We all were so happy there together
In our peaceful little mountain home,
But the Savior needed angels up in heaven:
Now they’re singin’ round that great white throne!
Tommy (the Kitten) Cavanaugh has, at long last, climbed that famous furry mountain and passed into manhood. Spent, yet firm and ready as ever — a tiger, man! — he cuddles naked with her in a corner of the Lincoln’s rangy back seat, staring out on the old ice plant, only witness to the miracle of his accomplishment. He rolls down the window, and, turning his back to her — which she kisses and softly scratches — he slips the fragile skin off: like a young snake enjoying his first molt. Taking care to hold it cuplike so as not to make an even worse mess in his Dad’s car, he flips it out, regretting that it could not be kept somehow as a souvenir. He’s still wet where the skin was and his hands are sticky, so he looks in the clothes on the floor for a handkerchief or something, comes across her panties. “May I?” he asks devilishly, yet at the same time with an intimacy, a camaraderie, he has never known before. She nods, takes them from him, dries him tenderly, looking down at it, her cheeks against his chest. There are dark stains, too, which cause profound pangs of compassion and gratitude to course through him.
“I can hear your heart,” she whispers.
Which is cause for him to listen to hers, and he does so, staring ahead at that stupendous pink bud at the tip of his nose. The two feelings he has not anticipated are the inexpressible after-sense of well-being that now magnifies everything into such tremendous — almost unbearable — beauty, and the terrible nostalgia that goes, he supposes, with any perfect love. For love it is, no doubt about it, the greatest he has ever known and the greatest, he’s sure, he’ll ever know. The unexpected beauty, the excruciating sadness, the intensity of his love, all seem oddly summed up in the silly country music swimming over them from the car radio. He knows now that, though neither of them like hillbilly stuff, it will be, in an inescapable way, their song, and that no matter where they are or who they’re married to, the song will recall for them this moment….
White dove will mourn in sorrow,
And the willows bow down their heads,
I live my life in sorrow,
Since Mother and Daddy are dea-ea-ead!
Sooner or later, in a sad, a terrible, yet also beautiful moment, they will have to talk about religion, that impossible thing, bigger than both of them, cruel to their love, her Catholicism and his Protestantism, and, after that, sooner or later, they will have to tear themselves apart. Forever. Tears spring to the edges of his eyes. There are tears in her eyes, too, and he wonders if her thoughts are the same as his. “I love you,” he says. He kisses her long and tenderly, tragically, and though her whole body is available to him, his embrace is chaste and gentle, a promise of his eternal care for her. So beautiful is she, so virginal, so his … his white dove …
As the years roll by I often wonder,
Will we all be together some day?
And each night as I wander through the graveyard,
Darkness hides me where I kneel to pray!
White dove will mourn in sorrow…
Sainthood, ultimately, is a rising above — not only God — but the Destroyer as well. Saint Rahim, rigid, hungry, but supremely at one with the All, stares meditatively in front of him at springs and the red and blue stripes of a cotton mattress. Illusion at moments of remarkable distance. A great calm. Through discipline to pattern. Distantly, a toilet lid clunks carelessly against the enameled tank. Like a bell in the mind. Shattering of peace, but still the perception of pattern. Again — as always — his childhood washes over and through him here, like an infusion of raw guilt, imprecise as ever in the imagery it calls up, yet piercing in the accuracy of emotions aroused. Panic! This dust—! He twists, squirms, chokes. Then it passes. He sighs. In truth, he feels better just now than he has felt all day, his second to go without food. Just six more days, and they say it gets easier after the third day. He believes he can make it. Abstractly, he worries about his cats. They have also been subjected to a fast, but he is not certain they will survive the week. Except for Nyx. Nyx will survive. He smiles.
Water running. Door hinges revolving. He turns his head, watches her bare feet pad wearily across the wooden floor. Poor dear child! She is very weak. He would give up speech, too, but cannot afford it, not even for her sake. He needs every word at his command to keep the others from faltering. God! he cannot stand alone! She arrives at the bed, pauses. She has forgotten to turn out the light. An urge to kiss her small toes — just a foot from his face — leaps to his lips, but he overmasters it. Discipline is his greatest virtue. She curls a toe. Oh God! He starts to cry, clamps his hand between his teeth, bites down with all his strength. She turns toward the door, hesitating, as though measuring the distance. Then, mechanically, her small feet, under the hem of her tunic, pad back to the door. The light goes off. She no longer troubles to put the hook.
Almost before he realizes it, her feet are near his face again. God! catches his breath, holds himself rigid. At last, she enters the bed. The mattress hardly sinks below her weight now, so thin is she. He reaches up, strokes the gentle depression. Calm returns. He waits for her to sleep. The perfect man is the motionless cause.
2
The news of the mine closing broke on Monday and Sal Ferrero came by Tuesday morning, the fourteenth. Vince was up on the ladder. He had stirred up the old paint, was just putting a new coat over the patch he’d started on the south side nearly a month before. He knew what Sal wanted to talk about, so he hooked the bucket on the top of the ladder, crawled down. They had known it was coming, everybody had known it for weeks, but still it had hit them hard. “It’s awful,” he said. He pulled out his handkerchief, wiped the paint off his hands.
“It’s a real blow, Vince.”