by Tito Perdue
He walked for about ten minutes, except that this time he walked away from the village as opposed to the other direction. There was undoubtedly a train up ahead which, however, soon turned off toward the north. Little birds indeed, he saw only one of the ever-present crows staring back at him threateningly from a position in what he or she deemed to be his or her own private quarters.
Meanwhile, he was smoking, of course. Another hour having gone past with Philip still walking more or less resolutely along the tracks, he stopped, took out his flask and indulged in an ounce of so of brandy. Soon he might be in Louisiana. But not if small villages, like this small village (the small village he had stumbled on), continued to get in his path.
It was a generic town of perhaps two thousand persons, he judged. The steeple was easily seen from the railway tracks. He had expected an old-fashioned business district enriched by a Confederate monument in the courthouse square, but what he actually got was a wedding party of some hundred well-dressed souls gathered together in front of the second-biggest church.
Right away Philip turned away from the tracks and moved into the city itself. It was only just past eleven o’clock in the morning and he had all sorts of time still remaining to him. Well-dressed, clear-eyed despite his disease, open-faced, about five feet and ten inches tall, not at all gloomy-looking, he sauntered past a furniture store, an insurance agency, and a tavern that tempted him to go inside. He had not tasted a daiquiri since he had left New York and yet, as he drew closer, he perceived just in time that the place was spilling over with racial elements of the worst sort.
He continued to the courthouse and after standing about with a cigarette and neutral facial expression and putting himself into social “gear,” as he called it, he stepped forward and made himself part of the group.
“Lovely, isn’t she?” said someone in reference to the bride.
“Indeed. And always has been!” Philip collaborated.
“Don’t believe I know your name.”
“And all that chiffon! Gorgeous, just gorgeous. Apparently, the ceremony is over, yes?”
He moved toward the bride (ignorant but pretty), an action that happened also to move him closer to the groom. He did not predict any especially horrible destiny that lay in wait for these two in the afterworld. He then shook hands with two persons, who both congratulated him, for some reason.
“Good ole boy, that Dwayne. They’re going to be real happy together.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
“Got a good job, does Dwayne?”
“Pretty good, pretty good. They’ll do just fine.”
“Oh, heck yeah. It always works out somehow.”
“Not always,” said the third man. “Look at me.”
“Watch it! You almost spilt wine all over this gentleman’s fine suit.”
“I probably drunk too much already.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time. Hey, you watch that game last night?”
Philip edged away. He knew about the special language that bound mediocrities together and had absolutely no wish to get in the way of things. Even so, he did want to take a good long look at these people, a final reminder of what exactly it was he planned to forsake before morning came.
This time a train really was coming. He waited for it, counting up to thirty-five before the thing came up even with him. He caught a brief glimpse of the driver, a serious individual wearing a horrified expression. Knowing in advance what sort of people they would be, he didn’t bother with the passengers. Truth was, and he knew it, he could have interviewed them one by one and never hear a single word worth hearing.
He finished off the brandy at mid-afternoon and left the bottle behind. It was true that he still did have his Icelandic grammar, but only because he had forgotten he still carried it. His billfold, coins, and pocket knife — they weighed but little — he kept with him.
Another hour went past. It pleased him that he had come so far with so little trouble; it seemed to suggest that his heart and/or lung problem might not be as detrimental as he had believed. Hell, he might go on for another five years! Time enough to acquire the full MGH. Time for Icelandic itself. Time enough to look about for a country girl interested in languages. Time enough to learn whether there was anything to the parallel universe theory. Enough time, that was to say, to go on for another five years!
Twenty-two
Still “going west,” as the saying has it, he went on for another hour and a quarter before taking out his paints and brushes and jar of solvent and leaving them beside the tracks. Still not satisfied, he left the root beer behind as well. It seemed to him almost beyond belief that night was still some hours away and that in the meantime he could not hope to avoid being seen by actual human beings going about their itineraries — walking and driving, thinking of money, speaking about the weather, doing home repairs, voting and eating, reporting to work, passing their lives in office buildings, and the whole list of preoccupations that had prevented them from being like him.
Would darkness never come? All his life he had been persecuted by long days and short nights, by cold weather, by the need to comb his hair, all of it to the prejudice of transcendence and unhindered thought. Suddenly he stopped and began a quick calculation of the precise ratio between the wonderful things that sometimes happen to a person, and the other 99.81% that must be seen as a waste of time. Not fair. Why not the other way around? Why not allow great music to fill the air at about, say, 98% of the time? Someone would have to answer for this. While as for the digestive system, the catalog of diseases, the behavior of simple people, American cities... Better not to pretend that he hadn’t already decided to slaughter himself.
Darkness did come. The moon was pretty good, too, and produced little sparks of light both in his glasses and in his eyes. Occasionally he spotted evidence of towns and villages here and there, nostalgic places where a person might have a cup of coffee with his grandmother and then toddle off to an antique bed supplied with a handmade quilt. Instead, he stopped again and spent a difficult minute trying to put all such thoughts out of mind.
Twenty-three
He said it must have been near to eleven o’clock in the evening, when in fact it proved almost an hour earlier than that. He had detected an acre or more of salvaged cars visible at about a hundred yards from his path, and after going forward for a distance and then turning back, he began to move in that direction. The weeds were high and he dreaded to think of what was happening to his clothes. He caught a fleeting sight of a small, blue, iridescent snake scampering off frantically into the undergrowth. “Ha,” said Philip to himself, “an outcast, no doubt. And just imagine all the trouble he has had for being special.” And then: “But who better to commiserate with that than I, n’est-ce pas?”
It’s a sin to kill an angel, although he’d long ago overcome that objection and was prepared, indeed anxious, to perform that very evil!
Twenty-four
Among all those wrecked automobiles, he chose a 1954 DeSoto that had an historical significance for him. The door was ajar and he had no difficulty getting in behind the wheel and making himself reasonably comfortable amid the leaves and broken glass. He was proud still to be behaving in the calm, brave way that seemed to be congenital with him. As long as he knew what he was, the conceptions of others had no traction whatsoever.
He smoked and then took out his pocket knife and severed the veins of his left wrist. And what, pray, might this be doing to his suit! It was true that he had agreed to meet with Leland one more time, but now he must break his promise after all.
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