Three Days Before the Shooting ... (60 page)

No
, I thought,
it’s her. He doesn’t want me to know, but just the same, it’s her…
. And I tried to understand the play of light upon the dark whiteness, the rectangle of cloth that would round out the mystery of my mother’s going and her coming.

They’re only shadows, Bliss, Daddy Hickman whispered. They’re fun if you keep that in mind, they’re only dangerous if you try to believe in them the way you believe in the sunlight or the Word.

Yes, sir, I, Bliss, said.

But for me now the three had become hopelessly blended in mystery: My mother gone before memory began, then she who called me Goodehugh Cudworth, and now she I saw as once more I entered the shadows.

Say there, Mister Dreamer Man, she beside me said
.

Goodehugh-cudworth, she called me Goodehugh. If not my mother, who moves in the shadows? And again as I look through the beam of pulsing light into the close-up looming wide across the distant yet intimate screen I’m enthralled and sweetly disintegrated like motes in sunlight and I listened as when in the box, straining to hear some sound from her moving lips, holding my breath to catch some faint intonation of her voice above the printed word which Daddy Hickman reads softly to me, explaining the action. And I knew anguish. Yes. There was the wavery beam of light. There was the smoke-like weaving of the light now more real than flesh or stone or pain pouring at a slant down to the living screen. And there behind me now I hear a whirring,
a grinding, a hum, broken by the clicking of cogs and rapid wheels. But from her no sound…

I would like to have seen you when you were a little boy, she said.

That was a long time ago, I said.

Did you have a happy childhood?

I looked into her serious eyes. She was smiling.

It was blissful, I said.

I’m happy. I’m very happy because now there’s something sad about you, she said. Something lonesome-like.

Like what?

She turned to rest on her elbow, looking into my eyes.

I don’t rightly know, she said. It’s something moody, and in the way you look at me sometimes. Do you feel sad?

No, I said, I just have a lot on my mind these days.

Yes, I guess you do, she said. Must be a lot on your hands too, judging from the way it’s wandering.

I removed my hand. I’m sorry.

And is your hand sorry?

Yes.

Then give it here.

I gave it and she looked at me softly, taking my hand and holding it against her breast.

I didn’t mean to be mean, she said.

I came close now, breathing the fever, the allure playing about her lips, her quick breath.

Please, I said,
Please…
.

You’ll be good to me?
Really
good? Her eyes were frightened, the whites pale blue.

Oh yes, I said, Oh yes!

Come back, Body! … How it hurts, here and here and there and there. His soles flashed in the dust as he ran. I stirred the hulls at my feet, disconsolate below…
.

Ho, all that the seed, for all that became the seed of all this
, the Senator thought—hearing,
Bliss? What are you trying to tell me, boy? Want me to get you the nurse?

Tell? Ah yes, tell…. How she looked when I took her there in the shade,

beneath the flowering tree, that warm brown face looking past my head to the sky, her long-lashed eyelids dreamily accepting me, the stranger, and lifelove the sky—What? Who? Fate? All creation, the rejected terms I fled?

Mister Man, she said, you’re making me a problem I never had before.

What kind of a problem?

She teased me with an elfish smile, then for a while she seemed to dream.

What is the problem?

Well, I’ll tell you the truth, Mister Movie-man—I’m so country I don’t know where the long nose you have is suppose to go….

She laughed then, placing the tip of her fingers there, tweaking my nose. Her own was barely flatter than mine and I was provoked, sweetly. My face suspended in her breath, the moisture came and I went through, upon the sweet soft lips I rested mine….

Bliss?

…
And I could tell you how I drew her close then and how her surrender was no surrender but something more, a materialization of the heart, the deeper heart that lives in dreams—or once it did—that roams out in the hills among the trees, that sails calm seas in the sunlight; that sings in the stillness of star-cast night…. The heart’s own that rejoins its excited mate once in a lifetime—like Adam’s rib returned transformed and glorious. I can tell you of her black hair waved out upon the grass with leaves in it; the demands of her hand, soft and soothing, with the back of my neck in it; her breath’s sweet fever inflaming my face. Even after all these years I can tell you of passion so fierce that it danced with gentleness, and how the whole hill throbbed with silence, the day gathering down, ordered and moving radiant beneath the firm pumping of our enraptured thighs, I can tell you, tell you how I became she and she me with no questions asked and no battle fought. We grasped the secret of that moment and it was and it was enough. I can tell you as though it were only an hour past, of her feel within my arms, a girl-woman soft and yielding. Innocent, unashamed, yet possessing the necessary knowledge. How I was at rest then, enclosed in peace, obsessionless and accepting a definition for once and for once happy. How I kissed her eyes, pushed back the hair from her smooth forehead, held that face between my palms as I tried to read the mystery of myself within her eyes. Spoke words into her ear of which only then I was capable—how the likes of me could say, I love, I love…. And having loved moved on.

Bliss, boy?

Leaning forward, mountainous in the dwarfed easy chair, the old man watched the Senator’s face now, observing the expressions flickering swiftly over the restless features of the man tossing beneath the sheet. He called again, softly,
Bliss? Then
heaved with a great sigh. I guess he’s gone again, he thought.

Hickman searched his lower vest pockets with a long finger, extracting a roll of Life Savers and placing one of the hard circles of minty whiteness upon his tongue as he rested back again. Before him the Senator breathed more quietly now, the face still fluid with potential expressions, like a rubber mask washed by swift water. He looks like he’s trying to smile, Hickman thought. Every now and then he really looks as though he would, if he had a
little help. Maybe that’s the way. When he wakes up I’ll see what I can do. Anyway, he looks a little better. If only I could do something besides talk. Those doctors are the best, though; the government and his party saw to that. He’ll have the best of everything, so there’s nothing to do but wait and hope. The fact that they let
me
in here when he asked them is proof of something—I hope that they mean to save him…. There’s such a lot I have to ask him. Why didn’t I hop a plane and go and find out just what Janey Mason was telling me in her letter? I
knew
she didn’t know how to say very much in a letter. Why? And who was that young fellow who did the shooting? Was it really that boy Severn? It’ll all come out, they’ll find it out even if they have to bring him back from the dead—Ha! Bliss lost all sense of reason; he should have known that he couldn’t do what he did to us without making somebody else angry or afraid. This here is a crazy country in which politicians have been known to be shot; even presidents. Pride. Let it balloon up and some sharpshooter’s going to try to bring you down. What did Janey mean? Who? I remember back about twenty-five years ago when Janey sent word that a preacher showed up out there. That may have been Bliss. That’s when he started whatever she was trying to tell me. One thing is sure, I heard that young fellow speak to the guard, he wasn’t from Oklahoma and he wasn’t one of us. A Northern boy, sounded like to me….

Suddenly he was leaning forward staring intently into the Senator’s face. The eyes, blue beneath the purplish lids, were open, regarding him as from a deep cave.

“Are you still here?” the Senator whispered.

“Yes, Bliss, I’m still here. How do you feel?”

“Let’s not waste the time. I can see it on your face, so go ahead and ask me. What is it?”

Hickman smiled, moving the Life Saver to the side of his mouth with his tongue. “You feel better,” he said.

“I still feel,” the Senator said. “Why don’t you leave? Go back where you came from, you don’t owe me anything and there’s nothing I can do to help your people….”

“My people?” Hickman said. “That’s interesting; so now it’s
my
people. But don’t you realize we came to help
you
, Bliss? Remember? You should’ve seen us when we first arrived; things might have been different. But never mind all that. Bliss, was it you who went out there to McAlister and fainted on the steps of Greater Calvary one Sunday morning? That would be about twenty-five years ago. Was that you, Bliss?”

“Calvary?” The Senator’s weak voice was wary. “How can I remember? I was flying above all that by then. I was working my way to where I could work my way to….” He sank to a safer depth. It was hot there but he could still hear Daddy Hickman.

“Think about it now, Bliss. Didn’t you light there for a while and didn’t you land on the Bible? In fact, Bliss, haven’t you landed on a church each and every time you had to come down?”

Twenty-five years? He thought, maybe he’s right. “Perhaps the necessities, as they say, of bread brought me to earth. But remember, they always found me and took me in. It was in their minds. They saw what they wanted to see. It was their own desire…. It takes two as with the con game and the tango—Ha!”

“Maybe so, Bliss,” Hickman said, “but you allowed them to find you. Nobody went to get you and put you up there in the pulpit. Look here, can you see me? This is Daddy Hickman, I raised you from a little fellow. Was it you? Don’t play with me.”

“So much has happened since then. I was at McAlister, yes; but they were white. Or were they? Was it Me? Are you still here?”

“You mean you preached in a white church? That early?”

“I think it’s all mixed up.” He closed his eyes, his voice receding. Is it my voice?

“Yes, High Style,” the Senator said. “Huge granite columns and red carpets. Great space. Everyone rich and looking hungry; full of self-denial for Sunday. Ladies in white with lacy folding fans. Full bosoms, sailor straws. White shoes and long drawers in July. Men in shiny black alpaca, white ties. Stern puritan faces, dry concentrate of pious Calvinist dilution distilled and displayed for Sunday. Yes, I was there. Why not? They sang and I preached. The singing was all nasal, as though God was evoked only by and through the nose, as though He lived, was made manifest, in that long pinched vessel narrowly. That was a long time ago….”

“So what happened?”

“I’ve told you, I preached.”

“So what did you preach them, Bliss? Can you remember?”

Where can I hide? Nowhere to run here. It’s a joke.

Yes, but what kind of joke?

“I preached them one of the famous sermons of the Right Reverend John P. Eatmore. In my,
our
, condition, what else?”

“Ha, Bliss, so you remembered Eatmore, Old Poor John. Now that there was a great preacher. We did our circuit back there. Revivals and all. Don’t laugh at fools. Some are His. Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty. Which of Eatmore’s did you preach ‘em, Bliss? Which text?”

Dreamily the Senator smiled. “They needed special food for special spirits, I preached them one of the most subtle and spirit-filling—one in which the Right Reverend Poor John Eatmore was most full of his ministerial eloquence:
Give a Man Wood and He Will Learn to Make Fire…
. Eatmore’s most Promethian vision….” Hot here.

No, Reverend Hickman seemed to say, his eyes twinkling, that’s one that I’ve forgotten. I reckon I’m getting old. But Eatmore was the kind of man who was
always
true to his name and reputation. He put himself into everything he did. Preach me a little of it, Bliss; I’ll lean close so you won’t have to use up your voice. Let’s hear you, it’ll probably do us both some good. Go on, son.

But how?
the Senator thought.
Where are the old ones to inspire me? Where is the Amen Corner and the old exhorters, the enviable shouting sister with the nervous foot tapping out the agitation on which my voice could ride?

I don’t think I can, he said. But his throat was silent and yet Hickman seemed to get it, to understand.

I taught you how, Bliss. You start it, you draw your strength and inspiration out of the folks. If they’re cold you heat them up; when they get hot, you guide the flame. It’s still the same. You did it in the Senate when you told them about those Nazi fellows and swung the vote….

What, the Senator said. You knew even then?

Eatmore, Bliss. Never mind the rest; let’s talk about you preaching Eat-more in a white church. Do I have to start you off like I used to do when you were a baby? Didn’t Eatmore begin something like this: He’d be walking back and forth with his head looking up at the ceiling and his hands touching prayer-like together? Then stop suddenly and face them, still looking out over their heads, saying: