The Last Western

by Thomas S. Klise

  At that moment Howard Arthur Amboy came into the kitchen, his face a boiling sun.

  “The camera—for God’s sake, the camera!” Amboy said.

  The straps had slipped from Felder’s shoulders and the world’s most expensive camera had fallen by his side.

  Howard Arthur Amboy reached out with trembling hands and touched the iridescent photo-gun.

  “World’s greatest—read about it in Now—takes and develops simultaneous.” Amboy’s words were like a litany. “No light—10,000 to 1 scope—freeze action—a mill, a mill and more.”

  Willie, moving to put his hand on Felder’s brow, kicked the camera.

  “My God, you’ll crack it!” Amboy shouted. “World’s most—”

  Felder squinted. “The manner remains after the morale has cracked.”

  “It cost a mill, didn’t it?” Amboy said, bending down. “More than a mill—”

  “Brother Herman,” said Willie, “let’s go on.”

  “Can’t—impossible. People already made it—in their heads—” Felder gasped.

  “What is he talking about?” said Willie.

  “A movie,” said Thatcher Grayson. “Lord—”

  “No more explainers—no more, ever!” said Felder solemnly.

  Suddenly he grabbed his hat and sat up a little. He jammed the hat on his head, snapping the brim rakishly. He gathered up his camera and got to his feet.

  “Herman, you’re not—”

  “Loo goo woo moo,” said Felder.

  Grayson’s eyes opened wide. “Why, he’s praying.”

  “Surely it’s the morph—whatever—,” Willie stammered. “Let’s call the doctor.”

  So quickly that neither of them could stop him, Felder barged into the living room where the black man was now singing in bluesy tongue. Amboy followed.

  “Moo soo too roo,” Felder crooned. “Xanadu too la roo, fu manchu.”

  “Alleluia!” the frail man shouted.

  “Alleluia!” said the group.

  “Praise to the Lord!” the blonde girl sang.

  A man wearing fuschia-tinted glasses put his hands on Herman Felder’s shoulders.

  “You have received the baptism of the Spirit?”

  “Kootchie-coo,” said Felder.

  “That is tongue?”

  “A tongue’s a tongue,” said Felder.

  “It is tongue slang,” said the frail young man. “That expression means sinners cause riots.”

  Felder reached into his trench coat and failed to find what he was looking for.

  “Who took the morph?”

  The fuschia-tinted man turned to the frail man.

  “What is the morph he speaks of, Brother Cal?”

  “The morph is sleep, death,” Brother Cal replied. “He is quizzing us to see if we really believe. Let us answer his question, brothers and sisters. Who took death away?”

  “JESUS,” the crowd answered.

  “Jee-sus,” said Felder, rummaging through his pockets.

  Grayson and Willie were trying to get him to the door now.

  “Who blew doo boo, my boo?” Felder asked the fuschia-tints, who turned immediately to the interpreter.

  This time the crowd did not wait for a paraphrase of the question.

  “THE SPIRIT!” they cried.

  Coming through the door very quietly was a majestic figure, an Oriental with gleaming head and enormous biceps. He looked, Willie thought, like a world champion wrestler.

  “Joto,” said Grayson with relief.

  Without a word, as if he had practiced it a hundred times before, the Oriental calmly pressed three fingers at the neck and then the temple of Herman Felder, who seemed to faint. The Oriental caught him as he fell, buckled him over his shoulder and carried him out into the night.

  “His close friend and helper,” Grayson said to Willie as they followed along. “Joto is also a Servant.”

  “Joto Toshima?”

  “The artist.”

  “This way to the car, brothers,” said Joto over his shoulder. “I am happy to see you again, Brother Thatcher. I am happy to meet you in the flesh, Brother Willie.”

  “Brother Joto, it is good to see you,” said Willie. “We didn’t know what to do back there. He is very sick.”

  “Common occurrence,” said Joto. “Go now to hotel where we stay. We all stay with him this night. Possible?”

  “Yes,” they both said.

  “Please?” said Joto, holding out the camera. Willie took it from him.

  Then they were moving through the old streets of Baltimore, and the police were walking the streets with dogs, and there were fires, like campfires of old, burning in trash cans, and they could see the faces around the fires, and silhouetted against the dark sky, the crude terrible lessons that had been made out of buildings.

  At the corner the pale green light of a sign brought Willie to the point of that question he had been wanting to ask Thatcher Grayson all day.

  He looked at the face of the sleeping Herman Felder and then at the tired, drawn face of Thatcher Grayson, who also looked at the blasted buildings but did not see what Willie saw.

  Another sign, and Willie could not help himself.

  “Did you give him my message, Mr. Grayson?”

  Without looking at him, Grayson said, “Why do you have to know that, my son?”

  “You saw him, then.”

  “In Florida, during spring training, Regent Industries had a convention.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Grayson, the exact words.”

  “He waved it off, son, he dismissed it.”

  “Please, Mr. Grayson.”

  Thatcher Grayson leaned forward. “Is it far, Joto?”

  “Very close, Brother Thatcher.”

  “Please, Mr. Grayson.”

  Grayson turned away and spoke to a ruined tenement.

  “He said, News of niggers doesn’t interest me.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Grayson,” said Willie. “I know that was hard to say.”

  “That man must not concern you ever again!” said Thatcher Grayson angrily. “With your power of the Spirit why should you bother about such a man!”

  Willie could see the policemen with their dogs.

  Grayson said, “The meeting was pure truth wasn’t it, son?”

  Willie could think of nothing to say. His hands were sweating on the world’s most expensive camera.

  “We are coming to the point at last where men know they are worthless to tackle it by themselves. You agree with that surely.”

  Felder moaned, twitched, then fell asleep again.

  “The testimonies—didn’t you hear the Spirit in them?” Grayson said.

  “It takes me so long to understand things,” said Willie. “Many people are unhappy.” “The Spirit will care for them.”

  The dogs were barking, straining at their leashes, pulling their trainers after them.

  BOOK FOUR

  We are entering a time of great bloodiness.

  In such a period passion speeds up. It is

  not a time for faint signals. Our new

  lipsticks will be the gaudiest ever—such

  reds as you have never seen.

  Frost R. Felder, President

  To the board of directors

  Agape, Inc.

  September 10, 1939

  Miami, Florida

  Chapter one

  In Herman Felder’s suite at the Edgar Allan Poe Motor Lodge, Condominium and Adventure in Living, Willie tried to pray. It was 3 a.m. and he was very tired. He sat under a huge depiction of the famous poem, “The Raven.” In gilt letters under the painting were the words: ED POE WAS A GOOD AMERICAN. HE FOUGHT MONISM WITH SOMETHING MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD. Clement “Clem” Thrigg, 44th President of the United States.

  Willie could hear the low voice of Joto ministering to Herman Felder in the next room. Thatcher Grayson had returned to his own hotel—one of the players had got stuck in an elevator. (“Sin has caused them to make errors off
the field as well as on.”)

  As he sat there, eyes closed, trying to compose himself for prayer, a door opened noiselessly and a human tree took shape before him.

  A full minute passed before he felt its presence. Then he opened his eyes.

  With a little cry he flew to the branches of the human tree.

  “Truman! Oh Truman!”

  Truman kissed his hair, bending down a little.

  “My dear brother, my brother.”

  Truman hugged him close, closer.

  “Where—do you come from? Oh Truman—how are you? Father Benjamin? The brothers? Where?”

  Truman, smiling, waved his great airplane arms: so many, many questions.

  Willie laughed. “I’m sorry, dear friend. Here.” He led Truman to the chair he had been sitting in. “Come now. Sit down. Rest. You must be hungry. Let’s get some food for you.”

  As he sat down, Truman made a vaguely comic sign about his size.

  “Some tea? No. Wine? Let me find some good wine for you.”

  Truman shook his shaggy head. Then he made a sign as if to say he could eat downstairs—he lived here, in this suite.

  “You’re staying with Brother Joto and Brother Herman?”

  Yes, nodding.

  “But you were in prison.”

  Yes.

  Truman then told his story in sign, making the beautiful gestures that Willie loved to see.

  Truman, after leaving the Servant camp in Texas, had gone to substitute for a convicted rapist in Trenton, New Jersey. The rapist himself had been a Servant substitute.

  Truman had transferred from this jail to three other jails, eventually landing in a prison in Maryland, where Joto Toshima and Herman Felder were serving short sentences.

  (Truman made a little sign here to indicate parentheses. In the parentheses he showed an old law being changed—a new system coming in. Under the new law, prison substitution was much easier than before: anyone could serve anyone else’s sentence as long as the number of prisoners in the country was proportionate to the number of crimes committed in any given year [referring to the Freedom of Punishment Amendment to the U.S. Constution].)

  Several weeks ago Father Benjamin had asked a sister Servant to substitute for Herman Felder. On his release Felder went to Atlanta, where he spent several days visiting Benjamin. A week later two brothers came to the Maryland prison to release Truman and Joto. Since that time, Truman’s signs indicated, the trio—Felder, Joto and Truman—had been moving about.

  “To the riots?”

  Truman nodded.

  Then a sign that said illness-. Herman Felder.

  Willie nodded sadly.

  But now, this minute, Truman signified, things would get better. His craggy face brightened. He and Willie and Joto were going on a mission of great love that would manifest God’s tenderness—Truman’s sign for the tenderness of God was that of a father cradling some infant creature he loved more than himself. Then he added: if there were a God.

  An airplane sign. Truman’s eyes shone like the eyes of a boy with a shiny model monorail. Herman Felder had a beautiful jet and he, Truman, would fly it.

  “Where do we go?” Willie asked.

  Truman made a wonderful baseball of the world out of his great fist.

  “Tell me about Father Benjamin. Has his health been all right through these years?”

  Truman gave the thrive sign for the White Beard and the same for the other brothers.

  “Oh Truman,” said Willie. “Such happy news you bring! And do you know—I’ve never seen you smile before.”

  It was true. Under the depiction of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem, the Man of Sorrows was for the moment the Man of Laughter, except that he did not have the equipment to laugh.

  Joto came from the other room, shirtless, exhausted.

  Truman and he exchanged the friendship sign.

  “Brother Herman is all right now, Joto?” Willie asked.

  “All right now because sleep. All right in morning when first drinks make young. All right until early afternoon. Then start to get old. From four o’clock to midnight, go from forty to eighty. Regular procedure.”

  “But why?”

  Joto and Truman looked at each other unhappily.

  “Is most complicated, Willie brother,” said Joto. “Too complicated for me, too complicated for maybe anyone.”

  “Mr. Grayson said he had stopped drinking for three years. Why does he drink now? There must be some reason.”

  Joto sighed. “Movies play on in head that cannot be made. Try to stop movies but hard to stop. Now worry too about mission. Brother Herman tell you of mission?”

  “Only a little.”

  Joto groaned. “He was to brief you on all that. Main men of church coming tomorrow. You were to be ready.”

  “But what will we do with Brother Herman?”

  Truman signified that Herman Felder was going on the mission with them.

  “He is in no condition to travel,” said Willie.

  “Only on mission will movies stop,” said Joto. “Stop movie, stop drinking. Mission save Brother Herman from art death.”

  Willie tried to follow this thought.

  “Besides,” said Joto, holding up his strong hands, “even when drinking, Brother Herman very great organizer. Number one director.”

  “He can organize nothing now,” said Willie.

  “Mission is salvation,” Joto replied. “Plunge in real. Then all benefit.”

  “Maybe we could call his wife—Maybella?”

  Joto shook his head. “She in space.”

  Confusedly the memory of the Pentecostal meeting came back to Willie. He saw the yellow-haired girl, singing.

  “Maybe, brothers, if we listen for a while,” he said then, “maybe we could get some helpful pictures.”

  Taking his Guidebook, he opened it at random and his eyes fell on the entry of Servant Sally Tea, of the twentieth century.

  “Let’s consider these words,” Willie said, and he read the words of Sister Sally: The cross is the perfect sign of J. The crossbar shows the earth part of life; the vertical beam, the divine. All truly human life is cross-shaped. But in today’s world, life has become either-or: people are either crossbars or up-beams. “Let’s listen to these words a little while and ask the Loving One for good pictures so that we can help Brother Herman.”

  So they listened for a half hour, standing under the watchful eye of “The Raven.” They then exchanged their dona in sign:

  Truman:

  Man fall into ground so far, have to dig to find him, but nobody digging: everybody looking up.

  Willie:

  Man trying to fly on wooden wings. People say can’t be done, but man flies off anyway. Then he reaches the sun, and wings catch fire. People say, We told you.

  Joto:

  Without art, violence. But when art only ego-shine, then—Joto showed an arrow traveling in a circle and coming back to strike his heart.

  Willie said wearily, “We speak out of our own needs and with great sadness. The air we breathe is the life breath of a sad brother.”

  They went to bed.

  * * *

  All that night Willie dreamt his flight dream. He was soaring over very beautiful country with hills like the soft breasts of women, and the sky above was tinctured with rose and gold and the air was wonderfully sweet and fresh, as after a rain, and he did not want to stop flying and when he felt the pull of the weights on his wings, he shook himself in the air, struggling to fly free, and then there came the voice of Joto and it was time to get up.

  “You were far under,” said Joto. “Men are here. Herman in next room want to see you.”

  “Good morning, Joto,” said Willie. “What men?”

  “Of church.”

  Felder appeared at the doorway, carrying a carafe of coffee. To Willie’s astonishment, he looked fresh and young. His voice, as he spoke, was lively and cheerful.

  “The chiefs have gathered,” he said. �
��Better have some coffee.”

  As he came nearer, Willie smelled the roses.

  “Brother Herman, what’s it all about? Who are the men?”

  “Some of the men you know—Cardinal Goldenblade; his brother, the gunmaker and publisher; a young bishop named McCool; Cardinal Tricci, who is the apostolic delegate, and Archbishop Looshagger who seems to be archbishop of this city.”

  Willie could not believe how young Felder looked.

  “But what brings them here?” he asked.

  “The mission of course. I told you all about it yesterday, but you were too busy listening to Thatcher’s Pentecostals. Incidentally, the flight plans are final now.”

  He looked like a youthful businessman, happy, relaxed, a man of thirty preparing for a holiday.

  Joto eyed Willie over Felder’s shoulders, watching his reaction.

  “I am flying,” Willie said carefully. “I know we are to fly. But where?”

  “Oh well, the details they’ll tell you about. Let’s go face them. Remember, it’s a show for them. It means something altogether different for us. Don’t mention Benjamin by the way. He set this up, most of it, using the name of Archbishop Tooler.”

  Willie searched Joto’s face for an explanation, but Joto’s face told him he had none.

  Into the room, behind the cloud of rose perfume, went Willie.

  And there, around a gilt-edged table in the splendid parlor of the Lord Calvert Suite, with maps and charts and lists and strange documents spread before them, were the churchly and worldly powers, ruddy faces, excellent clothing, manicured hands.

  Smiles, the manicured hands stretching out.

  “Your Excellency—”

  “Dear Bishop—”

  All rose.

  Goldenblade handled the introductions, immediately confusing Delegate Tricci by calling Willie, Bishop Brother. Since Tricci knew Cardinal Goldenblade was in fact the brother of G. D. Goldenblade, he concluded that G. D. Goldenblade had completely missed the point of the negotiations of the past week and believed the Vatican wished to send his own brother on the mission.

  “Who then were this man?” said Tricci pointing to Willie.

  “Bishop Brother,” said Goldenblade.

  “I’m your brother, George,” said Earl.