Three Fables

I. Fable From Vantage

Now there was this road zigzagging through country hot as hell—all coulees and rimrock and not enough grass to pasture sheep—and there were three travelers on the road, not together, you understand, but one after the other, too far apart for one to see what happened to the one before him. And all three travelers were hot and tired and hungry, sore in their feet from so many rocks, and wobbly in the knees from the stiff grades up and then down, up and then down, and sunburned, but hopeful. They always thought that things would look better from the top of the next ridge. Finally the road came out on the edge of a bluff that formed one side of a great river gorge. Straight below on the bank of the blue river stood a tower, and from the tower two bridges to the opposite shore made a shape like a V. The one to the left, to the south, led to a beautiful garden spot like fine irrigated land, green and lush with orchards and happy with little summer houses. The other, to the right, to the north, led to a shale beach about two feet wide and four feet long, and from that the cliffs went straight up—I mean really straight up. Of course there must have been a foothold in the rocks, or the bridge wouldn’t have led over there, would it? But it didn’t look that way.