Ugly Palmers stands in the noisy melancholic corridors of old WCHS, leaning against Elaine’s locker, at noon. He sees it all as if for the first time, hears only now the music in the excited voices and banging lockers, smells as though they had never before existed the dense sweaty odors of the generations which have passed through here. Nostalgically, he munches an apple, runs his fingers over the cool surface of Elaine’s locker. An end to this! Sometimes it seems almost unbelievable. Already, though he still has a whole week to enjoy it here, he is feeling the pain of irrevocable loss. And yet: he is happy.
Elaine, however, arrives crying, her little face streaked with tears, blowing her nose in one of her Pa’s big handkerchiefs. There’s something so lovable about her blowing her nose in one of those great big handkerchiefs, something so terrible about her tears. “What’s the matter, Elaine?”
She snuffles, more tears come, she opens her locker, shoves her books in, but she doesn’t answer.
“What is it, Elaine? Why’re you crying?”
“I cain’t tell you,” she whispers. She pulls out a brown paper bag, containing her lunch, from the locker, then closes it again.
“Why not?”
“It’s too bad.”
“Bad?” Carl Dean bristles. “You can tell me, Elaine. You still love me, don’t you?”
She nods, looks up at him with reddened eyes. Her look always gets him. “It was something Junior Baxter said. In front of everybody.”
Carl Dean feels his muscles tense, his back straighten, his fists ball shut. But he feels very cool now. This is something he can handle. “What was it?” he asks.
“He called me … he called me …”
“Look, why don’t you write it?” he suggests. He gives her a pencil stub and she uses the paper lunchbag. Her face reddens and her eyes water up again as she writes. She turns away and he reads: HORE. He sets his teeth. Looks around. Never find him now. But Junior’s first class after lunch is history. They eat their lunch in dark silence, holding hands.
He walks Elaine to her class, then goes down the hall to look for Junior. Class has already begun and Junior Baxter is on the far side of the room, next to the windows, between Joey Altoviti and Angie Bonali. Boy, what a bunch of enemies! He has no choice. He strides into the room, trying to act official about it. “Excuse me,” he says, “but I have to talk with Junior Baxter a minute.” Junior shrinks into his seat, toward the aisle, but Carl Dean drags him out. Books spill and girls cry out. Junior grabs onto his desk, starts whining like a baby, kicks out, but he is weaker than a girl. Carl Dean hauls him out the door, paying no mind to the teacher’s protest, and in the corridor gives Junior a thrashing. Junior puts up no defense to speak of, so Carl Dean alternates his blows by whim between the boy’s beanbag belly and his fat white face. When blood is running out his mouth and nose and Junior starts to vomit, Carl Dean lets up. “Now you just watch how you talk to girls from now on,” he says.
He realizes then he has a considerable audience. One of them is the principal, Mr. Bradley. “Come with me, young man!” Mr. Bradley says. In the office, Carl Dean starts to explain, but Mr. Bradley cuts him off. “I know who you are,” he says. “Now, you go down and clean out your locker, turn in everything you might have checked out, bring the locker key back to me … and get out of here!”
“Get out—?”
“You are expelled!”
So, he does what Mr. Bradley has told him to do, but in a kind of daze, wondering how it could ever have happened, how his life could have turned out this way, and altogether it takes him about forty-five minutes, so he is able to catch Elaine in the corridor between fifth and sixth hour classes. He tells her all that happened and he doesn’t know exactly what he wants her to do about it, but she does it anyway. She takes ahold of his hand like she doesn’t mean ever to let go and says if he has to go, then she’s going too, and that’s how it is that they walk out of there together, laughingly in love, and the day, crazy as it is, is beautiful.
Elaine’s Ma is that moment over in Randolph Junction with another Brunist, Ben Wosznik, concluding the most successful day so far. The newspaper stories have carried their fame far and wide, and the way, she discovers, has been prepared. Naturally, there are those who scoff, there always are, but there are many who do not. Above all, she does not encounter out here that kind of implacable hostility she has run up against in West Condon. And, of course, the people with whom she speaks have, almost all of them, known and respected her and Ely for years and years, such that even the scoffers scoff gently.
The Cleggs, Hiram and Emma, to whom she and Ben now bid farewell, are two of at least fifteen people who have said they would try to come next weekend, and, what is more, they believe they can bring another half dozen or so with them. Both Hiram and Emma are important leaders of the Randolph Junction Church of the Nazarene. Clara tells them how the Spirit has truly taken on flesh, that a new day is come, brought by the White Bird, which would last to the end of the world.
“Amazing! To be sure, there is something great here!” Hiram says, nodding gravely, and Emma listens wide-eyed.
Clara recounts the prophecies and the signs, tells of Ely’s premonitions and his disaster message, explains how so many folks arrived at the same truth by different paths, and mentions the secret aspects of it which of course cannot be let out until they actually join. She’s noticed the effect this usually has.
“And a prophetic cross, you say?”
“You mean like to tell the future?” Emma asks. “Oh, Hiram! we must go see!”
“Yes, dear, I quite agree.”
Clara also is careful to mention how the Mother Mary has played a part, because she has discovered this idea has a tremendous appeal wherever she goes. Ben tells them again how he himself was attracted to the group and why he has stayed on. It’s just plain common sense to come and have a look for yourself, he says.
“True! That’s true!” says Hiram.
Ben’s frank and earthy manner impresses people.
Driving back toward West Condon together, Clara tells Ben how big a help he has been to her. He tells her then how much he admires her, and adds surprisingly that if she ever thought of remarrying, he would like to be considered. She says she hasn’t been thinking about any such thing. He tells her that he understands perfectly well and certainly he could never hope to hold a candle to so great a man as Ely Collins, but he only wanted her to know how he felt. Just like Ben, she thinks, to put it so plain like that. Anyways, he adds, there’s no point even concerning themselves about it until after next Sunday, if there is an afterwards, but he does go on to mention anyway the Bible story about the woman who was widowed seven times. Of course, that story has already occurred to her. And then something Elaine reminded her of yesterday morning, something she had almost forgot, something Ely used to say in almost every preaching, comes back to her now and it has all the ring of a prophecy to it: “Grace is not something you die to get, it is something you get to live!”
One moment, Colin Meredith is assured of the end and ecstatic with its glorious promise, the next, plunged into deepest despair in seeing it can never be, then relieved and even made joyful by the certainty of continuance, the certainty of more life, next terrorized by a sudden paralyzing vision of the final horror now upon them. For one sublime and exquisite moment, he embraces and is embraced by all, the boy of the Brunists, the loved one, he upon whom all depend, the all without whom he is forever lost; and then, suddenly, he is utterly alone, ignored, forgotten, unwanted — Eleanor is self-absorbed and impatient, Carl Dean deserts him for a girl, Giovanni does not even see him, a woman laughs cruelly in his face. Though he has willed an end to all his vices, they return to overwhelm him. Chaste in principle, he seeks lecherous solace in the act of love. Spent, he sinks miserably into self-disgust, returns repentant to his vows and to his friends, only to meet rebuff and anguish and to fall again in sin. She is beautiful, but her beauty is ultimately a terror to him; she is enormous, but her enormity protects him. She is brilliant with Mr. Himebaugh’s cold true brilliance, and her passion is as spontaneous and furious as Carl Dean’s temper. Her eyes are gray and wise, and her mouth is young and full and eager. Her breasts, sweet to his hungry mouth, are greater even than Mrs. Wilson’s, her hips, which quiver in his grip, mightier even than Mrs. Hall’s. Her arms grip with the strength of Mr. Wosznik, her hands, like Mrs. Cravens’, tear at his flesh, her massive thighs squeeze and kick like a mare’s, and her hair, wild as the prophet’s, whirls and snarls and clings to his body. Her womb, fertile as Mrs. Harlowe’s, grabs him like a fist and wrings the seed from his body and angels sing and sweat beads his forehead—“Mother!” he cries out, and sucks, bites, chews the hard nipple of his pillow. “Son!” she says, and sinks away from him into the dark and hollow earth.