by Walker Percy
“Stedmann’s World War I,” I say absently.
“Oh yeah! Wow! We’ll all read it, all about those bad old days, and lead our new life!”
A light breeze springs up, swirling the smoke column. A whiff of brimstone comes to my nostrils.
Now a tuning fork sings against my skull. Art whispers behind me. “Just a little vaccination, Doc. You understand.”
“Did you vaccinate the others?”
“Positively.”
“Ellen says you lie.”
“I don’t believe you. She’s a lovely person. If you go to Honey Island, I should like to employ her.”
“You keep away from her, you bastard.”
“I am not illegitimate.”
“If you vaccinated the others, how come they’re acting like that?”
“They act like that normally.”
Dr. Billy Matthews, perhaps because he can’t stand it any longer, perhaps because the vapors have irritated his vagal nucleus, comes charging up the grassy hillock, where he confronts the scientists.
“I heard you rascals!” he cries.
“Heared us say what?” asks Stryker easily.
“You insulted the United States, Old Glory, and Jesus Christ!”
“When did we do that?” asks Colley, also smiling, but his voice is shaky. The scientists are astonished at the sight of the burly chiropractor, fists clenched, bald head gleaming malignantly in the sodium light, sunshades flipped in place like black eye-patches.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you people are,” says the furious chiropractor, gazing into one face after another.
“What are we?” asks Max.
“I know!”
Dr. Habeeb adjusts his glasses and peers closely at Dr. Billy Matthews. “A perfect example of Homo Americanensis politicus paranoicus, would you say, Max?”
“Don’t fight!” I cry from the bunker. “Billy is a good fellow. Once when he and I were in Ecuador—”
“Say that again,” says the chiropractor to Mark Habeeb.
“Or would it be more accurate to classify him as coonass or redneck?” Mark asks Max.
It is difficult to say which is the greater insult to Billy Matthews, to be called a coonass, a derogatory term for a Cajun, or a redneck, equally unflattering for a North Louisianian.
“Kike!”
“As a matter of fact, I’m Syrian.”
“Atheist!”
“Coonass!”
“Communist!”
“Holy Roller!”
“That’s not true. I am a Southern Baptist.”
“Christ, that’s worse.”
“Un-American!”
“Kluxer!”
“One Worlder!”
“Racist!”
“Nigger lover.”
“Knothead!”
“Liberal!”
For some reason, these last two epithets, the mildest of the list, proved the last straw. In a rage, yet almost happily, the two fall upon one another, fists flying. They grapple for each other, fall to the earth with a thud and roll into the sand trap.
“No!” I cry, getting up and staggering around. “Don’t fight!”
“Don’t jump in there,” says Max, grabbing my arm.
The brimstone smell is stronger. Smoke swirls between us. Stryker, I see, is most strongly affected by the noxious vapors. His eyes go vacant and lose focus. The Heavy Sodium ions hit his pineal body, seat of self, like a guillotine, sundering self from self forever, that ordinary self, the restless aching everyday self, from the secret self one happens on in dreams, in poetry, during ordeals, on happy trips—“Ah, this is my real self!” Forever after he’ll live like a ghost inhibiting himself. He’ll orbit the earth forever, reading dials and recording data and spinning theories by day, and at night seek to reenter the world of creatures by taking the form of beasts and performing unnatural practices.
I even fancy that I see his soul depart, exiting his body through the top of his head in a little corkscrew curl of vapor, as the soul is depicted in ancient woodcuts. Or was it no more than a wisp of smoke blown from the bunker?
“Over here, Doc.”
“What? Who’s that?”
I open my eyes. A fog must have rolled in from the swamp. The sodium lights have turned into soft mazy balls. Voices come from the highway, but the bunker is deserted.
“Come over here, Doc.”
It is Victor’s voice. I follow it into the woods, staggering into a pocket of ground fog that has settled into a saucer-shaped glade.
“Is that you, Victor?” I say to a shadow tall as a cypress.
“No,” says a different voice, muffled and flat. “Victor’s gone. I sent him for you. Sit down.”
It is Uru. He points to a stump. I sit down in a pool of fog, which is as thick and white as a CO2 Transylvania fog.
“What do you want, Uru?”
“I want your machine.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know what’s going on here but Victor and Willard say you know something and that your machine works. Let’s have it.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Well, I’ll find one in your house.”
“It wouldn’t do you any good. You wouldn’t know how to use it.”
“We’ll be the judge of that.” Uru takes another stump. Hunched over in his monkhu6, he looks like a benched pro in a poncho. His face is in darkness.
“If we live through this, I’ll bring the lapsometer wherever you like, test your people, and treat them if they need it.”
“We can take care of our own.”
“Very well. I’ll be going.”
“All we want from you is you off our backs.”
“Very well. You got it.”
Uru picks up his izinkhonkwani, which hangs between his legs like a Scotsman’s sporran, and slings it to one side.
“We’re taking what we want and destroying what we don’t and we don’t need you.”
“Is that what Victor says?”
“Victor’s got nothing to say about it. Let me tell you something.” Uru hunches forward on his stump. We sit knee to knee like commuters but I still can’t make out his face. “We got two hundred Bantus just from this town and not one of them, not one, got any use for Victor or sweet Jesus.”
“So?”
“So we don’t need any help from you or Victor in what we’re going to do.”
“Then why did you send for me?”
“You want to know what’s funny, Doc?”
“No.”
“The way you chucks sold Victor on sweet Jesus and he out-Jesused you. You beat him with Jesus but you beat him so bad that in the end he out-Jesused you and made liars out of you and that was the one thing you couldn’t stand. So Victor won after all.”
“Victor wouldn’t think that was funny.”
“No, he wouldn’t but Victor doesn’t matter now, not you or Victor. What matters is what we’re going to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Like I said. Take what we need, destroy what we don’t, and live in peace and brotherhood.”
“Peace and brotherhood.” The map has come back, crooked capillary county roads and straight stretches of interstate arteries. “Well, you’re right about one thing. I couldn’t help you now even if you’d let me. We’re not talking about the same thing. We’re talking about different kinds of trouble. First you got to get to where you’re going or where you think you’re going—although I hope you do better than that, because after all nothing comes easier than that, being against one thing and tearing down another thing and talking about peace and brotherhood—I never saw peace and brotherhood come from such talk and I hope you do better than that because there are better things and harder things to do. But, either way, you got to get to where you’re going before I can help you.”
“Help us do what?”
“There is no use my even telling you because, Ph.D. or not, you wouldn’t know what I was talking about. You got
to get to where we are or where you think we are and I’m not even sure you can do that.”
“Like I told you, Doc, we can do it and without your help.”
“Good luck, then.” I rise.
“We don’t need that either.”
“Yes, you do.”
“You better go back, Doc, while you can.”
“Papa, have you lost your faith?”
“No.”
Samantha asked me the question as I stood by her bed. The neuroblastoma had pushed one eye out and around the nose-bridge so she looked like a Picasso profile.
“Then why don’t you go to mass any more?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because you don’t go with me.”
“Papa, you’re in greater danger than Mama.”
“How is that?”
“Because she is protected by Invincible Ignorance.”
“That’s true,” I said, laughing.
“She doesn’t know any better.”
“She doesn’t.”
“You do.”
“Yes.”
“Just promise me one thing, Papa.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t commit the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.”
“Which one is that?”
“The sin against grace. If God gives you the grace to believe in him and love him and you refuse, the sin will not be forgiven you.”
“I know.” I took her hand, which even then still looked soiled and chalk-dusted like a schoolgirl’s.
I wonder: did it break my heart when Samantha died? Yes. There was even the knowledge and foreknowledge of it while she still lived, knowledge that while she lived, life still had its same peculiar tentativeness, people living as usual by fits and starts, aiming and missing, while present time went humming, and foreknowledge that the second she died, remorse would come and give past time its bitter specious wholeness. If only— If only we hadn’t been defeated by humdrum humming present time and missed it, missed ourselves, missed everything. I had the foreknowledge while she lived. Still, present, time went humming. Then she died and here came the sweet remorse like a blade between the ribs.
But is there not also a compensation, a secret satisfaction to be taken in her death, a delectation of tragedy, a license for drink, a taste of both for taste’s sake?
It may be true. At least Doris said it was. Doris was a dumbbell but she could read my faults! She said that when I refused to take Samantha to Lourdes. Doris wanted to! Because of the writings of Alexis Carrel and certain experiments by the London Psychical Society, etcetera etcetera. The truth was that Samantha didn’t want to go to Lourdes and I didn’t want to take her. Why not? I don’t know Samantha’s reasons, but I was afraid she might be cured. What then? Suppose you ask God for a miracle and God says yes, very well. How do you live the rest of your life?
Samantha, forgive me. I am sorry you suffered and died, my heart broke, but there have been times when I was not above enjoying it.
Is it possible to live without feasting on death?
Art and Ellen help me to my feet.
“Ready, Chief?”
“Where are we going?”
“My car is over there.”
“Dr. More is going to Honey Island,” says Art.
“I haven’t decided,” I say, frowning.
“Then you and I can go to Denmark,” says Art.
“Denmark!” I repeat with astonishment. “Why?”
“Our work here is finished.” Art gazes down at the bunker, which is smoking more than ever. Charley Parker’s hose is still running but Charley is gone.
“Why Denmark?”
“Number one, it is my home base. Number two, it is close to the Nobel Prize committee. Number three, it is the vanguard of civilization. Number four, I can get you a job there.”
“What kind of a job?”
“Of course after the Nobel you can write your own ticket. Meanwhile you’ve been offered the position of chief encephalographer at the Royal University.”
Art advances with his lapsometer. I can’t seem to move.
“He’s not going off with you!” cries Ellen.
“I think he wants to,” says Art quickly. For a second the tuning fork hums on my skull. I knock it away.
“Keep away from him!” warns Ellen.
“One little massage of his musical-erotic and he’ll be right as rain,” says Art.
He stoops over me. I watch him dreamily.
“Just a minute.” Ellen touches his shirt. I frown but cannot rouse myself. “Step over here.”
Ellen returns arm in arm with Art. She hands me her car keys. “You can go now, Chief.”
I am peering at Art through the smoke. He nods reassuringly. “She’s right. You can go on home, Doc.”
“Where do you think you’re going?” I ask Ellen.
“With Dr. Immelmann.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugs. “I need a job and you evidently don’t need me. It’s nothing new. Dr. Immelmann offered me a position the first day he came to see you.”
“Doing what?”
“As his traveling secretary.”
“You’re not traveling anywhere with this bastard.” I grab her hand and yank her away from Art. “Why you evil-minded son of a bitch,” I tell Art.
“I can’t understand why he calls me those extraordinary names,” says Art to no one in particular.
“Get away from here,” I say uneasily, for now Art is advancing upon us with his, with my, lapsometer.
Slinging the device from his shoulder, he holds out both hands. “The two of you will come with me.”
“We have to go,” whispers Ellen, shrinking against me.
“No we don’t.”
“If we both go, Chief, maybe it will be all right.”
“No, it won’t,” I say, not taking my eyes from Art, whose arms are outstretched like the Christ at Sacre Coeur in New Orleans.
“We’ll all be happy in Copenhagen,” murmurs Art.
Beautiful beautiful Copenhagen.
“Let’s sing, Doc!”
What is frightening is his smiling assurance. He doesn’t even need the lapsometer!
“Let’s go, kids,” says Art. One hand touches Ellen.
“Don’t touch her!” I cry, but I can’t seem to move. I close my eyes. Sir Thomas More, kinsman, saint, best dearest merriest of Englishmen, pray for us and drive this son of a bitch hence.
I open my eyes. Art is turning slowly away, wheeling in slow motion, a dazed hurt look through the eyes as if he had been struck across the face.
“I think you hurt his feelings,” whispers Ellen, trembling.
“How?”
“By what you called him.”
“What did I call him?”
“S.O.B.”
“Really?” I was sure I had not prayed aloud.
“What else were you mumbling? Something about a saint?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you think you’re a saint?”
“No.” Then Ellen never heard of the other Thomas More.
“Look, he’s leaving.”
“So he is.”
“Shouldn’t we—”
“No.” I hold her tight.
Art disappears into the smoke swirling beyond the bunker.
“Now what?” asks Ellen.
“I think I’ll have a drink.”
“No, you won’t. Let’s go home,” she says, spitting on me and smoothing my eyebrows.
FIVE YEARS LATER
In the Slave Quarters
9 a.m. / CHRISTMAS EVE
HOEING COLLARDS IN MY KITCHEN GARDEN.
A fine December day. It is cold but the winter sun pours into the walled garden and fills it up.
After hoeing a row: sit in the sunny corner, stretch out my legs and look at my boots. A splendid pair of new boots of soft oiled leather, good for hunting and fishing and walking to town. For the first time I understand what the Confederate sold
ier was always saying: a good pair of boots is the best thing a man can have.
A poor man sets store by good boots. Ellen and I are poor. We live with our children in the old Quarters. Constructed of slave brick worn porous and rounded at the corners like sponges, the apartments are surprisingly warm in winter, cool in summer. They are built like an English charterhouse, a hundred apartments in a row along the bayou, each with a porch, living room or (in my case) library, two bedrooms, kitchen, garden, one behind the other.
Waiting and listening and looking at my boots.
Here’s one difference between this age and the last. Now while you work, you also watch and listen and wait. In the last age we planned projects and cast ahead of ourselves. We set out to “reach goals.” We listened to the minutes of the previous meeting. Between times we took vacations.
Through the open doorway I can see Ellen standing at the stove in a swatch of sunlight. She stirs grits. Light and air flow around her arm like the arm of Velasquez’s weaver girl. Her half apron is lashed just above the slight swell of her abdomen.
She socks spoon down on pot and cocks her head to listen for the children, slanting her dark straight eyebrows. A kingfisher goes ringing down the bayou.
Meg and Thomas More, Jr., are still asleep.
Chinaberries bounce off the tin roof.
The bricks are growing warm at my back. In the corner of the wall a garden spider pumps its web back and forth like a child on a swing.
My practice is small. But my health is better. Fewer shakes and depressions and unnatural exaltations. Rise at six every morning and run my trotline across the bayou. Water is the difference! Water is the mystical element! At dawn the black bayou breathes a white vapor. The oars knock, cypress against cypress, but the sound is muffled, wrapped in cotton. As the trotline is handed along, the bank quickly disappears and the skiff seems to lift and be suspended in a new element globy and white. Silence presses in and up from the vaporish depths come floating great green turtles, blue catfish, lordly gaspergous.
Strange: I am older, yet there seems to be more time, time for watching and waiting and thinking and working. All any man needs is time and desire and the sense of his own sovereignty. As Kingfish Huey Long used to say: every man a king. I am a poor man but a kingly one. If you want and wait and work, you can have.
