Three Days Before the Shooting ... (80 page)

Donelson let out a howl, “Oh no, man, I
must
protest! You can’t do that, not add incest and insult to trickery….”

“Man, hush,” Choc Charlie said. “Now don’t forget, while this was happening the hound is streaking in like a cannonball, but when he hears all that evil talk coming out of the hole that hound throws on brakes and makes a turn so fast that not only is he running along the wall but his own tail is whipping his head like a blackjack in the expert hands of Rock Island Shorty, the railroad bull—and man, he highballs it the hell out of there yelling bloody murder
.

“Gentlemen, by now Brer Bear is sitting there in a flim-flam fog and before he can git hisself together, Brer Rabbit reaches up and snatched off his cap in order to cut down on the wind resistance and bookety-bookety-bookety, he lit up out of there and is
long
gone!”

“Act five, scene one coming up,” Donelson said. “What did they do then?”

“
They?
Hell, man, other than Brer Bear wasn’t no one left in there—unless’n it was that Polly fellow you brought up, and if so I guess he musta been under the bed. But Brer Bear, poor fellow, he was in a
hell
of a fix. He’s just sitting there rubbing his eyes, sweating gallons and shaking all over like he’s got the palsy. Gentlemen, it was
pathetic
…”

“Tragic,” Donelson said
.

“Whatever it was,” Choc Charlie said, “it was a bitch and it gave Brer Bear the bad-man blues. Said, ‘What on earth is this here country coming to, with these bad-acting bab-bub-bub-bad-talking bad-men breaking into folks’ homes talking ‘bout their mamas and threatening them with these outrageous, dum-dum-bullet-shooting pearl-handled .45s? Poor Brer Bear thought Brer Rabbit’s tail was a pearl-handled pistol grip and he felt so bad he started to cry like a baby. Said, ‘What did I ever do to have a fellow like that come imposing on me? What this here dam country needs is more law and order—and that’s a fact! Where the hell did I put my Gatling gun…?’

“But, gentlemen, Brer Bear was already too late, because by the time he located his shooting-iron Brer Rabbit was already going slam– bam–t hank you, mam, through all those fine young lady rabbits back in the briar patch.”

“And there,” Donelson said, “you have a scenario with conflict of will, high skulduggery, gunplay, escape, and rampant sex!”

Smiling into the sun, the Senator had begun to enjoy the familiar sensation of flying, the rush of wind against his face, but as he looked back along the tops of the swaying cars a cloud of black dust had begun to rise from where, several cars to the rear, three hulking figures were slipping and sliding through a gondola loaded with soft coal. The figures were shouting and gesturing in his direction and for a moment the Senator hesitated, but now, seeing a flash of metal burst from a gesturing hand he turned, and bending low, pushed hurriedly through the heavy pressure of the wind to the metal ladder attached to the forward end of the boxcar. Reaching it, he looked back, and seeing the
figures crawling in a line along the top of the boxcar, he clambered down the ladder and held on. Looking along the top where the figures came slowly forward he looked quickly ahead, seeing a cindered path running beside the tracks and to the right of the path the roadbed was falling steeply down into a narrow field. Sunflowers grew tall in the field and at its edge a wall of closely planted trees arose. The trees were tall with sunlight filtering through the high-flung branches and flickering gloomily upon the slender trunks, and as the train swept him past, the Senator looked some dozen cars ahead to where a sunny clearing was suddenly breaking and growing wider and as now the car came abreast he braced himself and let go, feeling his body flying away from the car and trying to run only to see the cindered path slamming up to meet him as with a palm-searing, knee-burning explosion of breath he landed hard upon the shuddering roadbed
.

Fighting for breath against the heaving path, he lay as though paralyzed, watching the wheels and under-carriages churning the light just beyond his head. Dust and bits of trash were whirling furiously about and he could see the rhythmical rise and fall of the sleepers as they took the pound and click of wheel on rail. Then, his breath returning, he was sitting up and watching the tail end of the train whipping swiftly up the track. The red lenses of lanterns glinted like enormous jewels from either side of the caboose and a flag was snapping briskly from the handrail as the three figures ran back along its top, continuing doggedly to advance toward him even as the train bore them smoothly away
.

Sweeping on, with smoke and flame pouring from its stack, the engine screamed again as it plunged toward a rise of rocky country that lay to the west. And suddenly it was as though he were watching a scene from a silent movie—with the train hurtling toward a point in the rocks where, as it approached, a spot grew like that which blossoms in a paper napkin at the touch of a lighted cigarette. Widening mysteriously around its periphery, the hole was turning rapidly inward upon itself and in a flash the three figures, the train, and the sunlit surrounding scene had vanished, leaving behind only the cindered grade, the cross ties, and gleaming rails, now running in steely convergence into the darkness of a void
.

For a moment the Senator had the impression of gazing toward a rumpled sheet which hung against the landscape with a mysterious hole burned in its center, but still hearing the muffled, clicking sound of the receding train he got to his feet and plunged in jolting, stiff-legged bounds down the grade and into the trees
.

The Senator was moving through deep country now, the sound of the train a faint rumble in the distance. Here in the shade of the trees the air was clear and cool and he walked beneath stands of towering walnuts, oaks, and cottonwoods that grew in clumps broken by park-like spaces of grass accented by bushes and trailing vines. His leg and palms smarted from his fall but now he moved ahead with a sense of relief, breathing the spicy air and trying to recall when he had passed through such woods before
.

Off to his right an abandoned apple orchard stood with gnarled limbs in surreal disarray and farther beyond he could see a stand of elders displaying clusters of dark red berries in the sunlight. He was moving in silence, brushing embedded cinders from his palms and stepping carefully to protect his injured leg—when, suddenly, a covey of
quail flushed at his feet, breaking the cathedral quiet with a roar that caused his heart to pound and his nerves to hum as he watched the rocketing birds reel off and sail with set wings into a nearby thicket. A dampness broke over his skin, chilling him as he watched where the birds had blended magically into the background, and for a moment he stood silent, searching in vain for the slightest telltale motion from the quail
.

Now the afternoon was motionless, the brown and green foliage where the birds had gone inscrutable. But for the distant cry of a single bird the only sound was that of his own breathing, and the Senator’s mind stirred with excitement, thinking: Surprise, speed, and camouflage are the faith, hope, and charity of escape, and the essence of strategy. Yes, and scenes dictate masks and masks scenes. Therefore the destructive element offers its own protective sanctuary. Hunting codes are a concern of human hunters or otherwise. To imaginate is to integrate negatives and positives into a viable program supporting one’s own sense of value. Flown before the unseeing hand the bird crouches safe in the bush. Therefore freedom is a wilful blending of opposites, a conscious mixing of ungreen, unbrown things and thoughts into a brown-green shade…. Where’s the light? What’s the tune? What’s the time?

For a moment he mused, his eyes playing along the quiet hedge. There was something missing from the formula but he would work it out later, for now he must move ahead
.

But hardly had he approached a mossy clearing in the trees than the Senator froze again. Before him two foxes were moving past at a leisurely trot, their elegant brushes floating weightlessly upon the quiet air. One fox carried a limp rabbit retriever-wise in its jaws and he could see the lazy flopping of the rabbit’s leaf-veined ears, observed its white powder puff of a tail. And now, reaching the center of the clearing the animals paused, delicately sniffing the air as they regarded him quietly out of the amber remoteness of vulpine eyes. One of the animals was gravid and the forgotten image of plump fox puppies playing upon the hard bare bone-and-feather-strewn earth before a rocky burrow flashed through his mind and a fragment from the Scriptures sang in his head:

Oh, the foxes have holes in the ground …
But son of man … son of man…

And before the quiet confrontation of their eyes the Senator stood breathless, feeling a breeze passing over the dampness of his arms and watching a lazy rippling begin to play through the fur of the foxes. And he felt the hairs stirring lightly along his own forearms as the breeze blew slowly past pointed muzzles and alerted ears to part with a gentle, silk-like ruffling the long fine fur of the high-held tails
.

Oh, the foxes have holes in the ground …
But son of man, son of man…

Then imperceptibly the foxes moved, becoming with no impression of speed twin streaks of red moving past the thicket of green, and he watched their brushes floating dream-like into the undergrowth
.

All this I’ve known, the Senator thought, but had forgotten…. Then in the sudden
hush, accented by a pheasant’s cry he felt as though no trains nor towns nor sermons existed. He was at peace. Here was no need to escape nor search for Eden, nor need to solve his mystery. But again he moved, somehow compelled to go ahead…
.

Soon the Senator was beyond the woods, his throat throbbing with nameless emotion stirred by the foxes, and he moved with inward-turning eyes—until, high above, where it flashed like a minnow in an inverted bowl of a clear blue lake, a small plane caught his eye and he moved beneath the boughs of a pine tree, watching the plane bank languidly into the sun to write in smoke across the sky:

Niggers
     
Stay
     
Away
     
From
     
The Polls

And watching the words expand and drift in ghostlike shapes he shook his fist at the sky and ran again, cursing the taut constriction of the sand
.

Following the upward slant of the terrain the Senator found himself approaching a crowd gathered below the terrace of a clubhouse resting on the broad, level surface of a cliff which overlooked a winding river. Below the cliff and atop the river’s farther bank, a flock of grazing sheep were strung out along a rolling meadow, making dark foreshortened shadows against the green, and far below, past the brown-and-gray outcroppings of the meadow’s rocky edge, he could see the dark swirl and sparkle of the river as it flowed past a pile of boulders which protruded white and brilliant in the sun
.

There was a feeling of holiday in the air now, and on the terrace he could see uniformed waiters serving pale yellow melon, frosted drinks, and ices to smiling couples who lounged at tables set in the pastel shades of brightly colored parasols
.

Moving painfully through the fashionable crowd the Senator squeezed past handsome women clad in sports clothing and tweedy, heavily tanned men sporting alpine hats decorated with the feathers of a game bird, silver-mounted brushes of badger fur, or tiny medals celebrating the hunt, and was suddenly aware of the fresh scents the women wore, the fine, smooth texture of their complexions. Then he had pressed to the front of the crowd and found himself leaning against a low barrier that fenced off the broad semicircle of a grassy shooting ring
.

To his right, just inside the barrier, a group of men with guns cradled in the crooks of their arms were looking out to the center of the ring where three workmen knelt in the grass working over a device attached to a length of rubber hosing. The hosing ran back to a truck parked at the rear where it was attached to the storage tank of a mobile air compressor. Other workmen, wearing black berets and blue coveralls, were standing in groups of three at four stations arranged at equal distances across the ring, all marked, like that where the men were working, by stacks of bright yellow dovecotes. They too
were looking toward the kneeling, frantically busy men, and back near the compressor truck the Senator could see dozens of dovecotes stacked high on a wagon before which a small, bony horse with docked tail wearing a farmer’s straw hat in which holes had been cut for its twitching ears, dozed wearily between the shafts. Then, as though someone had pulled a switch, the Senator was aware of the throbbing sound made by the cooing of many birds. The dovecotes were crammed with pigeons and he could see the nervous motion of their beaked heads thrusting back and forth between the bars. The air throbbed with the sound of their cooing, reminding him of a crowd of summer passengers looking out of the grill of a trolley car as they commented upon something out in the passing scene
.

And now as the annoyed voices of the spectators began drowning out the noise of the birds, he saw the men drawing erect and heard one of them call out to the men with guns
.