excerpt
Engine Fred was in the last row wearing a shirt and tie from the
Salvation Army store, his suit coat mended. “I wouldn’t do this for
anyone but you, my friend,” he told Poodie that morning in the old
picker’s cabin, as he scraped at his whiskers. Three councilmen sat
slumped in their seats in the arc of the table, reading their briefing
papers. They looked bored, he thought. Remembering his years in
rooms like this one, he knew they were bored. People came into the
chamber and stood staring at the empty chairs, thrown into indecision
by the abundance of seating. A woman looked at him as if she should
know him. A man about Fred’s age nodded and smiled at him and
walked down the aisle looking vaguely puzzled. At the front of the
room, two more councilmen wandered to their seats, leaving three
smaller chairs and a big one in the center to be filled. That must be the
mayor’s place, he thought. The audience seats in the middle of the
room were filling up with more people than Fred had thought would
come out for something to do with hobos. Then he remembered all
the crowds of entertainment seekers even at routine civil cases. Courthouse
hangers-on filled their days monitoring other folks’ troubles,
enjoying the details of dangerous living and running none of the risks.
Same thing here at city hall today, he thought.
Gritzinger, the man who ran the market, came in and took a
seat near the front of the room. Fred thought it was just as well that
Gritzinger hadn’t noticed him. He would, later. Two more council
seats were occupied now, one by a woman. That’s unusual, Fred
thought. A young man wearing glasses and a serious expression sat
on the aisle three rows from the front and took a long, narrow
notebook from his coat pocket. Ah, Fred thought, I figured he was
a reporter when he was walking around down by the jungle the
other day. Felt like a fool hiding, but I didn’t want to talk with him
then and don’t now. Suppose I’ll have to before the afternoon is
over. Aside from Gritzinger, Engine Fred saw no one he knew in
the room, but he thought the tall woman in the print dress…
Libros Libertad 