A Stick of Plato's Gravy, Part Four
A Stick of Plato's Gravy, part four
It was the next day, Saturday, the Manichean Sabbath, which he usually spent cycling, in fair weather, or reading, were the weather bad. He'd awakened at daybreak to a clear sky and enough breeze to keep him from drowning in his own perspiration. He'd smiled, taken a cup of coffee and wheeled the cumbersome nickel-and-dime into the street. Johnny nodded and set to cleaning the place. No patients had
Joseph Mago wore a cap, a white linen shirt and knee-breeches, stockings and black moccasins with leather soles. Men told him that his brown face was well set off by white, and sometimes he believed them. Passing a cargo cycle laden with trout and fishy-smelling ice, he pulled out onto Cherry and dodged through traffic to the station on Filbert Street, and the train out of town.
He had brought Verne's Topsy-Turvy, which the Ridgway Library hadn't been able to find in French, to his irritation. (They were usually most cooperative; he had managed to send some bequests of books and routed their buyers to estate sales, and so on.) The English would have to do. He read as the train clacked and clicked through suburbs and parks, then into countryside. There. Londinium Hills; that would do. He walked his clumsy bicycle off the train and tucked the book and two canteens into the basket. The wind was on his face as he pedaled into the mix of traffic on the turnpike.
Coal smoke blew across the macadam surface of the old road. Horses neighed and shook their heads at the smell, pulling an Essene farm wagon loaded with baskets of tomatoes and peaches. Carriages followed the road to Savery's Mill or Unionville. A gaggle of the new bicycles, the safety-models, parted round the wagon like a school of shad. The bearded Essenes driving the wagon shook their heads, speaking to each other in Dutch. As he rode east and north, he saw a horse-drawn reaper, a boy sitting on top, getting in the last of the winter wheat ere more rain ruined the crop. He crested a hill, perspiring freely, and coasted down the slope, the breeze puffing his shirt out.
It was the next day, Saturday, the Manichean Sabbath, which he usually spent cycling, in fair weather, or reading, were the weather bad. He'd awakened at daybreak to a clear sky and enough breeze to keep him from drowning in his own perspiration. He'd smiled, taken a cup of coffee and wheeled the cumbersome nickel-and-dime into the street. Johnny nodded and set to cleaning the place. No patients had
Joseph Mago wore a cap, a white linen shirt and knee-breeches, stockings and black moccasins with leather soles. Men told him that his brown face was well set off by white, and sometimes he believed them. Passing a cargo cycle laden with trout and fishy-smelling ice, he pulled out onto Cherry and dodged through traffic to the station on Filbert Street, and the train out of town.
He had brought Verne's Topsy-Turvy, which the Ridgway Library hadn't been able to find in French, to his irritation. (They were usually most cooperative; he had managed to send some bequests of books and routed their buyers to estate sales, and so on.) The English would have to do. He read as the train clacked and clicked through suburbs and parks, then into countryside. There. Londinium Hills; that would do. He walked his clumsy bicycle off the train and tucked the book and two canteens into the basket. The wind was on his face as he pedaled into the mix of traffic on the turnpike.
Coal smoke blew across the macadam surface of the old road. Horses neighed and shook their heads at the smell, pulling an Essene farm wagon loaded with baskets of tomatoes and peaches. Carriages followed the road to Savery's Mill or Unionville. A gaggle of the new bicycles, the safety-models, parted round the wagon like a school of shad. The bearded Essenes driving the wagon shook their heads, speaking to each other in Dutch. As he rode east and north, he saw a horse-drawn reaper, a boy sitting on top, getting in the last of the winter wheat ere more rain ruined the crop. He crested a hill, perspiring freely, and coasted down the slope, the breeze puffing his shirt out.