questioned anything he had ever said or done, any decision he had made. Never had she doubted. Her hands perspired nervously. Painfully she realized the truth. He had no love for her; even at first when they were happy, both had been in love with the same person. He had never loved her, never would. To him she was a puppet a toy to laugh at when it stumbled, to make it stumble, and laugh. To him she was a robot, a machine a senseless slave. When he awoke and came into the kitchen she faced him boldly. Fearlessly she told him. "You don't love me. You never loved me. You don't love anyone but yourself only yourself. You're a fool, an ugly, wretched, selfish fool! I hate you!" His eyes stared past her, would not look at her. He stood calmly inert. She yelled fiercely and beat his chest wildly with her fists. Desperately she wanted him to say she was wrong and he loved her, but his body his eyes remained fixed. He did not hear her hard, dry sobs, did not feel her exhausted body slide limply to the floor. For a long time her fragile arms hugged his legs. His lips spoke no word. It is possible for the mind to murder. The man had never pouted before. Each day she hoped that perhaps he would forget the things she had said, to forget and yet to remember to deny. Each day she smiled, and her voice bubbled with endless joys of the pleasant events of the day. Alone, she designed delightful things to entertain him, and invented stories of family fun to tell the neighbors. She waited for a word, even a smile; but there was no word, no smile, for her. The man looked, but never saw-never spoke to her again: to him she was dead. Her son did not marry. Since that first night when his father had not come home, when he was a child on the farm and his mother had needed him, he had felt a strange, unexplained obligation to protect her; the two had always found comfort in each other. He became her daily companion. With him she talked continually of the memories that fatal life dims. At night she wore her old party dresses even the emerald one -her jewelry and perfume, her moth-eaten satin slippers; she waltzed with him and laughed gaily, smiled and laughed. She imagined him to be her husband. She stroked his neck with her tallow fingers and held his hands softly. Although the man stayed away every night, the woman continued to lay out his work clothes and serve his dinner before he left for work. For years the boy knew that his mother loved his father, that she thought that he was his father, that all of the love she gave to him was really intended for his father. He, therefore, became consciously afraid that his father might forget and begin to speak again; he could not let that happen. If his father spoke, everything would be destroyed. His mother would forget about him, and he would be left alone. His mother loved him, needed him; his father only made her miserable and unhappy. He could not permit his father to speak again. The son discovered the body in the double-garage next morning, and explained to officers that his father had probably been too drunk to get out of the car; the fumes from the landlord's car had escaped and poisoned him. Of course it was an accident. Nothing more was said about it. A child noticed the woman's green satin party dress and snickered; his mother slapped his face and he whimpered. The hum of the gossips faded 20 with the last sympathetic smile, and silence echoed again, welcome. After the funeral the woman and her son returned to the house behind the house in the middle-class section of town. Perhaps out of habit she laid some over-alls and a blue broadcloth shirt on the bed and peeled potatoes for dinner. Dinner would be at 3:30, always at 3:30. The son talked chattered cheerfully, trying to ease the tension, trying to restore his mother's false love for him. He thought that now everthing would be the same between them, and they could be happy together. But the woman was silent. There was no one to listen. LOOKING FROM THE SUMMIT OF THE EASTERN The hot summer sun slips around the shade of the Spruce. The caw of the Clarks Nutcracker shatters the stillness. The deposits of prehistoric Lake Bonneville Have left the lifeless Great Salt Lake Desert Spread bare at the base of Pilot Peak. Six wagon tracks, bleached into the salt and alkali, Weave across the bareness to the base of the peak. These tracks followed the Reed-Donner Party And remained, indelibly inscribed upon the salt A jet plane flies overhead leaving plumed trails. The vapor separates and then vanishes The Clarks Nutcracker caws The sun slips into the shade The wag tracks of 1845 remain. SANDY ROSS 21