A Garden of Earthly Delights Author:Joyce Carol Oates A GARDEN OF EARLY DELIGHTS: — I. CARLETON -- — Arkansas. On that day, many years ago, a truck carrying a number of migratory workers collided with a car on a country highway. It was May 19, the side of the road was soft red clay, and in the light rain the people milled about with an air of festivity... — II. LOWRY -- — They had been driving so lon... more »g that Clara did not think about getting anywhere at all. At first she had watched the sun rise and thought nervously fiercely, "Nobody's going to get me now. He isn't going to get me." She had stared at the road ahead of them that Lowry overtook always at the same speed, not nervous or worried about anything, ant tried to imagine it running back under them and becoming part of the past - all that distance and time her father would have to conquer if he were to get her. She thought of the way he had hit her. She kept seeing his arm drawn back, then jerking out, then drawing back again...
III. SWAN ---
The man said to be Swan's father had shoulders that stooped a little, as if to minimize their obvious strength. His hair was gray, a mixture of many shades. All his life Swan had been seeing this man, but today,when he looked at him, his vision seemed to blotch, as if trying to protect him from some mysterious injury. He was a child, seven. His vision would pound and tiny nerve-like veins around his eyes pulsed a warning to him, but a warning of what? He was seven now and getting big and had no patience with babyish fears; he himself could measure how fast he had grown this year by the limb of the apple tree he had never been able to reach before...« less