The slow figure of a very old woman in a purple dress and a maroon cape appears before a dozen or more steps on the sidewalk ahead. I’m going west, she’s walking east. As we draw abreast of one another, I smile and nod as all good southerners must, and assume that cordiality has been observed. She stops, however, to speak.
“Young man,” she announces, “HE is risen!”
I stand flummoxed for a moment. This is an old formula to which I’m expected to make a proper reply. What do I say? It’s been years. But the words come as they’re bidden, and I speak them without thinking:
“He is risen, indeed.”
Part 8. The Pilgrimage
April 3 - 30, 1972
Monday, April 3
“I’ve heard that jail time turns some men’s lives around,” Garrett philosophizes, using a puffed-up voice that he might have some day delivered from the pulpit of his own Baptist church, had he not become a freak. “James, I fear, will emerge a bigger asshole than he was when he went in.”
“He’s grown his beard back,” Cindy reports, stretched provocatively across the water bed in the Ohm, weary and a little disheveled from the trip home from North Carolina. “Now he thinks he’s some kind of revolutionary martyr. Che Guevara or somebody.”
His friends seem to have turned sour on him.
“We got to visit his cell,” Andrew says, “and I must say it wasn’t half bad. I’ve lived in much worse. I’ve paid to live in much worse.”
“Your friend’s commune was worth the trip, though,” Garrett adds. “Good times, man. Good times. Everybody was assigned a job.”
“Tatyana will make you work,” I say.
“I learned how to milk the goats,” Cindy puts in.
“I was on shit collecting detail,” Garrett says. “Goats shit tiny little pellets. There’s an art to picking them up.”
“A new skill. I’m glad you profited from your vocational therapy.”
“A week of being a vegetarian was interesting as well,” Andrew says. “I thought I’d miss meat, but when you’re around malodorous livestock all day long, you’re not so eager to eat animals, are you?”
“There was something that happened, though,” Cindy adds, during a momentary lull in conversation. Andrew and Garrett lift a simultaneous sigh.
“We agreed not to speak of that,” Andrew says.
“You agreed. You and Garrett agreed. I never did. I think Daniel needs to know.”
“Know what?”
Andrew gestures an open hand toward her. “Go ahead. It’s too late now.”
“Tatyana,” she begins, tentative, “told me how you died.”
“Oh, lord.”
“She thought I already knew, and started talking about it one morning when she and I were milking together.”
“And you told the boys?”
“We could tell something was on her mind.”
“Yeah,” Garrett says, “Cindy’s not exactly a sphinx.”
“Well, how would you expect me to keep a secret like that?”
The group falls silent.
“Bloody awful,” Andrew finally volunteers. Cindy hums her agreement.
“I thought it was kind of funny,” Garrett says.
“I just thought you should know,” Cindy says. “That we know. You know?”
“I know.”
“So if you ever want to talk about it . . . .”
I cut her off. “I’ll never want to talk about it.”
~ ~ ~
Tuesday, April 4
Blake’s choice of a midnight snack – a bowl of Fruity Pebbles from the box he thinks he’s cleverly stashed away in the cupboard behind his booze – has turned out to be an unfortunate one.
Not only do I know the Fruity Pebbles are there (safe, because Cap’n Crunch remains my first love), but the mice have discovered them as well.
As Blake lifts the box down from its overhead hiding place, the bottom collapses outward, spilling Fruity Pebbles and a nest of tiny rodents onto his head. They scurry about, tangle in his hair for a moment, find footholds in his ears, and clamber down his neck to make death-defying leaps from his shoulder onto the floor below.
Drunk as he is tonight, Blake’s reaction time is delayed, so they’ve already managed to land before he starts screaming, “Shit! Shit! Shit! They’re on me! They’re all over me!”
I count five, six, seven of them scurrying across the floor. Just mice, not rats. Blake rocks back against the refrigerator, steadying himself before he shrieks again, “You little bastards! Die!”
He lifts his right foot and brings it down to smash the closest one. It feints to the side, safe. Now the left foot, aiming for another. Another miss. Right food, left foot. Right foot, left foot. Escape, escape. Escape, escape.
I’m watching this all from my side of the kitchen table, and wonder why the mice don’t just simply run for shelter under the couch. I think they’re having a good time, playing with a clumsy drunken scholar of French history, making him dance an absurd, humiliating jig. Mice are smarter than people. I’ve often thought so.
This thought seems to occur to Blake at the same time it crosses my mind, because he stops dancing, utters one more curse at them, and storms out the trailer door, leaving it open to the dark.
He’s either forgotten that the dog packs are out tonight, or doesn’t care. The night fills with howling and baying from the ravine, and I fear for him momentarily, before remembering that the Lord protects dipsos, and settle back into Herodotus.
Blake returns a few minutes later, accompanied by the Widow, who’s dressed only in jeans and a bra, and carries her rifle slung over her shoulder. She’s magnificent, a pioneer woman, an avatar of Artemis.
I want her.
Blake is carrying something fat and furry in his arms. It appears to be a cat.
“I’m warning you,” the Widow is saying as they enter, “she ain’t a mouser, but you’re welcome to borrow her for a few days if it will make you feel better.”
Blake drops the cat onto the floor. She instantly slouches into a nap position.
“What’s her name?” I ask.
“Flop,” the Widow answers. “You’ll see why. Listen, keep your roommate inside tonight, will you? He might have got torn to pieces out there by the dogs.”
~ ~ ~
Wednesday, April 5
Ex-deputy Hacker has taken a perch at the base of the Confederate monument outside the courthouse to deliver his version of the Good News, which appears to be that the Lord is just itching to smite anybody who steps even the teeniest bit out of line.
He’s only been preaching ten minutes (and attracted quite a crowd), but his list of the damned already includes idolaters, sodomites, blasphemers, actors, adulterers, Freudians, pagans, liberals, drug abusers, sex therapists, gamblers, public drunkards, gossips, murderers, fornicators, draft dodgers, Leninists, newscasters, exhibitionists, Jane Fonda, bigamists, rock musicians, pirates, terrorists, hijackers, speeders, Jungians, nudists, false witnesses, sorcerers, witches, gin runners, geologists, Sabbath breakers, thieves, pickpockets, opportunists, free-thinkers, libertines, counterfeiters, misers, liars, pederasts, Yankees, hippies, Peeping Toms, whores, college professors, illegal aliens, Communists, abortionists, moonshiners, lawyers, papists, astrologers, vegetarians, and the Beatles.
“Actually, I agree with him about the witches,” I say to Garrett and Clamor.
We’re watching from the window in the Ohm.
“What does he have against vegetarians?” Clamor wonders aloud.
“For that matter, what does he have against celibates?” Garrett says.
“Or pharmacologists?” I add.
“I expect he’s started pulling in any nouns he doesn’t know the meaning of at this point.”
~ ~ ~
Thursday, April 6
I’ve been working late at the library tonight, and stop by the Grill for a frozen cheeseburger from the vending machine. It’s warming in the microwave, and I’ve just depo
sited 15 cents in the coffee machine when a quintet of well-groomed young men surround me.
In matching fraternity pins. At first glance, I don’t recognize any of them, but then one face jogs my memory. It’s Stanley Boyle, all grown up. I haven’t seen him since he was a freshman.
He offers his hand in the order’s handshake.
“It’s been a while since I used this,” I remark, returning the shake. “A wonder that I still remember it.”
“Once a brother, always a brother,” Stanley answers. “We need to talk.”
I retrieve my cheeseburger from the microwave and carry it and my coffee to a table in the back room where the boys have already assembled in grave council.
“You have an enemy,” Stanley says.
“I have lots of enemies. It’s one of the hardest parts about being me. You’ll need to be more specific.”
“Keith Thompson.”
“Oh, him. He’s a joke. Or the punch line of a joke. The punch line of a bad joke that kids in special elementary school classes for the hopelessly inbred think is hilarious.”
“He claims you’re trying to steal his fiancée.”
“That poor girl doesn’t even like him.”
“Nobody likes him,” Stanley agrees. “We all wish he’d go back to Mississippi Southern.”
“Southern deserves him,” one of the boys pipes in.
“Piss ant,” another says.
“Ah’d ‘sholey luv to punch his aristocratic lights out,” a third adds, mocking Keith’s old school accent.
“So why are you telling me this?”
“Nobody respects a man who’ll snake another man’s girl, either. Keith may not be the most popular guy in the house, but he has sympathizers. And he’s out to stir up trouble against you.”
“You can tell my former brothers that I wouldn’t know how to snake a clogged kitchen drain, much less a girl.”
“Why don’t you come by and tell them yourself? You’re welcome any time. You may have left the order, but the order didn’t leave you.”
~ ~ ~
Friday, April 7
The auditorium in Bishop Hall is about three-quarters full by the time we arrive, a scant five minutes before the movie is scheduled to start. I catch sight of Amy sitting beside Alcott in the front row as we come in. She sees me, and looks away.
Plenty of room in the back. Garrett, Rose, Clamor and I take the empty aisle against the wall. Garrett clanks all the way up the steps, attracting curious glances because of the noise from the two Jitney Jungle bags he’s brought in with us.
He’s smuggling in Wild Irish Rose. I made it abundantly clear to the gang that I’m not going to sit through the film version of Alcott’s novel Battle Tides (Paramount, 1965), followed by a scholarly discussion with the author, without copious amounts of wine.
“I feel so excited,” Rose deadpans as we take our seats. “It’s like attending a Hollywood premiere.”
“It’s even better than that,” Garrett corrects her. “This here is belles lettres, Ole Miss style!”
The house lights go down, the theme music and credits come up, and the wine comes out. A cheer and a round of applause erupt as one of the last credits flickers across the screen:
Screenplay by Edward Alcott
Based on the novel, Battle Tides, by Edward Alcott
Opening scene: London, 1943, Ministry of Defense. Our hero, Dixon, is serving as an American adjutant in Field Marshall Montgomery’s staff, as Patton’s go-to-guy in the invasion of Sicily. At the end of a hard day of pushing toy tanks and airplanes around a gigantic map of the island in what looks like a warehouse, Dixon spends a romantic evening with his English girlfriend Clarisse, a dewy but tough shop clerk whose middle-class parents live, inexplicably, in a mansion on Upper Belgrave Street.
“John Wayne was supposed to star in this,” Garrett informs us. “But he backed out.”
“Good career move.”
“Who’s playing Dixon?” Clamor wants to know. “Is that Bridey Murphy?”
“Audey Murphy.”
“That’s not Audey Murphy,” Rose says.
“I think it’s Dan Blocker,” Garrett says.
“Dagnabbit, who is it, really? Didn’t anybody watch the credits?”
We are, at this point, shushed by a host of our fellow movie fans. It’s time for the love scene, which involves a great deal of stumbling around in a park filled with clouds of dry ice that are supposed to make us believe that Dixon’s sporting his honey through a foggy London evening.
Dixon makes sweet talk and googly eyes to the girl, who turns out to be even more dewy in all that moisture. This is their last night together. It’s off to Sicily tomorrow, to do battle against the Huns and face certain death. The girl’s practically dripping off the screen at this point. She promises to wait for him. They embrace. They kiss. Fade to black.
“Corporal Dixon just penetrated his first foreign line,” Garrett says.
The bottle comes my way again, and I take a few gulps before passing it along. In the meantime, Dixon has boarded an aircraft to parachute into Sicily. He delivers an heroic speech about history and sacrifice to the men on board the plane, who must wonder why this drippy American is leading them into battle.
Dixon then leaps from the plane without first fastening his jump line. At this point, he should plummet to his death and bring about the humane termination of this movie. But wait, here he is safe and sound on the beaches of Palermo, remarkably in tact for a man whose chute could not have opened.
The paratroopers seem to be landing in the middle of an ongoing, massive tank battle. As cinematically exciting as this scene is, I can’t help but puzzle over the military strategy involved in this plan. But, then, I did sleep through most of the mandatory ROTC classes during my freshman year, so I’m probably not one to niggle over details. Garrett, though, takes deep offense when Dixon manages to commandeer a German tank by leaping through its open hatch and systematically overpowering the entire crew with a few flicks of his iron fists.
“Button the damn hatch, you stupid krauts! Jeez, no wonder you guys lost the war!”
Dixon has now ditched the tank, stolen an officer’s uniform from one of the tank’s crew, and infiltrated the German command center in Salerno. He wanders about offices, using a clipboard to make him look like he’s on official business, and manages to glean secret intel on Nazi strategy.
He makes time to romance a sultry Italian girl – an actress as different from the dewy Clarisse as the director could possibly find – who discerns his true American identity from the purity of heart, his human decency and his strong jaw line. Naturally, she offers to assist him in espionage.
Alas, she is discovered and executed by an evil SS Agent. Dixon himself makes a narrow escape via the Germans’ secret fleet of shiny, bubble-domed Bell helicopters, vintage 1960.
“The Geneva Convention,” Garrett grumbles, “clearly states that armies are not allowed to use weapons that haven’t been invented yet.”
On his way out, Dixon strafes the air field and conducts a one-man Pearl Harbor, single-handedly destroying a large segment of the Italian air force.
Only upon landing safely behind British lines does Dixon discover that he’s suffered a life-threatening wound, one that will require a long recuperation in some hospital in the Alps. Another romantic interlude follows, as he melts the heart of a cheerful British nurse who alone senses his more-than-physical suffering.
Dixon reveals his guilt to her over the death of his Italian collaborator during a halcyon moment in a garden on the banks of a Swiss lake, surrounded by the reverberating, dulcet calls of loons.
“Loons?” Garrett asks. “No fucking loons in Switzerland!”
Dixon scores with the nurse after she heals his emotional wounds, and it’s back to the front lines for the stirring dénouement of our film. The Field Marshall himself hails the American’s intrepid courage – so typical of these Yanks, he adds – and rewards Dixon with command of an
infantry battalion to sweep up the east coast of the island, there to meet Patton’s forces at Messina.
The Allies finally take Sicily. This is Dixon’s finest moment. But it is short-lived. As he stands on a beach at the conclusion of the battle, delivering another speech about courage and sacrifice, a stray bullet fells him, and he dies handsomely in the arms of his companions.
The sun sets – in the east, oddly – on his dying words, a message of love to the bereft Clarisse, the girl he left behind.
The music swells. The tears flow. The heart soars. The word “Finis” appears on the screen, and the house lights come back up.
And there stands Alcott on the stage, bowing humbly to the cheers of the audience, gesturing to them in that “Oh you’re much too kind!” way that full-of-themselves stage actors use at the end of some awful romantic comedy.
“That was the worst piece of shit I’ve ever seen,” Garrett opines. “Worse than the Omega Man.”
But the audience loved it. Now it’s a standing ovation, punctuated with cheers, whistles, and the sound of feet stomping the floor. They’re treating Alcott like he just finished writing King Lear.
Dr. French steps to the podium, once the din has died down. “We’re going to take a short intermission, and reconvene at 9:00 p.m. for our question-and-answer session with the author,” he announces, and leads the audience in yet another round of applause.
Garrett persuades Rose and Clamor to stick around. I, myself, have had enough. I take the remaining half-full bottle of wine, and walk to the Grove to finish it.
There are couples out tonight, under the stars and newly sprouted leaves. I find a spot under the giant magnolia and listen to someone playing a guitar in the dark. The wine is warming and goes down smooth. I’ve finished the bottle and am about to turn my steps toward home when I notice a tall figure herding a trip of wild rabbits – a dozen of them, at minimum – across the lawn.
~ ~ ~
Saturday, April 8
“We might as well face it,” Blake manages to slur, head bobbing over the keys of his typewriter. “You and I are both losers. Okay? Failures. A waste of two placentas. Embarrassments to our respective mothers’ wombs.”
“God bless them,” I add.
“God bless them,” he agrees, lifting his glass of gin and tonic in toast. “God bless mothers everywhere. Be they yellow, red, black, brown or white. Be they shriven or not. Be they above ground or below. What was I saying?”
“Something about mothers. No, losers.”