I had to think about that one. I remember Janey from way back there in my heathen days, before Bliss came. Riding out of the bottoms during the springtime flood on a dripping horse with five little children rowed behind her and holding on to her nightgown and to each other while she swam that horse out of the swift water and her bare heels against his belly barrel till he came on up to higher ground. Talking comfort to those children with weeds in her hair. Saved all of ’em too. Walnut Grove. That was a woman. Oh yes. She roused me then too, up there looking, standing on the bank of mud and silt. Oh yes, in that wet nightgown she roused me. It wasn’t long before Bliss either, though I didn’t know it. I was on the verge of change—oh how odd of God to choose—yet playing Cotch and Georgia-skin or Tonk every night I wasn’t gigging or playing dances in that hall overlooking the railroad tracks, blowing out my strength and passion against those east- and west-bound trains.
No little Bliss then, but a lot of easy living in that frontier town. This I could tell him, since he wandered there years later. A lot of half-Indian Negroes, those “Natives,” they called them, and a bunch of hustlers and good-time gals. What times; what hard, young wasteful living. Used to put a number-two washtub full of corn on the table and drink your fill for a dime a dipperful. And there was Ferguson’s barbecued ribs with that good hot sauce, yes; and Pulhams. “Gimme a breast of Guinea hen,” I’d say, “and make the hot sauce sizzling.” All that old foolishness. Ha! Me a strapping young horn-blowing fool with an appetite like a bear and trying to blow all life through the bell of a brass trombone. Belly-rubbing, dancing and a-stomping off the numbers and everybody trying to give the music a drive like those express trains. Shaking the bandstand with my big feet, and the boys romping by midnight and jelly-jelly-jelly in the crowd until the whole house rocked. I should tell him about those times; maybe it was the self-denial that turned him away. Maybe he should have known all the wildness we had to bring to heel. Surely the Lord makes an allowance for all that, when you’re in the heat of youth. He gave it to me, didn’t He, and it was the new country which He gave us, the Indian Nation and the Territory then, and everything wide open and hopeful. You have to scream once maybe so you can know what it means to forbear screaming. That Chock beer, how I exulted in that; rich and fruity mellow. A communion there, back there in that life. Its own communion and fellowship. That Texas white boy who was always hanging around till he was like one of us, he knew it. Tex, why you always out here hanging around with us all the time? You could be President, you know.
Yeah, but what’s the White House got that’s better than what’s right here?
Maybe Bliss could tell him. Old Tex. Heard he struck oil in his daddy’s cotton patch but I hope he’s still a witness for the good times we had. Forget the name of that State Negro with the Indian face … a schoolteacher, tall man, always smoking Granger Rough Cut in his pipe and talking politics and the Constitution? From Tennessee, walked all the way from Gallatin leading a whole party of relatives and friends and no preacher either. That scar on my skull to this day from going to the polls with ax handles and pistols, some whites and Indians with us, and battling for the right. Long back, now Oklahoma’s just a song, but they don’t sing about that. Naw, and why not, since that’s what they want to forget. Run up a skyscraper and forget about the foundation, just hope there’s oil waiting to get into the water pipes. Yeah, but we got it all in the music. They listen but hear not; they feel its call, but they act not. Drink of the Waters of Life, He said. And I drank until He sent the child and I realized that I had to change. Then I drank again of the true water. I had to change so the sound of life, the life I felt in me and in the others could become words and it’s still too complicated for definition. But like the Lord Himself, I loved those sinners and I’ll not deny even one. They had the juice of deep life in them, and I learned to praise it to the transcending heat. Who knows? His ways are strange ways, Hickman. Maybe it was all His plan, and you had to be what you were then in order to lead His flock. It took all of that to come to this and little Bliss was the father to the man and the man was also me….
CHAPTER 16
The air was stirring gently across his face now and the Senator could hear dimly the “Son, are you there?” of Hickman’s voice softly murmuring—but when he tried to respond Bliss had moved on….
… Stirring beneath the sterile grain of the sheet the Senator felt a binding pressure on heel and toe, and now alone in the hot world beyond the puckered seal of his lids he found himself wading through a sandy landscape bathed in an eerie twilight. In the low-hung sky before him, vaguely familiar images of threatening shapes appeared, flickering and fading as though to taunt him, and he found himself lunging desperately across the sandy terrain in a compulsive effort to grasp their meaning. But the closer he approached the more rapidly the images changed their shape, tearing apart in smokelike strands only to reappear in ever more ambiguous forms further, further ahead.
The Senator struggled on, his right foot flaming, and now as he paused for breath the sudden rhythmical gusting of a slight breeze irritated the feverish surface of his skin and he could hear Hickman’s voice again, at first muted and low, then becoming a booming roar. Hickman was somewhere above him but suddenly as he strained toward the sound he was swept up and carried through the air with such force that his body slanted headfirst into the wind and he kept his balance only by rotating his arms in the manner of a skier soaring in exhilarating flight above the earth. Then came a burst of light followed by a shrilling of whistles and the clanging of bells and the Senator realized that he was standing atop a speeding freight train, his feet dancing unsteadily upon the narrow boards of a catwalk that ran the length of the car. It was a long freight, and far up the tracks he could see the engine, pouring a billowing plume of smoke against the sunny landscape as with a nervous, toylike shuttling of driving-rods it curved the rails to the west….
Wondering at the sudden change of scene, the Senator fought desperately to keep his feet, holding on by flexing at ankle and knee in a bending, straightening, balancing, swaying, dancelike motion which moved his body with and against the erratic rhythms of the bounding car. In the blazing sun the train was hurtling downgrade now and the engineer seemed determined to send him flying into space, for he had the impression that every car in the train was being forced to knock the car just ahead into a capricious, offbeat, bucking increase of speed which nothing on top could withstand. For a while it caused him to bounce about like a manic tap dancer, rattling his teeth and fragmenting the landscape into a whirl of chattering images; then the grade was leveling off and with the going smoother the Senator looked about.
Beyond the rows of cross ties and gleaming rails to his left, wheat fields, turned tawny and dry by the sun, wheeled away at a slant accented by flashing telegraph poles: and below he could see his own thin shadow atop that of the car flickering swiftly along the grading. Flocks of blackbirds were whirling up from the strands of wire which fenced off the field and swinging in broad circles over the tilting land.
Sweeping ahead the train screamed shrilly as it gathered highball speed, its whistle sending snatches of vapor into the blaze of sun. Then to his right, past a sparse windbreak of trees, three dark dogs raced over a harvested field, the agitated music of their trailing cry reaching him faintly through the roar. The dogs ran with nose to earth and far beyond, where the land rolled down to a sparkling stream, he could see the white semaphore-flashing of a rabbit’s tail as it coursed in curving flight away from the hounds.
Hurry, hurry, little friend, the Senator thought, hearing the engines whirling again, the sound distraught and lonely as he heard a woman’s voice speaking to him in an intimate, teasing drawl, “So, honey, I tell you like the rabbit tole the rabbit, ‘Darling, love ain’t nothing but a habit—hello, there, Mister Babbitt Rabbit’—Now, now, honey, don’t go getting mad on me. All I mean is that you can come see me again sometimes; ’cause short-winded and frantic as you is I still think you k
inda cute. You kinda fly too, and I like that. So whenever you feel like coming down to earth, why, drop in on a poor soul and thank you kindly….”
And in the cool shade of the back-alley porch he could see Choc Charlie pausing to drink from his frosty bottle of Chock beer then looking out bemusedly across the yard ablaze with a center bed of red canna flowers, shaking his head. Beyond the yard, the rutted roadbed of the alley was covered with broken glass of many colors and beyond its sparkling surface he could see a black cat yawning pinkly in the shade of the high, whitewashed fence which enclosed the yard beyond. Then Choc Charlie belched and turned, winking at Donelson, and he could see tiny wrinkles forming at the corners of Choc Charlie’s eyes as his querulous voice resumed.
“So now,” Choc Charlie said, “the dam’ hound was so hot on Brer Rabbit’s trail that he had to do something real quick because that hound was chasing him come hell for breakfast. So ’bout that time Brer Rabbit sees him a hole in some rocks—and, blip! he shoots into it like a streak of greased lightning—and too bad for him!”
“Looks like he made a mistake of judgment,” Donelson said. “How come, how come?”
“How come? Man, do you know who was holed up in that hole?”
“Not yet,” Donelson said. “You didn’t say….”
“Well, it was ole Brer Bear! That’s how come. Man, Brer Rabbit liked to shit his britches then, because didn’t nobody in his right mind mess with Brer Bear—and Brer Bear had done already looked up and seen him!…”
“Dramatic as hell, isn’t it,” Donelson said. “A turn in the plot; a ‘reversal.’ David and Goliath … Daniel in the goddamned lion’s den! Ole J.C. couldn’t do better.”
“Drink some beer, man,” Choc Charlie said. “I’m telling this lie and my initials ain’t J.C., they’re C.C.—You see, Brer Bear had been sleeping and when he sits up and rubs his eyes he’s flabbergasted! He’s hornswoggled! He’s hyped! He’s shucked! But he don’t know who dropped it! He’s looking right at him too but he can’t believe his own God-given eyes! Here’s Brer Rabbit in his very own bedroom! Somebody go get the chief of police, ’cause now Brer Bear is ’bout to move!”
“Ulysses alone in Polly-what’s-his-name’s cave,” Donelson said. “And without companions …”
“Man, what are you talking about?” Choc Charlie said. “How the hell did she get in there?”
“She?” Donelson said, “I didn’t say anything about ‘she,’ I said ‘he’—but forget it. What happened then?”
“Man,” Choc Charlie said, “you drinking too fast.—And sit back out of that sun—Anyway, don’t nobody name of Polly mess with Brer Bear, male or female. Not when he’s trying to get his rest …”
“That’s his name,” Donelson said, “Polly-fee-mess.”
Choc Charlie took a drink and looked wearily at the Senator. “Make him quit messing with this lie, will you please? I appreciate your buying me this Chock and those ribs last night and all but it ain’t really that good—know what I mean? Anyway, Brer Rabbit was there and he thought real hard and came up with what he hoped would be a solution. Because with Brer Bear in front of him and with that hound right on his heels Brer Rabbit had to come up with something quicker than the day before yestiddy … and that’s no bull.”
“We’re with you, hanging on,” Donelson said. “He’s reached a moment of grave decision….”
“Now you’re talkin’,” Choc Charlie said, “grave is right. He better do something quick or he’s in his grave, and that’s when Brer Rabbit made his move. Gentlemen,” Choc Charlie said, “git this: He spins in front of Brer Bear like a wheel of fortune, he spits on the floor like a man among men, he spins back around and makes his white tail flash like the nickel-plated barrel of a .45 pistol, then he wheels around agin and jumps way back and slaps his hips like he’s wearing two low-slung, tied-down holsters and a bushel of bullets, then he basses out at Brer Bear like he’s all of a sudden ten feet tall and weighing a ton. Said, ‘Let a motherfucker move and I’ll mow him down!’ ”
Donelson let out a howl. “Oh no, man, I must protest! You can’t do that, not add incest and insult to trickery….”
“Man, hush,” Choc Charlie said. “Now don’t forget, while this was happening the hound is streaking in like a cannonball, but when he hears all that evil talk coming out of the hole that hound throws on the brakes and makes a turn so fast that not only is he running along the wall but his own tail is whipping his head like a blackjack in the expert hands of Rock Island Shorty, the railroad bull—and man, he highballs it the hell out of there yelling bloody murder.
“Gentlemen, by now Brer Bear is sitting there in a flim-flam fog and before he can git hisself together, Brer Rabbit reaches up and snatched off his cap in order to cut down on the wind resistance and bookety-bookety, bookety, he lit up out of there and is long gone!”
“Act five, scene one coming up,” Donelson said. “What did they do then?”
“They? Hell, man, other than Brer Bear wasn’t no one left in there—unless’n it was that Polly fellow you brought up, and if so I guess he musta been under the bed. But Brer Bear, poor fellow, he was in a hell of a fix. He’s just sitting there rubbing his eyes, sweating gallons and shaking all over like he’s got the palsy. Gentlemen, it was pathetic….”
“Tragic,” Donelson said.
“Whatever it was,” Choc Charlie said, “it was a bitch and it gave Brer Bear the bad-man blues. Said, ‘What on earth is this here country coming to, with these bad acting bub-bub-bub, bad-talking bad men breaking into folks’ homes talking ’bout their mamas and threatening them with these outrageous, dum-dum-bullet-shooting pearl-handled .45’s?’ Poor Brer Bear thought Brer Rabbit’s tail was a pearl-handled pistol grip and he felt so bad he started to cry like a baby. Said, ‘What did I ever do to have a fellow like that come imposing on me? What this here dam’ country needs is more law and order—and that’s a fact! Where the hell did I put my Gatling gun …?’
“But, gentlemen, Brer Bear was already too late, because by the time he located his shooting-iron Brer Rabbit was already going slam-bam-thank-you-mam through all those fine young lady rabbits back in the briar patch.”
“And there,” Donelson said, “you have a scenario with conflict of will, high skullduggery, gunplay, escape and rampant sex!”
Smiling into the sun, the Senator had begun to enjoy the familiar sensation of flying, the rush of wind against his face, but as he looked back along the tops of the swaying cars a cloud of black dust had begun to rise from where, several cars to the rear, three hulking figures were slipping and sliding through a gondola loaded with soft coal. The figures were shouting and gesturing in his direction and for a moment the Senator hesitated, but now, seeing a flash of metal burst from a gesturing hand he turned, and bending low, pushed hurriedly through the heavy pressure of the wind to the metal ladder attached to the forward end of the boxcar. Reaching it, he looked back and seeing the figures crawling in a line along the top of the boxcar he clambered down the ladder and held on. Looking along the top where the figures came slowly forward he looked quickly ahead, seeing a cindered path running beside the tracks and to the right of the path the roadbed was falling steeply down into a narrow field. Sunflowers grew tall in the field and at its edge a wall of closely planted trees arose. The trees were tall with sunlight filtering through the high-flung branches and flickering gloomily upon the slender trunks and as the train swept him past, the Senator looked some dozen cars ahead to where a sunny clearing was suddenly breaking and growing wider and as now the car came abreast he braced himself and let go, feeling his body flying away from the car and trying to run only to see the cindered path slamming up to meet him as with a palm-searing, knee-burning explosion of breath he landed hard upon the shuddering roadbed.
Fighting for breath against the heaving path, he lay as though paralyzed, watching the wheels and undercarriages churning the light just beyond his head. Dust and bits of trash were whirling furiously about and he co
uld see the rhythmical rise and fall of the sleepers as they took the pound and click of wheel on rail. Then, his breath returning, he was sitting up and watching the tail end of the train whipping swiftly up the track. The red lenses of lanterns glinted like enormous jewels from either side of the caboose and a flag was snapping briskly from the handrail as the three figures ran back along its top, continuing doggedly to advance toward him even as the train bore them smoothly away.
Sweeping on, with smoke and flame pouring from its stack, the engine screamed again as it plunged toward a rise of rocky country that lay to the west. And suddenly it was as though he were watching a scene from a silent movie—with the train hurtling toward a point in the rocks where, as it approached, a spot grew like that which blossoms in a paper napkin at the touch of a lighted cigarette. Widening mysteriously around its periphery, the hole was turning rapidly inward upon itself and in a flash the three figures, the train and sunlit surrounding scene had vanished, leaving behind only the cindered grade, the cross ties and gleaming rails, now running in steely convergence into the darkness of a void.
For a moment the Senator had the impression of gazing toward a huge rumpled sheet which hung against the landscape with a mysterious hole burned in its center, but still hearing the muffled, clicking sound of the receding train he got to his feet and plunged in jolting, stiff-legged bounds down the grade and into the trees.