Bessie, he said, don't go, don't go, I hate his eyes, they cross. You know his eyes. They're stitched to him.
Tott twisted away.
Have you looked, Omensetter roared, straightening, glaring angrily, waving his arms, his long hair tossing above his brow. Go off and find your friend where he has hung himself. Curtis knows the way now, and can lead. And take your wagon to the white log by the creek. Then you won't have so far to drag his bones.
9
The fire and the lamp made pairs of crossing shadows, one steady and firm, one leaping and vague. Her shadow spotted the wall and disappeared, drawn magically back beneath her chair as she rocked, then darting forth to climb the wall as rapidly again. He found himself marking the height. Incredibly swift, it bent itself up from the floor, passing the picture, the long head reaching a mar in the paper and covering a cluster of leaves while the lengthening finial that followed behind struck a rose. Each time it was the same. Omensetter's shadow dwindled under him and Furber had the Impression of something being poured steadily through a hole in the floor. The girls sat mute in ladder chairs, their stiff and strangely twisted figures fastened to the wall like ill-cut paper silhouettes. Another corner was darkened by the cradle where the baby, ominously quiet now, lay dying of a closing throat, an occasional wisp of its breath crossing the room like a little draft of air or brief creak of the house. I shall make a rabbit with my fingers. I shall make a tiger. I shall make a bird. His own thin outline oozed through generous cracks and hung alongside wintering ants and modest spiders between the boards. I shall make a goose. I shall make a bear.
There were foolish men in the woods, death in the trees. What did a body matter? It was such a damp low place, hardly fit to put a spirit in. What did they think they were rescuing?
In seminary they'd been called The Great Hypotheses. The One and The Other. The Spirit and its Enemy. Yes and No. A and B. Truth against The Adversary, Father of Lies. A always won, while B….
If I enumerated all the contents of my soul, he thought; if I made a thorough list of them; if I overlooked nothing; if I counted twice; if I wrote each down carefully with a spit-wet pencil end like Luther's accomplished clerk; would I find an item I could say belonged to me, made me, formed my core and heart? Thus The Other always argued.
If you were to place a lamp before a wall and put your hand in the light that flows between them, you would make a shadow. Purse your fingers properly, the shadow is a duck, while with the thumb thrust up, a horse. Then on mastery of these you may try to make a hawk fly slowly with both hands. End of the lesson. Who was teaching?
Death was only another arrangement. For suppose, and mind it narrowly, that life is simply a shadow bodies cast inside themselves when struck by all those queerly various bits and particles, those pieces, streams of — what? — of science. Death in such a case would be only another arrangement.
He said: the fire needs wood; we must keep the room warm.
Why was it sorrowful, The Great Alternative? No hell afterward, but blessedness. What could be more blessed than to rest in a coil of silence — not to be? He'd meant to preach to that. His whole life, he'd Meant to preach, to preach… Where was his preaching and his preachment now? Would Henry's body, hanging in its tree, be dreaming? Would it be canting in itself another kind of shadow, a goblin shadow, to be feared?
But no dream could wound as cleverly as the painful edges of perception.
… while B persisted like a monstrous suspicion. Yes and No. A and …
Did they think he was praying, his head so holy, his hands so discreet in the folds of his priestly clothing? Perhaps his lips were moving. The fire sank under the added log. If there were only something in the room beside it, anything — speech — but not this ache of silence.
You can smooth the bruises from our bodies; You can sweep off the sickness that's infected them. Breathe gently on this infant, that he may one day carry in his lungs the fragrance of Your heart.
Crap.
A and… It could very well be. What kind of shadow would strangulation cast? How fares the spirit of the throttled man? The soul was once believed to exit from the mouth and nose and return on the insucked air, but just suppose, the breath cut off, belt grimly crimping in the pipe, that while the soul struggled to escape, the bungling body died? Imagine, then, this messy bit of business quickly buried with the soul still stuck like an animal inside. What sounds would funeral speeches make in a dead ear; what meaning would they carry for a skull? The body swells down there, takes water on, then pops — the spirit's out. But what, by this time, is it? What's the shadow in a swelling corpse? a chorus of shouts? Shut in the earth, it dies each minute, each minute is replaced by the reflection of a new arrangement. So it is with us. So it is with me. So. So. It is so like. Buried in this air, I rot. Moment by moment, I am not the same. And all I desire is to escape — get out. Then notice — look carefully on it — what happens when the body splits. The snow-white wormlings of the flies seethe out. The soul, the immortal principle of life, in its last condition, has come to this — this transmigration.
They are rescuing something then: Henry Pimber somewhat rearranged — who knows for worse or better? Get him down and smartly under. Play it safe. You never can tell.
Up and down, yes and no, A and B. She rocked. Suddenly it struck him — added up. It was as though he had been jumped at from the dark. Chilled. The rocker creaked. Its legs rubbed in their sockets. All this time a sound — each time the same — had issued from its motion. Yet he'd never heard it. Where was it when he'd watched the shadow pulsing, her head to the leaves and the finial to the rose, the knurl at its blotting? Now the squeal tore at his nerves. It became difficult to see.
For the boy — shall we pray? How?
He got up slowly, sweat gathering coldly on his chest and under his arms, and began to pace. Soon he would prickle. She was only an ear, not half alive, reduced to one expectation. How alive was he — the great square O? Furber risked his name, sailed it across the current of the squeak. O-men-set-ter. Now his name has entered his ear. In whose porches I poured the poison. It has penetrated to his brain. But? Nothing. Blank. Dead then, to that. Dead by so much. Nevertheless alive in some ways — movable. In stumbling shamble. Rocky-walky. Bear shuff. And in the woods the breath of the men as they climb the trees will be floating from their noses just as always. Unperceived. The spirit. The Holy Spirit.
Is it two falls out of three? God wins the first but the Devil takes the next one. There has not yet been a third to anybody's knowledge.
He had a desire to dance, to whirl while kicking his leg in the air, crying kangaroo. He would whirl and whirl and slowly mount toward the ceiling — whirling. Too bad he'd never made a study of ballet.
He was moving — stately — like a sailing ship. He saw the woodwork and the paper sliding. Then spots by. Another instance of it. So life and death were ranges of degree and no more opposite than snow and sleet or pie and pain. Note that. Four and twenty black Flacks. Everything alive. Who was the fellow who first said it? It was a matter, merely, of awake. Awake. Ho! the guard! Ho! the keep! So surely the house, and this, the stomach of the house, and these, the flickers of its feelings. Alarm within. Turn out the watch. So surely these are shadows cast inside. By. Then the bitter rocker. Bitterly alive to scrape sensations through its feet and speak. Arouse within! The treasure of the temple's stolen. So then dead — and then alive. Tick-teek. Tick-teeek. Tickteeeek. Tick-teeeeek. Everywhere upon him. Soles of his feet, behind the lids of his eyes, beneath the roots of his teeth. Furber sank into the hallway, itching intolerably, and like a hairy spider, every twitch meant victim.