Death in the form of death genes shall not prevail over me, for death genes are one thing but it is something else to name the death genes and know them and stand over against them and dare them. I am different from my death genes and therefore not subject to them. My father had the same death genes but he feared them and did not name them and thought he could roar out old Route 66 and stay ahead of them or grab me and be pals or play Brahms and keep them, the death genes, happy, so he fell prey to them.
Death in none of its guises shall prevail over me, because I know all the names of death.
Having pronounced this peculiar litany, he hopped into the car, lay down on the back seat, covered himself with the lap robe, stuck his nose in a fragrant crease of leather, and went to sleep.
This is what is going to happen.
In the very moment of sinking into a deep sleep he had, not a dream or a flight of fancy, but a swift sure unsurprised presentiment of what lay in store.
Thirty years earlier the child knew that something was going to happen, and that the something was all he ever wanted or needed to know, and that it only remained for him to wait for it to happen and to settle for nothing less until it did.
What was the something? Women? War? Or victory in life? Death?
Thirty years passed. He had women, war, and victory in life.
But nothing changed. Thirty years later he knew no more than he knew in Dalhart, Texas, squeezing his legs together and looking at girls.
Yes, but you have just discovered again what you knew all along, that something is going to happen.
This is what is going to happen. All at once he knew what had happened and what was going to happen.
He found himself in a certain place. It was a desert place. Weeds grew in the sand. Vines sprouted in the rocks. The place was a real place. Its exact location could be determined within inches by map coordinates, ninety-one degrees so many minutes so many seconds longitude west, thirty-three degrees so many minutes so many seconds latitude north. He had been there forty years earlier. Then the place had not been deserted. It was a spot near a stream which ran through a meadow. The spot was in a springhouse on the stream where crocks of milk and sweet butter used to be stored. D’Lo still liked to keep her own buttermilk there because it was not far from her house, which had no refrigerator, and she could pick it up on the way home. She found him there in the cool darkness watching reflections of light play against the damp masonry. Boy, what you are doing down here? I been looking all over for you, it’s your dinnertime. (He didn’t answer.) Now you come on up and eat with D’Lo. (He didn’t answer.) Don’t you remember how you always used to sit with D’Lo in the kitchen while they ate in the dining room? And when you had your spells, you’d come running in the kitchen and jump up in my lap and put your head right here? Sometimes I’d hold you all day. (No, I don’t remember.) You come on here, boy, and let D’Lo hug you. You po little old white boy. (She hugged him but he didn’t feel anything except that he was being hugged by a big black woman. What’s this about big black loving mammies?) You poor little old boy, you all alone in the world. Your mama dead, your daddy dead, and ain’t nobody left in the house but you and me. (That’s not bad. He thought of the novelty of walking home from school in the afternoons to the big house empty except for D’Lo shuffling around in her flattened-out mules. Strange! But not bad.) Sweet Jesus, what we gon do? (One thing we gon do, D’Lo, is you gon turn me loose.) He stiffened. She was angry. He knew she would be. He already knew enough about people to know what displeased them. He knew how to please people, even black people. He was everybody’s nigger. He was even the niggers’ nigger. (Her lower lip ran out. There came across her face the new peevish black-vs.-white expression — for a second he saw that she wasn’t sure he hadn’t stiffened because of the new white-vs.-black business. She let go.) You poor little old boy, you don’t know nothing. You don’t even know what you need to know. You don’t even know enough to know what you ain’t got. (She wasn’t angry now. He knew she wouldn’t be.) But don’t you worry, honey. You all alone in the world and you gon be alone a long time but the good Lawd got something special in mind for you. (He has?) Sho he has. (How do you know that?) Because he got the whole world in his hand, even a mean little old boy like you. (How do you know that?) Because, bless God, I know. You laughing at me, boy? (No, D’Lo.) You full of devilment but you messing with the wrong one this time. Now you get on up to the kitchen and we gon have us some pork chops and butter beans and then we gon set down on the back porch and listen to the radio. (Well, it beats sitting on the front porch and listening to Brahms.) What you say, boy? (Nothing.)
Then the spot became part of a country club, the exact patch of grass in the concavity of a kidney-shaped bunker on number-six fairway. For twenty years winter and summer thousands of golf balls, cart tires, spiked shoes crossed the spot.
After twenty years the country club became a subdivision. The spot was the corner of a lot where a ranch-style house was built for a dentist named Sam Gold. Weeds grew in the fence corner where not even the Yazoo Master mower could reach and covered an iron horseshoe for ten years. Though Sam Gold was a Jew, places meant nothing to him. One place, even Jerusalem, was like any other place. Why did he, Will Barrett, who was not a Jew, miss the Jerusalem he had never had and which meant nothing to Sam Gold, who was a Jew?
After twenty-five years the subdivision became a shopping center, with a paved parking lot of forty acres. The spot was now located in the mall between the Orange Julius stand and the entrances to H&R Block. The mall was crowded with shoppers for twenty years.
Now it was deserted. When he came to years from now, he was lying on the spot. The skylight of the mall was broken. The terrazzo was cracked. Grass sprouted. Somewhere close, water ran. Old tax forms blew out of H&R Block. A raccoon lived in the Orange Julius stand. No one was there. Yet something moved and someone spoke. Maybe it was D’Lo. No. Was it Allie? No, nobody. No, somebody was there all right. Someone spoke: Very well, since you’ve insisted on it, here it is, the green-stick Rosebud gold-bug matador, the great distinguished thing.
The ocean was not far away.
As he turned to see who said it and who it was, there was a flash of light then darkness then light again.
III
SUNLIGHT SHONE IN his eyes, then someone came between, then sunlight shone in his eyes again.
“Could it be? It is. Is that you, Will?”
“Yes,” he said, instantly awake, a thousand miles from his dreams, as unsurprised as if he were back in his office again. “Who—?” Holding a hand against the sun, he tried to make out the dark eclipsed face inside its bright corona of hair. What he recognized was the Alabama quirky-lilting voice and the way the round bare shoulder hitched up a little. “Kitty.” He sat up.
“You stood me up, you dog. You no good scoun’l beast. Look at you. You’re a mess! Happy birthday yesterday.”
“What? Oh.”
“We had a date in your summerhouse. Don’t you remember?”
He smiled. “What day was that?” What year was that? It pleased him that she was no more than mildly outraged and evidently found nothing remarkable in his absence or his appearance or finding him asleep in a car and looking like Ben Gunn. “I was called away suddenly,” he said. “I only just got back.”
“So I notice,” said Kitty absently, gazing at him. How, in what manner, was she gazing at him?
“Come around to the other side so I can see you.”