Adam asked, "When do you think you'll be back from your trip?"
Samuel did not answer.
Doxology stood patiently in the stall, head down, his milky eyes staring at the straw under his feet.
"You've had that horse forever," Adam said.
"He's thirty-three," said Samuel. "His teeth are worn off. I have to feed him warm mash with my fingers. And he has bad dreams. He shivers and cries sometimes in his sleep."
"He's about as ugly a crow bait as I ever saw," Adam said.
"I know it. I think that's why I picked him when he was a colt. Do you know I paid two dollars for him thirty-three years ago? Everything was wrong with him, hoofs like flapjacks, a hock so thick and short and straight there seems no joint at all. He's hammerheaded and swaybacked. He has a pinched chest and a big behind. He has an iron mouth and he still fights the crupper. With a saddle he feels as though you were riding a sled over a gravel pit. He can't trot and he stumbles over his feet when he walks. I have never in thirty-three years found one good thing about him. He even has an ugly disposition. He is selfish and quarrelsome and mean and disobedient. To this day I don't dare walk behind him because he will surely take a kick at me. When I feed him mash he tries to bite my hand. And I love him."
Lee said, "And you named him 'Doxology.' "
"Surely," said Samuel, "so ill endowed a creature deserved, I thought, one grand possession. He hasn't very long now."
Adam said, "Maybe you should put him out of his misery."
"What misery?" Samuel demanded. "He's one of the few happy and consistent beings I've ever met."
"He must have aches and pains."
"Well, he doesn't think so. Doxology still thinks he's one hell of a horse. Would you shoot him, Adam?"
"Yes, I think I would. Yes, I would."
"You'd take the responsibility?"
"Yes, I think I would. He's thirty-three. His lifespan is long over."
Lee had set his lantern on the ground. Samuel squatted beside it and instinctively stretched his hands for warmth to the butterfly of yellow light.
"I've been bothered by something, Adam," he said.
"What is that?"
"You would really shoot my horse because death might be more comfortable?"
"Well, I meant--"
Samuel said quickly, "Do you like your life, Adam?"
"Of course not."
"If I had a medicine that might cure you and also might kill you, should I give it to you? Inspect yourself, man."
"What medicine?"
"No," said Samuel. "If I tell you, believe me when I say it may kill you."
Lee said, "Be careful, Mr. Hamilton. Be careful."
"What is this?" Adam demanded. "Tell me what you're thinking of."
Samuel said softly, "I think for once I will not be careful. Lee, if I am wrong--listen--if I am mistaken, I accept the responsibility and I will take what blame there is to take."
"Are you sure you're right?" Lee asked anxiously.
"Of course I'm not sure. Adam, do you want the medicine?"
"Yes. I don't know what it is but give it to me."
"Adam, Cathy is in Salinas. She owns a whorehouse, the most vicious and depraved in this whole end of the country. The evil and ugly, the distorted and slimy, the worst things humans can think up are for sale there. The crippled and crooked come there for satisfaction. But it is worse than that. Cathy, and she is now called Kate, takes the fresh and young and beautiful and so maims them that they can never be whole again. Now, there's your medicine. Let's see what it does to you."
"You're a liar!" Adam said.
"No, Adam. Many things I am, but a liar I am not."
Adam whirled on Lee. "Is this true?"
"I'm no antidote," said Lee. "Yes. It's true."
Adam stood swaying in the lantern light and then he turned and ran. They could hear his heavy steps running and tripping. They heard him falling over the brush and scrambling and clawing his way upward on the slope. The sound of him stopped only when he had gone over the brow of the hill.
Lee said, "Your medicine acts like poison."
"I take responsibility," said Samuel. "Long ago I learned this: When a dog has eaten strychnine and is going to die, you must get an ax and carry him to a chopping block. Then you must wait for his next convulsion, and in that moment--chop off his tail. Then, if the poison has not gone too far, your dog may recover. The shock of pain can counteract the poison. Without the shock he will surely die."
"But how do you know this is the same?" Lee asked.
"I don't. But without it he would surely die."
"You're a brave man," Lee said.
"No, I'm an old man. And if I should have anything on my conscience it won't be for long."
Lee asked, "What do you suppose he'll do?"
"I don't know," said Samuel, "but at least he won't sit around and mope. Here, hold the lantern for me, will you?"
In the yellow light Samuel slipped the bit in Doxology's mouth, a bit worn so thin that it was a flake of steel. The check rein had been abandoned long ago. The old hammerhead was free to drag his nose if he wished, or to pause and crop grass beside the road. Samuel didn't care. Tenderly he buckled the crupper, and the horse edged around to try to kick him.
When Dox was between the shafts of the cart Lee asked, "Would you mind if I rode along with you a little? I'll walk back."
"Come along," said Samuel, and he tried not to notice that Lee helped him up into the cart.
The night was very dark, and Dox showed his disgust for night-traveling by stumbling every few steps.
Samuel said, "Get on with it, Lee. What is it you want to say?"
Lee did not appear surprised. "Maybe I'm nosy the way you say you are. I get to thinking. I know probabilities, but tonight you fooled me completely. I would have taken any bet that you of all men would not have told Adam."
"Did you know about her?"
"Of course," said Lee,
"Do the boys know?"
"I don't think so, but that's only a matter of time. You know how cruel children are. Someday in the schoolyard it will be shouted at them."
"Maybe he ought to take them away from here," said Samuel. "Think about that, Lee."
"My question isn't answered, Mr. Hamilton. How were you able to do what you did?"
"Do you think I was that wrong?"
"No, I don't mean that at all. But I've never thought of you as taking any strong unchanging stand on anything. This has been my judgment. Are you interested?"
"Show me the man who isn't interested in discussing himself," said Samuel. "Go on."
"You're a kind man, Mr. Hamilton. And I've always thought it was the kindness that comes from not wanting any trouble. And your mind is as facile as a young lamb leaping in a daisy field. You have never to my knowledge taken a bulldog grip on anything. And then tonight you did a thing that tears down my whole picture of you."
Samuel wrapped the lines around a stick stuck in the whip socket, and Doxology stumbled on down the rutty road. The old man stroked his beard, and it shone very white in the starlight. He took off his black hat and laid it in his lap. "I guess it surprised me as much as it did you," he said. "But if you want to know why--look into yourself."
"I don't understand you."
"If you had only told me about your studies earlier it might have made a great difference, Lee."
"I still don't understand you."
"Careful, Lee, you'll get me talking. I told you my Irish came and went. It's coming now."
Lee said, "Mr. Hamilton, you're going away and you're not coming back. You do not intend to live very much longer."
"That's true, Lee. How did you know?"
"There's death all around you. It shines from you."
"I didn't know anyone could see it," Samuel said. "You know, Lee, I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. And my life has not been a full orchestra for a long time now. A single n
ote only--and that note unchanging sorrow. I'm not alone in my attitude, Lee. It seems to me that too many of us conceive of a life as ending in defeat."
Lee said, "Maybe everyone is too rich. I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair."
"It was your two-word retranslation, Lee--"Thou mayest.' It took me by the throat and shook me. And when the dizziness was over, a path was open, new and bright. And my life which is ending seems to be going on to an ending wonderful. And my music has a new last melody like a bird song in the night."
Lee was peering at him' through the darkness. "That's what it did to those old men of my family."
" 'Thou mayest rule over sin,' Lee. That's it. I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name you a dozen who were not, and they are the ones the world lives by. It is true of the spirit as it is true of battles--only the winners are remembered. Surely most men are destroyed, but there are others who like pillars of fire guide frightened men through the darkness. 'Thou mayest, Thou mayest!' What glory! It is true that we are weak and sick and quarrelsome, but if that is all we ever were, we would, millenniums ago, have disappeared from the face of the earth. A few remnants of fossilized jawbone, some broken teeth in strata of limestone, would be the only mark man would have left of his existence in the world. But the choice, Lee, the choice of winning! I had never understood it or accepted it before. Do you see now why I told Adam tonight? I exercised the choice. Maybe I was wrong, but by telling him I also forced him to live or get off the pot. What is that word, Lee?"
"Timshel," said Lee. "Will you stop the cart?"
"You'll have a long walk back."
Lee climbed down. "Samuel!" he said.
"Here am I." The old man chuckled. "Liza hates for me to say that."
"Samuel, you've gone beyond me."
"It's time, Lee."
"Good-by, Samuel," Lee said, and he walked hurriedly back along the road. He heard the iron tires of the cart grinding on the road. He turned and looked after it, and on the slope he saw old Samuel against the sky, his white hair shining with starlight.
Chapter 25
1
It was a deluge of a winter in the Salinas Valley, wet and wonderful. The rains fell gently and soaked in and did not freshet. The feed was deep in January, and in February the hills were fat with grass and the coats of the cattle looked tight and sleek. In March the soft rains continued, and each storm waited courteously until its predecessor sank beneath the ground. Then warmth flooded the valley and the earth burst into bloom--yellow and blue and gold.
Tom was alone on the ranch, and even that dust heap was rich and lovely and the flints were hidden in grass and the Hamilton cows were fat and the Hamilton sheep sprouted grass from their damp backs.
At noon on March 15 Tom sat on the bench outside the forge. The sunny morning was over, and gray water-bearing clouds sailed in over the mountains from the ocean, and their shadows slid under them on the bright earth.
Tom heard a horse's clattering hoofs and he saw a small boy, elbows flapping, urging a tired horse toward the house. He stood up and walked toward the road. The boy galloped up to the house, yanked off his hat, flung a yellow envelope on the ground, spun his horse around, and kicked up a gallop again.
Tom started to call after him, and then he leaned wearily down and picked up the telegram. He sat in the sun on the bench outside the forge, holding the telegram in his hand. And he looked at the hills and at the old house, as though to save something, before he tore open the envelope and read the inevitable four words, the person, the event, and the time.
Tom slowly folded the telegram and folded it again and again until it was a square no larger than his thumb. He walked to the house, through the kitchen, through the little living room, and into his bedroom. He took his dark suit out of the clothespress and laid it over the back of a chair, and he put a white shirt and a black tie on the seat of the chair. And then he lay down on the bed and turned his face to the wall.
2
The surreys and the buggies had driven out of the Salinas cemetery. The family and friends went back to Olive's house on Central Avenue to eat and to drink coffee, to see how each one was taking it, and to do and say the decent things.
George offered Adam Trask a lift in his rented surrey, but Adam refused. He wandered around the cemetery and sat down on the cement curb of the Williams family plot. The traditional dark cypresses wept around the edge of the cemetery, and white violets ran wild in the pathways. Someone had brought them in and they had become weeds.
The cold wind blew over the tombstones and cried in the cypresses. There were many cast-iron stars, marking the graves of Grand Army men, and on each star a small wind-bitten flag from a year ago Decoration Day.
Adam sat looking at the mountains to the east of Salinas, with the noble point of Fremont's Peak dominating. The air was crystalline as it sometimes is when rain is coming. And then the light rain began to blow on the wind although the sky was not properly covered with cloud.
Adam had come up on the morning train. He had not intended to come at all, but something drew him beyond his power to resist. For one thing, he could not believe that Samuel was dead. He could hear the rich, lyric voice in his ears, the tones rising and falling in their foreignness, and the curious music of oddly chosen words tripping out so that you were never sure what the next word would be. In the speech of most men you are absolutely sure what the next word will be.
Adam had looked at Samuel in his casket and knew that he didn't want him to be dead. And since the face in the casket did not look like Samuel's face, Adam walked away to be by himself and to preserve the man alive.
He had to go to the cemetery. Custom would have been outraged else. But he stood well back where he could not hear the words, and when the sons filled in the grave he had walked away and strolled in the paths where the white violets grew.
The cemetery was deserted and the dark crooning of the wind bowed the heavy cypress trees. The rain droplets grew larger and drove stinging along.
Adam stood up, shivered, and walked slowly over the white violets and past the new grave. The flowers had been laid evenly to cover the mound of new-turned damp earth, and already the wind had frayed the blossoms and flung the smaller bouquets out into the path. Adam picked them up and laid them back on the mound.
He walked out of the cemetery. The wind and the rain were at his back, and he ignored the wetness that soaked through his black coat. Romie Lane was muddy with pools of water standing in the new wheel ruts, and the tall wild oats and mustard grew beside the road, with wild turnip forcing its boisterous way up and stickery beads of purple thistles rising above the green riot of the wet spring.
The black 'dobe mud covered Adam's shoes and splashed the bottoms of his dark trousers. It was nearly a mile to the Monterey road. Adam was dirty and soaking when he reached it and turned east into the town of Salinas. The water was standing in the curved brim of his derby hat and his collar was wet and sagging.
At John Street the road angled and became Main Street. Adam stamped the mud off his shoes when he reached the pavement. The buildings cut the wind from him and almost instantly he began to shake with a chill. He increased his speed. Near the other end of Main Street he turned into the Abbot House bar. He ordered brandy and drank it quickly and his shivering increased.
Mr. Lapierre behind the bar saw the chill. "You'd better have another one," he said. "You'll get a bad cold. Would you like a hot rum? That will knock it out of you."
"Yes, I would," said Adam.
"Well, here. You sip another cognac while I get some hot water."
Adam took his glass to a table and sat uncomfortably in his wet clothes. Mr. Lapierre brought a steaming kettle from the kitchen. He put the squat glass on a tray and brought it to the table. "Drink it as hot as you can stand it," he said. "That will shake the chill out of an aspen." He drew a chair up, sat down, then stoo
d up. "You've made me cold," he said. "I'm going to have one myself." He brought his glass back to the table and sat across from Adam. "It's working," he said. "You were so pale you scared me when you came in. You're a stranger?"
"I'm from near King City," Adam said.
"Come up for the funeral?"
"Yes--he was an old friend."
"Big funeral?"
"Oh, yes."
"I'm not surprised. He had lots of friends. Too bad it couldn't have been a nice day. You ought to have one more and then go to bed."
"I will," said Adam. "It makes me comfortable and peaceful."
"That's worth something. Might have saved you from pneumonia too."
After he had served another toddy he brought a damp cloth from behind the bar. "You can wipe off some of that mud," he said. "A funeral isn't very gay, but when it gets rained on--that's really mournful."
"It didn't rain till after," said Adam. "It was walking back I got wet."
"Why don't you get a nice room right here? You get into bed and I'll send a toddy up to you, and in the morning you'll be fine."
"I think I'll do that," said Adam. He could feel the blood stinging his cheeks and running hotly in his arms, as though it were some foreign warm fluid taking over his body. Then the warmth melted through into the cold concealed box where he stored forbidden thoughts, and the thoughts came timidly up to the surface like children who do not know whether they will be received. Adam picked up the damp cloth and leaned down to sponge off the bottoms of his trousers. The blood pounded behind his eyes. "I might have one more toddy," he said.
Mr. Lapierre said, "If it's for cold, you've had enough. But if you just want a drink I've got some old Jamaica rum. I'd rather you'd have that straight. It's fifty years old. The water would kill the flavor."
"I just want a drink," said Adam.
"I'll have one with you. I haven't opened that jug in months. Not much call for it. This is a whisky-drinking town."
Adam wiped off his shoes and dropped the cloth on the floor. He took a drink of the dark rum and coughed. The heavy-muscled drink wrapped its sweet aroma around his head and struck at the base of his nose like a blow. The room seemed to tip sideways and then right itself.
"Good, isn't it?" Mr. Lapierre asked. "But it can knock you over. I wouldn't have more than one--unless of course you want to get knocked over. Some do."
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