Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

The girls left the stage to small applause. Mrs. Rand spoke of MacMillan Houses and its good, good work, its excellent relationship with the government of Vietnam. Rather than listening, Kathy prepared her own remarks, it’s wonderful to see so many, this kind of effort requires more than private donors alone, therefore government grants and legislation, therefore your congressmen, your senators, above all your hearts, new lives given hope, tremendous gratitude, no, stress private donors, the annual expense for postage for just one office can amount to, food for a single mouth for a year can exceed, no, not a mouth, a single child, good food for a single one of these wonderful children can cost about, the buildings and facilities, education, your generosity, or rather education out of poverty, your heartfelt generosity, or rather shelter, food, and warmth for young bodies, education out of poverty, true hope for lives just beginning, all depend on your unflinching, heartfelt generosity, or just unflinching. Or just heartfelt. And, no, sacrifice. Dig at them. On more than just the kind generosity of people like you and me, ladies and gentlemen, but on, yes, our unflinching sacrifice. Dig away. To her right in the dimness the ring glinted on the finger of a gentleman propping his cheek on his hand. He’d shut his eyes. Some of the men, in order to endure this, may have given up the season’s first afternoon of golf. On the women near her she saw the bright, interested faces of people trying to stay awake. A little lad with his finger firmly in a nostril, doing nothing with it, just parking it there. The scene before her flattened, lost one of its dimensions, and the noise dribbled irrelevantly down its face. Something was coming. This moment, this very experience of it, seemed only the thinnest gauze. She sat in the audience thinking—someone here has cancer, someone has a broken heart, someone’s soul is lost, someone feels naked and foreign, thinks they once knew the way but can’t remember the way, feels stripped of armor and alone, there are people in this audience with broken bones, others whose bones will break sooner or later, people who’ve ruined their health, worshipped their own lies, spat on their dreams, turned their backs on their true beliefs, yes, yes, and all will be saved. All will be saved. All will be saved.