Light While There Is Light. Keith Waldrop
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any subject whatever, the range of his irritation having increased along with the force of resentment. He listened to all the radio newscasts, and commentators, and read the Gazette from beginning to end. It all made him furious. “You son-of-a-bitch!” he would shout at Fulton Lewis, Jr., or just some neutral voice from the local station. Or reaching the editorial page of the paper, and seeing the signature “William L. White,” “Young Bill isn’t half the man his dad was. Runs off to New York and lets the paper go to hell.” And then, putting down the paper a moment to refill his pipe, “Of course, old White tried to get us all to vote for Cal Coolidge. The son-of-a-bitch.”
My mother’s favorite story was a simple anecdote. A woman—“and she wasn’t an old woman either”—took down a dipper from its hook. And I was transported from the world I knew, a world of hot and cold faucets, from Emporia to Leeton, where the well water tasted awful to me—or to Samaria. She took this dipper from the hook, without lighting the lamp. And in the shadows she scooped a drink from the water bucket and swallowed, along with the water, a black widow spider.
“No one knew this was going to happen,” my mother always said at the end of this tale. “Not even the angels knew. But the Holy Ghost knew.”
“Didn’t Jesus know?” I asked.
“She thought she had a long life yet to live. And she went to meet her Judge, prepared or not. You never know, from one minute to the next.”
Elaine, at Miltonvale, promptly attracted a young man, a prospective minister of the right faith, and at Christmas vacation brought him home. This was the first Christmas after the war. Charles was just out of the navy, Julian had just gone into the navy, but as it worked out, they were both home.
My mother’s heart was set on having a preacher in the family. She had given up on Charles. He was not only headstrong, but a constant reminder of the Charles who had deserted her—she always claimed the younger to be a spitting image of the elder. She decorated the walls with photographs of her son in uniform (and there was for some years a silver star in the front window, denoting a member of the family on overseas duty) but his presence was always a trial, from preschool age even, when from behind the post of a porch he hurled whatever swear words he knew down a steep terrace to startled passing strangers.
She had, by this time, just about given up on Julian, mainly because of his long-standing feud with the Emporia police, which had ended in the compromise of his recent enlistment in the navy. It was touch and go for a while, the police swearing they would have him in reform school. The balance shifted, however, with Julian’s theft of their arsenal, at which point they showed a willingness to bargain, and, instead of threatening, offered him a position on the force. And they were again angered by the language of his refusal.
My case was not yet decided, which is to say that my mother had not given up, but as yet I had received no call to preach. All that could safely be said so far was that it was still not too late. The call was, of course, absolutely essential since, besides standing to reason, it has an unequivocal text (Romans 10:15). Elaine envisioned for herself the sort of double ministry in which both the preacher (male) and his helpmeet qualify as able workers—in short, she felt called to be a preacher’s wife.
She and mother consulted together and prayed long hours to know whether this particular conjunction was the will of God. Her young man, she insisted—still insists, if his name comes up—was a fervent Christian and a genius. The latter quality immensely pleased her, though I think in mother’s view it suggested vain science and man’s philosophy. In this case, at least, intelligence created a snare. While Elaine sought the counsel of God and parent, Charles and Julian were checking out her guest. Their conclusion, which clicked almost audibly as their eyes met after some reply, did not concern itself with matters of faith or morals, but with problems of coherence and comprehension. They had decided, simultaneously and irrevocably, that Elaine’s suitor was mad.
So they began to treat him accordingly, taking his most commonplace remarks as full of strange meaning, echoing his words in slightly distorted senses. Having been a trifle nervous at meeting the family, he soon developed a case of jitters. But there was worse to come.
Charles had brought home guns, several Japanese rifles and a German pistol. He had set up a target in the basement and every once in a while went down and blasted away with the pistol—the only weapon he could find ammunition for. He and Julian now took the guest to the basement to show him around. “They’re shooting that old gun off,” my mother said, red-eyed from prayer. The shots in fact were ringing out, a nerve-racking sound. Then they stopped. And soon, with laborious shuffling steps, Julian and Charles ascended, the third man more or less hanging between them. He was stunned, but soon recovered, without visible wound. Julian claimed he had
simply suddenly collapsed. He maintained, however, that Julian had hit him over the head. In any case, a few hours after what seemed full recovery, he became feverish and, by degrees, delirious. Dr. Hovorka examined him and pronounced with what seemed utter irrelevance—we would not have been surprised at hearing a diagnosis of epilepsy, plague, Huntington’s—that the patient was suffering from a strep throat. He should be kept in bed.
We kept him in bed. In a few days he had recovered and gone home. And just before Elaine’s vacation was up, she got a letter from him. Charles and Julian had both done their best to convince my mother that he was insane and Elaine’s protests that he was an intellectual served merely to reinforce this idea. But even Elaine’s sentiments were confused by the arrival of the letter. It started with compliments and went on to anecdotes and small talk, but one passage stood out and she went back to it again and again.
. . . I felt you had somewhat cooled towards me. I don’t mean at your home, where I was very sick, as you know, sicker perhaps than you know, but before, at Miltonvale where I will soon, I trust, see you soon again. I am afraid that they
(Here he had apparently started to write some name, possibly Elaine’s college roommate, but crossed it out and put “they.”)
have told you evil stories about me.
Understand, I don’t mean to accuse anyone of willful lying. But they may be mistaken. It’s hard to say what I mean, but they may have reported with the best of intentions a falsehood. Oh if you knew what it costs me to write this. Because, you see, I don’t know if it is false or not. I have asked my Redeemer for forgiveness, even if I did not actually sin.
What I am trying to say is that if it is a story about a woman they may have seen me with very late at night, long after hours, a few months ago, I would like to tell you the whole story. I did not know what kind of woman she was. Oh it is too painful, I cannot tell you how I came to be in her room that night. What I want you to know is that when I realized the sort she was, what she wanted of me, I started to leave.
Then everything blacked out. Later I had no memory of what came after that moment. The next thing I knew was that we were walking along the street and she had hold of my arm. I pulled my arm loose and ran. It may be that they saw me walking with her arm. But what would they have been doing out at that hour.
That makes no difference. I only wish I knew what happened while I was out. In any case, it is under the blood. Believe me. . . .
And on. And then to other things.
Elaine went back to Miltonvale, and might well have married him. But Mother had now decided he was possessed. The letter (she always liked things to be documented—the letter went into her trunk) was a perfect admission of guilt. The demon had possessed his body while he was with some sinful creature. That was why he had no memory of the events. And if the devil had him once, what was to prevent its happening again? She decided that Elaine should be far away from him, at some other college. This was the sign that pointed us to Sharon.
III
One whole dinner party, once, I had to be polite and listen to a philosopher, whose name I can’t recall, expand on the notion of divine omnipotence. No doubt Rosmarie was suffering more than I, since her Catholic background remains with her in the form of a distaste for religious conversation. (My mother, almost at the end of her life, was heard lamenting by telephone to her last pastor, “I had three