The Second Coming (28 page)

Moving quickly now, he folded the pages and inserted them with the letter to Lewis Peckham into the larger envelope, which he carefully sealed.

Opening a wall safe, he removed an insurance policy, read it, took down his old Harvard hornbook on Wills & Testaments, and wrote a letter to the Prudential Insurance Company requesting a change in beneficiary. He directed them to send the new policy to Dr. Sutter Vaught of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

So it was that Will Barrett went mad. His peculiar delusion and the strange pass it brought him to would be comical if it were not so perilous. This unfortunate man, long subject to “spells,” “petty-mall” trances, and such minor disorders, had now gone properly crazy. This is how crazy he was. He had become convinced that the Last Days were at hand, that the world had fallen into the hands of the only species which knew how to destroy itself along with all other living creatures on earth, that whenever in history this species had invented a weapon, it had forthwith used it; that it was characteristic of this species that, through a perversity or an upsidedownness peculiar to it, while professing a love of peace and freedom and life, secretly it loved war and thralldom and death and loved them to a degree that it, the species, in these last days behaved like creatures possessed by demons; that the end would come by fire, a fire such as had not been seen in all of history until this century of demons, a fire which would consume the earth. The very persons who spoke most about “people's democracy” or “the freedom and sacredness of the individual” were most likely, he was convinced, to be possessed by demons.

Madness! Madness! Madness! Yet such was the nature of Will Barrett's peculiar delusion when he left his comfortable home atop a pleasant Carolina mountain and set forth on the strangest adventure of his life, descended into Lost Cove cave looking for proof of the existence of God and a sign of the apocalypse like some crackpot preacher in California.

VI

ALLISON SQUATTED IN
the sunlight on the creeper, A coil of rope slung over each shoulder, a double metal block in one hand, single in the other, which she hefted absently as she gazed up at the stove.

It was getting cold. A cirrus feather of ice crystals stood in six miles high from Canada. During the day she and the dog followed the sun to keep warm. At night she curled up in the NATO sleeping bag. How to heat the greenhouse? It was either move the stove or buy a new Peerless kerosene heater. But it offended her sense of thrift and propriety to waste the stove. And she didn't want to stink up the greenhouse. There was plenty of wood. Pine cones and dead chestnut from the forest and all manner of charred timber from the ruin. So the stove was the thing. Anyhow, she was a hoister, a mistress of mechanical advantage. And here was something to hoist. If she could hoist this monster of a Grand Crown stove, she could do anything in life.

But first count your money. Make your list, assemble your words, then visit the hardware store for blocks and tackle, wrenches, WD-40, plastic pipe and sleeves. Next, Washau Motors for creepers (she would need four, she figured, one for each foot of the Grand Crown).

It was only after she left the hardware store, coils of rope slung over each shoulder, plastic pipe tied in a surprisingly light bundle, backpack heavy with blocks, pulleys, hooks, and wrenches—she had all the words and got the things without pointing—and walked in the service entrance of Washau Motors, that she realized she had forgotten the most important word of all—no, not forgotten his name, had never had his name, never even thought of him as having a name. She had two names though, creeper and Jerry the parts man.

A mechanic was moving on a creeper under a car. It was only when he winked at her that she realized she had been watching him or rather watching the action of the creeper with its queer swiveling wheels.

She frowned and turned away, fell back to reconnoiter. How to get four creepers without the name of the creeper owner? It took a plan. She had one. She had a name, but she needed another. Next to a field of used cars she spied a husky young black man washing a Ford Galaxy on a rack. He wore a
Go Wolves
sweatshirt. She knew about the Wolves. She came up alongside him. He seemed pleasant and even deferred to her with a small courtesy, turning ever so slightly toward her as if he meant to share with her his hosing down the Galaxy.

“Do you play with the Wolves?”

“Yeah,” he said, frowning. She perceived that he had second thoughts about his courtesy and decided to make up for it.

“Offense?”

He looked at the sky. “Cornerback.”

“Are you going to win State?”

“You better believe it.”

“I had better?”

“What?” he said heavily.

“Are you acting like somebody else?” she asked, eyeing him.

“What?” he asked quickly.

“Nothing. I hope you win.”

“Why, thank you.”

“What's the man's name here? I'm supposed to see him but I can't remember his name.”

“The man?” He almost looked at her and almost smiled, trying, she saw, to figure out whether she was talking as she might imagine he talked. “You mean the boss or the owner?”

“The owner.”

“Oh. Mister Barrett.” Did she imagine it or was there a certain affection in his voice? Or was it a smiling indulgence?

“Right. John Barrett.”

“No no. Will. Mister Will Barrett.”

“Will Barrett.”

Will Barrett.
She repeated it to herself. How did the name go with him? How to take the name? She tried to locate him in the name. Was he a kind of Will Scarlet of the woods?

“What do you think of him?” This question, even she knew, was not suitable, but what did she have to lose? She needed to hear others speak of him.

“Of who? Mister Barrett? He nice as can be. He going to send me to Princeton”—he began but suddenly, taking thought, changed his mind and became chesty and huffy—“why you axing me?” His lip stuck out like Ludean's. “Like I told him, I already got six scholarship offers from the ACL prior to his.”

Prior. She gazed at him curiously. Why did he flip-flop so fast, from courtesy to huffiness? “Why—” she began and fell silent. On the other hand, if you are curious, why not ask? Is there a law against asking? “Why are you pouting?”

“What's that?” He ducked his head toward her.

“Is it because your hands are cold and this is a poor job compared with a job inside as a mechanic or a salesman?”

“What? What you talking about, pouting?” He stared at her, open-mouthed. “Lady, what you talking about?”

“I was just wondering—”

“Lady, if you got any questions, ax inside.”

“Very well. Thank you and good luck in the game.”

“Sho,” he said, nodding. “Have a nice day.”

“I will. Goodbye.” For some reason people had stopped saying goodbye. Very well.

Suddenly she noticed something. She could say goodbye! She wasn't afraid to state her business, say goodbye, and leave! She wasn't afraid of hurting feelings. No, her desire to please everybody had given way to an immense curiosity. What in the world made people so jumpy?

Jerry the parts man was sitting behind a counter reading a magazine named
Hustler.
She rapped. He looked up, frowning.

“Are you Jerry?”

“Yeah'm.”

“I came by to pick up my creepers,” she declared. She had no trouble making a flat declaration.

“What creepers?”

“Didn't Mr. Barrett call?”

“Oh yeah. You a friend of Mr. Barrett's?” His face had a new hooded expression. She frowned.

“Yes.”

“Uh huh.”

She was astounded. Was he leering at her? “I'll take four creepers,” she said.
Don't give me that hustler look, you pimplehead, or I'll hustle you upside the head.
Why did she assemble these words, taking them not from the young black at the washrack but from Ludean the cook?

“He didn't mention four.”

“I mentioned four. Call him. Tell him that will leave only ninety-six from the hundred you ordered by mistake.”

“Yes ma'am.”

While he stacked the creepers for her, she used the two nylon cords she'd already cut, one to lash the creepers together and lash the half-dozen lengths of ten-foot plastic pipe atop the creepers (the pipe as strong and light as weightless moon pipe), the other to tie to the bottom creeper as a pull cord.

Off she went down Church Street, backpack heavy with blocks, creepers rattling behind her, but feeling strong. Pavement lasted to the country club. Then: would the creepers creep on a dry golf links?

They did. But now as she surveyed stove and terrain, she had her doubts. There must be a better way than shoeing each foot of the Grand Crown with a creeper and dragging it over the littered ruin. She was a hoister, not a dragger.

The great stove had come out of the dark earth with a crack and a suck, toots popping. It reminded her of her father extracting a molar. The only trouble, requiring three false starts, came from knotting the sling properly and gauging the angle of pull in such a way as to clear the cellar stairwell with no more than a bump or two. A problem this and therefore a pleasure in the solving. But a pain also: the price of the rope. Figuring the weight of the stove at around eight hundred pounds—she could barely lift one corner as she reckoned she could barely lift a two-hundred-pound man—she calculated she needed an eight-to-one mechanical advantage. How to get it? with a tackle of one double block and one triple block! But there was another calculation: lifting the stove twenty-five feet would require not twenty-five but 5 times 25 equals 125 feet of rope! She settled on a half-inch W.P.S. nylon (mfg. in Madison, Georgia) at 35¢
@
foot, break strength 5,500 lbs. $42.75!!! The blocks were even worse; 2 simple pulleys @ $4.87 (for making a single block and tackle for smaller loads), 2 Wichita Falls steel double blocks
@
$29.52, 1 triple block @ $43.71! Her cash reserve was devastated. She counted her money: $171.77—and she still had to buy plastic pipe and sleeves, stove polish, Brasso, and her meager groceries. But what blocks! Smooth satiny metal good for years of hoisting. And what a rope! Even as the blocks closed above her and the great ungainly molar of a stove popped out of its socket, the tackle running so smoothly through the blocks that she could pull with one hand, the tail of the rope lay loosely in her other hand as limber, supple, and heavy as a snake. There was always use for such a rope! In fact: why not rig a line from one chimney to the lonesome pine by the greenhouse, hang the stove on a pulley, and let it down the gentle slope like a trolley? Okay, except that, with her feel for angles and hefts, she gauged the distance from near chimney to greenhouse: yes, she could stretch the rope with the block and tackle as tight as you please, tighter than barbed wire, the break strength of the rope would stand it, but not the chimney. Her eye told her this. To clear the rubble and laurel and to allow for the down drag of the stove, she'd have to rig the rope high on the blackened chimney. The mortar mightn't hold. She couldn't take the chance.

Double half-hitching the tail around a stump of laurel, she covered the cellar hole with shards of stout two-by-six lumber and let the stove down.

Now that it was landed and only now did she give herself leave to take a good look at it.

What a stove! It was a castle of a stove, a rambling palace of a stove, a cathedral of a stove, with spires and turrets and battlements. A good six feet high and eight feet wide, it was made of heavily nickeled iron castings bolted together. Timidly she rubbed the metal with one finger. It was dirty but not rusty. Panels of porcelain enamel, turquoise blue for the oven doors and the four warming closets, little balconies jutting out head-high, snowy white for the splashback, were fused to heavy cast iron between frames of nickel. Bolted on one side was a nickel-iron box lined with heavy copper and fitted with a spigot. A water reservoir! On the other side, the firebox with a bay window of a door glazed with panes of mica, some crazed, some crystallized, but all intact. She opened the fire door. Inside was a grate, barely used to judge from the blacking, evidently a coal grate with four sides curling up like heavy petals, but observe: the end grates were attached by a single bolt and easily removable to accommodate logs, three-foot logs! Behind the firebox and attached by a short drawbridge loomed a squat Romanesque tower, yet another heater, it seemed, crowned by a nickeled dome, a great urn top fitted in turn with an ornamental temperature indicator (unbroken!). What was this? a newfangled 1899 water heater? (No, there was the copper reservoir which heated from the firebox.) A separate coal heater for sticking through kitchen wall into dining room? With a flue arrangement served by the main firebox so that, except in very cold weather, the two rooms could be heated from the firebox? She would see.

An hour she allowed herself and the dog to inspect her treasure in the sunlight, enough time to make sure it was in one piece and not only not rusted but, under the soot and grease and ashes, new. It must have been purchased shortly before the house burned, the super-stove of the nineteenth century, installed in the huge kitchen where during the fire it had the good fortune to settle early through the burning joists and into the cooled damped-down cellar where fire wouldn't burn. A great eighty-five-year-old brand-new stove! Tut can keep his gold mummy case.

Carefully, as the sunlight came full in her face, bejeweling her eyelashes, she sprayed the bolt on the coal grate with WD-40 and attached the two crescent wrenches (10” Fullers, $7.95 each!). The nut held tight, but WD-40 seeped between metal. She wedged the inside wrench and took the outside in her strong boy's hands: no way for you to go, friend, but around. It went.

A decision must be made. If the Grand Crown could not be dragged or hoisted, how to get it to the greenhouse? Piece by piece, and why not, since she had to dismantle it anyway to get it into the potting room? Then I will, disassemble it piece by piece, clean and oil each bolt, polish the nickel, black the iron, wipe porcelain with a clean cloth. Then rebuild it in the potting room against the partition of double-hung sashes, open one to admit the drawbridge and connect the urn of a tower in the greenhouse proper—enough to keep the frost off her greens?