15

   While in my bedroom sewing a rip in Elsie’s blue skirt I heard the doorbell and then Bing barking. I went on sewing, expecting Jack to go to the door, but finally I realized that he had shut himself up in his room and wasn’t hearing the doorbell, so I put down my sewing and hurried through the house to the door.
   On the porch stood Maud Mayberry, from Inverness Park, a large florid woman whose husband works down at the mill near Olema. I knew her from the PTA.
   “Come in,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t hear you right away.”
   We sat down at the dining room table and had coffee; I sewed on Elsie’s skirt while Mrs. Mayberry chatted about various events around north west Marin.
   “Have you heard about the saucer group?” she said presently. “Claudia Hambro’s bunch?”
   “Who cares about those nuts,” I said.
   “They’re predicting the end of the world,” Mrs. Mayberry said.
   At that I put down my sewing. “Well, I have to hand it to Claudia Hambro,” I said. “I take off my hat to her. Just when I get to thinking that my own life is a mess and I’m an idiot and can’t handle the simplest situation, then I hear about something like this. They’re psychotic; they really are. They ought to have medical attention.”
   Mrs. Mayberry went on to tell me details. She had gotten them second hand, but she seemed to think they were accurate. In fact, they had come from the wife of the young minister living in Point Reyes Station. The saucer group evidently expected to be whisked away to outer space just before the calamity. It was the most far-out crap I have ever heard in my entire life; it really was.
   “They ought to cart that Claudia Hambro away,” I said. “She’s spreading this contagion like the plague. Next thing, everybody in north west Marin County will be going up on Noren’s Acres and waiting for the saucer. I mean, this is going to get written up in the newspapers. This is what you read about. This happens once in a decade. I never thought it would happen with people I actually know. My good god—Claudia Hambro’s little girl was over here only the other day, with the Bluebirds. My good god.” I shook my head; it was really the end. And this was what my brother had gotten mixed up in.
   “Your brother’s in the group, isn’t he?” Mrs. Mayberry said.
   “Yes,” I said.
   “But you’re far from sympathetic.”
   I said, “My brother’s as nutty as the rest of them, and I don’t care who hears me say it. I just wish I hadn’t brought him up here. Hadn’t let Charley persuade me to bring him up here.”
   Mrs. Mayberry said, “Do you know about the story your brother wrote for the group?”
   “What story?” I said.
   “Well, according to what Mrs. Baron said—that’s who I get it from—he did some automatic writing under hypnosis, or under the telepathic influence of their spiritual leader… who lives, as I understand it, down in San Anselmo. Anyhow, he brought this story to the group, and they’ve been reading it and passing it around, trying to get at the symbolistic meaning beneath it.”
   “Christ,” I said, fascinated.
   Mrs. Mayberry said, “I’m surprised you hadn’t heard about it. They had a couple of special meetings about it.”
   “How would I hear about it?” I said. “When do I get out? My good god, I have to go down to S.F. three days a week, and now that my husband’s in the hospital—”
   “It’s about you and that young man who just recently moved up here,” Mrs. Mayberry said. “Nathan Anteil, who rented the old Mondavi place.”
   At that, I felt cold all over. “What do you mean, about me and Mr. Anteil?” I said.
   “Well, they haven’t showed it to anyone outside the group. That’s all Mrs. Baron knew.”
   I said, “Have you heard anything about me and Mr. Anteil from other sources?”
   “No,” Mrs. Mayberry said. “Like what?”
   “That fucking Claudia Hambro,” I said, and then, seeing the expression on Mrs. Mayberry’s face, I said, “Excuse me.” I threw down my sewing; I was so mad and upset I could hardly see. Going to my purse I got out my cigarettes, lit one, and then threw it into the fire– place. “Excuse me,” I said. “I have to go out.”
   Running into the bedroom I changed from my jeans to a skirt and blouse; I combed my hair, put on lipstick, got my purse and car keys, and started out of the house. There, at the dining room table, sat that big horse’s ass, Mrs. Mayberi-y, staring at me as if I were a freak.
   “I have to go out for a while,” I told her. “Good-bye.” I ran down the path and jumped into the Buick. A minute later I was driving up the road, as fast as possible, toward Inverness Park.


   I found Claudia out in her cactus garden, weeding. “Listen,” I said, “I think if you had any social responsibility you would have telephoned me as soon as you got your hands on that thing he wrote. Jack wrote.” I was out of breath from running up her flagstone path from the car. “Can I have it, please?”
   Claudia stood up, holding her trowel. “You mean that story?”
   “Right,” I said.
   “It’s being read,” she said. “We passed it around the group. I don’t know who has it.”
   “Have you read it?” I said. “What does it say about me and Nat Anteil?”
   Claudia said, “It’s in the form usual with telepathical writing. You can read it. I’ll put your name down and when it gets back to me I’ll bring it over to you.” She had amazing calmness; I have to give her credit for that. She kept really poised.
   “I’ll sue you,” I said. “I’ll take you to court.”
   “That’s right,” Claudia said. “You have that big attorney down in San Rafael. You know, Mrs. Hume, in a month from now none of us will remember or even care about all this. It’ll be all washed away.” She smiled her dazzling, beautiful smile. Probably there wasn’t another woman as physically beautiful as Claudia in Northern California. And she certainly wasn’t intimidated. She didn’t bat an eye, and I know I’ve never been so angry and upset in my entire life. I really felt that in a couple of moments with me she had gotten the upper hand. It was that magnetic personality of hers, that assurance. She really is a powerful woman. No wonder she had control of that group. Anyhow, I have never been good at dealing with women. All I could do was keep my temper and speak as rationally as possible.
   “I’d appreciate having that thing back,” I said. “Possibly you could contact the different members of your group and find out who has it and then I’ll drive over and get it back from them. I frankly don’t see what’s so difficult or impossible about that. If you’ll give me the names of your group I’ll call them now.”
   Claudia said, “It’ll come back. In due time.”
   I went away feeling like a child that had been reprimanded by its teacher. Good god, I thought. That woman completely takes over; there’s nothing I can do. I know she has no right to be circulating that god damn thing, and she knows it, too, but she made it sound as if I was asking for something completely outrageous. How did she do it? Now! felt more depressed than angry; I didn’t even feel scared. Ijust felt how incompetent and idiotic I was, how unable to handle my affairs.
   Looking back on it I saw that I should have been able to march up to her and simply demand that thing, not threaten or yell but just hold out my hand, say nothing at all.
   As soon as I had gotten back in my car I made up my mind to get Nathan and get him to get the damn thing back for me.
   After all, it involved him, too.
   I drove over to his place and parked and honked the horn. No one appeared on the porch, so I shut off the motor and got out and went up the stairs. Nobody answered my knock, so I opened the door, looked in and called. Still no one. The motherfucker, I thought. I returned to the car and began driving around purposelessly, with no more idea of what to do than a year-old baby.
   After half an hour I drove back to my own house; the time was two-thirty and the girls would be getting home. Mrs. Mayberry had left, thank god. I took a look into Jack’s room, but he wasn’t there; he probably had been eavesdropping on me and Mrs. Mayberry and had had the good sense to get out of the house.
   Going into the kitchen I poured myself a drink.
   This is really the pit, I thought. It’s all over town, and not only that, it’s being circulated by the screwiest, craziest, nuttiest bunch of simps in the entire North American continent. Of all the people to get hold of the god damn thing. What do you suppose it says, anyhow? I wondered. What did the asshole say?
   I called my attorney, Sam Cohen. After I had told him the situation he advised me to sit tight and wait until I had actually seen the document or whatever it’s called. I thanked him and went and made myself another drink. Then I called Doctor Andrews. The receptionist said I couldn’t hope to get through to him until four; he had a patient until then, and for me to call back. By now the girls had come home. I hung up and went outside, onto the patio, and watched the Rouen drake chasing the Muscovy around the pen. First he chased her up onto the feed can, and then she flew to the far end, onto the water trough. He ran after her and she then flew back.
   At four-ten I was able to get hold of Doctor Andrews. He told me to take one of the Sparines he had given me and to wait until I actually saw the god damn story.
   “By then even the farms out on the point’ll know about me and Nathan,” I said.
   In his usual fat-assed way he mumbled about keeping cool and taking a long-term view.
   “That’s what I’m doing, you hick analyst,” I told him. “You slob. My reputation in this town is going to be ruined. You never lived in a small town; it’s easy enough for you to say, living in San Francisco. You can screw anybody you want and nobody gives a damn. Up here they’re voting on you in the PTA before you have your pants zipped back up. My god, I have the Bluebirds, and the dance group—they’ll stop sending their kids, and I won’t be able to get my mail delivered, or the electricity—they won’t sell me food at the Mayfair; I’ll have to drive to Petaluma every time I want a loaf of bread—I won’t even be able to buy gas for my car!”
   Andrews told me I was getting worked up inordinately. Finally I told him to go to hell and hung up.
   Anyhow, I thought, that’s what analysts are for, to have steam blown off at them.
   In a sense he’s right. I am getting too excited.
   At six o’clock, while the girls and I were eating dinner—Jack was still hiding out somewhere—the front door opened and Nat Anteil walked into the house.
   “Where have you been?” I said, leaping up. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day.” And then I saw by the look on his face that he knew. “Can’t we sue them?” I said. “For defamation of character or something?”
   Nat said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
   “Wait,” I said. I led him out of the dining room and into the study; closing the door so the girls couldn’t hear I said, “What is it?”
   He said, “I was down in San Francisco, talking to your husband. Evidently Jack told him about us; anyhow he knows.”
   “Jack told everybody,” I said. “He wrote it up and gave it to Claudia Hambro.”
   “Charley and I had a long talk,” Nat said, but I interrupted him before he could go into one of his two-hour speeches.
   “You have to go over to Claudia’s and get it back,” I told him. “Tell her you’ll give her a hundred bucks for it; that ought to get it out of her.” Going to the desk I got my checkbook out and sat down on the bed to write out a check. “Okay?” I said. “I’ll leave it up to you. It’s entirely in your hands; it’s your responsibility.”
   Nat said, “I’ll go do what I can.” He stood holding the check, however, not doing a damn thing.
   “Go on,” I said. “Go get it. Or is this another of those degrading domestic errands that so offends you?”
   “Your husband said that when he gets back up here he’s going to kill you.”
   I said, “Oh, the hell he is. I’ll kill him. I’ll buy a gun and shoot him. Go get that thing from Claudia, will you? Don’t worry about Charley; he’ll probably fall dead of a heart attack on the way home. He’s been saying that for years. He came home one day when I sent him to buy me Tampax and practically killed me on the spot. It’s the kind of solution that comes into the mind of a man like that; it’s predictable, and when you’ve been married to him—”
   By this time Nat had started out of the study, holding the check in his hand.
   “You’re going to do it?” I said, following him. “Get it back? For me? For us?”
   “Okay,” he said, in a weary voice. “I’ll try.”
   “Work your sexy charm on her,” I said. “Do you know her? Have you ever met her? Go home and get that marvelous rust-colored skiing sweater you had on that day I first met you—god, have you got an experience in store, meeting Claudia Hambro.” I followed him outdoors, to his car. “She’s the most sensationally beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my entire life. She looks like a jungle princess, with that mane of hair and those filed teeth.”
   I told him how to find her house, and he drove off without saying anything further.
   Feeling much more cheerful, I returned to the house. The girls were fooling around at the dinner table, sliding mounds of spinach back and forth at each other. I gave them a couple of swats with my hand and then reseated myself and lit a cigarette.
   I’m smoking too much, I thought. I’ll have to get Nat to help me cut down. He’d probably force me to stop entirely, once I gave him an inch. He probably thinks it’s too expensive anyway.
   Later on, since Jack had not put in an appearance, I cleared the table and got the girls to do the dishes. Seated in the living room in front of the fireplace, I began meditating about what Nat had said, the business about Charley.
   Like hell he’ll kill me, I thought. But maybe he will. I’ll have to go get the sheriff or something. Get somebody to come over and stick around.
   I thought of calling Doctor Andrews at his home and asking him about Charley. In the past he had been able to predict what Charley was going to do; it was part of his field to know those things. How the hell could I tell? Maybe the heart attack had scared him so much he might actually do it.
   The front door opened. For a moment I thought it was Nat, back with the document, but instead it was Jack, wearing his old army raincoat and hiking boots. Jumping up, I said, “God damn it, I don’t mind you telling Charley, but why the hell did you have to tell the Inverness Park flying saucer group?”
   He glanced down sheepishly and grinned in that idiotic way.
   “What did you say in that nutty piece of writing?” I demanded. “Do you have a copy of it? Yes? No? Do you remember? You probably don’t even remember what it said, you—” I couldn’t think of any words to fit him. “Get out of here,” I said. “Get out of my house. Go on, get your stuff and go. Pile it in the car and I’ll drive you down to San Francisco. I mean it.” By his reaction I saw that he didn’t believe I was serious. “I wouldn’t have you around here,” I told him. “You lunatic.”
   In his creaky voice he said, “I have an open invitation from the Hambros to stay with them.”
   “Then go stay with them!” I shouted. “And get that woman to pick up your crap; tell her to come drive you and it over there.” I grabbed up something—it felt like one of the children’s toys—and threw it at him. I was so furious at him I was virtually out of my mind; if he could stay at the Hambros’ we’d never get him out of town—he could stay there and give them all the inside dope on us, write one telepathical paper after another, supply junk for an endless number of meetings. “And don’t expect me to drive you over.” I yelled, running past him to open the door. “You get over there on your own power. And get all your crap out of here tonight.”
   Still grinning his idiotic grin he sidled past me and out. Without a word—after all, what could he say?—he shambled off down the driveway to the road and disappeared into the darkness beyond the cypress trees. I slammed the front door, and then I hurried through the house, to his room, and began gathering up all his crap.
   At first I tried to lug it out front, to the driveway. But after a few trips I gave up. Why should I carry his stuff for him? Kill myself over a lot of rubbish—.
   Getting madder and madder, I threw it all together into the cardboard carton we had intended to use as a cage for the girls’ guinea pig. Taking hold of one end, I dragged it out the back door of his’room, onto the field and over to the incinerator. And then I did something that at the time I knew was wrong. Getting the gallon jug of white gas which we used with the roto-tiller, I poured gas onto the carton, and, with my cigarette lighter, ignited it. In ten minutes the whole thing was nothing but glowing embers. Except for his collection of rocks, the whole thing had been burned up, and I for one was relieved. Now that I had done it I ceased feeling regret; I was glad.
   Later in the evening I heard a car out front. Presently Jack opened the front door. “Where’s my stuff?” he said. “I only see a little out front.”
   I had seated myself in the big easy chair, facing him. “I burned it all,” I said. “I threw it in the incinerator, the whole god damn mess.”
   He stared at me with that asinine expression on his face, that giggle. “You did?” he said.
   “Why aren’t you leaving?” I said. “What’s keeping you here?”
   After fidgeting around, he wandered out, leaving the front door open. I saw him gather the junk that I had put out front into Claudia’s car. And then Claudia backed down the driveway to the road.
   Wow, I thought. Well, that’s that.
   I got the bottle of bourbon from the cupboard in the kitchen and carried it and a glass and the tray of ice cubes into the living room and put them down beside the big chair. For a time I sat drinking and feeling better and better. At least I had gotten my asshole brother out of the house, and that was something. I could get Nathan to help me in a lot of ways that Jack had helped. The girls would miss him, but again Nat would take his place.
   And then I began thinking about Nat and Claudia Hambro, and I stopped feeling better and felt worse. Was he over at their house? Was everybody over there, my brother and Nat both? House guests of the Hambros?
   No doubt Claudia Hambro was ten times as attractive as I. And Nat had never seen her before. Her magnetic personality—her ability to influence people; look at how she had gotten the upper hand with me, and Nat was far weaker a person than I. Not only that, it had always been evident that he was the kind of man that a woman can easily deal with. I saw that from the start. If an ordinary-looking woman like me, with only average intelligence and charm, could get such a reaction from him, what would Claudia get?
   Thinking that, I began to drink as never before. After a while I lost count. All! could think of was Nat and Claudia Hambro, and then it all became mixed in with Charley coming back and killing me, possibly killing the girls . – . I saw Charley coming in the front door with the jar of smoked oysters for me again, and I found myself getting up out of my chair and going toward him, reaching for the oysters and being so glad that he had brought me a present.
   He really will kill me, I realized. This time when he comes in the door he won’t hit me; he’ll kill me.
   I got up from the chair and told the girls to put themselves to bed. Then I went into the utility room, bumping into the washer and drier as I did so, and got the little ax that I used to cut up kindling. Going into my bedroom I locked the door and all the windows and sat there on the bed with the ax on my lap.
   I was still sitting there when I heard a man come in the front door. Is that him? I thought. Is that Charley or Jack or Nat? He couldn’t get out of the hospital tonight; he’s not supposed to get out until the day after tomorrow. And Jack hasn’t got a car. Didn’t I hear a car? Going to the window, I tried to see out onto the driveway, but a cypress tree blocked my view.
   “Fay?” a man’s voice called from somewhere in the house.
   “I’m in here,” I said.
   Presently the man came to the door. “You in there, Fay?” he said.
   “Yes,” I said.
   He tried the door and discovered that it was locked. “It’s me,” he said. “Nat Anteil.”
   I got up, then, and unlocked the door.
   When he saw the ax he said, “What’s wrong?” As he took it out of my hands he saw the empty bourbon bottle; I had carried it into the bedroom with me and finished it. “Good god,” he said, putting his arms around me.
   “Don’t you hug me,” I said. “Go hug Claudia Hambro.” With all my strength I shoved him away. “How was she?” I said. “A real good lay?”
   He took me by the shoulder and half-led half-pushed me into the kitchen. There, he seated me at the table and put on the kettle of water.
   “Go to hell,” I said. “I don’t want any coffee. Caffeine gives me nocturnal palpitations.”
   “Then I’ll fix you some Sanka,” he said, getting down the jar of instant Sanka.
   “That nothing coffee,” I said. But I let him fix me a cup of it anyhow.

16

   At one in the afternoon his wife was to pick him up at the front entrance of the hospital and drive him home. But the night before, he telephoned Bill Jaffers, the shop foreman at his plant in Petaluma, and told him to come by the hospital with a pick-up truck at nine in the morning. He explained to Jaffers that his wife was too nervous to take the responsibility of driving him home.
   So at eight-thirty he got out of his hospital bed, put on his clothes—his tie and white shirt and suit and shined black oxfords—made sure he had all his possessions in his suitcase, paid his bill at the business office of the hospital, and then sat outside on the steps waiting for Jaffers. The day was cool and bright, with no fog.
   Finally the plant’s pick-up truck appeared and parked. Jaffers, a big dark-haired man in his early thirties, stepped out and up to Charley Hume.
   “Hey, you’re looking almost well,” he said. He began picking up the pile of possessions stacked beside Charley and putting them into the bed of the truck.
   “I feel okay,” Charley said, standing up. He felt weak and sick to his stomach, and he waited for Jaffers to help him into the cab.
   Soon they were driving through downtown San Francisco, toward the Golden Gate Bridge. As always, traffic was heavy.
   “Take your time,” he told Jaffers. As he figured it Fay would leave the house about eleven. He did not want to get there before she left, so that gave them two hours. “Don’t go tear-assing around curves like you do when you’re on company time, wearing out rubber that doesn’t cost you anything to replace.” He felt deeply despondent and leaned against the door to gaze out at the cars and houses and streets. “Anyhow, I have to stop along the way and buy some things,” he said.
   “What do you have to get?” Jaffers said.
   “None of your business,” Charley said. “I’ll get it.”
   Sometime later they parked in the shopping district of one of the suburban Marin towns. Leaving Jaffers he got out of the truck and walked carefully down the street and around the corner to a large hardware store that he knew. There he bought a .22 revolver and two cartons of bullets. At home he had a number of guns, both rifles and pistols, but beyond any doubt Fay would have gotten them hidden. He had the clerk wrap the revolver and ammunition in such a way that no one could tell what it might be, and then he paid cash and left the store. Presently he was back in the truck, with the parcel on his lap.
   As they drove on, Jaffers said, “Bet that’s for your wife.”
   “You’re not kidding,” Charley said.
   “That’s quite some wife you have,” Jaffers said.
   Charley said, “You’re not just a-whistling Dixie.”
   In Fairfax they stopped at a drive-in and had something to eat. Jaffers ate two hamburgers and a vanilla milkshake, but he himself had only a bowl of soup.
   As they drove up the Sir Francis Drake Highway, through the park, Jaffers said, “This is sure beautiful country. We used to come up here all the time, up around Inverness, and fish. We used to catch salmon and bass.” He went on to describe the fishing equipment that he liked. Charley half-listened. “So the way I feel about spinners,” Jaffers concluded, “is that it’s fine for, say, surf fishing, but for stream fishing I don’t see the use. And Jesus, the good ones can cost you ninety-five bucks, just for the spinner alone.”
   “That’s for sure,” Charley murmured.
   The time, when they reached Drake’s Landing, was eleven-ten. She must have left, he decided. But as the truck reached the cypress lane that preceded his house he saw, between the trees, the flash of sunlight on the hood of the Buick. God damn her, he thought. She had not left.
   “Go on by,” he said to Jaffers.
   “What do you mean?” Jaffers said, slowing the truck and starting to turn into the driveway.
   With ferocity, he said, “Keep going, you fink. Keep driving. Don’t go in the driveway.”
   Bewildered, Jaffers brought the truck back onto the road and kept on. Peering back, Charley saw the front door of the house standing open. Evidently she was almost ready to leave.
   “I don’t get it,” Jaffers said. He had apparently put together the sight of the Buick in the driveway and Charley’s desire to go on and not stop. “Doesn’t she know I picked you up? Christ’s sake, don’t you want to stop her before she leaves?”
   “You mind your business or you’re fired,” Charley said. “You want to be out of a job? So help me god, I’ll fire you; I’ll write you out two weeks’ notice right now.”
   “Okay,” Jaffers said. “But it’s a hell of a thing to let her drive all the way down to Frisco and all the way back for nothing.” He became moodily silent, continuing to drive.
   “Park here,” Charley said, when they reached the top of a rise. “Get over on the shoulder. No, turn the truck around.”
   They parked in such a way that he could see down the road as far as Inverness Park. When the Buick left the driveway he would see it take off.
   “Can I smoke?” Jaffers said.
   “Sure,” he said.
   Fifteen minutes later the Buick appeared on the road and shot off in the direction of highway One.
   “There she goes,” he said. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get back. I feel tired. Come on, let’s go.”
   This time they found the driveway empty. Jaffers parked the truck and began carrying Charley’s possessions into the house. I hope she didn’t forget anything, Charley thought. Doesn’t turn around and come back. He got out of the cab, and, with Jaffers supporting him, walked up the path and into the house. There, in the living room, he lowered himself onto the couch.
   “Thanks,” he said to Jaffers. “Now you can take off.”
   “You want to go to bed, don’t you?” Jaffers said, lingering.
   “No,” he said, “I don’t want to go to bed. If I wanted to I’d go to bed; I’d be in bed now. I want to sit here. You can leave.”
   After hanging around a little longer, Jaffers at last left. Seated on the couch, Charley heard the truck back out of the driveway and go off down the road.
   Beyond doubt, he had all the time in the world. She would not get to the U.C. Hospital until one, and then it would take her two more hours to get back. So he had until three o’clock. He did not have to hurry. He could rest and recover his strength; he could even take a nap.
   Lifting his feet up onto the couch he lay back with his head on a pillow. Then he turned on his side to look out the window at the pasture.
   There, as big as life, stood his horse, cropping weeds. And, beyond the horse, he saw one of the sheep. Near the sheep lay a small dark shape that occasionally stirred. My god, he thought. A lamb. That ewe’s had a lamb. He tried to make out the other sheep, to see if they had had their lambs, too. But he could see only this one. It looked to be Alice, the oldest of the three. That’s a fine old ewe, he thought to himself, watching her. Almost eight years old, and wise as hell. Smarter than some humans.
   He watched another ewe approach her, and her lamb amble toward it. The other ewe butted the lamb back to its own mother, and that gave him a charge. You’d think a blow like that would break it in half, he thought. But it doesn’t. She has to butt it; needs her own milk for her own lambs.
   Big wise old black-faced sheep … he recalled the girls feeding Alice by hand, the great tranquil, intelligent face as the ewe bent to push its muzzle against their flat palms. Don’t curl your fingers, he told them. Like when you feed the horse… don’t stick up anything for her to nip off. They really have strength in those jaws … grind the grass, like rotary blades. Bone roto-tillers, and good for a hell of a lot longer than that monkey ward’s piece of tin.
   He thought suddenly, Of course, when she gets to the hospital and finds me gone she could call Anteil and send him right over here. That would be approximately one o’clock. So maybe I don’t have so much time after all.
   Getting up from the couch he stood for a moment. God, I’m weak, he thought. Wow. Unsteadily, he walked from the living room into the bathroom. There, with the door shut, he opened his parcel. He seated himself on the toilet seat and loaded the gun.
   Carrying the gun in the pocket of his coat he went outdoors, onto the patio. The day had become warm, and the sun made him feel stronger. He walked to the fence, opened the gate, and stepped out onto the pasture.
   The horse, seeing him, started in his direction.
   Thinks I have something for him to eat, he thought. Sugar cube. The horse picked up speed,jogging toward him and blowing excitedly.
   Oh dear god, he thought as the horse stopped a few feet away from him, eyeing him. How can I? The fucking horse; if they’re so smart, why doesn’t it run off? He got out the revolver and released the safety catch. Better the horse first, he decided. Lifting the revolver—his hand was shaking wildly—he aimed at the horse’s head and compressed the trigger. There was no recoil, but the sound made him tremble. The horse shook its head, pawed, and then turned and galloped off. I missed him, he thought. I fired right at him and missed him. But the horse suddenly fell forward as it ran; it pitched over, trumbled, and lay on its side, with its legs twitching. The horse screamed. Charley stood where he was, looking at it. Then he shot it again, from a distance. The horse continued to kick, and he started toward it, to fire again at close range. But by the time he reached it, it had stopped kicking. It was still alive; he could tell by its eyes. But it was dying. Blood ran down its head, from the wound in its skull.
   In the pasture the three ewes watched.
   He walked toward the first one. For a while it did not budge; he had gotten almost up to it before—as always—it ducked its head and began trotting off, its wide sides sticking out like packs. This one had not had its lambs. He raised the pistol and shot at it. The ewe bucked and picked up speed. It turned slightly to one side, erratically; catching sight of its head, he shot at that. The sheep fell head over heels, its legs flopping.
   With less trouble he approached the second ewe. She had been lying down, and as he reached her she scrambled to her feet. He managed to shoot her before she had gotten entirely up; her weight, the weight of unborn lambs, held her back.
   Now he had the trouble of the oldest ewe, with her lamb. He knew that she would not run because she was accustomed to having him approach her. He walked toward her, and she did not stir. She kept her eyes fixed on him. When he was still a few yards off she bleated loudly. The lamb let out its thin, metallic cry. What about the lamb? he asked himself. He hadn’t considered that. Well, it has to be included, he decided. Even though I never saw it before. It’s as much mine as any of them. He raised the revolver and shot at the ewe, but by now he had run out of bullets. The hammer only clicked.
   Standing there, he reloaded the revolver. Far off, the eucalpytus trees stirred with the mid day wind. The ewe and lamb watched him and waited as he finished loading the gun and put the box of bullets away. Then he took aim and shot the ewe. It sank down on its knees and keeled over. At once he shot the lamb, before it could start making any racket. Like its mother it died soundlessly, and that made him feel better. He walked slowly back toward the house, conserving his strength. On the pasture, nothing stood upright; no shapes of cropping animals. He had swept it clean.
   Where, he wondered, was the dog? Had she taken it with her? That made him angry. He passed through the house and out onto the front porch. Sometimes the dog spent its time down the street or across the street. Using the dog-whistle on his key chain he called it. Finally a muffled bark sounded somewhere in the house. She had shut the dog in, probably in one of the bathrooms.
   Sure enough, he found the collie standing in the guest bathroom, wagging its tail happily to see him.
   He led the dog outdoors onto the patio and shot it by putting the muzzle of the gun against its ear. The dog let out a screech, like a mechanical brake, so high-pitched that he scarcely could hear it. It leaped up and spun and fell down, scrabbling.
   Next he walked down to the duck pen.
   While he was busy shooting the ducks through the wire mesh he thought, Won’t somebody hear all the gunshots and call Sheriff Chisholm? No, he decided. There’s always hunters this time of year, bagging quail or rabbits or deer—whatever’s in season.
   Having finished with the ducks he searched about for the chickens. The flock had gone off somewhere and he saw no sign of it. Damn them, he thought. He called them, using the sound that he and Fay made at feeding time, but no chickens appeared. Once, he thought he saw a red tail moving in the cypress thickets … possibly the chickens had gone up into the cypress trees and had roosted there, watching him. No doubt the noise of the shooting had sent them packing. Bantams, he thought. So damn crafty.
   There was nothing left to shoot, so he returned to the house.
   The business of shooting the animals had put him in a state of exhaustion. As soon as he had gotten into the house he shed his coat, threw the gun down, dropped down onto the couch, and lay on his back with his eyes shut. His heart surely was going to stop working entirely; he could feel it preparing to cease beating. God damn it, he prayed. Keep going, you motherfucker.
   After a time he felt better. But he did not move; he continued to lie dormant, conserving himself.
   Maybe two hours, he thought. By then I’ll either be dead or strong enough to get back on my feet.
   From outdoors, beyond the patio, he heard a sound suggesting that one of the animals was not entirely dead. He heard whimpers, but although he listened, he could not make out which animal it was. Probably the horse, he concluded. Should he go out and shoot it again? Of course. But could he? No, he decided. I can’t. I’d fall over dead either going or coming. It’ll have to die by itself.
   He lay on the couch, listening to the faint sounds of the animal out on the pasture dying, and meanwhile trying not to die himself.


   All at once the noise of a car engine woke him.
   He slid his feet to the floor and arose, his heart pounding. He reached around him for the gun and could not find it.
   Outdoors, beyond the windows, Fay appeared on the patio. In her long green coat she stood gazing off across the field, and then she stood on tiptoe, shading her eyes. She’s seen the animals, he realized.
   Her cry was audible to him. She turned, saw him through the windows. God damn gun, he thought; he still could not find it, where he had put it. Fay had an armload, her purse and some packages. She dropped them and ran on high heels to the gate. At the gate she had trouble; she could not get the latch undone. He ran across the room and pushed open the door to the patio.
   By the barbecue pit, standing upright, was the long two-pronged fork that they used to lift the broiling steaks. He grabbed that and hurried toward her. Now she had gotten the gate open. On the far side she paused to kick off her shoes. Her eyes were filled with wariness. When he had gotten almost to her, she loped away, facing him, not taking her eyes from him. If I had the gun, he realized, she’d be dead now. He reached the fence and passed on through the open gate, onto the field.
   Fay, not speaking to him but speaking past him, called in a sharp loud voice, “You stay there.”
   The kids, he realized. Half-turning his head he saw them, standing together at the corner of the house. Both dressed up in their red coats and nice lace-edged skirts, two-tone shoes. Their hair brushed. Staring at him, staring and staring. Neither of them crying.
   Backing away from him, Fay called to the children, “Go on away. Go up the road to Mrs. Silva’s.Go on!” Her voice got that commanding tone, that harshness. Both children at once jumped forward, toward her, automatically going to her. “Go on up to Mrs. Silva’s!” Fay called to them, gesturing toward the road. This time the children understood. They disappeared around the corner of the house.
   He faced his wife.
   “Oh,” she said, almost with delight; her face shone. “I see—you shot them.” She had backed to the dead horse and had cast a quick glance. “Well,” she said, “My goodness.”
   He continued a few more steps toward her. She moved back the same distance; the distance did not change.
   “You motherfucker,” she said. “You daughterfucker. You fatherfucker. You turdface. You shithead. You—” She went on steadily, never taking her eyes from him. She kept herself under control by cursing at him. And he kept on advancing toward her. Of course, she retreated equally. With her wariness.
   “Call me anything you want,” he said.
   “I’ll tell you what I’ll call,” she said. “I’ll call Sheriff Chisholm and have you put in jail. I’ll get the police here. I’ll get you sent away. You nut. You madman. You sick person.”
   Back and back she went, never letting him get closer than ten feet from her. Now she had gotten her wind back; he saw her twist her head, measuring her distance from the barbed wire fence behind her that marked the edge of their land. Beyond the fence the ground sloped sharply, into trees and shrubs and eventually to marshy ground and a fast-moving stream. Once, he and she had pursued the Muscovy duck down onto the marshes; the duck had taken refuge among the roots of willows, and it had taken them all day to close in on her. His feet at that time had sunk down six inches with each step.
   I haven’t got it, he said to himself. Now she was moving more quickly; she was getting ready to leap the fence. Like an animal. Eying it first. Being sure. One hop and over. And then off at the speed of light.
   But she still retreated step by step. She was not near enough to the fence to turn her back to him.
   He began to hasten.
   “Ah,” she said, with excitement. And at once she turned and leaped the fence; her body spun and she was on the far side, still spinning, getting her balance. She fell to her knees, splashing in the mud and cow flop. At once she was up and off. Shows me her heels, he thought, going on to the fence himself and stooping down to crawl between the wire.
   It took him a long, long time to get across. And, on the far side, he could scarcely stand upright.
   There, not ten feet away, she stood watching him. Why? he wondered. Why didn’t she run off …
   Again he approached her, holding the long fork toward her. She resumed her slow backward walk.
   Why? he asked himself again as he slipped a little on the wet slope. And then he realized why. The children and the Silvas stood in the land behind the Silvas’ house, watching. Four people. And now a fifth person, an elderly man, joined them. He understood. She wants them to see. God, he thought. She’s making them see me. She’ll never run, never get away; she wants me to keep on, keep on. All the proof. Here. Here I am. Out in the field, pursuing her with this fork. Realizing that, he waved the fork at her.
   “God damn you,” he yelled at her.
   She smiled her quick, reflexive smile.
   “I’ll kill you,” he shouted.
   She backed away, step by step.
   He turned and started toward the house. She remained where she was, not going any farther away and not following him. At last he reached the fence again. He crept between the wire and into his own field. We were on the Bracketts’ property, he realized. She still is. Standing on Bob Brackett’s field, his forty acres of swamp that we had an option on once and then let go.
   When he got to the patio he looked back. Three men, starting from one of the houses up the road, were coming steadily toward him across the Bracketts’ field. Fay hung back beyond them.
   Opening the back door he crept into the house. He locked the door after him and threw down the barbecue fork. And the dead animals, he realized. Proof. All that dead stuff out there. And everybody heard me say it. The doctor. Anteil. The kids saw me hit her, that day. Hell, they all know.
   On the floor by the couch he found the gun. He picked it up and stood holding it, meditating. Then he seated himself on the couch. The men had halted by the fence; they could see him through the windows, sitting on the couch with the gun.
   He saw Sheriff Chisholm with them, telling them to go back. Sheriff Chisholm passed by the side of the house and was gone from sight. He’ll get me in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, he thought. He knows his business. Fucking rustic farmers.
   Putting the muzzle of the gun into his mouth he pulled the trigger.
   A light came on. Instead of sound. He saw, for the first time. He saw it all. He saw how she had moved him. Put him up to this.
   I see, he said.
   Yes, I see.
   Dying, he understood it all.

17

   The business of burning my things was dirty. And it wasn’t the first time. They did exactly the same thing during World War Two and even before that. It’s a pattern. Probably I should have expected it. Anyhow, I was able to salvage my geological collection. Naturally none of the samples making up that exhibit had been consumed.
   The day that Charley Hume killed himself I had been feeling unusually depressed since getting out of bed. Of course, at the time I did not know the reason for my depression. Mrs. Hambro in fact remarked on my unusual mood. I spent the day outdoors working in the Hambros’ terraced gardens, one of the tasks I had undertaken as a means of repaying them for their hospitality. In addition, I did similar work for the other members of the group, including tending various animals that they owned, such as cows, goats, sheep, chickens. My experience with Charley’s animals indicated that I had a natural bent in that direction, and I even considered taking a course in animal husbandry over at Santa Rosa.
   Meanwhile, of course, I kept up my spiritual life through my contact with the group. And Mrs. Hambro had introduced me to other sensitive individuals living down in the Bay Area.
   My depression became so acute by four in the afternoon that I gave up working and instead went and sat on the front steps of the Hambro house and read the newspaper. Not too much later, Mrs. Hambro drove up and parked and got out in a state of excitement. She asked me if I had heard the news that something dreadful had happened at my sister’s house. I said I hadn’t heard. She didn’t know what it was—she had gotten the news in a roundabout way—but she had the idea that Charley had either killed Fay or had died of a second heart attack, or something on that order. Sheriff Chisholm was up there, and a number of cars from out of town, and what looked like County officials; anyhow men in business suits and ties had been seen walking around in front of the house.
   It occurred to me that possibly I should go over there, since Fay was my sister. But I did not. After all, she had thrown me out. So I remained at the Hambros’ the balance of the day, eating dinner with them that evening.
   At eight-thirty, we got the news from Dorothy Bentely, who lived down the road from Charley and Fay. It was really terrible. I could hardly believe it. Mrs. Hambro thought I should go over, or at least phone. We discussed it, and then Mrs. Hambro called a special meeting of the group to consider the whole situation and to see what significance it had in the cosmic program that was unfolding.
   The group, after discussing it, came to the conclusion that the death was a symptom of the anarchy and dissolution attending the last agonies of the Earth before it became superceded. But we had still not decided whether I should go over. We put Marion Lane into a trance—Mrs. Hambro doing the actual hypnotizing—and she said that probably I should try to get in touch with Nat Anteil and find out if Fay wanted to see me. Because of the data that I had turned over to the group concerning Fay and Nat, the group had taken an active interest in their situation, viewing it as a manifestation on an earthly plane of certain super-terrestrial forces. None of us had been clear as to the nature or plan of these forces; we did not expect the goal to be revealed until the very end. That is, until toward the end of April, 1959. Meanwhile we had all kept in touch, as we did with everything else going on.
   Using Mrs. Hambro’s library phone I called Nat Anteil. We had found that when we used that phone—as contrasted to the extension in the kitchen or the living room—we got better results. It was the luckiest phone in the house, and in a situation this grave I wanted everything favorable in the universe to be at work.
   However, I got no answer to my rings. No doubt Nathan was over at the Home house.
   The next day I called Fay’s number several times, and at last got an answer. She said only that she was too busy to talk and would call back; thereupon she hung up, and did not call back. The next contact I had was a printed announcement, mailed by her, of the services.
   I did not attend the services, because it seems to me, as Pythagoras says, the body is the tomb of the soul and that by being born a person has already begun to die. The physical attribute of Charley which would be on display at the mausoleum was of no consequence to a person like myself who is concerned—not with this world—but with the real, that is, the eternal. Charley Hume, or the essence of him, the soul, the spark, had not been extinguished; it still existed as it always had, al though now we could not see it. As Mrs. Hambro phrased it, the corruptible man must put on immortality, and I thought that was a good way of putting it. So I did not feel that Charley had left us; he was still hovering in the sky near Drake’s Landing. And it would not be very many more days before the rest of us joined him—a fact he was ignorant of when he took his own life.
   During this time speculation throughout the Point Reyes Tomales Bay area concerned whether Nat and Fay would stay together or whether Charley’s death would cause them to break up through remorse. At first the issue seemed in doubt. Neighbors along their road, especially Mrs. Bentely, reported that Nat was not spending much time at the Hume home. The children had been taken out of school temporarily, so they could not be asked. But then his car was seen going back and forth once more, and the consensus was that they were once again resuming their relationship.
   The item published in the Baywood Press merely mentioned that Charley Hume of Drake’s Landing had “taken his own life,” due apparently to despondency over ill-health. The article mentioned that he had had a heart attack and had been just released from the hospital. It did not mention Nathan at all, only that “he is survived by his widow, Fay, and his two daughters Elsie and Bonnie.” The headline read:


C.B. Hume Ends Own Life

   The group felt that a much fuller account could have been given, and I prepared a complete factual presentation, describing Fay’s relationship with Nathan fully, and informing the public at large that the real cause of Charley’s death had not been despondency over ill-health at all but his having discovered that during his period in the hospital his wife had cheated on him with another man. However, the Baywood Press declined to publish this; in fact they did not even acknowledge receiving it—although, to be perfectly fair to them, I must admit that we were careful not to give our names or box numbers in case there was any legal action taken regarding use of the mails, etc.
   However it did not matter whether the Baywood Press chose to publish the complete account or not, since everybody in the area knew the real story anyhow. It was the main topic of discussion at the post office and the grocery store for weeks on end. And certainly, in a democracy, this is right. The public should know the facts. Otherwise it can’t judge.
   In reference to the element ofjudgment, it was our observation that the average opinion in the area ran fairly strongly against Fay and Nat, and quite often we heard words of censure—although, of course, these were not delivered to either of them, and certainly not to the children. The Bluebirds continued to meet under Fay’s guidance at the Hume household. Fay still attended the dance group, and none of the women either resigned or withdrew their children. The only overt action taken in reprimand of Fay and Nat was that some residents ceased waving to them when their car passed, and two or three mothers that I know of declined to permit their daughters to be picked up by Fay to play in the afternoons at the Hume house. But of course that had begun before Charley’s death; it took place as soon as the group promulgated the original dramatized presentation that I made available to them. Mrs. Hambro had had it mimeographed and mailed out to the list of residents that she had gotten from the Republican Party in Marin County, so persons as far away as Novato had been fully informed.
   I don’t think that either Nat or Fay were too conscious of this public disapproval, since they had so many problems of their own to settle. For a fact I know that they were concerned with the two children hearing something unpleasant on the playground, but when this did not transpire, their apprehension diminished. Outside of that, they seemed more interested in how to arrange their own lives, and I did not blame them for being wrapped up in that; they certainly had overwhelming moral and practical problems to cope with.
   A week or so later I received a letter from an attorney in San Rafael named Walter W. Sipe, informing me that I was wanted at ten in the morning on April 6th in his office on B Street. It had to do with the C.B. Hume estate.
   Mrs. Hambro felt very strongly that I should be there; she not only urged me to go but promised to drive me down. So on that morning, having put on a coat and slacks and tie of Mr. Hambro’s, I was driven down by Mrs. Hambro and let off at the lawyer’s office building.
   In the office I found Fay and the two girls and some adults that I had never seen before. Later I learned that some of them had worked for Charley at his plant in Petaluma and some were relatives of his who had flown out from Chicago.
   Nat, of course, was not present.
   We were given chairs, and after we had seated ourselves the lawyer read us the will that Charley had made out. I could make little or no sense out of it. It was not until days later that I understood what it meant. Legal language being what it is, I am still not sure about certain details. In any case, the gist of the disposition of his estate was this. Mainly, he was concerned about his two daughters, which was understandable. Since he had had a good deal of distrust of Fay for years—which I had recognized already—he had started a process of withdrawing capital from his plant and putting that capital into stocks and bonds in the children’s names. This had all been done before his death. The plant, then, was not worth nearly as much as might have been thought; in fact, it had been bled to the bone.
   Under California Community Property law, one half of all assets acquired during the marriage belonged to Fay. Charley, in his will, could not dispose of that. But the stocks and bonds no longer belonged to either him or Fay; they belonged to the children. So he had gotten most of his assets out of his and Fay’s hands, and into the girls’. In addition, he had instructed that the bulk of his estate be put into a fund to be administered by Mr. Sipe for the girls’ benefit, and that at their twenty-first birthday the fund be turned over to them.
   So not only did the girls own the stocks and bonds but they also got his share of the plant in Petaluma. The stocks and bonds, although belonging to them, were to be kept in trust by his brother, who had flown out from Chicago. He was to make funds available to the children according to their need. The children were to be allowed to live with their mother, and about that Charley had a lot to say.
   All he had left to Fay was the Buick—that is, his half, since the other half already belonged to her. She, of course, already owned one half of the house under California law, and one half of all the personal property in the house. Charley could not dispose of that. But here is what he had done with his half. He had willed his half of the house to me.


   To me. Of all the people in the world. So Fay owned one half and I owned the other.
   As to the personal property that was his, he had willed that to the children direct.
   He had left as much to me as to Fay, unless you include the Buick, which was not worth much.
   In the will was a long stipulation regarding tenancy of the house. Neither Fay nor I could forcibly exclude the other from the premises. We could, however, come to an agreement regarding sale of the house or use of the house. Each of us could sell his share to the other, for instance. Or rent it to the other for a sum to be named by the Bank of America at Point Reyes as reasonable. He had also set aside various small sums, derived from their joint bank account, half of which was his to will. He had left almost a thousand dollars to be used for psychiatric help for me, if! chose to use it, and, if not, it was to be turned over to the girls. And he had left money for funeral expenses.
   His having committed suicide had voided his insurance policies, so Fay got nothing out of them.
   When it came down to it, he had left everything to the girls and nothing to Fay. And her property under California law consisted only of her half of the house—on which there was a large mortgage to be paid off—and her half of the plant, which did not amount to anything like she had expected, since the plant had been bled over a number of years. Of course, she could get an attorney and go to court and claim that a good deal of the stocks and bonds actually belonged to her, since they had been bought with her money as well as Charley’s. And she could challenge the will in other ways, claiming, for instance, that he had willed her the Buick which was not his to will, since she had actually bought it before the marriage. A will which contains provisions of that sort can be tossed out, I understand. But Charley had written a clause in concerning her contesting the will. If she did so, the administrator of the children’s share of the estate—that is, his brother Sam—was to take action against her in court on the grounds that she was an unfit mother, and the girls were to be taken away from her, and his family appointed guardians. Now possibly that provision could not hold up, it being punitive. But even by investigating it she risked having it enacted, and evidently Sam declared himself willing to go through with the requirements of the clause. Charley had gone to some lengths in the will to describe—although vaguely—her relationship with Nat, and he also mentioned me specifically as a witness to this. There was no doubt that the house and funds left to me were in the nature of an inducement to me to cooperate fully in the “unfit mother” clause if Fay did challenge the will; at least I so construed it.
   She did not contest the will, although for a time she and Nat discussed it. I know they discussed it, because I was present. How could I not be? Almost at once, as soon as I had transportation, I moved back into the house with Fay and the children, and, of course, with Nat Anteil, to the extent that he was staying there. And this time they could not throw me out, because it was as much my house as hers. And it was not Nat Anteil’s at all; he had no legal right to be there, as I had.
   So when Claudia Hambro drove me back there in her station wagon, along with my possessions, she was driving me back to my own house.


   When I walked in the front door, Fay and Nat were flabbergasted to see me. Without saying a word—they were that affected—they stood around while I unloaded the station wagon and said good-bye to Claudia. In a voice loud enough for them to hear I took pains to invite Claudia and her husband and the rest of the group over, to use the house as a meeting place or just to visit. Then, waving to me, she drove off.
   Fay said, “You mean you’d just walk right in? Without discussing this whole business first?”
   “What is there to discuss?” I said, feeling wonderful. “I have a legal right to be here, as much as you.” And this time, I didn’t have to take up residence in the utility room, like a servant. Nor did I have to do their unpleasant tasks for them, such as emptying the trash or mopping the bathroom floors.
   I felt on top of the world.
   The two of them remained in the living room while I began fixing up the study; that was the room I had elected as my bedroom. Neither of them made a move to interfere, but I could hear them talking in low, grumpy tones.
   While I was hanging my clothes up in the study closet, Nat approached me. “Come on into the living room and we’ll discuss this,” he said.
   Enjoying myself, yet wanting to be at the job of getting my stuff arranged, I followed him. It was nice to seat myself there on the couch and not have to retire off somewhere in the rear while others conducted their affairs.
   Fay said, “How the hell do you plan to make your payments on the house? There’s two hundred and forty dollars due a month on this place, including interest. Half of that is yours to pay. One hundred and twenty a month. And that doesn’t include taxes or fire insurance. How can you pay that?” Her voice shrilled with outrage at me.
   Actually, I hadn’t given much thought to that. The realization diminished my pleasure somewhat.
   “By acquiring half the title to this place,” Nathan said, “you acquire half the indebtedness. You’re responsible for maintenance costs, utility costs, as much as Fay is. Do you know what it costs to heat this place? She’s not going to pay them; that’s a cinch.”
   “Fifty dollars a month,” Fay said. “That’s what your share of the heating bill is going to be. My god, it’ll cost you another hundred a month for utilities—it’ll cost you three hundred a month to own half this house. At least three hundred.”
   “Oh come on,” I said. “It doesn’t cost six hundred a month to maintain this house.”
   At that, Nat whipped out the big cardboard carton in which Fay kept incoming bills; he had also the checkbook and past stubs and bills. “That’s what it comes out to,” Nat said. “You know you have no money. Your part is going to lapse. How can it not lapse? You can’t live here. It’s impossible.”
   All I could think to do was smile at them, to show my lack of anxiety.
   “You horse’s ass,” Fay said, her voice continuing to rise in accusation. To Nat she said, “This is just to pay him so he’ll go into court and tell a lot of lies about you and me—good god, Charley must have been out of his mind; he must have been a paranoid at the last, there, in the hospital, believing all that crap.”
   “Take it easy,” Nat said to her. Of the two of them he seemed to me the more rational. “You better sell your equity right now,” he said to me. “Before it’s encumbered with indemnities.” On a piece of paper he made out figures. “You’ve got approximately a seven thousand dollar equity,” he said. “And you’ll have to pay inheritance tax on that—did you realize that?”
   I said, “You mean, you people buy my share of the house?”
   “Yes,” Fay said. “Otherwise the bank’ll be taking your share and you’ll wind up with not one god damn cent out of this.” To Nat she said, “And then we’ll be living here with the Bank of America.”
   “I don’t feel like selling,” I said.
   Nat said, “You have no choice.”
   To that, I said nothing. But I continued to smile.
   “There’s a bank payment due right now,” Fay said. “One of them. One-fifty-five. Do you have half of that? You have to have. It’s your share. Don’t imagine I’m going to pay your share of it, you—” She called me a name vile beyond belief. Even Nat looked embarrassed.
   We argued to no avail for at least an hour, and then Fay went off into the kitchen to fix herself a drink. Meanwhile, the girls had come home from playing with some friend of theirs. They both seemed quite glad to see me, and I played the airplane game with them. Fay and Nat watched with dark countenances.
   Once, I heard Fay said, “… gets to play with my kids, and what can I do about it? Nothing.” She hurled her cigarette at the fireplace, and it missed and landed on the floor beyond. Nat went over and got it. She paced around and around the living room while he sat gazing somberly at the floor, occasionally crossing and recrossing his legs.
   When I got tired of playing with the girls I sent them off to their rooms to watch tv, and then I joined Nat and Fay in the living room. I seated myself in the big overstuffed easy chair that had been Charley’s favorite. Putting my hands behind my head I leaned back and made myself comfortable.
   After some silence, Fay said suddenly, “Well, I’ll tell you one thing; I won’t live in this house with this asshole around. And I won’t have him playing with my kids.”
   Nat said nothing. I pretended not to hear.
   “I’d rather give up my share of the house,” Fay said. “I’ll sell it or give it away.”
   “You can sell it,” Nat said. “It shouldn’t be hard.”
   “What about now?” she said. “Right now? Tonight. How’m I going to sleep here?” Glancing at Nat she said, “God, we can’t make a move; we can’t even eat a meal or take a bath—nothing.”
   “Come on,” Nat said, standing up and motioning to her. Together they went outdoors onto the patio and stood together, far enough away from the house so that I couldn’t hear them.
   The upshot of their discussion together was that they decided to leave the house entirely and move over to the smaller house that Nat rented, the one which he and Gwen had lived in together. As far as I was concerned, that was fine. But what about the girls? That house was too small for four people, even two adults and two children. At least, that was my understanding, from what I had heard. It had only one bedroom, and then one small utility room in which he had done his school work late at night. Plus of course a living room and bathroom and kitchen.
   They took the girls that night, at about nine, and drove off with them. Whether they stayed at Nat’s house or in a motel I don’t know. In any case, I prepared to go to bed alone, in the empty house.
   It gave me an odd feeling that night as I changed from my day clothes into my pajamas and prepared to get into the guest bed in the study. After all, this had been Charley’s study, where he had spent a good deal of time. Now he was dead, and his wife had gone off, taking his and her daughters, leaving no one in the house but me. All of them gone. All of them had left this house which they had gone to so much trouble to build. And who was I? For a time, as flay in bed, I felt confusion. I wasn’t actually one of the persons who owned this house … at least, who owned it in a real sense. Perhaps I owned a legal share of it, but I certainly had never thought of it as mine. I might as well have had someone point to some movie theater or bus station and tell me that I owned a share of it. In some respects it was like when as a child I had been told that, as an American citizen, I’d someday “own” a part of every public bridge and dam and street.
   I had lived well in this house, for a short period of time. But not because of the house itself; more, because of the good meals and the warmth. Now, if! wanted warmth, I would have to pay for half of the bill that came as a result. And I would be buying my own food, as clearly as I had had to buy it when living in one single rented room in Seville. Nobody would charcoal broil t-bone steaks on the outdoor grill and hand me a piece free.
   And the animals were dead. Except for the banty chickens. Now, at night, the banties had gone into their shed and gone to sleep. No ducks. No horse. No sheep. Not even the dog. Their carcasses had been dragged off for fertilizer.
   The house and the land around it was absolutely silent. Except that now and then I heard quail whirring around in the cypress trees. I heard the quail calling like Oklahoma teen-agers to each other; ah-hawhoo-whoo. A sort of Okie yell.
   And then, lying by myself alone in the dark, empty house, hearing the refrigerator in the kitchen turn on occasionally, and the wall thermostats open and shut, I felt one thing. Fay and the girls and the animals had left, but someone besides myself remained. Charley was still in the house, living there as he had always lived there since the house had been built. The refrigerator that I heard was his. He had supervised putting in the radiant heating. The different sounds were made by things that belonged to him, and he had never left them. I knew it. It wasn’t merely an idea. It was an awareness of him, just as at any previous time, during his stay in the physical world, I had been aware of him. By sight, smell, sound, touch.
   All night long I lay being conscious of him in the house. He never left, even for a moment. It was constant; it never dimmed.

18

   At seven o’clock the next morning the telephone woke me up. It was Fay calling from wherever they were staying.
   “We’ll buy your equity in the house,” she said. “Here’s what we can give you. One thousand dollars cash and the rest in the form of monthly payments of thirty-eight dollars. We sat up half the night discussing it.”
   I said, “The only thing is that I want to stay here.”
   “You can’t,” she said. “Did it occur to you that everything in that house belongs either to the girls or to me? And if we want to we can keep you from using the refrigerator or the sink—you can’t even use the towels in the bathroom. You can’t even eat off the dishes in the rack on the drainboard. My good god, you can’t even sit down in a chair—that bed you’re sleeping in doesn’t come with the house; that’s part of the personal property, and he only left you his share of the house. The sheets on the bed. The ashtrays!” She went on and on, working herself up. “And how are you going to eat? I’ll bet you think you’re going to walk into the kitchen and open up a few cans and packages of food. Do you think that food is yours? It isn’t. And if you eat one bite of it, I’ll sue you. I’ll take you to court and sue you!”
   I hadn’t realized it. What she said was true. “There’s a lot in what you say,” I said. “I’ll have to get my own furniture.”
   She said, “I think I’ll have the movers come up from Fairfax and move everything out of that house.”
   “Okay,” I said, taken aback and having difficulty thinking.
   “You idiot,” Fay said. “All you’ve got in this world is that empty box of a house—half that empty box of a house. And we can keep up our share of the payments with what we’re getting in from the factory.” She hung up, then.
   I dressed and combed my hair, and then I went into the kitchen and stood wondering if I should fix myself breakfast or not. Suppose while I was eating it, Fay appeared with the sheriff or someone? Wouldn’t I, in a sense, be stealing the food?
   Unable to decide, I at last gave up the idea of eating breakfast. Instead, I went outdoors and down to the chicken pen to throw grain to the banties.
   How empty the duck pen was without the ducks. The trough remained, the porcelain sink that Charley had put down for them, and the drainage system that he had been working on. There was even a duck egg left over, half-buried in the weeds that the ducks had made into a nest. And, in the garbage can, half a sack of egg-gro. Almost fifty pounds of it.
   I wandered on, to the stable that Charley had built for the horse. There was the saddle hanging up on the wall, and all the other equipment that had gone with the horse. Over three hundred dollars worth of stuff.
   Returning to the house I seated myself on the floor, near the fireplace, and thought. I spent most of the morning deep in thought, and at last I came to the conclusion that what I had to do was find a way of bringing in enough money to make my monthly payments on the house, including what I had to pay on the taxes and insurance. Also, I needed to have enough money to buy food, because it was now clearly apparent that Fay and Nat would not give me any of theirs. I had had the half-formed notion that we could go back to something like the old system, with me doing baby sitting for them—although not the dirty work, the scrubbing part—and them supplying me with what would be an equitable amount of supplies such as food and the like. However, that was off.
   After figuring I came to the conclusion that I would have to earn almost five hundred dollars a month in order to keep up my end of the house, and this did not include either unusual medical bills or house repairs. Anyhow, I could make the payments, eat, buy some clothes, etc., and acquire some second-hand furniture.
   I therefore got out on the road and hitch hiked to Point Reyes Station. There, I started looking for a job.
   The first place I tried was the garage on the corner. I told them that I wasn’t a mechanic, but that I had a scientific disposition and was good at analyzing and diagnosis. They told me they didn’t have any openings, so I went on across the street to the market. There was nothing there, either, even ajob such as opening crates and putting out the merchandise on the shelves. I next tried at the big hardware store. They said that the only person they could use was one who could drive. After that I tried at the post office for the job of postal clerk, but there they told me that a federal civil service exam was required. I tried the other garages and gas stations, the pharmacy, the coffee shop—at least there should have been a job of dish washer open—and the dress shop, even the little free library. No work was available at any place. I tried the feed store, the big building-supply yard, and finally the bank.
   The man at the bank was very helpful. He recognized me as Fay’s brother, and we sat down at his desk and talked for a long time. I explained my situation, why I wanted work and how much I had to have. The man told me that it was next to impossible to find work at any of the retail businesses in the area because they all did such a limited operation. My best bet, he said, was either the dairy ranches out on the Point or down at Olema at the mill, or over at the gravel works on the Petaluma road, or the RCA station out on the lighthouse road. If I could drive, he said, I could probably get a job driving the school bus, but that was obviously out. In summer I could pick produce, but this was only April.
   Of the various alternatives it seemed tome that ajob on one of the dairy farms would be the best, because of my love of animals. Thanking the man, I hitch hiked back onto the Inverness side of the bay and then, by means of several rides, managed to get out to some of the ranches. It took all day. The only job that was open was that of milker, and this reminded me of what Charley had said originally, that milking would be my best bet up here in the country.
   Milking, however, although it sounded like interesting work, paid only a dollar-thirty an hour, and this would not be enough for me to meet my expenses. In addition, I would have to actually live on the various ranches, and this would defeat the whole purpose of the job. So milking was out. Toward evening, feeling discouraged and tired, I started hitch hiking back to town. Fortunately the people at one of the ranches were kind enough to give me a big lunch, otherwise I would have had nothing to eat all day. As it was, I got back to the house at nine-thirty in the evening, thoroughly depressed and tired, with no prospect of work.
   I turned on the light in the living room, and, because the house was so cold, I lit a fire in the fireplace, even though I was conscious that the wood belonged to Fay and the children, not to me. Even the discarded newspapers which we always used to start fires did not belong to me, nor the milk cartons that we saved out of the garbage. Only the stuff in the study that I had carried with me from the Hambros’.
   Thinking about it, I wondered if possibly anybody in the group might be able to help me find ajob that paid five hundred a month. I therefore took a chance and telephoned Mrs. Hambro. Although she was sympathetic she seemed to feel that there was no chance that I’d find ajob paying anything like that much; she pointed out that in a farm area wages were generally lower than in the city, and even for San Francisco, five hundred a month was a pretty high salary.
   At ten, while I was seated before the fire, the phone rang. I answered it. Again it was Fay, calling from wherever they were staying.
   “I came by during the day,” she said. “Where were you?”
   “Out,” I said.
   Fay said, “Are you going to get psychiatric help?”
   “I haven’t thought about it,” I said.
   “Maybe if you go see Doctor Andrews you’ll get more insight into your situation. Why won’t you sell your part of the house? I talked to him today and he says that you identify with Charley and are getting revenge on us for his death. You hold us responsible for him killing himself. Is that why you won’t sell? Good god, think of the children. They’ve lived in that house ever since it was built. – we actually built it for them, not for ourselves. And that’s virtually all the son of.a bitch left me, except for that nothing factory that hardly makes enough to pay its own way. I have to have that house—half of it is mine, and you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll never let my half go. Anyhow, you couldn’t buy it from me. Could you? My god, you can’t even pay the buckfifty water bill.”
   I said nothing.
   Fay went on, “I think we’ll come over and discuss it with you. We’ll see you in about fifteen minutes.”
   Before I could tell her that I was totally exhausted and about ready for bed, the phone had clicked. She had hung up. It never occurred to her to inquire whether I wanted to discuss it with her or not. That’s the way she’s always been; nothing will ever change her.
   Even more depressed than before I sat waiting for them to come. In a sense she was right; the children belonged in the house, and since she refused to live with me, the children would not be living here unless I moved out. She, of course, considered it her house, and to a degree it was. But certainly it was not her house in the sense that she meant it: that it was hers and no one else’s. The fact of the matter was that the house belonged to Charley, and that he had divided it between her and me, with the obvious idea that both of us would live here. Charley assumed that since Fay and I were sister and brother we would be able to live together. What he thought Nat Anteil would do I have no idea. Possibly he did not realize that Anteil’s wife had left him and that their marriage was over. He may have assumed that the relationship between Fay and Nat was only a passing affair. In that, he was not alone; none of us had thought of it persisting. Had Charley come back and not killed himself—nor Fay—then no doubt her assignations with Anteil would have come to an end. In some respects it is a shame that Charley did not see that. He had only to return to the house to put an end to the situation—at least, to keep them from physically coming together. Of course, the bond between them might continue, and that was why he did what he did. He had wanted to punish her for what she had done. I think he was right. She deserved whatever she got. However, at the end, she had outsmarted him and gotten him to kill himself instead. Even though he had drawn up a will that excluded her from the body of his estate, she still had her life, her half of the house, her children, and the household goods—even the car. And all that remained of Charley was the eternal presence that pervaded the house, the presence that I felt so keenly all the time I was there.
   In fact, even now as I sat trying to see a way out of this dilemma, I sensed Charley around the house, in each part of it in proportion to the extent that he had inhabited that part while physically alive. Especially in the study, where he had worked at night. – .1 felt it there the most. And the kitchen, where he ate, the living room where he sat. Not so much in the children’s rooms or even their bedroom. And not at all in Fay’s work room, where she did her clay modeling. Her creative stuff.
   What he hadn’t realized was that if he had killed her, nobody would ever have had a happy moment again. Think what the effect would have been on the children. Their lives would have been blighted. He himself would have nothing left ahead of him but death from his heart condition, unless he had planned to kill himself, too. Nat Anteil had already given up his wife, seen his brief marriage to her end, and, with Fay dead, what would there be in store for him? Who would have gained?
   The nthilism of what Charley did is shown in his killing of the animals. That part affected me the most; I had the greatest difficulty understanding it.
   Surely he hadn’t hated the animals as he hated Fay; he couldn’t possibly have thought that the animals had betrayed him—although of course the dog had learned to greet Anteil rather than to bark at him. To follow the logic of that, however, he would have had to kill his own daughters, since they both liked Anteil, and he would possibly even have had to kill me, since the girls liked me very much. Maybe he planned to. Anyhow, the sheep cared for nobody on earth, and the ducks, to the extent possible with their limited minds, kept a loyalty to him. After all, it had been he who built their pens.
   After thinking it over steadily, I came to the conclusion that he had not known he was killing the animals, that he had only been conscious that when he got back to the house after being in the hospital, there would be some great change, which he himself would bring about, and that this change would affect all the living creatures there. He shot the animals to show that what he did mattered. He could do something that couldn’t be undone. And yet, even deciding this, I felt then—and still feel now—that the actual reasons for his actions are beyond my scope. I don’t understand his kind of illogical, semi-barbaric mind. It was not a question of scientific reason; it was brute instinct. Perhaps he identified the animals with himself. Possibly he was already beginning on the path of killing himself, that he knew in some part of his mind that he would never kill Fay; that it would be he who would end up getting shot, not she. Or possibly he hadn’t even wanted to kill her, that he had only gone through the motions. Possibly he had meant to kill himself all the time, from the moment he bought the gun.
   In that case, she was not to blame. At least, not as much.
   But a confusion like this always results when the unscientific individual is involved. Science is baffled by the unreason of the hoi polloi. The moods of the mass can’t be fathomed; that’s a fact.
   While I was studying this entire situation deeply, and waiting for Fay and Nat, I heard their car drive up. So I got to my feet and went to the front door to turn on the driveway lights.
   Only one person came from the car. It was Nat Anteil; my sister hadn’t come along.
   “Where’s Fay?” I said.
   Nat said, “Somebody had to stay with the girls.” He entered the house and shut the door after him.
   His explanation, although reasonable, didn’t convince me. I had the intuition that she couldn’t bring herself to set foot inside the house as long as! was still there. And that made me feel just that much worse.
   “Sometimes it’s easier for two men to discuss a business matter,” Nat said. “Without a woman.”
   “True,” I said.
   We sat down facing each other in the living room. Looking across, past the fireplace, at him, I got to wondering how old he was. Was he older or younger than I? About the same age, I decided. And look how little he had done with his life. A marriage that hadn’t lasted a bit. Involvement with a married woman that had ended in the death of an innocent man. And, from what I had heard, a fairly insecure economic position. The only thing he had over me was that, to be very honest, he was much better looking than I. He had that sweet, open face, roundish, and jet-black hair which he kept cut short. He was tall, too, without appearing scrawny or bony. In fact he looked to me like a tennis player, with very long arms and legs, but at the same time keeping himself in good physical condition.
   Also, I had respect for his intelligence.
   “Well,” I said, “this is a difficult situation.”
   “No doubt of that,” Nat said.
   We sat for a time in silence. Nat lit a cigarette.
   “You don’t want to be a dog in the manger,” he said. “It’s indisputable that you can’t raise the capital to buy Fay out, and even if you did you couldn’t afford to live here; the cost of keeping this place going is enormous. It’s a completely impractical house. Personally, I’m not anxious to see Fay keep it. It’s too costly to heat. I’d rather see her sell it and move into a smaller place, possibly an older house.”
   “But she has her heart set on living here,” I said.
   “Yes,” he said. “She likes it. But if she had to, she could give it up. I think in the long run she’ll want to give it up. After she’s had to keep it running without Charley. In some respects, it’s more of a liability than an asset.” Getting to his feet, he wandered around the living room. “It’s nice. It’s really a marvelous house to live in. But it’d take a really well-off person to maintain it. It’s a constant drain. A person could wind up a slave to it, trying to keep it going. I don’t think I’d ever want to do that; I hope to hell I don’t get in that position.” He did not seem to be especially talking to me; I sensed that he was actually thinking out loud.
   I said, “Are you and Fay going to get married?”
   He nodded. “As soon as I get my divorce from Gwen. We’ll probably get a Mexican divorce and remarriage. There’s no waiting period.”
   I said, “Since Charley didn’t leave her very much, won’t you have to go to work full time to support her and the children?”
   “There’s the trust fund to support the kids,” he said. “And she’ll be getting enough from the factory and her property in Florida to maintain this place.”
   “I really don’t want to give my share up,” I said. “I want to live here.”
   “Why?” he said, turning to face me. “My god, it’s got three bathrooms and four bedrooms—you’d be living alone, one person in this huge house. This place was built for five or six people to live in. All you need is a rented room.”
   I said nothing.
   “You’ll go out of your mind, here,” Nat said. “All alone. When Charley first went to the hospital, Fay almost went crazy alone, and she had the girls to keep her company.”
   “And you,” I said.
   To that he had no comment.
   “I feel I have to stay here,” I said.
   “Why?”
   “Because,” I said, “it’s my duty.”
   “To what?”
   “My duty to him,” I said, letting it slip out before I realized what I had done.
   Without difficulty, he grasped whom I meant. “You mean because he left half the house to you, you feel you must live here?”
   “Not exactly,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him that I knew that Charley was still in the house.
   Nat said, “Since you can’t do it, it doesn’t matter whether it’s your duty or not. As I see it, your choice isn’t whether to give up your share. It’s whether you’ll sell it and get something for it, or simply lose it and get nothing. With a thousand dollars cash and thirty-eight dollars every month you could establish yourself very nicely in town. Rent a nice apartment, buy clothes, eat out in good restaurants. Go out in the evenings and have a big time. Right? And meanwhile you’d be using the money he left for psychiatric care. And if you had psychiatric care you’d be a lot better off. Let’s face it.”
   He had picked up that phrase, “let’s face it,” from my sister. It’s interesting how one person’s vocabulary affects another person. Everyone who ever had anything to do with her winds up saying that, and also, “in my entire life.” And, “my good god.” Not to mention the really foul language.
   “I just don’t want to leave this house,” I repeated. And then, suddenly, I remembered something that I had forgotten. And it was something that Nat did not know. Or if he did, he did not accept.
   The world was coming to an end in a month. So it didn’t matter what happened after that. I only had to stay here a month, not forever. Then there would be no house.


   I told Nat that I couldn’t decide, that I still had to think it over. He went back home, and I sat by myself in the living room, for most of the night, considering.
   At last, about four in the morning, I came to a decision. I got into the bed in the study and slept, sleep being something I badly needed. Then, the next morning, I got up at eight o’clock, took a bath and shaved, dressed, ate some Post’s 40% Bran Flakes and toast and jam—which wasn’t very much to take—and then set out along the road toward the Inverness Wye. There was one job-possibility that I had overlooked that I wanted to try. At the Wye was a vet’s, not one that worked merely with sick dogs and cats, as the ones in town did, but with sheep and cattle and horses as well as smaller livestock. Since at one time I had worked for a vet’s, it seemed to me that I might have a chance, here.
   However, after I had talked to the vet, I discovered that it was a family-run affair, the doctor and his wife and ten year old son and father. The ten year old boy did the feeding and sweeping that I had in mind, so I started back toward Drake’s Landing.
   At least I had explored every possibility.
   Approximately at twelve-thirty in the afternoon I got back to the house. I right away telephoned Nat Anteil’s number.
   It was Fay who answered. Evidently Nat was either at work or doing his homework.
   “I’ve come to a decision,” I told my sister.
   “My goodness,” she said.
   I said, “I’ll sell you my half of the house for the thousand dollars down and the rest in payments, if you’ll let me live in the house for the next month. And I have to be able to use the furniture and food and everything, so I can really live there.”
   “It’s a deal,” Fay said. “You horse’s ass. You better not eat any of those steaks in the freezer. None of the t-bone or sirloin or New York cut. There’s forty dollars worth of steaks in there.”
   “Okay,” I agreed. “The steaks don’t count. But I can eat any other food I find. And I want the money right away. Within the next day or two, no longer. And I don’t have to pay any of the utility bills for the month.”
   “There’s things we need,” Fay said. “All the children’s things. Their clothes—good god, my clothes, a million things. I don’t want to move all those things out and then move them back in again. Why do you have to have it for a month? Can’t you go back and stay with those nuts the Hambros?”
   So even though she had agreed she was trying to get me out. I felt the futility of trying to make any rational agreement with her. “Tell Nat that I agree,” I said, “if I can stay a month. I’ll work it out with him. You’re too unscientific.”
   After a few more exchanges she said good-bye, and we both hung up. Anyhow, I considered that I had agreed, even if it wasn’t in writing. The house would be mine until the end of April—or, more accurately and realistically, until April twenty-third.

19

   At nine in the morning, Nathan Anteil met his lawyer in the corridor outside department three of the San Rafael Courthouse. His witness was with him, a plump, scholarly man who had known both him and Gwen for a number of years.
   The three of them left the courthouse and went across the street to a coffee shop. In a booth they sat discussing what the lawyer would want done and how. Neither Nat nor his witness had ever been inside a court of law before.
   “There’s nothing to be nervous about,” the lawyer said. “You go up on the stand and then I ask you a lot of questions that you answer by saying yes; for instance, I ask you, isn’t it true that you were originally married October 10, 1958, and you answer yes; then I ask you, isn’t it true that you’ve been a resident of Marin County for a period in excess of three months, and so forth. I ask you isn’t it true that your wife treated you in a manner involving cruel and unaffectionate behavior that caused you acute humiliation in public and before friends, and that her treatment had the result that you suffered mental and physical privation, resulting in inability to perform your job and that the result of this was that you could not carry on your life and meet your obligations in a way satisfactory to you.” The lawyer droned on, gesturing with rapid, sharp flutters of his right hand. Nat noticed that the man’s hands were unusually white and small, that his wrist had no hair on it. The nails were perfectly manicured, and it occurred to him that this was almost like a woman’s hands. Evidently the lawyer did no physical work of any sort.
   “What do I do?” the witness asked.
   “Well, you get up on the stand after Mr. Anteil; they’ll ask you to swear the same oath, at the same time as he. Then I’ll ask you, isn’t it true that you’ve lived in the County of Alameda for three months and in the state of California for over a year; you say yes. Then I ask you, isn’t it true that in your presence you saw the defendant, Mrs. Anteil, behave toward Mr. Anteil in a manner that caused him acute humiliation, and that because of this you saw him become mentally distressed and suffer both physical and mental privation that resulted in him having to consult a physician, and that there was a noticeable change in him that caused you to remark that he didn’t seem—” The lawyer gestured. “That he no longer seemed to be in the same good health and that he was visibly suffering as a result of Mrs. Anteil’s behavior toward him.” To both of them, he said, “See, we have to establish the result of Mrs. Anteil’s behavior. It isn’t sufficient to declare that she treated you badly—for instance, that she slept around or boozed or something—but that you actually suffered a noticeable change as a result.”
   “A change for the worst,” the witness said.
   “Yes,” the lawyer said. “A change for the worst.” To Nat he said, “I’m going to ask you isn’t it true that to the best of your ability you tried to preserve this marriage, but that your wife showed in clear and tangible fashion that she had no interest in your health and happiness, that she stayed away from the home for prolonged periods of time, showed obvious reluctance to inform you of her whereabouts during these prolonged intervals, and in general did not behave in the manner that a dutiful spouse would be expected to.”
   Sipping his coffee, Nat thought to himself that this was going to be a terrible ordeal; he did not know if he could do it, when the time came.
   “Don’t worry,” the lawyer said, touching him on the shoulder. “This is just a ritual; you get up there and chant the proper formula and then you get the thing you want—a divorce decree. You won’t have to say anything but yes; you just answer yes to the questions! ask you, and we’ll be out of there in twenty minutes.” He looked at his watch. “We should be getting back there. I don’t know about this judge, but they usually like to get started right at nine-thirty.” He was from Alameda County, and Nat had gotten him because once he had represented him and Gwen in a property dispute with some neighbors. Both he and she liked him. He had arranged the property settlement for both of them.
   They returned to the courthouse. As they went up the steps, the witness discussed some trivial matters with the lawyer, having to do with the economic factor behind the decisions of courts. Nat did not listen. He watched an elderly man who sat on a bench with his cane in his lap, and a group of shoppers walking along the street.
   The day was warm and clear. The air smelled good. Around the courthouse building, painters had thrown up canvas and ladders; the building evidently was undergoing alterations. The three of them had to stoop under ropes as they entered.
   As his lawyer and witness entered the courtroom, Nat said to the lawyer, “Do I have time to go to the men’s room?”
   “If you hurry,” the lawyer said.
   In the men’s room—a remarkably clean place—he took a pill that Fay had given him, a tranquilizer. Then he hurried back to the courtroom. He found his lawyer and witness on their way back out; his lawyer took hold of his arm and led him into the corridor, frowning.
   “I was talking to the bailiff,” he said in a low voice. “This judge doesn’t permit the attorney to lead.”
   “What does that mean?” Nat said.
   “It means I can’t ask either of you questions,” the lawyer said. “When you get up there, you’ll be on your own.”
   “You can’t prompt us?” the witness said.
   “No, you’ll have to tell your own stories.” The lawyer led them back toward the courtroom. “We probably won’t be first. Listen to the other cases and try to judge from them what you should say.” He held the door open, and Nat entered ahead of his witness.
   Presently he found himself seated on a bench, like the pew of a church, watching a middle-aged woman on the witness stand telling how a Mr. George Heathens or Feathers had spilled coffee on Mrs. Feathers at a barbecue party in San Anselmo and that instead of apologizing he had called her a fool and a bad mother in front of ten people.
   The witness became silent, and then the judge, a gray-haired heavyset man in his late sixties, wearing a pin-stripe suit, made a grimace of distaste and said, “Well, how did that affect the plaintiff? Did it cause any change in her?”
   The witness said, “Yes, it caused her to become unhappy. And she said that she could not stand to be around a man who treated her that way and made her miserable.”
   The case went on to its end, and then a second one, very similar, took its place, with new women and a new attorney.
   “This is a tough judge,” Nathan’s lawyer said to him out of the corner of his mouth. “Look, he’s going through the property settlement. He’s really giving trouble.”
   Nat scarcely heard him. The tranquilizer had begun to take effect, and he gazed out of the window of the courtroom, at the lawn. He saw cars going by along the street, and the windows of the shops.
   To him, his lawyer whispered, “Say you had to go to a doctor. Say she made you physically sick. Say she was away for a week or more on end.”
   He nodded.
   On the stand a young, violently-nervous dark-haired woman was saying in a faint voice that her husband had hit her.
   Nathan thought, Well, Gwen never hit me. However she had that fool in the kitchen with her that night when I got home. I can say that she was in the habit of going out with other men, and that when I questioned her as to who they were and what they did, she abused me and insulted me.
   To their witness, his lawyer whispered, “You listen to what Mr. Anteil says and take your cues from him.”
   “Okay,” their witness said.
   She caused me distress and humiliation, Nathan thought. I lost weight and started taking tranquilizers. I lay awake at night worrying about money. She borrowed money and didn’t tell me about it. When she didn’t come home at night I had to call around to everyone we knew, thus notifying everyone that I had no idea where my wife was at night, or whom she was with. She ran up huge gas bills on our credit cards. She hit me, scratched me, called me dirty names in front of all kinds of people. She made it clear that she preferred the company of other men to me, and that she had little or no respect for me.
   In his mind he rehearsed and rehearsed.
   Not so much later he found himself up on the stand, facing the rows of empty seats and the few people. Slightly to his left and below him his lawyer stood tensely, holding a sheaf of papers and speaking very rapidly to the judge. Their witness sat ill at ease in the first chair of the jury box.
   “Your full name is Nathan Ruben Anteil?” his lawyer said.
   “Yes,” he said.
   “And you live in Point Reyes Station in Marin County?”
   “Yes,” he said.
   “And you have been a resident of California for a period greater than one year, and a resident of Marin County for a period greater than three months? And you are the plaintiff in this dispute asking a divorce between you and Mrs. Anteil in the Superior Court of Marin County? And that the marriage between you and Mrs. Anteil ceased for all practical purposes on or about March 10, 1959, and that at this time you and she are no longer living together?”
   He said yes to each question.
   “Would you tell the court,” his attorney said, “the reasons why you seek a divorce from Mrs. Anteil.”
   Now his lawyer stepped slightly back. The courtroom was a little noisy, because, in the rear, a lawyer was consulting in low tones with his client and two people in the front were talking and rustling. Nat began to answer.
   “Well,” he said, “the reasons are that for the most part—” He paused, feeling the fatigue and languor brought on him by the pill. The sense of weight. “Are that she was never at home,” he said. “She was always out somewhere and when she came back even though I asked her where she had been, all she did was vilify me and tell me it was none of my business. She made it abundantly clear that she preferred the company of other men to mine.”
   He tried to think what else to say. How to continue. All he seemed able to do was gaze out at the lawn beyond the windows, the warm, green, dry lawn. He felt terribly sleepy, and his eyes started to shut. His voice had trailed off, and only with great effort could he resume any sort of speech.
   “It seemed to me,” he went on, “that there was nothing but contempt for me in her all the time. I could never depend on her to back me up in anything. She went her own way. She never acted like a married woman. It was as if we weren’t married in the first place. The result of this was that I couldn’t earn my living. I got sick and had to consult a physician.” He paused, and then he thought of the name of a physician. “Doctor Robert Andrews,” he said. “In San Francisco.”
   The judge said, “What was the nature of this illness?”
   Nathan said, “What would be called a psychoneurotic complaint.” He waited, but the judge had no comment. So he resumed. “I found myself unable to concentrate or work, and my friends all noticed this. This went on for a long period. At one time she stood on the front porch and shouted abuse at me that even the town’s minister heard. He happened to be getting ready to visit us.”
   That had been the day that Gwen had moved her things out. Some neighbor had evidently realized what was happening, that their marriage was breaking up, and had called old Doctor Sebastian. The old man had come by in his 1949 Hudson just at the height of the argument between them; Gwen, on the front porch with an armload of towels, had screamed at him that he was a no-good bastard and that as far as she was concerned he could go to hell. The old man had gotten back into his Hudson and driven off. Apparently he had given up any idea of trying to help them, either because he realized that it was too late and he could do no good, or because what Gwen had said was too much for him. He simply was too frail to stand the stress.
   Anyhow, Nathan thought, as he gazed out at the warm lawn and the sunlight, the shops and people, she finished packing her things and then I drove her and them to her family’s house in Sacramento. I even gave her back the snapshots of her that I carried in my wallet.
   The courtroom was silent, waiting for him to go on. Waiting to see if he had anything more to say about the break-up of his marriage.
   He said, “It was intolerable to me to be treated that way, as if I was second in importance to other men. I found strange cars sometimes parked in front of my own house, and when I got home I found men sitting there that I had never in my life seen before. And when I asked her who they were she became so enraged and vilified me so completely that even the other man became embarrassed. He asked to leave, but she told him to stay.”
   How strange it feels, he thought. To be up here, telling these things.
   “Anyhow,” he said, “she had rages in which she deliberately destroyed objects that were of importance to me.”
   While she had been packing her things she had come across a plaster cat which they had won at Playland. She had been holding it, wondering how to pack it, when he had told her that he considered it his. At that point, she had turned and thrown it at him. The cat had broken against the wall behind him.
   “She had these violent rages,” he said, “where she couldn’t control herself.”
   His lawyer nodded to him—impatiently, it seemed to him—and he realized suddenly that he had finished. Getting to his feet he stepped down. His lawyer called their witness, and Nathan found himself seated in the first chair of the jury box, listening to their witness tell how he had come by the Anteil house and found only Mr. Anteil at home, and how, on frequent occasions, when he had found them both together, he had been forced to listen to what he considered unfair and humiliating tirades on the part of Mrs. Anteil, directed at her husband.
   The judge signed the paper; he and the lawyer exchanged a few words; and then Nathan and their witness and the lawyer walked up the aisle and out of the courtroom.
   “Did he grant it?” he asked the lawyer.
   “Oh sure,” the lawyer said. “Now we go down to the clerk and get a copy of the interlocutory decree for you.”
   As they descended the stairs, the witness said, “You know, Gwen’s about the most mild-mannered woman I’ve ever known. I felt funny up there talking about her ‘tirades.’ I never heard her raise her voice in my life.”
   The lawyer giggled at that. Nathan said nothing. But he felt a sense of release, a lifting of the burden of the court action. They entered the clerk’s office, an immense, brightly-lit place in which rows of people worked at desks and file cabinets. At a counter which ran the width of the room, persons conducted their business with the many deputy clerks.
   “Well, it’s over,” the witness said, while the lawyer got the papers.
   Was there any truth to what I said? Nathan wondered. Some truth. Part true, part made up. Strange to lose sight, blend it together. No longer know what had happened, merely talk, tell what seems appropriate. Aloud, he said, “Like the Moscow Trials. Confessing to whatever they want.”
   Again his lawyer giggled. The witness winked at him.
   But he did feel better. Dread of the ordeal … that was over, like the school play. Public speaking in assembly.
   “Good to get it over,” he said to his lawyer.
   “Boy, that old man is a tough one,” his lawyer said, as they left the clerk’s office. “Not letting me lead—he probably didn’t have a good bowel movement and felt like getting back at the world.”
   Outdoors, in the sunlight, they parted company. Each of them said good-bye and went off to his own car.
   The time was ten-forty. Only an hour and ten minutes had gone by since the court had been called into session.
   Divorced, Nathan thought. Over and done. Somebody else up there, now.
   Reaching his car he got into it and sat.
   Strange story to tell, he thought. When was she ever away from the house? Only when we broke up.
   I should feel guilty, he thought. Getting up there and letting all those lies come out of me, that mishmash. That uninspired recitation. But his sense of release overcame any guilt. God damn, he thought. I’m so god damn glad it’s over.
   All at once he felt doubt. How can it be over? You mean I’m no longer married? What happened to Gwen? I don’t understand it. Where did it go? How could a thing like this happen?
   It isn’t possible, he thought. What do you mean, I’m no longer married?
   He stared out the car window. It doesn’t make sense, he thought. Dismay, as if he were about to break down and cry, started everywhere inside him, appeared on all sides, throughout. I’ll be god damned, he thought. It just can’t be. It isn’t possible.
   This is the most awful thing that ever happened to me, he thought. It’s weird.-It’s the end of me, of my life. Now what am I going to do?
   How did I ever get into this situation?
   He sat watching the people go by, wondering how a thing of this sort could have come about. I must have let myself get mixed up in something horrible, he thought. It’s as if the whole sky is a web that dropped over me and snared me. Probably she’s the one who did it; Fay arranged all this, and I had nothing to do with it. I have no control of myself or anything that’s happened. So now I’m waking up. I’m awake, he thought. Discovering that everything has been taken away from me. I’ve been destroyed, and now that I’m awake all I can do is realize it; I can’t do anything. It’s too late to do anything. It’s already happened. The shock of getting up there and telling that account made me see. Mixture of lies and bits of truth. Woven together. Unable to see where each starts.
   At last, putting the key in the ignition, he started up the car. Soon he was driving from San Rafael, back to Point Reyes Station.


   At his house he saw her, in the front yard. She had found a bucket of gladiola and tulip bulbs that Gwen had brought up from the city to plant; wearing jeans and sandals and a cotton shirt she was busy with a trowel, digging a shallow trench for the bulbs along the front walk. The two girls were not in sight.
   As he opened the gate she heard him and turned, lifting her head. As soon as she saw the expression on his face she said,
   “You didn’t get it.”
   “I got it,” he said.
   Laying down her trowel she stood up. “What an ordeal it must have been,” she said. “My god, you look really pale.”
   He said, “I don’t know what to do.” It was not what he had intended to say, but he could think of nothing else.
   “What do you mean?” she said, coming up to him and putting her thin, strong arms around him.
   Feeling her arms, the authority and conviction of her, he said, “Hug me.”
   “I am hugging you,” she said. “You asshole.”
   “Look where I am,” he said, gazing past her at the remaining bulbs. She had planted most of them already. At one time the bucket had been full. “You’ve got me in a terrible spot. There’s nothing I can do. You really have me.”
   “Why?” she said.
   “I have no marriage.”
   “Poor baby,” she said. “You’re scared.” Her arms pressed harder against him. “But you did get it? He granted it?”
   “They have to grant it,” he said. “If it’s properly presented. That’s what the lawyer’s for.”
   “So you’re divorced!” Fay said.
   “I have an interlocutory decree,” he said. “In a year I’ll be divorced.”
   “Did he give you any trouble?”
   “He wouldn’t let the lawyer lead,” he said. “I was on my own.” He started to tell her about it, how the session had gone, but her eyes got that rapt, faraway expression; she was not listening.
   “I meant to tell you,” she said, when he halted. “The girls baked a cake for you. A celebration. One candle. Your first divorce. They’re indoors now, quarreling about the icing. I said they better wait until you got home and ask you what kind of icing you wanted on it, if any.”
   He said, “I don’t want anything. I’m completely exhausted.”
   “I’d never go into court in a million years,” she said. “I’d rather die; you couldn’t drag me into court.” Letting go of him she started toward the house. “They’ve been so worried,” she said. “Afraid something might go wrong.”
   “Stop talking,” he said, “and listen to me.”
   She slowed to a stop; both her speech and her motion toward the house ceased. Inquiringly, she waited. She did not seem tense. Now that he was back, having gotten the decree, she was relieved; she did not seem to have paid any real attention to what he had said.
   “God damn you,” he said. “You never listen. Don’t you care what I have to say? I’ll tell you what I have to say; I’m pulling out of all this, the whole darn business.”
   “What?” she said, in a faltering voice.
   He said, “I’ve gone as far as I can. I can’t stand any more. When I got out of the courtroom I realized it. It finally came to me.”
   “Well,” she said. “My goodness.”
   They stood facing each other, neither of them saying anything. With the toe of her sandal she kicked at a lump of dirt. Never before had he seen her so downcast.
   “How did the Sparine work?” she said finally.
   “Fine,” he said.
   “You were able to take it before you went in? I’m glad you had it. They’re very good, especially for something like this that overtaxes you.” Then, rallying, she said, “I don’t see how you can leave me. What would happen to you? This is the worst possible time. You’ve undergone a dreadful traumatic situation these last couple of weeks. We both have. And this divorce business, this having to go into court, was the ultimate.” Now she was attentive; her voice became quiet, and her expression changed to a tough acuteness. Taking hold of his arm she steered him toward the house. “You haven’t had anything to eat, have you?”
   “No,” he said. He held back, refusing to let her budge him.
   “You’re really furious at me, aren’t you?” she said finally. “This is the most hostile you’ve been toward me.”
   “That’s right,” he said.
   “I suppose the hostility must have been there all the time, buried in your subconscious. Doctor Andrews says it’s better to say things like this if you feel them than not to.” She did not sound angry; she sounded resigned. “I don’t blame you,” she said, eying him, standing very close to him and gazing up into his face with her head cocked on one side, her hands behind her back. Perspiration, from the heat of the day, shone on her throat; he saw it as it appeared and evaporated and reappeared. It pulsed there. “Can’t we talk about it further?” she said. Instead of becoming childish she had become deeply rational. “A decision this serious should be discussed. Come inside and sit down and have lunch. Anyhow, where are you going to go? If someone has to go, good god, this is your house—you can’t let us stay here if you feel about me the way you do. We’ll go to a motel. I mean, that’s no problem.”
   To that, he said nothing.
   Fay said, “If you leave me you won’t have a god damn thing. Maybe there are character traits in me that should be changed—that’s why I go to Doctor Andrews, isn’t it? And if there’re things wrong with me, can’t you tell me the right way to act? Can’t you put me in my place? I want you to tell me what to do. Do you think I respect a man who I can push around?”
   “Then let me go,” he said.
   “I think you’re nuts to go,” Fay said.
   “Maybe so,” he said. Turning around, he walked away.
   From behind him, Fay said in a firm voice, “I promised the girls that we’d take them down to Fairyland this afternoon.”
   He could scarcely believe his ears. “What?” he said. “What the hell is ‘fairyland’?”
   “Down in Oakland,” she said, facing him with composure. “They heard all about it on Popeye. They want to see King Fuddle’s castle. I told them when you got back we’d go.”
   “I never said that,” he said. “You never told me.”
   “Well,” she said, “I know how you don’t like to be bothered.”
   “God damn you,” he said. “Committing me.”
   “It’ll only take a couple of hours. An hour ride from here.”
   “More like two,” he said.
   “You should never break a promise to a child,” she said. “Anyhow, if you’re going to walk out on us and leave us, you should want to do something so they’ll remember you. Do you want them to have a last impression of you not giving a damn about their interests?”
   He said, “It doesn’t matter what last impression they have of me, because you’ll manage to tell them something about me that’ll make me look so weak and awful—”
   “They’re listening,” she said.
   On the porch, the two girls had appeared. They had their cake on a big plate. “Look!” Bonnie called down. Both girls beamed at him.
   “Nice,” he said.
   “Well,” Fay said. “Is this too much to ask of you? Then you can walk out on us.”
   The girls, obviously paying no attention to what either adult was saying, called down, “What kind of icing do you want? Mommy said to wait and ask you.”
   He said to them, “You want to go to Fairyland?”
   At that, they both came racing down the steps; the cake was put aside on the railing, abandoned.
   “Okay,” he said, above the clamor. “We’ll go. But let’s get started.”
   Fay stood watching, her arms folded. “I’ll go get a coat,” she said. To the girls, she said, “You both get your coats.”
   The girls scampered back into the house.
   To Fay he said nothing. He got into the car, behind the wheel. She did not join him; she waited for the girls. As she waited she got her cigarettes from the spot at which she had left them, lit up, and did a little more digging.


   The howling of the children made him weary. Everywhere kids raced and screamed, in and out of the bright, newly-painted storybook buildings that made up the Oakland Park Department’s idea of Fairyland. He had parked quite far from it, not being sure exactly where it was, and the walk alone had worn him out.
   Bonnie and Elsie appeared at the bottom of a slide, waved at him and Fay, and scurried to join the other children at the stairs leading back up.
   “It’s nice here,” Fay said.
   In the center of Fairyland, Little Bo Peep’s lambs were being fed from a bottle. A middle-aged woman’s voice, amplified by loudspeakers, told the children all to come running to see.
   “Isn’t that funny,” Fay said. “We come all the way down here to see lambs being fed. I wonder why they feed them from bottles. I guess they think it’s cuter.”
   After the girls had finished with the slide they wandered on. Now they had found the wishing well and were fooling with it; he only vaguely noticed them.
   Fay said, “I wonder which is Fuddle’s castle.”
   He didn’t answer.
   “This is tiring,” she said. “I guess you already had enough for one day.”
   Presently they arrived at the refreshment stand. The children had orange drink and hot dogs. Just beyond that they saw the ticket window and station house of the little train. Its narrow track ran into and out of Fairyland, passing among the trees beyond. On their way to Fairyland from the car they had noticed the track; in fact they had followed it to the main gate of Fairyland, which of course was on the opposite side from them. They had had to walk all around it.
   As they had tramped along, looking in vain for the gate, Fay had said to him, “You know, you’re a schlimozl.”
   “What’s that?” both girls had demanded.
   Fay said, “A schlimozl is a person who always gets up to the ticket window at the ballpark just as the last bleacher seat is sold. And he doesn’t have enough money with him to buy a reserved seat.”
   “That’s me,” he said.
   To the girls, Fay explained, “You see, he parked on the opposite side from the entrance, and we had to walk all around. Now, if I had been driving I would have parked and we would have gotten out, and there we would have been. Right at the entrance. But a schlimozl always has bad luck. It’s an instinct with him.”
   Yes, he thought. It’s true about me. There is a bad luck that gets me into things that I don’t want to be in, and then it keeps me there. It holds me there. And nothing that I do can get me out.
   “It’s just my luck,” Fay said, “to marry a schlimozl. Maybe our luck will balance out, though.”
   Now, he stood with her and the children, lined up to buy tickets for the little train. His legs ached and he wondered if he could live through it, the waiting in line for tickets and then, after getting tickets, the waiting for the train to return and take on passengers. At this moment the train was off somewhere in the park, out of sight. A whole raft of children, who had already gotten tickets, waited eagerly on the platform beyond the ticket window.
   “It’ll take at least half an hour,” he said to Fay. “Is it worth it?”
   Fay said, “This is the main event. Isn’t this what we saw them all doing? They have to ride on it.”
   So he waited.
   Alter a long time he was able to reach the ticket window and buy tickets for the four of them. Then he and Fay and the girls pushed on to the platform. By now the train had returned; children and their parents were spilling out of it, and the conductor was pointing the way out. A new load ran to the cars and began to board. The cars were small and irregularly-shaped. The occupants’ heads were forced almost to bump, as if by entering the car they became ancients nodding and dozing.
   “In a way this Fairyland is a disappointment,” Fay said. “1 don’t think they give the children enough to do; they can’t actually go into those little houses—all they can do is look at them. Like a museum.”
   His weariness and lethargy kept him from commenting. He no longer felt related to the noises and movement around him, the swirl of children.
   A conductor came along the platform, collecting tickets. He counted aloud. When he reached Nathan he stopped, saying, “Thirtythree.” Then he took Elsie’s ticket and said to Nathan, “Are you all together?”
   “Yes,” Fay said.
   “Well, I hope I can squeeze you all in,” he said, taking her ticket and Bonnie’s and Nathan’s.
   “How many can you get in?” Fay said.
   “It depends on the number of adults,” the conductor said. “If it’s mostly kids we can keep squeezing them in. But an adult is another matter.” He departed with the tickets.
   “I guess we get in,” Fay said. “He took our tickets.”
   Theirs had been the last tickets collected. Behind them, a family of five fretted and worried.
   They won’t get on this time, Nathan thought. They’ll have to wait. He gazed off past the refreshment stand at the sturdy house that the third little pig had built.
   When the train returned, he and Fay and the children moved with the others through the gate and onto the outer platform, along the track. As the cars became empty the new passengers clambered on. The conductor began shutting the wire doors of the cars. At the gate, the family with tickets were stopped. “No,” the attendant said. “You can’t get on if you have tickets.”
   How weird, Nathan thought, seeing a small boy whose ticket had not been collected standing hopefully at the train, holding his ticket up. Here, if you have a ticket, you’re barred. If you don’t, then you can get on. The girls and Fay hurried toward the rear car, along with the others. His feet dragged; weighed down, he fell behind them. Children squeezed past him and hopped up into the cars.
   When he arrived at the last car he found that Fay and Elsie had already found places. The conductor started to close the wire door, and then seeing Bonnie, said to her.
   “Room for one more.”
   Lifting her up, he handed her to Fay, inside the car.
   Around Nathan, the other children without tickets disappeared into the cars. Only a few remained, and then only he remained on the platform. Everyone had been seated but him. The wire door on Fay’s car had been locked, and the conductor was starting away. Suddenly seeing him, the conductor said,
   “I forgot about you.”
   Nathan found himself smiling. Behind him, beyond the gate, the waiting people waved and shouted with sympathy. Or was it sympathy? He did not know. He found himself walking along with the conductor, back up the length of the train, toward the engine. The conductor prattled away, telling him how he had happened to overlook him. At the first car the conductor peered in and then said,
   “Here. You can get in here.”
   He clambered up, pushed through the little entrance, and found himself facing four Cub Scouts in blue uniforms. They stared at him as he tried to seat himself on the bench. At last he said to the first Cub Scout, “Why don’t you move over?”
   The scout at once moved, and he was able to seat himself. His head brushed the roof of the car, and the angle was such that he had to hunch forward. He sat no taller than the scouts; only larger, more awkward, filling up more space—as the conductor had said. The wire door was locked and then the conductor signalled to the motorman.
   After a series of noises the train jerked and began to move.
   Under Nathan’s feet the floor drummed; the train vibrated steadily, without variation. They moved away from the platform and the waving, shouting people. Almost at once they found themselves out of Fairyland, among oak trees and grass.
   Seated so far up in the train, he could look out at the tail of the engine and, beyond that, the area toward which they were moving. He saw the track ahead of them, the slopes of grass, a road to the right. Beyond the road were more oak trees and then the lake. Now and then he made out the sight of picnickers. They glanced up at the train, and once, the Cub Scout next to him started to wave and then nervously changed his mind. No one in the car spoke. The noise of the wheels was so constant that no one expected it to stop; they all sat patiently riding, gazing out, contemplating.
   On and on the train went, always at the same rate of speed.
   The unvarying noise and vibration and pace of the train took the fatigue out of his legs. Cramped as he was he began to feel more at peace. The oak trees lulled him. The inevitability of the train’s progress… always ahead of them he saw the track, the two rails, and there was nothing else the train could do but follow it. And nothing else that any of them could do but remain where they were, cooped up in the little irregular cars, locked in by their wire doors, hunched and huddled in whatever postures they had first assumed. Their knees touched; their heads almost touched; they could not even look at one another unless luck happened to have put them facing that way. And yet none of them objected. No one complained or tried to stir.
   How odd I must look, he thought to himself. In here with these Cub Scouts in their blue uniforms. One bulging, misshapen adult crowded in where he shouldn’t be. Where several children should be, on a child’s train, in a child’s amusement park. Did the City of Oakland anticipate me? Certainly they had not. This is the luck of the schlimozl, he thought. Put up forward here, away from Fay and the ghls. Riding alone here while they ride together in back.
   But it stirred no real emotions in him. He experienced a relaxation of physical tension; nothing more.
   Is that all that is wrong? he asked himself. Merely the accumulation of tensions, worries, fears? Nothing of lasting importance? Can the constant vibrations of a children’s train soothe me and take away whatever it is that confronts me? This sense of dismay and doom. – .
   He no longer felt the dread, the intuition that he had been moved against his will into a situation built for another person’s use.
   He thought, There is certainly no hope left of getting away. And it isn’t even terrible; it’s possibly funny, if even that. It’s embarrassing. That’s all. A little embarrassing to realize that I no longer control my life, that the major decisions have already been made, long before I was conscious that any change was occurring.
   When I met her, or rather, when she looked out of her car window and saw me and Gwen… that was when the decision was made, assuming that it ever was. She made it, as soon as she saw us, and the rest was inevitable.
   Probably she will make a good wife, he thought. She will be loyal to me, and try to help me do what I want to do. Her passion toward controlling me will ultimately subside; all of this energy in her will fade. I will make substantial changes in her, too. We will alter each other. And someday it will be impossible to tell who has led whom. And why.
   The only fact, he realized, will be that we are married and living together, that I will be earning a living, that we will have two girls from a previous marriage and possibly children of our own. A valid question will be: Are we happy? But only time will tell that. And not even Fay can underwrite the answer to that; she is as dependent as I am, in that final area.
   He thought, She could bring about everything that she wants and still be wretched. Out of this I could emerge as the prosperous one, the peaceful one. And neither of us can possibly know.
   When the train had finished its trip and was returning to the platform he saw the people lined up for their ride. The Cub Scout next to him plucked up his courage at last and waved; some of the people waved back, and that encouraged other scouts to wave.
   Nathan waved, too.

20

   With the money I received from my sister as cash payment for my equity in the house I opened a checking account at the Bank of America at Point Reyes Station. As soon as possible—after all, there wasn’t much time left—I set out to buy the things I needed.
   First, I paid two hundred dollars for a horse and had it brought to the house by truck and let loose in the back pasture. It was almost the same color as Charley’s horse, possibly a little darker, but the same size, as far as I could tell, and in as good physical shape. It ran around for a day or so and then it calmed down and began to crop grass. After that it seemed perfectly at home.
   I then set out to buy sheep, the black-faced kind. With this I had more trouble. In the end I had to go all the way to Petaluma for them. I paid about fifty dollars apiece for them, three ewes. As far as lambs went, I was undecided at first. Finally I came to the conclusion that he hadn’t considered the lambs his, so I did not get any.
   Getting a collie like Bing was really hard. I had to take the bus down to San Francisco and go shopping at various kennels before I found one that was the same variety. There are all sorts of collies, costing different prices. The one resembling Bing cost almost two hundred dollars, virtually as much as the horse.
   The ducks cost me only a dollar and a half apiece. I got them locally.
   My reasoning was that I wanted everything set up the way it was supposed to be. It seemed to me that there was a very good chance that on April twenty-third Charley Hume would come back to life. Of course, this was not a certainty. The future never is. Anyhow, I felt that this increased the chances. According to the Bible, when the world ends the dead arise from their graves at the sound of the last trumpet. In fact, that’s one of the ways that the end of the world is known to be coming, when the dead arise. It’s a piece of strong verification of the theory. During the month that I lived there in the house I felt his presence grow more and more real, as he neared closer and closer to the moment of his return to life.
   I felt it especially at night. Beyond any doubt he was close to resuming his existence in this world. His ashes—he had been cremated, according to the terms of his will—had been sent by error to the Mayfair Market, and there Doctor Sebastian had picked them up (the clerks at the Mayfair had telephoned him and explained the situation) and had driven them out to Fay. She had taken the package up to the McClure’s ranch and scattered them into the ocean. So when he returned, he would do so in the Point Reyes area, and with his house exactly like it had been, with the horse and dog and sheep and ducks, all of which had belonged to him, he was sure to arise there.
   In the afternoons, when the wind from the Point was strongest, I could go outdoors onto the patio and actually see the bits of ash in the air. In fact, several people in the neighborhood remarked on the unusual concentration of ash in the air near sunset. This gave the setting sun a deep reddish color. Beyond any doubt, something of vast importance was about to happen; you could feel it, even if you hadn’t been warned.
   Every day that passed put me into a greater state of excitement. Toward the end of the month I was hardly sleeping at all.
   When April twenty-third arrived I woke up while it was still dark. I lay in bed awhile, so keyed-up that I could barely stand it. Then at five-thirty a.m. I got out of bed and got dressed and ate breakfast. All I could get down was a bowl of Wheat Chex, incidently. And a dish of apple sauce. I lit a fire in the fireplace in the living room and then I began walking around the house. I didn’t know exactly where Charley would first be seen, so I tried to cover every part of the house, be in each room at least once every fifteen minutes.
   By noon I was so conscious of him that I kept turning my head and catching a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye. But at two o’clock I had a distinct feeling of let-down. I had a cheese sandwich and a glass of milk and that made me feel better, but the sense of his presence did not become any stronger.
   When six o’clock came, and he still hadn’t come back to life, I began to become uneasy. So I telephoned Mrs. Hambro.
   “Hello,” she said, in that hoarse voice.
   I said, “This is Jack Seville.” (What I meant, of course, was Jack Isidore.) “I wondered if you’d noticed anything definitive.”
   “We’re meditating,” she said. “I thought you would be with us. Didn’t you catch our telepathic message?”
   “When was it sent out?” I asked.
   “Two days ago,” she said. “At midnight, when the lines are Strongest.”
   “I didn’t get it,” I said in agitation. “Anyhow, I have to be over here at the house. I’m waiting for Charley Hume to come back to life.”
   “Well, I think you should be here,” she said, and I noticed a real hint of crossness in her voice. “There may be a good reason why we aren’t getting the expected results.”
   “You mean, it’s my fault?” I demanded. “Because I’m not there?”
   “There has to be some reason,” she said. “I don’t see why you have to stay there and wait for that particular person to come back to life.”
   We argued awhile, and then hung up with less than the most amiable feelings. Again I began pacing around the house, looking this time into every closet, in case he returned and found himself shut in where he couldn’t get out.
   At eleven-thirty that evening I was really getting worried. I again telephoned Mrs. Hambro, but this time got no answer.
   By a quarter of twelve I was virtually out of my mind with worry. I had the radio on and was listening to a program of dance music and news. Finally the announcer said that in one minute it would be twelve midnight. He gave a commercial for United Airlines. Then it was twelve. Charley hadn’t come back to life. And it was April twenty-fourth. The world hadn’t come to an end.
   I was never so disconcerted in my entire life.


   Looking back on it, the thing that really gets me is that I had sold my interest in the house for next to nothing. My sister had gotten it away from me, taking advantage of me the way she takes advantage of everyone. And I had restocked the place with a horse and dog and sheep and ducks. What did I get out of it? Very little.
   I sat down in the big easy chair in the living room, feeling that I had reached the really low point in my life. I was so depressed that I could hardly think; my mind was in a state of complete chaos. All my data rattled around and made no sense.
   Out of it all I realized that there was simply no doubt. The group had been wrong.
   Not only had Charley Hume not returned to life but the world had not come to an end, and I realized that a long time ago Charley was right in what he said about me; namely, that I was a crap artist. All the facts that I had learned were just so much crap.
   I realized, sitting there, that I was a nut.
   What a thing to realize. All those years wasted. I saw it as clearly as hell; all that business about the Sargasso Sea, and Lost Atlantis, and flying saucers and people coming out of the inner part of the earth—it was just a lot of crap. So the supposedly ironic title of my work wasn’t ironic at all. Or possibly it was doubly ironic, that it was actually crap but I didn’t realize it, etc. In any case, I was really horrified. All those people over in Inverness Park were a bunch of cranks. Mrs. Hambro was a psycho or something. Possibly even worse than me.
   No wonder Charley left me a thousand dollars for psychoanalysis. I was really on the verge of the pit.
   Good god, there hadn’t even been an earthquake.
   Now what was there left for me to do? I had a few more days left to me in the house, and a couple hundred dollars of the cash that Fay and Nathan had given me. Enough money to get back to the Bay Area and relocate myself in a decent apartment, and possibly be able to find ajob of some sort.! probably could go back and work for Mr. Poity at One-Day Dealers’ Tire Service, although he had gotten all he could stand of my crap.
   So I wasn’t really so bad off.
   Of course, it’s unwise to go overboard in blaming myself. I had had a theory, which couldn’t be verified until April twenty-third, and therefore until that time it couldn’t positively be said that I was out of my mind for believing it. After all, the world might have come to an end. Anyhow, it did not. All those people like Fay and Charley and Nat Anteil were right.
   They were right, but thinking about them I came to the conclusion, after a long period of hard meditation, that they were not a hell of a lot better than me. I mean, there’s a lot of rubbish in what they have to say, too. They’re darn near a bunch of nuts in their own way, although possibly it isn’t quite so obvious as in my case.
   For instance, anybody who kills himself is a nut. Let’s face it (as Fay says). And even at the time I was conscious that his killing all those helpless animals was an example of the lunatic brain at work. And then that nut Nathan Anteil who just got married to a very nice girl and then dumped her as soon as he got mixed up with my sister… that isn’t exactly a model of logic. To get rid of a sweet harmless woman for a shrew like Fay.
   As far as I’m concerned, the nuttiest of us all is my sister, and she’s still the worst; take my word for it. She’s a psychopath. To her, everybody else is just an object to be moved around. She has the mind of a three-year-old. Is that sanity?
   So it doesn’t seem to me that I should be the only person who has to bear the onus of believing an admittedly ridiculous notion. All I want is to see the blame spread around fairly. For a day or so I considered writing to the San Rafael newspapers and giving them the story in the form of a letter to the editor; after all, they have to print that. It’s their duty as a public service. But in the end I decided against it. The hell with the newspapers. Nobody reads the letters to the editor column except more nuts. In fact, the whole world is full of nuts. It’s enough to get you down.
   After thinking it all over, and weighing every consideration, I decided to avail myself of the clause in Charley Hume’s will and take the thousand dollars worth of psychoanalysis. So I collected all my things that I had around the house, packed them up, and got a neighbor to drive me down to the Greyhound. A couple of days before I had to I left the house that Charley and Fay had built—Fay’s house—and started back to the Bay Area.
   As the bus drove along I considered how I would locate the best analyst. In the end I decided to get the names of every one of them practicing in the Bay Area, and visit each of them in turn. In my mind I began putting together a questionaire for them to fill out, telling the number of patients they had had, the number of cures, the number of total failures, length of time involved in cures, number of partial cures, etc. So on the basis of that I could draw up a chart and compute which analyst would be the most likely to give me help.
   It seemed to me that the least I could do was try to use Charley’s money wisely and not squander it on some charlatan. And on the basis of past choices, it seems pretty evident that my judgment is not of the best.

Deus Irae

Philip Kindred Dick
Roger Zelazny

One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen

Deus Irae
by Philip K. Dick & Roger Zelazny

   “This novel, in loving memory, is dedicated to Stanley G. Weinbaum, for his having given the world his story “A Martian Odyssey.”

One

   Here! The black-spotted cow drawing the bicycle cart. In the center of the cart. And at the doorway of the sacristy Father Handy glanced against the morning sunlight from Wyoming to the north as if the sun came from that direction, saw the church’s employee, the limbless trunk with knobbed head lolling as if in trip-fantastic to a slow jig as the Holstein cow wallowed forward.
   A bad day, Father Handy thought. For he had to declare bad news to Tibor McMasters. Turning, he reentered the church and hid himself; Tibor, on his cart, had not seen him, for Tibor hung in the clutch of within-thoughts and nausea; it always came to this when the artist appeared to begin his work: he was sick at his stomach, and any smell, any sight, even that of his own work, made him cough. And Father Handy wondered about this, the repellency of sense-reception early in the day, as if Tibor, he thought, does not want to be alive again another day.
   He himself, the priest; he enjoyed the sun. The smell of hot, large clover from the surrounding pastures of Charlottesville, Utah. The tink-tink of the tags of the cows… he sniffed the air as it filled his church and yet—not the sight of Tibor but the awareness of the limbless man’s pain; that caused him worry.
   There, behind the altar, the miniscule part of thework which had been accomplished; five years it would take Tibor, but time did not matter in a subject of this sort: through eternity—no, Father Handy thought; not eternity, because this thing is man-made and hence cursed—but for ages, it will be here generations. The other armless, legless persons to arrive later, who would not, could not, genuflect because they lacked the physiological equipment; this was accepted officially.
   “Uuuuuuuub,” the Holstein lowed, as Tibor, through his U.S. ICBM extensor system, reined it to a halt in the rear yard of the church, where Father Handy kept his detired, unmoving 1976 Cadillac, within which small lovely chickens, all feathered in gay gold, luminous, because they were Mexican banties, clung nightlong, bespoiling… and yet, why not? The dung of handsome birds that roamed in a little flock, led by Herbert G, the rooster who had flung himself up ages ago to confront all his rivals, won out and lived to be followed; a leader of beasts, Father Handy thought moodily. Inborn quality in Herbert G, who, right now, scratched within the succulent garden for bugs. For special mutant fat ones.
   He, the priest, hated bugs, too many odd kinds, thrust up overnight from the fal’t… so he loved the predators who fed on the chitinous crawlers, loved his flock of—amusing to think of—birds! Not men.
   But men arrived, at least on the Holy Day, Tuesday—to differentiate it (purposefully) from the archaic Christian Holy Day, Sunday.
   In the hind yard, Tibor detached his cart from the cow. Then, on battery power, the cart rolled up its special wood-plank ramp and into the church; Father Handy felt it within the building, the arrival of the man without limbs, who, retching, fought to control his abridged body so that he could resume work where he had left off at sunset yesterday.
   To Ely, his wife, Father Handy said, “Do you have hot coffee for him? Please.”
   “Yes,” she said, dry, dutiful, small, and withered, as if wetless personally; he disliked her body drabness as he watched her lay out a Melmac cup and saucer, not with love but with the unwarmed devotion of a priest’s wife, therefore a priest’s servant.
   “Hi!” Tibor called cheerfully. Always, as if professionally, merry, above his physiological retching and reretching.
   “Black,” Father Handy said. “Hot. Right here.” He stood aside so that the cart, which was massive for an indoor construct, could roll on through the corridor and into the church’s kitchen.
   “Morning, Mrs. Handy,” Tibor said.
   Ely Handy said dustily as she did not face the limbless man, “Good morning, Tibor. Pax be with you and with thy saintly spark.”
   “Pax or pox?” Tibor said, and winked at Father Handy.
   No answer; the woman puttered. Hate, Father Handy thought, can take marvelous exceeding attenuated forms; he all at once yearned for it direct, open and ripe and directed properly. Not this mere lack of grace, this formality… he watched her get milk from the cooler.
   Tibor began the difficult task of drinking coffee.
   First he needed to make his cart stationary. He locked the simple brake. Then detached the selenoid-controlled relay from the ambulatory circuit and sent power from the liquid-helium battery to the manual circuit. A clean aluminum tubular extension reached out and at its terminal a six-digit gripping mechanism, each unit wired separately back through the surge-gates and to the shoulder muscles of the limbless man, groped for the empty cup; then, as Tiber saw it was still empty, he looked inquiringly.
   “On the stove,” Ely said, meaningly smiling. So the cart’s brake had to be unlocked; Tibor rolled to the stove, relocked the cart’s brake once more via the selenoid selector-relays, and sent his manual grippers to lift the pot. The aluminum tubular extensor, armlike, brought the pot up tediously, in a near Parkinson-motion, until, finally, Tibor managed, through all the elaborate ICBM guidance components, to pour coffee into his cup.
   Father Handy said, “I won’t join you because I had pyloric spasms last night and when I got up this morning.” He felt irritable, physically. Like you, he thought, I am, although a Complete, having trouble with my body this morning: with glands and hormones. He lit a cigarette, his first of the day, tasted the loose genuine tobacco, purled, and felt much better; one chemical checked the overproduction of another, and now he seated himself at the table as Tibor, smiling cheerfully still, drank the heated-over coffee without complaint. And yet—
   Sometimes physical pain is a precognition of wicked things about to come, Father Handy thought, and in your case; is that it, do you know what I shall—must—tell you today? No choice, because what am I, if not a man-worm who is told; who, on Tuesday, tells, but this is only one day, and just an hour of that day. “Tibor,” he said, “wie geht es Heute?”
   “Es geht mir gut,” Tibor responded instantly.
   They mutually loved their recollection and their use of German. It meant Goethe and Heine and Schiller and Kafka and Falada; both men, together, lived for this and on this. Now, since the work would soon come, it was a ritual, bordering on the sacred, a reminder of the after-daylight hours when the painting proved impossible and they could—had to—merely talk. In the semigloom of the kerosene lanterns and the firelight, which was a bad light source; too irregular, and Tibor had complained, in his understating way, of eye fatigue. And that was a dreadful harbinger, because nowhere in the Wyoming-Utah area could a lensman be found; no refractive glasswork had been lately possible, at least as near as Father Handy knew.
   It would require a Pilg to get glasses for Tibor, if that became necessary; he blenched from that, because so often the church employee dragooned for a Pilg set off and never returned. And they never even learned why; was it better elsewhere, or worse? It could—or so he had decided from the utterances of the 6 P.M. radio—be that it consisted of both; it depended on the place.
   And the world, now, was many places. The connectives had been destroyed. That which had made the once-castigated “uniformity.”
   “ ‘You understand,’ “ Father Handy chanted, singsong, from Ruddigore. And at once Tibor ceased drinking his coffee.
   “ ‘I think I do,’ “ he wailed back, finishing the quotation.
   “ ‘That duty, duty must be done,’ “ he said, then. The coffee cup was set down, an elaborate rejection costing the use of many surge-gates opening and closing.
   “ ‘The rule,’ “ Father Handy said, “ ‘applies to everyone.’ “
   Half to himself, with real bitterness, Tibor said, “ ‘To shirk the task.’ “ He turned his head, licked rapidly with his expert tongue, and gazed in deep, prolonged study at the priest. “What is it?”
   It is, Father Handy thought, the fact that I am linked; I am part of a network that whips and quivers with the whole chain, shivered from above. And we believe—as you know—that the final motion is given from that Elsewhere that we receive the dim emanations out of, data which we strive honestly to understand and fulfill because we believe—we know—that what it wants is not only strong but correct.
   “We’re not slaves,” he said aloud. “We are, after all, servants. We can quit; you can. Even I, if I felt it was right.” But he would never; he had long ago decided, and taken a secret binding oath on it. “Who makes you do your job here?” he said, then.
   Tibor said cautiously, “Well, you pay me.”
   “But I don’t compel you.”
   “I have to eat. That does.”
   Father Handy said, “We know this: you can find many jobs, at any place; you could be anywhere working. Despite your—handicap.”
   “The Dresden Amen,” Tibor said.
   “Eh? What?” He did not understand.
   “Sometime,” Tibor said, “when you have the generator reconnected to the electronic organ, I’ll play it for you; you’ll recognize it. The Dresden Amen rises high. It points to an Above. Where you are bullied from.”
   “Oh no,” Father Handy protested.
   “Oh yes,” Tibor said sardonically, and his pinched face withered with the abuse of his mis-emotion, his conviction. “Even if it’s ‘good,’ a benign power. It still makes you do things. Just tell me this: Do I have to paint out anything I’ve already done? Or does this deal with the over-all mural?”
   “With the final composition; what you’ve done is excellent. The color thirty-five-millimeter slides we sent on—they were delighted, those who looked at them; you know, the Church Eltern.”
   Reflecting, Tibor said, “Strange. You can still get color film and get it processed. But you can’t get a daily newspaper.”
   “Well, there’s the six-o’clock news on the radio,” Father Handy pointed out. “From Salt Lake City.” He waited hopefully. There was no answer; the limbless man drank the coffee silently. “Do you know,” Father Handy said, “what the oldest word in the English language is?”
   “No,” Tibor said.
   ‘“Might,”‘ Father Handy said. “In the sense of being mighty. It’s Macht in the German. But it goes further back than Teutonic; it goes all the way back to the Hittites.”
   “Hmmm.”
   “The Hittite word mekkis. ‘Power.’ “ Again he waited hopefully. “ ‘Did you not chatter? Is this not woman’s way?’ “ He was quoting from Mozart’s Magic Flute. “ ‘Man’s way,’ “ he finished, “ ‘is action.’ “
   Tibor said, “You’re the one who’s chattering.”
   “But you,” Father Handy said, “must act. I had something to tell you.” He reflected. “Oh yes. The sheep.” He had, behind the church in a five-acre pasture, six ewes. “I got a ram late yesterday,” he said, “from Theodore Benton. On loan, for breeding. Benton dumped him off while I was gone. He’s an old ram; he has gray on his muzzle.”
   “Hmmm.”
   “A dog came and tried to run the flock, that red Irish-setter thing of the Yeats’. You know; it runs my ewes almost daily.”
   Interested now, the limbless man turned his head. “Did the ram—”
   .”Five times the dog approached the flock. Five times, moving very slowly, the ram walked toward the dog, leaving the flock behind. The dog, of course, stopped and stood still when he saw the ram coming toward him, and so the ram halted and pretended; he cropped.” Father Handy smiled as he remembered. “How smart the old fellow was; I saw him crop, but he was watching the dog. The dog growled and barked, and the old fellow cropped on. And then again the dog moved in. But this time the dog ran, he bounded by the ram; he got between the ram and the flock.”
   “And the flock bolted.”
   “Yes. And the dog—you know how they do, learn to do—cut off one ewe, to run her down; they kill the ewe, then, or maim them, they get them from the belly.” He was silent. “And the ram. He was too old; he couldn’t run and catch up. He turned and watched.”
   Both men were then, together, silent.
   “Can they think?” Tibor said. “The ram, I mean.”
   “I know,” Father Handy said, “what I thought. I went to get my gun. To kill the dog. I had to.”
   “If it was me,” Tibor said, “if I was that ram, and I saw that, I saw the dog get by me and run the flock and all I could do was watch—” He hesitated.
   “You would wish,” Father Handy said, “that you had already died.”
   “Yes.”
   “So death, as we teach the Servants of Wrath—we teach that it is a solution. Not an adversary, as the Christians taught, as Paul said. You remember their text. ‘Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?’ You see my point.”
   Tibor said slowly, “If you can’t do your job, better to be dead. What is the job I have to do?”
   In your mural, Father Handy thought, you must create His face.
   “Him,” he said. “And as He actually is.” After a puzzled pause Tibor said, “You mean His exact physical appearance?”
   “Not,” Father Handy said, “a subjective interpretation.”
   “You have photos? Vid data?”
   “They’ve released a few to me. To be shown to you.”
   Staring at him, Tibor said, “You mean you have a photo of the Deus Irae?”
   “I have a color photo in depth, what before the war they called 3-D. No animated pics, but this will be enough. I think.”
   “Let’s see it.” Tiber’s tone was mixed, a compound of amazement and fear and the hostility of an artist hampered, impeded.
   Passing into his inner office, Father Handy got the manila folder, came back with it, opened it, brought out the color 3-D photo of the God of Wrath, and held it forth. Tiber’s right manual extensor seized it.
   “That’s the God,” Father Handy said presently.
   “Yes, you can see.” Tibor nodded. “Those black eyebrows. That interwoven black hair; the eyes… I see pain, but he’s smiling.” His extensor abruptly returned the photo. “I can’t paint him from that.”
   “Why not?” But Father Handy knew why not. The photo did not really catch the god-quality; it was the photo of a man. The god-quality; it could not be recorded by celluloid coated with a silver nitrate. “He was,” he said, “at the time this photo was taken, having a luau in Hawaii. Eating young taro leaves with chicken and octopus. Enjoying himself. See the greed for the food, the lust creating an unnatural expression? He was relaxing on a Sunday afternoon before a speech before the faculty of some university; I forget which. Those happy days in the sixties.”
   “If I can’t do my job,” Tibor said, “its your fault.”
   “ ‘A poor workman always blames—’ “
   “You’re not a box of tools.” Both manual extensors slapped at the cart. “My tools are here. I don’t blame; I use them. But you—you’re my employer; you’re telling me what to do, but how can I, from that one color shot? Tell me—”
   “A Pilg. The Eltern of the Church say that if the photograph is inadequate—and it is, and we know it, all of us—then you must go on a Pilg until you find the Deus Irae, and they’ve sent documents pertaining to that.”
   Blinking in surprise, Tibor gaped, then protested, “But my metabattery! Suppose it gives out!”
   Father Handy said, “So you do blame your tools.” His voice was carefully controlled, quietly resounding.
   At the stove, Ely said, “Fire him.”
   To her, Father Handy said, “I fire no one. A pun. Fire: their hell, the Christians. We don’t have that,” he reminded her. And then to Tibor he said the Great Verse of all the worlds, that which both men understood and yet did not grasp, could not, like Papagano with his net, entangle. He spoke it aloud as a bond holding them together in what they, the Christians, called agape, love. But this was higher than that; this was love and man and beautifulness, the three: a new trinity.


Ich sih die liehte heide
in gruner varwe stan.
Dar suln wir alle gehen,
die sumerzit enphahen.


   After he said that, Tibor nodded, picked up his coffee cup once more, that difficult, elaborate motion and problem; sipped. The room became still and even Ely, the woman, did not chatter.
   Outdoors, the cow which pulled Tiber’s cart groaned huskily, shifted; perhaps, Father Handy thought, it is looking for, hoping for, food. It needs food for the body, we for our mind. Or everyone dies. We must have the mural; he must travel over a thousand miles, and ifhis cow dies or his battery gives out, then we expire with him; he is not alone in this death.
   He wondered if Tibor knew that. If it would help to know. Probably not. So he did not say it; in this world nothing helped.

Two

   Neither man knew who had written the old poem, the medieval German words which could not be found in their Cassell’s dictionary; they together, the two of them, had imagined out, summoned, found, the meaning of the words; they were certain they were right and understood. But not exactly. And Ely sneered.
   But it was, I see the light-stricken thicket. In green—and then they did not quite know. It somehow stood in greenness. And we will all go there… was it soon? The summertime to—but to what? To reach? To find? Or was it—the summertime to leave?
   They felt it, he and Tibor; a final truth, and yet it was, for them in their ignorance, without reference sources, both leaving and finding the summertime, the sun-struck woodland; it was life and the leaving of life fused, since they did not quite make it out rationally, and it frightened them, and yet they turned and returned to it, because—and perhaps exactly because they could not understand—it was a balm; it salved them.
   Now, Father Handy and Tibor needed a power—mekkis, Father Handy thought to himself—to come from Above and aid them… on this, the Servants of Wrath agreed with the Christians: the good power lay Above, Ubrem Sternenzelt, as Schiller had once said: above the band of stars. Yes, beyond the stars; this they were clear on; this was modern German.
   But it was strange, depending on a poem whose meaning one did not actually grasp; he wondered, as he unfolded and searched through the old stained gas-station maps once given out free in prewar days, if this was not a stigma of degeneracy. An omen of badness… not just that times were bad but that they themselves had become bad; the quality was lodged withinthem.
   His conference now was with the Dominus McComas, his superior in the hierarchy of the Servants of Wrath; the Dominus sat, large and tepid, with strangely cruel teeth, as if he tore things, not necessarily living, in fact much harder—as if he did a job, a profession, teethwise.
   “Carl Lufteufel,” the Dominus McComas said, “was a son of a bitch. As a man.” He added that because of course one did not speak of the god part of the god-man, the Deus Irae, like that. “And,” he said, “I’ll give you ten to five that he made martinis with sweet vermouth.”
   “Did you ever drink sweet vermouth straight or with ice?” Father Handy asked.
   “It’s sweet piss,” McComas grated in his horrid, low voice, and, as he spoke, cut into his spongy gum with the tail of a wooden match. “I am not kidding; it’s nothing but horse piss they’ve bought.”
   “Diabetic horses,” Father Handy said.
   “Yeah, passing sugar.” McComas grunted a ha-ha; his round, red—red as if they had short-circuited and the metal in them had heated up, dangerous and improper—eyes sparked; but this was normal, as was his half-zipped fly. “So your inc,” McComas grated, “is going to roll all the way to Los Angeles. Is it downhill?” And this time he laughed so that he spat onto the table. Ely, seated off in a corner, knitting, stared at him with such flat hate that Father Handy felt uncomfortable and turned his attention to the creased gas-station maps.
   “Carleton Lufteufel,” Father Handy said, “was Chairman of the Energy Research and Development Administration from 1982 to the beginning of the war.” He spoke half to himself. “To the use of the gob.” The great objectless bomb, a bomb which detonated not at one particular spot on the Earth’s surface but which acted so as to contaminate a layer of the atmosphere itself. It therefore (and this was the sort of weapons-theorizing that had gone on prior to World War Three) could not be headed off, as a missile could be by an antimissile, or a manned bomber, no matter how fast—and they had gone quite fast, by 1982—by, incredibly, a biplane. A slow biplane.
   In 1978 the biplane had reappeared in the D-III. Defensive III, a flap-flap man-made pelican which held within it a limitless fuel supply; it could circle, at low altitude, for months, while, within, the pilot lived off his suit as Our Grandparents had lived off trees and shrubs. The D-III biplane had a tropic device which directed its efforts when a manned bomber, even at fantastic altitude, came; the D-III began to ascend when the bomber was still a thousand miles away, releasing from between its wings a sinkerlike weight of vast density which pulled the plane to the proper altitude; the D-III and its pilot were actually jerked high, where no atmosphere to speak of existed. And the sinker—it had actually been called that even though it did just the opposite; it in fact lifted—carried the biplane and the man within toward the manned bomber, and all at once the two objects met. And everyone died. But “everyone” was only three men in all: two in the bomber, one in the D-III. And, below, a city lived on, lit up, composedly functioning. .While other D-IIIs circled, circled, month after month; like certain raptors, they hovered for a seeming eternity.
   However, it was not truly eternity. The antimissiles and the D-IIIs had kept off the fatal wasps for a finite time, and then at last the Dies Irae had come—for everyone, because of the gob, the great objectless device which Carleton Lufteufel had detonated from a satellite at an apogee of five thousand miles. It had been imagined that the U.S. would in some mysterious fashion survive and prosper, perhaps because of a New Year’s Eve funny-hat artifact distributed to the multi-millions of patriotic USers; it connected to cephalic veins and gave restitution to a bloodstream rapidly losing red corpuscles. The vacuum-cleaner salesmen’s convention-style headgear, however, had been finite, too; it had failed for many people long before the Krankheit—the sickness—had faded. The great, grand corporation which had sold the Pentagon and the White House on the funny hats—it too had disappeared, gotten not by bone-marrow-destroying fallout but by direct hits from missiles which ducked and wove faster than the anti-ms twisted and darted. Don’t look back, Satchel Paige had once said; something may be gaining on you. The missiles from People’s China had not looked back and the things gaining on them had not reached them in time; China could die with the happy knowledge that out of their miserable underground “backyard” factories they had developed a weapon which even Dr. Porsche, had he still been alive, would have shaken his head at—nodded at with admiration.
   But what, Doctor, Father Handy thought to himself as he shuffled and unfolded the ancient gas-station maps, had been the authentic really dirty weapon of the war? The gob of the Deus Irae had killed the most people… probably about a billion. No, the gob of Carleton Lufteufel, now worshiped as the God of Wrath—that had not been it, unless one went by mere numbers.
   No; he had his own favorite, and, although it had killed only a relatively few million people, it impressed him: its evil was so blatant; it glowed and stank, as a U.S. Congressman had once said, like a dead mackerel in the night’s dark. And it, like the gob, was a U.S. weapon.
   It was a nerve gas.
   It caused the organs of the body to eat one another.
   “Well,” the Dominus McComas growled, picking at his hardy teeth, “if the inc can do it, fine. If I was an Elter I wouldn’t give a damn if it looked like Lufteufel or not; I’d just get a good fat wicked bloated pig-face up there; you know, a swilling face.” And his own swilling face beamed, and how strange it was, Father Handy thought, because McComas looked like one would imagine the Deus Irae to look… and yet, the color photo had shown a man with pain-smeared eyes, a man who seemed ill in a deep and dreadful way even as he gorged on roast chicken with a lei around his neck and a girl—not pretty—to his right… a man with shiny, heavy, tumbled black hair and too much stubble, even though no doubt he carefully shaved; it was subdermal, showing through: not his fault, and yet it was the mark. But of what? Blackness was not evil; blackness was what Martin Luther in his translation of Genesis had meant when he said, “Und die Erde war ohne Form und leer.” Leer; that was it. That was what blackness was; when spoken it sounded like “layer”… a film negative, which, having been exposed to unshielded light, had, due to chemical action, turned to absolute opaqueness, to this quality of feerness, this layer of glaucomalike blindness. It was like Oedipus wandering; what he saw, or rather what he failed to see. His eyes were not destroyed; they were really covered: it was a membrane. And so he, Father Handy, did not hate Carleton Lufteufel, because that billion who had died had not gone like those who had been gassed by the U.S. nerve gas; its death had not been monstrous.
   And yet this had ended the war; there was, after the toxic rain had ended, insufficient personnel to continue. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, he thought: Of the dead only say good things, such as—well, he thought, perhaps this: You died because of the idiots whom you hired to rule you and protect you and collect terrible taxes from you. Therefore, who was the ultimate cretin, you or they? Anyhow, both had perished. The Pentagon had long ago gone; the White House, the VIP shelters… de mortuis nil nisi malum, he thought, correcting the old saying to make it come out the more wisely: Of the dead only speak evil. Because they were that stupid; it was cretinism carried to the dimension of the satanic.
   –Carried to the point of supinely reading the ‘papes and watching the TV and doing nothing when Carleton Lufteufel had given his speech in 1983 at Cheyenne, the so-called Numerical Fallacy speech in which he had made the inspired, brilliant point, much head-nodded at, that it was not so that a nation needed a certain number of survivors to function; a nation, Lufteufel had explained, does not reside in its people at all but in its know-how. As long as the data-repositories are safe, the time capsules of micropools buried miles under—if they remained, then (as he had phrased it, equal, many in Washington said, to the “blood-sweat-tears” speech of Churchill’s, decades before) “our patriotic idiosyncratic ethnic patterns survive because they can be learned by any replacement generation.”
   The replacement generation, however, had not had the wherewithal to dig up the data-repositories, because they had a more important task, one overlooked by Lufteufel: that of growing food to keep themselves alive. The same problems which had lashed the Pilgrims, those of clearing land, planting, protecting crops and livestock. Pigs, cows, and sheep, corn and wheat, beets and carrots: those became the vital patriotic idiosyncratic ethnic preoccupations, not the aural text of some great American epic poetic stupidity such as Whittier’s Snowbound.
   “I say,” McComas rumbled, “don’t send your inc; don’t have him do the mural at all; get a Complete. He’ll roll along on that cow-cart for a hundred or so miles and then he’ll come to a place where there’s no road, and he’ll go into a ditch and that’ll be that. It’s no favor to him, Handy. It just means you’re killing some poor limbless fart who admittedly paints well—”
   “Paints,” Father Handy said, “better than any artist that SOW knows of.” He pronounced the initials as a word, as “sow”—the female pig—so as to plague McComas, who insisted it always be spoken as three initials or at least as “sow” to rhyme with “mow.”
   McComas’s short-circuited red eyes focused malignly on him, and he searched for a cutting, tearing, oral return remark; while he did so, Ely said all at once, “Here comes Miss Rae.”
   “Oh,” Father Handy said, and blinked. Because it was Lurine Rae who made into fact the dots, jots, and tittles of Servants of Wrath dogma; at least as far as he personally was concerned.
   Here she came now, red-haired and so small-boned that he always imagined that she could fly… the idea of witches entered his mind when he saw Lurine Rae unexpectedly, because of this lightness. She rode horseback constantly, and this was the “real” reason for her springiness—but it was not merely the lithe motion of an athletic woman; nor was it ethereal either. Hollow-boned, he had decided, like a bird. And that connected once more in his mind women and birds; hence once more Papagano, the birdcatcher’s, song: He would make a net for birds and then he would make, someday, a net for a little wife or a little lady who would sleep by his side, and Father Handy, seeing Lurine, felt the wicked old ram-animal within him awake; the evil of substantiality itself manifested its insidious being at the heart of his nature.
   Distressing. But he was used to it; in fact he enjoyed it—enjoyed, really, her.
   “Morning,” Lurine said to him, then saw the Dominus McComas, whom she did not like; she wrinkled her nose and her freckles writhed: all the pale red, that of her hair, her skin, her lips, all twisted in aversion, and she, too, bared her teeth, back at him. Only her teeth were tiny and regular, and made not to grind—as for instance the prehistoric uncooked seeds—but to neatly sever.
   Lurine had biting teeth. Not the massive chewing kind.
   She, he knew, nipped. Knew? Guessed, rather. Because he had not really ever come near her; he kept a distance between them.
   The ideology of the Servants of Wrath connected with the Augustinian view of women; there was fear involved, and then of course the dogma got entangled with the old cult of Mani, the Albigensian Heresy of Provincal France, the Catharists. To them, flesh and the world had been evil; they had abstained. But their poets and knights had worshiped women, had deified them; the domina, so enticing, so vital… even the mad ones, the dominae of Carcassonne who had carried their dead lovers’ hearts in small jeweled boxes. And the—was it merely insane, or rather more perverted?—Catharist knights who had actually carried in enameled boxes their mistresses’ dried dung… it had been a cult ruthlessly wiped out by Innocent III, and perhaps rightly so. But—
   For all its excesses, the Albigensian knight-poets had known the worth of women; she was not man’s servant and not even merely his “weak rib,” the side of him who had been so readily tempted. She was—well, a good question; as he got a chair for Lurine and poured her coffee, he thought: Some supreme value lies in this slight, freckled, pale, red-haired, horse-riding girl of twenty. Supreme as is the mekkis of the God of Wrath Himself. But not a mekkis; not Macht, not power or might. It is more a—mystery. Hence, gnostic wisdom is involved, knowledge hidden behind a wall so fragile, so entrancing… but undoubtedly a fatal knowledge. Interesting, that truth could be a terminal possession. The woman knew the truth, lived with it, yet it did not kill her. But when she uttered it—he thought of Cassandra and of the female Oracle at Delphi. And felt afraid.
   Once he had said to Lurine, in the evening after a few drinks, “You carry what Paul called the sting.”
   “The sting of death,” Lurine had promptly recalled, “is sin.”
   “Yes.” He had nodded. And she bore it, and it no more killed her than the viper’s poison killed it… or the H-warhead missiles menaced themselves. A knife, a sword, had two ends: one a handle, the other a blade; the gnosis of this woman was for her gripped by the safe end, the handle; but when she extended it—he saw, flashing, the light of the slight blade.
   But what, for the Servants of Wrath, did sin consist of? The weapons of the war; one naturally thought of the psychotic and psychopathic cretins in high places in dead corporations and government agencies, now dead as individuals; the men at drafting boards, the idea men, the planners, the policy boys and P.R. infants—like grass, their flesh. Certainly that had been sin, what they had done, but that had been without knowledge. Christ, the God of the Old Sect, had said that about His murderers: they did not know what they were up to. Not knowledge but the lack of knowledge had made them into what they had been, frozen into history as they gambled for His garments or stuck His side with the spear. There was knowledge in the Christian Bible, in three places that he personally knew of—despite the rule within the Servants of Wrath hierarchy against reading the Christian sacred texts. One part lay in the Book of Job. One in Ecclesiastes. The last, the final note, had been Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, and then it had ended, and Tertullian and Origen and Augustine and Thomas Aquinas—even the divine Abelard; none had added an iota in two thousand years.
   And now, he thought, we know. The Catharists had come bleakly close, had guessed one piece: that the world lay in the control of an evil adversary and not the good god. What they had not guessed was contained in Job, that the “good god” was a god of wrath—was in fact evil.
   “Like Shakespeare has Hamlet say to Ophelia,” McComas growled at Lurine. “ ‘Get thee to a nunnery.’ “
   Lurine, sipping coffee, said prettily, “Up yours.”
   “See?” the Dominus McComas said to Father Handy.
   “I see,” he said carefully, “that you can’t order people to be this or that; they have what used to be called an ontological nature.”
   Scowling, McComas said, “Whazzat?”
   “Their intrinsic nature,” Lurine said sweetly. “What they are. You ignorant rustic religious cranks.” To Father Handy she said, “I finally made up my mind. I’m joining the Christian Church.”
   Hoarsely guffawing, McComas shook, belly-wise, not Santa Claus belly but belly of hard, grinding animal. “Is there a Christian Church anymore? In this area?”
   Lurine said, “They’re very gentle and kind, there.”
   “They have to be,” McComas said. “They have to plead to get people to come in. We don’t need to plead; they come to us for protection. From Him.” He jerked his thumb upward. At the God of Wrath, not in his man-form, not as he had appeared on Earth as Carleton Lufteufel, but as the mekkis-spirit everywhere. Above, here, and ultimately below; in the grave, to which they all were dragged at last.
   The final enemy which Paul had recognized—death—had had its victory after all; Paul had died for nothing.
   And yet here sat Lurine Rae, sipping coffee, announcing calmly that she intended to join a discredited, withering, elderly sect. The husk of the former world, which had shown its chiltinous shell, its wickedness; for it had been Christians who had designed the ter-weps, the terror weapons.
   The descendants of those who had sung square-wrought, pious Lutheran hymns had designed, at German cartels, the evil instruments which had shown up the “God” of the Christian Church for what he was.
   Death was not an antagonist, the last enemy, as Paul had thought; death was the release from bondage to the God of Life, the Deus Irae. In death one was free from Him—and only in death.
   It was the God of Life who was the evil god. And in fact the only God. And Earth, this world, was the only kingdom. And they, all of them; they constituted his servants, in that they carried out, had always done so, over the thousands of years, his commands. And his reward had been in keeping both with his nature and with his commands: it had been the Ira. The Wrath.
   And yet here sat Lurine. So it made no sense.

   Later, when the Dominus McComas had ambled, trudged off on foot to see about his business, Father Handy sat with Lurine.
   “Why?” he said.
   Shrugging, Lurine said, “I like kindly people. I like Dr. Abernathy.”
   He stared at her. Jim Abernathy, the local Christian priest in Charlottesville; he detested the man—if Abernathy was really a man; he seemed more a castrato, fit, as put in Tom Jones, for entry in the gelding races. “He gives you exactly what?” he demanded. “Self-help. The ‘think pleasant thoughts and all will be—’ “
   “No,” Lurine said.
   Ely said dryly, “She’s sleeping with that acolyte. That Pete Sands. You know; the bald young man with acne.”
   “Ringworm,” Lurine corrected.
   “At least,” Ely said, “get him a fungicide oinment to rub on his scalp. So you don’t catch it.”
   “Mercury,” Father Handy said. “From a peddler, itinerant; you can buy for about five U.S. silver half-dollars—”
   “Okay!” Lurine said angrily.
   “See?” Ely said to her husband.
   He saw; it was true and he knew it.
   “So he’s not a gesunt,” Lurine said. Gesunt—a healthy person. Not made sick or maimed by the war, as the incompletes had been. Pete Sands was a kranker, a sick one; it showed on his marred head, hairless, his pocked and pitted face. Back to the Anglo-Saxton peasant with his pox, he thought with surprising venom. Was it jealousy? He amazed himself.
   Nodding toward Father Handy, Ely said, speaking to Lurine, “Why not sleep with him? He’s a gesunt.”
   “Aw, come on,” Lurine said in her small, quiet, but deadly boiling-hot angry voice; when she became really terribly furious her entire face flushed, and she sat as stiffly as if calcified.
   “I mean it,” Ely said, in a sort of loud, high screech.
   “Please,” Father Handy said, trying to calm his wife.
   “But why come here?” Ely asked Lurine. “To announce you’re going to revert, is that it? Who cares? Revert. In fact, sleep with Abernathy; a lot of good it’ll do you.” She made it meaningful; she put over the significance of her words by the wild tone alone. Women had such great ability at that; they possessed such a range. Men, in contrast, grunted, as with McComas; they resorted, as in his case, to an ugly chuckle. That was little enough.
   Trying to sound wise, Father Handy said to Lurine, “Have you thought it over carefully? There’s a stigma attached; after all, you do live by sewing and weaving and spinning—you depend on goodwill in this community, and if you join Abernathy’s church—”
   “Freedom of conscience,” Lurine said.
   “Oh god,” Ely moaned.
   “Listen,” Father Handy said. Reaching out, he took hold of both of Lurine’s hands, held them with his own. He explained, then, patiently. “Just because you’re sleeping with Sands, that doesn’t force you to accept their religious teachings. ‘Freedom of conscience’ also means freedom not to accept dogma; do you see? Now look, dear.” She was twenty; he was forty-two, and felt sixty; he felt, holding her hands, like a tottering old ram, some defanged creature mumbling and drooling, and he cringed at his self-image. But he continued anyhow. “They believed for two thousand years in a good god. And now we know it’s not true. There is a god, but he is—you know as well as I do; you were a kid during the war, but you, remember and you can see; you’ve seen the miles of dust that once were bodies… I don’t understand how you can in all honesty, intellectually or morally, accept an ideology that teaches that good played a decisive role in what happened. See?”
   She did not disengage her hands. But she remained inert, so passive that he felt as if he held deceased organisms; the physical sensation repelled him and he voluntarily released her. She then picked up her coffee cup once more, with tranquility. And she said, “All right; we know that a Carleton Lufteufel, Chairman of the ERDA of the United States Government, existed. But he was a man. Not a god.”
   “A man in form,” Father Handy said, “made by God. In God’s image, according to your own sacred writ.”
   She became silent; this she could not answer.
   “Dear,” Father Handy said, “to believe in the Old Church is to flee. To try to escape the present. We, our church; we try to live in this world and face what’s happening and how we stand. We’re honest. We, as living creatures, are in the hands of a merciless and angry deity and will be until death wipes us from the slate of his records. If perhaps one could believe in a god of death… but unfortunately—”
   “Maybe there is one,” Lurine said abruptly.
   “Pluto?” He laughed.
   “Maybe God releases us from our torment,” she answered steadily. “And I may find him in Abernathy’s church. Anyhow—” She glanced up, flushed and small and determined and lovely. “I won’t worship a psychotic ex-official of the U.S. ERDA as a deity; that’s not being realistic; that’s—” She gestured. “It’s wrong,” she said, as if speaking to herself, trying to convince herself.
   “But,” Father Handy said, “he lives.”
   She stared at him, sadly, and very troubled.
   “We,” he continued, “as you know, are painting him. And we are sending our inc, our artist, to seek him out; we have Richfield Station and AAA maps… call it pragmatism, if you want; Abernathy once said that to me. But what does he worship? Not anything. You show me. Show me.” He slammed his flat hand on the table, savagely.
   “Well,” Lurine said, “maybe this is—”
   “The prelude? To the real life to come? Do you genuinely believe that? Listen, dear; St. Paul believed that Christ would return in his own lifetime. That the ‘New Kingdom’ would begin in the first century A.D. Did it?”
   “No,” she said.
   “And everything that Paul wrote or thought is based on that fallacy. But we base our beliefs on no fallacy; we know that Carleton Lufteufel served as the manifestation on Earth of the Deity, and he showed his true character, and it was wrathful. You can see it in every handful of dirt and rubble. You’ve seen it for sixteen years. If there were any psychiatrists alive they’d tell you the truth, what you’re trying to do. It’s called—a fugue.” He became silent, then.
   Ely added, “And she gets to sleep with Sands.”
   No one said anything to that; it, too, consisted of a fact. And a fact was a thing, and words could not retort to a thing: it required another and greater thing. And Lurine Rae, and the Old Church, did not have that; it possessed only nice words like “agape” and “caritas” and “mercy” and “salvation.”
   “When you have lived through the ter-weps,” Father Handy said to Lurine, “and the gob, you no longer can live by words alone. See?”
   Lurine nodded, troubled and confused and unhappy.