Jones lit a cigar, grunted interrogatively.
“I haven’t been able to get good pictures of the group yet, but tonight may be a good time. They’re going to meet out at that little rise next to Deepwater Number Nine. You know it?”
“Yeah. Cunt Hill.”
“What! Are you serious?”
“Somebody told me when we were out there for the disaster.”
“But how did it get a name like that?”
“Looks like one. The east, or belly, slope is gradual, and there’s even a slight abdominal dip before the last pubic rise — Stretch out there on the bar, Doris, and lemme show—”
“Not me,” grumbled Doris. “My slope ain’t gradual,” and she slapped her belly, making them laugh.
“Then, on the west side,” Jones continued, “it drops off sharply into a grove of trees at the edge of the mine buildings. But it only really got its name, I understand, when the company for some goddamn reason cut a clearing in the middle of all that vegetation, went digging for something or other, and left an incredible gash right in the old alveolus of love!”
“Right in the old olive-oilus of love!” exclaimed Doris. “What the hell is that?” She left them, shaking her head, to continue her mindless wandering behind the counter, smudging a clean glass here, dropping bread on the floor there.
“This fissure is now the repository of used condums, thrown there, it is said, in the belief that such oblations prolong the potency of the communicant.”
“Jones, you’re kidding!”
“There is, in fact, a sizable orifice in the crack, driven no doubt by some wag with an electric drill and a compressed air hose, though many in the heat of a drunken brawl have claimed to be the Man Who Deflowered Cunt Hill.”
Marcella, fresh from the bath and into the frock, flies gaily down the steps. Flagstones of sun lie bright in the living room garden. Out! out with the sackcloth! let the new day in! Marcella sings swings leaps skips whirls through the musty old house, heaves open the windows, brings the green air in, brings smiles to the faces of Elan and Rahim, huddled over writings at the kitchen table. It is spring! And she is in love! And then, from outside, a bird’s liquid laughter sends wildflowers shivering up her spine, and out she dances to drench herself in the hot and holy sun!
Passing through the hotel lobby on his way to the plant, Miller ran into Wally Fisher and the Chamber secretary Jim Elliott. Elliott wanted to talk about the industrial brochure and the new West Condon Common Sense Committee being set up. Miller agreed to print the brochure at cost and help with the layouts, listened noncommittally to the Common Sense idea. He had bet Cavanaugh would get into this thing, was glad to see it finally happen, but wouldn’t be able to participate. Fisher, for his part, had a wild story about an out-of-town couple that had come through last night, registering as Mr. and Mrs. Washington; they had slipped out before dawn without paying, leaving deposits of shit all over the bed. “Some spring,” he said.
“Happy first day of spring!” Annie his office chief sang out as Miller pushed through the front door.
“Same to you, Annie!” he said, so boisterously that Annie started. They both laughed.
“Mr. Miller, the plaque came today, the award for the disaster special!” She was giddy with possession of it.
“Well, hang it up!” he smiled.
In the newsroom, he plumped his hat on the spare chair beside his desk, tossed the trenchcoat over the back of it. Crossed to the teletype and snapped the switch. The carriage jumped as though goosed, bringing the room to with its familiar clacking thumping heartbeat. Thing he liked. In his morning mail, besides the award plaque, he found another black-bordered Last Judgment communication from the lady Black Hand:
The Devil, to no one’s surprise, turned out to be a woman. She roamed the tight streets of West Condon during the drawnout Judgment proceedings, servicing weak souls. Mother, complained the Supreme Judge, you are depopulating heaven! Your paradoxes drive me nuts, she responded with a dry scoffing cackle, and gave her skirts a kick.
• • •
Seven thousand philosophy professors were assembled simultaneously and told that if they could produce one truth among them, they would all be pardoned. The seven thousand consulted for seven days. At the end of that time, they presented their candidate, who, standing before his Judge, said: God is just. This philosopher was immediately sent to heaven to demonstrate the stupidity of his statement, and the remaining 6,999 were consumed by Holy Wrath.
• • •
A poet, seeking favors at the Judgment, composed a brilliant ode to Divine Justice, and presented it. It was so enthusiastically received that the poet was proclaimed Judge of the Day and granted Supreme Authority for twenty-four hours. So ingenuous and sweet-natured was the fellow, however, that he unhesitatingly absolved everyone who appeared before him. God finally had to call an end to the poet’s franchise for fear of being laughed at…
He shouldn’t go out there, just fog up the vision, but he’d promised yesterday. He’d better go. He would. Picked up the phone, dialed the hospital. Though it was what he lived by, he regretted the one-track specificity of all action, of all choice, what time made you do when you came to a fork in the path … or two forks at once. Eleanor Norton’s seven aspects were the thing, by God! While he waited, he hummed “Just As I Am,” an old revival tune, and doodled on his desk blotter. He noticed that all the doodles lately looked alike: M’s. Since his own name had never fascinated him that much, they could only stand for one thing. Some were peaked and shaded heavily, gone over and over until they looked like a flock of shaggy black birds in flight in a green sky. Others were rounded like two hillocks, or like one hill cleft, insignia of all three feminine distinctions at once. As if something were lacking still, some of the M’s had even been enclosed in a circle. “And that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee,” he sang into the phone, “O Lamb of God, I come! I come!”
Marcella, digging in the dewed earth by the old apple tree, sings revival songs of her own make. She punches open the gaily colored seed packages. Thirty days! The sun is gloriously hot on her spring-frocked back. He comes!
After loading up the hooks with wirecopy, Miller took the panel out to the hospital. Stalled at every stopsign, clanked even on new asphalt. Old rusty-smelling wreck. One year old. Stopped for gas at the station where Lem Filbert worked, asked him if he was keeping in shape. Filbert played a creaky shortstop on their semipro team. The guy grinned broadly, then sighed, spat. “Ahh, shit, I’m gittin’ too fuckin’ old, Tiger.”
“Yeah, we all are. Where’s all the young talent?”
Filbert’s grin faded. “They’re smart. They’re all gittin’ outa this deathtrap before it’s too fuckin’ late.”
“Is that Mello in there working on that Ford?”
“Yep, he’s one a the fuckin’ lucky ones. Come on a coupla weeks ago. Been at least fifty fuckin’ guys by here lookin’ for a job.” The valve on the gas hose burped shut. Filbert squirted enough more in to round the charge off, hung up the hose, capped the gastank, spat again. “Gonna be a lotta fuckin’ holes in the lineup this year,” he said flatly, and stared off.
“I know.” There was nothing else either of them could say, so Miller paid and left. Lem’s brother, Tuck, killed in the mine disaster — about all they were able to bring out were his head and feet — had played a great center field with them for six or seven years. There were others, too, too painful to think about. Lorenzini and Calcaterra. Their pitcher Bill Lawson, whose widow had been in and out of the cult. Mario Juliano. And Bert Martini with one arm gone now. Martini caught and Miller had known one-arm catchers before, and he hoped to rehabilitate the old guy. But it was going to be a pretty glum season. Man. Down with spring.