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TkWorfd! Oxe-13reativ'(!j DAVID MADDEN Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1933, David Madden attended Iowa StateTeacher's College, the University ofTennessee, San Francisco State College, and Yale Drama School. His distinguished teaching career has included Appalachian State Teacher's College, Centre College, the University of Louisville, Kenyon College-where he was assistant editor of the Kenyon Review-Ohio University in Athens, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Louisiana State University, where he was writer-in-residence and is now the Founding Director of the United States Civil War Center. Madden has published eight novels, among them The Beautiful Greed (1961), Brothers in Confidence (1972), The Suicide's Wife (1978), Pleasure-Dome (1979), On the BigWtnd (1980), Cassandra Singing(1969; reissued 1999), and Sharpshooter : A Novel ofthe CivilW0r (1996), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He has also published ten plays, several critical and historical studies, and many textbook anthologies,·including The World ofFiction and Studies in the Short Story. His short story collections are The Shadow Knows (1970) and The New Orleans ofPossibilities (1982). Both showcase Madden's gift for subplot development and his command ofdialogue, earning him inclusions in The PushcartPrize and Best American Short Stories. Displaying these gifts as well as Madden's intimacy with the culture of rural Eastern Kentucky, "The World's One Breathing" depicts a very modern tension between the callings of the world and the callings of home. • McLain wakes. The motor is idling, the bus is shuddering, and he is startled to see old men rising from seats in the front. "Could have wiped out every one of them," says the driver, "in a single swipe." Three seats behind him, McLain rises to look through the front window. "They must be living right." "Where's this, driver?" "Almost to Truckston." "Why are we stopping?" ''Ask whoeveis driving that rolling whorehouse." McLain sees now that the bus has stopped alongside an outmoded mauve Cadillac that straddles the double yellow line, the wipers still flapping, the head- THE WORLD's ONE BREATHING 163 lights dimming out. Five men stand around it, getting into position to push. An overloaded coal truck, a pickup, and two other cars are parked east and west along the road. Most ofthe old men are out oftheir seats, clustered around the driver, trying to get a good view. McLain glances at them. When he fell asleep, the bus had been empty. The sudden presence often or eleven old men surrounding him makes him nervous. The five men begin to push the Cadillac backward to the side ofthe highway behind the coal truck. The bus jolts, the old men reach for their seats, bumping into each other. "Hey, Rans, stop this slop bucket," says an old man, his voice so deep McLain imagines an injured throat. "Let a body see what the hell's going on." When Rans stops the bus again, McLain walks to the front. "Listen, I've got to get to Black Damp soon as possible.... My mother's dying." "You don't soundlike you're from around here, mister," says Rans, looking up at McLain as if he doesn't believe him. "I've been away. Up North." "I figured ..." "My brother lives around here, though, in Harmon.... I'd appreciate your not stopping unless you have to...." "Okay, mister, leave it to me, you're in good hands when you travel with Rans. Ain't that right, Mr. Satterfield? " "That's right, Rans," said one of the old men behind McLain. "Now, these old fellers here got all the time in the world," says Rans. "We dropping 'em off at Harmon for a little reunion of the disaster of nineteen and twenty-one." "That was before my time," says McLain, trying to be friendly. Returning to his seat, McLain looks at his watch. Five o'clock. The mountains , like Manhattan skyscrapers, make darkness come early. "Truckston!" announces Rans. "Here she comes ... There she goes!' In the reek of bodies on the bus, McLain imagines his mother, her breath coming in tiny explosions, lying in the iron bed where his six brothers and five sisters were born-four dying in infancy or early childhood of diseases-where he was the last to be born, a few months after his father had suffocated a mile underground . After her funeral, he will sleep as he must have slept the first day ofhis life, and wake to gaze through veils ofhalf-sleep upon the company town-as...

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