Raintree County (85 page)

The faces were a thinning stream. The sidewalk ended. He plunged into golden heat. He was on the empty road passing the Jacobs farm. He looked neither to right nor left. He wouldn't stop at the Widow Passifee's, despite his promise to Brother Gideon Root. He would go on past. Hosanna! The hour had come!

Suddenly, he was aware of someone approaching in the white roadway, coming closer and closer to the minute pebbles and brown dust on which he walked. The black twisting shape stood suddenly before him like a jinnee in a glass bottle, writhing, fantastic, dreadful. The creature was incredibly tall and thin, black eyes stabbing through pince-nez glasses, face long, lined, grinning with malice and amusement. It made a ceremonious bow, leaning on a cane. A thin tongue of derision licked its hissing lips.

—Have I by chance the honor of addressing the Reverend Lloyd G. Jarvey?

—You have, Brother! Praise the Lord!

The words were hurled like an accusation, quavering and frustrate.

—Praise the Lord! shouted the intruder in a highpitched, nasal voice crackling with sanctimony. Pleased to meet you, Brother.

—Who might you be, Brother?

—A visiting preacher, Brother, the thin intruder said. The Reverend Jerusalem Webster Stiles from New York.

—Pleased to meet you, Brother.

He bowed his head and fairly butted his way past this hateful rival.

—One moment, Brother. What is the status of sin these days in Raintree County? Enough to go around, I trust?

A malicious, cackling laugh pursued him as he went on. Confusion warred with rage. Someone had set this foreign dog upon him.

Nevertheless, he went by the Widow Passifee's and continued until he saw the blurred lines of an iron fence on his left. He slowed down, panting as though he had been running. He listened. His ears cropping from the shaggy brown hair were sickly sensitive to every sound, but there were no footsteps on the road. He walked slowly to the iron gates. They stood open, the ironwork designs
drawn on his vision with painful exactness, while beyond them a brown walk faded into a lake of green.

He stopped. He had come to a threshold of decision.

Yes, the time had come. Perhaps he might forestall God's vengeance by an act of loving kindness. Wasn't this woman after all the one most worthy to be saved? Who but Lloyd G. Jarvey, he that had been called the Blind and had been blessed with vision, he that had killed and ravaged in his great hill-strength, who but he was chosen to tame this sophisticate daughter and teach her submission, even in the chambers of her scarlet palace?

My daughter, had you forgotten your God? What have you been doing in my absence, my loving daughter? Did you suppose that I did not foresee this invention, that I was incapable of this pleasant pastime of mortals? Erring and beautiful daughter, God is able to do anything, possesseth every power and pleasure. In one of my earlier shapes, when I was several and not one, I too was Begetter. But I had forgotten this earlier self, until you reminded me of it. You discovered it without permission, my intuitive daughter. You entertained false forms of myself, obsolete deities, in this garden which I gave you to tend. And should you not therefore endure the chastisement of a jealous God?

The Reverend Lloyd G. Jarvey walked through the gate, heavyfooted, his powerful arms not swinging at his sides, but slightly lifted as if appealing. His eyes in the thick glasses had a fixed expression.

But then I am not wholly displeased with you, my daughter. You have reminded me of myself. And what if I should now return, and forgiving you for this evil knowledge that you have acquired, should supplant your mortal lover, and in my infinite power and mercy, take back to my own breast the erring daughter?

Only for God and the gods, the most beautiful mortals.

And if then I should find you here hiding in the garden and hugely should come upon you, and you should stand before me with eyes averted, beseeching my forgiveness and admitting your guilt, and you should stand before me in the stolen garments (but I know your white flanks and the little applefirm breasts tilted for love), then might there not be for you a majestic revealing of Godhead? Then, o, then, might there not be for you the hard, bluff strut and the bullgreat weight of . . .

Preacher Jarvey was standing at the base of the brick house. He saw clearly the clumps of columns supporting the roof of the verandah, and beyond that a dull red mass of walls. He breathed heavily; his breast swelled up as if it would burst with the anguish of a wish that had no name. This wish tore him with fury and anger; he opened his mouth as if to give voice to it.

A sound pierced his ears, at first muted and reedy, then swelling to a trumpet blast and ending in a harsh wail of amorous fury. Male laughter volleyed. Feet scuffled. A gate creaked.

In confusion, Preacher Jarvey turned and ran. Along the path of his flight the garden started into life around him. Naked women with sightless eyes stood suddenly from nooks of shrubbery. Blurred shapes of bulls, archers, chariots formed and faded on waves of lawn.

Harried by scurrilous laughter and scuffling feet, he ran through the gates and stopped in the road. The noises had lessened to a murmur. He peered at the garden from which he had just been driven in confusion. What had he come to do there?

Once more dull fury burned in his chest. Against the old walls of his blindness a thousand stridulous noises beat, surf of an oceanic world beyond his grasp. He was sad as never before. His breath labored. The hot sun smote him without mercy. He knew the anguish and sorrow of the one god who may not be loving of beautiful mortals.

Now he held his eyes up to the yellow light that blazed directly above him. It entered him with splendor, destroying all vision but itself. It poured hot gold and frenzy into his breast. He staggered west, incarnate with a radiant god. . . .

. . .

—Jupiter is his name, Mr. Jacobs said in answer to the Senator's question. Won first prize at the State Fair last year.

—Young? The Senator asked.

—Just a boy. Three years old.

The Senator and his entourage had stopped for a while in Mr. Jacobs' front yard. Now they walked past the barn on their way to the bullpasture.

—John, the Senator said, raising his voice and spreading abroad his eloquent arms, were it not for my obligations to the people, I
should have asked nothing better than to be a tiller of the soil of Raintree County. What better life is there, gentlemen, than that of the simple farmer? Who is closer to God than he who gathers by his toil the fruits of the earth? Sturdy, honest, industrious, independent, the farmer is the backbone of the Republic. Without his matchless virility, how many of her wars could America have won? Without his manly valor, what freedom would she possess?

—And without his manifold vote, the Perfessor said, catching up from the rear, what President has she ever elected?

He took a flat bottle from his pocket as he and Mr. Shawnessy fell somewhat behind the others.

—Your farmer, he said, is a poor brute. But I acknowledge his usefulness. Without him there would be no corn. Without corn, there would be no corn whiskey. And without corn whiskey, there would be no sacred frenzy.

The Perfessor put the bottle to his mouth. Mr. Shawnessy watched the antic, tall figure tilted against the green earth.

—I trust you all perceive, the Perfessor said, catching up with the Senator, the object which I hold in my hand. It is, as you see, a bottle, a plain, ordinary, everyday bottle. But this bottle, friends, contains the wonderworker of our age. Here, Senator, have a slug of this.

—To please an old friend, the Senator said.

He lipped and pulled.

—My God! he said. Is this the stuff they fuel the Muse with?

—The Heliconian fount, said the Perfessor, whence all my verse proceeds.

The bottle went around and came to rest in Mr. Shawnessy's hands.

—First liquor I've touched in months, Mr. Shawnessy said. The good ladies of Waycross are teetotalers, except for the annual vintage of the dandelion.

He tasted sun, noon, and the summer earth. The cornjuice throbbed slowly through him as they turned east beyond the barn and started down a lane running parallel to the National Road.

—Well, where's this bull, boys? the Senator said. I haven't seen a heifer heeled since I was a kid. Whose house is that?

—Mrs. Brown's, Mr. Shawnessy said.

The lane led them straight toward the round brick tower of Mrs. Brown's house.

—Good corn crop, the Senator said. Kneehigh by the Fourth of July.

—Mooooooooooo—uh!

The white bull had seen them coming and had made a cry half-human with rage and desire.

—Jove, he's big! the Senator said. I trust that fence is strong. He might be a Democratic bull.

Male laughter volleyed. Feet scuffled. The crowd stopped at the long plank gate giving on the little bullpasture wedged into the cornfields next to Mrs. Brown's yard. Dense shrubbery and trees concealed all but the top of a brick tower. Apart stood the Perfessor and Mr. Shawnessy.

—Jupiter! the Perfessor said. A classic bull. But where is lo?

Mr. Jacobs and another man had stopped at the barn, and were presumed to be bringing up the heifer.

—He reminds me of someone, Mr. Shawnessy said.

—'Tis a senatorial bull, the Perfessor said. Judging from current models, it hath the congressional cut.

The corn was an ocean of softly brandished arms, in which, islanded, the bull was a great strength formed for love and strife. From tight rump to mounded shoulders brutely propulsive, he stood, love-tortured, staring at a world without depth.

—Maybe, said Mr. Shawnessy, he remembers his epic past, the white flanks of the beloved of Minos—that was a sweet begetting—or Europa, who bestrode his shoulders, and her naked calves teased his little pricked ears, or lo, whom ox-eyed Juno envied. Argos of a hundred eyes couldn't prevent his jovial rage. Does he know that he was Dionysus, god of the wineborn frenzy of love and creation? The celebrants hung garlands of flowers on the thick column of his neck; he walked like a man on his hindlegs. He was not always a prisoner in barbed wire where love is rationed to him in brief allotments while lecherous mortals lean on the gate and laugh. He was a god once and loved a beautiful mortal. . . .

. . .

Rear protrudent, the Widow Passifee was at the back of her yard, cutting away a load of flowers with her yardshears. Colossally voluptuous in a white dress, she bulged silently on Preacher Jarvey's vitreous world still stricken with the sun.

Mrs. Passifee's yard had none of the studied formality of Mrs. Brown's. It was tangled and frenzied. The old picket fence surrounding her little frame house sagged with unpruned vines. The outhouse behind was both visible and odorous.

—Sister Passifee.

She squealed and whirled.

—Brother Jarvey! You plumb frightened me.

He glared fixedly at her broad, heartshaped face, green eyes, young wide mouth, small pointed chin. She was flushed in the noonheat. Her neck and the white roots of her breasts were shining with sweat. Her arms were full of torn flowers.

—Won't you come in, Brother Jarvey?

—I will, Sister, I will.

He followed her into the dark cool parlor. She started to put up the shades, which were drawn to within a few inches of the sills.

—Just leave them drawn, Sister. The light hurts my eyes.

He sat on a horsehair sofa and closed his eyes. Instantly, his inward vision swam with golden splendors, splintering afterimage of the sun. Women with great white glowing limbs and golden hair stood in nooks of green, twisting ropes of flowers.

—Make yourself to home, Brother Jarvey. It's hot, ain't it?

—It is, Sister.

She bit her lip and studied the floor with a frown.

—Maybe you'd like a little refreshment. To cool you off.

—As you please, Sister.

A waning gold gilded a garden of clipped lawns, beds of tossing flowers. Flinging their golden hair, whitebodied, with musical cries, the bare nymphs ran.

Returning, Mrs. Passifee had a stone jug from the earth-cellar. Clear yellow wine guggled from stone lips. She filled two glass tumblers.

—Just a little dandelion wine, she said. Practickly no alcohol in it. It'll cool you off. If you don't mind.

For answer, Preacher Jarvey leaned forward, picked up a tumbler, drained it.

He leaned back again and closed his eyes. There was a sharp sweet taste in his throat, of summer lawns, of the sunwarm faces of dandelions.

—Goodness! Mrs. Passifee said. You drink fast, Brother Jarvey.

Giggling nervously, she filled up his glass on a little table beside the sofa and then sitting down beside him sipped at her own.

—It
is
good, she said. A body's a right to a little nip now and then on a hot day, don't you think?

For answer, Preacher Jarvey leaned forward, picked up his tumbler, drained it.

—Goodness! Mrs. Passifee said, filling it up again.

She studied her glass.

—I got news, Brother Jarvey, she said. I mean about him and her. Something that happened last night. Be perfectly frank, I don't think we had much to go on before. But if you really mean to accuse 'em of sinnin' together tonight, why, I seen something that will int'rest you.

—Sister, he said. You may speak to me without reservation. Don't let your feminine delicacy prevent you from givin' a full story of what you saw.

—Well, she said, putting down her glass, he come past here about seven o'clock in the evening, and he had a sheaf of papers in his hand. He turned in at the gate there and went up to her house. I could see plain from the corner of my yard.

—Yes, the Preacher said.

A sweet sadness throbbed in his veins. Sipping the cool wine, he leaned back and shut his eyes. Blood of the dandelion drenched his throat.

—He went up to the house there, and they was there all evening. I come out to my gate again and again, and I knowed he hadn't left. They was no one else in or out of that there gate all evening. They was hardly any light at all in the house—I know because I walked down the road once to see more clearer, and they was only a little low light burnin' in a front room. I says to myself, I bet I know what's a-goin' on in there.