Universe 15

by Terry Carr

  Anyone could have predicted he’d join our group, he was so different from the complacent, well-heeled little boys and girls who made up the rest of the student body. He was twenty-three years old by that time, older than the other students, and he had lousy clothes, no car, and no money. But he didn’t let it bother him. He was set on being a lawyer, and Barker was famous for getting its pre-laws into good schools. Barker was his ticket out of Texarkana forever, so he just put his head down, worked, and ignored the scornful children around him.

  He got approval to live off campus because of his time in ’Nam. He moved into the Cavender house with the rest of us. Months went by, then semesters, then years. You know how it goes. We became best friends, and had endless midnight talks over beer and grass, dreaming, raging, wondering—the way you do when you’re young and the world’s still fresh.

  We talked a lot about reincarnation. Mike had seen some gruesome things in Vietnam, but instead of flipping out over them like some people did, he looked for an explanation. He rejected Christian mythology and began to study the Eastern religions and philosophies. At last he settled on reincarnation as the answer.

  He thought it would explain a lot of things, particularly the suffering of innocent people. He also thought it explained his own birth, and his struggles through life. Mike saw the whole of one’s existence as a Ladder, each rung representing a life, up which a soul had to climb to reach perfection. He suspected that he had misused money and power in his last life, so that he had fallen many rungs on the Ladder, and was born a poor-white in Texarkana to learn his lesson over.

  I didn’t buy that at all. Mike was a good man, through and through. I thought he’d done well in his past lives, and that he was undergoing some obscure test of strength and endurance. If there was ever a soul high up on the Ladder, it was Mike.

  We used to sit for hours and try to figure out who different people had been in past lives—and, of course, who we were. Mike had a theory that the intervals between successive incarnations were infinitesimal, so that when someone died, the soul passed at once into the body of a child just being born.

  We were approaching Brenham. Houston now lay far behind us, and Austin was practically over the hill.

  “Are you thirsty?” I asked Martha. “Let’s stop at an icehouse and pick up some beer.”

  “Icehouse,” she echoed, and laughed out loud. “That’s surely one of your old incarnations speaking.”

  We pulled into a store beside the highway, bought a six-pack of Shiner longnecks, and drank the first two.

  “So,” said Martha, “the soul enters a child’s body at the moment it’s born?” She turned her head and looked at me, her eyes glittering as if the idea had caught hold of her.

  I took a swig of my beer. “Yeah,” I said, feeling strangely uncomfortable.

  Now we come to the strange part of the story. You see, there was a black caretaker named Lamont who literally came with the Cavender house. He had worked for old Miss Cavender all his life, and when she died, it turned out that her will not only gave him a stipend for life, but required that he be kept on as caretaker of the house until his death, if he so desired. That was another reason no one would buy the house.

  We always thought of Lamont as old, even though he was only forty when we moved into the house. His hair was already grizzled, and he walked in a slow, stooped-over fashion. He talked to himself all the time he worked in the yard or in the house. You could chat with him for a few minutes, if he was having a good day, but all the while you got the feeling he was distracted. It was as if his mind were somewhere else, as if he were listening to something you couldn’t hear.

  After Miss Cavender died, various people in the town offered Lamont other jobs, and the current President of the college tried to get him into a job-training program in the next county. But Lamont had no intention of leaving the house. He stayed, and helped perpetrate an amusing spectacle: an old, decaying house full of hippies, surrounded by immaculate grounds and handsome gardens.

  The oddest thing of all was how Lamont took tender care of a certain tree in the front yard, a great old bay tree older than the house. You could never speak to him when he was tending the tree. I tried, once, when he was raking leaves underneath it, but he never saw me, he was so busy talking to the tree. He stroked its trunk, mumbling all the while. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said, again and again. “You couldn’t help it. A nice May morning, all pretty and green. You had birds in your branches. You were just standing there, and look what they did to you.”

  Here’s what made it all so weird. Lamont’s mother had also worked for the Cavenders her entire life. George Hughes wasn’t Lamont’s father, now; but the mother was carrying Lamont and was due to deliver that day in 1930 when George was lynched. She saw the mob come up to the house. She stood in the front parlor and saw them string Hughes up to the bay tree, and the sight shocked her so much it sent her into labor. Lamont was born, as far as anyone could tell, at the instant Hughes died.

  Of course, the locals blamed Lamont’s craziness on the lynching. They said it had marked him in the womb. Mike Donnell, on the other hand, had a different explanation.

  He had a theory about crazy people. He said the progression of the soul from one incarnation to another is supposed to be quiet and orderly. The soul is not supposed to keep any of the knowledge and memories of its previous incarnation. If it had learned the lesson of that life and climbed another rung on the Ladder, it was now made of finer fiber than before; for growth in the next incarnation to mean anything, the soul must start life afresh. But sometimes the soul of a dying man is so outraged that it won’t let go of the past. It tries to make its next incarnation an extension of the previous one. The result is a kind of madness. The soul cannot develop and grow as it should, under the shadows carried forward from the last incarnation. But neither can it avenge or come to grips with whatever wrong took place then, for when it passed into a new body it was bound to leave all that behind, and broke the laws that govern such passage when it did not do so. The person is split in two; he is forever at war with himself. The madness may in fact be very mild, as in the case of a man who has tormenting dreams that in fact have followed him from an earlier life. Or it may be disabling, as in the case of Lamont.

  In short, Mike thought Lamont was really George Hughes. To Mike, the whole thing was as obvious as the result of a laboratory experiment.

  We topped a hill, and there, on the horizon, were the lights of Austin. “Almost there,” I said to Martha.

  “I haven’t seen Les Frères in years,” she said, and stretched. “With any luck we can park close. Aren’t the students all tied up with finals now?”

  “I think so.”

  “It’s still cold enough so the cafe won’t be crowded—not the patio, at any rate. Only the Marxists with their little beards and heavy coats will be out, smoking cigarettes and drinking that good coffee you can buy at Les Frères. We should have no trouble finding a table.”

  I nodded. “And now,” I said, “for the finale.”

  Graduation arrived. In a sentimental moment, Mike even telephoned his father in Texarkana and told him about it. I was in the living room when Mike called him, and gathered his father was pretty drunk on the other end of the line; I was flabbergasted, therefore, when his father not only remembered the conversation but showed up at the Cavender house a few days later.

  Ray Donnell was sixty-five years old and looked seventy-five. Bloodshot eyes, day-old stubble on his chin, a weathered, suspicious face—he was the picture of backwater trash. He looked mean, too. You could tell from one look at him that he’d spent a lifetime drinking hard and getting in fights. In fact, he’d been drinking by the time he showed up at the house, and it had put him in a surly mood.

  He and Mike sat on the porch and talked for about an hour. Ray had a pint bottle in a paper sack and sipped at it steadily the whole time. I was in the front parlor reading in one of the window seats, and since it was May and the
windows were open, I could hear them talking. Their conversation was forced and artificial; Mike asked his father stilted questions about people he hadn’t seen in ten years, and his father made gibing comments about the college and the students he saw pass by. He had a lot to say about the girls in their bell-bottom jeans and halter tops, more even than about the boys with long hair.

  Along about four o’clock I heard the back door slam, and I knew Lamont had come back from shopping. I heard him put packages on the kitchen table; then his footsteps approached and I saw him enter the parlor, an amiable, dreamy look on his face.

  Then he came to an abrupt halt. His eyes widened; the strangest look came over his face. I said hello, but he didn’t seem to hear me.

  He walked to the window seat and looked out at the porch. “Who’s that man?” he demanded.

  I told him. Lamont didn’t reply, but stood staring through the open window as if hypnotized.

  Outside, I heard Mike ask his father a question. “Where are you planning on staying, Dad?”

  “I thought I’d stay here. I don’t have money to throw around like you college kids. What’s the matter, ain’t I welcome?”

  “I can’t do that, Dad. All the rooms in the house are taken, even the ones that weren’t originally bedrooms.”

  I heard Ray give a gravelly-sounding laugh. “Just put me in with one of those little college girls. The way they walk around here, I can tell they’d like it.”

  There was a pause. “You’d better go, Dad,” said Mike.

  Ray cursed, and there was a shattering sound as he threw his pint bottle on the porch. A chair scraped; I looked out of the window again and saw the older man grab his son and slam him up against the wall of the house. Mike gasped as the breath went out of him. Then I saw him duck, as something bright and shining flashed in Ray’s hand.

  I froze. “He’s got a knife,” I said. “He can’t use it on Mike—”

  Behind me, an unfamiliar voice spoke. “Ray Donnell will do anything,” it said.

  I whirled. Lamont stood there—or rather, Lamont’s body—but someone alien looked out of his dark eyes. The fumbling, distracted creature that was Lamont was gone, and in its place was a cold, inexorable spirit. It crossed to the parlor fireplace and picked up a poker.

  “Lamont, what are you doing?” I cried, though I knew perfectly well.

  “Get out of my way. I’m going to kill him.”

  “No, stop. He’s drunk—Mike can get away from him.”

  Lamont stopped, turned, and looked right at me. “Don’t you understand? I’ve got to pay him back for what he did to me. And I can’t let Mike get hurt.”

  With that, he banged open the screen door and stood staring at the father and son. Ray froze. He turned away from Mike and faced Lamont, the beginnings of a grin playing about his lips.

  “Well, come on, nigger,” he crooned. “Butt in and see what you get.” “Lamont, no!” cried Mike. “He fights dirty. Get away.”

  “I know how he fights. I saved his neck more than once.”

  “I’ve never seen you before in my life,” Ray sneered. He waved the knife. “Come on, boy, come and get it.”

  They fenced. Lamont swung the poker, and Donnell jumped back so that it whistled harmlessly through the air. He laughed, and taunted Lamont.

  But whatever possessed Lamont was clever. It forced Donnell to jump away from the poker once more, and then, before Donnell could recover his balance, brought the poker up to connect with his knife hand. Blood sparkled red there as the knife flew onto the front lawn, halfway between the porch and the big bay tree.

  “What’s this all about?” Donnell’s voice was shrill and afraid; that seemed to please the black man.

  “We’re settling a score,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?” cried Donnell.

  “They strung me up right here,” came the answer, “for something you did. You ran away and left me to face it, Donnell.”

  Donnell looked from Mike to me. “Is he crazy or something?”

  “Don’t you remember? We picked up a girl downtown, you and me. Or you picked her up, you with that damn fancy roadster. And when she got scared and you hurt her, then she started screaming and ran away—remember? You took off and left me to take the blame. They blew up their own courthouse to get at me. They paraded me all over town like I was some wild animal. When they got tired of that, they strung me up in that tree standing yonder. Don’t you remember George Hughes, Donnell? Now I’m going to make you pay for it.”

  He took a step toward Donnell, who pressed back against the porch railing.

  “I didn’t do nothing she didn’t ask for,” said Donnell, talking very fast. “You saw her—just like these college girls with their dugs hanging out. Everybody in town knew what she was.”

  “Didn’t matter,” said Lamont. “She was white, and I was black.”

  “I didn’t know it would happen!”

  Lamont shrugged. “Now I’m going to kill you,” he stated.

  He dropped the poker, as if he knew he no longer needed it. He reached out for Donnell, and for a moment his hands closed around the white man’s throat. Donnell let out a shriek, and then his legs let go, and he fell to the porch without another sound.

  I knew he was dead. Mike stood there for a moment, looking stunned, and then crossed the porch to the black man’s side. I looked at the two of them; as I watched, the purpose left Lamont’s eyes, the hate flickered, died, and went out, and the old, familiar clouded look crept back into his face. For a moment Lamont seemed to be listening to a voice no one else could hear. Then his face went blank as a sheet of new paper.

  “Don’t worry,” said Mike, putting an arm around him, “I won’t let them hurt you. He just dropped dead—his heart was bad, that’s what I’ll tell them.”

  Lamont looked down at the body on the floor with a complete lack of recognition. “Who’s that?” he asked. “What happened to him?”

  Mike and I just looked at Lamont, speechless.

  Lamont looked from Mike to me. “Who are you boys?”

  The police came, of course, and turned the body over to the county morgue, where it was decided that Donnell had died of heart failure. Mike remained stoic through the rest of the incident; I guessed he was afraid to show any emotion, for fear others would realize how thankful he was his father was dead.

  As for Lamont, he had no memory left at all. He could still speak English, of course, and he understood what people said to him, but past that he was like a newborn baby, starting life over. For forty-four years he had lived in the shadow of the wrong done to him in 1930. Now that shadow was gone, and he was free to start living the new life that should have been his so many years before.

  We left the freeway, exiting onto the far north end of Guadalupe Street. We headed south toward the University area. There was a chill in the air, as it was getting on toward the end of the year, and the warm yellow streetlights that lined Guadalupe were comforting after our long drive through the black Texas landscape.

  I turned onto Twenty-fourth Street and parked the car a few blocks down from the cafe. We walked there and found a table outside with no trouble at all, just as Martha had predicted.

  “Hot spiced wine is what I’ll have,” she said, shivering a little, “with hot tea on the side.”

  I ordered for both of us.

  Martha leaned forward across the table, looking at me intently. “So,” she said, “do you believe it all?”

  I hesitated; I chose my words carefully. “Let’s just say that the whole incident scared me. I stopped thinking about reincarnation so much—I was afraid I really would start to believe in it.”

  “Didn’t you ever wonder who you might be?”

  I couldn’t keep looking at her eyes. I lowered my face, and toyed with the hot wine the waitress had just placed in front of me. I shrugged, and tried to sound offhand. “Sure.”

  “Who was Mike?”

  “Mike was older than the rest of
us, remember, Martha? I was born in ’52, but he was born earlier, toward the end of the war. I admit we tried to match up his birth date with certain—deaths—but we never had any luck. A lot of people were dying back then.”

  “What does he do now?”

  “He went on to law school. He worked for Nader’s Raiders a while. Now he’s an anti-nuke activist in Washington, and from what I hear, pretty influential.”

  “Still fighting a war,” she said softly. The streetlight glinted in her eyes; I knew what she was going to ask. “Who are you?”

  “1 really don’t know,” I said, a bit too loudly. It was the truth. I’d tried to find out once, but I got scared and quit. “I’ve got my quirks, Martha… maybe they’re holdovers from my last incarnation. I don’t know.”

  “Like what?”

  “I hate crowds. Put me downtown in a street full of people and I break out in a cold sweat.”

  “Claustrophobia.”

  “No! I love to be inside—the smaller the room, the better. I feel safe there. It’s the wide-open spaces I can’t stand, not when they’re full of people.”

  She considered. “Have you ever felt drawn to a place, or perhaps a person? Felt like a power outside yourself was pulling you to them?”

  I’d had lots to drink. “Yes,” I said. “You.”

  Her eyes bored into mine. “Perhaps our lives were somehow connected—once.”

  The gooseflesh stood out all over my body, and I could not reply.

  She leaned forward. “Tell me, Keith. Are you convinced that the soul passes into a child’s body at the moment that child is born—not at the moment of conception? That if you can pinpoint the death of one and the birth of another at a single instant, you can be sure they are the same person?”

  I nodded. “That’s what Mike thought.”

  “Because I always suspected it worked that way, Keith. If we’re right, then I think I know who I was the last time around.”

  She seemed to believe every word she was saying, and I felt myself shiver. I was afraid I’d believe it, too. “Who were you?” I asked.