由于版权原因，VOA未提供这期AMERICAN STORIES的正式文稿。以下节目文稿由热心网友Eva Huang自行听写整理。
Now the Special Egnlish programme of American Stories.
Today's story is called Look Into Nothing. It was writen by Kent Nelson and first published in 1975. Your narrator is Shep O'Neal.
The truck brought up dust as it moved over the roadless flat land. It stopped where two cowboys stood at the edge of a deep canyon.
"Where is it?" Taylor asked.
The older cowboy named John pointed to the canyon. "Down there." He said. Taylor walked to the edge.
"What is he doing?"
Barry said he heard of crying.
"I heard nothing." John answered.
"You hear?" Taylor asked the younger man.
Barry took off his cowboy hat, then smoothed his long brown hair.
"Yes, I heard of them."
"Maybe you heard something else." John said.
Barry shook his head.
"Sounded like crying."
Taylor stepped away from the edge. "How long has it been on?"
John looked at his watch. "One, two hours since I told them."
"It is that why is down there?"
"Sure that's why." Barry said roughly.
"John should not have said anything."
"I just told them what everybody says. I did not know the boy was going to run off."
Taylor looked from one to the other.
"It is done." He said, "No one is to blame."
"Call down to him." He said to Barry. "Say if he is down there."
"Roy, hey, Roy, it's Barry. Are you down there? Roy, listen, we want you to come out."
He could see the asbean trees in the canyon, their leaves were shaking white and then dark in the last light of the day, but only the sound of his own voice came back.
"He is not down there." John said.
Barry went on: "Roy, John says he is sorry. We want to help you to get out."
"I am not sorry." John shouted, "I did not do anything."
Taylor stepped between them. "If he is down there, he is not going to answer."
For a moment, they all stood, not knowing what to do. The sky was blue gray and getting darker.
"We might as well go on?" Taylor said last.
"And leaving?" Barry asked.
"There is nothing wrong with the spending at cold night outside once a while." Taylor answered.
"I am not worried about the night." Barry said, "I am worried about what Roy is thinking. You two go back. I will stay here a while and talk to him."
The two other men turned to go back the truck. Then Barry called out: "John, maybe you should wonder what Roy is thinking down there."
Somewhere below in the asbean trees Roy was sitting. Barry imagined him sitting and not walking. He tried to listen for Roy's crying he had heard so clearly before.
He had called out once softly: "Roy?" And low moaning sound had stopped.
Barry lit a cigarette. He wondered if Roy could see the light. He thought about the young cowboy, small, not strong as most men, thin, skinny as a reel.
Barry looked down into the blackness. "Roy? You do not have to answer, just listen to me. I will talk slowly or play a little and you can listen."
The stars were out by the thousands. He played a little more and then stopped. The silence seemed welcome.
"You know, Roy, when I was a kid, I did some funny things, not things to laugh at, but strange things. I never knew where I was going the way you do. You know what you want." He did not know if Roy was listening, but he did not stop. He had firm belief that Roy was there. "I had a boy once." His voice was strong.
"No one else at ranch knows that I had a boy. It is one of those things you keep hidden from the people you see everyday like a secret, only much more severe like a dream too, only more real. The boy's mother does not even know than I know about my own son. I read it in the newspaper when he was born." Barry laughed.
"Maybe you think she was ugly to go with someone like me, but she was beautiful. I met her in a drink place, a place where she did not belong. She just came up to my table then and looked at me. I have never seen a look like that anywhere else." Barry felt his voice was getting too loud, he calmed himself down.
"You know me, Roy. My mouth is too big and thick, my face is too long. I could use some way just like you. But she chose me." Then Barry looked up at the sky. He could remember often seeing the stars as thick as they were that night, but never before had he understood the great deep blackness behind them.
It was like looking into nothing, no air, no color, nothing. It hurt him to look at the sky like that.
"Roy," He said, "Sometimes, your feeling is all gone like that evening when Nevill came down, remember? Nevill said she was going to see you. You believed her and then she did not even look at you. I know what affected you, that is the way you are."
He expected and answered. "Roy, you are down there, Roy? I will stay out here with you all night. I just wish I knew you want me to stay." The wind started up again. "She took me right out of that place that is the way my boy was begun. I found out later what she was, a doctor's wife, a smart girl who lived in a big house on a hill. She had my boy."
Then a thought struck him. Maybe Roy did not want to be found. He stood up.
"I'm going to home now, Roy. Just speak out if you want me to stay."
The silence was heavy. He waited, half an hour it seemed like too. Then he walked to the edge of the canyon again.
"Roy, listen, I never went away. I have been waiting for you to start a fire or make some sign, but it is alright to be quiet, I will be here."
The wind became stronger. There was smell of rain.
"That was 14 years ago, I was 20, just a year older than you. I never married a woman. As soon as she knew she was pregnant she came to me."
He saw it all again in his mind.
"She had come to him in his small room. She had no time to wait. She had to get home to her husband. She came flying across the room toward him. He thought she was going to hit him. ‘I'm going to have your baby.' She said." He had spoken aloud.
The words seemed to float out over the canyon.
"I thought she was going to blame me, but she said she wanted to leave her husband and come with me." Rain began to fall. It washed through quickly without thunder and lighting.
Barry turned his back to it. He said nothing until the land was quiet again. "I could not do it. I thought it was impossible. We did not belong to the same world. We could never be happy. So, Roy, I know a little about going out, too. You are going to be OK."
The buildings of ranch spread out through the trees. One was the Bank house where Barry, John and Roy lived. Barry got there early in the morning, as John was coming out.
"Find him?" John asked.
"No." Barry answered, "He must still be down in the canyon. I talked to him all last night."
"What did he say?"
"Lots of things you will not understand."
Another cowboy stepped out the Bank house. Each morning, Taylor met them in the yard and gave them their tasks for the day. He was walking towards them now. "Just got the telephone call." Taylor said, "He is alright."
"Where is he?" Barry asked.
"In Aneld. He is in the jail."
"What do you mean?"
"Roy was in the town last night. He had too much to drink. Somebody got mad and called the sheriff. It will cost 30 dollars to get him out of jail."
"I have it." Said Barry. "OK. Let me know when you get back."
He turned and walked to the bar. After a while, Barry went into the Bank house to change his clothes. There was no hurry to get to town. Roy could wait a little longer.
You have been listening to the American Stories -- Looking Into Nothing by Kent Nelson.
It appeared in the publication -- The Transatlantic Review and was adapted by Dona de Sanctis. Your narrator was Shep O'Neal. For VOA Special English, this is Doug Johnson.