The Last Western (61 page)

“I’m here—out here with the people,” said Willie.

“If your pilot will taxi your plane over here, you see, we can have the welcome. The President has a speech.”

“The people are all around us here, Brother McCool. I am going to speak to them. I don’t know if we are near you or not.”

“You are at the wrong concourse—the A concourse,” said Archbishop McCool. “The President is
here
, at B.”

The people were streaming across the runways to the place where Truman had stopped the plane.

“Look at the people. So many coming out to see the pope,” Willie said with a sigh. “Perhaps you see them from where you are, Brother McCool.”

“If your pilot would turn around… ,” McCool said, but his voice now was lost in the roar of the mob.

“I have to see them—to let them see me,” Willie said into the radio microphone. Then, leaving the pilot’s cabin, he went to the door of the plane.

When the door opened and he stood before them, the people sent up a roar that seemed to move the aircraft and the frail figure standing in the sunlight.

Joto found a portable microphone, plugged it into the radio, then, hurrying through the plane, brought the mike close to Willie’s mouth.

When the tower heard his voice and spied him standing there, the control supervisor switched the signal to the public address system so that suddenly above the persistent hubbub of the crowd, Willie’s words were clear, though his voice was worn and tired, the voice of an old man.

“Perhaps we have simplified, falsely simplified. I do not know. Being only a man, I do not know.”

The crowd roared,
No!

“Nothing else seems to have worked so very well. And yet—what has happened before should not cast us down.

“We have got to try the brand new now—that is why we are here. To try what we started somewhere long ago and then forgot—for other things.”

That was all he said—a meaningless group of phrases, thought most of those who listened, not a message at all. But then that did not matter. That faded red-gold substance that was him—that was the message they wanted to grasp or heroize or smash.

They smashed into the plane now, and Willie shouted to them to be careful of themselves. Arms stretched out to grab him. He shouted again, but then they began to swim before him, and he staggered back into the plane.

Archbishop McCool’s voice, urgent now, came crackling over the radio.

“The President is here. Concourse B. President Shryker?”

Benjamin led Willie to his seat.

“You must eat now, you
must
,” said Benjamin.

“In a while,” said Willie, but he knew now he was very weak.

The crowd swirled about the plane. Up close they are different, Willie thought abstractedly. He could see an old woman holding up a statue of Saint Francis of Assisi.

A new shrill voice came over the radio.

“Your Holiness, this is President Shryker. Welcome to the United States. I’m sorry there’s this mix-up in our meeting. However, we’re sending a police escort out to your aircraft. There’s a special white limousine for yourself and your companions. This car will take you down through Manhattan and then on to the Regent Complex where we hope to have a more formal welcoming ceremony. There will be Secret Service men in the cars before you and after you, of course. We understand your own service personnel are arriving very shortly. Is that correct?”

“What is he talking about?” said Willie.

Felder took the microphone.

“Mr. President, this is an aide to His Holiness. Yes, the security service and other members of the papal party will be arriving in a large aircraft in the next twenty minutes. We look forward to seeing you in the complex.”

Joto, Felder and Benjamin talked animatedly among themselves.
Are they arguing
? Willie wondered. He felt faint again.

Felder, smiling a little, leaned over the seat before him, holding a bowl filled with broth.

Willie looked at the broth for a time, trying to decide whether to take it.

You are fainting
, he told himself.
You have to be awake or it will all be lost.

So he took the broth and very slowly sipped it. It was hot and it tasted like beef broth, and he sipped a little more and he did not taste that other substance that was in the broth that was not beef, but when he looked out at the crowd once more he saw them with great clarity as if they were actors in a movie spectacle.

Flashing red lights came up to the plane, and he felt himself walking unsteadily out of the plane on the arms of others. He did not hear the crowd shouting as a crowd but only individual voices and he tried to wave but it seemed a great effort to raise his arm.

He was in the big white car now and sirens were screaming and they were streaking across a field.

Someone handed a thermos to Mr. Grayson, who opened it and held it for Willie so that he could drink.

“Dear Mr. Grayson,” said Willie. “We are only in the third and I am going all the way.”

Thatcher Grayson’s eyes lighted.

“You are pitching wonderful,” he said. “As always. Drink this. It will keep you throwing hard.”

Keep throwing hard
, he thought.
Keep throwing the hard high ones, or no, low.
He sipped the broth again and felt the warmth come into him and also the detached feeling.

“Six innings more and keep throwing hard,” he said. “Who’s up in the fourth?”

“He does not sound good,” said Joto.

“He is tired,” said Thatcher Grayson. “So tired.”

“Need only enough to finish,” said Willie from far away.

“Finish what?” said Joto.

And Willie’s eyes, which had started to close, opened and fastened on Felder’s.

“Brother Herman,” he said. “Who knows if you do not know?”

Benjamin, Joto and Thatcher Grayson looked at Felder, as if to ask a question.

“His fast has taken its effect,” Felder said.

On each side of the car, the people lining the streets shouted the quick, unthought expressions, releasing feelings that were in them that they did not know were there. And some who came to mock and taunt the Mad Pope, seeing him, became speechless. Others found themselves shouting things out of their childhood that later they could not remember and would deny having said.

Many wept openly. They saw him for a second, two seconds, the car was moving so fast. He looked like a thin red-gold old man, withered and ill, and seeing him moved them to cry out those unexpected things, and Willie tried to see them but the car was going fast and the broth had caused him to see things differently.

He tried to figure out what had changed but it was too difficult and he thought perhaps he was only passing out from hunger.

He saw Benjamin in the jump seat very clearly and he knew Benjamin was praying the Silent Prayer, and there at Benjamin’s side was Truman and the noise made Truman tremble and the noise was building as they went on into the city.

Willie let go of the thermos but Grayson caught it and handed it back to him.

“Do you remember Chicago, Mr. Grayson?” said Willie. “Chicago? I mean when we were there, when Clio doubled off the right center field wall the day they said in the newspapers he couldn’t hit?”

“So well,” said Grayson.

“In right center it is hard to hit the wall. Do you remember how glad he was?”

“I shall never forget,” said Grayson. “And you, dear son—that day you threw pitches such as men have never seen before or since.”

“Poor Clio. How can we see Clio again?”

Willie started to let go of the thermos again, and Thatcher Grayson took it from him and then took Willie’s hands and folded them around the cup.

“What is this soup?” Grayson said.

“Just beef broth with some vitamins I put in it,” Felder said without turning around.

“It seems to be helping very little, Herman,” said Grayson.

“I have lost my pitch now,” said Willie in a sleepy voice. “I have got to finish with ordinary pitches.”

“You can do it,” Grayson said. “Besides, you haven’t lost the pitch. No one can hit anything you throw.”

“Never learned the curve,” said Willie. “Never learned anything—only what I started with. Now… .”

The crowds were thickening along the walks. The big car slowed down. The high city was suddenly before them.

Opening his eyes, Willie struggled up from his seat in the back of the car.

“Look at them!” Felder said with awe.

As far as they could see, there was nothing but people—millions of people, more people gathered together than ever before in the history of the city.

They were massed along the great avenue where the heroes had once ridden in triumph. They hung from the windows of the once-proud skyscrapers. They swarmed over fountain and monument. They packed themselves deep and thick from the edges of the avenues to the glass panes of the airline offices and brokerage firms and fashionable shops.

The car moved more slowly still, and the crowd stirred and moved like a giant slug, and there was an emotion in the air that was like a scent.

Suddenly Willie pushed the button that opened the glass dome of the vehicle and at the same time elevated that section of the seat in which he sat, flanked by Thatcher Grayson and Joto.

“Put it down!” Felder shouted from the front. “There are maniacs out there!”

Willie stood up and held out his arms and the roar of the crowd beat against him.

Both Thatcher Grayson and Felder tried to pull him down gently, but Willie had become joined to the emotion of the people and with one part of himself he saw what they saw and felt what they felt and, strengthened a little, he waved his arms in an imploring way.

As the car slipped farther into the uproar, the shouts of the people came faster—strange cries that had not been heard in streets before, except once, in a forgotten time.

Lord Jesus, have mercy!

Save us, Lord!

Jesus, Lord, give—

“You need to see with your own eyes,” he said to them, and he tried to look upon their individual faces, to reassure them one by one, but there were too many of them and the car kept moving and the noise echoing up and down the long, wide avenue was like a true storm that needed something to wear itself out upon, and he was that something.

He made the sign of Jesus over all of them on both sides and then made it again very slowly and still a third time, trying to send something to them that they could use even though he knew they would not use crosses any more, ever.

Willie! Willie! Willie!

The old chant began somewhere behind them, and when it caught up to their car, Willie stretched out his arms, leaning to this side and that. Reaching up, the people tried to touch him.

Leaning backward and twisting his body, Joto held fast to Willie’s legs, fearing that he would be pulled from the car. The crowd wailed and moaned like a beast starving.

“Get down!” shouted Felder. “They will kill you!”

Willie looked down at Felder and Felder seemed far away and all that Willie knew did not seem important, and Felder raised his arms, motioning him to lower the seat, but Willie paid no attention, and of all the pictures taken that day, there was one picture taken at that moment that was more interesting than others. It showed Felder lifting his arms like the leader of an orchestra, and he seemed in that picture to be directing a mammoth demonstration that only God could fully comprehend.

Up Fifth Avenue they went, igniting each block into a new burst of noise, up past the great broadcasting studios and the old cathedral of Saint Patrick, and the sound swelled after them and rose up on either side and rose up before them until there was nothing now but a hurricane of sound, and they were in the eye.

Willie! Willie! Willie!

There were black people and brown people and white people and people of yellow skin and old people and young people and rich people and well people and beast people and spirit people, and he blessed them again even though the did not want to be blessed and did not want anything they could give name to—but only to see and if possible to touch, this madman, this saint, this freak, this joke, this devil, this fool, this something much greater or much worse than anything they would ever be, this something they could use as a target for the drifting rage that was their only vitality.

But whatever they wanted in their million unknown hearts, whatever they had come to get, what they received was a different gift, a surprise that they could scarcely have hoped for and that gave their chorus its peculiar intensity.

For as he rode on before them, the sad Oriental eyes roving this way and that as if trying to find a place to rest, the red-white hair turning in the sun, the thin, even bent frame swaying to the motion of the car, the arms little more than sticks waving under tattered cloth—they saw he too was doomed, a part of the hopeless cargo. He became, in their eyes, the confirming sign of what they had long looked for, the enfleshed captain of their guilty secret. A thrill went shivering through them:
That he should go before them and the bloodred circle close exactly as it had begun.

I know
, he seemed to say, with slow-moving arms and the old sad smile forming and reforming on his drawn face,
I know and I accept
.

Thatcher Grayson pulled at his arm and pointed ahead.

And Willie saw that dream-driven structure once more.

It was there, like a tree, like any plain thing, and the dream fell away from it. Abstractedly, with the detached feeling that he could seemingly invoke at will now, he thought that this immense place would one day be a burial ground and that men would come here to remember all that they had wrecked and even pay tribute to the act of wrecking.

The sun slipped under a cloud so that the bulk of the structure was shadow and only its top rim showed life, and over the rim stretching away, sickly clouds roiled and scuttled in the sky as if this building made war against all that lay beyond it and could not stand on earth in any condition of peace with anything above or under or outside its own possessed presence.

The crowd, coiling and pressing forward, forced the limousine to stop.