Now it was just as it had been in the beginning. The same fragrant coffee was mixed with the land smell (the coffee tree had been made on the Third Day), and the cup was like the first cup that was ever brewed.
Dotty had coffee and rolls and then phoned the abogado. He came to her and they went to Finnegan's rooms, but he had already left them. Dotty got a map of the City and its environs, and Ignacio traced on it the miles-long route of Finnegan's daily walks. Then, after Ignacio had told her other things, she bought a pistol and started out.
Now it was afternoon, and Finnegan was again on the beach beyond the rocks. This was a terminus, and the difficulty was to tell if it was the beginning or the end. This was either the last day of his life or (in a way) the first. If it were followed by another day, then plainly it was not the last. If it were not so followed, then just as plainly it was.
There were sea-birds diving for fish and taking them away; and there were small crawlers going in and out of sand holes. For some it was their last afternoon. Others would still be here tomorrow. The best way was to come early and leave before dark. That way you could watch the struggle of the water and the strand and not know how it ended.
Dotty had a curious pistol. It was a .38 mounted on a .45 frame, and was probably a nine shot. She wandered the hills in search of either of two men. She had learned about the impending disaster from Ignacio and was on a manhunt. Also a person given to premonitions, she knew approximately the time and place of it.
When she circled back once on her way she saw the car of Nick the Rattle, and it had not been there before. To immobilize it, she slashed the tires. This isn't a simple thing to do. To tell about it sounds easy, but a very strong girl with a very sharp knife did it with difficulty. Only one of the four blew out as she let them down.
Then she fired the little gun out over the rocks to see if she could make her prey break cover. But it made less noise than the tire that had blown, and she could see no motion below. She took the trail of the left-footed heavy man that any child could follow. And as soon as she saw him she was already in range and she shot.
The Sidewinder, when hit, coils laterally, and strikes with the same motion. The moment Niccolo hit the sand he show twice. Finnegan, now seen to be between Dotty and Nick, was hit. And Dotty was hit. And Nick the Rattle had certainly been hit when he went down. Nick was using a weapon greater than a carbine and less than a rifle.
Finnegan had always admired Dotty in times of crisis. Not that this was a crisis. In a crisis there should be a change of attitude. The attitudes of none of them were going to be changed by the shooting.
Dotty shot again, and the Sidewinder writhed in pain, then shot back twice rapidly, and again got home. This was exceptional shooting, six shots between them and not a miss.
A little cloud went over the sun, and people were coming from a great distance.
You had to admire Dotty's stability. A lot of girls would have gone down from that second shot. It hurt her. Finnegan couldn't get up himself. If he had been up, the second shot to hit him would certainly have felled him. The Sidewinder had gotten them much better the second time than the first when he was hurried.
Finnegan was chilly. It was as he had been told in his army days; when you are shot at and missed it makes you hot; but when you are hit it makes you chilly and weak.
Nick the Rattle was gut-shot and sick. But he had not been winged right and could still shoot. If Dotty had known that he shot left-handed she would have had him the first time before he hit the sand. It was funny that she didn't know that Nick shot left-handed. But it was also funny that she even knew there was a Nick the Rattle.
Dotty shot with crossed wrists and the pistol nearly at arm's length. She shot again. And the Rattle bounced around on the ground and returned the fire on both his targets effectively. This was really outstanding shooting: seven, eight, nine shots, and still neither of them had missed.
7.
There is an advantage in very old and mutilated writings: they are improved by the mutilation. It is the first and the last sheepskins that are always lost or worn. There is no story that is not improved by having its first and last pages lost. A story should begin in the middle of the morning. And end in the afternoon quite a while before it gets dark.
Anamnesis
Keroul, keroul, the dogs do growl,
The Duffeys are in Saint Lou.
They catch the eye, and none knows why.
Their humor's a little bit blue.
The Duffeys so far were one day wonders in St. Louis. They were a jingling novelty who were everywhere, and Duffey's jokes were all around the town. Most of the Duffeys were in the Rounders' Club that first evening, and they had about taken it over without a shot being fired, except by that loud cap pistol that Marie Schultz had. No, that noise that Dotty Yekouris was making wasn't shots; it was firecrackers, real big ones, that she was lighting and throwing about at random. Doesn't everyone love the acrid hot smell of big firecrackers!
The Duffeys seemed quite a bit overdone. Their colors were a bit too garish. They were too loud, they were too big, they were too intelligent. Those four excesses taken together come very near to spelling out bad manners. Very near but not quite. For the name of their game was ‘fun’. When Marie swept through the big rooms of the Rounders' Club, firing her pistol and carrying her husband Hans a-riding on her shoulders, everybody in Rounders' understood that it was fun. Things like this were much more common in Rounders' than in other clubs. Now the young lady customers there began to give their boyfriends rides on their backs and shoulders and to claim that this made them Duffeys too, whatever Duffeys were.
Well, if Melchisedech made them, why were they so damnably overdone? Because everything that Melchisedech did was damnably overdone. One of the most overdone of the Duffeys was Absalom Stein.
The Absalom, surnamed the Stein,
Was full of purple fire.
In some more ancient life he's been
Great Hiram King of Tyre.
Well that was true. In a former life Absalom had been King of Tyre, or even in the on-going present life. But what was he doing this evening? He was sitting on the lap of a middle-aged school teacher, and she seemed quite pleased about it.
Some of the Duffeys had never seen each other before, and most of them had never seen their supposed maker Melchisedech Duffey. But they quickly guessed each others' identities and cried out in delight the names they had never heard before. It was magic, sheer magic, Duffey magic.
Did the Duffeys know that they were grotesquely overdone? Some did, some didn't, some suspected it, but it wouldn't have made any difference. The name of the game would always be ‘fun’ for them, and it didn't matter much whether they were overdone or not.
One thing about Hans Schultz, he was always active.
Hans Schultz had been a lot of things
The Orpheus (sometimes shown with wings),
Apollo, with a lyre that sings
The Faust, whose dong the Devil dings,
But now, tonight, what 'tis he slings?
Oh, Hans had just been seized with a wild urge for a tallish, slim slightly boney girl, with a tallish and slim smile on her face, who was standing in the center of one of the big rooms. He believed that this girl, like himself, was a Duffey, but he couldn't guess which one and he was good at guessing. Probably he had never even heard her name, but that was no reason for not being able to guess it, with a little bit of Duffey magic. Anyhow, if she were a Duffey, he'd treat her as a Duffey.
He came up behind the tallish girl and vaulted onto her shoulders. That should have jarred her but it didn't. Well dammit, she should have pretended that it jarred her, but she didn't.
“This is as good an introduction as any, Hans,” she said. “I guessed you without too much trouble, though I had never heard of you. I also guessed your beautiful wife, Marie. I am Mary Catherine Carruthers from Chicago, supposedly Casey's girlfriend, and Show Boat Piccone invited me down to this strange c
onclave. You were rather well known as a girl rider when you were Orpheus, were you not? Will you know Duffey when you see him? Is Finnegan here yet? I dreamed of him last night, so I know that I'll recognize him when I see him. Don't you think it's rather magic the way we Duffeys recognize each other, even those we've never seen or heard of before? Do you want me to turn this into a truly electrifying ride and give you an experience you've never had? I can, you know. Or do you not realize yet what sort of creature I am?”
“I'm pretty sure I'll know Duffey when I see him, yes. And it is all rather magic. Finnegan isn't here yet, but he's supposed to be in town sometime tonight. No, do not give me a truly electrifying experience such as I've never had before. You're already ahead of me. You spoiled my surprise and took the wind out of my sails. No, I guess I don't know what sort of a creature you are, if you put it that way. What are you?”
“I'm a nymph, an Oread Hipparion, an Oread Pony, one to be ridden.”
“Who told you that you were?”
“Duffey told me. He recognized what I was when I was nine years old.”
“But they aren't creatures of Duffey, they're of another recension.”
“Some are, some aren't. I'm both. I'm a Duffey creature, and I'm also such a nymph. I am a creature of Duffey, and I am also a Mountain Nymph, one to be ridden. At first thought it seems slightly grotesque that the great heroes should ride on the shoulders of such slight girls, of such slight nymphs. But then it seems something elegant, something of so magical a luxury that it takes the breath away.”
“I remember, I remember,” Hans said dreamily, and he slid off Mary Catherine's shoulders.
“Oh Hans, I promise to be totally surprised when you do it again,” she said. “And I promise to fill your sails with wind again. And I will find a way to unbruise your ego. I promise. I believe that all of us Duffeys will now be totally in love with each other. It has to be.”
“Yes, totally in love with each other,” Hans said. He kissed her tenderly and left.
Melchisedech Duffey himself came into the Rounders' Club then. And all of the people were so amused and bemused by the Duffeys that nobody noticed him immediately.
Three of the wonderful lady Duffeys especially were there. They had met and recognized each other only that evening and now they were the closest of friends for ever and a day. Since there was nothing at all prosaic about any of the three, they must be presented in poetry. They were: Dotty Yekouris of New Orleans.
Oh Dotty Y is droll and wry.
She walks with swing and trist.
She grins a lot, she turns you hot.
Her eyes are amethyst.
And Marie Monahan Schultz of St. Louis.
Marie instead has hair of red.
She's something of a stunt.
Oh how she'll stand you on your head!
She knows things that you dunt.
And Mary Virginia Schaeffer of Galveston.
Oh Mary V is quite serene.
She's happy and she's handy.
She's half as sweet as saccharine,
And twice as sweet as candy.
The originals of all these verses exist in old Chaldee which has a more intricate rime scheme, but we lack the scholarship to transliterate them. But it happened that it was this Mary Virginia who sensed the presence of Duffey in Rounders' and announced it with happy words.
“Oh, you come to us like a ghost and we hardly knew you,” this gentle lady said, but the chandeliers quivered from the sound of her gentle voice. “Oh, bring bread and wine, people, this is the Duffey himself, the Melchisedech!”
Time stood still then as the overly colorful and fun-loving Duffeys gathered around Melchisedech the high Magus who, they were all convinced, had at least a left hand in their own making. It was like lightning dancing between Duffey and the Duffeys. Outside of time there is no duration, 'tis said; no duration, but only a moment. But what a wonderful moment it was! Melchisedech knew all of them, and they all knew him with a knowledge from ancient days.
Then time began again in Rounders' Club. The band played ‘The King Shall Ride’, and an ample smiling lady came and swung Melchisedech Duffey up onto her shoulders and carried him through all the rooms of Rounders' and back again. The Duffeys gathered around her after Duffey was on his own feet on the floor again.
“Who are you, who are you?” they demanded. “How could you do that and we not know who you are?”
“I am a St. Louis lady and my name is Lucille Sisler,” she said. “And I came to work at the Rounders' Club when the club itself was only eleven days old. And I've worked in this pleasant place ever since.”
“But who are you really?” Mary Virginia asked. “Who are you in legend? Who are you in myth?”
“So far as I know I have never been in either of those things, pretty Mary Virginia,” she said. “Should I have been?”
“Of course you should have been,” Hans Schultz explained to her. “Nobody can be in life who has not been in legend and myth first. That is a requirement of being born.”
“I will have to plead innocence then,” Lucille said. “I didn't mean to take any shortcuts to being born. How will I find out what my name was in legend or myth?”
“Oh, we'll find it out for you, Lucille,” Absalom Stein told her. “Your true name is buried in your unconscious and in your dream life. How is your dream life?”
“It's bountiful to the point of overflowing. It's powerful, and it's mostly pleasant. My days are mostly devoted to delightful retrospect of my dreams of the night before. When I work in this pleasant club more than half of my brain is enraptured by my dreams.”
“This will be easier than I thought,” Absalom told her. “I'll meet you in one of your dreams just about an hour before dawn in the morning. That's when I dream most rampantly.”
“So do I. I'll meet you in one of my dreams then, if you wish. But how will that give me my ‘true’ name?”
“Oh, I'll ask you what it is. And you'll tell me. All inhibitions will be down then. You'll remember your real name and you'll tell me.”
“Thank you, Mr. Stein.”
After a bit all of the Duffeys drifted out. There were other clubs to conquer in St. Louis and other people to meet. Duffey drifted out with one faction of the Duffeys. And he returned about midnight with another group of people. These were Charley Murray who was co-owner with Duffey of the wonderful Rounders' Club, and his sister Monica Murray Stranahan and her husband Patrick Stranahan. Patrick and Monica were the parents of Vincent Stranahan who in just four more days (in just three more days if midnight had already struck) would marry Teresa ‘Show Boat’ Piccone.
“Is our son Vincent on the premises?” Patrick asked one of the old faithful retainers of whom Rounders' was always full.
“No, I'm sure he's not,” the old faithful retainer said. “He's out on the town with some of those Duffeys of whom the city is full.”
“It's his bachelor week. I don't know where that custom ever originated. The groom isn't supposed to see the bride-to-be for these several days before the wedding.”
“Oh, they keep to it pretty well,” the old retainer said. “In the day that is ending, the two of them have had only three dates here. They have a rather secluded alcove where they meet. Nobody except everybody knows when they are here together. The barely audible enchanting giggling of Show Boat is what gives them away. I'm told by one who travels a lot that it retains its barely audible quality all the way to Heaven. I hear the faintness of it right now, and I guess that she is still several blocks away.”
“Yes, she's on her way here with her father. Send them up to the thrice-special upstairs dining room when they come.”
Duffey and Charley and Monica and Patrick went up to the thrice-special room which was triply luxurious even by Rounders' Club standards.
“Why yes, I can hear her giggling now. She's only two blocks away,” Monica said. “Brace yourself, Duffey. She is the most wonderful of all your creations and you have never s
een her. I first saw the gamin when she was ten years old, and I haven't stopped shaking yet, shaking with delight and awe mixed in equal quantities.”
“It's like an earthquake, quite low on the scale but determined to shake things up a little bit,” Duffey spoke, and his own face showed delight and awe in equal quantities. Then, all the doors and windows being closed as it says in scripture, the earthquake named Teresa and her father Papa Piccone stood in the midst of them. Or so it seemed; but in reality both doors to the thrice-special room now stood open (could Teresa and her father have come through both of them?) and the five windows on the east side of the room, those that now looked out on night-time St. Louis, had their shutters thrown open and banging in the wind. “But there isn't any wind tonight,” Duffey said.
“I am the wind,” Teresa said. “I am your number one fan, Duffey, so I claim proprietorship of a sort. We Duffeys have a saying that God made Melchisedech Duffey and Duffey made the Duffeys. And you made us well, Duffey, though people say that we're overdone, and I most of all. But we're supposed to be overdone. I can't fault your handiwork at all. But God's handiwork in you sure falls short. Come over here and sit in this chair and I'll see what I can do to fix things.
“God, God, listen to me. You've done a terrible job on Melchisedech Duffey. God, God, tell those people to come back tomorrow. This is more important. Look at how you've botched this good man. I've seen worn-out shoes that looked better than him.”
“God hears her, Duffey,” Monica Stranahan said. “Why, you're quite a bit better looking already.”
“Somebody bring me a looking glass,” Duffey said. “I want to watch God's work in action.”
Papa Piccone pulled a mirror out of his pocket. That old showman could pull almost anything out of one of his pockets. He brought the mirror to Duffey. Duffey looked into it and it shattered into a thousand pieces. (That part is true. Everybody saw it.)
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