The Valley, 1989
The Valley (Page 2)
by William Burroughs
Maybe, some say, they will be seen, and people will lower ropes. There is a legend that one man built a flying machine from lizard, snake and fish skins sewn to a frame of light wood. It took all his life to build it and he was seventy when the machine was finally finished. It looked like a gigantic dragonfly with sixty-foot wings.
The currents rising from the valley on certain hot afternoons, he calculated, could bear the ship aloft. It could carry only one person and that person must be very light. A boy of thirteen was chosen. The Builder was by then fairly corpulent, since he was granted extra rations for his work, which they hoped would be their means of deliverance: esperanza.
The Builder had a device like a dormer’s.