Summer Comes to the Three Villages

SUMMER COMES TO THE THREE VILLAGES / Louis Simpson The people come off the ferry, cross East Broadway to Main Street, and go into the stores. The cars come down the ramp and drive around, sightseeing. They admire the white church on the corner. Dick Bone is in his drive working on his boat, replacing old boards with new ones, fixing the bilge-pump. I watch him when I am not writing, listening to the sounds of birds and the traffic out on the road. There is the picnic on the Fourth of July with a softball game, a three-legged race, and an outdoor barbecue. Red flares on the road . . . drive slower. There's glass in the road ... an ambulance, a car skewed across the road. A friend was dying of throat cancer. He seized the slate round his neck and wrote fiercely ... an indecipherable scrawl. You could think of nothing to say, and what could anyone do? Only this—still be thinking about him. 290 · The Missouri Review This is the time when calamus has grown almost to its full height, lining the water. A green wall. These are the days when not a leaf stirs and everyone complains of the humidity, and the boughs grow dark as the sky whitens. The smoke of summer rises from the Three Villages like incense in the sight of God and he smells it and pronounces it good. Louis Simpson The Missouri Review · 292 ...