Chapter 6
John Knock was waiting for her. Himself a bit the worse for wear, what with the dried sweat and ground in dirt, overly long errant locks sticking out in all the wrong places. Arms covered with scratches, some of them having bled and dried in a smear down forearms muscular as some men's thighs. Brown-black eyes still impossible to read as they locked onto hers. Appearing even larger indoors, what with the absence of mountains to lend perspective on the size of things in the universe in general, what with the indoor scale being set for the average human, which he was certainly not. Looking impossibly out of place in the lobby of the Medical Center. As though an oversize GI Joe doll stuffed inside a too-small doll house. And something else--in an old cardboard box at his feet, with a couple of holes punched in the side, through the which a cat paw poked first through one then the other, one then the other, one then the other--Fletcher! Smelling her, sensing it now the absolute best time to emit a shrill skweee-ooo! skweee-ooo!
Liz, not understanding, about to hustle Donica straight past the man staring at her daughter.
"Mother. That's him."
"That's who, dear?"
"John Knock."
"That ... is John Knock."
"Yes."
"Oh Lord." This said with a deep tremble in the larynx as though she had just heard an announcement that the end of the world would be taking place in five minutes on aisle three. Heads tilting back as they drew closer to John Knock, both women's eyes rolling up, taking in the measure of something which had no true measure. Something outside the normal ken, which required fresh instincts, instinct itself warning that old responses would be useless in this surprise new arena. One went with the flow. Did not stiffen up or crushing would result.
He smiled at her.
And in that instant, Donica knew for sure. Connected the dots and the dots revealed the triangle, the strongest form in the universe. Dot one, her gasp of surprise when the giant lifted her in her car. Dot two, the peace in her heart as she rested like an animal on the branch in the tree in the canyon. Dot three, the smile of John Knock.
Solomon had once described such a rare thing. Perhaps in a vision while fasting just outside the Holy of Holies, had foreseen the smile of John Knock and made note of it later in the famous poem. But until now she had never quite grasped what the great King over all Jerusalem was trying to tell her, never gotten the full picture of Solomon's envisioned bridegroom, simply yet aptly depicted as chief among ten thousand.
The power of the smile of John Knock lay more in what it wasn't than what it was. It wasn't the smile of a pretty boy, huckster or seducer. Nor the smile of a self-satisfied man, a plain man, a shy man, a rich man or an evil man. No, it was more the smile of a man who understood arithmetic better than most, who understood that the language of mathematics was not simply something to be memorized in order to pass, but rather something to be breathed in and out as the language of all living souls. The smile of John Knock, directed as it was into Donica's soul, was simply a carrier of a basic mathematical equation and its immediate corollary. One plus one equals two, which when it did so ultimately produced three, the strongest number. Solomon again understood this corollary, perhaps at the same time as he'd witnessed in a vision John Knock's smile, and had foretold Donica's destiny, hiding the words in a proverb until the time was right to reveal their meaning to her: A strand of three cords is not easily broken.
Three cords. Contained within John Knock's smile to her was the archetypal corollary life force. John Knock plus Donica Kelly equaled two. Which would then equal three when the baby came, the John-Donica child.
She understood it all the moment he smiled. That the power and principle by which the peoples of the world existed was simply one plus one. And she understood something quite otherly else: that this was all that mattered. All. Everything else was simply something which profited nothing. Was vanity of vanities.
The universe must have agreed, for it created some space for the extraordinary moment. And when the universe was through doing that, through removing Liz, and the cat, and the various and sundry others, it was just the two of them standing there. As if there were only two people not only in the room, but in the entire world. At which point, it happened. It came from deep within her, from a place she hadn't realized even existed. A place perhaps understood better by the Eastern philosophers. From her soul. Which was, she was just now learning, was somewhere located in her belly. Of course. Christianity was an Eastern philosophy. Jesus himself had described what would happen once the truth truly struck one. Why, once that happened, rivers of living water would begin to flow from the belly.
Which began to happen, the flowing rivers from the belly, which felt better than anything she'd ever felt before and which was why Donica did what she did next.
Donica smiled back.
And knew that it was the first smile of her life. In times past, she had formed what the world had told her was a smile, when, for example, she had felt mirth, or had grinned, widened her lips and cheeks in this form of communication or that. Perhaps to make a point, or to help another feel at ease, to be polite under a poorly told joke from a well-meaning relative, or perhaps as a form of self-defense, as a way of keeping things bearable in the myriad of day to day human social relations she was a part of.
And understood all those supposed smiles of social convenience to be counted as nothing. Because this smile, returned into the smile of John Knock, was the first smile of her life. Of her true life, the one which began when he lifted the Jag, the life which would cause one plus one to equal two, at which point two would soon be three. The two smiles rushed together, connecting them at the root of their souls, defining that space for the first time, showcasing it, blessing it, hallowing it. And giving her a new ability. The ability to see, feel, taste, touch and understand directly from her soul, bypassing the faulty machinery of the natural body in favor of something much more accurate, more powerful, more real. A power as that of clairvoyance. Clear vision. The ability to truly see. Where once, as in the manner of Jesus' blind man, she had seen with her natural eyes herself and other people as trees walking, she now saw with the eyes of her soul the truth in John Knock's dark eyes. Could read what they were saying. Could understand for the first time what was in his heart, soul and mind.
His heart, soul and mind, his strand of three cords, were all saying one thing. One word. A word which, if one was truly honest about it, was the only word worth saying. The word which God had spoken when He had created the universe. The first and only word God had needed to speak. The first word spoken and, after all was finally done, all was completed, would at the last be the only word still remaining, all the others having served their purpose and being needed no longer, gathered up and cast into the fire. The Word which formed the first half of the name of Christ Himself. It was this word which came to her through the smile of John Knock.
YES
"You saved my cat," Donica said. "But however did you do it? I cannot imagine it."
"I called to him," John Knock said.
"And he came?"
"He came."
"No. It's not possible. He would never have come to you. He would have been frightened after the incident with the car. He would have run deep into the hills, and reverted to a wild state, and menaced mice, birds, and other creatures."
"No. Fletcher's not like that. In his heart he wanted to return home. And he smelled your scent on me. On my hands, where your scent was the strongest."
"What?" Liz said.
"He had me by the ankles, Mother," Donica said. "My scent rubbed off on his hands."
"Listen," he said. "I must be going. But I wanted to give you my card and make sure you were all right."
Going? Donica felt something vibrating inside her. A bad feeling, which brought a decided weakness to her outer extremities, as though fainting might be the final result. Seconds before, the unive
rse had restored the normal order of things, returned the humdrum it had whisked out of sight in order that two souls might connect. Now, with the humdrum restored, in the aftermath, there was the faint sensation about her of settling dust. A grinding dust. A grittiness. Something to be walked in and when day was done, to be washed off the feet before infection set in. The dust that filled every pore, every crack, no matter how small. Until it caused the complete subatomic breakup of whatever it covered. Until the whole thing was just a big dust heap.
A card was in his hand. She accepted it, felt a thousand possibilities process through before the words eliminated them all but one, one she'd not have supposed.
JOHN KNOCK
Sculptor
Civic Displays * Ironworks
Fountains * Curiosities
There was a toll-free phone number, and an address on Seventh Street, an area which she knew to be a tough one, down by the Greyhound terminal. She instantly felt sorry for him. This was Los Angeles. How many of the eighteen million residents of the area's 6,400 square miles had business cards imprinted with their dreams? All eighteen million, that's how many. Ask anybody who served you a hot dog about their dream. They'd hand you a card. In his case, the dream was to sculpt. Perhaps one day even create something worthy of a full-scale civic display, something to be unveiled on Independence Day someplace in the Midwest, in a park or plaza nobody had ever heard of, heralded by a High School band and grand showy speeches by the white-haired local political hacks.
Perhaps one day. But not this day. The address on Seventh gave him away. And the pathetic attempt to look legitimate by having a toll-free number. A toll free number to the pit of Hell. A place called in to, but never out of. She could see it in her mind. A tenement of some sort, or perhaps a moldering space on the third floor of some defunct office building, next door to somebody who sold Mexican videotapes and printed up fake social security cards.
Seventh Street. Maybe he made a living, or maybe he welded at some Long Beach dry dock days and sculpted nights. Maybe he made a living on Seventh Street. It could be said, perhaps, that it was an area where a struggling artist could manage the rental on a loft without much trouble, assuming he had a few sales coming in from some sort of bread and butter product, something which would attract the attention of visiting goobers from back East, something, say, along the order of statues of bears cut from large sections of tree trunk with a chainsaw, or maybe burl wood clocks with Elvis' face smirking out from underneath a half-inch layer of polyurethane. Stuff which could be loaded on an 18-wheeler along with a half-load of toilet seat covers and shipped to a backyard someplace where it would stand guard over a couple of rusting cars with chickens living in them. Yes, John Knock would have subsistence sales, not much more than that, and some local cash inventory, perhaps from some mundane source such as the Rose Bowl swap meet, or a space at Venice Beach in the height of the summer tourist season. She had a sudden image of him spending the week welding together a bunch of small, indoor water fountains and making an unusually good profit on such a Sunday, and celebrating with a bag of a dozen Big Macs, wolfing them down shamelessly, alone in his loft. One corner of which was taken up with one work which wasn't for sale, a hunk of marble out of which was slowly appearing a masterpiece along the lines of the Pieta, a true rendering in visible fashion of the contents of his soul which the world wouldn't recognize or pay anything for, not until long after he was dead. Sculptor.
"On the back of the card is the number of the police impound where they're taking the Jag," he said. "The cops were talking about your civil liability for the fire, but I told them they'd be up to their walkie-talkies in lawyers if they even think about it."
"My father's law firm will never let them hang a civil liability rap on me."
"Your dad's a lawyer?"
"Retired. But still has a lot of powerful friends."
"Donica?" Liz said.
"Mother! Wait outside! And take the cat!" An uncharacteristic sharpness to the outburst. Liz wilting under it. Hurt, even. Having never been spoken to in quite that way before by her only daughter. And obeying, picking up the box, which jumped this way and that as the cat inside shifted his weight around, Liz, disappearing through the doors, leaving Donica and John to continue their awkward exchange in the aftermath of the connection of their souls.
"What shall we do?" She said, feeling foolish.
"About what?" he said.
"I don't know. I'm confused." About the smile, you idiot, she thought. About the Yes that I felt coming from you. About the entire rest of our lives. About making a baby. About you being my man and me being your woman. About Sunday morning brunches after church. About you learning to cheat to win at cards with my father. About when to discipline the children, and how to do it. About you giving up wearing your favorite old T-shirt and making just the smallest attempt to look presentable on Saturday mornings. About stupid marital arguments over who takes out the trash. About me complaining about my wrinkles and you telling me that I'm still the most beautiful woman in the world to you. About who will die first and leave the other old and alone. "I guess I mean about the Pinto I wrecked. I suppose you were taking it to that Government agency that pays a thousand dollars for old heaps running or not."
"No," he said.
"No what?"
"Forget about it," he said.
"At least let me pay for the cost of cleaning up the mess it made at the bottom of the canyon."
"Not necessary," he said. "I shouldn't say this out loud, my insurance agent would probably shoot me if he heard me, but I really feel like your accident in the Pinto was my fault. I shouldn't have been driving the thing myself, let alone suggesting you drive it. The thing had a loose ball joint. I was certain the tie rod was eventually going to separate, so I chained it just in case."
"You can't go," she said. "When we met, something happened. Something passed between us."
There. It was out. Taking all her courage to change the subject. Everything now depended upon his next statement.
"Uh, I just wanted to return your cat."
"John. You saved my life today. And just now. We had a moment. I'm sure you felt it. John?"
"Are you sure you're okay?" He said.
"Yes. I'm fine. Whatever that is."
"Good-bye," he said.
And with that, John Knock turned and started walking out of her life. And stopped, turning. "I lied just now. I'm not normally in the habit. You're right. We had a moment. I felt it."
Liz bustled in. "I was just on the phone to the Carson Law Firm. With John Carson himself. He saw the color changes I emailed this morning. Loves the puce! Can you believe it! He was completely sympathetic and understanding. He told me there was no need for a meeting, that it was just a formality. He intended to hire us all along. He's e-mailing our contract in the next hour!"
"Mother? Where's the cat?"
"The cat? Oh my goodness! I guess I got so excited about my phone call I left him on the sidewalk!"
The box was empty, with a cat-sized exit hole in its side.
"Fletcher's gone."
"Fletcher!" John Knock bellowed. The cat appeared from underneath a beige Camry and with quick short steps covered the distance to the man, allowing himself to be scooped up like a baby.
"I'm not a real sculptor," John Knock said. "The truth is, I weld at the shipyards most weekdays. Weekends, I make coffee tables out of old cars. I have them crushed into a cube which I use for the base of the table, then I top it with a piece of glass with the car's emblem embedded in it."
"Who buys such a hideous thing?" Donica asked.
"South Americans," he said. "I sell as many as I can make to a distributor who has clients in Argentina, Chile, and Peru. That's where the Pinto was headed. For Peru. It was a special order. But it's all working out. Better than I thought. I'm going to crush up the burnt remains of the Pinto into a cube any
way. Don't you see the beauty of it? The car was famous for exploding. So I'm using one that exploded. I'll charge an extra thousand for that little tidbit of authenticity."
"Donica, we've got two weeks before Carson wants us to start," Liz said. "Now let's go. I need to get you settled before I go see Bertrand. Just before I got here, the news reported that the wind has died down and they're getting the fire under control. I think we'd better collect your father and get out of town early. I was thinking maybe the three of us could celebrate the 4th on Catalina this year, the way we did when you were a child."
"Well, I guess I better be going," John Knock said, extending towards her the cat.
"I'm coming with you," Donica said.
"We'll have to put the cat in something," Liz said.
"No, not with you, with him. I'm going with John."
"Donica?"
"Mother, I'm going with him. We had a moment. He needs me. He doesn't believe he's a for-real sculptor. But look at me. Look at the way he sculpted me this morning. He changed everything about me, inside and out."
Fletcher purred. Liz looked helplessly around. John Knock smiled at Donica. She smiled back. The sun dimmed slightly, unable to compete with the energy between them.
"I hope you're not expecting too much," he said.
"I'm expecting everything," she replied.
The End
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