In today's encore excerpt, seven-year-old Truman Capote, abandoned by his parents and raised by dirt-poor relatives in Alabama, with his closest friend a distant cousin--an elderly, simple minded, and slightly crippled woman named Sook. On a cold, bleak and empty Christmas afternoon with the two of them alone together, she exclaims to him:
" 'My, how foolish I am!' she cries, suddenly alert, like a woman remembering too late she has biscuits in the oven. 'You know what I've always thought?' she asks in a tone of discovery, and not smiling at me but a point beyond. 'I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun shining through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine takes away all the spooky feeling.'
" 'But I'll wager it never happens like that. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are,'--her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie, our dog, pawing earth over her bone-- 'just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with just today in my eyes.' "
Truman Capote, A Christmas Memory, Modern Library, 1996, originally published in 1956, pp. 26-7.
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By building bridges and crossings over busy roads, rivers and railway lines, Connect2 will get people to the places they want to go. Each crossing will link to a network of walking and cycling routes, taking you to your schools, shops, work and green spaces. Connect2 will also bring people closer together, making journeys quicker and more convenient and leaving more time to spend with family and friends.
