John’s response was defensive and imperious. “Look!” he shouted. “I respect you because of what you’ve been through and I respect you for feeling some guilt about it, but why go ape? It’s fucking self-indulgent to think the whole fucking world’s guilt is on your head!”
“It ain’t something I think!” Urban yelled back, the corners of his mouth slot turning white with each word.
Again John answered, shouting, sense having given way to simple intensity. Since they both knew what was meant, the words didn’t matter. The names they called each other—“Punk!” “Asshole!”—hadn’t the precision of insult and weren’t taken as such. The double-talk of righteous anger.
The light was growing. John resisted looking at his watch because the subject of the Apocalypse seemed, along with the pistol Urban wore, more dangerous than argument. The roof seemed to fall away more steeply as the tiles turned pink. The roofs of Tulaveda, descending to the west, began to define themselves, palms above them here and there, the darker masses of trees not yet quite green. The air was dusty, as if just waking up. He supposed there were people in this town who got up to go to work, who made a living and were not gaga over Ultimate Answers.
He was still angry at Urban, but after the shouting it was the anger one had for an exasperating friend. “Anyway, why don’t you tell Oval yourself? I’ve never even met this character.”
Urban looked at his wristwatch. Down in the street, cars were starting up and moving away. A man carried a sleeping child, a woman another.
“Well,” Urban said, “I guess I’m all washed up as a preacher. I got myself out on a limb and sawed it off again. It just don’t make any sense, none of it.”
“Come on, let’s go back, then,” John said.
“Naw. You go on, buddy,” Urban said in a kindly voice. “Take the women down with you.”
“So what are you going to do?” He reached out and put his hand on Urban’s shoulder, feeling the fabric shoulder strap and brass button.
“You wouldn’t think of grabbing on, now, would you?” Urban said mildly.
“What are you going to do?”
When he took his hand from Urban’s shoulder Urban lifted the flap of the holster and eased the handle of the pistol, but didn’t draw it.
“Hey, come on, now!” John said.
“You tell Oval I couldn’t take it no more, that I never could get the hang of all that love shit. I’ll come to Judgment wearing the uniform of Satan so they’ll know me and can cut the orders right there and then.”
“Hey, come on, now!” John said. A symptom of his incompleteness, or immaturity, he thought, was his consistent belief that other people weren’t as crazy as their actions indicated. He was also intolerant of staggering drunks and the pickers of fights. His own scheme of rationality was the only one he was large enough to tolerate. So it was forbidden that Urban shoot himself; Bonnie and the young housekeeper must not have to cope with it. Once this imperative was clear he didn’t have to think, and as in sports had no hesitations and could feel no pain. He grabbed Urban by the front of his blouse, getting shirt and tie in his fist as well, pulled him straight up against himself and at the same time, as Urban’s arms came up to shove him, picked the pistol out of the holster and let it fall. It clinked two or three times on the tiles and was gone.
At that moment fear returned, along with a weakening pain in his knee that made everything worse. He held Urban in a bear hug that was overly powerful, fear seeking to annihilate danger, and he remembered the story of the wrestler in Minneapolis who killed the burglar out of panic, and how his father had disapproved. Maybe he was having a relapse of some kind, signaled also by his babbling apologies, explanations and advice, such as if they fell off the roof they’d probably just break a leg, or their necks, and become living vegetables. Urban wasn’t listening, and in fact John wasn’t listening to himself very carefully. Gradually he released Urban, found that Urban still straddled the roof in a stable fashion, and began to inch his way back toward safety. Urban, whose mouth slot was closed like a scar, and who seemed to be thinking deep thoughts, followed.
It was nearly broad daylight when his back touched the base of the steeple and Bonnie and the young housekeeper pulled at him, hindering his planned, careful, painless climb to safety and making it none of those. Urban came along slowly, silently.
“Loco!” said the young housekeeper. “Por eso no entra en razón!” When Urban climbed over the railing she cried and grappled with him, calling him sweetheart and crazy. Urban said nothing, even when she lifted him right off his feet. John then saw what hadn’t been apparent to him before—that without his history and his passion Urban was really a very little man.
The housekeeper, whose name was Maria, and Bonnie both acted as if they wanted to beat Urban up, or at least give him a spanking. They wouldn’t let go of him and kept shaking him all the way down the stairs. John stopped to look for the pistol, which he found in the dirt below an exotic red-leafed hedge he couldn’t name, and followed them into the residential ell of the church. The pistol was loaded with wartime steel-cased cartridges. He unloaded it in the vestibule, fieldstripped it and decided to keep the barrel, which he put in his pocket. He followed the cries and admonitions of the women into the kitchen, put the dismantled pistol and the cartridges on a counter and shoved them back out of the way. His knee felt freer than it had, but also wet, the wetness blood that had come through his pants.
The women had Urban in a chair and were arguing with him, though he was silent. Maria was removing his uniform blouse, while Bonnie held up his arms and pulled him forward or back in order to make this possible. John’s hands were filthy, so he washed them at the sink, using dish soap, then wiped them on a dish towel.
Bonnie said, “I’ve got to be convinced he won’t do anything till Oval gets back.”
“He’ll be okay,” Maria said. “I’ll watch him. I don’t let go of him.” She straddled his chair, grabbed his head and put his face between her breasts, saying harsh, chiding endearments.
“Urban!” Bonnie said. “Will you not do anything dumb till Oval gets back?”
“He means ‘okay,’ ” Maria said. “He has no sleep. He’ll sleep for two days. Don’t worry.” She pulled him to his feet, saying, “Beddie-bye now.”
John said that he had the barrel of the pistol, in case anybody wondered about it. He looked at Urban carefully, but there was no response at all. He didn’t know what Urban thought about what he’d done—whether he’d rescued him or betrayed him, not even permitting the poor desperate fucker the right to blow his brains out.
“Muchas gracias,” Maria said. “He is in…He owe you.” She took Urban away, carrying his blouse, hat and tie. Urban wore the empty holster. In another room they stumbled on stairs, Maria talking.
“He didn’t talk for over a week last time,” Bonnie said. “Oval gave his sermons for him, but of course the church was mostly empty.”
They seemed to be waiting for Maria to come back.
“What could he have said?”
“You mean Urban?” Bonnie said.
“No. Oval.”
“I don’t know. I had to teach the LCD class from ten till eleven.”
That would be, from his reading, the “Live Christ Daily” class.
As he moved from behind the table Bonnie saw the blood on his knee. She rushed to kneel before him and roll up the leg of his suntans. “You tore off the bandage and it’s a mess! We’ll get you home and fix it.”
Maria didn’t come back. “She said she wouldn’t let go of him,” he said. “Maybe she means it literally.”
Bonnie looked surprised, as though she’d just understood the obvious. “Yes, you’re right. She’s Catholic, you know. She doesn’t believe any of it.”
He puzzled over this remark as they went out to Bonnie’s car. Meaning that to Maria, the Catholic, all these God ideas of vengeance, love, forgiveness, harmony, etc., were best left in church for the authorities to puzzle over, w
hile she herself stuck her man’s blasted face between her breasts and held on. Maybe.
On the drive back to the parsonage Bonnie was at first silent and then began to make little chirps and sniffs, and he saw that she was crying big, Bonnie-sized tears. As big as peas they formed, glinted like opals or pearls and found smooth ways down her smooth cheeks to the corners of her lips.
“You want me to drive?” he asked.
“You are good, John!” she said. “The way you went out there and talked with him, and hugged him and brought him back! It’s the power of Love again! And I love you, John Hearne! I love you for your love! I’d do anything for you! Anything!” She sniffled and swallowed and cast him bright, glistening looks.
He was startled by this and had nothing to say, but after a moment decided that she probably meant a sort of general anything, a sort of being-very-nice anything. In his limited experience when a girl said she loved you it meant that sooner or later, even if certain legal or religious requirements had to be met, she meant things uterine, that you had been chosen for that mortal process, but with Bonnie he wasn’t sure about this. He couldn’t be sure and he was shy, as if the worst thing in the world would be not to have understood exactly what she meant.
At the parsonage she insisted that he take a bath, and afterwards redid his bandages. Was there anything she could get for him? Did he want to go back to bed or stay up? Would he like something to read? There was the church library, but maybe he’d like some magazines. Life? Time? The Saturday Evening Post? Collier’s? What could she do for him? He was special, good, wonderful; she was at his service. She had no assignments today; would he like to see Tulaveda? The ocean? There were many interesting sights to see and places to visit. Would he like to go to a matinee? Bambi was playing at the Pearl Theater on Pasadena Avenue. They could take a picnic lunch and go up to Sierra Madre Park in the National Forest. Also there was the Municipal Art Museum, the Tulaveda Museum of Natural History, or they could go see all the sights in Hollywood: Grauman’s Chinese Theater, and the studios and all, and maybe they’d see a famous star walking down Hollywood Boulevard as casual as you please. Or they could go to South Tulaveda and see the motorcycle races on the dirt track—would he like that? Or tonight the midget-car races in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. They could eat at a drive-in—did they have those in New Hampshire, with the waitresses on roller skates?—and see all the fancy custom cars. They could go to the carnival at Del Rosa and ride the Ferris wheel. They could go over to Ozzie Rittheuber’s estate and play croquet or watch television or go swimming in the pool (except he couldn’t, she supposed, with that knee)—she and Oval had keys, and could just walk in anytime.
“That’s the Rittheuber of the Church of Something, Biosophic?” he asked. At this point he was shaving and she was sitting on the edge of the high bathtub.
“Yes, that’s Ozzie—G. Oswald—Oval kids him that the G stands for God. He really made it big in the New Metaphysics. He’s had some marvelous cures and is such a powerful preacher. The people just flock to the Cathedral of Gladness.”
“They don’t flock so much to CSW, then?”
“Oh, we’re different—sort of basic, you know. More conventional. Oval doesn’t make the claims Ozzie does. I mean we’re all on the same side, so to speak, but Ozzie claims he’s three separate persons and can appear at three places simultaneously. Oval wouldn’t do that.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“No, he wouldn’t do that.”
“Does he believe Ozzie can do that?”
“Maybe Ozzie can. Who knows? There’s no doubt he’s a Christed person—he’s given hope to so many.”
He rinsed off his razor, put it in his kit and put that into his musette bag. Bonnie handed him a clean white shirt—Oval’s. She hadn’t, truly hadn’t, understood his reluctance to borrow it. It was too long in the sleeves, but he rolled the cuffs up onto his forearms. In the borrowed shirt he felt that his neck, where the unfamiliar collar seams crossed it, was another man’s neck.
In the kitchen Hadasha Kemal Allgood and Thelma, without seeming to pay attention to each other, were having cereal and orange juice. Thelma had forgotten her bib, so Bonnie got one and put it on her, first making her stand up so she could twist her dress around straight. Thelma smiled. Bonnie put bread in a large, many-slotted toaster and got coffee going.
“Thelma’s going to school today,” Bonnie said, mainly, he saw, to remind Thelma, who got all excited and looked often up into the corner, stretching her mouth. “So we’re going to wash her hair, aren’t we?”
A pale wash of milk lightened Thelma’s underlip and chin. “Shampoo!” she said. “Shampoo! Shampoo!”
“She likes that word,” Hadasha Kemal Allgood said.
After breakfast, while Bonnie was washing Thelma’s hair, a large Chrysler station wagon arrived out in front and sounded its trainlike horn. Since no one responded to it, John went out to see. His first impression was that it was full of large balloons, but soon they became the heads and faces of mongoloids, hydrocephalics—so many imprecisely focused eyes. The driver was a middle-aged Negro wearing gold-rimmed glasses. As John went around to the driver’s side the man got out of the car to meet him, smiling, worried by this new face but trying not to seem as worried as he was.
“I’m Washington, transporting the children,” he said. He wore a dark blue pinstripe suit, a dark blue tie and white cotton gloves, the kind that had one button at the base of the palm.
“John Hearne,” John said, and held out his hand. There was the nearly imperceptible hesitation before the snow-white glove rose to meet his hand. “You’ve come for Thelma?”
“Yes, for all the unfortunate children, bless their loving hearts!” His diction was careful and hearty, with the excess of unambiguous goodwill that was essentially servile. John had trouble making small talk against the grain of his thoughts, but before there was too much silence Bonnie brought Thelma out. Her bowl-cut blond hair was wet, but she was happy. As Washington helped her into the back seat, moving another wide child to give her room, she waved, smiled and seemed the most conscious of the passengers.
“John Hearne—Washington Johnson,” Bonnie said. Washington Johnson shook hands again and bade them good day in his Negro voice that had a glassy ring in it, and drove off, the large heads swaying backwards in the mild acceleration.
“Washington and his wife are in the Church,” Bonnie said. “He’s a mortician. Such a lovely person, and so is Ertrude. They’re the only colored family we have.”
“Does he always wear the white gloves?”
“Oval asked him about that. Yes, always. He says the embalming chemicals do something bad to his hands.”
Or maybe, John thought, Washington Johnson would rather offer a snow-white hand to those of doubtful inclinations, not a Negro hand, especially one that had been contaminated by the dead. The question was why Washington Johnson would want to be in the Church at all. Not for business reasons, certainly, because nowhere in his country, John knew without having to think about it, would a Negro be allowed to prepare naked whites, especially naked white females, for the grave. He wondered if Bonnie, the believer, would ever have asked why Washington and Ertrude Johnson wanted to be in the Church. But of course he, faithless John Hearne, was automatically discounting belief.
While Bonnie got ready for the day, he walked in the lush rear garden between parsonage and church. I walk (walked?) in the garden alone, he heard in memory, while the dew is (was?) still on the roses—from Camp Washonee, a YMCA summer camp, when he was twelve or thirteen. He found that he was walking pretty well; his joints had progressed until they felt about the way they used to on a Sunday after a high school football game. And the voice I hear, falling on my ear, the Son of God is call-all-ling…Beyond a stone arch was the Church of the Science of the Way, miniature gray Gothic that because of its solidity and the surrounding vegetation seemed too ancient for Tulaveda, California.
But what did he really want to do today?
Bask in admiration? That was always nice. He would like, realizing that he didn’t want to talk to Bonnie all that much, to spend the day lazing with her somewhere in deep privacy, naked, their voices meaning nothing. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever touched—excessively, lushly, hugely, almost impersonally glamorous—and he an immature young buck sneaking in where he didn’t deserve to be but, oh, Lord, taking advantage of his luck. That was all; grab it when you could. Did the rest of them have faith and guilt and all that? He had millions, maybe billions, of the long years in which all living matter grappled and slimed and reproduced. He would turn her rosy, melt her into honey—no, something less viscous, more transparent, gaseous, her long thighs helium, her uterus a flower, her belly a heap of wheat set about with lilies, her two breasts like two young roes, that are twins, which feed among the lilies.
Some form of calculation, its terms ethereal, metaphysical, led him down the hallway past the bathroom. The door was open, humid air wafting from it, and the tall goddess stood toweling beside the gurgling tub. Ordinarily he would have glanced and passed by in minor embarrassment, but his glance met hers, and she, who of course had been the one who had left the door open, looked into his eyes and made no gesture of modesty. He could go on, or he could stop; it was a pretty, it was a lovely, it was a generous choice to have given him. All this in a thousandth of a second as he traversed the portal. He stopped, but it was still a gamble as to her intentions as he turned back to her. She gazed calmly into his eyes and toweled the nape of her neck below her piled dark hair. She was the most naked woman he had ever seen. The borders of her were lined by light, the peripheries of her, the subtly concave planes, the dawn-downy fields, the bright hemispheres of her umbered into dark. She let down her hair and fluffed it out, watching him.
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