加载中…SAT阅读文章（文学作品）第1篇
(2016-12-26 12:55:10)
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http://s15/mw690/001K3Dbwzy77uq8vXgG3e&690http://www.triquarterly.org/issues/issue-147/magic-waiting
文章作者：Linda Niehoff选自 《Like Magic Waiting》，这个作品是作者在博客上发表的，时间是2015年1月This passage is adapted from Linda Niehoff, “Like Magic Waiting.” ©2015 by Linda Niehoff.
We walked through the field a long time, pushing tall grass out of
the way, before we saw anything. I’d pluck ticks out of my hair
later and scratch red bumps. I hoped it was worth it.
“How much longer?” I asked. I wondered now if it was just a story
Tamara told in her bedroom with the window propped open and flies
buzzing everywhere. There were always flies and the sour smell of
hog drifting in on dusty Saturday afternoons.
We’d already flipped through shiny magazines and smelled their
thick scent. We’d smeared watermelon polish on our nails for a
moment that’d probably never come. Then we rolled the magazines up
and slapped at the never-ending flies. Coming out here was the only
thing left to do.
“Sometimes it takes a second to find,” Tamara said as she stopped
and scanned the field, and I said nothing because I still wanted to
believe her.
I turned back around. From here the sagging trailer was the size of
a thumbprint. It was hard to believe we’d been crammed inside—it
seemed too small to hold us. You could block it out with a finger
and make it disappear.
The late summer sun sank low in the far row of trees and looked
like moving globs of light. If I squinted my eyes and let them go
all blurry, it glittered just like magic waiting. Or how I pictured
magic might look if I could ever find it.
“Should we go back?” I asked, right as she pointed.
“There it is.”
At first I couldn’t make it out. Weeds and golden grass had pierced
the wood and pushed through, making it hard to tell what it had
been. I was just about to ask her where when I saw the
face.
Its teeth were bared in an eternal grin. A tiger. Or a lion, maybe.
A few feet away lay a camel. And I thought I saw a giraffe, but it
was hard to tell. The
framework was gone. Probably cut up and sold for firewood a long
time ago.
“I told you,” she said, but I didn’t look at her.
I bent down and touched its head, the lion or tiger, and traced my
newly painted nail along a red wooden vein. It was a long-ago
ribbon or maybe even a rose,
now
It looked old. And not just because of the rotting wood. It looked
old-fashioned.
“Where’d it come from?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” Tamara said. “It’s always been here. Even my mom
remembers it from when she was a girl.”
“She never rode it?”
Tamara shook her head.
Somebody had carved each eye, each tooth, each wild, blowing curl
and set it out in a farmer’s field. Others
had stood in line, clutching sweaty coins, just to ride around in
circles to the sound of a
calliope. Until
it wasn’t enough anymore. Or
maybe there was just too much to keep it standing. Too much sky
pressing down, and now it was just wooden bones.
I wished I could have seen him twirling madly, head lifted high and
proud, but there was still a fierceness in his gaze that not even a
prison of weeds could hold. Even though the earth was slowly
swallowing him, it was like he wouldn’t stop fighting.
I looked up at Tamara, but I could see that she didn’t care, not
really.
“It’s just a pile of wood,” she said when she saw how I looked at
her.
But I wanted to tell her to shut up. This was haunted
ground. I
strained to listen before the cicada song rose up and sang it
away.
Tamara shrugged and chewed on a nail. She was already peeling off
the watermelon polish.
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