o’er-reached by trees, struck by hard lines of radiant light, blindly waited. Locust Hill, snowy mornings, his dogs, Mother’s face. That sad monster called boyhood. Lewis’s throat constricted, and swallowing became impossible. In the end, a body simply outlived its usefulness.
He was now in for the worst. The heart beat and beat and need run itself out.
O, to see his Janey again! For hers was a soul so grim, stoic, and resolute. We are sent to keep one other person alive. And not ’til the end do we know which one was ours, which was the one we were sent for. All of one’s good was displayed in a moment. But not ’til the end did one know which moment.
Wishing to speak to that lady, he saw she was just now occupied with the memory of a dead child, and turned away. By not marrying, he’d at least been spared that!
Night now came crashing and breaking in pieces, shards and motes of black.
Her cow’s lowing fell quiet. Her dog barked. That lady would wish him a good night, if only he could approach her. Pernier attended with dark and somber look. The lady knew! O, she knew his plight, even with her little ones tucked in bed, her chicken dinner simmering on the stove, bubbling tiny curls of bloody feathers. Her cribs were full to the very top, for winter.
“A pleasant evening—” he croaked, at the apogee of his orbit.
“Yes, Captain?” She brightened, for here was conversation.
O, dismal! O, painful! Reflections swarmed to goad him away from her, for she was comfort and aid. Any instant, he’d beat his head and cry out and be truly insane. He just managed to break off with a smile. With a slight bow, going his way politely while a din, a gnattering of demonic flies, resounded by his ears.
He began to circle and chant. Looking west, where ev’ry hope went to die.
The clouds with weak gold light along their bottoms were seeing the world’s end. The world: the thing for which he’d never stop fighting. But why was it all designed? God, please end the world, and let us all awaken in the next!
A cardinal said, again and again, Am I alone? Where are you?
But O, for an earth made the way they’d believed! With one long river top to bottom and shore to shore. Which prov’d the creation was not for Man, who was only cast-away in it.
No, tonight the planet was only a lonely outpost in a forgotten corner. The garden was dismantled quickly now. As for Tom, he’d wonder when he saw the notes. “But these are mere facts,” he’d say. “Where is the woolly mammoth? Where is the Northwest Passage, the ten Lost Tribes?”
Tom had called him the fittest person. But not ’til that moment did he comprehend what he’d been fittest for. Meanwhile, from her screaming nightmare, Janey had waken’d gasping, crying over her children, who fled a world desp’rate to kill them. Like her, they’d be abducted over and over, held captive and raped, and raped again, over and over.
The dark was heavy as iron on leaves and branches. And through the crushing weight, the night stars began to press. Venus was out, naturally. He had but a moment left. And yet that lady did not leave, for summat was very wrong with her guest. But she was not afraid. A natural thing was happening, like a birth. She was a great lady on a par with his mother, or Janey, or F., or Theo, or L. B., or the madwoman who’d scarified herself in a horrible manner.
Twice had he tried for that embrace, the dousing of the fire that burned in his ev’ry nerve. In constant tremor, with flashes of wildfire, he suddenly heard the growl of his familiar.
The new world was coming on behind him. Light broke the clouds open and spread all around. Pernier was silent and forbore it all, foresaw every moment.
Falling to his knees by a beautiful arbor, the o’erreaching branches stretch’d tendriled fingers, and dead milkweed pods and vines clung fast to a limestone wall. A part of him he’d got cut off from felt such joy. How he should love to feel it! Perhaps it was not too late to feel! But a nameless, bottomless thing said there was nothing. An explosion threw up colours to the west, and the sun fell in the sea, making clouds from the steam. Slowly, two worlds ground their way into each other, like lovers, and eras’d his time. The road came loose and the columns toppled. He could not stir from there unless that lady came forward to release him. Everywhere about Heaven, Sergeant Floyd was asking and looking for him, in increasing alarm.
Now, streaks of light broke into shrill rockets and screamed in ev’ry direction. Each note flow’d and spark’d, did tricks in the air, like countless swallows of gold whiskey, red wine, green absinthe. The earth was shaking, and the universe vibrat’d and flick’red at such velocity as to appear solid. New sensations arrived nowhere and meant nothing. He’d come so far, but could not stir the final step. To stink in the body and bowel, to not be able to flee the stench of fear. Meanwhile, his enemies smiled, trading satisfied looks.
Probably, he’d ended that day on the beach, where Janey scorned him. He had never returned after all.
The evening lasted, and that place grew in space, pushing out to form the sides of his universe. This widening in a lost track dead-ended here. It seemed he’d always seen it, in his mind’s eye. And that lady was awaiting his crossing. Through it all, a whistling of wind acrost a hollow-mouth’d bottle. Something hurtled toward him. That bullet which missed him on the Maria’s! On a flick’ring plain, in his squirming mind’s eyes, he embrac’d Janey, dirty skin and animal musk. Stinking, with ripp’d nails, scarred knuckles, rough hands and chapped rasping lips, teeth yellow at the root, he nursed at those small brown dugs, worked a rough nipple into his mouth which let go a flow of thick yellow cream. And as he clambered up, his spunk came.
Wishing not to ever forget the distant bright world, sobbing after it already with longing, he went in the cabin, loaded the pistol and shot himself in the skull. Then, lying on the floor, he shrieked forth, “O, Madam! Give me some water, for I am so strong and it is so hard to die! . . .”
3. “…why did I come down in the same place?…”
Bill Lewis was, that moment, saying something to someone, and looked up to find the dim, surprised faces of his class. He was at the chalk-board with the chalk in hand, the squealing tip having slid down in a crooked line, like its author was interrupted by a seizure. Richard, in the back row, had his hand up with a question. The room was full of maps. And globes. The silence, impatient, had undertones of anguish. The faces were those of lovely young women, interrupted here and there by the duller male. “Are you all right?” Joaney asked. She was quite plainly big, pregnant, hugely ready to give birth. Her hard, thrusting belly crowded the desk.
He stepped back and looked. It wasn’t his handwriting exactly, but he had clearly written it. His hands didn’t seem familiar.
“Mr. Lewis, you want me to get the nurse?” Joaney asked. “You’re sort of white.”
He felt a little sick, full in the bladder, trembly as if for want of food. It seemed this scene kept happening, or had happened before. The roll was open on the desk: Pete, Jeff, Chris, Bethany, Joaney, Rebekah, Natalie, Skyler, Tremaine, Richard, etc. It was all pretty American. Maps looked back at him from all sides. Maps accused him and confronted him. It was all his fault, but what was? One boy was black. One girl was Asian. Richard was still waiting and Lewis happened to glance at his last name, Mercutio. “Richard, your last name is really Mercutio?” he asked. Laughter pressed him and held him in one place. “Your question was?”
“Were
