Read The Cradle for Free Online Page B

the sky above was calm. By feeling it through the truck, he knew the wind was blowing. No thunderclouds.
     Occasionally he’d go by a broken-down farm, the wood so old it was gray. Cows milling, even a few horses running up and down
     a pasture, chasing one another. Then there would be the newer farms, bright, what he imagined as productive.
    There were, he reflected, only three feelings in his heart’s repertoire: worry about money, love for Marissa, and a somewhat
     more mysterious attraction to the simplicity of one single day. There were the typical day-to-day somethings, the colors that
     turned his head here and there, the annoyances, the reliefs, but those were not the central three. Everyone had those little
     ones. But then, everyone had a few more that were larger, and their own. Or at least the arrangement was their own. The central
     three were much larger. Money was money. The Marissa feeling wasn’t complicated either; he’d loved her after knowing her for
     nine days, and ever since then, the feeling had been the same: he would die for her. He would lie down in front of a train
     and allow himself to be sliced in half for her. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and that part was simple.
     The feeling about the days was farther away but there were times when it approached him in its abstract glory and nearly brought
     tears to his eyes. What was it? Life? He had no idea. The simple beauty of how the earth rolled and the sun came up and then
     went down and the sun came up again, how they were allowed to keep doing this, over and over again, thousands upon thousands
     of times. Asleep awake asleep awake. What he felt was gratitude. He had no interest in poetry or art or music. Something in
     him, though, told him that whatever the reasons for their existence, it had to do with this same feeling. Gratitude. He didn’t
     need to look at anything or listen to anything to bring on the feeling. Instead, it usually found him. It would come to him
     at work, and he would take a break; it would come to him when he was driving, and he would even tear up and sometimes even
     pull over to the side of the road; it would come to him at home, in front of a bad movie or a bad television show, and he
     would excuse himself and go to the bathroom and sit on the toilet and breathe, leaning forward until it passed. Not that he
     did not enjoy it. He was embarrassed by this side of himself but he did enjoy it, he did. When it came, it was as though he
     had one special connection to the world that other people didn’t have, so he welcomed it. No one will say no to that.
    It wasn’t coming now—it was nowhere near. In fact, there was nothing. The only things nearby were the silver chick silhouette
     tire flaps on the truck in front of him and the bumper and license plate of the little Toyota behind him. Both annoyed him.
     The Toyota was too close, and the truck in front of him had been altering its speed for the last fifteen miles, first blasting
     by everyone at seventy-five miles an hour, then slowing up and doing fifty-five in the right lane. The wind was getting it,
     too, and the trailer was moving with menace to and fro. Matt had passed and then been passed by this same truck at least five
     times. He wanted to escape it, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t. If he slowed, it eventually slowed with him, and if
     he sped up, it was there. Matt would not have been surprised to pull up alongside it, look up, and see a skeleton driving.
    He decided to end the problem completely and get off the road in Sheboygan and eat at an Arby’s. Sturgeon Bay was an hour
     and forty-five minutes away. If he ate now, it was possible that he’d find the sister, find Caroline, and find the cradle
     all before he was hungry again. He’d be back driving almost immediately and would be home before dark. It felt like he had,
     in the last week, fallen into a well where time didn’t work properly. When had she had the