Galilee

  Glass in hand, she padded back to the bedroom. It was a little after five o’clock She set the glass down, and lay down thinking that if she needed to take half of another sleeping pill she would. But as she was in the process of shaping the thought, exhaustion overtook her.

  ii

  I settled down to sleep a couple of hours ago believing I’d brought Part Six to an adequate conclusion. But here I am, appending these paragraphs, and effectively spoiling the neatness of my conclusion by so doing. An well; this was never fated to be a book distinguished by its tidiness. I’m sure it’s going to get a damn sight less orderly before we get to the final pages.

  What was so urgent that I had to get up out of bed and write about it? Only another dream. I offer it here not because I think it’s prophetic, like my dream of Galilee on the raft, but because it moved me so strangely.

  It was a dream about Luman’s children.

  That’s odd in itself, because I hadn’t given any conscious thought to the conversation I’d had about his bastards for several weeks. My unconscious mind was apparently turning the subject over however, and its investigations produced this bizarrity: I dreamed I was a piece of paper, a sheet of tattered paper. And the wind had me. It was blowing me across an immense landscape, flipping me over and over. As so often happens in dreams, I saw more than I could possibly describe, all concentrated into a few seconds of dream time. Sometimes I was lifted high into the air, and I was looking down at towns that were so far below me their inhabitants were tiny dots; sometimes I was skimming a dusty road with all the other windborne trash. I saw canyons and cities; I clung to picket fences and telegraph poles; I was becalmed in the heat of a Louisiana summer, and forked up with the leaves in Vermont, I was frozen to a fence in Nebraska, while the wire whined in the wind; I was in the meltwaters when the spring warmed the rivers of Wisconsin. By degrees a sense of imminence crept upon me. The landscapes continued to roll on—the peaks of the High Country, a palmy beach, a field of poppies and wild violets—but I knew my journey was moving toward resolution.

  My destination was an unpromising place. A grimy neighborhood in a minor city somewhere in Idaho; a wasteland of gutted buildings and rubble and gray grass. But there a man sat in the remnants of a broken-down truck, and when I came to his feet he reached down and picked me up. It was a strange sensation, to be held in those tobacco-stained fingers, but I knew, looking at the man’s face, that he was one of Luman’s children. There was something of my half-brother’s satiric fever there, and something of his piercing curiosity, though both had been dulled by hardship.

  He seemed to sense that he had found more than a piece of trash in me, because he tossed his cigarette away, and getting up from his seat in the crippled vehicle he shouted:

  “Hey! Hey! Lookee what I got here!”

  He didn’t wait for those he’d summoned to come to him, but strode with a quickening step to the remains of a garage, its pumps like rusted sentinels guarding a half-demolished building. A black woman in early middle age—her bones marking her indisputably as Cesaria’s grandchild—appeared.

  “What is it, Tru?” she asked him.

  He handed his prize over to her, and the woman studied me.

  “That’s a sign,” Tru drawled.

  “Could be,” the woman said.

  “I told you, Jessamine.”

  The woman called over her shoulder, back into the garage. “Hey, Kenny. Look what Tru’s found. Where’d you find it?”

  “It just blew my way. And you was saying I was crazy.”

  “I didn’t say you was crazy,” Jessamine replied.

  “No, I did,” said a third voice, and a man who was in age and color somewhere between his companions came and snatched me out of Jessamine’s hands. His skull was as bald as an egg, but the rest of his face was covered with a thick growth of beard. Again, there was no doubt of his ancestry. He didn’t even look at what he had in his hand.

  “Ain’t nothing but a piece of trash,” Kenny said, and before the other two could protest he’d turned his back on them and was stalking away.

  They didn’t follow him. At a guess, he intimidated them. But once his back was turned on them, I saw him cast a forlorn look at what he held. His eyes were wet with tears.

  “Don’t want to hope no more,” he murmured to himself.

  Then he turned my face to the flames of a small fire burning among the bricks. There was a moment of sheer panic, as the heat caught hold of me. I felt my body curl up in the flames, and blacken, blacken until I was the color of Galilee. Then I woke, bathed in enough sweat that had I indeed been burning I would have surely extinguished myself.

  There; that’s the dream, as best I remember it. One of the stranger night visions I’ve had, I must say. I don’t know what to make of it. But now that I’ve written it down, I withdraw what I said earlier, about it not being prophetic. Perhaps it is. Perhaps somewhere out in the middle of the country three of Luman’s bastards are waiting for an omen, even now; knowing that they’re more than the world has let them be, but not knowing what. Waiting for someone to come and tell them who they are. Waiting for me.

  PART SEVEN

  The Wheel of

  the Stars

  I

  Today I made my peace with Luman. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, but I knew that I was going to have to do it sooner or later. Just a few hours ago, sitting back from my desk to muse on something, I realized suddenly how sad I’d be if events were somehow to quicken, and L’Enfant fell, and I was to not have reconciled with Luman. So I got up, fetched my umbrella (a pleasant drizzle has been falling for most of the day; perhaps it will clear the air a little) and took myself off to the Smoke House.

  Luman was waiting for me, sitting on the threshold, picking his nose and staring down the path along which I approached.

  “You took your time,” was his first remark to me.

  “I did what?”

  “You heard me. Taking all this time to come an’ tell me you’re sorry.”

  “What makes you think I’m going to do that?” I replied.

  “You look sorry,” Luman replied, flicking something he’d mined from his nostrils into the vegetation.

  “Do I indeed?”

  “Yes, Mr.-High-and-Mighty-I’m-a-Writer-Maddox, you look very sorry indeed.” He grabbed the rotted doorjamb and pulled himself to his feet. “In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t jus’ throw that sorry carcass down on the ground an’ beg me to forgive you.” He grinned. “But you don’t have to do that, brother o’ mine. I forgive you your trespasses.”

  “That’s generous of you. And what about yours?”

  “I don’t have none.”

  “Luman, you virtually accused me of killing my own wife.”

  “I was just telling the simple truth,” he said. Then added: “As I saw it. You didn’t have to believe me.” His goaty face became sly. “Though somethin’ tells me you do.” He regarded me in silence for a time. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

  What I really wanted to do was beat that smug smile off his face, but I resisted the temptation. I’d come here to make peace, and peace I was going to make. Besides, as I’ve admitted in these pages, the guilt for Chiyojo’s death does in some measure lie with me. I’d confessed it on paper; now it was time to do the same thing staring my accuser in the face. That shouldn’t be so difficult, should it? I knew the words; why was it so much more difficult to speak them than to write them?

  I put my umbrella down and turned my face up to the rain. It was warm but it still refreshed me. I stood there for perhaps a minute, while the raindrops broke against my face, and my hair became flattened to my scalp. At last, without looking back at Luman, I said:

  “You were right. I’m responsible for what happened to Chiyojo. I let Nicodemus have her, just as you said. I wanted . . .” I began to feel tears rising up in me. They thickened my voice; but I went on with my confession. “I wanted to have his favor. To have him love me.” I put my hand u
p to my face, and wiped the rainwater off. Then, finally, I looked back at Luman. “The thing is, I never really felt as though I was his son. Not the way you were. Or Galilee. I was always the half-breed. So I scampered around the world trying to please him. But it didn’t work. He just took me for granted. I didn’t know what else to give him. I’d given myself and that wasn’t enough . . .” Somewhere in the midst of saying all this I’d started to tremble; my hands, my legs, my heart. But nothing short of death would have now stopped me finishing what I’d begun. “When he set eyes on Chiyojo I felt angry at first. I was going to leave. I should have left. I should have taken her—just the way you said—taken her away from L’Enfant so we could have had a life of our own. An ordinary life, maybe—a human life. But that wouldn’t have been so bad, would it?”

  “Compared to this?” Luman said softly. “It would have been paradise.”

  “But I was afraid to go. I was afraid that after a while I’d regret going but that there’d be no way back.”

  “Like Galilee?”

  “Yes . . . like poor Galilee. So I ignored my instincts. And when he came after Chiyojo I looked the other way. I suppose, deep down, I hoped she’d love me enough to say no to him.”

  “Don’t blame her,” Luman said. “The Virgin Mary would have given up her pussy for Nicodemus.”

  “I don’t blame her. I never blamed her. But I still hoped.”

  “You poor idiot,” Luman said, not without tenderness. “You must have been a mess.”

  “The worst, Luman. I was torn in half. Part of me wanted her to reject him. To come running to me and tell me he’d tried to violate her. And part of me wanted him to take her from me. Make her his mistress if that made him pay more attention to me.”

  “How was that going to happen?”

  “I don’t know. He was going to feel guilty so he was going to be kinder to me. Or we’d simply have shared her. Him at one end and me at the other.”

  “You’d have done that?”

  “I think so.”

  “Wait. Let me be certain I understand this. You would have had a ménage a trois with your wife and your own father?” I didn’t answer, but I suppose my silence was reply enough. Luman slapped his hand over his eyes with comic gusto. “I thought I was twisted,” he said. Then he grinned.

  For myself I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. This was more than I’d confessed with pen and paper; this was the dirtiest truth; the most wretched, sickening truth.

  “Anyway, it never happened,” I said.

  “Well that’s something,” Luman replied. “You’re still a pervert, mind.”

  “He took her and fucked her and gave her feelings I guess I never gave her.”

  “He could do that,” Luman said. “He had the gift.”

  “Was it . . . physical?” I asked him, voicing a question that had haunted me for years. Luman looked at me blankly. “His gift,” I said. “Oh come on, Luman, you know what I’m talking about.

  Was that how he made women love him?” I glanced down between my legs. “With that?”

  “Are you asking me how big his dick was?” Luman said. I nodded. “Well, judging by my own attributes, sizable. But I think that’s only half the story. If you don’t know how to wield it . . .” He sighed. “I never have, you see. That’s always been my problem. Plenty of substance, but no style. I’m hung like a stallion but I fuck like a one-legged mule.” Finally, I laughed, which plainly pleased Luman no end, because he beamed. “Well we certainly know more about one another than we knew five minutes ago,” he said. Then, more quietly:

  “Pervert.”

  We talked a little longer before I returned here to the study, with him standing in the shelter of his door, and me out in the rain. Only a couple of significant things were said. Luman suggested that in the near future the two of us go down to the stables and visit Nicodemus’s grave. I agreed that we should do so, adding that I didn’t think we should delay going, in case events overtook us and we were denied the opportunity. Luman’s response to this was interesting.

  “Are we at war then?” he said. “Should we expect an invasion any day?”

  I told him I didn’t know, but that the House of Geary had become unstable of late, which was certainly reason for nervousness.

  “If you’re nervous then I’m nervous,” Luman said. “I’m going to get out my knives tonight. Start polishing. Have you got yourself a gun?”

  “No.”

  He ducked back inside the house and reemerged a few moments later with an antiquated pistol. “Take it,” he said.

  “Where did you get it?” I asked him.

  “It belonged to Nub Nickelberry,” he said. “He gave it to me when he left. In fact Galilee made him give it to me. He told Nickelberry he wouldn’t have any use for it. He had all the protection he’d ever need.”

  “Meaning himself?”

  “I guess so.” He proffered the weapon again. “Go on, Eddie, take it. Even if you don’t think you’ll ever use it. I’ll feel better knowing you’ve got something to wave around ‘sides your pen, which will do you no damn good when things get nasty.”

  I took the weapon from his hand. It was a Griswold and Gunnison revolver, my researches later discovered; plain and heavy.

  “It’s fully loaded,” Luman said. “But that’s all the bullets I got for it, so you’re going to have to choose your targets. Hey! Point it away from me. How long is it since you handled a revolver?”

  “A long time,” I admitted. “It feels strange.”

  “Well don’t be afraid of it. Accidents happen when people pussyfoot around a gun. You’re in charge of it, not the other way about. Got it?”

  “I got it. Thanks, Luman.”

  “My pleasure. I’ll see what else I can dig up. I’ve got a nice saber in there somewhere, made in Nashville. They had a factory there in the war, turned plowshares into swords.”

  “How very Biblical.”

  “You know what else I got?” He was smiling from ear to ear now. “I got a Confederate snare drum.”

  “From Nickelberry?”

  “No . . . Marietta brought it back, just after the war ended. She found it out there in a ditch somewhere. Along with the drummer. He wasn’t going to be beating it no more so she pried it out of his hands and brought it back for me. I’m going to have to learn to beat it again. Nice and loud. Sound the alarm . . .” His smile had gone again; he was staring at the revolver in my hand. “Strange,” he said. “After all these years, things you never thought you’d need again.”

  “Maybe we won’t.”

  “Who are you kidding?” he said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

  II

  i

  I returned to my study thoroughly soaked, but curiously revivified by my conversation with Luman. While I was stripping out of my sodden clothes I looked around the room, and realized that it had deteriorated into chaos: piles of notes everywhere, books and newspapers heaped on every side. It was time to clear the mess away, I thought; time to put things in better order, to gird myself for whatever battles lay ahead. I began right there and then, without even putting on a dry pair of socks. Naked as a babe I set to work, sorting through the stuff I’d accrued over the months I’d been writing. The books were easily collected up and returned to the shelves, the newspapers and magazines I bundled up and set outside the study door for Dwight to collect. The real challenge was my notes, of which there were many hundreds of pages. Some were midnight inspirations, jotted down in darkness when I woke from a dream; some were doodlings I made to break my own silence on a day when the pen refused to move. Some read like the jottings of a dyslexic poet, some like a paranoid’s stab at metaphysics; the worst’ are beyond comprehension.

  I’ve been afraid to throw any of them out, in case there was something here that I was going to need. Even in the foulest of this shit I thought there might be something that illuminated a murky corner of my intentions; offering a glimpse of grandeur where my text was squalid.


  Enough of that, I told myself. It all had to go. I need to proceed from here less encumbered than I’ve been. I need to travel lightly to keep up with events. Things are getting desperate for everyone, and I need to be right there at their shoulders as they make love, at their lips as they whisper their dying words, in their heads as their sanity curdles. So it all goes. My potted history of the warlord Timur-ileng, for instance, whose bones lie in Samarkand: I’ll never make use of it. Out it goes. My notes on the genital configurations of the hyena; all very interesting, but wholly irrelevant. Out they go. My pages of meditations on the nature of my endeavor—pretentious stuff most of it, written while I was high—they have to go too. There’s no room for that kind of stuff now; not if we’re preparing for war.

  It took me about seven hours to finish all this tidying, including a thorough scouring of the drawers of my desk. By the time I had finished it was dark, and I was exhausted. It was a pleasant exhaustion, however I’d achieved something: I could see the rug again. And my desk was clear, except for my single copy of the book, which I’d set in the upper left corner, a pile of paper, along with my pen and ink, set in the middle, and the revolver Luman had given me, which was set on my right, where I could quickly snatch it up if occasion demanded.

  There remained only one thing to do. The redundant notes I’d collected up needed to be destroyed. I didn’t want anyone sifting through them at some later date, finding my sentimental ramblings or my spelling mistakes; nor did I want to be tempted back to them myself, at some moment of weakness. I gathered them all up in my arms and took them out onto the lawn. I was still stark naked, but what the hell? Nobody was going to waste their time spying on my nakedness; it’s a singularly unedifying sight. So out I went, and dumped the papers in the grass. Then I struck a match, and set fire to them. There was no wind to blow the burning sheets around; they simply blackened and curled where they lay, one after the other. I sat down on the grass, which was still damp from the rain, and toasted the disappearing words with a glass of gin. Every now and again I’d catch a phrase as it was burned away, and once—watching something I rather liked eaten up before my eyes—a wave of regret broke over me. I tried to comfort myself by thinking that if these thoughts had flown through my head once then they’d always be there to be recaptured, but I don’t entirely believe that. Suppose the mind that’s making this book is steadily winding down—the heat-death of its creator reported on its pages in a hundred subtle ways? Then there’s no recovering what I’ve burned; none of the meditations anyway. The facts, yes; the facts I can find again. But the feelings I set down? They’ve gone, and they’ve gone forever.