The stewardess offered me a magazine to calm me down, seeing how overwrought I was. She was aware that I had the lion cub Dahfu in the baggage compartment, as I had ordered chops and milk for him, and there was a certain inconvenience about my going back and forth constantly and prowling around the rear of the plane. She was an understanding girl, and finally I told her what it was all about, that the lion cub was important to me, and that I was bringing him home to my wife and children. “It’s a souvenir of a very dear friend,” I said. It was also an enigmatic form of that friend, I might have tried to explain to this girl. She was from Rockford, Illinois. Every twenty years or so the earth renews itself in young maidens. You know what I mean? Her cheeks had the perfect form that belongs to the young; her hair was kinky gold. Her teeth were white and posted on every approach. She was all sweet corn and milk. Blessings on her hips. Blessings on her thighs. Blessings on her soft little fingers which were somewhat covered by the cuffs of her uniform. Blessings on that rough gold. A wonderful little thing; her attitude was that of a pal or playmate, as is common with Midwestern young women. I said, “You make me think of my wife. I haven’t seen her in months.”
“Oh? How many months?” she said.
That I couldn’t tell her, for I didn’t know the date. “Is it about September?” I asked.
Astonished, she said, “Honestly, don’t you know? It’ll be Thanksgiving next week.”
“So late! I missed out on enrollment. I’ll have to wait until next semester. You see, I got sick in Africa and had a delirium and lost count of time. When you go in deep you run that risk, you know that, don’t you, kid?”
She was amused that I called her kid.
“Do you go to school?”
“Instead of coming to ourselves,” I said, “we grow all kinds of deformities and enormities. At least something can be done for those. You know? While we wait for the day?”
“Which day, Mr. Henderson?” she said, laughing at me.
“Haven’t you ever heard the song?” I said. “Listen, and I’ll sing you a little of it.” We were back at the rear of the plane where I was feeding the animal Dahfu. I sang, “And who shall abide the day of His coming (the day of His coming)? And who shall stand when He appeareth (when He appeareth)?”
“That is Handel?” she said. “That’s from Rockford College.”
“Correct,” I said. “You are a sensible young woman. Now I have a son, Edward, whose wits were swamped by all that cool jazz … I slept through my youth,” I went on as I was feeding the lion his cooked meat. “I slept and slept like our first-class passenger.” Note: I must explain that we were on one of those stratocruisers with a regular stateroom, and I had noticed the stewardess going in there with steak and champagne. The fellow never came out. She told me he was a famous diplomat. “I guess he just has to sleep, it’s costing so much,” I commented. “If he has insomnia it’ll be a terrible let-down to a man in his position. You know why I’m impatient to see my wife, miss? I’m eager to know how it will be now that the sleep is burst. And the children, too. I love them very much-I think.”
“Why do you say think?”
“Yes, I think. We’ll have to see. You know we’re a very funny family for picking up companions. My son Edward had a chimpanzee who was dressed in a cowboy suit. Then in California he and I nearly took a little seal into our lives. Then my daughter brought home a baby. Of course we had to take it away from her. I hope she will consider this lion as a replacement. I hope I can persuade her.”
“There’s a little kid on the plane,” said the stewardess. “He’d probably adore the lion cub. He looks pretty sad.”
And I said, “Who is it?”
“Well, his parents were Americans. There’s a letter around his neck that tells the story. The kid doesn’t speak English at all. Only Persian.”
“Go on,” I said to her.
“The father worked for oil people in Persia. The kid was raised by Persian servants. Now he’s an orphan and going to live with grandparents in Carson City, Nevada. At Idlewild I’m supposed to turn him over to somebody.”
“Poor little bastard,” I said. “Why don’t you bring him, and we’ll show him the lion.”
So she fetched the boy. He was very white and wore short pants with strap garters and a little dark green sweater. He was a black-haired boy, like my own. This kid went to my heart. You know how it is when your heart drops. Like a fall-bruised apple in the cold morning of autumn. “Come here, little boy,” I said, and reached for the child’s hand. “It’s a bad business,” I told the stewardess, “to ship a little kid around the world alone.” I took the cub Dahfu and gave it to him. “I don’t think he knows what it is-he probably imagines it’s a kitty.”
“But he likes it.”
As a matter of fact the animal did lighten the boy’s melancholy, and so we let them play. And when we went back to our seats I kept him with me and tried to show him pictures in the magazine. I gave him his dinner, and at night he fell asleep in my lap, and I had to ask the girl to keep her eye on the lion for me-I couldn’t move now. She said he was asleep, too.
And during this leg of the flight, my memory did me a great favor. Yes, I was granted certain recollections and they have made a sizable difference to me. And after all, it’s not all to the bad to have had a long life. Something of benefit can be found in the past. First I was thinking, Take potatoes. They actually belong to the deadly nightshade family. Next I thought, Actually, pigs don’t have a monopoly on grunting, either.
This reflection made me remember that after my brother Dick’s death I went away from home, being already a big boy of about sixteen, with a mustache, a college freshman. The reason why I left was that I couldn’t bear to see the old man mourn. We have a beautiful house, a regular work of art. The foundations are of stone and three feet thick; the ceilings are eighteen feet. The windows are twelve, and start at the floor, so that the light fills everything through that kind of marred old-fashioned glass. There’s a peace that even I haven’t been able to destroy, in those old rooms. Only one thing is wrong: the joint isn’t modern. It’s not like the rest of life at all, and therefore it’s misleading. And as far as I was concerned, Dick could have had it. But the old man, gushing white beard from all his face, he made me feel our family line had ended with Dick up in the Adirondacks, when he shot at the pen and plugged the Greek’s coffee urn. Dick also was a curly-headed man with broad shoulders, like the rest of us. He was drowned in the wild mountains, and now my dad looked at me and despaired.
An old man, disappointed, of failing strength, may try to reinvigorate himself by means of anger. Now I understand it. But I couldn’t see it at sixteen, when we had a falling out. I was working that summer wrecking old cars, cutting them up for junk with the torch. I was lord and master of the wrecked cars, at a place about three miles from home. It did me good to work in this wrecking yard. That summer I did nothing but dismantle cars. I was grease and rust all over and scalded and dazzled with the cutting torch, and I made mountains of fenders and axles and car innards. On the day of Dick’s funeral, I went to work, too. And in the evening, when I washed myself in the back of the house under the garden hose, I was gasping as the chill water rushed over my head, and the old man came out on the back porch, in the dark green of the vines. By the side was a neglected orchard which later I cut down. The water blurted over me. It was cold as outer space. Fiercely, the old man started to yell at me. The hose bubbled on my head while inside I was hotter than the cutting torch that I took to all those old death cars from the highway. My father in his grief swore at me. I knew he meant it because he put aside his customary elegance of words. He cursed, I guess, because I didn’t comfort him.