Long After Midnight (27 page)

 
          
"_
om
! —
om
!"

 
          
He
could not pronounce the T.

 
          
But
it was my name.

 
          
Like
a man on a cliff edge, terrified that the earth might fall and drop him back to
night and soil, he shuddered, grappled me.

 
          
"-
om
!"

 
          
I
held him tight. He could not fall.

 
          
Riveted
in a fierce embrace, not able to let go, we stood and rocked gently, strangely,
two men made one, in a wilderness of shredding snow.

 
          
Tom,
O Tom, he grieved brokenly, over and over.

 
          
Father,
O dear Pa, Dad, I thought, I said.

 
          
The
old man stiffened, for over my shoulder he must have truly seen for the first
time the stones, the empty fields of death. He gasped as if to cry: What is
this place?

 
          
Old
as his face was, in the instant of recognition and remembrance, his eyes, his
cheeks, his mouth withered and grew yet older, saying No.

 
          
He
turned to me as if seeking answers, some guardian of his rights, some protector
who might say No with him. But the cold truth was in my eyes.

 
          
We
were both staring now at the dim path his feet had made blundering across the
land from the place where he had been buried for many years.

 
          
No,
no, no, no, no, no,
no!

 
          
The
words fired from his mouth.

 
          
But
he could not pronounce the n.

 
          
So
it was a wild explosion of: "... o .,. o ... o ..; o ... o ...!
"

 
          
A
forlorn, dismayed, child-whistling cry.

 
          
Then,
another question shadowed his face.

 
          
I
know this place. But
why
am I here?

 
          
He
clawed his arms. He stared down at his withered chest.

 
          
God
gives us dreadful gifts. The most dreadful of all is memory.

 
          
He
remembered.

 
          
And
he began to melt away. He recalled his body shriveling, his dim heart gone to
stillness; the slam of some eternal door of night

 
          
He
stood very still in my arms, his eyelids flickering over the stuffs that
shifted grotesque
furnitures
within his head. He must
have asked himself the most terrible question of all:

 
          
Who
has done this thing to me?

 
          
He
opened his eyes. His gaze beat at me.

 
          
You?
it said.

 
          
Yes,
I thought. I wished you alive this night.

 
          
You/
his face and body cried.

 
          
And
then, half-aloud, the final inquisition:

 
          
"Why
. . . ?"

 
          
Now
it was my turn to be blasted and
riven
.

 
          
Why,
indeed, had I done this to him?

 
          
How
had I dared to wish for this awful, this harrowing, confrontation?

 
          
What
was I to do now with this man, this stranger, this old, bewildered, and
frightened child? Why had I summoned him, just to send him back to soils and
graves and dreadful sleeps?

 
          
Had
I even bothered to think of the consequences? No. Raw impulse had shot me from
home to this burial field like a mindless stone to a mindless goal. Why? Why?

 
          
My
father, this old man, stood in the snow now, trembling, waiting for my pitiful
answer.

 
          
A
child again, I could not speak. Some part of me knew a truth I could not say.
Inarticulate with him in life, I found myself yet more mute in his waking
death.

 
          
The
truth raved inside my head, cried along the fibers of my spirit and being, but
could not break forth from my tongue. I felt my own shouts locked inside.

 
          
The
moment was passing. This hour would soon be gone. I would lose the chance to
say what must be said, what should have been said when he was warm and above
the earth so many years ago.

 
          
Somewhere
far off across country, the bells sounded twelve-thirty on this Christmas morn.
Christ ticked in the wind. Snow flaked away at my face with time and cold, cold
and time.

 
          
Why?
my father's eyes asked me; why have you brought me here?

 
          
"I—"
and then I stopped.

 
          
For
his hand had tightened on my arm. His face had found its own reason.

 
          
This
was his chance, too,
his
final hour
to say what he should have said when I was twelve or fourteen or twenty-six. No
matter if I stood mute. Here in the falling snow, he could make his peace and
go his way.

 
          
His
mouth opened. It was hard, so dreadfully hard, for him to force the old words
out. Only the ghost within the withered shell could dare to agonize and gasp.
He whispered three words, lost in the wind.

 
          
"Yes?"
I urged.

 
          
He
held me tight and tried to keep his eyes open in the blizzard-night. He wanted
to sleep, but first his mouth gaped and whistled again and again:

 
          
"...
I  
uw
      
yuuuuuuuu
        !"

 
          
He
stopped, trembled, wracked his body, and tried to shout it again, failing:

 
          
"..
. I  
wv
      
yyy
        u...
I"

 
          
"Oh,
Dad!" I cried. "Let me say it
for
you!"

 
          
He
stood very still and waited.

 
          
"Were
you trying to say I ... love . .. you?"

 
          
"
Esssss
!" he cried. And burst out, very clearly, at
long last: "Oh,
yes!"

 
          
"Oh,
Dad," I said, wild with miserable happiness, all gain and loss. "Oh,
and Pa, dear Pa, I love
you."

 
          
We
fell together. We held.

 
          
I
wept.

 
          
And
from some strange dry well within his terrible flesh I saw my father squeeze
forth tears which trembled and flashed on his eyelids.

 
          
And
the final question was thus asked and answered.

 
          
Why
have you brought me here?

 
          
Why
the wish, why the gifts, and why this snowing night?

 
          
Because
we had had to say, before the doors were shut and sealed forever, what we never
had said in life.

 
          
And
now it had been said and we stood holding each other in the wilderness, father
and son, son and father, the parts of the whole suddenly interchangeable with
joy. The tears turned to ice upon my cheeks.

 
          
We
stood in the cold wind and falling snow for a long while until we heard the
sound of the bells at twelve forty-five, and still we stood in the snowing
night saying no more—no more ever need be said—until at last our hour was done.

 
          
All
over the white world the clocks of
one a.m.
on Christmas morn, with Christ new in the
fresh straw, sounded the end of that gift which had passed so briefly into and
now out of our numb hands.

 
          
My
father held me in his arms.

 
          
The
last sound of the
one-o'clock
bells faded.

 
          
I
felt my father step back, at ease now.

 
          
His
fingers touched my cheek.

 
          
I
heard him walking in the snow.

 
          
The
sound of his walking faded even as the last of the crying faded within myself.

 
          
I
opened my eyes only in time to see him, a hundred yards off, walking. He turned
and waved, once, at me.

 
          
The
snow came down in a curtain.

 
          
How
brave, I thought, to go where you go now, old man, and no complaint.

 
          
I
walked back into town.

 
          
I
had a drink with Charles by the fire. He looked in . my face and drank a silent
toast to what he saw there.

 
          
Upstairs,
my bed waited for me like a great fold of white snow.

 
          
The
snow was falling beyond my window for a thousand miles to the north, five
hundred miles to the east, two hundred miles west, a hundred miles to the
south. The snow fell on everything, everywhere. It fell on two sets of
footprints beyond the town: one set coming out and the other going back to be
lost among the graves.

 
          
I
lay on my bed of snow. I remembered my father's face as he waved and turned and
went away.

 
          
It
was the face of the youngest, happiest man I had ever seen.

 
          
With
that I slept, and gave up weeping.

 
          
After
seventy years of writing short stories that never sold, Mr. Henry William Field
arose one night at eleven-thirty and burned ten million words. He carried the
manuscripts downstairs through his dark old mansion and threw them into the
furnace.

 
          
"That's
that," he said, and thinking about his lost art and his misspent life, he
put himself to bed, among his rich antiques. "My mistake was in ever
trying to picture this wild world of
a.d
. 2257. The
rockets, the atom wonders, the travels to planets and double suns. Nobody can
do it. Everyone's tried. All of our modern authors have failed."

 
          
Space
was too big for them, and rockets too swift, and atomic science too
instantaneous, he thought. But at least the other writers, while failing, had
been published, while he, in his idle wealth, had used the years of his life
for nothing.

 
          
After
an hour of feeling this way, he fumbled through the night rooms to his library
and switched on a green hurricane lamp. At random, from a collection untouched
in fifty years, he selected a book. It was a book three centuries yellow and
three centuries brittle, but he settled into it and read hungrily until dawn. .
. .

 
          
At
nine the next morning, Henry William Field staggered from his library, called
his servants, televised lawyers, scientists,
literateurs
.

 
          
"Come
at once!" he cried.

 
          
By
noon
, a dozen people had stepped into the study
where Henry William Field sat, very disreputable and hysterical with an odd,
feeding joy, unshaven and feverish. He clutched a thick book in his brittle
arms and laughed if anyone even said good morning.

 
          
"Here
you see a book," he said at last, holding it out, "written by a
giant, a man born in
Asheville
,
North Carolina
, in the year 1900. Long gone to dust, he
published four huge novels. He was a whirlwind. He lifted up mountains and
collected winds. He left a trunk of penciled manuscripts behind when he lay in
bed at
Johns
Hopkins
Hospital
in
Baltimore
in the year 1938, on September fifteenth,
and died of pneumonia, an ancient and awful disease."

 
          
They
looked at the book.

 
          
Look Homeward, Angel.

 
          
He
drew forth three more.
Of Time and the
River. The Web and the Rock. You Can't Go Home Again.

 
          
"By
Thomas Wolfe," said the old man. "Three centuries cold in the
North Carolina
earth."

 
          
"You
mean you've called as simply to see four books by a dead man?" his friends
protested.

 
          
"More
than that! I've called you because I feel Tom Wolfe's the man, the necessary
man, to write of space, of time, huge things like nebulae and galactic war,
meteors and planets, all the dark things he loved and put on paper were like
this. He was born out of his time. He needed really
big
things to play with and never found them on Earth. He should
have been born this afternoon instead of one hundred thousand mornings
ago."

 
          
"I'm
afraid you're a bit late," said Professor Bolton.

 
          
"I
don't intend to be late!" snapped the old man. "I will
not
be frustrated by reality. You,
professor, have experimented with time-travel. I expect you to finish your time
machine as soon as possible. Here's a check, a blank check, fill it in. If you
need more money, ask for it. You've done
some
traveling already, haven't you?"

 
          
"A
few years, yes, but nothing like centuries—"

 
          
"We'll
make
it centuries! You others"—he
swept them with a fierce and shining glance—"will work with
Bolton
. I
must
have Thomas Wolfe."

 
          
"What!"
They fell back before him.

 
          
"Yes,"
he said. "That's the plan. Wolfe is to be brought to me. We will
collaborate in the task of describing the flight from Earth to Mars, as only he
could describe it!"

 
          
They
left him in his library with his books, turning the dry pages, nodding to
himself. "Yes. Oh, dear Lord yes, Tom's the boy, Tom is the
very
boy for this."

 
          
The
months passed slowly. Days showed a maddening reluctance to leave the calendar,
and weeks lingered on until Mr. Henry William Field began to scream silently.

 
          
At
the end of four months, Mr. Field awoke
one midnight
. The phone was ringing. He put his hand out
in the darkness.

 
          
"Yes?"

 
          
"This
is Professor Bolton calling."

 
          
"Yes,
Bolton
?"

 
          
"I'll
be leaving in an hour," said the voice.

 
          
"Leaving?
Leaving where? Are you quitting? You can't do that!"

 
          
"Please,
Mr. Field, leaving means
leaving."

 
          
"You
mean, you're actually going?"

 
          
"Within
the hour."

 
          
"To
1938? To September fifteenth?"

 
          
"Yes!"

 
          
"You're
sure you've the date fixed correctly? You'll arrive before he dies? Be sure of
it! Good Lord, you'd better get there a good hour before his death, don't you
think?"

 
          
"Two
hours. On the way back, well
mark time in Bermuda, borrow ten days of free floating continuum, inject him,
tan him, swim him,
vitaminize
him, make him
well."

 
          
"I'm
so excited I can't hold the phone. Good luck,
Bolton
. Bring him through safely!"

 
          
"Thank
you, sir. Good-bye."

 
          
The
phone clicked.

 
          
Mr.
Henry William Field lay through the ticking night He thought of Tom Wolfe as a
lost brother to be lifted intact from under a cold, chiseled stone, to be
restored to blood and fire and speaking. He trembled each time he thought of
Bolton
whirling on the time wind back to other
calendars and other days, bearing medicines to change flesh and save souls.

 
          
Tom,
he thought, faintly, in the half-awake warmth of an old man calling after his
favorite and long-gone child, Tom, where are you tonight, Tom? Come along now, well
help you through, you've got to come, there's need for you. I couldn't do it,
Tom, none of us here can. So the next best thing to doing it myself, Tom, is
helping you to do it. You can play with rockets like jackstraws, Tom, and you
can have the stars, like a handful of crystals. Anything your heart asks, it's
here. You'd like the fire and the travel, Tom, it was made for you. Oh, we've a
pale lot of writers today, I've read them all, Tom, and they're not like you.
I've waded in libraries of their stuff and they've never touched space, Tom; we
need
you
for that! Give an old man
his wish then, for God knows I've waited all my life for myself or some other
to write the really great book about the stars, and I've waited in vain. So,
wherever you are tonight, Tom Wolfe, make yourself tall. It's that book you
were going to write. It's that good book the critics said was in you when you
stopped breathing.

 
          
Here's
your chance, will you do it, Tom? Will you listen and come through to us, will
you do that tonight, and be here in the morning when I wake? Will you, Tom?

 
          
His
eyelids closed down over the fever and the demand. His tongue stopped quivering
in his sleeping mouth.

 
          
The
clock struck four.

 
          
Awakening
to the white coolness of morning, he felt the excitement rising and welling in
himself. He did not wish to blink, for fear that the thing which awaited him
somewhere in the house might run off and slam a door, gone forever. His hands
reached up to clutch his thin chest.

 
          
Far
away... footsteps...

 
          
A
series of doors opened and shut. Two men entered the bedroom.

 
          
Field
could hear them breathe. Their footsteps took on identities. The first steps
were those of a spider, small and precise:
Bolton
. The second steps were those of a big man,
a large man, a heavy man.

 
          
"Tom?"
cried the old man. He did not open his eyes.

 
          
"Yes,"
said a voice, at last

 
          
Tom
Wolfe burst the seams of Field's imagination, as a huge child bursts the lining
of a too-small coat.

 
          
"Tom
Wolfe, let me look at you!" If Field said it once he said it a dozen times
as he fumbled from bed, shaking violently. "Put up the blinds, for God's
sake, I want to see this! Tom Wolfe, is that
you?"

 
          
Tom
Wolfe looked down from his tall thick body, with big hands out to balance
himself in a world that was strange. He looked at the old man and the room and
his mouth was trembling.

 
          
"You're
just as they said you were, Tom!"

 
          
Thomas
Wolfe began to laugh and the laughing was huge, for he must have thought
himself insane or in a nightmare, and he came to the old man and touched him
and he looked at Professor Bolton and felt of himself, his arms and legs, he
coughed experimentally and touched his own brow. "My fever's gone,"
he said. "I'm not sick anymore."

 
          
"Of
course not, Tom."

 
          
"What
a night," said Tom Wolfe. "It hasn't been easy. I thought I was
sicker than any man ever was. I felt myself floating and I thought, This is
fever. I felt myself traveling, and thought, I'm dying fast. A man came to me.
I thought, This is the Lord's messenger. He took my hands. I smelled
electricity. I flew up and over, and I saw a brass city. I thought, I've
arrived. This is the city of heaven, there is the Gate! I'm numb from head to
toe, like someone left in the snow to freeze. I've got to laugh and do things
or I might think myself insane. You're not God, are you? You don't look like
Him."

 
          
The
old man laughed. "No, no, Tom, not God, but playing at it. I'm
Field." He laughed again. "Lord, listen to me. I said it as if you
should know who Field is. Field, the financier, Tom, bow low, kiss my ring
finger. I'm Henry Field. I like your work, I brought you here. Come
along."

 
          
The
old man drew him to an immense crystal window.

 
          
"Do
you see those lights in the sky, Tom?"

 
          
"Yes,
sir."

 
          
"Those
fireworks?"