Chapter 17

It had jumped all customary postal tracks, of course, to travel through dark time zones and bleak wastelands of yore, accompanied by the eerie wailing note of an oscilloscope and other science-fiction movie background music ...speeding through nimbus shadows and along the undulating mist of bubbling dry ice ...then we cut to close-up: ah. A solitary crystal hand appearing at my mail slot . . . floating there for an instant, like chemical statuary designed to immediately dissolve as soon as it deposits the invitation that requests my humble presence at a gathering being held twelve (twelve? that long ago? Jesus . . .) twelve years previous to the day of its delivery! Whew! Any wonder it left me a little ringy?” I didn’t wait for an answer, or pause when the voice at the other end attempted to interrupt my manic monologue. As the loudspeaker announced departures and the pinball scoreboard outside the booth clattered and clashed and ran its meaningless numbers upwards in maddened acceleration, I kept talking, compulsively filling the phone with words in order not to leave an opening of silence for Peters to speak into. Or, more accurately, to question into. I think I must have phoned Peters, not so much out of thoughtfulness for an old friend as out of a need to verbalize my reasons, and a desperate wish to logically explain my actions—but I wanted to explain without anyone questioning my explanations. I must have suspected that any extensive probing would surely reveal—to Peters, to myself— that I really had no logical explanation, either for my abortive attempt at suicide or for my impulsive decision to return home. “. . . so the card convinced me, among other things, that I am still much more at the mercy of my past than I ever imagined. You wait; the same thing will happen to you: you’ll get a call from Georgia one of these days and realize that you’ve many a score to settle back home before you can get on with your business.” “I doubt that I could settle that many scores,” Peters said. “True; your scene is different. But with me it’s just one score. And one man. It was amazing the number of pictures of him that card conjured up: booted feet, with spikes no less. Muddy sweatshirt. Gloved hands forever scratching scratching scratching at a navel or an ear. Raspberry-red lips draped in a drunken grin. A lot of other equally ridiculous pictures to choose from, but the picture that came on the clearest was of his long, sinewy body diving into the river, naked and white and hard as a peeled tree ...this was the predominant image. You see, Brother Hank used to spend hours swimming steadily into the river’s current as he trained for a swimming meet. Hours and hours, swimming steadily, doggedly, and remaining in exactly the same place a few feet from the dock. Like a man swimming a liquid treadmill. The training must have paid off because by the time I was ten he had a shelf simply gleaming with trophies and cups; I think even held for a time a national swimming record in one of the events. Lord God! All this brought back by that one tiny postcard; and with such astonishing clarity. Lord. Just a card. I dread to imagine what a complete letter might have produced.” “Okay. But just what in the shit do you hope to accomplish going home? Even, say, you do settle some funny score—” “Don’t you see? It’s even in the card: ‘You think you’re big enough now?’ It was that way all my time at home—Brother Hank always held up to me as the man to measure up to—and it’s been that way ever since. In a psychologically symbolic way, of course.” “Oh, of course.” “So I’m going home.” “To measure up to this psychological symbol?” “Or pull him down. No, don’t laugh; it’s become ridiculously clear: until I have settled my score with this shadow from my past—” “Crap.” “—I’ll go on feeling inferior and inadequate.” “Crap, Lee. Everybody has a shadow like that, their old man or somebody—” “Not even able to get on with the business of gassing myself.” “—but they don’t go running home to even things, for shit-sakes—” “No, I’m serious, Peters. I’ve thought it all out. Now listen, I hate to leave you with the hassle of the place and all, but I’ve— thought it all out and I’ve no choice. And could you tell them at the department?” “What? That you blew yourself up? That you’ve gone home to settle a score with the naked ghost of your brother?” “Half-brother. No. Just tell them ...I was forced because of financial and emotional difficulties to—” “Oh man, come on, you can’t be serious.” “And try to explain to Mona, will you?” “Lee, wait; you’re out of your head. Let me come over—” “They’re calling my bus number. I’ve got to rush. I’ll send what I owe you as soon as I can. Good-by, Peters; I’m off to prove Thomas Wolfe was wrong.” I placed Peters, still protesting, back on the hook, and once more drew that long breath. I complimented myself on my control. I had pulled it off nicely. I had managed to remain religiously within the boundaries in spite of Peters’ attempts to subvert our system and in spite of a mixture of Dexedrine and phenobarb which was bound to make a fellow a little giddy. Yes, Leland old man, no one can say that you didn’t present a concise and completely rational explanation regardless of all the rude distractions . . . And the distractions were getting more rude by the second; I noticed this as I pushed out of the booth into the rush of the depot. The fat boy was humping the pinball machine toward a frenzied orgasm of noise, neon, and numbers. The crowd was pushing. The suitcase was pulling. The loudspeaker was advising me in a roar that if I didn’t get on my bus I would be left! “Too much up,” I decided and at the water fountain washed down another two phenobarbitals. Just in time to be swept up in a maelstrom of motion that landed me, marvelously and just in time, on the loading platform in front of my bus. “Leave the suitcase and find yourself a seat,” the driver told me impatiently, as though he’d been waiting for me alone. Which proved to be exactly right: the bus was completely empty. “Not many going West these days?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. I walked unsteadily down the aisle to a seat at the back (where I am to remain almost unmoving for almost four days, getting off at stops to go to the can and buy Coke). As I stood, removing my jacket, the door thumped closed at the other end of the bus with a loud hiss of compressed air. I jumped and looked toward the noise, but it was so dark in the unlit bus in the garage I couldn’t see the driver. I thought he had gone out and the door closed behind him. Left me locked in here alone! Then the motor beneath me thundered and began straining in pitch. The bus started out of the murky cement grotto toward the bright New England afternoon, lurching over the sidewalk and throwing me finally into my seat. Just in time. I still hadn’t seen the driver return. The weird, billowing anarchy of motion and sound that had started in the phone booth was now surging around me in earnest. As though the debris had finally begun to settle back after hanging suspended overhead all the hours since the blast. Scenes, memories, faces . . . like pictures embroidered on curtains billowing in the wind. The pinball machine clattered and clung to my eyes. The postcard rang in my ears. My stomach rolled, voices tolled in my head—that interior monitor of mine bellowing for me to WATCH OUT! HANG ON! THIS IS IT! YOU’RE FINALLY COMPLETELY FLIPPING! I clutched the armrests of the bus seat desperately, terrified. Looking back (I mean now, here, from this particular juncture in time, able to be objective and courageous thanks to the miracle of modern narrative technique), I see the terror clearly, but I find it a little difficult to believe that I was sincerely able to blame much of this burgeoning terror on the rather hackneyed fear of going mad. While it was quite fashionable at the time for one to claim to be constantly threatened by the fear of finally flipping out, I don’t think I had been able to honestly convince myself of my right to the claim for a good while. In fact, I remember that one of the scenes swirling past me as I clutched my seat was a scene with Dr. Maynard, a session at his office where I had told him in dramatic desperation, “Doctor ...I’m going mad; the final complete flip, it’s swooping down out of the hills at me!” He had only smiled, condescendingly and therapeutically.