Then suddenly the highway was wide open, clear, a long rising six-lane concrete boomerang with its tip driven into the horizon and all for us. Soft gray seats and chrome and the sunlight standing still on the ebony dashboard, and only the highway itself took my attention away from the chrome, the felt padding under our feet, so that for a moment I saw the lemon trees, the olive groves, the brown sculpted contours of the low hills.
There was a shadow in the front seat next to the driver, a dark amorphous shadow that swelled and tried to change its position and vague shape according to the curves in the road, black shadow that seemed to be held in its seat by the now terrible speed of the Caddy. The driver had both hands on the wheel and now the speed was whispering inside my spine. I noticed that the tints of the window and windshield glass had slid, suddenly, onto Cassandra’s black dress, were shining there in the black planes of her body, and that she was looking at me. The black shadow was snuggling up to the driver.
“Hurry up,” I said as loud as I could, leaning forward and fighting against the sword at my side, “hurry up, will you? We haven’t got all day.”
And then the turn-off, the gentle incline over gravel, a long sweeping glimpse of the lemon sky, the archway flanked by two potted palms — there was an angel floating between the palms — the still sunlit aspect of the cemetery at the end of the day. And a little sign which I saw immediately-speed six miles per hour—and far off, at the top of a dun-colored hill, a little activity which I tried not to see. Sonny was suffering now, moaning to himself, and doing a poor job of controlling his fear of graveyards.
“Look, Sonny,” I said, “isn’t that the hearse?”
“Appears to be the hearse, Skipper. Sure enough.”
We crawled toward the hill and toward the green speck — it proved to be a tent for mourners — and toward the other elongated speck, black and radiant, which was the hearse. The sky was a pure lemon color, quite serene.
“But, Sonny,” clutching his arm, reaching up quickly for a fierce grip on the handstrap, “it’s moving, isn’t it? It wasn’t moving before, but it’s moving now.”
“Appears like you’re right, Skipper. That hearse just don’t want our company, I guess.”
And then the stillness of the limousine, the grease and steel sound of the door opening — we left the car door open behind us, large and empty and catching the sun — and Sonny holding one of my arms and Cassandra the other, and we were walking across the carpet of thick green imitation turf in the gentle light on top of the dun-colored hill, and no one was there.
“All right,” I said, “they can begin. Let’s get it over with.”
But I knew better. There was no one there, the place was empty. The remains of flowers were scattered around underfoot, red roses, white carnations, the debris of real activity, I could see that. But I rushed to the tent, for a long while stood looking into the darkness of that warm tent. There was a shovel lying on the ground and the smell of earth. Nothing else.
The flowers were heaviest where the digging had been going on. Piled up, kicked out of the way, crushed. And there were a few strips of the thick green turf lying more or less around the edges of what had been the hole, and the three of us, standing there together, gently touched the green turf with the toes of our shoes. They must have thought they were burying a piano, and judging by the width and depth of the new earth the hole must have gone down a hundred feet. There was the deep print of a workman’s boot right in the center and I squatted, kneeled, brushed it away.
And kneeling, weighing a handful of the new earth in my cold hand: “So they went ahead without us,” I said. “They put poor Gertrude into the ground without us. You know,” looking up at the two black figures rising into the soft lemon sky, “I told them I wanted Gertrude to have a white casket. A white casket with just a touch of silver. But they might have put her into mahogany and gold for all we’ll ever know. How can we tell?”
I stood up, raised my palm, straightened out my fingers: “Pretty sandy stuff, isn’t it, Sonny?” I said, and tossed it away, wiped my hand on the back of my pants. I turned to go.
And then the whisper, the quick soft whisper full of love and fear: “Ain’t you got something for the grave, Skipper? Got to leave something for the grave, Skipper. Bad luck if you don’t.”
I nodded, thought a moment, pointed. He understood. Sonny understood and unhooked the hooks and raked out a little trough about three inches deep in the loose skin-colored soil. He buried the sword about three inches deep in the loose soil, tamped it down. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps we would have had worse luck had we not left it there. At least it was no great loss.
The driver took us the long way around the cemetery on our way out, drove us at six miles per hour along the gentle road that was like a bridle path through a hovering bad dream. At the far end of the cemetery there was a line of eucalyptus trees, and leaning forward, staring out of the tinted glass and between the trees, I saw a mountain of naked earth heaped high with flowers — dead flowers, fresh flowers, an acre-long dump of bright tears for the dead — and I knew that poor Gertrude’s flowers would soon land on the pile.
“When we get home, Cassandra,” I said, and leaned back against the perfect cushion and shut my eyes, “I want you to try on that camel’s-hair coat. I think her camel’s-hair coat might fit you, Cassandra.”
The Brutal Act
White lifeboat. I heard something, steel, ratchet, a noise I must have known was descending cable, and there was an eclipse of the porthole, a perfect circle of blackness flush against the side of the ship at the spot where the great ring of brass and glass was hooked up with a little chain. The porthole was always open as it was now because I liked to catch the first pink edges of the tropical dawn, first breath of day, first patter of bare feet on the deck above. But it had never gone black before, that porthole of mine, and for a moment — squall? tidal wave? another ship between ourselves and the sun? — I felt what it was like to be faintly smothered in some new problem of seamanship. Slowly I put on my cap, set aside my tom gray copy of the serviceman’s a-bridged edition of the New Testament. Then carefully I thrust my head through the porthole and attempted to twist myself about and look topside. No luck at all. So I looked down. Suspended a long way below me, yet out of reach of the waves, motionless, a white lifeboat was empty and absolutely still down there. For some reason I lowered the port, spent precious minutes screwing tight the brass lugs, even though I was swept immediately by my usual swift fear of ocean nausea. Then I looked at my wrist, 0500 hours, and then I locked the cabin door, climbed topside. For three days, in a sudden effort to keep abreast of Mac the Catholic chaplain, I had been reading the New Testament each dawn. The lifeboat destroyed all that.
I came out with a light in my eyes and the brisk wind catching my cap by the visor, and dead ahead was an enormous field of shoal water emerald green in the dawn. East, I thought and smiled, blotted a little fine spray with the back of my hand. I had to shade my eyes. But the lifeboat was there all right, though swung up as she should have been on giant fishhooks of steel and not suspended above the waves where I had first seen her, and she was motionless up there, hauled now a good distance above my head, and she was as large as someone’s private cruiser and, in her own shade, a solemn white. I wondered whether or not it was the same boat. But the fishhooks were canted slightly, the blocks were pulled from under her, the giant tarpaulin lay heaped on the deck, and after a moment I knew that it must be the same boat. I stood there, shaded my raised eyes, waited.
Because someone was standing on her bow. He was nearly a silhouette to me, and yet I took him all in, the long spread legs, the fist on the cable, the faded denim jeans, the flapping sky-blue shirt, the long black hair whipped in the wind, the white hat rolled up and stuck halfway down the front of the jeans. I watched him in the shelter of the white lifeboat and in the bright warmth of the sun. But he was a man of the wind, a tall bony man of this sudden topside wind, and he was bracing himself on the enormous soft white prow of the lifeboat and grinning down at me.