His father had gone to the yard and his mother to a neighbor’s. The old house was empty around him, brittle and too clean. He thought of his miserable cave of a room in Paris; mold, mice, cockroaches and all, and he wished himself back there again. There were roses on the walls of that room, too, in the places where the paper hadn’t been turned back into brownish pulp by rot, the plaster absorbing, as if it were a sponge, the sweat of the ancient stone walls. He sat staring at the sun-glittering leaves of the rock maple, then got up and took his .30-.30 carbine from the gunrack. He balanced the short rifle in his left hand and flicked down the lever. Click clack; the crisp sounds were lovely and satisfying. The square bolt slid back and then forward to lock, leaving the large hammer cocked. He let the hammer down slowly and worked the action again: after two years the rifle had regained, as beautiful objects do, a measure of its original freshness and wonder. He didn’t want to put it to his shoulder just yet—he wanted to save that view of it—but he turned it over in his hands, discovering again the little planes and curves of it, from the slightly curved butt plate to the deep rifling visible at the muzzle.
