The Second Coming

Because the next time you took no chances and did it right, used both barrels, both thumbs and your mouth.
    I remember now. I cleaned the gun when I got it back from the sheriff in Mississippi. Both barrels. Wouldn’t one have been enough? Yes, given an ordinary need for death. But not if it’s a love of death. In the case of love, more is better than less, two twice as good as one, and most is best of all. And if the aim is the ecstasy of love, two is closer to infinity than one, especially when the two are twelve-gauge Super-X number-eight shot. And what samurai self-love of death, let alone the little death of everyday fuck-you love, can match the double Winchester come of taking oneself into oneself, the cold-steel extension of oneself into mouth, yes, for you, for me, for us, the logical and ultimate act of fuck-you love fuck-off world, the penetration and union of perfect cold gunmetal into warm quailing mortal flesh, the coming to end all coming, brain cells which together faltered and fell short, now flowered and flew apart, flung like stars around the whole dark world.
    4
    â€œGoing hunting?”
    â€œNo.” It was Lewis Peckham standing in the doorway behind him. He wondered if anything could surprise him.
    â€œI got an old cornfield the hogs have been into. It’s full of doves. You could come down this afternoon.”
    â€œNo thanks.” He unlatched the forestock of the gun, broke the breech, replaced the parts carefully in the plush cavities of the heavy fitted case.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI said what’s the matter?”
    â€œWhat do you mean what’s the matter?”
    â€œSomething’s been the matter with you.”
    â€œIt’s okay now.” He laughed.
    â€œYou do seem better. What was it?
    He looked at Lewis. It was unusual for him to ask questions.
    â€œIt was something I didn’t know that was bothering me. Now I know.”
    â€œI could tell you how to correct your slice, but that’s not it, is it?”
    â€œNo.”
    Lewis Peckham’s face, narrow and dark as a piece of slab bark, was as usual slightly averted.
    â€œBut the slice is part of it, isn’t it? I’ll tell you a funny thing. I can watch a man swing a golf club and tell you more about him than a psychiatrist after a hundred hours on the couch.”
    It was probably true. Lewis had a shrewd grave watchful intelligence which, however, was almost spoiled by a restlessness under the quietness. He was not what he appeared. It had at first appeared that Lewis was a natural man, one of the few left, a grave watchful silent courteous man, a Leatherstocking. But he was not. He was a discontent golf pro. He looked like a Cherokee scout but his family was old-line Tidewater and he had played golf at the University of Virginia. He was an unhappy golf pro. Maybe books had ruined him. What a shock to learn from this grave silent man that he wrote poetry in secret! Imagine Leatherstocking a poet. Lewis knew a great many things, could read signs like an Indian but unlike an Indian he did not know what he could not do. He thought he was a good poet but he was not. He thought books could tell him how to live but they couldn’t. He was a serious but dazed reader. He read Dante and Shakespeare and Nietzsche and Freud. He read modern poetry and books on psychiatry. He had taken a degree in English, taught English, fought in a war, returned to teach English, couldn’t, decided to farm, bought a goat farm, managed a Confederate museum in a cave on his property, wrote poetry, went broke, became a golf pro. Lewis showed him some of his poetry once. It was not good. There was one poem called “New Moon over Khe Sanh,” which was typed in the shape of a new moon:

    How could Lewis who could locate others so well, so misplace himself? How could he read signs and people so well, yet want to be a third-rate Rupert Brooke with his rendezvous with death at Khe Sanh? Why would he even want to be a first-rate Rupert Brooke? On the other hand, what was Lewis supposed to do? be an Indian scout? goatherd? English teacher? golf pro? run a Confederate cave? Lewis didn’t seem to know. But what was good about him was that he remained himself despite himself. Books had not spoiled him. He knew a great deal he hadn’t learned from books. The trouble was he didn’t set store by it.
    Will Barrett smiled. All at once he knew what Lewis