Lancelot

back?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œOkay.” We might have been discussing his chores for the day.
    â€œOh yes. Something else. Take Ellis and Suellen to Magnolia, Mississippi, where y’all have kinfolks. It’s on I-55, on your way north. They can return after the storm. You won’t have any trouble persuading them. They’re both scared to death. They are the only people around here who have any sense.”
    â€œOkay. Is that all?”
    â€œThat’s all.”
    â€œWhat are you going to do?”
    â€œMe? I’m fine, Elgin.”
    â€œDon’t you need me to help you move all those folks out of here?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œOkay. Well—”
    We shake hands. He gives me a level-eyed look. He’s seen too many movies. Or maybe it’s being in one. The level-eyed look means we understand each other and have been reconciled, perhaps by the Christlike stranger played by Dana. When the truth is, nobody understands anyone else, and nobody is reconciled because nobody knows what there is to be reconciled. Or if there is something to be reconciled, the way it is done in the movies, by handshakes, level-eyed looks, expressions of mute understanding, doesn’t work.
    Don’t you agree? No? Do you really believe people can be reconciled?
    â€œOne more thing, Elgin.”
    â€œYes?” He was standing in the doorway in a way he learned from Jacoby. It was an actor’s way of standing in a doorway at a moment of farewell, eyes fine, face slanted.
    â€œWhen you shake hands with somebody, squeeze.”
    â€œOkay,” he said frowning. He left slightly offended.
    Did it ever occur to you in considering those instances of blacks who decide they want to act like whites and are very observant and successful in doing so (they are even better than the Japanese in imitating us—so much so that Elgin can act more like Mannix than Mannix) that no matter how observant one is, one cannot by observation alone assess the degree of squeeze in a handshake or even be sure there is a squeeze at all?
    I was wrong about one thing. Merlin too had good sense and no taste for hurricanes. He was leaving.
    For once I astonished myself: I wanted him to leave! I wanted him to get away, escape, the man who had made love to my wife in the Roundtowner Motor Lodge in Arlington, Texas, on or about July 15, 1968, and begot my daughter Siobhan.
    Why?
    Because he, poor old man, had come to as bad a place as a man can come to. Going back to Africa to find his youth. To see leopard. It was as if I had lit out for Asheville looking for dead Lucy. An old man should find new things. Shooting was too good for him. Anyhow I liked him and he liked me.
    I caught him fidgeting up and down the gallery after the rest of the crew had gone.
    â€œI was working on the causeway in the Keys when that son of a bitch (they had no women’s names for hurricanes then) hit in 1928. They’re no joke and I’d as soon not see another one.”
    â€œDidn’t some people get killed?”
    â€œAbout five hundred. Christ, what I haven’t seen in my life. What I haven’t done. Three things I’ve loved—women, life, and art.”
    â€œIn that order?”
    â€œIn that order.”
    â€œWell, you’ve got plenty of life left.”
    He looked at me, then looked at me again.
    â€œRight!” he said. “And I’m in good shape. I’ve got a good body. Feel that, Lance,” he said, making a bicep.
    â€œOkay. Very good.”
    â€œThat’s the arm of a young man. Feel my gut.”
    â€œFlat and hard.”
    â€œHit me.”
    â€œThat’s not necessary.”
    â€œGo ahead, hit me. You can’t hurt me.”
    â€œI believe you.”
    â€œI can beat the shit out of anybody here—except you, Lance. I believe you could take me.”
    â€œI doubt it. I’m in rotten shape.”
    â€œYou want to arm wrestle?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou’ve got a good body. You know what you ought to do?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œKung Fu. You’d be great at it. You’re a natural athlete, with an athlete’s grace and strength. It would be good for you.”
    â€œYou may be right, Merlin. You know what you ought to do?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œGet out of here.”
    â€œWe’re leaving the first thing tomorrow morning. Those other nuts want to spend the night.”
    â€œMarie is arriving