Now and on Earth Read online

  No, I guess it isn’t a very nice song. I forgot you didn’t like songs like that. What was it you liked? “I Will Take You Home Again, Kathleen”? “Humoresque”? “On the Banks of the Wabash”? Yeah. Nice violin pieces. I never played the violin, you remember.

  Have a drink? Have a cigarette? Aw, go on. Little drink never hurt anyone. Remember I told you that once before. Remember that Sunday morning when I fell down on the front porch and almost bit a hole in the planks, and you carried me into the bathroom, eyes filled with disgust. Yeah, I knew what you thought of me. I never got so drunk that I didn’t.

  And you always called cigarettes coffin-nails. Going around with a coffin-nail pasted in my lip. Pasted—I’ll never forget that. Yes, I drank until I never fell down and I smoked coffin-nails. But I never had gravy on my clothes; no, goddamit, I never had that. My clothes were a damned sight better than yours ever were, I saw to that. And I supported the family ten times better than you’d ever done. And my manners were better. I didn’t sit down at the table and gobble up everything in sight. I didn’t walk through doors ahead of people. I didn’t keep breaking in when someone else was talking. Goddam you, I was better! I showed you I was, and I made you like it.…

  Ahhh, you never! You never had a thought for anyone. Marge, maybe, after you’d got all you wanted for yourself; and she’d saw away on that damn fiddle until the sky was green and you’d sit with your eyes closed, tapping on the arm of your chair, and no one dared to say a word.…

  I’m not sore. I just want to approach this thing from the—the scientific viewpoint. That’s the right word, scientific? You should know. You always knew, and I had to stop and think. And why in the hell shouldn’t it have been that way? I’ll tell you a thing or two.

  Those two years you were in Mexico—finding a copper mine, and sinking the shaft, and getting the machinery hauled in by burro; and then not being able to move your ore. Ha, ha. Not being able to move it, because the bandits had goddam well made hash out of the railroad, and—

  Those two years:

  I was wearing dresses, and I laughed when I saw the sun, or the trees making shadows on the grass, or a sparrow hopping through the dust. I laughed because it was good to laugh. There was no bad, only error. (Like the Christian Scientists, Pop.) And I slept long hours, and I was still fat with mother-fat. Then snow lay on the ground, and in the cold room where Mom watched by the window a little girl and I tossed a ball back and forth by the hour—a ball made out of an old stocking; and there was nothing so funny as when it rolled under the bed or fell behind the door, and I wondered how the little girl could ever bear to stop. And then the snow was green, and we were like the others now—not the big others but the others that were bigger than we were, and we did not need sleds and warm boots and mackinaws. Barefoot, we walked down to the grove and we laid sticks upon the ground and I sat on the ground with them, holding back my laughter with my hand, and the little girl frowned and she was the teacher. And I laughed when the clods fell around us, and the little girl ran this way and that and tried to climb the trees; ran in circles, crying and screaming until her eyes rolled white in her head; ran because there was nothing to do but run; ran because Mom was at the house and she was not at the house. And I laughed because everything was laughter. There was the smell of fresh earth and yellow dust, and a great pile that was a mountain of gold (like Pop is going to find); and the gold spouted downward from a pipe in the sky, falling around my head, mounting above my feet like golden sand, above my waist and shoulders. And I was looking into the man’s eyes, far above, and he was looking down into mine, and I knew that we were playing a game, that he was going to hide me beneath the gold; and I could not understand why Mom came racing across the field nor why the man’s teeth bared like a frightened dog’s. But I knew that everything was good, and I laughed. Then the grass was white again, and the stocking-ball was strange and no longer funny, but there were other things of laughter. The closet that was a cave, and the bedsheets that could make a ghost, and the frosted window that was a slate, and the cracks in the floor, and the snow sifting in at the eaves, and the wind whispering in the chimney, and the broom with its whiskers, and an old newspaper between the mattress and springs, and…And a big bear that was tired and had to rest now, and two little bears that had to go to sleep, too, and when you wake up it’ll be daylight. Many things, and some to laugh at. And then the grass again, the snow and the grass, and then only the grass. And there was a long table where the others sat, and Mom going from the table to the stove, from the stove to the table, from the pantry to the table. And we could not be seen because we had made king’s X’s in front of us, and we smelled all the things, and counted the bites the others took, and sometimes I could forget why we were counting—sometimes—and it was funny. And there was a cupboard, and the little others, the little others who were still bigger although we were bigger (and that was funny) would reach down great brown loaves and smear thick slices from them with jams and jellies, and watch you as you watched them stuff their mouths. And then you were hiding behind the doorway, the plate of tarts you had found in front of you—the plate that had been so easy to find. And then you saw the woman, the woman who looked like Mom, and you smiled up at her because she was smiling. And you did not notice the brown flecks that moved along your hands, that swarmed up your arms. And then there were needles in your throat, and in the top of your mouth, and your tongue was on fire, and your lips puffed, and the flecks marched in and out of your nostrils, and they stood outward from your face like acrobats, burying their furious fiery heads in your flesh. And you knew that she did not know, you thought that she knew something that you did not, because you were crying and she was laughing. And you tried to tell her, and she only laughed. Then the leaves turning brown, and the water in the pails slopping over your feet, tickling them, and your shoulders and arms, drawn tight and numb, tickled also. The great baskets of fuzzy cobs for the stove tickled your chin, and you laughed at that. Laughed at those things. And then somehow the tickling became pain, the laughter weeping; and you no longer saw the shadows, the sun, the sparrows in the dust. And the snow fell, and your shoes were too tight, and your coat dragged upon the ground, and you wondered at the shortness and the longness of the days, and you wondered why you could not sit in the room with Mom and you were told why. You were told, and you could not understand. There was food and warmth and sunshine and the sparrows hopping from foot to foot, and you knew that these things were better than the things you had. But when you told them, they only laughed. They laughed now. They. Sometimes you laughed at the little girl, but when Mom noticed she pressed her lips together and shook her head. And you began to know that it was not funny when, after the little girl had sat for hours, a day, rigid, frightened into immobility, her eyes rolled back into her head and the urine spurted from her pantslegs. It was not funny to you, and you did not want them to laugh when you could not. You hated them for being able to laugh, and you began to hate her for making them. Then, and then, the straw cushions of the day coach, the shaded lanterns swinging from their hooks, and your image floating along in the night outside, dancing along with the clicking of the rails, and staring in at you sullen-faced, laughterless. And the woman across the aisle, the friendly motherly woman with the ostrich plume: Can’t you smile for me, little boy? My, my! What make ’ums look so mad?…

  What make ’ums look so mad! God! You with your fat dignity; and me with my toes permanently overlapped, and my body outgrown my organs so that I could never eat what I needed; and what you might call my soul—ha, ha, my soul!—turned inward because I knew how unbeautiful it was. Inarticulate, and awkward, and angry. Angry; raging; suspicious. Not pleasant to have under your eye. Something that could carry golf clubs, and telegrams, and be kept out of the way as much as possible, and—

  Never mind.

  It wasn’t that, Jimmie. I will have you know now that it wasn’t. You were so pale and brooding, and I wanted you to be strong and mix with other boys
. I knew that Marge had broken, and I did not want you to…

  Oh, never mind.

  Yes, and when you got off the train I was shocked and outraged. When I saw Marge, when I saw you, when Mom told me things…I did not know there were people like that. I suppose I did know; but I had never thought of them as touching us, me and mine. I tried never to think of things like that. They made me—

  I know. I’m the same way.

  And I didn’t know it would be so long. There were so many things I hadn’t anticipated. The peons were bound to the land, the dons; no matter what we paid them they got no more than a subsistence, so they didn’t care. When the shaft was halfway down, they let a dump-pail filled with dynamite drop, and ten of them were killed. By the time we’d indemnified the dons, and their families, and—

  Yeah, you told us all about it. You had a tough time, I guess. But, why the hell—why the hell in the first place, Pop? I don’t remember, but I can read. And Mom has told me and you have told me. You were doing all right before. Why the—

  When I went into law, there were only two other things to go into: medicine and school-teaching.

  But you were so damned good, Pop! There wasn’t a lawyer in the Southwest that could come up to you. Not even Bill Gilbert, or Temple Houston with his flowered vests and ten-gallon hat, or the blind man, Gore, or Moman Prewitt. None of them. I don’t know whether it was what you said, or the way you said it. Frankly, I used to get so sick of reading and hearing about you when we didn’t have—but let that go. I don’t know whether you knew a hell of a lot of law—although I don’t see how you could have—or…

  No. I didn’t know the law as well as I should have, and I knew that I could never know it. I was afraid every time I stepped before a jury; timid, afraid for my client. My size was with me, and I had a good voice, and I was terribly afraid of losing; that was all I had. It wasn’t enough. I lost six cases.…

  Everyone has to lose some time. Only six out of a hundred and—

  Only six cases.…If I had known what I should have…As it was, I dropped four men through the trap, and sent two over the road.

  Oh, hell…well, I know how you might feel. But you could have got out of it. Used it to step into something else. You could have been United States Attorney for—

  I never pled a man’s case unless I was convinced he was innocent. I wouldn’t try to convict him unless I was sure he was guilty.

  You could have gone to Congress. I was looking back through an old newspaper today—one Mom had saved—a yellowed special election-edition. And there was your picture everywhere: Bill Dillon in a lion-tamer’s outfit, and the western half of the state a cowering lion; the western district a dove, eating out of your hand, a monkey on a chain, sitting on your shoulder. And there were pages about you. They took you apart and put you together again, and—and it was a non-party paper—they couldn’t find anything that wasn’t good. Why didn’t you—

  Yes, I think I would have liked that. I thought I’d told you why.

  You told me so many things so many times. I began shutting my ears pretty early. I don’t mean anything. I suppose, seeing so many people, you forgot when you’d told a story and when you hadn’t.

  Well, I was from the North and so was my campaign manager. Our fathers marched with Sherman to the sea. My middle name was Sherman. In all modesty, I think I could have won without a manager, but this man was my friend. Well, our state, particularly my district, was strongly rebel in its sympathies. However, that wasn’t the reason I’d never obtruded my full name and background. I wouldn’t deceive anyone about them. I simply liked Bill Dillon better, and I was content to let old hatreds die. But—I had a three-car railway train traveling over my district, with a band and campaign workers and various influential people. On election day each one of those railway cars blossomed forth with a banner: WILLIAM SHERMAN DILLON. Moreover, the band played “Marching through Georgia” at every stop.

  A double cross?

  No, I don’t think so. I don’t like to think so. I suppose my manager felt that the election was in the bag anyway, and he’d just let the rebels know the Yankees had won another war. Of course we lost by a landslide.

  No one could be that dumb! Why didn’t you stop him? You must have known about it as soon as it began.

  It was my name. “Marching through Georgia” was a good piece; there was nothing dishonorable or indecent about it. I couldn’t deny my name or the piece that my father marched to in helping to liberate the slaves.

  Oh, my God! Free the slaves!

  It is what I believed. Right or wrong, I believed in it. You will find this, Jimmie: To get even as far as I did, you must believe in something; believe in it so firmly that it is part of you, so much that you would no sooner think of changing it than you would of twisting your arm out of shape or cutting off a leg.

  You say that. All the stinkers and grafters and nitwits that get into office, and you tell me—

  I’m not talking about them. They can. We couldn’t.

  Yeah—but Pop. The money. Us. What right did you have to marry and bring children into the world and—

  What right has anyone?

  But—I know. I know how that is. Of course, you don’t plan it that way. You think everything is going to be swell, and—

  Yes, and in his love for his family a man will do all the things that he shouldn’t and do the one thing that he should when desperation drives him to it. I was a lawyer, a politician, an insurance salesman, a little bit of everything. I didn’t get into the oil business soon enough. I was too old to learn the things one had to know to exist in it.

  Pop, did—did you hate us very much?

  I did. I had come in from the outside, and I was different from you. The things I had to tell bored you, bored your mother. I had learned to push in front of people, to raise my voice, to interrupt when an interruption seemed necessary. In my environment food had not been dallied with and clothes had been to keep you covered; and I was absent-minded; and there were times when I preferred reading to talking, because I enjoyed reading and I knew what a terrible thing it is not to know enough. And because I was different from you and would not be as you were, you hated me and in self-defense I hated you. You ringed me in with my failures, and each action of mine that was unlike yours you snatched up and laid on top of this ring. And in time I was walled in with nothing but failure to look at. And from my prison I peered cautiously out at you—angrily at first, then boldly, then cautiously. And I began to think perhaps I was wrong, perhaps the things I thought right were wrong and the wrong right, and I began to lose something called character. Yes, I knew about the money; I smelled the whores and the whisky. But out of your eyes you despised me, and I could not speak because there were no ears to hear, and I was no longer sure. You were, as you have pointed out, supporting the family ten times better—

  I didn’t mean that, Pop. Honest to God, I didn’t mean it.

  You meant it, and it was true. True and damnably false. But I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t talk to you. Perhaps—but I don’t hate you that much. I don’t hate you at all, now. Food. You drink. Mine was food. When you are walled in, you do something.

  It must have been hell, Pop. To have been a big man, to have been something—

  Yes, and may you never know that hell, Jimmie. Because I love you, now. I hoped you would die out there on the pipeline. I had taken your money because I thought I would shame you by not taking it, and you had shamed me instead. I thought you were mean, rotten to the core; a dirty blob of scum that floated by virtue of its own filth. You came back and I sank even farther within myself—

  I wanted to talk to you, Pop. I wanted to tell you about the stories.

  I know that now; I never understood you, and I could not take the time for understanding. There were so many things to do, and— But you came back. It started all over again. Then you came to me and told me about the magazine, about going to school.…

  And you made me, Pop. You stood th
ere before the empty house with the locked doors and without a penny in your pocket—damned little anyway—and there was a smile on your face as we drove off.

  Yes, we understood each other then. Twenty years too late. It was not your fault or mine. Circumstances had made us different and we were too long in adjusting ourselves.…Well, and then you married and settled in Oklahoma City, and I was working as a janitor there. And it was like beginning life all over again. Like it, but not the same. The things I had to tell you were interesting, true, but I had lost my sureness of them and I could never bring it back. And I was surrounded by doubts as to how far I should move a hand or foot, and I had to think when I spoke because there were so many words to choose from and so many had been laughed and sneered at. I would see your impatience when I began to speak—and so I spoke less. I was slow when I walked, and so I—

  Pop…

  But it was nice. I can’t tell you how nice, how much I appreciated it. We would sit there in your apartment in the evenings, and I would close my eyes, and Jo would climb up onto my lap. And Roberta wouldn’t notice when I called her Mom, and Jo would be Marge, and you would be—Jimmie, of course. Your voice was husky and you were big, but a boy’s voice should be husky and he should be big. And then, later—farther down the years—Jo and I would walk. And we talked and walked the same—

  Jo worshiped you, Pop. When she heard that you were dead, she broke down. She’s in with Roberta now. Would you like to see her? Jo! Roberta!

  And we—we talked and walked.…

  Only one of us could go, Pop. I sold the story, but there was only money enough for one. That was the reason I didn’t come. It wasn’t because I was ashamed of, hated you, for eating the—

  And we talked and—

  I didn’t mean it about Marge. I know now. I know about the violin lessons. I know why you—Pop!