The Last Western

by Thomas S. Klise

  “I wish to give peace and love,” said Willie. “And forgiveness.”

  “There is no need for forgiveness.”

  “Even so.”

  Felder’s eyes were enormous; the red veins were strange forlorn roads in a chaotic land.

  “Don’t,” he said. “I don’t want—”

  “You don’t want love or peace, Brother Herman? Why, then, have you made this trip?”

  Felder was still holding his drink; it was like a burning coal in his hand. He tried to put it somewhere and at the same time move farther back into the plane. But he was up against the door of the pilot’s cabin now and there was no more room.

  Willie advanced toward him.

  Felder dropped his drink on the floor of the plane. Standing rigid, arms pressed against his sides, he allowed Willie to embrace him.

  “And so may the peace of our Lord Jesus be with you always.”

  Felder whispered, “All right.”

  Willie stepped back and looked into the eyes and he stood in this way for half a minute, and Felder was like a man who had been pinned to the door.

  Then Willie turned away and went back to the men outside and they communed in the Body and Blood of Jesus, and Herman Felder sat in the private cabin and drank four morphinis, until what had happened was something that had not happened.

  An hour later the planes flew up from the desert toward the sun.

  Ahead, the storm clouds were already forming over Iowa and Illinois and Indiana.

  “You cannot mean an actual plot,” said Benjamin.

  “Certain things will happen that are not of my doing,” said Willie, making ready for that fact that there was no real preparation for. His eyes saw things in a soft, luminous haze, and the events of the past began to mix confusedly in his brain, and even now he could not remember what had happened in the desert.

  He drank a little sugared tea because he wanted to be clear-headed when he met the old teacher, though his mind was even now like the earth when clouds sail over it in fast succession. In the dark moments, when his brain worked, he saw shadowy, obscure men against shifting, mysterious landscapes, architects or builders of some fantastic structure. In the quick openings of light and brightness he was flying high above the world, and all was well, even if the flight was nearly over. He was inside his dream and outside it, and there was only a little energy left for listening.

  As he slept, Benjamin, Joto and Thatcher Grayson tried to argue away that persistent cry still echoing across the desert. At last they persuaded themselves that his fasting had induced a state of hallucination. Joto prepared another intravenous feeding and Grayson went forward to pray with Truman. Only Benjamin sought to understand the meaning of the hallucination, knowing that hallucination was not only vision but judgment and knowing too that there was a presence in the plane now that had not been with them before, a sullen, slouching presence that he tried to picture.

  When he closed his eyes, he saw only the dim figure of some sly official, a teacher possibly, engaged in a tiresome explanation without beginning or end. “Begone,” said Benjamin in his spirit, but the figure took no notice. “Name yourself,” he said again, but the figure went on without a pause in a lifeless singsong voice that finally merged with the monotone of the plane.

  In the other plane the genius of the drama reviewed the shooting script for the last act. He saw the movie clearly now, saw the great theater of the world thrilling to his all-explaining spectacle. There was a burst of applause, a spreading warmth, a sigh, then a sorrowing understanding. A new myth was burning the old away. He saw history swing out from its rutted rails, the rabbling demons fleeing before it. Time now was a chariot, and he was the driver. As he lurched on, he felt himself a titan—king, conqueror, conjurer of a million dreams, salvific herald of an immortal age.

  But as the plane hurried on, a smaller definite picture intruded itself on the brimming vision. There was a whirring in the back room, the fitful sputter of a take-up reel. Lights. Flickering images. Suddenly he was in the past of thirty years ago. Palms. A long lawn going down to sea. Coming up to camera, a boy on horseback dressed as a cowboy and twirling a lariat. The camera closed in swiftly, awkwardly, on the boy’s grinning face. The screen went white for a second, then the crude hand-lettered lines came up: HERMAN—WINNING THE WEST. DIRECTED BY GUNNER AT SAN RAPHAEL.

  * * *

  The planes flew on, like two silver bullets, while on the earth below men prepared for L-Day.

  A few minutes before noon the United Nations issued its long-debated Declaration of Universal Peace, which called for a truce “between all warring elements in the world with said truce commencing at midnight November 23, wherever the pope of Rome shall be, and lasting for a period of twenty-four hours.”

  The statement, with ninety-six amendments, ran more than 500 pages and would not be published in final format for several weeks.

  “What it provides,” said the Secretary General of the United Nations, Jack E. Stonewell, “is that any nation stepping out of line on this thing is going to get the living hell pounded out of it whether it be a peace-loving superpower or some upstart country that isn’t worth the powder to start with.” Secretary Stonewell went on to explain that certain revisionist monist freaks had introduced amendments to the truce that were designed purely for selfish national gain, and he told his press conference that he was proud that he, as an American, had succeeded in getting Amendment 24 into the document, which called upon the responsible member nations to implement aggressive neutralization of all dissident elements acting against the spirit of the truce, through such means as thermonuclear punitive reprisals. After his press conference, Secretary Stonewell went on a family retreat at Camp Saint Billy Graham in Maryland.

  But by the time the Secretary General gave his press conference, few citizens of any nation were paying any attention to the U.N. and its pronouncements. By now Willie’s final TV tapes were being broadcast across the globe—in China, Russia, Europe, Africa, the Americas.

  By the hundreds of millions, people watched the telecasts or heard them on radio. Immediately many went to churches and synagogues for special L-Eve services.

  L-Eve had become a Holy Day of obligation in many Catholic dioceses around the world, and even bishops and priests who did not approve of the pope or his plan tried to encourage people to join in the spirit of the day ahead. This was an act of loyalty to the pope, who, even if he was crazy, was still the leader of the church, as the archbishop of Paris reminded his clergy.

  The day had begun with the usual round of suicides, but there seemed to be no more than on any previous day over the past two months, and perhaps a few less. Those who had stayed this long had decided “to be there when it happened,” as Second Wind said in what it called its final, final edition.

  The spiritist forces of the world were staging spectacular rallies everywhere. In Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and in many parts of the Americas, people were already gathering in open country or at mountain retreats to be taken up to heaven with the triumphant returning Lord.

  The largest of these rallies was already drawing thousands to the Grand Canyon where, according to Earl Cardinal Goldenblade, “at precisely 11 p.m. Rocky Mountain time the Spirit would plunge a flaming sword through the center of the earth, pick it up and eat it like an olive.”

  In London, Big Ben tolled ten times every quarter hour, reminding citizens, as the London Times noted, “of the grandeur of the Judeo-Christian tradition and of the spirit of moral renewal.”

  There were bells tolling in every city of the world. Preachers preached, sinners prayed, the fearful wept. Even the most beastly of men found themselves in church or temple to await—something. The feeling of world catastrophe was in the air. Anything could happen. Everywhere there were rumors of assassinations, conspiracies, plots, violence. Heads of state went into hiding. In the great cities the streets began to empty, until by midafternoon many had the look of cities under air siege.

 
In only one nation of the world did the L-Day truce seem in serious jeopardy. In that nation, in the words of the Defense Minister, “Instead of being a day of peace and reconciliation, November 24 could well be the day when the hatred of war reaches fever pitch.”

  That nation was Peru, where the Green Canary Army, under the command of General Clio Russell, had pressed to the very edge of Lima and was about to seize the government.

  Willie’s televised plea for L-Day was broadcast in Peru three times on Saturday November 23, and after each broadcast the aged archbishop of Lima came on the air and spoke directly to the leaders of the revolutionary army. Each time he asked the rebels to cease their war-making for at least the period of the truce.

  “You have heard our pope,” he said after the noon broadcast, “our pope, whom the people of Peru love and venerate as their spiritual father. I ask you in the name of God to stop the fighting. Please, gentlemen. After all, what difference will one day make?”

  When he was off the air, the loyalist leaders congratulated the archbishop.

  “They cannot refuse your plea, Eminence,” they told him.

  “The man who took the True Cross, Clio Russell—you have located him now?” the old man asked.

  “We know where he is. There is a handsome bounty on his head. In this twenty-four-hour period, if they stay in place according to the truce, we shall settle his account and at the same time regroup our forces and drive them back.”

  “It is a very small chip but it has a dark stain upon it,” said the archbishop.

  “The man who captures or kills him receives 10 million sols,” said the loyalist general.

  “I have often wondered if it is not truly a drop of the Precious Blood.”

  “Many of my men would kill him for nothing. With the incentive of 10 million sols we cannot fail.”

  “I used to hold it in time of temptation. I conquered my flesh with it,” said the aged archbishop.

  Clio and his staff watched the telecast of Willie’s speech.

  “They say he is mad,” said Clio’s aide-de-camp. “Last night in Rome before he flew to the States there was a fracas and a churchman was killed.”

  “He has the look of a loco,” said another officer. “Note the eyes. He sees another territory, not a real one.”

  Clio was shocked at the appearance of Willie. Gaunt, white-haired, exhausted, he had become a man of eighty in three months.

  A man named Talazar, who had once been a general in the regular army of Peru and who had defected to the rebels within the last month, stood quietly at the doorway, watching the telecast.

  The officers scoffed and cursed, but Talazar stood there listening, smiling curiously. At last he said, “For all that, he presents us with a difficult situation.”

  They turned around, looking at him doubtfully. He moved into the room, sat down and filled an elegant carved pipe.

  “The archbishop speaks the truth,” Talazar said. “Peruvians are Catholics. They revere the pontiff. In terms of public support here in the country and throughout Latin America, it will be very bad to fight tomorrow.”

  The younger officers sharply disagreed. One of them said Talazar had been a staff officer too long and had forgotten what war was about and now lacked the boldness.

  “Boldness is something for the very young,” said the general, smiling indulgently, “for those who wish to make movies or write books and for romantics who wish to be heroes. Here, our cause is rather commonplace. We wish to take over the country.” Talazar lighted his pipe. “General Russell, you see the political aspects of the situation.”

  Clio walked to the window of the farmhouse and looked out over the fields. He could see the churches of Lima in the distance.

  “We have won here,” he said. “A day one way or the other would not matter.”

  “Exactly,” said Talazar.

  “I tell you they have reinforcements coming down from the North with many U.S. weapons,” said the youngest of the officers.

  “It still does not matter,” said Talazar calmly. “Better to fight soldiers for a few days more than the people for a century.”

  “You are not going to make a peace gesture to them!” the young officer said furiously. “To compromise the cause of freedom!”

  Clio looked at the young officer sadly. He had not heard the word cause in a long time.

  “General Russell will not of course meet them,” said Talazar. “We are speaking only of a short truce that will serve us politically.”

  “It serves them better,” the young officer insisted. “They will get the same political advantage that we would get and they will get the reinforcements besides.”

  “Please,” said one of the other officers turning to Clio. “Let us keep up the fight, General Russell.”

  Clio said that he wanted time to think the matter over. Then he dismissed them and went to the small room he kept in the back of the house.

  The officers went out to the yard, continuing the argument on the front lawn.

  General Talazar walked into a flower garden a short distance from the house and smoked his pipe. He strolled there and dreamed of a villa on Ibiza and of a woman with green eyes.

  In the pocket of his jacket he had a pledge signed by the president of Peru that guaranteed him 10 million sols for the murder of Clio Russell.

  Clio sat at the small table and tried to write his letter.

  I suppose you heard him—and saw him, he wrote. Maybe you have decided to

  He stopped there and could not go on. He looked at the picture on the bedside stand: his wife and son and baby.

  He had taken the picture himself on the last day in Rio. Martha’s mouth was not happy in the picture because they had quarreled, and he had left her that way even though they had made love while the children napped and the quarrel was with them all through the lovemaking and the lovemaking did not remove the quarrel that had been with them almost a year.

  He crumpled up the letter and started a new one, glancing now and then at the picture. Through the window he could see the soldiers sitting under the trees arguing and, in the garden, General Talazar strolling among the flowers.

  I know you feel I have left you, but I haven’t. I miss you. I can’t even tell you how much. I can’t express it. I am sad thinking about the last time when we said those things. And when you said I put all this ahead of you and the children I was mad, because maybe that is what I have done. I can’t help it.

  He stopped there and looked at the picture again.

  And now watching W. on the TV I am even sadder thinking of what happened. Why didn’t you say those things before—afraid of what I might think? Don’t you know I love you and if you believed something that doesn’t matter but is just personal and wouldn’t affect us? Just like what I am doing is personal—can’t you accept what I think? Maybe this is my religion?

  He stopped again, seeing that he was only continuing the quarrel. After a while he tore up the second letter and drank from the brandy flask that he always carried now, and then he stood by the window for a long time looking down on his soldiers, who seemed very young.

  Beyond the trees, between rows of bright flowers, the neat tan uniform of General Talazar moved back and forth, catching many small moving spots of light and making the general look like a leopard.

  Anyone could fight, thought Clio, but not everyone could do the other things. And watching General Talazar, he was aware of the pitiful quantity of his own store, of how much he needed and would never have. To be like this silver-haired general, to be able to talk well, to lead and preside and rule in all those other ways… . Into his mind came the picture of a great African diplomat who had led a revolution for his people. In his youth the leader had been the greatest guerilla fighter of his day, but after the fighting he had been able to put aside his guns and don rich clothes and meet with men in splendid reception rooms. That man offered incontestable proof of—what was his name? Or was it only something he had seen on TV long ago? />
  He called for his orderly.

  “Tell General Talazar that I have decided to respect the truce.”

  “The men will not listen to him, sir.”

  “General Talazar is the chief of staff of this army, sergeant. Do the men listen to their generals?”

  “I will tell him what you have said.”

  “What kind of soldiers are they if they do not obey their leaders?”

  “They are not soldiers, sir. They are revolutionaries.”

  “Go tell the general.”

  Clio watched the orderly go, following his progress out to the edge of the grove, where the general had stopped to refill his pipe.

  The general listened, then turning to the house, raised his arm to Clio in an approving salute.

  Clio waved back.

  Then he sat down at the table again and tried to write to his wife to see if what had been broken could be fixed. But it was a letter he could not write because he knew there was no way of answering what she had said that afternoon after they had made love.

  In a room below he heard the old voice of his past once more. The guffaws of the soldiers. A curse.

  You probably never guessed how much I wanted once to see it all differently—how much I wanted to feel as he did. Then I found out nobody believed what he did but only pretended to. So I found another religion if that is what it is. But even if I was crazy and believed what he did, and you believed what I believed now, I would still love you. I can’t stand to think you are turned against me. Or that you are not happy. Oh Martha—

  It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and Clio kept on trying to repair what had been broken and General Talazar strolled in the garden and dreamed of the blue-shuttered villa he would buy on the island and the yacht that he would anchor in the harbor below and he thought how splendid it would be to awake in the morning and turn from her green eyes to the green waters below and see the yacht and the palms along the shore and smell the mimosa drifting up from the terrace. And Clio kept trying to repair what was broken and Willie’s voice came once more from the radio in a lower room of the farmhouse and the soldiers were getting drunk under the trees and the voices of the soldiers grew angry because victory was there before them, just beyond the hills, but General Russell listened to fools and bargained with tyrants.