ordering gestures

from Seamus Heaney, "Casualty" in Field Work (1979)

I

He would drink by himself

And raise a weathered thumb

Towards the high shelf,

Calling another rum

And blackcurrant, without

Having to raise his voice,

Or order a quick stout

By a lifting of the eyes

And a discreet dumb-show

Of pulling off the top;

At closing time would go

In waders and peaked cap

Into the showery dark,

A dole-kept breadwinner

But a natural for work.

I loved his whole manner,

Sure-footed but too sly,

His deadpan sidling tact,

His fisherman's quick eye

And turned, observant back.

a flickery second

from Cormac McCarthy, The Orchard Keeper (1965)

Shielding the flame with his hands he lit the cigarette, then dropped the dying match over his elbow into the slipstream boring past the open windwing and took the wheel once more, exhaling luxuriously and repocketing the matches. He waited.

Say, old buddy, I wonder if I could get a . . . why thanks, thank ye.

The match scratched and popped. Sylder meditated in the windshield the face of the man cast in oragne and black above the spurt of flame like the downlidded face of some copper ikon, a mask, not ambiguous or inscrutable but merely discountenanced of meaning, expression. In the flickery second in which Sylder's glance went to the road and back the man's eyes raised to regard him in the glass, so that when Sylder looked back they faced each other over the cup of light like enemy chieftains across a council fire for just that instant before the man's lips pursed, carplike, still holding the cigarette, and sucked away the flame.

why we pull the blinds

from Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary (1959, 1998)

Then I saw two figures clinging together near the reef. I recognized Yeamon and the girl who had come down with me on the plane. They were naked, standing in waist-deep water, with her legs locked around his hips and her arms around his neck. Her head was thrown back and her hair trailed out behind her, floating on the water like a blonde mane.

At first I thought I was having a vision. There scene was so idyllic that my mind refused to accept it. I just stood there and watched. He was holding her by the waist, swinging her around in slow circles. Then I heard a sound, a soft happy cry as she stretched out her arms like wings.

I left then, and drove back to Jesús Lopo's place. I bought a small bottle of beer for fifteen cents and sat on a bench in the clearing, feeling like an old man. The scene I had just witnessed brought back a lot of memories - not of things I had done but of things I failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost because time had eaten so much of my life and I would never get it back. I envied Yeamon and felt sorry for myself at the same time, because I had seen him in a moment that made all my happiness seem dull.

her moments

from Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke (2007)

She'd come at just the right time. This was her atmosphere. This was the light for her, for sad, pale skin below the tanned neck and above the rough elbows, for a virgin martyr's poise, for her unexpectant waiting--her right calf, rather thick and like a peasant's, dangling from the bed and the foot plunged into shadow near the floor, which was of old wood, the other leg akimbo and the sole of its foot against the other knee, making a number 4 with her legs as she lay back on the bed, her hand across her breasts, the other behind her head--pond-light, church-light. Had she known how he stared, she'd never have allowed it. But she turned her eyes to him and looked at him full on as if he didn't matter, without any change of her expression. She wasn't, herself, beautiful. Her moments were beautiful.