Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Charlton Heston Is God

2010; University of Iowa; Volume: 40; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.17077/0021-065x.6864

2330-0361

J T Price,

Themes in Literature Analysis

s dad was killed in August, when the sun is red and round and you can look straight at it without squinting.He was crop dusting and his plane just fell out of the sky.The next morning my mother opened the paper and asked me to join her on the couch.There, on the front page, was a photo of the wreckage.She held me on her lap and read the caption?"CharlesMurphy," "killed,""accident"?in her most careful voice.I stared at the photo, at the twisted metal, wondering how he could be in that scrunched-up place, big Mr. Murphy, World War II hero and ace pilot.I searched the shad owy places for his tall flat-top, his brown-crusted work boots, his bulging forearms, any sign of him at all.There was nothing but the dark tail of the plane sticking up from the corn, like a windmill."This will be hard for Jason," she said."He'll need a good friend."I slid out of her arms, stepped outside, and sat down on the front step.Twenty-First Street didn't look any different?thesame white houses, the same row of locust trees, their feather leaves drooping from the heat.Dale Chalmers and the younger boys were kicking rocks along a curb that might still be followed to its usual end, the Murphy home.And in the doorway, Mr. Murphy, kneeling, as he had just the other day, to shake my hand and offer me a cold pop.I tried to hold it that way for a while, as if the street led to the same home, the same family, the same boy.But I knew what was actually going on in that house, the same as it had in mine, back in April, when my baby broth er was born dead: the familiar strangers shuffling in with their cheesy casseroles, the dim light seeping through the shades, the mother rest ing behind a closed door.And for Jason, the unanswered questions, the silence.He would need someone to talk to and to teach him the way of things.He would need, as Mom had said, a good friend.I sat on the steps for a long time, waiting, in case that friend happened to be me.