Michael Malone - Weebly

whom he had defended already to A.A. Hayes. Had he
been wrong? Had Henry done it? No!
Impossible he had so misjudged the man.
Through a sudden burst of rain, Abernathy hurried
back to the tiny yellow roadster. As he drove,
dangerously skidding on the wet highway, driving by
faith for the most part, for the thundering rain made it
impossible to see, he tried with a sense of its vital
urgency to analyze his response before he reached the
Madder trailer park and Maynard Henry. First shock,
denial, nausea, and fury too quickly mixed for analysis.
Then, with the whole force of his consciousness, the
want to will it away. He did not want her to be raped.
No other fact in his life had been as simple, as absolute,
as that, as uncluttered and unmodified by qualifications
and compromises and recognitions of ambivalences; not
even his abrupt desire to marry Beanie. No fact but the
will not to let go of that broken beam hanging above the
Pacific. And how easy holding to that beam had been
compared to what Judith must have felt. Water
streaked down Abernathy's face.
He put his hand to the canvas top, then to his eye.