#56 The Crossing- Henry Dumas
Three children, Bubba, Jimmy, and Essie are walking home
from Sunday School. It’s hot noon in Louisiana and the group stop to horse
around near the old bridge, the talking bridge.
This is as Americana a tale as you will find, as good and
real as Mark Twain. Dumas captures the
essence of childhood with uncanny feeling.
The back and forth, the exaggerated stories, the physical hi-jinx,
egging each other on. Slow and ambling like the country lane they’re on, sounds
of nature punctuate the narration. The story they tell each other isn’t told as
a political point, its just idle talk between playmates, because kids talk
about stuff they hear.
As with most of Dumas’ stories there is a spiritual
bloodline that make these stories almost parables. There is so much truth here,
and soul that oozes out of Dumas’ pen. This collection should be required
reading in schools, as a good juxtaposition alongside Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.
Notable Passage: “It was a quiet area. The feeling one got
was like the feeling that comes when one is standing besides a still pond
staring at a school of hungry minnows. Here, where the rotting planks stretched
over the life in the green water, distance broke through, and for a while,
north and south and east and west filled the eye.”
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