The Second Coming (42 page)

Then why not walk? But when he struck out through the woods, he found himself turning against the gyroscope in his head and went round in a circle. He had to stick to the sidewalks like ordinary folk.

Things increased in density and stood apart. He could see around trees. But time ran together. Was it Wednesday or Sunday? He bought a calendar Timex watch. Things increased in value. As he drove the Mercedes his attention was transfixed by the luminous turquoise of a traffic light. It glowed like a huge valuable jewel! He stopped and gazed until it turned into a great hot ruby. Surely red meant go, not stop. He went. A woman in a Dodge pickup cursed him.

He stopped driving and took up golf.

“You want to putt a round?” he asked Jack Curl.

“You got to be kidding. Get Vance or Slocum.”

He got Slocum. Slocum too seemed to like him better. Everybody was relieved that he was sick not crazy, that he was being treated and was getting better. Being sick made him feel better too.

His driving and walking were peculiar, but his putting was deadly. The little hydrogen ions had odd effects. The gyroscope spinning in his head hurt his driving the Mercedes but helped his putting. All he had to do was settle over a putt, wait till the gyroscope steadied and the twisting stopped and zing, the ball flew straight for the cup like a missile locked on target.

Bertie came by. Will Barrett beat him seventeen up on eighteen holes. Bertie looked left and right. “You don't have to turn in a scorecard here, do you?” “No.” “Thank God. It won't affect your handicap.” “That's right.” Bertie winked. “We missed the Seniors here but we're signed up for Hilton Head and the whole Southern tour. We can't miss.”

2

A wiry old man was watering a young pine with a bucket.

Will Barrett watched him for a while. At first the old man appeared as part of the scenery and therefore of no particular moment, old-man-watering-tree-in-front-of-old-folks'-home. Then it occurred to him to wonder. Why would anyone want to water a pine tree with a bucket?

Standing on the porch, he asked him.

The old man frowned and went on watering but presently he replied: “They planted these seedlings too early. They should have waited till the winter months when there is plenty of rain.”

“Seedlings? Those are not seedlings. They're two years old. I know because my wife had them planted.”

“They still need water,” said the old man, not raising his eyes from the pine.

“You know about plants?”

Yes, he did. His name was Lionel Eberhart, born in Kingsport, Tennessee. He had started out as a gardener in Asheville with one old truck, hiring out himself and wife and two sons and one daughter to tend lawns. They weren't afraid of work. He started his own nursery. Before he retired he was wholesaling lots of one hundred thousand rhododendron and laurel to Sears, Roebuck.

“Why did you retire?”

“My wife died. I had three heart attacks. My two sons wanted to put me here. My daughter wanted me to live with her but her husband didn't. So the doctor put me here. But that's all right! They all right! I wouldn't want to live with them! So.” He went to fill his bucket.

“Is that all you can find to do around here, water a pine tree?”

“They got a gardener. Your wife took care of everything. She surely was a nice lady. They got ever' thing around here a fellow would need.” Still, he did not raise his eyes from the small wet pine.

He gazed down at the old man. Quick and wiry, an East Tennessee Yankee, yes, he'd drive his wife, sons, daughter crazy with his puttering. Yes, of course he'd seen the old man before, always outside, walking with his quick stoop, raking leaves, watering trees, pestering the gardener. He'd live another thirty years.

3

Jack Curl was leaving for Hilton Head and an ecumenical meeting between a Greek Orthodox archimandrite, a Maronite patriarch, and the Episcopal bishop of North Carolina, a meeting suggested in fact by Jack Curl. Could Jack Curl reunite Christendom? He laughed, socked himself, and did a turn. Why not? Isn't it just the sort of damn fool thing God might favor? Actually Marion had conceived the idea before she died and even provided the funds.

“You mean that's the sort of thing the Peabody Trust would undertake?” he asked Jack.

“You got it, Will,” said Jack, his laughter turning off like a light.

“And you want me to put Marion's money in a trust to be administered by you.”

“Or Leslie. Or both.”

“Well, which?”

“Take your pick. Then we'll run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it.”

“What does that mean?”

Jack Curl shrugged and looked vague. “You're the lawyer. Check it out with Slocum. It comes down to naming a trustee or co-trustees. I'm glad to serve.”

Jack Curl showed him around St. Mark's before he left, even though Jack must have known that he used to pilot Marion through once a week in her wheelchair. The dining room was pretty and the food good, tables for four, ladies in dresses and hairdos, gents in coats and ties, grace before meals.

“Now,” said Jack, “I'm going to show you something that's going to blow your mind. Not even Marion knew about it. It's strictly off limits to the ladies. Okay. I'm going to show you a bunch of guys having a ball. I spend a little time here myself. A little, ha.”

They climbed steep steps. A door opened into a spacious attic. Tracks and trains ran everywhere through a waist-high landscape. Not children's toy trains but good-sized Pennsylvania diesels, an L & N steam locomotive, a Southern Pacific freight, a Twentieth Century Limited, crossed trestles, ran through tunnels, stopped at stations, switched onto sidings, off-loaded bales of cotton, took on soybean oil. Bars came down at crossings. Bells donged. A mechanical darky on a mule doffed his cap. Lonesome whistles blew. Half a dozen men, old men, operated control panels, switches, water towers, roundhouse turnarounds. Most of the men wore railroader's caps.

“Talk about a nostalgia trip,” whispered Jack Curl.

“Yes,” he said and for some reason thought about Allison standing in the sunlight.

“Highball it, Shorty!” cried Jack Curl to a man wearing a railroader's cap but with a false note in his voice and Shorty did not reply. “Shorty was president of First National of Georgia,” whispered Jack. “You see that guy on the roundhouse? That's Orin Henderson of Henderson Textiles. They're great guys. Come on, I'll introduce you.”

“Later.” He looked at his watch. What was Allie doing? It was four-thirty. The sunlight was yellow. Was she going down into herself? Was the dog worrying about her?

“Who knows, Will, you might take up railroading. You could do worse,” said Jack Curl, his eyes not quite coming round to him.

“No thanks.”

“Why not?”

“I'm taking up senior golf.”

“All
right
!” said Jack.

“Yes.”

“You remember Father Weatherbee, also a known train nut. You'll be in his hands while I'm gone. And damn good hands they are, better than Allstate. Father spent fifty years in the Philippines.”

Father Weatherbee was the ancient emaciated priest whose clerical collar and lower eyelid drooped. One eye had a white rim and spun like a wheel. Smiling, he took Barrett's hand in both of his, two dry hot whispering banyan leaves. He shrugged at Jack Curl. Will Barrett saw something in his eyes.

“Father was an old highballer from Raleigh before he took to persecuting the saints,” said Jack, absently socking fist into palm. “He used to ride the old Seaboard Air Line and never got over it. Right, Father?”

Father Weatherbee said something.

“What's that, Father?” asked Will Barrett, leaning toward him.

“Father Weatherbee has two unusual interests,” said Jack Curl, looking at his wristwatch. “Oh my, I've got to see Leslie before—” He took Will Barrett's hand as if he meant to say goodbye. In the handshake he felt himself being steered closer to the old priest. “Father here believes in two things in this world. One is the Seaboard Air Line Railroad and the other is Apostolic Succession. Right, Padre? Frankly, it sounds more like the ancestor worship of his Mindanao tribesmen, but I don't argue with him. After all, I also get along with Leslie, who has no use for any priests, let alone a succession of priests. So what? You pays your money and you takes your choice.”

“Apostolic Succession?” said Will Barrett, looking from one to the other.

“A laying on of hands which goes back to the Apostles,” said Jack Curl, smiling and nodding at the highballers.

“It occurred,” said Father Weatherbee in a dry hoarse voice. When he spoke, a red bleb formed at the corner of his mouth like a bubble-gum bubble.

“There you go,” said Jack Curl.

Father Weatherbee said something.

“What's that?” asked Will Barrett, cocking his good ear.

“I said he reminds me of a kumongakvaikvai,” said Father Weatherbee, nodding at Jack and blowing out a bleb.

“What's a kumongakvaikvai?”

“It's the dung bird of southern Mindanao. It follows herds of Kumonga cattle and eats dung like your cattle egret. Characteristically the bird perches on the backs of the beasts and utters its cry
kvai kvai."
And Father Weatherbee uttered a sound which could only have been the cry of the bird.

“Ha ha,” laughed Jack Curl, giving Will Barrett the elbow. “I told you they're all characters up here.”

4

“What do you think of these great John Kennedy rockers?” Jack Curl called out on the front porch. “You know I slipped a disc last year and instead of surgery I rocked. I mean really rocked. Do you know you can get a workout in one of these?”

There were at least fifty rocking chairs, damp from the fog, none occupied.

After supper he sat in a rocker and watched a cloud rise from the valley floor. To the left, where the valley narrowed, the cloud seemed to boom and echo against the sides of the gorge.

Suddenly he jumped up, remembering something he meant to ask Jack Curl, even though Jack had left hours ago. Instead, he called Vance.

“Vance, I just thought of something.”

“What's that, buddy?”

“It just occurred to me that Leslie moved all my stuff here before she found out I was sick.”

“Ahmmm.” Vance cleared his throat. “Well, we all knew something was wrong. You were sick. It was only a matter of diagnosis. As a matter of fact, I was me only one who didn't think you were crazy. As for what you got, we going to lick that mother, right? How're you feeling?”

“Fine. But she moved me out before I came back. What did she have in mind?”

“Let me tell you something, Will.”

“All right.”

“Leslie is much woman.”

“Yes.”

“She is some kind of woman, a fine Christian woman.”

“Right. But—”

“You know what she's going to do with St. Mark's?”

“No.”

“Well, she's transferring the convalescents to the new community Marion had planned over on Sourwood Mountain—as soon as we can get it built. And we'll use the present St. Mark's as a hospital with a new wing for radiation patients complete with a new beta cyclotron. I'm sure you'd rather live in the Peabody community. There's no reason for you to have to live in a hospital.”

“The love-and-faith community.”

“Right.”

“I see. Where is the money for all this coming from?”

Vance coughed. “I thought you and Leslie and Slocum had worked that out. Christ, you're a lawyer.”

“You're talking about the Peabody Trust?”

“Yes.”

“There is no Peabody Trust. I am Marion's sole beneficiary.”

“I know, but Leslie had given me to understand that you wanted to carry out Marion's wishes in this—let alone considerations of your own health.”

“What about my health?”

He could feel the shrug through the telephone. “You're going to be following a strict regime from here on out—and you're going to be fine! But let's face it. We don't know a damn thing about Hausmann's Syndrome except how to maintain a patient.”

“Are you talking about maintaining me or committing me?”

“Ha ha. As long as your pH doesn't get over seven point four, you're right as rain. In fact—”

“Yes?”

“We were wondering if you might not run the Peabody community, since you're going to be out there anyway.”

“We?”

“Talk to Leslie. She's another Marion.”

“I see.”

He went up to his room and turned on the stereo. Leslie had even popped in a tape. It was Strauss's
Vier letzte Lieder,
which used to be one of his favorites.

Earlier Jack Curl had introduced him to Warren East, formerly with Texas Instruments, who was also a music lover and had in his suite a digital sound system. “You two guys got it made,” said Jack, reaching deep in his jump-suit pockets. “You can either swap tapes or get together. Warren's got everything that Victor Herbert ever composed.” Again the handshake steering him against Warren East.

He looked at Warren East. Warren East did not look at him.

Leslie had put a book next to his favorite chair. It was the Bible. He picked it up. It opened to a bookmark. He read: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” Leslie had made a note in the margin:
And what lovely hills!

Overhead in the attic the Wabash Cannonball rambled along with a rustle and a roar.

Closing the Bible, he got up fast, causing the gyroscope in his head to twist. He went by arcs down to the porch and sat in a John Kennedy rocker. It was damp. The porch was deserted. The cloud had come out of the valley. Everything beyond the banister rail was whited out. Through a window he caught sight of half of a giant TV screen in the recreation room. Lawrence Welk, still holding his baton, was dancing a waltz with a pretty young blonde.