excerpt
boar in the rugged hills, long for a beautiful American girl to share
his life and his unimaginable wealth? Yes, she thought, he would.
She wondered whether every other girl and woman on the packing
line had reveries like hers. Maybe they kept their minds on the
endless procession of apples, never thinking that they were handling
the products of malus sylvestris, pyrus malus, the cousin of the
rose bush, “the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
brought death into the world, and all our woe.” Where had Milton
come from all of a sudden? Latin and Milton were boring, but they
kept popping up and surprising her. She didn’t even like Milton.
Mr. Moran told the class that they might hate Milton now but if
they studied him well, he would come back to reward them all
through their lives. Here was old Milton already, in an apple packing
shed in the middle of nowhere. Well, it wasn’t really the middle
of nowhere, she admitted, but it was boring. Oh, her father told
her, every teenager thinks her town is boring and dumb and a terrible
place to be stuck. You’ll get over it, he said. Marcie knew it
would be better when she went away to college next year. She wondered
how much of her boredom was because she knew that teenagers
are always bored with their towns and how much of her true
feelings about the town she was repressing. She did, after all, love
the swimming pool and the kids and her lifeguard job in the summer.
She loved the school activities and her popularity and her
friends and even some of the teachers, like Mr. Moran. True, he
was an English literature teacher, but a big clumsy funny man who
sometimes told the class about his time in the war as an army mule
skinner in Italy. He seemed so old, but when she thought about it,
he was only 10 years older than she and yet he had been in the war
for three years and came home with a limp from being wounded.
She almost wished she could go to war and be in danger and have a
rich inner life like Mr. Moran. Well, that’s silly. Being wounded
and having a rich inner life have nothing to do with one another, of
course.
“Brought you more boxes, Miss.” It was the box boy, Jim. Box
boy. Box man, it should be. He’s at least 35. He always stays…
Libros Libertad 