Andrew Frankel - Audiobook

Transcript

Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
not that he ever really figured to keep up. He knew from the start he couldn't do that. But he had to try to keep up just to keep them in sight. So for 40 years he was able to live, if not right in the world of men, at least on the edge of it. I can see all that and be hurt by it. The way I was hurt by seeing things in the Army in the war, the way I was hurt by seeing what happened to Papa and the tribe, I thought I'd got overseeing those things and fretting over them. There's no sense in it. There's nothing to be done. I'm tired, is what he says. I know you're tired feet, but I can't do you no good Frightened about it, you know I can't p floats on the way of the old Colonel. He comes Billy bib it the way Pete come by. They're all filing by for a last look. I know Billy can't be more in a few feet away, but he's so tiny it looks like he's a mile off. His face is out to me like the face of a beggar needing so much more on anybody can give his mouth works like a little doll's mouth. And even when I proposed, I flubbed it. Uh, I said, honey, honey, will you? No, till the good of broke out. But if in nurse's voice I can't see where it comes from. Your mother has spoken to me about this girl, Billy. Apparently she was quite beneath you. What? Would you speculate it was about her that frightened you? So, Billy, I I was in of with her. I can't do nothing for you either, Billy. You know that. None of us can. You got to understand that as soon as a man goes to help somebody, he leaves himself wide open. He has to be cagey, Billy. You should know that as well as anyone. What could I do? I can't fix your stuttering. I can't wipe the razor blade scars off your wrists with cigarette burns off the back of your hands. I can't give you a new mother. And as far as the nurse riding you like this, rubbing your nose in your weakness. So what little dignity you got left is gone. You shrink up to nothing from humiliation. I can't do anything about that, either. At Anzio, I saw a buddy of mine tied to a tree 50 yards from me, screaming for water, his face blistered in the sun. They wanted me to try to go out and help him. They have cut me in half from that farmhouse over there. Put your face away, Billy. They keep filing past. It's like each face was a sign like one of those I'm blind signs that **** accordion plays in Portland hung around their necks. Only these signs say I'm tired or I'm scared or or I'm bound up with machinery and people pushing me all the time. I can read all the signs. It don't make any difference how little the print gets.