The Coolidge examiner., 1932-07-29


pillow of them on this crude pal
let.
He spent long days in the woods
and came home more silent than
they.
Sometimes it seemed to Farming
ton he must spring at the throat
of this man who was so complacent
with the mystery of the silence.
Sometimes, watching him sleep
through his own sleepless nights, it
seemed to Pennington he must fly
at his heart. To tear from it the
secret. The secret of his capacity
for silence.
The silence that was eating into
Pennington. Gnawing into him.
Making him a little mad with terror
of it.
The radio did its part to help.
Yanking the outside world into the
heart of the forest. And the mechan-
ical piano and the letters from his
friends and the hint of the doings
of men in the outside world that
came with the weekly parcel post.
But those were only moments out
of hours. Hours of torment.
Hours of trying to read out of the
books, to tear out of the piano,
something to counteract the loneli-
ness.
Poor Pennington! 1t is difficult
in the haunts of men to learn how
to be alone. Pennington frankly
had horror of it. He had all his
life been the sort of man who would
call up a bore of a friend sooner
than dine alone. Or sit through a
vapid musical show sooner than
spend an evening at home without
guests. When Pennington so much
as Travelled from one city to an
other he took a secretary along for
company.
And now, up here in the woods,
not even the secretaries would re-
main for more than a few weeks
at time. Only Pennington and
his old guide, who talked back to
the birds in noises that reSembled
their own and who knew secrets of
the forests that first had enter
tanned, but after a while began to
pail on Pennington.
Two years of this and then, as
the saying goes. the house settled.
That is, from nervous, plunging
kind of resistance, Pennington re-
ceded into a morose kind of acqui-
escence. Lethargy. Torpor. Or
call it what you will. Sometimes
days of silence in their little cabin,
or the two of them, Pennington and
his guide, tramping the woods hour
after hour. Silently. There was
so little to say. And, strangely
enough, so much to observe
quick, fleeting life of the forest. 1t
shimmered with it. Indeed, it kept
the senses alert just being on the
watch. The perky head of a chip
munk where you least expected it,
The slant of late sunlight through
trees. Clear, cold music of water
fall. Ever see a pine tree sway in
wind? The bob-tailed leap of a
rabbit? The wind-polished bole of
a poplar? Pennington was the un-
conscious student in the mystery
of this lore. Sometimes the old
guide used secretly to smile. Farm
ington coming home of a dusk with
few choppy words of what he had
seen. Mysteries too subtle for many
words. Mysteries as lovely as the
leap of a deer.
Then a great diagnostician, for
fee that would have been ransom
for a king, journeyed up to the
mountain shack.
The sky and the pines and the
silence had done their work well.
The two sores on one lung and
the threat of sore on the other
had entirely disappeared. Farm
ington had won.
Pennington was released from
the forest and given his ticket of
leave back to the haunts of men.
And Pennington, after weeks of
procrastination with himself, did
not take it.
There was not much explaining
to be done about it. In fact he
never even discussed it with his
guide. They just sat side by side
smoking pipeful after pipeful of 81
lence. The old guide knew, of
course. With the sensitiveness that
helped him to know the football of
a deer.
He knew. The peace had bored
it's way into Pennington. Far, far
from the tramp-tramp-tramp of the
feet of man, Pennington had heard
the football of the deer.
And it was worth waiting for to
hear the football of another. And
all the strange, new VISIONS that
went with knowing and loving the
delicate sound of the football of a
deer.