After Gregory

by Austin Wright

  They had left him just beyond the overpass where the Millyville road crosses the Interstate. All the country was flat, fields divided by lines of brush, with clusters of trees around groups of farm buildings, widely scattered. He stood slightly above the general level of the fields. Just here, where the eastbound ramp descended to the Interstate from the Millyville road, was a gasoline station with a high sign (TEXACO) on two white legs, writing in the sky for motorists ahead. The wind whistled against the pipes. Another sign said TRUCK STOP, and another, FOOD. There was a low single-story building, sprawling back from the asphalt lot toward a little stream at the edge of a field. The building had orange shingles, a solid plate glass front, and the lot was parked with tractor trucks and automobiles. Hitchhiker crossed the lot, glanced in the window (counter, souvenirs, cash register, women in slacks), and went in.

  Try lunch. He ordered a hamburger and chocolate shake, sat in a booth, and ate slowly. Went to the men’s room. Mirror there, a shock, the exposed view of ugly Peter Gregory gaping at him. The high balding forehead, yellow curly hair, eye bags, bloody eyes, anyone would recognize him. It took courage to go back to the booth, but no one noticed. Sat a long time, delaying. Then out again into the sun. Noticed a poster tacked by the door:

  HEAR THE WORD OF GOD

  Rev. Osgood Landis

  Miranda Landis

  Coliseum, 8:00 pm

  That would have been last night, the big windowless amphitheater over the river where Peter Gregory drowned, the believers worshiping in their lighted vault while you struggled for watery rebirth below. That too was past. Soon I must hitch rides again. Because that’s what I have been born to: a hitchhiker. With all the time in the day and no place to go. Let’s sit in the sun a while at that table in back. Someone will come from the kitchen and chase us away, but until then, tables for travelers tired from the road.

  This particular bench, splintery and reddish brown, had a crust of dried ice cream at one corner, flies working on it. Flies all over. The discussion at the picnic table was lethargic, dazed by the sun. Questions without answers. Mainly this one: in view of the sudden allergy in the truck this morning, why can’t you cross back and raise Peter Gregory from the dead?

  It was the sun, bright shining at midday on the back of your head, making a sharp shadow of whoever you are on the red painted picnic table, stunning your eyes with the sharpness of contrast between sunlight and shadow. This sun was warm, but the air was cool as it came across the flat land undeflected, stirring the grasses, flapping the banners at the gas station next door, whistling on the pipes that held up TEXACO and TRUCK STOP and FOOD. See how the land stretches away from you in all directions, miles and miles, how the sky runs away from you into that blue beyond all horizons, out of sight. On the Interstate, cars zip past, down below the bank, zip and silence and thdrumm a truck and more trucks, while nearby people you do not know drive into the lot, unload into the building with the orange roof, come out again, get into their cars, descend the ramp to zip again.

  Waiting for an answer. No inside sound at all, only the whistling pipes, some live squeaking of birds in the grass. Then suddenly, Peter Gregory at the door of his house, walking into the kitchen and saying to Linda, his wife, Linda, I’ve come home: She looks at him with shocked joy and clattering plates: Oh my dear. Children, fat boy, skinny girl, climbing onto him in a tableau of reconciliation.

  Chasm in your brain, black hole. Try again. Linda in the kitchen doorway, looking at him straight. The delicate face, pale diamond eyes. He tries to explain: I’ve just come back from killing myself. She stares. Stop, don’t let her speak.

  What a jolt. No projections could alter her direction, hastened by his falling into the river, not to be reversed by jumping out again. No allergy in a stranger’s pickup truck could hide what Peter Gregory knew. Which Hitchhiker, dozing in the windy afternoon sun on the picnic table, could not remember. Warmed by the sun, watching the flies, listening to the zip and thdrumm, this man neither young nor old in the dark shapeless clothes put his elbows on the table, rested face in hands, brooding while the metamorphosis struggled to undo itself. Peter Gregory groping back to life, threatening all your joy, all the effort of the wet night and zest of the bright morning. Yet if he can’t go back, you ought to know why. All you know is Peter Gregory against Peter Gregory, who had made a botch of things. Peter Gregory whose dislike of Peter Gregory arose out of Peter Gregory’s own fine and finicky judgment. Piling manure on his head until it was difficult to distinguish manure from Gregory.

  But you, it wasn’t your disgust, your hatred, your rage. You try to remember, help him remember, because you need some excuse for being here. Some history to explain why he can’t go back and start over again. But it’s too hard. He took you into the river for reasons of some sort. Remember how sweetly the river washed away that crusted pile of disgust and soothed the angry disturbance. This question remained: If Peter Gregory drowned in the river, who are you? Did you plan this? Did you deliberately arrange to leave him in the river and you here?

  Never mind. It was impossible to tell what was on your mind when you were Peter Gregory. He knew his weakness, inability to swim, and despair would be enough. With the water in his shoes, socks, pants, shivering and defying his natural repugnance, he slipped, fell, and was in. Head under for a second—the slosh and pressure in his nose, bubbles streaming through his ears—and then he swam. It was Peter Gregory saying I’ll swim out far enough so I can’t get back. So much for Peter Gregory.

  For you meanwhile, something else. When you found yourself swimming better than expected. You had the struggle with the water, but also the lights on the shore. You were seeing those lights for the last time. It occurred to you it was Peter Gregory who was preventing you from seeing them again. It was Peter Gregory who was taking the night away from you, as he meant to take away also the morning and the countryside. The realization shocked you. That was a big sacrifice he was asking of you, to satisfy his ego. It woke you up, angry like a revolutionary with the possibility of a coup, kicking him out, letting him drown while you made your way back to the lights and life.

  The revolution was successful. Which puts you here now, with the sky and the sun and the cool air blowing the pennants and whistling against the signs. Whoever you are has no name and no place, free to go wherever you like except back. If it proves too difficult, if you have too many fits of grief, you can say it was just an experiment. You can always go back to the river, you told him then: it will still be there.

  FIVE

  In the afternoon the fairweather clouds began to thicken. They passed in front of the sun and took away its warmth. The afternoon is moving on, you said, night is coming, you’d better do something. You went down the ramp to the Interstate. It was not a decision: something within said Now and you obeyed. Where are you going? you asked. No reply. It was not an adventure yet.

  At the point where the ramp touched the highway, you turned to face the cars. For misidentification of Peter Gregory this was the most dangerous thing yet, for it was the main exit from the city to the Northeast. Come on, you said, get your ass out of here.

  A car stopped, the color of apricots, driven by a woman in a copper-gold dress. I’ll take you to the Cleveland turnoff, she said.

  The car smelled clean and new. Windshield tinted, motor silent, it rode like a boat. She was a pretty young woman, not as young as you first thought. A coppery necklace, earrings, gold-colored bracelets. What’s your name? It came high pitched out of the silence between you and the rock music on the radio. The question stunned you. You had no answer. You grabbed the first name flying by. It was Thomas Sebastian, but you checked that, looking for another. Osgood Landis, you almost said, catching that one too just in time, so that it came out Gilbert Osmond. You remembered too late the book that came from.

  But the air remained silent, not shocked, and that moment it became an adventure. Your life was an adventure, you realized it suddenly, and it was totally new.

>   Gilbert Osmond: aesthete collector, effete snob, private in the recesses of his home, the last person in the world you would meet hitchhiking on an American highway. You felt wonderful, full of meringue and ice cream, just as you had hoped.

  Most people call me Gil, Gil said.

  All right, Gil. Who are you?

  (Still, you would need a name more usable than Gil Osmond. You would have to think of a good one, that you could answer to without effort, that you would not forget. Names: Oscar Chapin. Stanley Trumpet. You would also need a job.)

  The reason I ask, look at your clothes. What happened to you?

  Better names, quick: Jack (Mississippi) Cousteau. Neanderthal (Ned) Truckee. That won’t do.

  Jobs: Truck driver. Postman. Reference librarian.

  She watched you. You noticed what had made you think of Osgood Landis when she first asked your name. She said, why are your clothes so all gummy and stinky? Your pants are covered with mud.

  That? I fell in a ditch.

  How come?

  It’s a long story.

  Forget it. She looked irritated, but since she’d asked your name you felt free to ask hers, hoping she would say Isabel, the free spirit of America turning its freshest face to the world.

  No reply. Her mood settled in like weather. Suddenly she didn’t want to talk. Is something wrong? You saw her shiver, hold herself in. At the next intersection she pulled off.

  You get out now. There’s something wrong with you.

  What’s wrong with me?

  Get away from there. I don’t like you.

  You watched her drive off, afraid of you, and you felt like an escaped convict wondering what she had seen.

  What you had seen was the decal on her windshield, showing a television screen with a large silver cross and shiny gleams of angel hair superimposed upon a castle with spires, all inside a legend reading LANDIS COMMUNITY. She had come from Cleveland to hear the Word of God but had found the devil in you.

  Late afternoon, the sky fading. He walked (Harold Hastings) into the town and stopped at a small restaurant for his supper. Meditating over his hot beef sandwich, trying to forget her evil message. The question was where to sleep tonight. He went into the delicatessen and bought a tin of canned meat, a chunk of cheese, and a loaf of bread, along with a shopping bag to carry them in. Tomorrow, Harold Hastings said, having discovered the future. Louis Bolero could mow lawns. Gus Tulips, highway construction worker.

  How to find a place to sleep? The town was very small. He passed a dentist’s office (Forscht Sprinkel could dig in gardens), three gas stations, a store selling tractors and mowers (Mitchell Matchum), and a rooming house: ROOMS.

  Did Hal Hastings want ROOMS? Could he afford ROOMS? A pair of elderly proprietors would call him “Son” and make him sign their guest book. They too would see something wrong in him. You had slept on the ground last night, you could do it again.

  You went out of town along the road, up a hill, houses with lights in their windows. Late dusk. An open field, with a barn on the other side. Signs in the field, facing the road: Elks, chewing tobacco, a restaurant. Beyond the field, the woods came up to the edge of the road, with a grassy ditch between woods and road. The sign was small, white, posted on a tree: NO TRESPASSING. Just beyond it, barely discernible in the thickening darkness, the barbed wire fence. The road leveled off. Not far ahead, the fields began again, with a group of farm buildings. Another sign across the ditch: NO TRESPASSING. All the woods in this area have signs, are black and full of thorns, brambles, and barbed wire.

  Car lights approaching, you went down into the ditch and waited for the car to pass. Eyes getting used to the dark. Fenceposts for the barbed wire, tall shapes of the trees beyond, stars through the tops of the trees. The floor of the woods was clean, not filled with underbrush as it had been further back, and you heard running water. You argued. The sign is meant for hunters—it doesn’t apply to you. It applies to everyone, Hal Hastings said: NO TRESPASSING means everybody. You insisted, nothing on signs applies to you. Written in words for people who use names. It doesn’t apply to squirrels or bears, it doesn’t apply to you.

  Leaving Hal Hastings behind, you crossed the ditch, inspected the fence, discovered it was down, and went into the woods. Picked your way through the trees, crunching the leafy forest bottom, and found a grassy patch next to a rock. You sat there, quiet. Occasionally the sound of a car, for you were still near the road. Also the running water you had heard before, and a remote roar over the fields and woods from the Interstate where you had left it at the other side of town.

  After a few minutes, what to do? By Gregory habits it was still early. You could go back to the movie advertised in the town. A long way to walk, just to see something Peter Gregory would have scorned. Yet no one could do anything in this darkness except sleep. Sleep then. Creatures without names who live in the woods, living by the natural light and dark.

  You wondered what rituals you still needed for sleep. This compulsion to remove clothes. Off your jacket, but the air was chilly, and you put it back on. Off tie, empty pockets, wallet on the ground. Rituals of washing and brushing your teeth, but no toothbrush, no water. You lay down on your side as if you were in bed.

  Thus began your second night without a name, alone on the unmediated surface of the earth. You had to get up again in a few minutes for what Peter Gregory’s mother years ago used to call the Call of Nature. Find a place in the dark to squat, tear up the paper bag in which you had carried your bread, shivering, if not from disgust then from fear of disgust. Whose disgust? Gregory’s, of course, his fastidious ghost.

  SIX

  Nameless in the morning after a night of names. After jobs, biographies, obituaries, confessional letters, amid ghostly trees and witches and terrors of the woods, you woke to the early morning light thinking you had not slept at all. The experiment has failed, you said.

  Wakened by the birds. Chickadees, cardinals, a distant cock crow. A woody grove, sunlight in the tops of trees. The grove sloped downward, and through the trees you could see the green slope of an opposite field, with the sunlight penetrating the dissolving mist. Forgetting the burials and arrests of the night, you were awake now with bird songs and a pleasant morning, saying, Well here it is: you asked for it, now enjoy it.

  A piece of cheese, two slices of bread. Down the slope, you kneeled and doused your mouth in the brook, fresh and cold, splashed your face, the stiff growing bristles. Wild life, junco in the leaves, small olive green birds in the branches.

  Sitting on a rock, you dozed, waiting for the wildness to come back. You stood up and stretched. You noticed how settled the trees had become since the night before, fixed like stars, placed for life. You were different. If you weren’t sleepy, you were bored. Though you weren’t going anywhere you would have to go. Back to the road, carrying your shopping bag. You began your long day’s walk.

  That’s what legs are for. All day for miles and miles, fields with scattered woods, country rolling with gentle hills, the road going mildly up and down. When the sun was high you sat on a rock and ate canned meat and bread and cheese. You came to a small town and took a long drink from the water fountain in the playground. You went to the General Store and bought a roll of toilet paper, a shaving set, an army canteen. You kept walking.

  Winston Topsoil, window washer. Newton Oldflower, garden weeder. Dozed on a bench in a village square and woke abruptly. You had forgotten to pick up your mail, then remembered who you were. Nicholas Rostov, no-count white trash. Day turned into late afternoon, afternoon into evening, evening into night. You prepared for another night in the woods.

  In the night a thunderstorm. You heard him curse the rain. Wet clothes, again, complaining. Followed by a day in a ravine by a stream where you washed your clothes and draped them on bushes to dry in the sun. Maybe now people wouldn’t call you stinky and look at you strange and say, There’s something wrong with you. Gerald Carstairs, naked bellhop under the open sky. In the late a
fternoon your clothes were dry. Jake Barnes put them on, climbed up to the road, back to the town he had passed through late the day before, and spent the fourth night of his life in a small hotel. I owe this to myself, he said.

  He signed the register as Dick Diver, and ate in the restaurant across the street. Late that evening he burned his credit cards in the wastebasket of his room and washed the ashes down the toilet. He slept deeply in the soft sheets and the pillow against his cheek.

  Morning in the Paradise Hotel, where the cracks in the ceiling bounded rectangular fields in a map of farm country. From your bed you saw chimney pots on a roof across the square and branches of a tree shining in the sun. You heard automobiles below, cars starting, idling, going, and you heard voices, men greeting, a woman’s voice, talk. Dick Diver, diver, needed to earn money. He got up and went to the window. Directly below were two men in farm clothes, talking by a parked car. A clock on the tower: 7:30. You felt the grief coming on again, for the dead who could never come back to tell the living how they had signed a hotel register as Dick Diver or ridden in a car with Isabel Archer. A letter for Linda, damn you: If you change your mind, please write to me care of this hotel.

  Quit that now. You’ve got to learn the difference between Gregory and you. Slice him away with a clean knife.

  To work. According to James Green, handyman, your job possibilities were limited. The skills and training of Peter Gregory were not transferable because you would need credentials to bring them into view. You will have to go from door to door, asking for work. Admit your lack of knowledge, but show your willingness—polite, pleasant, helpful.

  Consider the little restaurant where you ate yesterday. He could wash dishes. You went in the door, sat down at the counter. The fat waitress was collecting glasses in a large bin to soak in water under the counter. Excuse me.