Michael Malone - Weebly

his life significance. Sammy Smalter gave up a fantasy of
love and Winslow Abernathy gave up a fantasy of
marriage and Jonathan Fields gave up Walter Saar.
Other Dingleyans, in the Virgilian manner, cultivated in
the sun with hoes and hums. Of these, many had
application and a few some talent, but only that
floricultural archimage Sebastian Marco was a Merlin,
and over the best gardens in town he held an inviolate
suzerainty, which with unpredictable moodiness he
periodically accepted, resigned, and reclaimed. This
morning Sebastian was supposed to be at work on the
Ransoms' garden. His absence, however, was not
temperamental: with his mother, his brother Carl, and
Carl's wife and children, the bachelor gardener sat in
the Church of Our Lady of Mercy, where Father
Patrick Crisp said some prayers for the soul of Alfredo
Marco. Without imposing long illness, expensive
hospitals, or even an outing in inclement weather on his
family, the postal assistant had died as undemandingly
as he had lived.
By herself, across the aisle from the Marcos, Judith
Haig knelt in black. She was watching the sun inflame