The Last Western (26 page)

“But I say this to you: there is more to do in this good town of Delphi than to make weapons.

“Yes, there are many things to do, so many great and fine things to do that I say this to you as your friend—your friend, Juan; your friend, Carlos; your friend, Manuel—that instead of being the end of something, this day and this event of your getting fired is the beginning of something.”

A true hush had fallen over the crowd, an uncanny stillness.

Even Goldenblade and the others in the Bimini Lounge were part of it.

The camera, backing away, caught Willie at the medium distance, close enough to see his face but not close enough to show that his eyes were closed.

And while the microphone in the third pew had no trouble relaying his words to the men in the Bimini Lounge, there was no microphone in that church or in that city or indeed anywhere on earth to pick up the strange language that was spoken in his heart.

With a slow, calm but decisive step, he went to the edge of the sanctuary area and jumped up on the communion rail.

The westering sun fell on his face and illuminated a bright banner that hung beside him.

It was a blanket that the Delgado children had given Willie for his personal use, but he had found it so beautiful, with its bright stripes and its intricate pattern of moons and suns and stars, he had hung it in the church as a sign of hope and joy and Eucharist.

“Look at this, men,” he said, placing a hand on the blanket. “Look and see how fine and beautiful this blanket-banner is. Do you think I bought this in Houston or New York or that it was given to us by a rich man? No. You know very well that some of your own children and wives made this wonderful thing, for you all have blankets and other such woven things just like it in your own homes.”

Willie unhooked the green-blue-tan-orange banner from its stand and tossed it over his shoulders, holding out a portion of it to the crowd.

“You have lived with these beautiful blankets so long, you do not know how truly fine they are. And only recently has it occurred to you that others appreciate their fineness and are willing to pay money for them.

“Men and women and children will always need warm blankets, and it is better to have beautiful blankets because people can never have enough beautiful things to look at to remind them of the goodness and beauty of life, especially when there are many ugly things happening to make people sad and angry.

“So you have already made a start in the blanket business. You know how to make the blankets and you have begun to sell them to the world outside Delphi.

“Now, because of what happened today, you have the chance to make the blankets full-time. You have the opportunity to go into this good and useful work as your regular occupation—and leave the job of making weapons to others.”

“The man’s a genius!” cried Goldenblade gleefully. “Why didn’t we think of this blanket angle? Why he’s got them tamed like little fuzzy kittens.”

General Harrison said: “Still they might burn, blow to the insect infinity total field range of the—”

“Not now, Maxie,” said Goldenblade, genially patting the general on the shoulder, “not with this bird around. I remembered a minute ago that I met this man yesterday walking around the plant. Maybe he was hatching his program even then. By God, he’s marvelous. I’m going to start attending Mass here once in a while.”

On the screen a weathered old Mexican worker had risen in the crowd and the microphone carried the thin cry of his used-up voice.

“We have no experience at this,
padre
. We have no place to work. And besides, how would we sell what we made to the outside people who do not even know that Delphi exists?”

“Together we will solve those problems, Samuel. Among so many men, there are many different gifts. Some will be good at organizing the work, some will be good at selling the goods, some will be good at keeping the records. As for the factory—” Willie made a circle with his arms, “our church will be fine for that purpose until we all have the money to build a regular plant.”

A buzzing in the congregation, then another man stood up.

“Surely, this is not correct,” said Pedro, the sacristan of the parish, who went to Mass every morning and said fifteen decades of the rosary before he went to bed at night.

“This is God’s house, not a factory. The Lord Jesus drove out money-makers from the temple in his day. What then do you plan to do? Bring the money-makers into the church of Jesus and thus mock his teaching?”

“Ah, Pedro, it is right to think of certain places as holy,” said Willie kindly. “On the other hand, since Jesus broke up the standard arrangements of the entire world and made everything holy and made man himself holy, every single place man goes is holy. And man can do many holy things, such as making warm blankets for babies and old people and married folk to lie beneath. This is a splendid work for men and women to do because it is something that helps other people, especially those who know what it is to try to sleep on a cold night when there is only a thin blanket at hand.”

Willie gestured, poking the air with his pitching hand.

“The making of a good and beautiful thing by a good person is itself a prayer, so that when our people come together to make their beautiful blankets, they will be praying, they will be worshiping in spirit and in truth. In the new arrangement of the Lord, all the old arrangements are put aside, everything is loosened up, all the walls come down, and we are on the open plains in the fresh wind, and every place is holy and every place is church.

“And I see now how wonderful it will be on Sundays when all of us rest a bit and come back here to the place where we have spent our week, to idle a bit, to break the bread and drink the wine, to thank the Loving One. If in every business people worshiped where they worked, then perhaps the making of unholy things would end.”

“Wha’s that sounding mean?” said the general fuzzily. “Unholy and all that? Burning beginning?”

“He’s talking about dirty books, Maxie,” said Goldenblade. “He’s talking about crud. By God, we could well take example from what he is saying. If we had the rosary recited over the loudspeaker system every day, you wouldn’t see so many of those filthy magazines around the plant. Happier families would result.”

Caught up in the idea, he turned wildly upon the translator.

“Your family happy?” he asked.

“I have no family but a wife,” said the translator.

“What’s wrong?” Goldenblade asked.

“Nothing,” said the translator.

Goldenblade decided that the man was lying and made a note to have him discharged for habitual immorality.

“S’ere any more gin?” the general asked.

“Certainly, Maxie,” said Goldenblade handing the general a fresh bottle. “You might as well head back to Houston now. We’ve got peace in Delphi and this chink-nigra is the one we owe it to. I’m gonna buy him a steak tonight and see if we can’t get some prayer into the plant which is, God knows, smoldering with corrupt morals, rotten families, and homosexual monists.”

When the crowd
had gone, Willie and Clio sat down in the last pew of the church.

The yellow westerly light of the sun had thickened and darkened, and where it met the blue haze that always gathered above the sanctuary, it made a sort of green glow that drifted over the sad statues.

At that hour the church spoke of dead things, and the old Latin words that had been written above the altar in the unremembered times looked forlorn and pathetic, like a letter from a dead person that no one would ever read and that could not be answered: MEMENTO, DOMINE, FAMU-LORUM FAMULARUMQUE TUARUM ET OMNIUM CIR-CUMSTANTIUM.

“What’s it mean?” said Clio.

“It means, Don’t forget anybody,” said Willie.

“Nice. That’s nice.”

Willie’s eyes were closed. He was exhausted; a part of himself had been lost.

“That was a mean mob, man,” said Clio. “You handled it great.”

“They’re great people.”

“But I don’t blame them for the way they felt.”

“Me either, Clio.”

“And you know something? I don’t know if what you did was the answer.”

“Me either.”

“The Mexicans and the blacks had the jobs before the whites. One of them told me that. But look who got fired.”

Willie sighed. He could have slept, but he did not want to sleep.

He had lost some inner thing. What was it? He did not know.

It was all right, he thought, it did not hurt. In fact, he had the feeling that it was right to let it go.

He felt as if he had gone up to a high place, then come down too suddenly.

“They’ll make it work, Clio,” he said. “They can do whatever they want.”

“People have to fight for justice,” said Clio. “It isn’t handed to them.”

“Who handed them anything?”

“You did.”

“I made some words. Is that so much? They will make the justice when they make the blankets. Or they won’t.”

He yawned, then yawned again. He stood up.

“Would you let me go away for a little while, Clio?”

“Sure, man. Why don’t you sack out for a while? I’ll mess around town and we’ll get together later.”

“Fine,” said Willie, and he turned to go.

When he got to the door, he turned back and said, “You’re okay, aren’t you, Clio? You’re not in trouble?”

Clio laughed.

“What you wanna do, make me go to confession? Get outta here.”

Willie waved and went away, leaving Clio in the green-blue shadows.

Clio went to the door and watched him walk away, his shoulders bent a little.

He knew after last night that there was no use talking to him about the thing that had brought him here.

There was no hope for him; he was a child and always would be a child.

Still, watching him disappear around the corner of the Aztec Tap, he felt the tug of their old friendship and he went out on the steps and nearly called out to him.

But he did not call. His reason prevented it. There would never be a way to make him understand the simplest thing about the world.

He sat down on the steps of the church and tried to think.

It was going to be difficult, and he did not know how to proceed. He had to act very quickly now because it was Friday evening and the sales people would be gone.

He had to find the right man, the absolutely right man, and then get away as soon as possible.

Through the quick-falling, green-turning dusk came the great limousine.

It stopped noiselessly at the curb and out of it stepped the silver-maned George Doveland Goldenblade, his mottled face relaxed and smiling as it had not been since the day before his wedding thirty-seven years before.

“You are an usher here, young man?” he said to Clio in a most polite way.

“A friend of the good father,” said Clio, eyeing Goldenblade curiously. “A visitor from a distant place.”

“A friend of the good father—well, isn’t that fine? I’m G. Doveland Goldenblade, K.S.G., beloved founder and president of Doveblade Communications.”

Mr. Goldenblade and Clio shook hands.

“My name is Talazar,” said Clio, “Hector Talazar. And I must say that this is a most happy coincidence. I just been reflecting here on the vagaries and the vicissitudes of life.”

Clio was speaking with an English accent he had been working on for more than two weeks and he was using words he had picked up in several all-night sessions with a special team in the city of Recife, Brazil.

“I happen to be in the area on business, Mr. Goldenblade, and I was just coagulating on the events of the day—the discharge of the employees and the near tumult among the people. A most interesting event from a sociological standpoint.”

“Fascinating,” Goldenblade agreed. “And your friend, the good father, played a key role—one might even say a saving role.”

“Indubitably and forthwith,” said Clio. “But even as that conundrum was happily being resolved, my own dilemma put on the beef, as it were.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My English is most uneven,” said Clio. “I have been out of practice for no little time. The fact is that this very afternoon I had planned to come to your plant to accomplish an important bit of business. My time being mitigated, I was wondering how I should ever find the correct person or persons with whom to coalesce, what with the weekend contravening as is its wont. My sole hope lay in catching an important personage late this afternoon, but at that time this urgent matter had gripped the attention of the local habitants.”

“You are in the blanket industry, Mr. Talazar?”

“I am with the government of Brazil,” said Clio.

Goldenblade’s smile vanished.

“You’re not a monist!”

“I am with the true government of Brazil,” said Clio, clicking both his heels together, “not the rodents who have visited such pestilence upon our land these past months. My garb, you will notice, is casual. My business here is urgent and confidential. I am definitely incognito. You see, even in your great land of freedom, equality and brotherhood, not a few citizens would desire my demise if my true identity were divulged. I hope it will not offend you, sir,” said Clio, lowering his voice a little and selecting the phrases taught him by his coaches, “I hope you will not take it as a criticism of your nation or its people, if I say that at the present time there are many so-called citizens of the republic who are in fact flag-burning, traitorous wretches who have no respect for the spirit of 1776 and who in fact do not even honor their mothers.”

Goldenblade seized Clio’s hand.

“By God, Mr. Talazar, you make a point there I have been harping on myself for any number of years. But come, let’s go into the church here and see what we can do. I take it you wish to purchase arms?”

“You take it absolutely correct,” said Clio. “Arms for freedom, for patriotism, for better families.”

“Senor Talazar,” said Goldenblade, genuflecting before the altar, “I have been waiting, I have been praying, I have been sacrificing daily that Our Lady of Fatima would send me a man of strength such as yourself to deal with this sorry state of affairs. You may or may not know it, but I lost one of the most beautiful ranches in all Latin America at the time this uprising began.”