And I didn't recall what was on my mind till I pulled the pick-up up to the garage, and that reminded me of seeing him and I don't recall all of it till I look out across the moonlit river and see the launch is tied over there now, across the way, and that now there's two rooms lit over in the house instead of only one . . .)
After leaving Viv with her poetry and her disappointment, I went to the bathroom, where I drew out my teeth-brushing as long as possible and spent a good five minutes examining the skin of my face to see how the burn had healed. In my own cold quarters I undressed slowly, putting off getting into bed until the cool of the room forced me between the covers. Finally I turned out the light. The darkness exploded into the room; then, slowly, the moon cast a blue-white beam across my quilt, chilling my cheek and intersecting that thin finger of light that came from the hole in the wall. Have to fill that hole, I thought to myself. I'll have to fill that hole. Someday soon I will have to do that for good. . . .
Then, like that exploding darkness, the shame rose again and surged over me with the same sickening force that had years ago left me with drumming headaches and vomiting . . . the same force, years before, in the same bed . . . always after (oh God, I had never made the connection before!) always the day after I had watched through that spyhole the passion that I was then, was still incapable of competing with. Now that point of light had found me again. I cringed back into the bedclothes; it seemed to be chopping away at me, at the worthless flesh of me. A scalpel of terrible light, causing actual physical pain! I lay writhing beneath it, feeling no longer shame but only pain. Perhaps when shame grows too much for the soul to hold, it expands to sicken the flesh itself with a disease as palpable as cancer, and as deadly. I couldn't say. Not then. Only that it was a very real hurt and rapidly growing in proportion . . . I realized I was crying, not at all silently this time. I clutched my head in time to catch a thunderclap of pain that shook water from my forehead and eyes. I clenched my teeth and rolled groaning into a ball, readying myself for the blow to my stomach. I shuddered with deep, clutching sobs. . . .
And it was this way, a whimpering wad of childhood misery under a quilt, that she found me. "Are you feeling sick?" she whispered. She was beside my bed. The pain behind my eyes disappeared at the glimmering sight of her. The sickness in my chest fled instantly before the light brushing of her fingers . . .
Outside, the river rocked between mountain and sea, suspended momentarily between tide and flood, motionless but for a spreading moon-rippled wake. The clouds hurried along, back to the sea. The pick-up eased lightless and quiet into the cavernous garage . . . (When I saw that the launch was gone I don't know what got into me; you'll make it across because I decided to swim, rather than call for the boat. You'll make it. Now from the garage across to the dock in cold water is no slouch of a swim, even when a man is feeling his oats. And I was tired clean through, tired enough I should never have tried. But the funny thing is after I dived in and started swimming I didn't get any tireder. It took hours, it seemed like, of hard swimming, but I never got any tireder. I was out there and it was like that old river was a hundred miles across--blue-silver, cold--but I knew I would make it. I remember thinking: Look at you: you'll make it all the way across here when you couldn't make it up that hill for a air hose for Joby. You'll make it across here not because you're strong enough but because you're weak enough . . .)
Then, of course, after she had touched me, we made love. The scene no longer needed the impetus of my contrived plot. I no longer moved the scene; the scene moved me. Quite simply, we made love.
(You'll make it acrosst . . .)
We made love. How pedestrian the words look--trite, worn, practically featureless with use--but how can one better describe that which happens when it happens? that creation? that magic blending? I might say we became figures in a mesmerized dance before the rocking talisman of the moon, starting slow, so slow . . . a pair of feathers drifting through clear liquid substance of sky . . . gradually accelerating, faster and faster and finally into photon existence of pure light.
(Tired and beat as you are, you'll make it acrosst, you big stud swimmer you . . .)
Or I might instead list impressions, images still brilliant, flash-bulbed forever by the white arching of those first touches--the first look after the woolen plaid was parted to show that she wore no brassiere; the slight shy lifting as I pulled the coarse denim from her hips; the supple line starting at the point of her back-thrown chin, pulsing down between her breasts to her stomach spotlighted by that beam from her room . . .
(You'll make it acrosst because you ain't strong enough not to, I kept thinking as I swam. And I recollect this one other thing, a notion that came to me when I climbed out of the water: that there ain't really any true strength . . . and as I climb the steps: there ain't really any real strength . . .)
Yet it still seems to me I best communicate the beauty of those moments by repeating, quite simply, we made love. And consummated there a month of quick looks, guarded smiles, accidental brushings of body too open or too secret to be mere accident, and all the other little unfinished vignettes of desire . . . and, perhaps most of all, consummated the shared knowledge of that desire, and of that returned desire, and of the juggernaut advance of that desire . . . in a silent inward explosion as my whole straining body burst like fluid electricity into hers. Shared, consummated, resolved; in a joyous sprint side by side up the steep slope to the topmost brink, vaulting out . . . the weightless glide . . . the soaring motionless through light-year distances of skin-tight space; gliding down, gradually back . . . to the tick-tock of majority-vote reality, to the timid squeak of bed, to a LISTEN dog barking outside at the voyeur moon . . . and to the LISTEN WHAT? pressing memory of a strange sodden tread that I thought I had heard WATCH OUT somewhere frighteningly near ages, hours, seconds before!
To finally opening my eyes and finding Viv brushed only by the soft, wide stroke of moonlight, and the spotlighting beam from the hole in the wall extinguished!
(No, not the strength I always believed in; I kept hearing in my head--not strength like I always thought, I could build and thought I could live, and thought I could show the kid how to live . . .)
The total revelation of what had happened during our love-making blasted me so hard I was nearly knocked right back into that outer-space safety of orgasm. I had been confident of my security behind the moat. Positive of it. It had occurred to me that he might return before I was finished. I had half hoped he would. But when he returned he would be across the water. He would honk for the boat. I would take it across to him. Sure, he would be suspicious--me alone there in the house with his woman all those hours--be almost certain, in fact. But almost was all I had planned on. Not on his swimming the river and creeping up the steps like a thief in the night. Not on his actually stooping to spying on me! My Captain Marvel brother, peeking like a pimp through a knothole? Brother Hank? Hank Stamper?
Can't a fella bank on anyone any more?
(No, there ain't any true strength; there's just different degrees of weakness . . .)
I lay paralyzed, with Viv still in a swoon beneath me. One part of my brain was remarking with academic detachment: "So that's how he used to know I was watching; my room would cast a corresponding beam into the next-door dimness, which went out when interrupted by something solid, like my head. How stupid of me." While another, louder part kept screaming at me: RUN, YOU FOOL! WATCH OUT! FLEE BEFORE HE COMES FOR YOU RIGHT THROUGH THAT WALL! HELP! WATCH OUT! HIDE! JUMP! . . . as though the wall were going to crash at any instant to reveal a swaying lock-kneed monster, myself springing nude out into the cold moon and falling to the mud below in a splintering shower of crystal . . . HIDE! WATCH OUT! FLEE!
Yet gradually, as the initial shock subsided, I remember being overcome by a gloating sense of remarkable good fortune: sure . . . why, this is too perfect! This could mean victory beyond my wildest dreams, vengeance beyond my wickedest schemes. Shall I? I debated. Dare I? Ye
s . . . never give an inch, as they say . . .
"Never," I breathed to Viv before I had a chance to back out. "Never in all my life"--not loud, just loud enough--"have I had it happen like that."
She took the cue beautifully. "Me neither. I didn't know, Lee . . . so wonderful."
"I love you, Viv."
"I didn't know. I used to dream . . ." Her fingers traced my spine and came to rest on my cheek. I wasn't to be distracted. "Do you love me too, Viv?" I could feel the breath stop beyond that wall; I could hear the tunnel roar of listening strained through the hole to catch her whisper. "I love you too, Lee."
"This may sound inappropriate at the time, but I need you, Viv; I love you very much, but I need you very badly."
"I don't understand." She paused. "What are you asking?"
"I'm asking you to come away with me. Back East. To help me finish school. No. More than that: to help me finish living."
"Lee--"
"You said once that perhaps I needed Somebody instead of Something. Well, you're it, Viv; I don't know that I can make it without you. I mean it."
"Lee, . . . Hank is . . . I mean I--"
"I know you're fond of Hank," I cut in quickly; I was into it now and nothing to do but drive on through. "But does Hank need you? I mean, oh, Viv, he can get along without you, and we both know it. Couldn't he?"
"I imagine that Hank," she mused, "could probably get along without anybody, if it came to it."
"That's right! He could! But not me. Oh, Viv, listen." In my fervor I rose to my knees on the bed. "What's stopping us? Not Hank: you know if you ask for a divorce he'll consent. He wouldn't hold you here against your will!"
"I know that"--still musingly--"he's too proud to do that sort of thing; he would let me go. . . ."
"And he's too strong to be hurt by it."
"It's hard to say what hurts him. . . ."
"Okay, but even if he is hurt, won't he survive it? Can you imagine a hurt he wouldn't survive? He's arrogated to himself the powers of Superman, and he believes it. But Viv, I'll tell you; listen. I came out here at the end of my rope. You've given me a knot to cling to, to survive with. Without that knot, Viv, I just don't know, I swear to god I don't. Come with me. Please."
She lay for a while, looking out at the moon. "When I was a kid," she began after a pause, "I found a rope doll, an Indian doll. I liked it better than all my other dolls for a while, because I could pretend it was anything I longed for it to be." The moon stroked her face through the pine bough on the window; she closed her eyes and from the corners tears ran into her pillowed hair. . . . "Now I don't know what I love any more. I don't know where the thing I make-pretend leaves off and the thing that's really there starts up."
I started to tell her that there was no line between the two, but stopped myself, not knowing what make-pretend virtues she had fashioned for my brother. And said instead, "Viv, all I know is that I can't be noble about this. Only desperate. I need you to live. Come with me, Viv, come away with me. Now. Tomorrow. Please . . ."
If she answered my pleading I did not hear her. I was no longer paying any attention to her. My listening, as well as every spoken word, was now directed toward that hole which had suddenly opened again to light. Viv, intent on my words, had not noticed. I started to go on when I thought I detected that same sluggish tread that I had previously heard, moving away from the wall, out of the room . . . into the hall now . . . now into his room, where he will sit, stricken, on his bed, eyes glassy, hands slack in his lap . . . all right, Superman; it's your move. . . .
A thin groan shot down the corridor, followed by peals of retching. And another, even sicker groan. "Hank!" Viv lurched sitting with a startled cry. "That's Hank, what is he--? What's happened?" Then ran from the room, drawing the wool shirt about her, to find out.
I was somewhat slower dressing. My head rang with anticipation and I smiled as I walked the dark hall toward light fanning across the floor from their bedroom door. I knew what had happened: he's getting sick, losing his lunch. He's carrying on with moaning and coughing and all the other theatrics traditionally used by children seeking repossession of sympathy. Yes. I knew: an exact duplication of the scene I used to enact, with identical motives and intentions.
There was just one thing left now, one short speech, and my overthrow would be complete.
I walked slowly down the hall. I was savoring the words I had prepared for what was to be the greatest put-down in history; as my long-ago words had come back to me at the bottom of that postcard this phrase was Brother Hank's own put-down returning to roost after all these years, like a homing pigeon equipped with the murderous beak of a hawk. "Musta been somethin' gawdawful rich"--I tried the line half aloud, practicing it for my entrance "to make you so gawdawful sick." Ah, it was perfect. It was beautiful. And I was ready. I stepped into the room where Viv sat holding to Hank, who had slipped half to the floor in an effort to stick his head into a vomit-covered metal wastepaper basket. His sopping shirt clung to his pathetically shaking shoulders, and the back of his head was matted with river scum. . . .
"Well, brother. Musta been somethin' gawdawful rich," I incanted ceremoniously, giving the phrase the magical sound afforded words due to effectuate all kinds of miraculous change, "to make you so--"
"Oh, Lee, Hank says--" My incantation was cut short, first by Viv, then by the sight of Hank's head rising and turning slowly to reveal a cheek swollen blue over one eye and lips torn ragged as though by the force of his retching. "Oh, Lee, Hank says that Joe Ben . . . Joe and the old man . . ."--turning, slowly, until his good eye could fix on me, cold and green with knowing--"that Joe Ben is dead, Lee; that Joe's dead; and maybe old Henry"--mouth opening to a black, guttering tongue and unintelligible words. "Bub--bub--there ain't, bub--" Viv caught him; "Call the doctor, Lee; somebody beat him all up."
"But there . . . ain't any real--"
But whatever he was trying to say was lost in more retching.
(But if the strength ain't real, I recall thinking the very last thing that day, before I finally passed out, then the weakness sure enough is. Weakness is true and real. I used to accuse the kid of faking his weakness. But faking proves the weakness is real. Or you wouldn't be so weak as to fake it. No, you can't ever fake being weak. You can only fake being strong. . . .)
Downstairs, at the telephone talking to the doctor, without thinking of it, I completed my magic words. "How does he look?" the doctor asked. I answered, "Why, Doctor, I would say he looks sick"--adding, without realizing until later it was the end of my incantations, "gawdawful sick"--finishing the phrase, like Billy Batson, gag ripped from his mouth, finishing the last half of a broken "Shazam!" that all-powerful word that would transform Billy, to the accompaniment of lightning and thunder, from a drab and puny runt into that great and all-powerful orange giant, Captain Marvel. "Yes, Doctor . . . gawdawful sick," I said.
And my bolt of lightning was right on time, spilling suddenly in all the western windows like moonlight through clouds. And my clap of thunder roared deafeningly through the house, echo-chambered from upstairs by a wastepaper basket. Everything was in order. But, unlike Billy's, my transformation failed to materialize. I don't know what I expected--perhaps to actually find myself swollen to Captain Marvel magnitude, flying away replete with cape, spit-curl, and neon-orange leotard--but as I stood there, holding the buzzing phone at my side, hearing the overacted melodrama being coughed and sobbed out upstairs, I knew that I had in no way achieved the stature I had subconsciously dreamed that my revenge would bring about. I had very successfully completed my ritual of vengeance; I had accurately mouthed all the right mystical words . . . but instead of turning myself into a Captain Marvel, as the ritual and words were supposed to do according to all the little-guy-beats-big-guy tradition . . . I had merely created another Billy Batson.
Then, finally knew what I had been warned to WATCH OUT for.
(And if you can only fake being strong, not being weak, then the kid has done
to me what I set off to do to him! He's shaped me up. He's made me to quit faking.
He's straightened me out.)
Suburban survivors of Hiroshima described the blast as a "mighty first boom, like a locomotive followed by a long, loud train roaring past, fading gradually away to a murmur." Wrong. They describe only the ear's inaccurate report. For that mighty first boom was only the first faintest murmur of an explosion that is still roaring down on us, and always will be. . . .
For the reverberation often exceeds through silence the sound that sets it off; the reaction occasionally outdoes by way of repose the event that stimulated it; and the past not uncommonly takes a while to happen, and some long time to figure out.
. . . And the citizens of the little West Coast towns, not infrequently, needed some time to even begin recognizing that it had happened, let alone to get around to figuring it out. For this reason their centennials are never a great success--many oldtimers from bygone times are reluctant to admit those times are gone by. For this reason a nondescript bog in a meadow is still called Boomer's Ferry . . . though Mr. Boomer, his cable-drawn ferry, and the wide slough that once floated them, have long since sunk into nondescript mud. For this reason it takes almost a day after the rain has stopped in Wakonda for the men to straighten up out of their hump-shouldered shuffle, almost a day after the wind has quit whipping the water before the women remove the newspaper calking from beneath doors. After one whole rainless day they are willing to say that it by god might be clearing up at that, after a rainless day and night the men and women are even compelled to go so far as to admit that it has stopped, but it takes the mentality of a child to think that the sun might actually come out, here, in November, right in the dead of winter.