Yes, I said.)
He wasn’t going to live like that.
So: college in Michigan and that summer he’d become a wiry bantam rooster of an expert moving low and fast among hiscitified classmates and the following magical autumn when, by way of certain compliments, nicknames, and fellowships bestowed upon him by faculty, it became clear that the mastery of a short list of subjects (econ, sedimentology, organic chemistry) could make his dream (of stepping out of a spaceship-like cart into a circle of adoring caddies who’d just been enviously/fearfully discussing him and his beautiful new shoes) come true.
And it had all been accomplished. Noteasily,butsmoothly.With work, hard work, but no real struggle. Up, up, up he went. (Could I even begin to imagine the thrill of that?) He loved the work and believed in it. (He loved the work and it loved him back, he always said.) He became part of a tribe, a tribe of brothers (and some sisters, yes, even back then) and soon emerged as a leader of that tribe. He’d loved the tribe. Loved it dearly. Was proud to be part of it, thrilled to be giving his days to it and to find himself rising up effortlessly within it.
And never along the way had there been a moment of hesitation or doubt or anything but a growing gratitude that he’d been formed in such a way that his natural strengths were just what the world required.
Then came a challenge. A drumbeat, a steady drumbeat. Of objection. To who he was, to what the tribe was about. Their enemies were hyperbolic, hysterical, irrational, over-the-top, panic-stricken. Piss and moan, piss and moan was all they knew how to do. They were losers, trivial people, reckless in speech and action. They took but knew not from whence the bounty flowed. They were rude, dismissive, sent insulting letters to his home, talked him down in public, all while understanding not the first damn thing about what he, what they (the tribe), actuallydid:how bold it was, how risky, how often they failed, losing, sometimes, millions in the trying.
Terrible, I said.
And to come to the point: What had he ever “denied”? Nothing. He’d challenged, sure, he’d asked for a higher level of certainty, he’d pulled at loose threads in certain specious arguments, he’d pointed out the existence of a range of valid scientific opinions out there re what, exactly, was happening.
And for that, he’d become the villain of the piece, the principal baddie.
That must have been difficult, I said.
Yes, he said. Yes it was. Thank you. For understanding that.
But it didn’t matter. The tribe saw him clearly. The tribe knew what was what. The tribe was made, to a person, of honest, straightforward, trustworthy, hardworking folks.
Salt of the earth.
Good people all.
He wanted me to know that.
There’d been no sin involved in any of it, none at all.
Then his eyes widened at a sound from across the room.
—
He was dying, for reasons unclear, in the least appealing room of his magnificent home.
A pair of red velvet drapes hung on the eastern wall, as if to frame a view out a window. But there was no window. The space would also have been ideal for a valued painting. But there was no painting and no indication that one had ever hung there.
These purposeless drapes seemed part of some abandoned attempt to render the room regal. Above the fireplace hung the helmet from a suit of armor. On a side table near the love seat a set of miniature brass knights was arranged around a lamp asif laying siege to it. This aspiration to regality competed with an earlier attempt at an Old West theme: on the wall above the dresser hung an arrangement of antlers, an old saddle, two Colt .45s in an African blackwood display case. An empty medical bed took up what was left of the room but the speed with which my charge’s illness had overtaken him meant that he’d never felt well enough to be transferred to it.
Hear that? he said.
Yes, I said.
We were hearing the thrashing sound one of our ilk will sometimes make as it struggles itself into being. One must want desperately to appear and, even so, might only partly succeed: one might arrive in waves, or in a diminished state. One’s appearance might be distorted by detritus from one’s psyche or the manner of one’s passing. Even having succeeded, one might fade away before one’s desires were fully realized.
Two men of our ilk, approximately a third the size of real men, stepped out from behind the useless drapes, one from the right, the other from the left. Growing ever more full-sized as they came, they crept toward my charge, clad in shiny blue (three-piece, wide-lapeled) business suits over which, for reasons unknown, white lab coats had been thrown. Then, in the next instant, the white lab coats would be on the inside, with the shiny blue business suits outside, these transitions occurring every second or so.
Gentlemen, I said. You’re intruding.
We’re not, said the first man.
We’re more than welcome here, said the other.
More welcome than you, said the first.
Than you are, said the other.
