I felt overcome with tiredness. I could hear the dog’s teeth gnawing gristle and bone. Cold air swept into the room and I felt a chill. I was thinking fondly of other Dougs, those dead in infancy and their childhoods, and unborn Dougs to come. Would it be going too far to imagine past souls contained within my own, my old soul spirited through life, again and again, within the happy succession of men called Doug?
I pressed on with my impromptu lecture to my brothers. It was clear to me, from the way their faces gazed up at mine, that I held their attention. I’m not a bad speaker, once I get rolling. I bore down and made eye contact with men in their seats, man after man, to give each the impression that I was addressing him, in a personal, confidential way; to make all my brothers stop chewing, put down their forks, and show some manners. “The dead should not be feared. Their spirits are inside us. The dead inhabit us. I feel the spirits of ancestors alive in me. The dance of the Corn King is the nocturnal dance of death and the life that grows out of death! Cold winds of the coming winter blow through the red library! Winter is upon us! Who will take up the knife and cut out the living, beating heart of the Corn King? The Corn King must be sacrificed!”
No one moved. One after another, my beloved brothers turned away from me. They fidgeted in their seats, glanced down at food on their plates, or upward at the ceiling vaults and the cumbersome chandeliers that swayed, gently, in the icy drafts. One humorist a few places down — I’m not sure who this man was — said, quietly but audibly, “What happened to Doug’s face? He looks beat up.”
“He’s been drinking,” replied a second, nearby voice. There was no time to find out who had spoken. Hiram, from his great chair at the head of the oak table, announced abruptly, “Let us say grace”—our cue to stop talking, close our eyes, and bow heads in prayer.
“Dear Father, bless this supper we are about to eat, and bless us. Let us not fight unnecessarily, but help us to behave like gentlemen. Look after our brothers who are unable to make it to the table because of injuries, and forgive us for injuring them. Help us to love all creatures, men and animals, the fish and the birds, and every green thing. Guard our red library against electrical fires in the walls, and keep out the rain, the cold, and trespassers. Please help us preserve our way of life. A special prayer from all of us for Doug, who has promised to stand in as quarterback this coming Sunday and throw the ball against the Episcopal Ministers. Amen.”
“Amen. Amen,” echoed voices all around. The official eating began. Water pitchers and peas in bowls traveled from hand to hand down the table. My plate was, unfortunately, still empty. Allan was sitting in my chair. I pushed my way toward the main course and prayed there would be some left. Of course there’s never enough of anything. The wine carafes were already running empty. Wind shook the windowpanes and blew out the candles giving light to the table. Suddenly a large bat darted overhead — so close to our heads, in fact, you could hear its leathery wings as it veered away, barely missing things — and the young fathers ducked. At that moment quite a few cross-table shouting matches were under way:
“What?”
“That’s not what he said!”
“Ask Anton. He’s been depressed all his life. Hey, Anton, has it worked for you?”
“All I can say is when you’re sick, you’ve got to take care of yourself!”
“What?”
“I heard him clearly because I was standing right beside him at the exact moment he fell!”
“Those poor people!”
“Who?”
“Anton’s not here!”
“I can’t hear!”
“He said, ‘The God is beyond us’!”
“Has anyone seen the sheepdog?”
“That’s not what he said!”
“I said he has a broken nose and a bad bump on his head and some shallow cuts on his hands and face!”
“Benedict, get your beetles away!”
“I have to tell you that that’s not what he said! I was right there beside the man and you weren’t even in the room at the time!”
“Who?”
“I believe it was his shoulder!”
“Depression is a serious illness!”
“Place your bets! Place your bets!”
“What?”
“What?”
All this shouting and noise soon reached a level at which it was impossible to really hear anything. This can create a feeling of detachment, a comforting but utterly false sense of one’s separateness from the busy crowd. It was in precisely this kind of isolated, subjective haze that I wandered around the table in search of red wine.
My plate was in my hand. I circled around back of Hiram’s chair. Hiram wore his napkin as a bib tucked into his shirt collar. It was good to see him taking nourishment. His teeth were working and he appeared contented. I strolled on by. Brothers in a line were having their feed, and I said hello to each in turn. “Hello, Porter.” “Hello, Eric.” “Hello, Frank.” “Hello, Jim.” “Hello, Dennis.” Someone had stacked paperbacks on the floor and I stumbled across these. I had to hold on to a chair to keep my balance — it was George’s empty chair, and I would’ve sat in it but this was out of the question because taking George’s chair would have been considered unforgivable, so I continued around the enormous table, behind the matching twins seated in a line. Sure enough, four or five beetles marched up the long table. Men in their seats cheered. Bob leaned over the table, put his head down behind a beetle, and blew — an illegal ploy to speed a lethargic insect. A beetle bumped into a glass and could go no farther. Another crawled into butter and this caused laughter. The beetle struggled helplessly in the butter — it was like some beetle tar pit — and a twin, seeing his opportunity, raised a plate to smash it. I couldn’t watch. Cold casserole was left in the bottom of a ceramic bowl and I overturned this onto my plate. I did not have a fork so stood in place and ate with my fingers while watching the chandeliers overhead swing back and forth, back and forth on their ropes. It was the wind moving them. Twenty golden pendulums. This way and that they swung, not in unison but each according to its own particular frequency and gentle pitch and roll. Our chandeliers blown by wind became massive, crystal chimes. It was disturbing to watch these lights swinging so wildly, but on the other hand it was true that on account of bats our tall windows had been flung open, and this was the beginning, the first storm rolling through, the first snow in late autumn, winter’s eve.
A triplet waving a tennis racket dashed after a black bat resting on a red wall. Tennis rackets are more effective against bats than nets, though also more grisly. I was one among several men gazing intently up toward the ceiling. I worried that a swinging chandelier might stress its rope, break free, and crash down on our heads. I could see, looking at the ceiling, the full extent of water damage up there. Fissures spread across vaults and from vault to vault; these black crevices intersected and formed, at their junctures, broad, open craters, pitted hollows bordered with plaster fragments that hung precariously, ready to fall and strike us. In the moving light from windblown chandeliers these vertical outcroppings cast shadows that swept metronomically across the broken, spackled vaults. Here and there moisture dripped. One great brown stain looked, I thought, exactly like a man’s head. It was the profile of a man. Yes. Pointing north was his Celtic nose. There were the recessed eyes. Chipped paint made a gray mustache that concealed a familiar, weak mouth. There was even a cigarette formed by exposed timber, one of the sagging structural supports bearing the weight of ceiling, roof, snow. “Look at that,” I said to my brothers gathered around.