Red Leaves

by James Colton

as a

Mark Morsov, dark and small and soft-spoken, with eyes beautiful as hawk's, had come to Stone River from Chicago when his Uncle, Jacob Pincus, had been felled by a stroke. He had come to take over the dry cleaning shop, the only one in town. Jacob Pincus was an old bachelor, but his brother-in-law in Chicago had many sons, of whom Mark was the eldest not yet married and in business for himself. So to far-away Oregon he was sent. And from June through this second week of September he had tended the shop in the wet summer heat, laboring at the great steam presser, stripped to the waist, his neat, brown body gleaming with sweat.

The hardware store where Floyd Nichols worked was across the street. Floyd saw Mark through the plate glass and yearned after him-a nameless longing he had never before known, that made his mouth dry, made him stammer when he spoke to the boy at noon in the Acme Cafe. What if the boy turned him off? He felt this would be the end of him. But there was no need to fear. The boy's smile had been open, welcoming. Over their hamburgers and Pepsi-Cola's they were soon deep in talk of books.

That night Floyd was supposed to preside at a meeting of the Young Chris, tian's Guild in the church basement. He had never missed a meeting. Yet tonight he forgot to go. Tonight he spent instead in the small room at the back of Jacob Pincus' house, where Mark slept. He started it there, playing chess and listening to wonderful records the Chicago boy brought; ended it in an hour's-long walk down the dark, tree-shady night streets of Stone River, talking, talking, talking-of all manner of things, in and out of books, ideas that had crowded his own mind through long, mute years, seemingly awaiting the advent of this boy, this Mark, this beautiful, wonderful friend of whom he'd dreamed. "Where in the world have you been?"

From the door of her downstairs bedroom, a jagged, agitated silhouette, his mother surprised him out of his happy daze. He had no idea of the time. Outside in the grass the crickets had stopped. It must be very late.

"The church children called and called. I didn't know what to tell them. I've been half out of my mind with worry."

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