The Second Coming

was supposed to do and what would make him happy. After all the local Angles and Jutes and Saxons have driven each other crazy over niggers and gone to war for lack of anything better to do, Lewis is the fellow who keeps his head and goes around picking up people with his pickup and saving a remnant in his cave.
    â€œYou’re sure you’re okay, Will?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œYou want to know what I think?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI think you’re in a clinical depression. I believe you might do with some counseling. Have you heard of logotherapy?”
    Logotherapy. Jesus Christ. What’s he been reading now? English teacher, goatherd, spelunker, poet, golf pro, now a psychiatrist.
    Lewis inclined his head gravely. “The trouble is you and I share something that sets us apart.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œWe’re the once-born in a world of the twice-born. We have to make our way without Amazing Grace. It’s a lonely road but there are some advantages along the way. The company, when you find it, is better. And the view, though bleak, is bracing. You see things the way they are. In fact, don’t you feel sometimes like the one-eyed in the land of the blind?”
    He frowned. Why was Lewis’s unbelief so unpleasant? It was no better than the Baptists’ belief.
    If belief is shitty and unbelief is shitty, what does that leave?
    No, Lewis was even more demented than the believers. Unbelieving Lewis read Dante for the structure. At least, believers were consistent. They might think Dante is a restaurant in Asheville but they don’t read Marx for structure.
    â€œHave you considered analysis, Will?”
    â€œAnalysis of what?”
    â€œOf you. Psychoanalysis.”
    â€œI did that. Three years of it.”
    â€œAnalysis? No kidding.” Lewis brightened. Lewis thought better of him! Lewis envied him! Lewis wanted to be analyzed! “Then you of all people should know that depression is eminently treatable, right?”
    Lewis waited, not quite watching him, as grave and courteous as if he were waiting for a putt.
    â€œMaybe you’re right.”
    â€œOf course I’m right. What is more, you know as well as I do that such a reaction is quite common following the death of a spouse.”
    A spouse. Marion was a spouse. But did Marion’s death depress him or mystify him?
    â€œAlso, if you want to know the truth. Will, I think you retired too soon.”
    â€œMay be,” he said absently.
    â€œEarly retirement is one of the major causes of depression.”
    â€œIs that right?”
    He took a good look at Lewis, at the dark slab-sided face and straight black hair which was too long for a golf pro and too short for a poet. There was a space in him where a space shouldn’t be, where parts were not glued together. What it was was that there is nothing wrong with being a goatherd-poet-golf-pro but there was something wrong with the way Lewis did it. What?
    â€œAfter all. Will, you got it all. You got everything a man needs. And you’re a good athlete. You could play scratch golf if you put your mind to it.”
    â€œWhat would you do if you had it all, Lewis?”
    â€œI’d raise beef cattle, listen to Beethoven and Wagner, read and write,” said Lewis without hesitation.
    Two fingers strayed along the greasy steel of the Greener barrel.
    â€œYou don’t enjoy such things, Will?”
    â€œSure.”
    Lewis touched his arm, a rare thing. Leatherstocking didn’t touch anybody. “Tell you what, Will. They don’t need the father of the bride around here. Let’s me and you cut out, go down to my spread, crack a bottle, and put on the Ninth Symphony.”
    â€œNo thanks, Lewis.” Dear Jesus. Sitting with Lewis in his farmhouse, listening to the Ninth Symphony.
    â€œName one thing better than the Ninth Symphony.”
    Kitty’s ass. “I’m not in the mood.” He looked at his watch. What did Kitty have in mind?
    â€œYou and I know that golf is not enough.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œYou couldn’t do without them any more than I can, Will.”
    â€œDo without what?”
    â€œThe finer things in life.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œMan does not live by bread alone and we make plenty bread at golf.”
    â€œRight.” Why was it that the thought of the finer things in life, such as the Ninth Symphony, made his heart sink like a stone?