Solo Faces Read Online Free Page A

nodded.
    “Is he good?”
    “Pretty good.”
    “He looked terrific.”
    “Watch your step here,” Rand warned. He was moving more slowly. The slope of the rock had steepened. “I knew someone who fell right here.”
    “Here? It’s easy,” Lane protested. “How could he fall?”
    “He was running and he slipped.”
    There were boulders far below.
    “That’s the hard way down,” Rand said.
    In Chamonix the aiguilles, the tall pinnacles, were covered with snow. The glaciers descended slowly, half an inch an hour, centuries deep.

4
    B EHIND THE HOUSE WERE sections of piñon that had lain there so long the earth had taken their shape. The wood had hardened, fragments of a column shielding a world of ants.
    Swinging the hammer in heavy, rhythmic blows, Rand was splitting logs. A forgelike ringing echoed as the wedge went deep and a clear, final sound as the wood came apart. The morning surrounded him, the sun spilled down. He was shirtless. He looked like a figure in medieval battle, lost in the din, in glinting planes of sunshine, dust that rose like smoke.
    From the house, Louise was watching. Occasional glances, impatient, half-resigned, like a woman whose husband is intent on some ruinous, quixotic labor. Lane was in his room. He could hear the blows.
    The car was gone, sold that morning. The sound of the wedge being driven was steady and unvarying. She went to the door.
    “Hey, Rand.”
    His head came up.
    “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”
    “I’ll be finished in a while,” he said.
    At last it stopped. She heard the logs being piled against the house. He came in and began to wash his hands.
    “Well, I always said I’d do that. You’ve got enough for the winter, anyway.”
    “Wonderful,” she commented.
    “You might need it.”
    “I can’t even make a fire,” she said. He was drying his hands, brushing bits of bark from his waist. Suddenly she realized she had no way to remember this image. He was going to put on a shirt, button the buttons. All this simply would disappear. She felt a shameful urge to reach out, put her arms around him, fall to her knees.
    They had been in a bar the night before. It was noisy, crowded. There was something he had to tell her. He was leaving, he said. She could hardly hear him.
    “What?”
    He repeated it. He was going away.
    “When?” she asked foolishly. It was all she could manage to say.
    “Tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow,” she said. “Going where?” She wanted to think of something incisive that would hurt him, make him stay. Instead she murmured, “You know, I really liked you.”
    “I’ll be back.”
    “You mean it?”
    “Sure.”
    “When?”
    “I don’t know. In a year. Maybe two.”
    “What are you going to do, go back to climbing? Lane told me you met your old friends.”
    “Friend.”
    “Is he going with you?”
    “No.”
    “Well …” She was looking at her glass. She tried to force a smile and suddenly turned away.
    “Are you all right?”
    She didn’t answer.
    “Louise …”
    She was weeping.
    “Come on …”
    “Oh, forget it,” she said. Her nose was running.
    “ …I’ll take you home.”
    “I don’t want to go home.”
    Someone at the next table asked, “Is anything wrong?”
    “Mind your own business,” Rand said.
    “Yes,” she agreed. She had already risen and was gathering her things.
    They drove home in silence. She sat against the door, her narrow shoulders hunched. She was folded like an insect, legs drawn up beside her, arms crossed.
    In the morning her face was swollen as if she were ill. He could hear her breathing. Somehow, it seemed conscious, sorrowful, close to a sigh. As he listened it seemed to grow louder to become, he suddenly realized, the sound of a jet crossing the city at dawn.
    He left behind some cardboard boxes filled with letters, shoes, fishing equipment. The letters were from an old girl friend, born in Kauai, who had cut his palm one night and, to seal their love, raised it to her