Zona Gale

“ Going, too, Jerry? Don't keep us waiting."
The enormous night received the little car. Ten miles of dusky cornland, warm with the breath of the day; eight miles of city streets, sleepy with heat, nervous with light, washed by a thin black stream of beings. Pearl City traffic formed the veins of some vast undivined body. That body seemed to have a voice, raucous, unresting. The powers of that body were evident—to give death, to give life, to sin, to rejoice, to agonize. Was there no more to that unknown being? Could it only bellow with its body while its veins flowed with the traffic? ”

“ They faced a meadow made limitless by night. The life of the dark was there, the dark peopled by rustle, breath, odor. In the stillness these influences came confidently to the car. The night breathed, and along its vast invisible veins coursed some faint fluid, tincturing the darkness, flowing through the little bodies of men.
Suddenly Elmer Dasher felt a frightful nostalgia. Home, home! He wanted to be at home. But when he thought of his house, his porch with red chairs, it was not these that he wanted. Home. ”

“ Beneath the hall burner Jerry passed, came to the threshold, and when her mother said "Better sit down" emerged and obeyed.
"I don't understand it and I never shall," said Mrs. Dasher heavily.
"Don't say that again!" Elmer Dasher cried. "There isn't a woman in the world that'll keep on saying the same thing over and over the way you will."
"I won't be here long to say anything. I'm sick of the whole thing."
Jerry interposed: "It's hot again, isn't it?" She heard: "Why shouldn't it be? It's summer time." And: "Can anybody see whether I hung up the ice card?" ”

“ Elmer Dasher's exaltation, his wife's pity and terror, Jerry's brief motherhood, all boxed dry in their rooms.
The storm cleared and left the air sultry, intolerable. Dasher could not sleep. He went downstairs and sat in the swing. Ludlow was moving about the lawn, barefooted in the drenched grass. He came to the Dashers' veranda rail.
"Been up in town, have you?" he said. "I tell you, if there's reason why Patch Grove should collapse and slide into the valley. Pearl City ought to drop into the ground with no warning. Ought to disappear from the human eye."
Something shook Elmer Dasher. ”

“ Far down the curve of the railroad across the distant swamp, a yellow eye outrayed in the first rain.
"The 'way freight," said Elmer Dasher. "It's none too good for us. We'll signal them, and if they row we'll report them to the directors!"
The highway was level with the fields. To the fields' edge they rolled their car, an ancient servant, and left it locked in darkness ”

“ The virginity of the toilette is preserved for its main purpose. On the porches sat those who did not dress for the evening any more. In many of these the desire to give life had changed to a dynamic hostility to those already alive. ”