Then he can see that it is two faces which seem to strive (but not of themselves striving or desiring it: he knows that, but because of the motion and desire of the wheel itself) in turn to free themselves one from the other, then fade and blend again.
But he has seen now, the other face, the one that is not Christmas.
‘Why, it’s …’ he thinks. ‘I have seen it, recently ...
Why, it’s that ... boy.
With that black pistol, automatic they call them.
The one who … into the kitchen where … killed, who fired the ...’
Then it seems to him that some ultimate dammed flood within him breaks and rushes away.
He seems to watch it, feeling himself losing contact with earth, lighter and lighter, emptying, floating.
‘I am dying,’ he thinks. ‘I should pray.
I should try to pray.’
But he does not.
He does not try.
‘With all air, all heaven, filled with the lost and unheeded crying of all the living who ever lived, wailing still like lost children among the cold and terrible stars. … I wanted so little.
I asked so little.
It would seem ...’
The wheel turns on.
It spins now, fading, without progress, as though turned by that final flood which had rushed out of him, leaving his body empty and lighter than a forgotten leaf and even more trivial than flotsam lying spent and still upon the window ledge which has no solidity beneath hands that have no weight; so that it can be now Now.
It is as though they had merely waited until he could find something to pant with, to be rearmed in triumph and desire with, with this last left of honor and pride and life.
He hears above his heart the thunder increase, myriad and drumming.
Like a long sighing of wind in trees it begins, then they sweep into sight, borne now upon a cloud of phantom dust.
They rush past, forwardleaning in the saddles, with brandished arms, beneath whipping ribbons from slanted and eager lances; with tumult and soundless yelling they sweep past like a tide whose crest is jagged with the wild heads of horses and the brandished arms of men like the crater of the world in explosion.
They rush past, are gone; the dust swirls skyward sucking, fades away into the night which has fully come.
Yet, leaning forward in the window, his bandaged head huge and without depth upon the twin blobs of his hands upon the ledge, it seems to him that he still hears them: the wild bugles and the clashing sabres and the dying thunder of hooves. Chapter 21
THERE lives in the eastern part of the state a furniture repairer and dealer who recently made a trip into Tennessee to get some old pieces of furniture which he had bought by correspondence.
He made the journey in his truck, carrying with him, since the truck (it had a housedin body with a door at the rear) was new and he did not intend to drive it faster than fifteen miles an hour, camping equipment to save hotels.
On his return home he told his wife of an experience which he had had on the road, which interested him at the time and which he considered amusing enough to repeat.
Perhaps the reason why he found it interesting and that he felt that he could make it interesting in the retelling is that he and his wife are not old either, besides his having been away from home (due to the very moderate speed which he felt it wise to restrict himself to) for more than a week.
The story has to do with two people, passengers whom he picked up; he names the town, in Mississippi, before he entered Tennessee:
“I had done decided to get some gas and I was already slowing into the station when I saw this kind of young, pleasantfaced gal standing on the corner, like she was waiting for somebody to come along and offer her a ride.
She was holding something in her arms.
I didn’t see what it was at first, and I didn’t see the fellow that was with her at all until he come up and spoke to me.
I thought at first that I didn’t see him before was because he wasn’t standing where she was.
Then I saw that he was the kind of fellow you wouldn’t see the first glance if he was alone by himself in the bottom of a empty concrete swimming pool.
“So he come up and I said, quick like:
‘I ain’t going to Memphis, if that’s what you want.
I am going up past Jackson, Tennessee: And he says,
“ ‘That’ll be fine.
That would just suit us.
It would be a accommodation.’
And I says,
“ ‘Where do you all want to go to?’ And he looked at me, like a fellow that ain’t used to lying will try to think up one quick when he already knows that he likely ain’t going to be believed. ‘You’re just looking around, are you?’ I says.
“ ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘That’s it.
We’re just travelling.
Wherever you could take us, it would be a big accommodation.’
“So I told him to get in.
‘I reckon you ain’t going to rob and murder me.’ He went and got her and come back.
Then I saw that what she was carrying was a baby, a critter not yearling size.
He made to help her into the back of “the truck and I says, ‘Whyn’t one of you ride up here on the seat?’ and they talked some and then she come and got on the seat and he went back into the filling station and got one of these leatherlooking paper suit cases and put it into the bed and got in too.
And here we went, with her on the seat, holding the baby and looking back now and then to see if he hadn’t maybe fell out or something.
“I thought they was husband and wife at first.