Raintree County (38 page)

Looking for the roofs of Waycross, Eva saw something like a vast brown bladder swelling on the south horizon. The unfamiliar became instantly a vague fear.

Then she remembered what it was.

She was wondering if she would see her Grandfather Root at the Revival Tent. He had come to some of the earlier meetings, and Eva had even walked past him, almost touching him with her dress once. Of course, as usual, he didn't speak to her, although he did go over and talk with her mother awhile.

There was something ominous about the big Revival Tent. Eva knew that her life had always been pierced with flashes of anxiety, just as sometimes on a blithe summer day a black cloud would roll down on Raintree County, the air would split with jags of fire, thunder would bound in heavy balls up and down the County, and then the rain would fall. Raintree County was itself a vast four-sided tent, under which might rush at times the four winds of the Nation.

Among the few parked buggies, Eva looked for the shiny black horse of her Grandfather Root, or for her grandfather himself, standing massively apart, his beard shot with jags of gray, his big head pivoting slowly on the motionless block of his body.

Just past the Revival Tent the surrey had to stop behind a line of vehicles waiting to enter the National Road.

—The children and I will just get out here, Esther Shawnessy said, and walk down to the Station. Then I'll come back alone for the service at the tent.

She and the children climbed out.

—I'll drive home, their father said, and put President up for the day. I suppose I'll be busy from then on looking after the Senator. Have a good day, children.

—Pshaw! Did you ever see so many people! Eva's mother said.

She walked ahead of the children past the stalled vehicles, her straightbacked form moving with grave purpose, her feet planted exactly parallel.

Eva hadn't stepped on firm ground since they had left home at sun-up. The rocking motion of the surrey still governed her body. She felt languidly aswim in light. For hours, she had floated on the calm ocean of summer and had enjoyed an immense, passive possession of herself and the earth. Now the earth surprised her by its immovable substance. She looked at the sky, walled by far clouds east, but cloudless over Raintree County.

EVA'S ETERNAL HOME
(Epic Fragment from the
Eva Series
)

Yes, little blue-eyed Eva, you raise your eyes toward the eternal sky. What do you see there, Eva, child of the summer day? Look deep and far, Eva, our favorite little girl, and see if you can read upon the face of this ocean of God's universe any tracing of your own life in huge characters. Do you see there the far, beautiful realms of peace and love where joy forever dwells, the cloudbuilt ramparts of your heavenly home awaiting, when all earthly barriers have been burned away? Little tempestuous and tender spirit, our own dear Eva of the childlife series, our little heroine of so many episodes fraught with grave and gay, entertainment and instruction for the wellbroughtup little girls of America, do you see there some haven of eternal peace, where all your dreams come true, in the arms of a beneficent Creator, your Father and your God, when the slow-pacing years have carried you home at last along

The Great Road of the Republic

PASSING
through Waycross made a sound like a prolonged chord, dissonant but not unmusical. It aroused in Mr. Shawnessy an old excitement. It was the sound of humanity in crowds.

As he drove nearer to the Road, the tonal ingredients of the chord emerged. Bandmusic spouted, firecrackers crumped, wheels ground on gravel, hooves clanged, horses whinnied, human throats bubbled.

Beyond the intersection, the long aisle of the street was swollen with parasols, derby hats, flags, blurring and brightening around the railroad station. Stranger even than Mr. Shawnessy's prophetic dream of the early dawn was this glut of people on the wide and quiet crossing.

At the intersection, he felt the pull of the Great Road. It sucked him out of the narrow county road, picked him up, flung him about in a whirlpool of traffic. Engulfed in the Mississippian stream of the Republic, he navigated the surrey carefully against the tide. He reached his own yard, went into it between parked buggies, and drove into the barn, where he quickly unharnessed President and put him into a stall.

He picked up the
Atlas
and the newspapers, planning to run into the house and tidy up before going down to the Station. As he went around to the front porch, he saw a man in a white linen suit sitting on the porchswing.

—Mr. John Wickliff Shawnessy, I presume?

The voice was a pleasant, hissing sound.

—Yes? Mr. Shawnessy said, tentatively.

The man stood up and walked briskly down the steps, plucking the cigar from his mouth and switching it to his canehand.

—Glad to see you again, my boy.

—Professor! Mr. Shawnessy said, taking the thin, strong hand.

Nodding amiably, Professor Jerusalem Webster Stiles exhaled aroma of distant places and metropolitan manners.

—Don't you grow old like other people, my boy?

—You haven't changed much yourself, Professor.

—I grow old, the Perfessor said. Deep scars of thunder have entrenched, and care sits on this faded cheek. But happily I still have my teeth. Both are sound and sometimes leave a signature of senile passion on the shoulders of the most beautiful women in the City of New York.

The Perfessor shook soundlessly. His skull was bonebright under thin hairs that were still defiantly—almost obscenely—black, slicked back from a middle part. His long, narrow face seemed all features and wrinkles. But the tall form was still erect and jaunty, the malacca cane swung with practised ease, the black eyes darted restlessly about. The essential Perfessor was still there, seen as through a frosted glass.

—You fooled me, Professor. Your letter didn't say——

—At exactly seven forty-five this morning, the Perfessor said, trainborne I crossed the borders of Raintree County. I haven't been back since that day thirty-three years ago when the preacher's shotgun goosed me over the border. When did we last see each other, John?

—Fifteen years ago. July of '77. Night of the Grand Ball at Laura Golden's in New York.

—Ah, yes, the Perfessor said. The night you ascended the Great Stair. I envied you that night, John. Tell me the truth, my boy, what did you do up there?

—I was hunting for the exit.

—Hmmmmmmm, the Perfessor said. Won't tell, eh?

He looked around, twirling his cane.

—So this is where the Bard of Raintree County has elected to spend his declining years. Really, John, isn't it a bit bucolic for a man of your talents?

—I have a good pure life here.

—Unavoidably! said the Perfessor. What in the devil is that big book under your arm, John?

The Perfessor peered keenly at the
Atlas,
covered up with newspapers.

—Something I promised to get for the Senator. By the way, is this a professional visit?

—Strictly, the Perfessor said. I persuaded my paper to let me cover this thing. These days, when Garwood moves, the stars zigzag in their orbits, the stock market fluctuates, and the virgins bedew themselves with ecstasy. What an opportunity, I thought, to return unobtrusively to Raintree County, drop a tear once more on the soil that gave me birth, and touch again that magical, mystical time, John, when you and I were young, Maggie.

—Does Evelina know you're coming?

The Perfessor shot a quick glance at Mr. Shawnessy.

—I did write her a letter, he said. How is our little poetess?

—Lovely as ever, Mr. Shawnessy said.

—Where does she live?

—An improbable big brick mansion just outside town, Mr. Shawnessy said, pointing east. You can't quite see it from here.

—I've never forgiven you, John, for luring the little woman away from New York.

—I had nothing to do with it, Mr. Shawnessy said.

—Of course, I blame myself too, the Perfessor said. You two got together in my column. By the way, do you read it these days?

—It's been scintillatingly naughty of late, Professor. How do you get away with it?

—The secret is this: The truth, the real truth, sounds so preposterously false to the average citizen of the Republic that he thinks I'm kidding. So they let me go my lonely way as the New York
Dial's
Special Reporter on Life, the only man in America who reports the news as it really is.

—Some time, Professor, I want you to publish a newspaper of your own and call it the
Cosmic Enquirer.

—Right now I'm cosmically thirsty, the Perfessor said. Where's the local hell?

—The town is teetotal.

—How lucky, then, that I happen to have a little on me, no?

From a backpocket, the Perfessor pulled a flat bottle of corncolored fluid, uncorked, lipped, gurgled.

—Have some?

—No, thanks, Mr. Shawnessy said, looking warily to see who watched.

—By the way, would you conduct me to the Chair of Philosophy?

On the way back, Mr. Shawnessy said,

—The Senator arrives in a few minutes. I'm supposed to be at the Station to meet him.

—What kind of country is it, the Perfessor said, pushing back the crescentcarved door, that permits itself to be run by such bastards! If we're not careful he'll be the next President. Hi, there, Apollo invades the Privy!

The interior walls of the little twoseater were covered with clippings from books and newspapers.

—Wherever Socrates and Plato converse, there is the abode of the Muses, Mr. Shawnessy said.

RURAL PHILOSOPHERS CONGREGATE
(Epic Fragment from the
Cosmic Enquirer
)

Some of the brainiest savants in this section of the country assembled recently for high metaphysical discourse. The scholarchs are reported to have sought out a meetingplace suitably quiet for their deliberations. Occupying the Boylston Chair of Oratory and Rhetoric was that engaging wiseman and wit . . .

Professor Stiles adjusted his glasses and read aloud from one of the clippings,

—Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence. The palaces of kings are erected upon the bowers of Paradise.

We have a text. Mr. Shawnessy, will you elucidate to the goodly and handsome company assembled?

Mr. Shawnessy consulted his watch.

—To be naked is to be either god or beast, he said. Eden is man's memory of godlike appetite and animal satisfaction, uncurbed by moral law. The forbidden fruit is the act of love resulting in discovery of another and not simply affirmation of oneself. In this act, man becomes man—moral, responsible, parental, and the Republic is born. By the way, Garwood's train is about due. I have to tidy up a little. Meet me in front of the house.

Walking up the back path, he glanced at the sundial. Inside the circular inscription,
I record only the sunshine,
the sharp shadowhand darkened the numeral IX. He reflected that in the
Atlas,
which he carried under his arm, the same hour was fixed forever on the face
of the Court House Clock. A radiant god was writing nine o'clock all over Raintree County. With his golden finger he traced a hundred images on great soft sheets of earth, and all proclaimed the magical, morning hour of nine. Without selection or distinction, he traced all legends with a brush of light and shadow. In his bright book of simultaneously existing images, was one thing more forbidden than another?

In the house, Mr. Shawnessy spent a few minutes running through the
Atlas,
but without success. Remembering the Senator's request, he carried the book outdoors, sandwiched in copies of the
Free Enquirer.
On the sidewalk, the Perfessor waited, intoning words for the music which the band at the Station was playing.

—Blow ye the trumpet, blow

The gladly-solemn sound!

Let all the nations know,

To earth's remotest bound,

The year of Jubilee has come.

—John Brown's favorite hymn!

—John Brown! the Perfessor said. How well I remember those days! All that summer and fall of '59, when the War was coming on and no one knew it. Those were the days of our paradisal innocence, John. Let me see, what were J. W. Shawnessy and J. W. Stiles doing that summer?

—That summer, Mr. Shawnessy said, J. W. Shawnessy left the estate of youth and innocence and entered upon the estate of manhood and bitter wisdom.

—That summer, the Perfessor said, J. W. Stiles left the County of his Birth lest it become the County of his Demise.

—That summer, J. W. Shawnessy discovered the Source of Life.

—And where is that? said the Perfessor.

—Where the river joins the lake.

—That summer, J. W. Stiles remained a small name and alive, while John Brown prepared to be a great name and dead.

—That summer, J. W. Shawnessy became an agriculturist of love, and worried about his crops.

—Ah, and J remember, too, said the Perfessor,