You have people nowadays—the men in general, who were helping the woman—and that which they should not disturb, she had put into a crate.
She put a yellow-flowered plant into the crate.
The men’s names were embroidered on their shirt pockets, but truly, there was no need to address one or another of them. A question could just be asked of one—without use of a name.
The pockets of their garments were needleworks with thread in bright white. But for Marwood, somebody had devised an orange and mustard-yellow embroidery.
The woman was standing a step aside and didn’t have much to contribute, but she looked at a man—at what he was making ready to take—and she held her hands with her palms turned away from her body with her fingers spread, as if she had dirtied herself.
At the curb, the woman’s car was an Opel, and the hood was up, and the door to the car was out, and what was its color? It was a butterscotch and a man, up to his elbows, was under the hood. Now and again he’d go back into the car and try the starter engine. Ted—that was that one.
It could be lovely, the woman was thinking. It was already lonely and there were mountains and mosses and grasses and violent deaths nowadays, and injuries and punishments, and the woman finds the merest suggestion of cheerful companionship and carousal—a bit too dramatic.