Horace Afoot Read Online Free Page A

words.”
    “Love?”
    “Yes. L-O-V-E. Love.”
    “Well, I’d have to think about it a minute.”
    “Take your time.”
    “Let me see. Do you mean what is love for me? Or what is love in general?”
    “For you would be fine.”
    “Love. For me. Well, now, there are different kinds, I suppose.”
    “Are there?”
    “It depends on what kind you’re talking about. There’s husbands and wives and parents and children. And then there is the love of Jesus, but there’s no way of explaining that. You have to strive for it alone.”
    “Really?”
    “Of course. I’ll give you an example of what love is.”
    “Okay.”
    “Last year I was in the hospital. I had a bypass operation. My husband stayed with me every day. He only went home to change his clothes. I have two grown daughters, one lives in California and the other in Minnesota. They both came to spend time with me even though they have families and it was a considerable hardship for them. Now, if that’s not love, real Christian love, I don’t know what is.”
    “I don’t either.”
               
    It hasn’t rained for weeks, and the grass and weeds that sprout up around my house are wilted and turning brown. It is hot and humid. The sun beats down on the tin roof of my little yellow house, and despite open windows and drawn shades the rooms are stifling. The front porch is the only comfortable place, and I rock there all day long in the broken chair I rescued from the dump and restored with nails and glue.
    I have been rocking on the front porch for three days now, and I have discovered something: time passes, and I enjoy having it pass. Inactivity is no easy accomplishment, and finding pleasure in it means overcoming conditioned reflexes. My mind wanders. I permit it to. I try to quiet it, slow it down. A period of what I suppose is called meditation ensues. Without effort I suddenly enter a thoughtless, wordless state. Time passes, and I am unaware of it. Leave it behind. This discovery of inactive bliss comes to me as a revelation. It is the wide-eyed empty-headedness of infant life, self-contained, unconnected to the temporal order of things. Nothing precedes it, and nothing ensues. Now I understand why the newer houses in Oblivion have replaced front porches with rear decks. Porches are for being idle. On decks you entertain yourself to death.
    Often a distraction from outside breaks the spell: a sudden clap of late afternoon thunder, my neighbor revving his engine or honking his horn, a squirrel racing across the porch. Sometimes the distraction wells up inside, and a spontaneous thought becomes a memory and timeless bliss yields to idle irritation. Rocking restores my equilibrium, a sense of unity with the elements—though not with the neighbors. I watch them come and go, hustling from air-conditioned car to air-conditioned house. They come outside in the early evening to water their lawn and cast sour glances at mine.
    A truck with a sign that reads Lawn, Inc., pulls up. A man gets out and ambles up the walk to the porch.
    “Mr. Horace?”
    “That’s me.”
    “You called for me to stop by.”
    “I didn’t call you.”
    “You didn’t?”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    The man scratches the back of his head, puzzled. “Yesterday afternoon a Mr. Horace called, said he needed lawn work.”
    “It wasn’t me.”
    A pause ensues during which the man makes a quick appraisal of the front yard. “Well, I wouldn’t be here if someone didn’t call me,” he says with some irritation. “Anyhow, from the looks of it I’d say you could do with some yard work.”
    “I said I didn’t call you. And I like my lawn the way it is.”
    He scratches the back of his head and surveys. Finally he says, “That’s not a lawn, sir, that’s a disaster area.”
    “Did my neighbor send you?”
    “I couldn’t rightly say. All I know is a Mr. Horace called and said he wanted his lawn worked on.” The man takes his cap off and slaps it on his thigh, then