Raintree County (150 page)

Now, wherever he sought he found the earth penetrated by names and peopled by other souls, wanderers like himself in quest of beauty and eternal life. Each one was a private universe. And the feeling with which the child sought to understand and share the universe of other souls was love. When the child had grown in years and strength and had become a young man, his love was a strong desire to pluck forbidden fruit and know a sweet pleasure which only could be found with a mysterious creature like himself but subtly different, who embodied in her white beauty the ancient secret of the earth touched into breathing form.

Meanwhile, he and these other souls struggled darkly through a series of Events, the imperfect writhings of their human dream. Out of them they built a fiction called the Past and embodied it in a myth called History.

And seasons and years passed, and he continued in his quest, which was no other than to win eternal life from darkness and a dream of darkness.

And slowly he discovered that in the imperfect world of his personal dream, he had been making the legend of a hero. This hero was Humanity, and the place in which the hero strove for beauty and the good was the Republic. Both Hero and Republic were immense fictions. They could never have existed without their poet, but neither could he have existed without them.

For he had localized the great myth of the Republic in Raintree County. He and all who had ever lived had labored to create this vast, amiable legend, the Republic, and this most gentle and passionate of heroes, Humanity. Unknown to himself, the child had already consummated the quest, the quest being itself an eternal consummation.

And in so doing, he became in truth, what he had always known
himself to be, the father and preserver of Raintree County, which without him never could have been at all. And thus, by becoming most himself, he became a greater than himself—in fact a god, who singly by his own desire and faith created and kept alive a universe.

—And thereby hangs what tail?

—And so he learned that Raintree County being but a dream must be upheld by dreamers. So he learned that human life's a myth, but that only myths can be eternal. So he learned the gigantic labor by which the earth is rescued again and again from chaos and old night, by which the land is strewn with names, by which the river of human language is traced from summer to distant summer, by which beauty is plucked forever from the river and clothed in a veil of flesh, by which souls are brought from the Great Swamp into the sunlight of Raintree County and educated to its enduring truths.

—And this is
The Legend of Raintree County?

—This is it. What can you say against it?

The Perfessor had sunk far down in the swing, shoulders hunched, head sunken between them, face in shadow. After a while, his voice rasped up as from a cave.

—To my
History of Mankind,
he said, I wish to append a footnote:

Homo pluviarboriensis,
or Raintree County Man, who evidently consisted of a dried testicle, a copy of the
Indianapolis News-Historian,
a cake of Pears' Soap, a Colt revolver, a McGuffey
Reader,
and a railroad spike, was dug out of a tertiary stratum in which were also imbedded
bovum domesticum
and his spouse
bova domestica, la cucaracha,
and John D. Rockefeller.

The Perfessor considered this so funny that he shook, choked, and coughed for half a minute.

—Seriously, John, he said, there's much truth in what you say. Your
Legend of Raintree County
is a beautiful and brave fable. For my part, I love ideas, and I love people—some people. I think that in our human world are all beauty, goodness, love, and godlike disputation. Only, I also think that all this is only a mist—a dream, if you will—from which we awaken into nothingness. All this is only a by-product of blind process. In the enormous web of chance, which
a little while ago you described so eloquently, I believe that there was no provision for myself or any other, but that we merely happened to arrive. I go forth beneath the skies of your Republic, and everywhere I see impermanence—beautiful, fleeting forms, among whom, alas! most beautiful and most fleeting, I perceive a certain reflection in a mirror—Myself! A man knowing himself is merely a property of living matter, the by-product of certain agitations in his nerve-system.

—I name, Mr. Shawnessy said, the Sacred Name of the Great God Nerve-System. His Law is Cause, and his abode is Space, and his Divine Substance is composed of Matter. Through his all-pervasive body Electric Impulse passes and creates the World. This is the Truth, the one Truth, and the only Truth. And when the Great God Nerve-System dies, then shall we all be dead and overthrown. And we who believe in the Great God Nerve-System accept on faith—for in our infinite humility we do not understand—the Sacred Mysteries of Name, Cause, Space, Matter, Electric Impulse, Truth, and Death. For all that we are and all that we hope to be we owe to the Great God Nerve-System.

The Perfessor elevated his hands in a priestlike gesture.

—You are taking advantage of a sick man, he said. What do
you
believe in, my boy?

—In miracles.

—Such as?

—In the eternal miracle of the living Self which is greater than itself. From this premise all begins: that science and all the world are unavoidably human. Everything exists by the authority of that sturdy republican, the Self. The world in which we live lives in us. To look outward at the farthest star is to look inward into oneself. We are merely exploring our immense cupboard.

—Get me another bottle off the shelf, the Perfessor said.

He tossed an empty bottle into the bushes.

—But, John, your Self and its precious Ideas don't explain anything.

—For example?

—They don't explain your Self and its precious Ideas. By what authority is the Self here and who or what implants its Ideas? To be brutal with you, boy, what is the
cause
of all this?

He made a gesture with his hand indicative of the night, the fountain, Mrs. Evelina Brown, Esther Root Shawnessy, and the children, who were busy fixing rocket sticks in the ground.

—There are laws beyond the Law of Cause.

—Such as?

—The Law of Being.

—Which is?

—I am that I am.

The Perfessor crossed himself and shuddered dramatically.

—Then to be is to be God?

—In a way, yes. Beyond all Cause, is the Uncaused Thing, the Causer that isn't Caused. Beyond every mystery is another mystery—by Cause itself, which creates more and more causes by its own law.

—But what is the ground of it all?

—The ground of it all, the Uncaused Causer, is a Self, which must always assume a prior cause, creating mystery out of its own law of order. The deepest intuition is that we are alive in mystery. Know thy Self, Professor, and the greatness of thyself.

—And is this Self God?

—Each Self participates in God.

—John, the Perfessor said, I have a crudely logical mind, and I must say that if I have to believe in God, frankly I would rather believe in the crude old God of Christianity because this comfortably crude old God was at least a creator, and He crudely explains what I cannot explain and didn't create—the world and its creatures.

—But the world is a perpetual creation, Mr. Shawnessy said. Every moment of it is an intense, sustained act of creation, in which everything participates. Each Self is a part of this divine act of creation and couldn't detach itself from it if it wished. Each Self is a Universe, and no universe is possible without God.

—I have a petty geographical mind, the Perfessor said. This Self

—where does it live?

—In Raintree County.

—And where is Raintree County?

—Where is Raintree County? A profound question, Mr. Shawnessy said.

He studied for a moment.

—That's like asking, Where is place? The only reason we can
come back to Raintree County is that we've put it there ourselves and haven't forgot it. Raintree County was never contained in its map. Nor, I trust, was a human being ever contained in that semblance made of dust and called a face.

—That's what you meant this morning, John, when you said that a face is a map?

—Yes—a symbol of what is always placeless, being its own place, of what is always wandering, exploring, creating—a human soul. A face—like a map—is the earth imbued with human meanings. And the earth is a Great Stone Face, in which we perceive the profile of our own life.

The Perfessor made a motion of frivolity with his head and shoulders.

—Great Eve, the Mother of the Race,
Went to bed with the Great Stone Face.

As the dialectic died in this perfessorial couplet, Mr. Shawnessy was thinking of the map of Raintree County, repeated in many copies—one by an old landsurveyor, another varnished and hanging in a clockless court house, another faintly colored and finely printed in an
Atlas of Raintree County, 1875.
What dream was this in which the earth was ensnared on a piece of paper?

He had a moment of doubt. The myth was beautiful, but was it truly lasting? Who could save Raintree County from destruction, what brash hero, weaponless and now with fading temples? Or who could save the hero himself, whose life was twisted with this legend of the earth? Or who could save his children or his children's children? How and why did it ever happen that there was once a place called Raintree County, and a young man grew up beside a road and visited a court house square on Saturdays and lay beside a river with a mystic name and fell in love with another soul? What were all the wars and the City days and the letters and the newspapers now? Some day, suddenly and surely, this little piece of paper called Raintree County would be rolled up and put in a bottom drawer of the Cosmos along with the loose sheets of an unfinished poem, and it would be forgotten. Forgotten. Lost.

On an obscure impulse, he reached down into his left coatpocket and fished up the letter that he had got at the Post Office in the
morning. He tore it open, held it in such a way as to catch the glare of the lanterns, glanced over it, and then read it to the Perfessor.

—Dear Mr. Shawnessy,

In reply to your request for information concerning a family burial lot in Havenholm, we wish to advise that we have such a lot available for you at moderate cost. Burial Plot 163 is at the south side of the Cemetery, on the peripheral drive, near the railroad. We cordially invite you to examine it at your convenience. Havenholm, the Cemetery of Beautiful Rest, has recently been enlarged and landscaped, and the beloved dead may be committed here with the satisfaction that they will be cared for in death as in life.

The lot in question is ten by twenty feet and costs $50. For $50 more, you can purchase Perpetual Upkeep.

If you are interested, let us hear immediately. A check by return mail will insure your retention of this plot. We have many requests, and we wish to give you exactly what you want.

Respectfully yours,
    The Havenholm Graves and
        Markers Company, Roiville, Indiana

—Buy, buy! the Perfessor cried, rejuvenated. Have and hold in Havenholm! It's a sure investment, the one piece of real estate you'll never part with! It's a bargain! Eternity for fifty dollars!

—Do you think I ought to buy Perpetual Upkeep too?

—They're giving it away! the Perfessor said. Ten thousand years from now they'll still be changing the posies in your urn and wiping the bird dooey off your block.

—But what if they lose the account book? Or what if they just plain decide they won't do it?

—You won't mind, the Perfessor said. You have bought and paid for two beautiful and satisfying words, ‘Perpetual Upkeep.' Are you afraid to think of yourself lying by the railroad, John?

—I shall never lie by the rails with unlistening ears, Mr. Shawnessy said. Even now, as I think of my stone there, and others rising in years to come, and the great trains passing day and night, and the feet of pilgrim hundreds——

—Blest be the man that spares these stones,
intoned the Perfessor.

—I'm certain that I, John Wickliff Shawnessy, won't be there.

—Just so, said the Perfessor. You won't be there.

—If I should die, the human world dies with me. Nothingness knows no Time nor Space. To it ten million years are like a second. In the very instant of my nothingness, the whole pageant of humanity expires. The faces that leaned over me in the moment of parting, that sorrowed at my death, they too are all gone in the moment of my becoming nothing. Nothingness! Can you imagine real nothingness, Professor?

The Perfessor chewed his cigar in silence. A little reluctantly, he said,

—No.

—If I—who am something—were to become nothing, it would be the annihilation of everything. On my life, the world depends. After all, nothingness is not and cannot be.

—Then you believe in resurrections?

—In Perpetual Upkeep.

—And yet, John, the Perfessor said, suddenly bestirring himself, as if for a last effort, nothing is more certain than that fifty-four years ago, there was no John Wickliff Shawnessy. You yourself have a memory of awakening awareness and no prior memory. Why then do you suppose that fifty-four years from now there will be a John Wickliff Shawnessy?

—I didn't exist before or after. I exist always. It's a riddle of Time. Time was when Time was not. Man doesn't live in Time, but Time in man, eternal conjugator of the verb ‘to be.'

—Ah, my boy, the Perfessor said, adopting his gentle, sweet manner, what really worries me, you see, is that I'm afraid to die. I do not sincerely believe that I will live forever. I do not sincerely believe that anyone who ever died was ever seen again on earth or heard again. I do not sincerely believe that there are resurrections. I do not sincerely believe that the dead lovers ever find each other again. And from this one fact, more than any other, I derive my great Nature God, who doesn't sincerely believe these things either. You see, my boy, I am afraid to die. I am afraid of the grave.