But he shook his head. He threw the coat he had no need for over his shoulder and went to the register. Callie stood helpless a minute, then pulled the square, green check-pad from her belt and leaned on the counter to figure how much it came to, and then Henry was standing at her elbow. “Let it go, Callie,” he said. Then, with a grim laugh, “It’s on the house, Ben.”
Ben glared as though it wasn’t August he hated after all, but Henry Soames, as if Henry had denied him the vote.
Henry was saying, “The same for all of you. Tonight it’s all on me.”
“Some other time, Henry,” Lou Millet said.
But Henry was possessed, dangerous. “I mean it,” he said. “Tonight we’re not taking a dime.” He hit his chest three times with his thumb, his face incredibly serious; none of them laughed. “I mean it,” he said again. “Today’s my birthday.” He yelled it as though he were angry. “Truth. Callie, give everybody cake.”
“Hear, O Israel,” George Loomis said, “today is the day he takes upon himself. …” But Henry’s face was dark red, and George shut up.
“We’re going to sing ‘Happy Birthday, Dear Henry’,” Henry roared, not smiling at all, forgetting to smile, his fat fists clenched, and Callie was saying in a whisper that cut through Henry’s roar, “Henry, stop it!”
“All together,” he yelled, putting a cookie in his mouth, raising his arms.
And all at once, probably out of pure shock at first, they were doing it, cold sober as they were. And then a vast and meaningless grief replaced the shock. Tears streamed down Lou Millet’s face, and he was choked up so badly he couldn’t bring out more than every fourth word. In the beginning there were only three voices — Henry’s, Old Man Judkins’, Jim Millet’s — then more: Emery Jones’ hired man singing tenor, almost soprano but in harmony; Ben Worthington, Jr., whining out baritone, sweat running down his throat; even George Loomis more or less singing, with a pained expression, droning like the bad note on a banjo. Lou Millet stood up. They were singing it through again, but it seemed to have come to him that he had to get home, it was foolishness sitting here half the night, his wife at home alone with the kids. He left, hurrying, and after a minute Ben Worthington, Jr., picked up his wallet and followed him out. Old Man Judkins stood up after that, and then Jesse Behmer. Henry stood in the middle of the floor like a giant, slowly bobbing up and down waving his arms. His forehead shone and the belly of his shirt was pasted to his skin.
Behind him, his face as solemn as his father’s — but solemn without weight, like a serious toy — Jimmy bobbed up and down too, quickly and lightly, waving his arms.
When midnight came, only George Loomis was still there. Henry sat down, panting, sucking air in and out through his mouth. Callie brought him a pill. “Well!” he said. He tried to laugh, but he couldn’t get his breath.
For a long time after that nobody spoke. Finally George Loomis said solemnly, “Whooey.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Henry said.
George Loomis looked at the ceiling. “I don’t know.”
Then George said: “But I’ll tell you something. I’m beginning to believe in the Goat Lady.” He said it lightly, but a hint of uneasiness came over him as soon as it was out.
“You saw her, didn’t you,” Callie said at once, knowing the direct accusation would shock him but suddenly not caring.
George went white.
“What happened?” Callie said.
They sat like people precariously balanced over a chasm, and everything depended on what George decided. Henry sat blankly, pulling at the fat below his chin, not eating the cookie he held in his left hand. George Loomis stared at his cigarette. He could tell them and be free (she saw what he was thinking) but then he would never be free again, because then there would be somebody who knew his guilt, shame, embarrassment, whatever it was. Except that maybe that was what it was to be free: to abandon all shame, all dignity, real or imagined. She remembered the funeral for George’s mother, how they’d lowered the coffin carefully as if to preserve even in death her decorous, more than bodily virginity, and how they’d put the dirt in gently to avoid cracking the window through which the blind earth stared at her face.
At last George said, “No. I never saw her.” He stood up.
Henry looked at him, pitying him, George Loomis no more free than a river or a wind, and, as if unaware that he was doing it, Henry broke the cookie in his hand and let the pieces fall. She realized with a start that it was finaclass="underline" George had saved them after all. She felt herself going weightless, as though she were fainting. And something said in her mind, as though someone stood behind her, whispering hurriedly in her ear: Nevertheless, all shall be saved. She thought: What? And again: All. Everything. Even the sticks and stones. Nothing is lost. She thought: How? Why should sticks and stones be saved? But the waking dream was passing quickly, a thing so fragile that she would not even remember tomorrow that she’d had it. The room was suddenly filled with ghosts, not only Simon, but Henry’s father, huge as a mountain and gentle as a flower, and Callie’s great-great-grandfather, with his arm suspenders, an almanac closed over one finger, and Old Man Kuzitski, drunk as a lord, and Mrs. Stamp, irascible and pretty, with a blue-black umbrella, and arthritic, bushy-browed old Uncle John, and there were more, a hundred more she didn’t know, solemn and full of triumphant joy; and the space in front of the diner was filled, from the door to the highway to the edge of the woods, and the woods were full, an enormous multitude solemn and triumphant, and she saw in the great crowd the pink and purple (transformed, magnificent, regally solemn) of the Goat Lady’s cart. They vanished. Henry stood out by the gas pumps now, gray-looking and old in the pinkish glow of the neon. She saw the lights of George Loomis’s truck go on and watched him back down toward the road, then pull forward, turning. She watched his taillights move up the hill and, dipping over the top, snap out. Henry came back.
“What did happen?” she asked in the amazing stillness.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Do you think the Goat Lady—?”
“I don’t know.”
Jimmy lay asleep below the cash register, like something (a bag of potatoes) turned in as a trade. Henry lifted him gently, without waking him, while Callie locked the door and turned out the lights.
Sometime during the night, while they all slept, missing it, or missing anyway the spectacular beginning that they’d surely earned the right to see (but the dog saw it, rising slowly to his feet and tilting his gray, giant head), thunder cracked, shaking the mountains, and it rained.
VII. THE MEETING
1
It wasn’t until he was already aboard and looking around him in the twilight of the coach that Willard Freund realized he’d forgotten to wire ahead to tell them which train he’d be on. The ticket had taken almost all the money he’d had, all but two dollars. If he had to spend the night in Utica it would have to be on one of the wooden benches at the station. But there was nothing he could do about it now. He took a seat near the rear of the half-empty car and settled himself for the trip. A red-headed old Welshman in a thin, threadbare coat with the collar turned up watched him with dim, angry eyes from across the aisle. One of the two middle-aged women talking about the blizzard and the lateness of the train, a few seats ahead of him, craned her neck around the side, like a chicken, to look at him. He pretended to stare through her.