An Accident
When she awoke in the hospital, she found her parents had paid the doctor to perform an abortion � but they couldn�t do that, could they? but she was underage (merely a child, Pa had shouted, in his brittle coal miner voice), it was their responsibility, and their money, and it was final; the baby was gone anyway. And she cried and screamed and wailed until she was hoarse, and then she tried slashing her wrists but she was never patient enough and before the blood could flow like a gentle river into oblivion, she was on the kitchen floor, screaming to a silent and unyielding sky for help. As for the father, no one ever knew who he was � some said he had been murdered by her angry parents, some said that he went jumping trains back to California, but it was all the same: no one ever knew what happened to him, and nobody cared enough to ask questions, because he must have been a nobody, and that was no reason to start making trouble for anybody, anyhow. She wasn�t talking, anyway.
So, on one July morning, Ann had wiped the tears from her face, washed and curled her hair just so, made sure her makeup was just right, and changed into her pretty little dress � and she waited, with a serenity she never felt she could have, underneath that great big sycamore tree outside her house. It wasn�t a particularly beautiful day; in fact, it was a little overcast, and the pollen in the air made most of the neighbors put away their gardening shears in favor of a hot cup of tea and a Saturday morning with the television. Something was changing, everyone felt, and so the traveling salesmen hung their hats and put away their shoes, and covered up the car again; the kids put away their baseball bats and gloves and left the fields empty; the housewives, shut the windows and the doors from the draft, and kept their lives as sheltered from Ann as she was from them; and through the streets, there was a great silence, only broken by the occasional squawk of birds in the distance. It was a very lonely morning, but there she sat, a beauty among the madness, a flower in the barrens, with no one to see. She really hoped someone would, because it was all gone, her life, her love, her desire � and she needed someone to give it all back.
And there was only one boy who felt he couldn�t handle the stillness, and he packed his bag and rose up out of his emptiness, and out the door, his mother saying William, where are you going? and he, turning and looking at her with sadness, but he spoke nothing and turned to get onto his bicycle to go somewhere, go anywhere, just away, to fly away; the wind sped through his hair as he passed by, and the clouds parted for a brief moment to light his way, and in the distance, he imagined he were seeing, as it were, a great flower, blooming into wonderful greatness, regal in its splendor � and as he hit the curb and knocked himself into a wonderful unconsciousness, he saw her, his lover, his little Ann.