Boswell (20 page)

So shocking is this certainty, and so profound, that the merest hint of it seeping into the still living man’s consciousness is enough to contaminate everything that has come before it.

There is a man in the next room who has an advanced cancer. The others in the room with him are offended by his pain and his odor, but the man himself has grown indifferent to them as one is indifferent toward one’s bowels or the coarse sounds one makes in private. His family visits him—his son has come from Washington—but the man no longer cares about any of them. I learned from his son that the father was a printer, and that all his life he worked hard, making terrible sacrifices for his wife and children. By taking a second job some years ago he was able to earn enough to put his son through the university. Now the son is a lawyer and very grateful to his father, but the father is as indifferent to his son’s gratitude and love as he is to his own pain, as he is even to his own old fierce love for his boy. Already he is beyond this world and functions with a different intelligence. He knows new things. He knows what animals in traps know, what stones know.

Johnson says: “Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent; deliberation which those who begin it by prudence and continue it with subtlety, must, after long expense of thought, conclude by chance.” He means, perhaps, that everybody’s happiness and unhappiness total up to the same thing finally—that the bill, when it is presented, is always the same. Perhaps. I see that no one ever really gets away with anything, that we all owe a death, but surely it is senseless to argue that some of us do not get more for our death than others. In a way, the housewife’s economy is the highest wisdom. One must watch the ads, risk the crowds, know his needs.

The thing is, I see, to be
great,
to sit the world like a prince on horseback, to send out the will like a tyrant his armies, with the warning not to come back empty- handed. I need what the tyrant needs. Like him, I need plunder and booty and tribute and empire and palace and slave. I need monuments and flags and drums and trumpets. I need my photograph enlarged a thousand times in the auditorium. I am not, however, a great man. I see that I will never have these things, that I must adjust to my life as I must to my death, and that finally the two adjustments are the same. But despite this, I will never do what others do. I will not write my life off or cut my losses. I will never treat with it as the man in the next room has been forced to treat with his. I see what happens to such men. Their cancers take away their histories. My cancer, when it comes, must not do that. When I am downed, when the latest drug proves useless, when the doctor, embarrassed, asks who is to be notified, when the morphine is no longer effective and pain builds on pain like one wave slapping another at the shore, when the high tide of low death is in,
I must still have my history,
and it must, somehow,
matter!

I have conceived a plan. It is not clear in all its aspects yet, but I envisage a kind of club. It must include all the great men of my time, and I am to be the spirit behind it, mine the long table on the dais. If I cannot be great, then I can at least be a kind of Calypso. Heroes will sing in my caves, sit on my shores, seek sails on my illusory horizons.

Only the gods or death will free them.

March 28, 1949. St. Louis.

My Uncle Myles came into the hospital room. He set his umbrella against the bed and placed his derby carefully over the leather handle.

“James, I did not come before because you refused to see me when I contacted you in your hotel.”

“Contacted me in my hotel? What are you talking about?”

“The evening of the fight. I called at your hotel and the room clerk rang you up.”

“I don’t remember that, Uncle Myles,” I said. “Why would I refuse to see you? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Nor did it to me,” my Uncle Myles said.

I tried to remember the evening my Uncle Myles referred to. It was less than two weeks before, but it might have been in another life. I remembered that I had been trying to locate Sallow. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I was trying to get in touch with John Sallow. The phone rang and I thought it must be him calling, but when I answered, it was the desk clerk telling me that some people wanted to see me. A man, I think, and a woman and a little boy.”

“I was the man,” my uncle said.

“Well, but the clerk didn’t give me your name, you see. I was very preoccupied. I should have asked. I was crazy that week.”

“I read of your defeat in the papers,” he said. “They said you were badly beaten.”

“I was,” I said. -

“You seem recovered now.”

“I’ll be getting out in three days,” I said. “I could have been discharged yesterday, but my policy pays for most of this and… well, I’ve no place to go now. I’ve quit wrestling.”

He seemed to hear this. “It paid well,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m not rich, but I was able to save a little money.”

My uncle nodded. I thought I saw what was troubling him and I said, “I won’t be able to send you any more checks until money is coming in again.” (I had started to send him a little money after I began to wrestle.)

“You’ve been very generous,” he said stiffly. “I haven’t always been easy to get along with.”

“You’ve been very fine, Uncle Myles,” I said.

“We don’t agree about things.”

“I suspect we’re more alike than you think,” I said. “I’m a very conservative person.”

“I hope that is so,” he said. He sat down and looked around the room. “You have a private room,” he said after a while.

“I was in a ward at first—my policy stipulates a ward—but I couldn’t stand it there and I asked to be transferred. I pay the difference.”

“Of course you’ll have to be careful about your money now that you aren’t wrestling.”

“Yes. I suppose I will. It was just that I didn’t like being with sick people.”

“With strangers,” my uncle said.

“Yes, of course,” I said, remembering my uncle’s illness, “with strangers.”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s very difficult. Even with people one has a feeling for. You know, James, I don’t mean to offend you, but I can’t say I’ve been unhappy about your going away. People get used to needing others. They are often surprised to learn they can do quite well without them.”

I remembered he had been with others the night he had tried to see me at the hotel. “The clerk said there were a woman and a little boy with you.”

“Yes.”

I laughed. “Uncle Myles, you haven’t gotten married, have you?”

“No.”

“Are you keeping company?”

“The woman is the mother of that poor girl who had your child. The little boy is your son.”

“What?”

“The woman’s husband has died. They were never well off, James—you must certainly be aware of that. They took the child because you were only fifteen at the time. Now that her husband is dead she can’t afford to keep the child without help. They have been staying with me until more satisfactory arrangements could be made.”

“No,” I said.

“They are outside, James. Please don’t raise your voice. When we have concluded these other arrangements—”

“No,” I said. “No arrangements.”

“The boy is six years old now.”

“No,” I said. “No.”

“You are hardly in a position to say no, James.”

“Are you talking as a
lawyer
now?” I said.

“As a judge, I think, James.”

“Are you talking as a lawyer now?” I asked him again.

“If you mean are you guilty of child abandonment in the eyes of the law, no. The child was taken away from you and legally adopted by the grandparents, but you have a certain responsibility.”

“No,” I said. “No.” I had begun to weep. My uncle had brought me down. I wanted to explain it to him, that I mustn’t be caught just because every son of a bitch who ever lived got caught, but I was inarticulate with sorrow and rage. All I could do was shake my head and wail denials.

My Uncle Myles stood up. “I can no longer keep them with me, James. It isn’t my responsibility.”

“No,” I shouted. “No.”

“You’re responsible. You feel trapped now,” my uncle said. “I understand that, but when you see the lad, James—he’s a nice lad—all that will change. He’s outside now. I’ll just get him.”

“No,” I yelled. “No, no, no, no.”

A nurse ran into the room. “What is it?” she said.

“No,” I wailed. “No, no, no.”

“We can’t have this,” she said to my uncle. “You can’t come in here and upset a patient like that.”

“He stinks, your patient. He should die now.”

“No! No! No! No! No!”

“You’ll have to leave,” she said.

“Get him out,” I screamed. “Get him out.
Get him out!”

The nurse pulled my uncle toward the door. Almost comically, smoothly, as if from some keen presence of mind, he managed to reach out and pluck the umbrella away from the bed. Even as he tugged at her he was adjusting his derby. He had begun to shake, and the nurse, mistaking his tremors for resistance, pulled him from the room fiercely. She didn’t close the door and as soon as they were outside I saw a woman rush up to them and grab at my uncle. She was a woman of about fifty- five, and at first I thought it was Mrs. Slabe, but then I recognized that her face and body were aged parodies of the face I had kissed so awkwardly all those years ago, the body I had shot my death into. The nurse struggled with the woman, trying to push her away and at the same time pull my uncle toward the elevator. In a moment other nurses had come up and surrounded them. I saw my uncle’s hat fall from his head and one of the nurses trample it with a white, clubbed heel as she shoved against him. Slowly the nurses moved my uncle and the woman away from the door.

I couldn’t move. I stared appalled at the hat, his derby that had cost him so much money, black and empty and ridiculous on the floor.

And then I saw two thin, bare legs move into position over the hat, straddling it, and a child’s hand reach slowly down to pick it up. As he straightened, his eye caught mine and we looked at each other helplessly.

Then my son began to cry.

March 29, 1949. Somewhere in Kansas.

I am on a bus. I am going West. Calypso must first be Ulysses.

September 4, 1950. Dallas, Texas.

William Lome is a rich man. A rrrrrich man. As rrrittchh azz Creesusss. He has dollars and pounds and lire and pesos and rubles and drachmas and francs and kronen and Deutsche marks and rials and piastres and fils and dinars. He has sucres and quetzals and gourdes and lempiras and forints and rupees and pahlavis and sen and yen and guilders and córdobas and guaranis and sols and zlotys and leu and behts and kurus. He has monies. He has moneez. He has stocks and he has bonds, and he has securities and certificates. He has gold and he has silver. He gets di-vid-ends. He earns interest. He earns in-ter-est- ing in-ter-est.

He was once asked how much he was worth. “Practically everything there is,” he said.

This campaign has lasted almost three months now. I must make my fortune. As in the fairy tales. And why not? Am I not the youngest son, the orphan, the kid with the squint, the limp, the blue baby? A frog isn’t always what he seems, but kiss me today and I give you warts. An ugly duckling in the swimming pool of the world’s fat swans—who will feed me? Everywhere there are signs, warnings, admonitions: Do not feed the ducklings.

I would share my bread with gnomes under mushrooms. I would give to testing elves, salvage the lives of bosses’ daughters—I haunt the forests, the beaches— tease a belly laugh from the king’s dour daughter and the joke would be on the king.

I must have money!

My way of life demands it. The savings from the wrestling days are almost gone, but there are still bus tickets to buy, meals to eat. My expenses are not great (I am easily shabby), but they exist. Need, the fleet-heeled one, will not stand still.

And what a campaign, this one! Who would have thought? Three months. The complications! Lome travels in his private plane and I follow in a bus. I must anticipate his schedule. Futile, futile. But I think I may have caught up with him. He comes in four days. I wait now.

Croesus, my would-be father-in-law, where are your daughters?

September 5, 1950. Dallas, Texas.

Eleven dollars to the man who rents the costumes. Seven dollars to the tailor to get it to fit.

September 9, 1950. Dallas, Texas.

“You’re sure now he ain’t in yet?” I said to the room clerk.

“I’ve told you repeatedly—Mr. Lome arrives later this morning.”

“You said that yesterday morning.”

“He canceled out,” the room clerk said. “I told you last night.”

“It’s just that I’m his cousin,” I said.

“I understand that,” the clerk said.

“I come down from Muskogee, Oklahoma.”

“I know,” the clerk said.

“Big-shot-millionaire-skinflint bastard,” I said.

“I told you before,” the clerk said, “we can’t have that kind of language about our guests.”

“You ever meet this fella?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well, if you do you’ll get an idea what I mean.”

“Please,” he said, “I’m very busy.”

“Who do you think give him that stake those years ago? My uncle.”

“Yes,” the clerk said.

“My uncle give it to him.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, he paid it back, all right.”

“Hmm,” the clerk said

“To the dollar.”

“That’s not—”

“The nickel.”

“—any of—”

“The penny.”

“—my—”

“But not a cent of interest. Well, that’s all right. We’re kin. Kin don’t go around charging each other no interest. My uncle don’t expect that.”

“Please,” the clerk said, “there are things I must attend—”

“Old as he is.”

“Now look,” the clerk said.

“Sick as he is.”

“You’re going to have to—”

“Poor as he is. But no thank you, even—not even a Christmas gift.”

“I can understand how your uncle—”

“Just that old cold check in the mail when he give back the stake. Just that lonely old cold check made out to W. J. Lome and signed W. J. Lome.”