The next day his mother noted something almost ethereal about his ravaged face. He looked like one of those dying children who must have Christmas early. He sat up in the bed and directed the rearrangement of several chairs and had her remove a picture of a maiden chained to a rock for he knew it would make the Jesuit smile. He had the comfortable rocker taken away and when he finished, the room with its severe wall stains had a certain cell-like quality. He felt it would be attractive to the visitor.
All morning he waited, looking irritably up at the ceiling where the bird with the icicle in its beak seemed poised and waiting too; but the priest did not arrive until late in the afternoon. As soon as his mother opened the door, a loud unintelligible voice began to boom in the downstairs hall. Asbury’s heart beat wildly. In a second there was a heavy creaking on the stairs. Then almost at once his mother, her expression constrained, came in followed by a massive old man who plowed straight across the room, picked up a chair by the side of the bed and put it under himself.
“I’m Father Finn—from Purrgatory,” he said in a hearty voice. He had a large red face, a stiff brush of gray hair and was blind in one eye, but the good eye, blue and clear, was focused sharply on Asbury. There was a grease spot on his vest. “So you want to talk to a priest?” he said. “Very wise. None of us knows the hour Our Blessed Lord may call us.” Then he cocked his good eye up at Asbury’s mother and said, “Thank you, you may leave us now.”
Mrs. Fox stiffened and did not budge.
“I’d like to talk to Father Finn alone,” Asbury said, feeling suddenly that here he had an ally, although he had not expected a priest like this one. His mother gave him a disgusted look and left the room. He knew she would go no farther than just outside the door.
“It’s so nice to have you come,” Asbury said. “This place is incredibly dreary. There’s no one here an intelligent person can talk to. I wonder what you think of Joyce, Father?”
The priest lifted his chair and pushed closer. “You’ll have to shout,” he said. “Blind in one eye and deaf in one ear.”
“What do you think of Joyce?” Asbury said louder.
“Joyce? Joyce who?” asked the priest.
“James Joyce,” Asbury said and laughed.
The priest brushed his huge hand in the air as if he were bothered by gnats. “I haven’t met him,” he said. “Now. Do you say your morning and night prayers?”
Asbury appeared confused. “Joyce was a great writer,” he murmured, forgetting to shout.
“You don’t eh?” said the priest. “Well you will never learn to be good unless you pray regularly. You cannot love Jesus unless you speak to Him.”
“The myth of the dying god has always fascinated me,” Asbury shouted, but the priest did not appear to catch it.
“Do you have trouble with purity?” he demanded, and as Asbury paled, he went on without waiting for an answer. “We all do but you must pray to the Holy Ghost for it. Mind, heart and body. Nothing is overcome without prayer. Pray with your family. Do you pray with your family?”
“God forbid,” Asbury murmured. “My mother doesn’t have time to pray and my sister is an atheist,” he shouted.
“A shame!” said the priest. “Then you must pray for them.”
“The artist prays by creating,” Asbury ventured.
“Not enough!” snapped the priest. “If you do not pray daily, you are neglecting your immortal soul. Do you know your catechism?”
“Certainly not,” Asbury muttered.
“Who made you?” the priest asked in a martial tone.
“Different people believe different things about that,” Asbury said.
“God made you,” the priest said shortly. “Who is God?”
“God is an idea created by man,” Asbury said, feeling that he was getting into stride, that two could play at this.
“God is a spirit infinitely perfect,” the priest said. “You are a very ignorant boy. Why did God make you?”
“God didn’t. . . .”
“God made you to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him in the next!” the old priest said in a battering voice. “If you don’t apply yourself to the catechism how do you expect to know how to save your immortal soul?”
Asbury saw he had made a mistake and that it was time to get rid of the old fool. “Listen,” he said, “I’m not a Roman.”
“A poor excuse for not saying your prayers!” the old man snorted.
Asbury slumped slightly in the bed. “I’m dying,” he shouted.
“But you’re not dead yet!” said the priest, “and how do you expect to meet God face to face when you’ve never spoken to Him? How do you expect to get what you don’t ask for? God does not send the Holy Ghost to those who don’t ask for Him. Ask Him to send the Holy Ghost.”
“The Holy Ghost?” Asbury said.
“Are you so ignorant you’ve never heard of the Holy Ghost?” the priest asked.
“Certainly I’ve heard of the Holy Ghost,” Asbury said furiously, “and the Holy Ghost is the last thing I’m looking for!”
“And He may be the last thing you get,” the priest said, his one fierce eye inflamed. “Do you want your soul to suffer eternal damnation? Do you want to be deprived of God for all eternity? Do you want to suffer the most terrible pain, greater than fire, the pain of loss? Do you want to suffer the pain of loss for all eternity?”
Asbury moved his arms and legs helplessly as if he were pinned to the bed by the terrible eye.
“How can the Holy Ghost fill your soul when it’s full of trash?” the priest roared. “The Holy Ghost will not come until you see yourself as you are—a lazy ignorant conceited youth!” he said, pounding his fist on the little bedside table.
Mrs. Fox burst in. “Enough of this!” she cried. “How dare you talk that way to a poor sick boy? You’re upsetting him. You’ll have to go.”
“The poor lad doesn’t even know his catechism,” the priest said, rising. “I should think you would have taught him to say his daily prayers. You have neglected your duty as his mother.” He turned back to the bed and said affably, “I’ll give you my blessing and after this you must say your daily prayers without fail,” whereupon he put his hand on Asbury’s head and rumbled something in Latin. “Call me any time,” he said, “and we can have another little chat,” and then he followed Mrs. Fox’s rigid back out. The last thing Asbury heard him say was, “He’s a good lad at heart but very ignorant.”
When his mother had got rid of the priest she came rapidly up the steps again to say that she had told him so, but when she saw him, pale and drawn and ravaged, sitting up in his bed, staring in front of him with large childish shocked eyes, she did not have the heart and went rapidly out again.
The next morning he was so weak that she made up her mind he must go to the hospital. “I’m not going to any hospital,” he kept repeating, turning his thudding head from side to side as if he wanted to work it loose from his body. “I’m not going to any hospital as long as I’m conscious.” He was thinking bitterly that once he lost consciousness, she could drag him off to the hospital and fill him full of blood and prolong his misery for days. He was convinced that the end was approaching, that it would be today, and he was tormented now thinking of his useless life. He felt as if he were a shell that had to be filled with something but he did not know what. He began to take note of everything in the room as if for the last time—the ridiculous antique furniture, the pattern in the rug, the silly picture his mother had replaced. He even looked at the fierce bird with the icicle in its beak and felt that it was there for some purpose that he could not divine.
There was something he was searching for, something that he felt he must have, some last significant culminating experience that he must make for himself before he died—make for himself out of his own intelligence. He had always relied o
n himself and had never been a sniveler after the ineffable.
Once when Mary George was thirteen and he was five, she had lured him with the promise of an unnamed present into a large tent full of people and had dragged him backwards up to the front where a man in a blue suit and red and white tie was standing. “Here,” she said in a loud voice. “I’m already saved but you can save him. He’s a real stinker and too big for his britches.” He had broken her grip and shot out of there like a small cur and later when he had asked for his present, she had said, “You would have got salvation if you had waited for it but since you acted the way you did, you get nothing!”
As the day wore on, he grew more and more frantic for fear he would die without making some last meaningful experience for himself. His mother sat anxiously by the side of the bed. She had called Block twice and could not get him. He thought even now she had not realized that he was going to die, much less that the end was only hours off.
The light in the room was beginning to have an odd quality, almost as if it were taking on presence. In a darkened form it entered and seemed to wait. Outside it appeared to move no farther than the edge of the faded tree line, which he could see a few inches over the sill of his window. Suddenly he thought of that experience of communion that he had had in the dairy with the Negroes when they had smoked together, and at once he began to tremble with excitement. They would smoke together one last time.
After a moment, turning his head on the pillow, he said, “Mother, I want to tell the Negroes goodbye.”
His mother paled. For an instant her face seemed about to fly apart. Then the line of her mouth hardened; her brows drew together. “Goodbye?” she said in a flat voice. “Where are you going?”
For a few seconds he only looked at her. Then he said, “I think you know. Get them. I don’t have long.”
“This is absurd,” she muttered but she got up and hurried out. He heard her try to reach Block again before she went outside. He thought her clinging to Block at a time like this was touching and pathetic. He waited, preparing himself for the encounter as a religious man might prepare himself for the last sacrament. Presently he heard their steps on the stair.
“Here’s Randall and Morgan,” his mother said, ushering them in. “They’ve come to tell you hello.”
The two of them came in grinning and shuffled to the side of the bed. They stood there, Randall in front and Morgan behind. “You sho do look well,” Randall said. “You looks very well.”
“You looks well,” the other one said. “Yessuh, you looks fine.”
“I ain’t ever seen you looking so well before,” Randall said.
“Yes, doesn’t he look well?” his mother said. “I think he looks just fine.”
“Yessuh,” Randall said, “I speck you ain’t even sick.”
“Mother,” Asbury said in a forced voice. “I’d like to talk to them alone.”
His mother stiffened; then she marched out. She walked across the hall and into the room on the other side and sat down. Through the open doors he could see her begin to rock in little short jerks. The two Negroes looked as if their last protection had dropped away.
Asbury’s head was so heavy he could not think what he had been going to do. “I’m dying,” he said.
Both their grins became gelid. “You looks fine,” Randall said.
“I’m going to die,” Asbury repeated. Then with relief he remembered that they were going to smoke together. He reached for the package on the table and held it out to Randall, forgetting to shake out the cigarettes.
The Negro took the package and put it in his pocket. “I thank you,” he said. “I certainly do prechate it.”
Asbury stared as if he had forgotten again. After a second he became aware that the other Negro’s face had turned infinitely sad; then he realized that it was not sad but sullen. He fumbled in the drawer of the table and pulled out an unopened package and thrust it at Morgan.
“I thanks you, Mist Asbury,” Morgan said, brightening. “You certly does look well.”
“I’m about to die,” Asbury said irritably.
“You looks fine,” Randall said.
“You be up and around in a few days,” Morgan predicted. Neither of them seemed to find a suitable place to rest his gaze. Asbury looked wildly across the hall where his mother had her rocker turned so that her back faced him. It was apparent she had no intention of getting rid of them for him.
“I speck you might have a little cold,” Randall said after a time.
“I takes a little turpentine and sugar when I has a cold,” Morgan said.
“Shut your mouth,” Randall said, turning on him.
“Shut your own mouth,” Morgan said. “I know what I takes.”
“He don’t take what you take,” Randall growled.
“Mother!” Asbury called in a shaking voice.
His mother stood up. “Mister Asbury has had company long enough now,” she called. “You all can come back tomorrow.”
“We be going,” Randall said. “You sho do look well.”
“You sho does,” Morgan said.
They filed out agreeing with each other how well he looked but Asbury’s vision became blurred before they reached the hall. For an instant he saw his mother’s form as if it were a shadow in the door and then it disappeared after them down the stairs. He heard her call Block again but he heard it without interest. His head was spinning. He knew now there would be no significant experience before he died. There was nothing more to do but give her the key to the drawer where the letter was, and wait for the end.
He sank into a heavy sleep from which he awoke about five o’clock to see her white face, very small, at the end of a well of darkness. He took the key out of his pajama pocket and handed it to her and mumbled that there was a letter in the desk to be opened when he was gone, but she did not seem to understand. She put the key down on the bedside table and left it there and he returned to his dream in which two large boulders were circling each other inside his head.
He awoke a little after six to hear Block’s car stop below in the driveway. The sound was like a summons, bringing him rapidly and with a clear head out of his sleep. He had a sudden terrible foreboding that the fate awaiting him was going to be more shattering than any he could have reckoned on. He lay absolutely motionless, as still as an animal the instant before an earthquake.
Block and his mother talked as they came up the stairs but he did not distinguish their words. The doctor came in making faces; his mother was smiling. “Guess what you’ve got, Sugarpie!” she cried. Her voice broke in on him with the force of a gunshot.
“Found theter ol’ bug, did ol’ Block,” Block said, sinking down into the chair by the bed. He raised his hands over his head in the gesture of a victorious prize fighter and let them collapse in his lap as if the effort had exhausted him. Then he removed a red bandanna handkerchief that he carried to be funny with and wiped his face thoroughly, having a different expression on it every time it appeared from behind the rag.
“I think you’re just as smart as you can be!” Mrs. Fox said. “Asbury,” she said, “you have undulant fever. It’ll keep coming back but it won’t kill you!” Her smile was as bright and intense as a light bulb without a shade. “I’m so relieved,” she said.
Asbury sat up slowly, his face expressionless; then he fell back down again.
Block leaned over him and smiled. “You ain’t going to die,” he said, with deep satisfaction.
Nothing about Asbury stirred except his eyes. They did not appear to move on the surface but somewhere in their blurred depths there was an almost imperceptible motion as if something were struggling feebly. Block’s gaze seemed to reach down like a steel pin and hold whatever it was until the life was out of it. “Undulant fever ain’t so bad, Azzberry,” he murmured. “It’s the same as Bang’s in a cow.”
; The boy gave a low moan and then was quiet.
“He must have drunk some unpasteurized milk up there,” his mother said softly and then the two of them tiptoed out as if they thought he were about to go to sleep.
When the sound of their footsteps had faded on the stairs, Asbury sat up again. He turned his head, almost surreptitiously, to the side where the key he had given his mother was lying on the bedside table. His hand shot out and closed over it and returned it to his pocket. He glanced across the room into the small oval-framed dresser mirror. The eyes that stared back at him were the same that had returned his gaze every day from that mirror but it seemed to him that they were paler. They looked shocked clean as if they had been prepared for some awful vision about to come down on him. He shuddered and turned his head quickly the other way and stared out the window. A blinding red-geld sun moved serenely from under a purple cloud. Below it the tree line was black against the crimson sky. It formed a brittle wall, standing as if it were the frail defense he had set up in his mind to protect him from what was coming. The boy fell back on his pillow and stared at the ceiling. His limbs that had been racked for so many weeks by fever and chill were numb now. The old life in him was exhausted. He awaited the coming of new. It was then that he felt the beginning of a chill, a chill so peculiar, so light, that it was like a warm ripple across a deeper sea of cold. His breath came short. The fierce bird which through the years of his childhood and the days of his illness had been poised over his head, waiting mysteriously, appeared all at once to be in motion. Asbury blanched and the last film of illusion was torn as if by a whirlwind from his eyes. He saw that for the rest of his days, frail, racked, but enduring, he would live in the face of a purifying terror. A feeble cry, a last impossible protest escaped him. But the Holy Ghost, emblazoned in ice instead of fire, continued, implacable, to descend.