SLPAD - 86 - rain / errant comma / knowing grin

[Michael Bailey]

The next day the lieutenant came around and said, “You can take that leave,
Levine,
               if you want. Everything’s set up now. You’re just an extra
body.”


            Levine shrugged. “All right,” he said. It was raining. Back at
the truck Picnic said,
               “Jesus Christ I hate rain.”


            “You and Hemingway,” Rizzo said. “Funny, ain’t it. T. S. Eliot
likes rain.”



These might be the Hemingway and T. S. Eliot references regretted in the
Intro?



Levine slung his bag over one shoulder. “Rain is pretty weird that way,” he
said.
               “It can stir dull roots; it can rip them up, wash them away.
I will think of you boys
               as I bask in the sun down in N’Orleans, up here up to your
ass in water.”


            “So go,” Picnic said, “go already.”


Have Levine’s roots been stirred or have they been ripped up & washed away?


Maybe the answer to this is something either Rizzo or (more likely) Levine
says in the next paragraph -

“By the way,” Rizzo said, “Pierce wanted you yesterday but I gave him some
crap about
               finding a part for the TCC. It took me a while though to
figure out where it was you’d
               gone.” “Christ, let me in on it,” Levine said quietly. “I’m
still trying to figure
               it out,”  Rizzo grinned.


That comma bothers me a little.
Shouldn’t it be, like,

Levine: “I’m still trying to figure it out.” (Period)

Rizzo: (grins)

The comma makes it seem like Rizzo says “I’m still trying to figure it
out,” and then grins.

But Rizzo *just said* he did figure it out, though it took him awhile.
Rizzo says a lot of weird shit, but not that immediately obviously
self-contradictory, does he?

Nope, I think the comma is artistic license: Levine’s brain is clicking as
never before, and right after he weighs in on rain, he busts out another
profound statement with, “Christ, let me in on it. I’m still trying to
figure it out,” (like, what kind of fucking world is this anyway?)

And the comma is because Rizzo’s knowing smile (a grin of approval) in
response is immediate & directly connected.