, I don’t know.” Dora searched the box and held up a blue envelope. “Let’s see.” Josie whipped it out of her hand. She broke the seal and took out two airplane tickets. “Airplane tickets?” Dora asked in disbelief. “What do we do with tickets?” “Here’s a note between the tickets.” Josie opened it.  “It says the tickets are for a quilt show in Philadelphia. Milton wants us to attend.  He says he will meet us there and answer more questions for us.” “But we’re afraid to fly,” Dora protested. “Could we send the tickets back?” Josie suggested. “I don’t think so. Milton will be out his money.” “When is it?” Dora took the tickets and examined them. “In September. Only a month away.” Josie tapped her chin in thought. “If we decided to do more touring, we could extend our trip from there to the New England States.” “We could see the autumn leaves,” Dora said, excitement rising in her voice. “Anthony wanted us to visit him in Iowa,” Josie reminded Dora. “How are we going to work all this in?” “I have no idea. Why does traveling have to be so complicated and so full of surprises?”   ______   MDora looped a bright red scarf around her neck while glancing out her bedroom  window. The wind swirled bits of trash down the sidewalk of their Hedge City, Nebraska, home. She sighed, wishing she could stay at home today and read.  Buzzie looked up at her and meowed, expressing the same sentiments. She reached down and patted her softly.  But she didn’t have that luxury today. She had agreed to substitute teach for the current English teacher who would be out for at least a week.  Josie called from the kitchen. “Want more coffee?” “Yes, please.  Fill my mug.  I’ll drink it on my way to school.” She reached into the closet and pulled out a beige sweater. A glance in the mirror confirmed the bright red scarf did wonders for the nondescript sweater’s color. Josie joined her at the door dressed in russet slacks and matching jacket and handed Dora her mug.  “A little blustery today.” “For sure.” Dora eyed Josie, wishing she had the sense of style Josie displayed. The sisters would walk together and then would split to their separate ways, Josie to fill in at the

One of the optional subjects that we could study at Eton was motor mechanics, roughly translated as “find an old banger, pimp it up, remove the exhaust, and rag it around the fields until it dies.” Perfect. I found an exhausted-looking, old brown Ford Cortina station wagon that I bought for thirty pounds, and, with some friends, we geared it up big-time. As we were only sixteen we weren’t allowed to take it on the road, but I reckoned with my seventeenth birthday looming that it would be perfect as my first, road-legal car. The only problem was that I needed to have it pass inspection, and to do that I had to get it to a garage. This involved having an adult drive with me. I persuaded Mr. Quibell that there was no better way that he could possibly spend a Saturday afternoon than drive me to a repair garage (in his beloved Slough). I had managed to take a lucky diving catch for the house cricket team the day before, so was in Mr. Quibell’s good books--and he relented. As soon as we got to the outskirts of Slough, though, the engine started to smoke--big-time. Soon, Mr. Quibell had to have the windshield wipers on full power, acting as a fan just to clear the smoke that was pouring out of the hood. By the time we made it to the garage the engine was red-hot and it came as no surprise that my car failed its inspection--on more counts than any car the garage had seen for a long time, they told me. It was back to the drawing board, but it was a great example of what a good father figure Mr. Quibell was to all those in his charge--especially to those boys who really tried, in whatever field it was. And I have always been, above all, a trier. I haven’t always succeeded, and I haven’t always had the most talent, but I have always given of myself with great enthusiasm--and that counts for a lot. In fact my dad had always told me that if I could be the most enthusiastic person I knew then I would do well. I never forgot that. And he was right. I mean, who doesn’t like to work with enthusiastic folk?

When you leave tomorrow, you’ll be accompanied by a few of my people.” “Why?” “Because they will be needed to drive the wagon to Xandria. I know that you are indentured to your master—that you still owe him a good deal of money before you are free to live your own life. He’s making you pay back a fortune that he forced you to borrow.” He squeezed her hand before approaching one of three trunks pushed against the wall. “For saving my life—and sparing hers.” He flipped open the lid of a trunk, then another, and another. Sunlight gleamed on the gold inside, reflecting through the room like light on water. All that gold … and the piece of Spidersilk the merchant had given her … she couldn’t think of the possibilities that wealth would open to her, not right now. “When you give your master his letter, also give him this. And tell him that in the Red Desert, we do not abuse our disciples.” Celaena smiled slowly. “I think I can manage that.” She looked to the open window, to the world beyond. For the first time in a long while, she heard the song of a northern wind, calling her home. And she was not afraid.

As she left the wagons far behind, she felt more alone than she ever had in her life. Moonlight bathed the flats. Loretta turned in a slow circle but saw no one. If Hunter was out here, why didn’t he show himself? The call of the coyote trailed skyward again. Loretta whirled toward the sound and ran toward the rise. As she crested the slope, Hunter loomed up out of the shadows, tall and dark, his hair drifting in the wind. His upper chest and shoulder were crisscrossed with torn strips of cloth. Calico and muslin. Slowing her footsteps, she walked toward him a ways, then stopped. Did he even want her as his woman now? So much had happened since they last saw each other. So much pain and grief. His face was in shadow, so she could read nothing in his expression. When Loretta drew to a halt several feet away from him, Hunter’s heart skipped a beat, then started racing. Peering at her through the silvery darkness, he saw a tosi woman in tosi clothing, her pale skin and golden hair illuminated by the light of the Comanche moon. Just as the prophecy had foretold, they stood on a high place, she on the land of the tosi tivo, while he, Comanche to his bones, stood on the land of the People. A great distance divided them, a distance much harder to bridge than the few feet between them. Hunter ached with things he longed to say, but none of them seemed enough. He realized then that the great canyon filled with blood wasn’t a chasm in the earth but one in their hearts. There was an ache in Loretta’s eyes that cut clear through him. He knew the same ache was in his own. His father, Maiden of the Tall Grass, her parents. So many were lost to them. “Are you all right?” she asked. Hunter was weak from loss of blood. His shoulder felt as if it had a red-hot coal buried in it. “I am well. You came, yes? There is much we must talk about.

Their wagon crawled along over gently rolling humps and swells, generally following the dusty valley floor between and around a maze of overlapping ridges. Thin pine and oak forests covered the lower slopes but never quite reached the red-rock ridgetops. Nor were there many trees down in the dry valleys of prairie grass and sage, where the occasional stunted, wind-rustled corn patch of a mestizo farm huddled against the road, or the mangy dogs of a native village ran out to pester the horses. But even in the afternoon when the road began to climb, winding through gaps in the craggy mountains toward the town of Arteaga, Caleb noted that it was a much better and smoother road than the one from Agua Nueva.

So it was with the various eccentrics she discovered in the next years. Some she went home with, some she didn't; some she photographed, others she just talked to, but everyone impressed her. Like the irate lady who appeared to Diane one night pulling a kiddy's red express wagon trimmed with bells and filled with cats in fancy hats and dresses. Like the man in Brooklyn who called himself the Mystic Barber who teleported himself to Mars and said he was dead and wore a copper band around his forehead with antennae on it to receive instructions from the Martians. Or the lady in the Bronx who trained herself to eat and sleep underwater or the black who carried a rose and noose around with him at all times, or the person who invented a noiseless soup spoon, or the man from New Jersey who'd collected string for twenty years, winding it into a ball that was now five feet in diameter, sitting monstrous and splendid in his living room.

It is impossible to view Calamity Jane today without responding to the gay subtext; hell, it’s not even subtext—the lesbian aspects of the film are all right out there. Dressed in buckskins, with a cap on her head and a red bandana around her neck, dirt streaking her face, Calamity says to Katie, “You’re the purtiest thing I’ve ever seen. I didn’t know a woman could look like that.” Hugging Katie, she invites her to move in with her to “chaperone” each other. Helping Katie out of the horse and wagon, Calam tells Katie, “We’ll batch it here as cozy as two bugs in a blanket.” And after Katie cleans the entire cabin, the finishing touch is a front-door stencil that reads “Calam and Katie.” It’s not exactly difficult to guess which woman is the butch one in this relationship; similarly, it is no accident that The Celluloid Closet, the documentary examination of Hollywood’s depiction of gay men and women on film, contains footage of Doris Day in buckskin singing “Secret Love,” the very title itself a code in 1950s America.

It is sad, in a way, that the exploding auto is going the way of the old red streetcar, the horse-drawn milk wagon, the ice truck and other traditional and practical forms of transportation. A shotgun blast from a clump of bushes is nice in its own way, but for drama there is nothing like instant depreciation of a car with a gangster at the wheel.

fifty good wagons

She had been in the wagon for two days now, watching the light shift and dance on the walls. She only moved from the corner long enough to relieve herself or to pick at the food they threw in for her. She had believed she could love Sam and not pay the price. Everything has a price, she’d once been told by a Spidersilk merchant in the Red Desert. How right he was.

Behind them, filling the roads that converged on Liège came the infantry of Emmich’s assault force, rank after rank. Only the red regimental number painted on helmet fronts broke the monotony of field-gray Horse-drawn field artillery followed. The new leather of boots and harness creaked. Companies of cyclists sped ahead to seize road crossings and farmhouses and lay telephone wires. Automobiles honked their way through, carrying monocled Staff officers with orderlies holding drawn pistols sitting up front and trunks strapped on behind. Every regiment had its field kitchens on wheels, said to be inspired by one the Kaiser had seen at Russian maneuvers, with fires kindled and cooks standing up stirring the stew as the wagons moved. Such was the perfection of the equipment and the precision of the marching that the invaders appeared to be on parade.

Mother’s yellow station wagon slid like a Monopoly icon along the gray road that cut between fields of Iowa corn, which was chlorophyll green and punctuated in the distance by gargantuan silver silos and gleaming, unrusted tractors glazed cinnamon red. Mother told me how the wealth of these farmers differed from the plight of the West Texas dirt farmers of her Dust Bowl youth, who doled out mortgaged seed from croker sacks. But because I was seventeen and had bitten my cuticles raw facing the prospect of fitting in at the private college we’d reach that night—which had accepted me through some mixture of pity and oversight—and because I was split-headed with the hangover Mother and I had incurred the night before, sucking down screwdrivers in the unaptly named Holiday Inn in Kansas City, I told Mother something like, Enough already about your shitty youth. You’ve told me about eight million times since we pulled out of the garage.

Listen. The Sinspire is nearly sixty yards high, one thick Elderglass cylinder. You know those, you tried to jump off one about two months ago. Goes down another hundred feet or so into a glass hill. It’s got one door at street level, and exactly one door into the vault beneath the tower. One. No secrets, no side entrances. The ground is pristine Elderglass; no tunneling through it, not in a thousand years.” “Mmmm-hmmmm.” “Requin’s got at least four dozen attendants on each floor at any given time, plus dozens of table minders, card dealers, and waiters. There’s a lounge on the third floor where he keeps more out of sight. So figure, at minimum, fifty or sixty loyal workers on duty with another twenty to thirty he can call out. Lots of nasty brutes, too. He likes to recruit from ex-soldiers, mercenaries, city thieves, and such. He gives cushy positions to his Right People for jobs well done, and he pays them like he was their doting mother. Plus, there are stories of dealers getting a year’s wages in tips from lucky blue bloods in just a night or two. Bribery won’t be likely to work on anyone.” “Mmmm-hmmmm.” “He’s got three layers of vault doors, all of them ironshod witchwood, three or four inches thick. Last set of doors is supposedly backed with blackened steel, so even if you had a week to chop through the other two, you’d never get past the third. All of them have clockwork mechanisms, the best and most expensive Verrari stuff, private designs from masters of the Artificers’ Guild. The standing orders are, not one set of doors opens unless he’s there himself to see it; he watches every deposit and every withdrawal. Opens the door a couple times per day at most. Behind the first set of doors are four to eight guards, in rooms with cots, food, and water. They can hold out there for a week under siege.” “Mmmm-hmmmm.” “The inner sets of doors don’t open except for a key he keeps around his neck. The outer doors won’t open except for a key he always gives to his majordomo. So you’d need both to get anywhere.” “Mmmm-hmmmm.” “And the traps…they’re demented, or at least the rumors are. Pressure plates, counterweights, crossbows in the walls and ceilings. Contact poisons, sprays of acid, chambers full of venomous serpents or spiders…One fellow even said that there’s a chamber before the last door that fills up with a cloud of powdered strangler’s orchid petals, and while you’re choking to death on that, a bit of twistmatch falls out and lights the whole mess on fire, so then you burn to a crisp. Insult to injury.” “Mmmm-hmmmm.” “Worst of all, the inner vault is guarded by a live dragon attended by fifty naked women armed with poison spears, each of them sworn to die in Requin’s service. All redheads.” “You’re making that up, Jean.” “I wanted to see if you were listening. But what I’m saying is, I don’t care if he’s got a million solari in there, packed in bags for easy hauling. I’m inclined to the idea that this vault might not be breakable, not unless you’ve got three hundred soldiers, six or seven wagons, and a team of master clockwork artificers you’re not telling me about.” “Right.” “Do you have three hundred soldiers, six or seven wagons, and a team of master clockwork artificers you’re not telling me about?” “No, I’ve got you, me, the contents of our coin purses, this carriage, and a deck of cards.

Did it never occur to him that she might want to ride, and feel the fresh wind, and smile at the wide-open country, and rope cattle, and consider the route, and speak up in the meetings while he trudged beside the squealing wagon, and changed the shitty wrappings on their youngest, and shouted at the next three in line to stop shouting, and had his nipples chewed raw every hour or two while still being expected to have a good dinner ready and do the wifely duties every bloody night, sore or not, tired or not? Abercrombie, Joe. Red Country (First Law Standalones Book 3) (pp. 145-146). Orbit. Kindle Edition.

Let’s go, ladies,” said Dolores, her long face grim as she turned from the scene. “Let’s see what Obiryn can tell us about trapping this devil.” We had no need to stay here. We’d be much more productive back at Davenport House with glasses of wine between our hands. We did our best thinking and planning that way. Red wine is a superfood. I fell into step with Marcus as we all followed Dolores down the alleyway toward the Volvo station wagon parked at the curb. Beverly and Ruth walked in silence behind us. I felt a vibration chime through me just as the light faded as though storm clouds had suddenly covered the sky—just a little too fast. Curious, I halted and looked up into the sky. “What the hell is that?” I asked no one in particular. We’d come to the crime scene under a blue sky, a speckling of clouds, and a warm morning. But now a cold wind rose with a green horizon

He might have apprenticed himself to one of these people, but he was impatient, so he began by dropping into restaurants in the late afternoon, casually introducing himself to managers and sometimes chefs, offering to do their flowers. Most were curt, but Oliver had charm, and often enough he found himself at a bare table with a cup of tea and a couple of serious, nodding men, showing them photographs of flowers and containers and making notes about their color preferences, heights, shapes, and prices. During this period he created his arrangements on a plastic sheet stretched on the floor of his studio, and when they were done he transported them to their destinations in a child’s red wagon, the vases wedged tightly and the flowers wrapped against the wind. After the first month, he’d accumulated eight regular clients and a host of sporadic customers. He added office lobbies, doctors’ offices, two clothing shops, and an antique store on Bleecker Street. He began to leave business cards beside his arrangements, with the new address optimistically printed and his current phone number. He began to get calls. All of which made him ever more impatient for his own home.

If you aren’t intentional about where you want to go in life and how you’re going to get there, you’ll end up in a rut of the status quo. So you’ve got to decide. The world is filled with people who live in conflict with that question all the time. They blame other people or situations. Certainly, there are plenty of obstacles in life, but what it often comes down to is people not being willing to make the hard decision or ask the next uncomfortable question.

one way to find out. I drew my Colt and spurred my horse forward, my guiding Cisco and the mare between the wagons, buckboards and riders blocking my path to the saloon. Bryce didn’t see me coming. He took a long pull on the cigar and then contentedly exhaled the smoke through pursed lips. I was close now and could have shot him easily. But I knew that wouldn’t satisfy me. I wanted to look into his eyes, to see the shock and the pain in them as he felt my slug rip through him, so I held my fire.  It was a costly mistake. For in the next moment Bryce must have heard my horse coming and turned toward me. He instantly recognized me and in one continuous move whirled around and dived through the saloon swing-doors. I didn’t bother to dismount. Dropping the mare’s reins, so I wasn’t hampered by her, I spurred my horse onto the red-brick sidewalk and without stopping, ducked my head and rode into the saloon. A dozen shots greeted me. I heard Cisco grunt and knew he’d been hit. By then I had spotted the Guthrie brothers firing around the sides of upturned tables, and opened fire on them. I saw the oldest brother, Doke, grab his arm up by his shoulder and spin around, while my other shots forced Gibby and Bryce to pull back behind their tables. By now the panicked customers had scattered in different directions and both barkeeps had ducked below the bar. But they weren’t safe there. A wild shot smashed the mirror above the back-bar and shards of glass showered over them.

These old-style buses had other glories too. I’m sure it was not only me and my friends who enjoyed the occasional ride without a fare on these old wagons. ‘Get on a red bus and not pay the fare, get on the red bus and go anywhere,’ as I sang in ‘Somewhere in London’.

Rose carefully and gently pushed the growing pile of rosy-golden apples around each time another crate was dumped into the wagon. She waded carefully through the apples without lifting her feet, so she wouldn't step on a single one. Soon the whole wagon box was a sea of red and yellow, full almost to the top. She wanted to dive right in, it looked so inviting. She picked two of the reddest ones she could find, gave one to Mama, and they each took a bite. "Delicious," said Mama through a mouthful, the juice running down her chin. "If there were no other food in the world, I think I could live on apples alone." Hers was the sweetest apple Rose could ever remember eating.

Years from now when my kids are older, they’ll probably think of Jesus whenever they even smell a Goldfish cracker. I’m sure this is a kid thing, not just a Christian thing, but on about fifty-one Sundays of the year, that’s what they have for snack. And at our church, if your kid cries a ton, before they flash their number on the video screen in the sanctuary asking you to come get them, they put them in a wagon, pull them around, and stuff them full of Goldfish. It’s like this little red wagoned parade of wailing in the halls. Eyes streaming tears, mouth full of fish, tiny hands clutching the side of the “Bye Bye Buggy,” counting the minutes until a parent can come rescue them. Good times.

Six horses waited, adorned in the red and black of the Company of Cooks and harnessed to an open, canopied wagon festooned with ribbons. Upon it lay Bartolomeo's casket, draped with a cloth embroidered with the company's coat of arms. A bear was on the left side of the crest and a stag on the right. Below the central chevron and its two red stars were the tools of the company's trade, a crossed knife and a butcher's knife. The banner beneath bore a Latin phrase coined by Horace- ab ovo usque ad mala- embroidered in gold. From eggs to apples, beginning to end. Roman meals had always begun with eggs and ended with fruit.

As he rounded a hillock, he perceived that the roadway was now a crying mass of wagons, teams, and men. From the heaving tangle issued exhortations, commands, imprecations. Fear was sweeping it all along. The cracking whips bit and horses plunged and tugged. The white-topped wagons strained and stumbled in their exertions like fat sheep. The youth felt comforted in a measure by this sight. They were all retreating. Perhaps, then, he was not so bad after all. He seated himself and watched the terror-stricken wagons. They fled like soft, ungainly animals.

Polish rule robbed Ukraine of its nobility. But it also saw the emergence of a new power in the region – the Cossacks. Outlaws and frontiersmen, fighters and pioneers, the Cossacks are to the Ukrainian national consciousness what cowboys are to the American. Unlike the remote and sanctified Rus princes, the Cossacks make heroes Ukrainians can relate to. They ranged the steppe in covered wagons, drawing them up in squares in case of Tatar attack. They raided Turkish ports in sixty-foot-long double-ruddered galleys, built of willow-wood and buoyed up with bundles of hollow reeds. They wore splendid moustaches, red boots and baggy trousers ‘as wide as the Black Sea’. They danced, sang and drank horilka in heroic quantities.

Because a very high proportion of Czechoslovakia’s own freight wagons were being used by the Soviets to carry German booty back to the USSR or to transport units of the Red Army, the Americans turned to the only significant remaining source: the freight trains employed by UNRRA to carry aid supplies into Czechslovakia. In the spring of 1946, these were pressed into service to transport the expellees to the U.S. zone.

A victory looks but a sorry thing to the boy conscript lying cramped, and bleeding, and crushed, and woe-begone in the ambulance wagon on the red evening-tide after the battle.

Cool Dust" A heave of afternoon light pulls a tulip from the turf, a bower for locusts, a cup of shells. The farmhouse tilts, a bent shadow on wheels. In cedar rooms a family is molded, silent, wrapped in the wire of steel eyes and stopped voice, romantic ash. This is not my house, my ghost, my uninvited guest, my lost labor of love, my thicket or grease, my JPEG gessoed or rawhide suit. The yellow light throbs like an internal organ — soft body of an overture to insect sounds — sapling of a new world — whose future awaits me at the tilting window of my own domestic hut. Perhaps this is my mesh of hours, my muscular ache, my guardian sash, twist of rope carved around an old maple trunk, my rod of power red with anticipatory friction at the edge of an emerging set of planetary rings. Stained ochre by the air I pitch forward, a vanilla-scented pear that floats or falls. In the rattan chair on the front porch by the blistered boards of the front door a figure of tar watches. Cool dust sparkles and settles. Shadows have made me visible. An empty wagon flares on the hillside.

Her limbs function, and she finds this miraculous when she dwells on it. In fact, she finds plenty of things miraculous. Forcefully, she summons her best memories. That time on a red-eye bus when the driver used the intercom to contemplate, in campfire baritone, the wonder of his grandchildren, the way they validated his life as time well spent. As he lulled the passengers with stories, someone began to pass around a Tupperware of sliced watermelon, and a drunk man offered to share the miniature bottles of whiskey from his bag, and Joan felt such overwhelming affection for her species, she feared she would sacrifice herself to save it. A bad summer storm. Green sky, tornado warning, violent winds. Joan was downtown, leaving work early, briskly walking toward the parking garage where her station wagon waited. On the opposite end of the sidewalk, a large woman in her sixties collapsed. Immediately, two people rushed to the woman's side, gingerly tending to her, touching her shoulders and face, speaking to her as though she were their mother -- a cherished one -- and Joan understood that human tenderness was not to be mocked. It was the last real thing. Dining alone on a blustery Easter night at the only Chinese restaurant in town. When she asked for the check, the waiter said, "It just started to rain. You're welcome to stay a little longer, if you want." Miraculous. Joan recalls the existence of dogs, craft stores, painkillers, the public library. Cream ribboning through coffee. The scent of the lilacs near her childhood home. Brown sugar on a summer strawberry. Her father's recovery from the tyranny of multigenerational alcoholism. The imperfect but true repossession of his life. The euphoria of the first warmth after winter, the first easy breath after a cold, the return of one's appetite after an anxiety attack. Joan has much to be happy about. She thinks: I am happy, you are happy, we are happy. These thoughts -- how she can force herself to have them. Miraculous.

His mother said she had to use the wagon that afternoon, but she’d drop him off wherever he was going. “I’m going to the Red Key,” he said. “Where?” “The Red Key,” he shouted. “Over on College and Fifty-fourth Street.” “The tavern?” “It’s a bar.” “You’re going there in the afternoon?” “I’m meeting a guy.” “Are you sure they’re open—in the afternoon?” Sonny took a deep breath. “I’m sure.