However, its absorbed attitude in the water reminded Ada of Narcissus, and she told Ruby the story briefly, which was a courtesy to continue their understanding of Greek culture.
The bird thinks that Kogan is not himself. Ruby said after Ida finished, Look, it pecks and kills its prey. That’s its primary nature. Now it wants to find something to pierce it and eat it.
They walked slowly to the water’s edge, and the heron turned to look at them with a little interest. It adjusted its flat head very finely and accurately, as if its vision was blocked by its long beak. Ida felt that its eyes seemed to be evaluating its own merits, but it was rewarded.
What are you doing there? She asked the heron earnestly, but from the look on her face, Ida could tell that she was born as an independent and mysterious stranger. She was the same kind. She was a lonely and maverick, not bound by the rules and conventions of social birds. Ida thought about breeding herons, but it was really commendable that she could endure close contact with each other. She had seen these birds several times. They were so lonely that it made people feel faint and painful. On exile in birds, it seemed to be a distant land for them.
The heron came towards them and stopped at a mudflat on the waterfront, less than ten feet away from them. Its head tilted slightly and its neck bent slightly enough to lift off the ground. Black scales were the size of nails. Ida looked at the mud for a while, leaving strange claw marks. When she raised her eyes, the bird stared at her as if she were studying a person who had known each other a long time ago but whose memory was still vague.
Then the heron slowly spread its wings. The process seems to be in a row of hinged levers, crankshafts, pulleys, manipulation and display of feathers, skin, roots and long bones. After beating its wings, Ida can hardly imagine how it can fly from the trees. The heron took a step closer to Ida, and the body gently lifted its wings from the ground. After flapping its wings slowly for one or two, it rose over Ida’s head and rushed to Ida from the canopy of the forest. She could feel the wings stirring up. A cold blue shadow swept over the ground and swept over her face and skin. She turned around and waved a hand to send the heron away in
Ida took her new diary, sharpened it with a small knife, and hooked a sketch pencil from memory to draw a picture of a heron standing on a muddy beach. After that, she was not satisfied with the radian of the neck and the angle of the beak, but the neck hair and eyes at the crop of her legs were drawn wonderfully. In the page, she wrote the blue heron pigeon in Niven style. On January 9, 1864, she looked up at the sky and asked Ruby what time it was.
Ruby stirred up an eye and looked west. She said that after five o’clock, Ida would fill in five o’clock and then close her diary.
As they walked along the river, they talked about the bird Ruby felt that she was a heron. She told Ada something. She said that when she was a child, Stebrod often denied her, saying that her father was not a human. When Ruby’s mother was pregnant with her, she often said that the child was not him but a blue heron. She said that a blue heron landed on the stream in the morning and pecked fresh water shrimp for a whole afternoon, and then she came to her yard. At that time, she was breaking up a dry tortilla and scattering it on the ground to feed the chickens. Tebrod repeated what she said, that the heron strode forward with long legs and bent backward, and looked her straight in the eye. The white eyes could be an explanation. She turned and ran, and the heron followed her into the room. She tried to get under the bed on all fours, and then the heron rushed to her from behind. What happened was a cruel whipping in Ruby’s mother’s story.
He told me this story a hundred times, and Ruby said, I know it’s just another lie, but I still feel a little strange every time I see the heron in difficulty.
Ida didn’t know what to say. Seen from the trunk, the sunshine on the river was golden. The breeze blew the leaves of beech poplar. Ruby stopped and put on a sweater. Ida shook the folds of her coat and put it over her shoulders like a cloak. They continued on their way. At Hejin, they met a young woman with a checkered tablecloth on her shoulder. She leaped over the stepping stones in the river barefoot like a deer, without saying a word, but the child looked at them with a wooden expression. Eyes crossed the river like two oaks. Soon a solitary apple tree flew up in the farmland and a group of birds flew into a forest. Ruby could not tell what birds they were with her eyes facing the sunset, but judging from the way they flew, the weather was not a problem. The rainy day was not over yet.
They continued to walk along the road to a pool near a river bend, when people were baptized here. At this moment, a maple tree that was about to be red suddenly started up, and a group of purple cliff swallows were dark. The sunset edge just rubbed against the ridge, and the purple cliff swallows flew from the tree in unison in the sky, still holding their maple shape just now, and then they flew against the wind for about two heartbeats. Ida could see a thin silhouette of a swallow, and in a moment, they turned high again. A pair of wings are facing Ida to fill the bright gap. It looks like a red maple tree cast in the sky, a black shadow. They are reflected in the farmland at the other end of the road, and the grass is constantly beating.
Twilight rises around Ada Ruby, and it seems that darkness gradually permeates from the river to the sky. Ruby’s bizarre heron story reminds Ada of a story that Monroe told shortly before his death, which involved how he pursued Ada’s mother when it was getting dark and had to walk several miles up the river. When he sent it away, Ada told Ruby the story in detail.
Ida knows that Monroe’s mother got married relatively late, and Monroe’s 45-year-old mother also knows that their courtship was very short-lived, but she knows the details of their initial courtship. She has always known that her parents’ marriage is a dull friendship, similar to the marriage of an old bachelor and an old maid, and she has seen many of them. She imagines that she is the product of their reluctant marriage after miscalculation in love.
It was a winter afternoon before Monroe’s death. It was a very wet day. Large snowflakes fell on the ground and melted for a long afternoon. Ada Monroe had been sitting in front of the fireplace reading him a new life rule. For many years, Monroe had been following Mr. Emerson with great interest. On that day, he thought that Emerson was old, but his mental outlook was still too extreme.
It’s getting dark outside the window. Ada put Monroe aside. He looked very tired, pale and sunken eyes. He just sat there watching the ashes slowly burning, and the fire was almost gone. Finally, he said, I never told you how I got married with your mother.
No, Ida said
I’ve often thought about it recently. I don’t know what it is. You never know that when I met your mother, she was just sixteen and I was only twenty-five.
I don’t know. Ida said
Well, it’s the first time I met her. I think she is the cutest person I have ever seen. It was in February when the weather was cold and the sea was wet and breezy. I just bought a tall chestnut-red Hanover mare. Its 17 palms are not bad, and its hind legs are slightly folded out. But it’s urgent for me to walk the horse. It runs wonderfully and smoothly, just like floating in the water. I rode Charlestown and ran far north along the Ashley River, passed Middleton and then passed Hanahan on the way back. Although it was cold, the horse was still sweating. I was hungry and eager to eat
I stopped at the door of a house, which was neither extravagant nor shabby. The porch was very wide with ancient palm trees at both ends. A drinking trough in the courtyard was too close to the road, and it was not my kind of dark window. I thought maybe no one was at home, so I came to let the horse drink water. Then suddenly a woman came from the porch and said, you can say hello to the master first.
Obviously, she has been sitting on a bench by the window. I took off my hat and said that if she walked from the shadow of the porch to the last step, she would be dressed in a thick gray wool skirt with a black shawl over her shoulders, and her face was as white as a big stone. She should have been combing her hair just now because her hair was hanging down almost to her waist and she was holding a tortoise-shell handle to comb her body. Everything was either black or white or two colors.
Although she is dressed very simply, I have never seen anyone who can compare with her beauty. I have lost my mind and finally suppressed a sentence, miss. I dare you to say it again, and my mind is in a mess. I woke up in bed after dinner that night. She is the woman I want to marry.
The next day, I took action to show my courtship plan as carefully as I could. The first step was information. I found out that her name was Laird Shute’s father was a French immigrant in the United States. His motherland was doing round-trip trade and importing wine and rice. He was well-off but not well-off. He was in a warehouse near Cooper River Pier, where we arranged for the first meeting. The warehouse was filled with crates of high and low Bordeaux red wine and piled up many sacks of American rice. We met, and he used to do business with De Schutter. De Schutter, your grandfather was short, stocky and stocky. To be exact, he was a very stocky person. His French smell was too strong for me. I think you can understand what I mean. You and your mother have nothing in common with him.
I want his daughter to get married and I hope to get his approval. I express my willingness to introduce myself to the property certificate. He believes that I will be a son-in-law material. I can see that he is making an abacus in his heart. His hands are touching his bow tie and his eyes are rolling. Then he walked aside. Ashwell muttered for a while. When he came back, he extended a hand to me and said that I would try my best to help you.
His only request was that Claire should not get married until she was 18 years old. I agreed to wait for two years. It didn’t seem like a long time, and it was also a fair request for him. A few days later, he took me home for dinner. His guests introduced me to your mother. I saw from her eyes that she still remembered me, but she didn’t say a word. I believed from the beginning that my feelings for her were not unilateral.
We dated for several months, from spring and summer to autumn. We met at the dance and posted to her. How many times did I arrange? How many wet summer nights did I ride journey to the south, a Hummer in Hanover, to De Shute’s house? Claire, I sat on the porch bench and talked about our favorite topic, I couldn’t ride a horse. We wrote to each other every day. These letters passed by somewhere in Miting Street. I ordered a diamond ring and sapphire in late autumn. Your little finger was so big that it was set in a platinum carved ring. I decided to surprise her one night in November.
On the selected day, I rode north at dusk. The vest pocket contained the ring and put it properly in a velvet pouch. That night, the cold water was less according to Charlestown standards, and it was a little winter. In all respects, the night we first met was exactly the same.
It was already dark when I arrived at De Shute’s house, but the lights in the room were on and every window was bright, indicating to me that I was welcoming the piano. From the room, I vaguely heard Bach. I rode on the road for a while, thinking that this night would push the efforts of the previous quarters to a peak, and everything I longed for in my heart would be available.
At that moment, I heard a low voice on the porch, and the speaker was moving. Lyle’s figure leaned forward, and the window behind her shone yellow. Her black outline was that she would never be wrong. She also leaned over from the other side of the window to see a man’s face. They got together and kissed each other for a long time. Then Lyle reached out and pulled his face back. My stomach twitched and I clenched my fists. I wanted to go to the porch and yell at my anger and find someone to beat me up, but I was betrayed and pursued this humiliating role.
I don’t want to kick my horse’s belly and gallop to the north any more. I rode a healthy horse for many miles, swinging my long legs for a moment, and galloped all the way like crossing a dark world in a dream. The speed was closer to flying with wings than running on horseback. I galloped through the dense Turkish oak swamp, and Ping Ye crossed the barren land with cattail grass and Crash grass. At last, it was not until wax bayberry invaded a place in the road from the left and right that the horse slowed down, panting and lowered its head.
I don’t know where I am. I haven’t been riding along the road all the time. Even the direction can’t be completely guaranteed. I know that I am generally heading north. Because I didn’t rush into the Ashley River or the Cooper River and drowned in the twilight of the waning moon, the red horse looks black and shiny. Now, except for going crazy to the west and disappearing into the wilderness of Texas, it’s easy to go home. I turned my horse’s head and went back. Suddenly, I saw wax, poplar, Meilin, yellow light up in the distance, like a huge bonfire, and other aspects of creation seemed