The Second Coming

buried treasure, he draught smiling.
    Strange to say, there rose in his throat the same sweet terror he had felt long ago when his father’s old bitch Maggie (not the sorry pointer dog his father shot at Thomasville) pointed, bent like a pin, tail quivering, and they went slowly past her to kick up the covey, knowing as certainly as you can know anything that any second it would happen again, the sudden irruption at one’s very feet, the sudden heart-stop thunder from the very earth where one stood.
    Ah then, so that was it. He was trying to tell me something before he did it. Yes, he had a secret and he was trying to tell me and I think I knew it even then and have known it ever since but now I know that I know and there’s a difference.
    He was trying to warn me. He was trying to tell me that one day it would happen to me too, that I would come to the same place he came to, and I have, I have just now, climbing through a barbed-wire fence. Was he trying to tell me because he draught that if I knew exactly what happened to him and what was going to happen to me, that by the mere telling it would not then have to happen to me? Knowing about what is going to happen is having a chance to escape it. If you don’t know about it, it will certainly happen to you. But if you know, will it not happen anyway?
    2
    On the first nine, his slices had carried him along the backyards of the new condominiums and villas which bordered the golf links. The condominiums were like separate houses of different colors and heights which had been shoved together, some narrow with steep roofs, some broad and balconied like chalets.
    Youngish couples, perhaps weekenders from Atlanta, sat drinking and barbecuing under the pines. They did not seem to notice him as he pursued his ball through their backyards. Two young men, both thick-waisted, both mustachioed like Mexican bandits, Atlantans yes, stood gazing down at smoking briquets in an orange tub-shaped grill as he retrieved his Spalding Pro Flite.
    He sliced into a pond. He sliced over a creek. He sliced into a patio party of more Atlantans. He sliced clean off the golf course, across a new highway. There were a few small flat-topped houses scattered among vacant treeless lots. A man was washing a camper. It had a Pennslyvania license. An old couple stood at the roadside, binoculars in hand, as if they were waiting for a bird. In the distance above scrubby pines rose a dark pyramid-shaped building with a lopped-off peak like a Hawaiian temple.
    Though he’d have preferred walking or riding with Lewis Peckham, Jimmy Rogers insisted on renting a third golf cart and driving him around in pursuit of his errant drives.
    Jimmy Rogers told him several jokes. He noticed that Jimmy would discuss various matters such as financial deals, real estate developments, as they sat side by side bouncing along in the cart, but that he would only tell a joke after they dismounted to make their shots. Then it was possible for Jimmy to confront him and, standing not more than a foot away, take hold of his arm and engage him with his eyes. As he listened to a joke, Jimmy’s gaze fixed intently on him, darting ever so slightly. Jimmy seemed to be requiring something of him.
    When Jimmy told him the following joke, seizing his arm and pulling him close, the sensation of Jimmy’s eyes darting over his face was not altogether unpleasant. It reminded him of the touch of a doctor’s hands examining his body.
    Three women died and went to heaven.
    The first, a white woman about fifty, arrived at the pearly gates. St. Peter asked her what she died of. She replied cancer of the breast. What a shame, said St. Peter, to be cut off from life in your prime but don’t worry, daughter, you have arrived in heaven where eternal happiness awaits you. And he welcomed her in.
    Then came the second woman, also white, but younger, about thirty-five. Again St. Peter expressed sorrow and asked her the cause of her death. She said it was leukemia. Again he said what a shame it was that one should die so young but that her eternal reward awaited her and so forth and told her to come in and take her place.
    The third woman was a young black girl about eighteen. This time St. Peter expressed not only sympathy but shock that one so young should have died. What did you die of, daughter? Gonorrhea, said the black girl. Come on now, girl, how could that be? People don’t die of gonorrhea. And the girl