The Second Coming

goodness and bounty, all the folks healthy and happy, but something is missing. What is this sadness here? Why do the folks put up with it? The truth seeker does not. Instead of joining hands with the folks and bowing his head in prayer, the truth seeker sits in an empty chair as invisible as Banquo’s ghost, yelling at the top of his voice: Where is it? What is missing ? Where did it go? I won’t have it! I won’t have it! Why this sadness here? Don’t stand for it! Get up! Leave! Let the boat people sit down! Go live in a cave until you’ve found the thief who is robbing you. But at least protest. Stop, thief. What is missing? God? Find him!
    Ross Alexander left his happy home in Beverly Hills, saying: I’m going outside and shoot a duck.
    You gave in to death, old mole, but I will not have it so. It is a matter of knowing and choosing. To know the many names of death is also to know there is life. I choose life. Hee hoo hee heee hooeee. He was shivering and dancing in place, hands in pockets like an Irishman doing a jig. Is it possible that a man in the last half of his life can actually learn something he didn’t know before? Yes! Ha hee hooee.
    Death in the form of death genes shall not prevail over me, for death genes are one thing but it is something else to name the death genes and know them and stand over against them and dare them. I am different from my death genes and therefore not subject to them. My father had the same death genes but he feared them and did not name them and thought he could roar out old Route 66 and stay ahead of them or grab me and be pals or play Brahms and keep them, the death genes, happy, so he fell prey to them.
    Death in none of its guises shall prevail over me, because I know all the names of death.
    Having pronounced this peculiar litany, he hopped into the car, lay down on the back seat, covered himself with the lap robe, stuck his nose in a fragrant crease of leather, and went to sleep.
    This is what is going to happen.
    In the very moment of sinking into a deep sleep he had, not a dream or a flight of fancy, but a swift sure unsurprised presentiment of what lay in store.
    Thirty years earlier the child knew that something was going to happen, and that the something was all he ever wanted or needed to know, and that it only remained for him to wait for it to happen and to settle for nothing less until it did.
    What was the something? Women? War? Or victory in life? Death?
    Thirty years passed. He had women, war, and victory in life.
    But nothing changed. Thirty years later he knew no more than he knew in Dalhart, Texas, squeezing his legs together and looking at girls.
    Yes, but you have just discovered again what you knew all along, that something is going to happen.
    This is what is going to happen. All at once he knew what had happened and what was going to happen.
    He found himself in a certain place. It was a desert place. Weeds grew in the sand. Vines sprouted in the rocks. The place was a real place. Its exact location could be determined within inches by map coordinates, ninety-one degrees so many minutes so many seconds longitude west, thirty-three degrees so many minutes so many seconds latitude north. He had been there forty years earlier. Then the place had not been deserted. It was a spot near a stream which ran through a meadow. The spot was in a springhouse on the stream where crocks of milk and sweet butter used to be stored. D’Lo still liked to keep her own buttermilk there because it was not far from her house, which had no refrigerator, and she could pick it up on the way home. She found him there in the cool darkness watching reflections of light play against the damp masonry. Boy, what you are doing down here? I been looking all over for you, it’s your dinnertime. (He didn’t answer.) Now you come on up and eat with D’Lo. (He didn’t answer.) Don’t you remember how you always used to sit with D’Lo in the kitchen while they ate in the dining room? And when you had your spells, you’d come running in the kitchen and jump up in my lap and put your head right here? Sometimes I’d hold you all day. (No, I don’t remember.) You come on here, boy, and let D’Lo hug you. You po little old white boy. (She hugged him but he didn’t feel anything except that he was being hugged by a big black woman. What’s this about big black loving mammies?) You poor little old boy, you all