Going to Meet the Man (6 page)

She said, “Yes,” and looked down at him; he had closed his eyes and was bathing his face in the slowly waning sun. Abruptly, she asked him:

“Why don’t you get saved? You around the church all the time and you not saved yet? Why don’t you?”

He opened his eyes in amazement. Never before had Sylvia mentioned salvation to him, except as a kind of joke. One of the things he most liked about her was the fact that she never preached to him. Now he smiled uncertainly and stared at her.

“I’m not joking,” she said sharply. “I’m perfectly serious. Roy’s saved—at least he
says
so—” and she smiled darkly, in the fashion of the old folks, at Roy—“and anyway, you ought to be thinking about your soul.”

“Well, I don’t know,” David said. “I
think
about it. It’s—well, I don’t know if I can—well, live it—”

“All you got to do is make up your mind. If you really want to be saved, He’ll save you. Yes, and He’ll keep you too.” She did not sound at all hysterical or transfigured. She spoke very quietly and with great earnestness and frowned as she spoke. David, taken off guard, said nothing. He looked embarrassed and pained and surprised. “Well, I don’t know,” he finally repeated.

“Do you ever pray?” she asked. “I mean,
really
pray?”

David laughed, beginning to recover himself. “It’s not fair,’ he said, “you oughtn’t to catch me all unprepared like that. Now I don’t know what to say.” But as he looked at her earnest face he sobered. “Well, I try to be decent. I don’t bother nobody.” He picked up a grass blade and stared at it. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I do my best.”

“
Do
you?” she asked.

He laughed again, defeated. “Girl,” he said, “you
are
a killer.”

She laughed too. “You black-eyed demon,” she said, “if I don’t see you at revival services I’ll never speak to you again.” He looked up quickly, in some surprise, and she said, still smiling, “Don’t look at me like that. I mean it.”

“All right, sister,” he said. Then: “If I come out can I walk you home?”

“I got my mother to walk me home—”

“Well, let your mother walk home with Brother Elisha,” he said, grinning, “Let the old folks stay together.”

“Loose him, Satan!” she cried, laughing, “loose the boy!”

“The brother needs prayer,” Roy said.

“Amen,” said Sylvia. She looked down again at David. “I want to see you at church. Don’t you forget it.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

The boat whistles blew at six o’clock, punctuating their holiday; blew, fretful and insistent, through the abruptly dispirited park and skaters left the skating rink; boats were rowed in furiously from the lake. Children were called from the swings and the seesaw and the merry-go-round and forced to leave behind the ball which had been lost in the forest and the torn kite which dangled from the top of a tree. (“Hush now,” said their parents, “we’ll get you another one—come along.” “
Tomorrow?
”—“Come along, honey, it’s time to go!”) The old folks rose from the benches, from the grass, gathered together the empty lunch-basket, the half-read newspaper, the Bible which was carried everywhere; and they started down the hillside, an army in disorder. David walked with Sylvia and Sister Daniels and Brother Elisha, listening to their conversation (good Lord, thought Johnnie, don’t they ever mention anything but sin?) and carrying Sylvia’s lunch-basket. He seemed interested in what they were saying; every now and then he looked at Sylvia and grinned and she grinned back. Once, as Sylvia stumbled, he put his hand on her elbow to steady her and held her arm perhaps a moment too long. Brother Elisha, on the far side of Sister Daniels, noticed this and a frown passed over his face. He kept talking, staring now and then hard at Sylvia and trying, with a certain almost humorous helplessness, to discover what was in her mind. Sister Daniels talked of nothing but the service on the boat and of the forthcoming revival. She scarcely seemed to notice David’s
presence, though once she spoke to him, making some remark about the need, on his part, of much prayer. Gabriel carried the sleeping baby in his arms, striding beside his wife and Lois—who stumbled perpetually and held tightly to her mother’s hand. Roy was somewhere in the back, joking with Elizabeth. At a turn in the road the boat and the dock appeared below them, a dead gray-white in the sun.

Johnnie walked down the slope alone, watching David and Sylvia ahead of him. When he had come back, both Roy and David had disappeared and Sylvia sat again in the company of her mother and Brother Elisha; and if he had not seen the gold butterfly on her dress he would have been aware of no change. She thanked him for his share in it and told him that Roy and David were at the skating rink.

But when at last he found them they were far in the middle of the lake in a rowboat. He was afraid of water, he could not row. He stood on the bank and watched them. After a long while they saw him and waved and started to bring the boat in so that he could join them. But the day was ruined for him; by the time they brought the boat in, the hour, for which they had hired it, was over; David went in search of his mother for more money but when he came back it was time to leave. Then he walked with Sylvia.

All during the trip home David seemed preoccupied. When he finally sought out Johnnie he found him sitting by himself on the top deck, shivering a little in the night air. He sat down beside him. After a moment Johnnie moved and put his head on David’s shoulder. David put his arms around him. But now where there had been peace there was only panic and where there had been safety, danger, like a flower, opened.

A
S THE SUN
began preparing for her exit, and he sensed the waiting night, Eric, blond and eight years old and dirty and tired, started homeward across the fields. Eric lived with his father, who was a farmer and the son of a farmer, and his mother, who had been captured by his father on some far-off, unblessed, unbelievable night, who had never since burst her chains. She did not know that she was chained anymore than she knew that she lived in terror of the night. One child was in the churchyard, it would have been Eric’s little sister and her name would have been Sophie: for a long time, then, his mother had been very sick and pale. It was said that she would never, really, be better, that she would never again be as she had been. Then, not long ago, there had begun to be a pounding in his mother’s belly, Eric had sometimes been able to hear it when he lay against her breast. His father had been pleased.
I did that
, said his father, big, laughing, dreadful, and red, and Eric knew how it was done, he had seen the horses and the blind and dreadful bulls. But then, again, his mother had been sick, she had had to be sent away, and when she came back the pounding was not there anymore, nothing was there anymore. His father laughed less, something in his mother’s face seemed to have gone to sleep forever.

Eric hurried, for the sun was almost gone and he was afraid the night would catch him in the fields. And his mother would be angry. She did not really like him to go wandering off by himself. She would have forbidden it completely and kept Eric under her eye all day but in this she was overruled: Eric’s father liked to think of Eric as being curious about the world and as being daring enough to explore it, with his own eyes, by himself.

His father would not be at home. He would be gone with his friend, Jamie, who was also a farmer and the son of a farmer, down to the tavern. This tavern was called the Rafters. They
went each night, as his father said, imitating an Englishman he had known during a war,
to destruct the Rafters, sir.
They had been destructing The Rafters long before Eric had kicked in his mother’s belly, for Eric’s father and Jamie had grown up together, gone to war together, and survived together—never, apparently, while life ran, were they to be divided. They worked in the fields all day together, the fields which belonged to Eric’s father. Jamie had been forced to sell his farm and it was Eric’s father who had bought it.

Jamie had a brown and yellow dog. This dog was almost always with him; whenever Eric thought of Jamie he thought also of the dog. They had always been there, they had always been together: in exactly the same way, for Eric, that his mother and father had always been together, in exactly the same way that the earth and the trees and the sky were together. Jamie and his dog walked the country roads together, Jamie walking slowly in the way of country people, seeming to see nothing, heads lightly bent, feet striking surely and heavily on the earth, never stumbling. He walked as though he were going to walk to the other end of the world and knew it was a long way but knew that he would be there by the morning. Sometimes he talked to his dog, head bent a little more than usual and turned to one side, a slight smile playing about the edges of his granite lips; and the dog’s head snapped up, perhaps he leapt upon his master, who cuffed him down lightly, with one hand. More often he was silent. His head was carried in a cloud of blue smoke from his pipe. Through this cloud, like a ship on a foggy day, loomed his dry and steady face. Set far back, at an unapproachable angle, were those eyes of his, smoky and thoughtful, eyes which seemed always to be considering the horizon. He had the kind of eyes which no one had ever looked into—except Eric, only once. Jamie had been walking these roads and across these fields, whistling for his dog in the evenings as he turned away from Eric’s house, for
years, in silence. He had been married once, but his wife had run away. Now he lived alone in a wooden house and Eric’s mother kept his clothes clean and Jamie always ate at Eric’s house.

Eric had looked into Jamie’s eyes on Jamie’s birthday. They had had a party for him. Eric’s mother had baked a cake and filled the house with flowers. The doors and windows of the great kitchen all stood open on the yard and the kitchen table was placed outside. The ground was not muddy as it was in winter, but hard, dry, and light brown. The flowers his mother so loved and so labored for flamed in their narrow borders against the stone wall of the farmhouse; and green vines covered the grey stone wall at the far end of the yard. Beyond this wall were the fields and barns, and Eric could see, quite far away, the cows nearly motionless in the bright green pasture. It was a bright, hot, silent day, the sun did not seem to be moving at all.

This was before his mother had had to be sent away. Her belly had been beginning to grow big, she had been dressed in blue, and had seemed—that day, to Eric—younger than she was ever to seem again.

Though it was still early when they were called to table, Eric’s father and Jamie were already tipsy and came across the fields, shoulders touching, laughing, and telling each other stories. To express disapproval and also, perhaps, because she had heard their stories before and was bored, Eric’s mother was quite abrupt with them, barely saying, “Happy Birthday, Jamie” before she made them sit down. In the nearby village church bells rang as they began to eat.

It was perhaps because it was Jamie’s birthday that Eric was held by something in Jamie’s face. Jamie, of course, was very old. He was thirty-four today, even older than Eric’s father, who was only thirty-two. Eric wondered how it felt to have so many years and was suddenly, secretly glad that he was only
eight. For today, Jamie
looked
old. It was perhaps the one additional year which had done it, this day, before their very eyes—a metamorphosis which made Eric rather shrink at the prospect of becoming nine. The skin of Jamie’s face, which had never before seemed so, seemed wet today, and that rocky mouth of his was loose; loose was the word for everything about him, the way his arms and shoulders hung, the way he sprawled at the table, rocking slightly back and forth. It was not that he was drunk. Eric had seen him much drunker. Drunk, he became rigid, as though he imagined himself in the army again. No. He was old. It had come upon him all at once, today, on his birthday. He sat there, his hair in his eyes, eating, drinking, laughing now and again, and in a very strange way, and teasing the dog at his feet so that it sleepily growled and snapped all through the birthday dinner.

“Stop that,” said Eric’s father.

“Stop what?” asked Jamie.

“Let that stinking useless dog alone. Let him be quiet.”

“Leave the beast alone,” said Eric’s mother—very wearily, sounding as she often sounded when talking to Eric.

“Well, now,” said Jamie, grinning, and looking first at Eric’s father and then at Eric’s mother, “it
is
my beast. And a man’s got a right to do as he likes with whatever’s his.”

“That dog’s got a right to bite you, too,” said Eric’s mother, shortly.

“This dog’s not going to bite me,” said Jamie, “he knows I’ll shoot him if he does.”

“That dog knows you’re not going to shoot him,” said Eric’s father. “Then you
would
be all alone.”

“All alone,” said Jamie, and looked around the table. “All alone.” He lowered his eyes to his plate. Eric’s father watched him. He said, “It’s pretty serious to be all alone at
your
age.” He smiled. “If I was you, I’d start thinking about it.”

“I’m thinking about it,” said Jamie. He began to grow red.

“No, you’re not,” said Eric’s father, “you’re dreaming about it.”

“Well, goddammit,” said Jamie, even redder now, “it isn’t as though I haven’t tried!”

“Ah,” said Eric’s father, “that was a
real
dream, that was. I used to pick
that
up on the streets of town every Saturday night.”

“Yes,” said Jamie, “I bet you did.”

“I didn’t think she was as bad as all that,” said Eric’s mother, quietly. “
I
liked her. I was surprised when she ran away.”

“Jamie didn’t know how to keep her,” said Eric’s father. He looked at Eric and chanted: “
Jamie, Jamie, pumkin-eater, had a wife and couldn’t keep her!
” At this, Jamie at last looked up, into the eyes of Eric’s father. Eric laughed again, more shrilly, out of fear. Jamie said:

“Ah, yes, you can talk, you can.”