Lee

by Tito Perdue

  Lee came out from under the bed and then went to check in the mirror. The headache had aged him somewhat, a penny’s worth about the mouth and eyes. Always, he had wanted a death like that of Empedocles, in full heat; now, he would take whatever he could get. In any case, he ought to die soon, before Time and Nature could do more experimentation on him. And even now, could his wife have picked him out of a crowd, an old one like himself coming up quietly and laying his hand upon her? On the contrary, he could very well imagine her drawing back in indignation. And rightly too! Nothing worried him more.

  This time he was so impatient, fumbling with it, he hardly marked the pain; he was quite ready to melt the arm itself if that was needed. Now came the tears, the smell, then finally the scream (rare for him) that guaranteed success.

  To his astonishing surprise she came to him this time as a child, wide-eyed, blinking, silent, frocked in green; never had he seen her at this stage, not outside of photographs, never with pigtails.

  “How’s your puppy? Is he all better now?”

  No answer. Apparently it hadn’t happened as yet.

  “Want to go for a walk?”

  She did. He loved to see her nodding that way, eagerly.

  His first job was to stop by the garage and drain off some two gallons of gasoline. The stuff was pretty, spinning in the jar, and good-looking enough to drink. Also, he appreciated the way it balanced, and more than balanced, the two volumes of Suidas in the other hand.

  The night was thin, watery even, and with numerous stricken pedestrians floating up out of nowhere. What he saw were bleached faces from out of a painting by Munch; what they saw was a tall one in robe followed by a trusting child. So small was her hand, it awed him how it could be that same instrument destined to be used, ten million times, for meal-preparation and patting him off to sleep on bad nights. She, of course, knew nothing of all this, and never mind that he might be bursting to tell about it.

  They crossed the road and then stepped down into the golf course, a black shallow sea with ripples and threat of nibbling fish. In front was a line of trees that looked like women tearing out their hair. This was good, he liked it, an open expanse where it was quite impossible to be undone by ambush. The moon, too—formerly he used to look upon it as his own special star, now the thing was plainly in decay. Too large! Moreover, it had gone into the phase called “lilac scales.” Three miles further the radio tower was sputtering furiously, telegraphing to all quarters of town that the time had come for sleeping. He did so love night and wished he had another thirty years for it, for it and for Judy, for leading her to the best authors and marrying her a second time.

  They climbed the hill. She was better than he at this; moreover, with his stick, books, and pail, he was heavy-laden. Already, the townsfolk were flying homeward. He saw one little boy outracing the cars. Lee knew these habits—how in another two hours they would all be fed and televized and toddling off to bed; he yearned to cane the bunch of them. He could remember some considerable austerity when he was young; now, it was a sink of prosperity and none of them were any good.

  For two blocks he followed a man who was dressed too young for his age, but then at the last minute Lee let him go his way. In fact, Lee was drawing nigher and nigher to his friend’s house. Nor could he help but see how the homes were so much more extravagant these days, far, far out of proportion to what he knew about the quality of those that lived inside. He saw a woman, her face the very picture of ignorance, riding in a car six times more valuable than herself.

  He crossed. The home of his friend! It was three stories high. Lee could remember when this same fellow had abided in a tiny place jammed with siblings and noise. Lee set foot on the lawn, and then he moved around to the back and up to the window itself where he saw, first, a grand-sized television and, second, four persons feeding. There was an offspring (a male, it looked), old enough to have left home years ago; he too was feeding. Lee could feel his gorge rise. It was a room without books—his friend of aforetimes who once had been a fisherman and hiker too . . . Now Lee saw something that settled the fate of his friend and offspring all: There was a landscape on the wall, one of the impossibly gorgeous kind.

  He had to work fast, while the fury was on. There was a newspaper; he drenched it, using half the fluid before taking out a match. He wanted a blaze yes, a sunburn no. Nothing would have been more gratifying than to tap politely, then go inside, and explain in calm voice how and why it was the house must burn. Instead, Lee turned and broke into a gallop. The tiny Judy kept pace with him, a small and most serious person making three steps for his every one.

  They went into the mountains. Normally, he would have tired, this night he was exhilarated. None had climbed these hills in years; there was not one hamburger wrapping, no condoms hanging from thorns. Although the radio tower was high, they found themselves on a level with the topmost lamp. Thankfully, the town was in a valley, the better to contain the late twentieth-century overspill. It was strange: He could see more from this vantage about the conduct of things than could those actually carrying them out. Two cars were headed for a collision, until one turned off at the last minute. No doubt there must be a full hundred of his former friends and colleagues even now bedding down under his eye. And did they talk about him ever? No. And were they fit to play with anymore? Not one.

  The fire itself had passed on to other houses—never had it been in his scheme to bring down the entire city. Also, there came a dull sound when one of the cars exploded; it formed a blue-green glow that put him in mind of the matches. Probably there were humans scampering about, probably firemen at work; he couldn’t see them.

  They moved to the crest and then, never dawdling, they began at once to drop into the adjoining valley. Here was unexplored land, not one gleam of light anywhere to be seen. And such growth! Looking up, it seemed to him they were sighting the underside of prodigious mushrooms with fleshy gills. He stopped to take a flower, a scarlet bud much like a tiny heart on a stem. He sensed the nearness of snakes before he actually saw one—in this case, a bright green neon article of exceeding thinness flashing in the weeds. This is how it was to be roving through a dazzling painting of the Persian type, with birds of plumage and florid script running around the edges; he could feel Judy clutching at his hand. This night the moon was particularly evil and much too big, like a pomegranate cut in two, with a danger of seeds tumbling down on his head.

  He anticipated a ten mile hike through darkness, then hills and the valley that would follow. It needed years to worship night in the way it deserved and to read it correctly. This he knew: He had never been serene in the light, not with all of the ignorant alert and forever busy. That moment, a jackal blurted out loudly close at hand. He had not seen fireflies in such numbers, requiring to be pushed aside. Now they came upon an abandoned shack with a curled tin roof. Looking into it, he thought he could summon up in his mind the first young couple with their few sticks of furniture, even down to the last old man whose imprint Lee believed he could identify in the bed. There were artifacts—candle, blanket, and cup. Apparently the old one had had to flee in some haste. Too many jackals, too much brightness of fireflies. The next room had a stove in it, a black personality (smelling still of bacon and pine) from the Wood-Burning Age. He could see the tiny Judy edging up to take a look.

  Outside, the vines had put on a spurt—another two weeks and they would have digested shack, stove, and all. No doubt about it, the nineteenth century was ending, even if it had needed the whole of the twentieth to get it done. He could divine a path, a thin, blue, halfmillimeter-wide line that looked exactly as if jotted down impulsively by a map maker without secure information. In the first place, it was far too crooked. A hundred yards more and it emptied into a “wadi” with tree roots sticking through, and some twenty geologic layers very neatly laid open to the view. He could not look upon such a display without feeling that it was time, past time, to lay him down and take up his position in the 1950’s, even a
s when he used to pretend that he was dead beneath the quilt. It was queer how he felt so much more akin to things like this, to rocks and fossils and popular songs of long ago, far more so than to anything transpiring behind him in the city. He could see a lurid haze five miles away where modern men were devouring one another just now. And if that were not enough, the egregious Birmingham was not so far away that he couldn’t see its peculiar glow as well.

  There’d be but one city soon, and four hundred million in it inspecting one another’s rumps. (He wanted a small world getting smaller, and a fine people living in subtlety off the ruins.) No country had been noisier than his own, nor thrown up more rubbish, and yet—he could remember the very moment of it—this was a people as might have taken up where the Greeks left off.

  Here the trees were dripping Spanish moss. He passed into a clear place, and then, glancing in both directions, he darted across the highway. The tower now was flashing in great urgency; for years the nation had been foisting its methods upon a sullen world, perhaps someone was foisting back.

  He realized they were running down into a channel, thence into a lake long ago plugged in sediments. He was tired. His cane trembled. The girl, however, never complained, and now she could be seen running off on little excursions of her own. He wanted to laugh. She who had set out so tidy; now, she was smirched from ears to socks. Never had there been such a person, such seriousness, so much enthusiasm of such a sort.

  They found the trail and then came up cautiously to the next ridge. A truck lay on its belly, a burnt-out case deposited there aeons ago by forces he could not very well explain. Very few trees—the loam, such as it was, had all washed into the valley. Suddenly it struck him that they were being watched by a bird of some sort, which dangled just a few feet overhead. It never failed; never yet had he been able to go abroad by night without some little manner of thing monitoring on him. That instant there was a shrieking, horrifying in its essence, and so hate-filled it seemed to have something human in it. He had his cane ready, Judy came running, the moon was down.

  From this elevation he could look down upon all the Alabamas, from far north (now in drought) to Baldwin County itself. It was as good a spot as any; indeed, from his stone couch giving vantage upon where the sun would have to rise, he was in the best of places for that great “Noontide” foretold by him who had been first to call for a small world of fine people. He smoked. Below were pine barrens, and then a vacant swatch where his new-world university might very well be built. He saw it as walled, with sentries, double-gated (Mycenae in mind), and joined to a clay-built hamlet with merchants and clerks enough, and new-world wizards in conical hats. One thing he foresaw clearly: after this next spate, life would be stranger than even he could imagine. One more slight falling off, then History will have turned into something never seen before.

  He’d not see it, not if he stayed where he was for . . . Suddenly, he realized that he was sinking slowly into the sediment, an inch already. With him, he never could relax lest he find himself vanishing of a sudden. He might place one foot down, but then have the greatest difficulty in drawing it up. Then too, he was acutely aware of being on earth’s bottom side, as if he were dangling in space.

  Most were frightened by it, yet Lee was satisfied to be in a world without laws, and to have no god but the god he could make of Himself. True, his inheritance was against him—progenitors without genius or even his own iron will. Now it was late, very late, yet still he refused to turn and go back home. It gave him a pleasure similar to when he used to wait out in the rain with his mouth open, save that now it was fireflies that filled his maw and set him gleaming. He was old, old and gray, old, gray, thin and insane, and chortling in the woods. Zarathustra might discourse with insects; Lee preferred to eat them.

  Let him not die at night, not when his mind was working. Just then, something reared in his path—a shrub, a bear, something in black cowl come to take his soul away. Lee spit at it and then blundered on down the rest of the distance to level ground.

  Truly, it was a blessed site for the school he envisioned, good defenses from postern to moat and observatory. If he had his way, students everywhere would be living in cells, a hard regime eventuating in a small world getting brilliant. Of course, his own apartment was to be in the wall itself, with views both of the countryside without and the civilization within, and thirty little rooms for Judy’s thirty ages. As for the citizenry, he envisioned them producing their own food, each taking his turn upon the wall, and so infused with all the world’s literature that no modern man could endure to look one in the eye.

  He’d not see it; in fact, he doubted he’d get home that night. All his life he had wanted to lord it over an unsullied place, and now he found himself actually measuring it off with his stride and marking with a stone where the refectory ought to be. He’d get no credit for it, of course—he knew how these matters went—that it would be a rich man who someday plucked his idea out of the air.

  The girl was saying nothing; he saw her in one spot and then another, both times with her hands behind her back. He was quite happy. Finally, he got down in the weeds and goggled up at the moon turned beet red. An hour of this and he could make out cities, a seventeenth-century scene, a landscape painted on glass.

  Nine

  HE WOKE AND LOOKED ABOUT, very well pleased with himself for having grabbed off a few hours sleep. Even so, he did not try to rise all at once. The sun-wheel was high, white, and so thin he could see through it. Now he realized he had been sinking during the night, so much so in fact that he was by no means certain of escaping. Far from school or “scriptorium,” he had taken up in a lime pit of some sort, with heavy machinery off to one side.

  He stood, dusted himself, sought about for his hat. A crow was singing sarcastically, the first notes of a new age that was starting out perhaps a little weakly. He never felt best in morning time. He was coughing, expelling firefly wings and two little yellow lanterns. Next he pissed in his ineffectual manner, needing three episodes to get it done, with long halts between.

  It was pretty weather, even by his severe standards. He saw clouds—one lavender in shade and of nostalgic quality, another full of lumpy books. One had spears and arrows sticking out. He could not take his eye off this lovely world, which put him in mood of a certain lovely engraving seen once upon a certain lovely old-world postage stamp. Lilac and blue, a rock formation of calcium and ambergris, a bunny with bent ear—he felt he was within an ace of reading nature’s language. He saw a bush enveloped in an aura of bees, humpback creatures with bourgeois tendencies and not the slightest notion of what they were slaving for.

  He had to travel a full mile before sighting the radio tower. Far off to the west was a farm that he had first spied the night before on his outward journey. Now he saw the barn was rouge-colored and bulging and looked like something out of a sentimental book. His choices were to continue on toward town, where he was certain of a cup of coffee, or of turning aside, up two hills and down three dales, and the possibility of an irritable old farmer who would give him nothing. He tossed the cane, then waited to see in which direction it pointed. Last night’s adventures, he had thought, would be his last; instead, here now was yet another coming up. Truth was, he wished for a thousand years, that he might go on forever as the last representative of his generation, both those who had decamped and those that had accommodated to the times.

  He came up the hill, staff dragging, leaves clinging to his vest. The farmer himself was irritable and old, even as Lee had foretold; they glared at each other. Seldom had he seen so stubborn-looking a type. Who would be the first to speak?

  “Warm today.”

  “Little bit. But then of course I prefer it hot.”

  “That right? You might not like it if you had to look after a bunch of animals.”

  “Naw, it won’t hurt ’em.”

  “Won’t?”

  “Naw.”

  “Kill ’em, is all.”

  “Not
if you deal with them properly.”

  “I deal with them properly! Lord, man, it was a hundred here last week.”

  “I know that! Hell, I was out walking in it.” He could feel his gorge rising. The other man had a potato-like face of the sort Lee had never liked.

  “You from town?”

  “That’s right, yes.”

  “Well, how’d you happen to pick me?”

  “I wasn’t looking for you! Christ, I don’t even know what your attributes might or might not be.”

  They were moving slowly toward the house, a picturesque thing if ever Lee had seen one. Also, there were horses, or rather one horse and one mule, this latter intelligent to a degree, judging from it, and sewed together out of a velvet that caused Lee to want to go over and feel.

  “You’ve got some fine animals here.”

  “I suppose. That one there like to have died last week. ’Course he wasn’t ‘out walking in it.’”

  Lee looked at him. He was bald on the knob, a palpitating location where he could have been dispatched easily with one blow of a cane.

  “What is it—you sell your produce in town?”

  “No sir, no, um-um, I don’t go there unless I has to.” Lee nodded; they had come to the kitchen, so tidy and clean. There were pictures, a porcelain cow, a glass jar with cookies in it.

  “Where do you keep your books?”

  “I expect you want some coffee too, am I right?”

  “Much obliged.”

  He had expected a good quality coffee, in fact the stuff was excellent. Suddenly he made a grab for the cookies.

  “Lord, man!”

  “Your wife make these?”

  “Wife? Why lord, man, she died years ago.”