Collected Stories of Reynolds Price

by Reynolds Price

  I can tell by his voice he is not through, but he stops, leaving raw quiet like a hole beneath us. I feel that because I have stayed awake, and my finger slips to the trough of his wrist where the pulse was before. It is there again awful. I take it, count it long as I can and say, “It feels all right to me, sir” (not knowing of course how right would feel). He says he is glad which frees me to see Mr. Barden again. I call up his face and pick it for anything new. At first it is very much the same—bloodless, old—but I settle on the faded stripes of his lips and strain to picture them years ago saying the things that were just now reported. They move, speak and for a moment I manage to see his face as a wedge—but aimed elsewhere, making no offer to split me clean from my lacks my foes. So I let it die and I say to my father, “I still think Jesus is your real hero.”

  Glad for his rest, he is ready again. “Maybe so. Maybe so. But Mr. Barden was what I could see.”

  “Who has seen Jesus?”

  “Since He died, you mean?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Several, I guess. Dr. Truett for one.”

  I know the story—it is why I have come this far to hear an old man tremble for an hour—but I request it again.

  “Well, as I understand it, years ago when he was young, he asked a friend to come hunting with him. He came and they went in the woods together, and after a while he shot his friend. By accident but that didn’t make him feel any better. He knew some people would always say he killed the man on purpose.”

  “Maybe he did.”

  “No he didn’t. Hold on.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The same way he knew—because after he sweated drops of blood in misery, Jesus came to him one evening in a dream and said not to grieve any more but to live his life and do what he could.”

  “Does that mean he really saw Jesus?—seeing Him in his sleep?”

  “How else could you see Him since He is dead so long?”

  I tell him the chance that is one of my hopes, my terrors—“He could walk in your house in daylight. Then you could step around Him. You could put out your hand and He would be there. But in just a dream how would you know? What would keep Him from being a trick?”

  “The way He would look. His face, His hands.”

  “The scars, you mean?”

  “They would help. But no—” This is hard for him. He stops and thinks for fully a mile. “I mean whether or not He had the face to say things such as ‘Be ye perfect as God is perfect’—not even say ‘try to be,’ just ‘be’—a face that could change people’s lives.”

  “People do not know what He looks like, Father. That is half the trouble.” We are now on one of our oldest subjects. We started three years ago when I first went to vacation Bible school. At the end of that two weeks after we had made our flour-paste model of a Hebrew water hole, they gave us diplomas that were folded leaflets with our name inside and a golden star but on the cover their idea of Jesus—set by a palm under light such as comes after storms (blurred, with piece of a rainbow) and huddled around Him, one each of the earth’s children in native dress, two or three inside His arms but all aiming smiles at His face (jellied eyes, tan silk beard, clean silk hair, pink lips that could not call a dog to heel much less children or say to His mother, “Who is my mother?” and call her “Woman” from the bitter cross). I took the picture but at home that night I handed it to my father and asked if he thought that face was possible? He looked and said it was one man’s guess, not to worry about it, but I did and later after I had studied picture Bibles and Christ and the Fine Arts by Cynthia Pearl Maus full of hairy Jesuses by Germans mostly—Clementz, Deitrich, Hofmann, Lang, Plockhorst, Von Uhde, Wehle—I asked him if in all the guessers, there was one who knew? any Jesus to count on? He said he thought there was but in Student’s Bibles, the ones they give to boys studying ministry. I said had he seen one? He had not and I asked if he could buy me one or borrow Mr. Barden’s for me to trace? He said he did not think so, that Student’s Bibles were confidential, secrets for good men.

  So tonight I ask him, “Then how did He look in your mind when I was being born and Mother was dying?”

  “He didn’t look nohow that day. I was not seeing faces. I was doing business. If I saw anything it was rocks underfoot, those smooth little rocks Paul hauled from the creek to spread in his yard.”

  “I think it is awful.”

  “What?”

  “Him not appearing. Why did Dr. Truett see Him and you could not?”

  “Maybe he needed to worse than me. He had killed a man, killed somebody else. I was just killing me, making others watch me do it.”

  “That is no reason.”

  “Preacher, if I was as good a man as George W. Truett—half the man—I would be seeing Jesus every day or so, be fishing with Him.”

  “I am not joking, Father. It is awful, I think—Him not helping you better than that. “

  “Preacher, I didn’t mind”—which even with this night’s new information is more or less where we always end. It does not worry my father that he is not privileged to see the secret. But it scalds, torments any day of mine in which I think that the face with power to change my life is hid from me and reserved for men who have won their fight (when He Himself claimed He sought the lost), will always be hid, leaving me to work dark. As my father has done, does, must do—not minding, just turning on himself his foe with nothing for hero but Mr. Barden when it could have been Jesus if He had appeared, His gouged hands, His real face, the one He deserved that changes men.

  We are quiet again, so quiet I notice the sound of the engine. I have not heard it tonight before. It bores through the floor, crowds my ears, and turning my eyes I take the mileage—sixty-three thousand to round it off. My father travels in his work as I say, and this Pontiac has borne him three times around the earth—the equal of that nearly. It will get us home together, alive, and since in a heavy rush I am tired, I sleep where I am, in his heat, in his hollow. Of course I do not think I am sleeping. I dream I am awake, that I stand on the near side of sleep and yearn, but it is a dream and as sudden again I wake—my head laid flat on the mohair seat, blood gathered hot in my eyes that stare up at nothing. My head lifts a little (stiff on my neck), my eyes jerk round collecting terror—the motor runs gentle, the knob of the heater burns red, burns warm, but the car is still and my father is gone. Where he was the dashboard light strikes empty nothing. My head falls back and still half dreaming I think, “They have won at last. They have caught us, come between us. We have ended apart.” I say that last aloud and it wakes me fully so I lie on (my head where his loaded lap should be) and think what seems nearer truth—“He has left as I always knew he would to take up his life in secret.” Then I plunge towards the heart of my fear—“He knew just now what I thought when I pressed his pulse, and he could not bear my sight any more.” Then deeper towards the heart—“God has taken him from me as punishment for causing his death just now in my mind. But why did He not take me?” Still He did not. I am left. So I rise and strain to see out the glass, to know my purpose for being here, what trials lie between me and morning, what vengeance. The first is snow. The headlights shine and in their outward upward hoop there is only flat gobs of snow that saunter into frozen grass and survive. The grass of the shoulder is all but smothered, the weeds of the bank already bent, meaning I have slept long enough for my life to wreck beyond hope—my father vanished and I sealed in a black Pontiac with stiff death held back only long as the draining battery lasts and now too late, no hero to turn to. My forehead presses into the dark windshield. For all the heater’s work, the cold crawls in through glass, through flesh, through skull to my blood, my brain.

  So I pray. My eyes clamped now, still pressed to the glass, knowing I have not prayed for many weeks past (with things going well), I swallow my shame and naked in fear ask, “Send me my father. Send me help. If You help me now, if You save my life, I will change—be brave, be free with my gifts. Send somebody
good.” My eyes click open on answered prayer—coming slow from the far edge of light a tall man hunched, his face to the ground hid, head wrapped in black, a black robe bound close about him, his arms inside, bearing towards me borne on the snow as if on water leaving no tracks, his shadow crouched on the snow like a following bird, giant, black (killing? kind?). I stay at the glass, further prayer locked in my throat, waiting only for the sign of my fate. Then the robe spreads open. The man’s broad hands are clasped on his heart, turned inward, dark. It is Jesus I see, Jesus I shall touch moments from now—shall lift His face, probe His wounds, kiss His eyes. He is five steps away. I slip from the glass, fall back on my haunches, turn to the driver’s door where He already stands, say silent, “If Father could not see Your face, why must I?”—say to the opening door “Thank You, Sir,” close my lips to take His unknown kiss.

  He says, “Excuse me leaving you asleep,” and it is my father come back disguised. “I had to go pee—down that hill in the snow.” (He points down the road as if he had covered miles not feet.) “I thought you were dead to the world.”

  I say, “I was”—I laugh—“and I thought you were Jesus, that you had been taken and I was left and Jesus was coming to claim me. I was about to see Him.”

  Standing outside, the warm air rushing towards him, he shrugs the coat from his shoulders, lifts the scarf from his head, lays them in back, slides onto the seat. Shrinking from cold I have crawled almost to the opposite door, but kneeling towards him. He faces me and says, “I am sorry to disappoint you, Preacher.”

  I say “Yes sir” and notice he smiles very slow, very deep from his eyes—but ahead at the road. Then he says I had better lie down. I crawl the two steps and lie as before, and we move on so I have no chance to return his smile, to show I share his pleasure. Still I root my head deep in his lap and hope for a chance before sleep returns. The chance never comes. Snow occupies his eyes, his hands. He cannot face me again or test for warmth. Even his mind is surely on nothing but safety. Yet his face is new. Some scraps of the beauty I planned for Jesus hang there—on the corners of his mouth serious now, beneath his glasses in eyes that are no longer simply kind and gray but have darkened and burn new power far back and steady (the power to stop in his tracks and turn), on his ears still purple with cold but flared against danger like perfect ugly shells of blind sea life, on his wrists I cannot ring with my hand, stretched from white cuffs at peace on the wheel but shifting with strength beyond soldier’s, beyond slave’s—and I think, “I will look till I know my father, till all this new disguise falls away leaving him clear as before.” I look but his face shows no sign of retreat, and still as he is and distant, it is hard to stare, painful then numbing. I feel sleep rise from my feet like blood. When it reaches my head I shut my eyes to flush it back, but it surges again and I know I have lost. My own hands are free—he has not touched me, cannot—so my right hand slips to the gap in my pants, cups itself warm on warmer trinkets long since asleep, soft with blood like new birds nested drowsy. I follow them into darkness, thinking on the threshold, “Now I have lost all hope of knowing my father’s life,” cupping closer, warmer this hand as I sink.

  First in my dream I am only this hand yet have eyes to see—but only this hand and a circle of light around it. It is larger by half than tonight, and black stubble has sprung to shade its back, its new thick veins, its gristly cords showing plain because this hand is cupped too, round like a mold, hiding what it makes. It lifts. What it has molded are the kernels, the knobs of a man still twice the size of mine I held before I slept, but cold, shrunk and shrinking as my hand lifts—their little life pouring out blue through veins gorged like sewers that tunnel and vanish under short lank hairs, grizzled. Then I have ears. I hear the blood rustle like silk as it leaves, retreats, abandons, and my hand shuts down, clamps on the blood to turn its race, to warm again, fill again what I hold. But the rustle continues not muffled, and my hand presses harder, squeezes the kernels. Through my fingers green piss streams cold, corrosive. But my hand is locked. It cannot move. I am bound to what I have made, have caused, and seeing only this terror, I find a voice to say, “If I cannot leave may I see what I do?” The light swells in a hoop from my hand filling dimly a room and in that room my whole body standing by a bed—the body I will have as a man—my hand at the core of a man’s stripped body laid yellow on the narrow bed. Yet with this new light my original eyes have stayed where they started—on my crushing hand and beneath it. I tear them left to see the rest. So I start at his feet raised parallel now but the soles pressed flat by years of weight, the rims of the heels and the crowded toes guarded by clear callus, the veins of the insteps branching towards shins like blades of antique war polished deadly, marred by sparse hair, the knees like grips to the blades, the thighs ditched inward to what I crush—his hollow his core that streams on thin with no native force but sure as if drained by magnets in the earth. Then his hands at his sides clenched but the little fingers separate, crouched, gathering ridges in the sheet. Then his firm belly drilled deep by the navel, his chest like the hull of a stranded boat, shaved raw, violet paps sunk and from under his left armpit a line traced carefully down his side, curved under his ribs, climbing to the midst of his breast—the letter J perfect, black, cut into him hopeless to dredge out a lung, laced with gut stiff as wire. Then under a tent of soft wrinkled glass his face which of course is my father’s—the face he will have when I am this man—turned from me, eyes shut, lips shut, locked in the monstrous stillness of his rest. So he does not watch me, shows no sign of the pain I must cause. Yet I try again to lift my fingers, to set him free, but rocking the heel of my hand, I see our skin has joined maybe past parting. I struggle though—gentle to spare his rest. I step back slowly, hoping this natural movement will peel us clean, but what I have pressed comes with me as if I had given love not pain. I speak again silent to whoever gave me light just now, say, “Set him free. Let me leave him whole in peace.” But that prayer fails and turning my eyes I pull against him, ready to wound us both if I must. Our joint holds fast but the rustle beneath my hand swells to scraping, to high short grunts. “Jesus,” I say—I speak aloud—“Come again. Come now. I do not ask to see Your face but come in some shape now.” A shudder begins beneath my hand in his core our core that floods through his belly, his breast to his throat, bearing with it the noise that dims as it enters the tent. I stare through the glass. His head rolls towards me, his yellow lips split to release the noise, his eyes slide open on a quarter-inch of white. The noise scrapes on but behind the tent it is not words—is it rage or pain or wish, is it meant for me? With my free left hand I reach for the tent to throw it back, saying, “Stop. Stop,” but I cannot reach so “Father,” I say, “I beg your pardon. Pardon me this, I will change my life—will turn in my tracks on myself my foe with you as shield.” But he yields no signal. The eyes shut again, the lips shut down on the noise, the shudder runs out as it came, to our core. What my free hand can reach it touches—his wrist. What pulse was there is stopped, and cold succeeds it till with both hands I press hard ice, final as any trapped in the Pole. I can see clearer now, my terror calmed by his grander terror, the peace of his wounds, and facing his abandoned face I say again (to the place, the dream), “Pardon me this, I will change my life. I make this …” But pardon comes to stop my speech. My cold hands lift from his hollow, his wrist. My own hot life pours back to claim them. Then those hands fail, those eyes, my dream. A shift of my headrest lifts me from sleep.

  I face my live father’s present body—my present eyes on his belly but him, tonight, above me, around me, shifting beneath me. My lips are still open, a trail of spit snails down my cheek, my throat still holds the end of my dream, “I make this promise.” So my first thought is fear. Have I spoken aloud what I watched in my dream? Have I warned my father of his waiting death? offered my promise, my life too early? I roll away from his belt to see—and see I am safe. He is what he has been before tonight, been all my life, unchanged
by my awful news, my knowledge, undisguised—his ears, his cheeks flushed with healthy blood that also throbs in the broad undersides of his wrists on the wheel, in the wounded fat of his hand, his hollow, even in his eyes which are still ahead on the road for safety, able, unblinking but calm and light as if through snow he watched boys playing skillful games with natural grace.

  His legs shift often under me now—braking, turning, accelerating—and we move forward slowly past regular street lamps that soar through the rim of my sight, gold at the ends of green arms. We are in some town. From its lamps, its wires, its hidden sky, I cannot say which—but not home yet I trust, I hope. I am not prepared for home and my mother, the rooms that surround my swelling lacks, direct sight of my doomed father. I need silent time to hoard my secret out of my face deep into my mind, granting my father twelve years fearless to work at his promise, freeing myself to gather in private the strength I will need for my own promise the night he dies, my own first turn on what giant foes I will have as a man. And clamping my eyes I seize my dream and thrust it inward, watching it suck down a blackening funnel, longing to follow it. But his legs shift again, his arms swing left, our wheels strike gravel, stop. Beyond the glass in our stationary light are bare maple limbs accepting snow, limbs of the one tree I climb with ease. Too sudden we are home and my father expels in a seamless shudder the care, the attention that bound him these last three hours. His legs tense once, gather to spring from beneath my weight, then subside, soften. I ride the final surge, then face him—smiling as if just startled from sleep.