09/03/2026 07:24

---

You do them jobs properly, you ain’t got no worries about such things as mortgages and cancer and the tax collector. “When you told us those inconse­quential things about the Amazon—the birds, the bigness, you were really trying to impress me . “After all, I’m forty-three and she’s only twenty-two. ” And she stood there, looking to the empty south, as the first flock flew overhead, their noisy cackling announcing with joy the fact that they were home.

Now the muscle-work began. But they required rest, and through the centuries during which they had fol­lowed the same route south and north Then again there’s nothing for a long way. Then she would lean back and stare at the sky—birdless, cloudless, infinitely remote—and she would think: I’m as invisible to them up there as the people across the bay are to me.