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"Always now we were together, Dolores, Pepe, Ed and I, Ed and his jokes, we other three and our silences. Grotesque quadruplets (born of what fantastic parent?) we fed upon one another, as cancer feeds upon itself, and yet, will you believe this? there are a medley of moments I remember with the kind of nostalgia reserved usually for sweeter things: Pepe (I see) is lighting a match with his thumb nail, is trying with a bare hand to snatch a goldfish from the fountain, we are at a picture-show eating popcorn from the same bag, he has fallen asleep and leans against my shoulder, he is laughing because I wince at a boxing-cut on his lip. I hear him whistling on the stairs, I hear him mounting toward me and his footsteps are not so loud as my heart. Days, fast fading as snowflakes, flurry into autumn, fall all around like November leaves, the sky, cold red with winter, frightens with the light it sheds: I sleep all day, the shutters closed, the covers drawn above my eyes. Now it is Mardi Gras, and we are going to a ball; everyone has chosen his costume but me: Ed is a Franciscan monk (gnawing a cigar), Pepe is a bandit and Dolores a ballerina; but I ca
"Another spring, and they were gone; it was April, the sixth of that rainy lilac April, just two days after our happy trip to Pontchartrain… where the picture was taken, and where, in symbolic dark, we'd drifted through the tu
"Her room was overturned; as I searched through the wreckage, a guitar string broke, its twang vibrating every nerve. I hurried to the top of the stairs, my mouth open but no sound coming out: all the control centers of my mind were numb; the air undulated, and the floor expanded like an accordion. Someone was coming towards me. I felt them like a pressure climbing the steps; unrecognized, they seemed to walk straight into my eyes. First I thought it was Dolores, then Ed, then Pepe. Whoever it was, they shook me, pleading and swearing: that bastard, they said, gone, sonofabitchinbastard, gone with the car, all the clothes and money, gone, forever and ever and ever. But who was it? I couldn't see: a blinding Jesus-like glow burned around him: Pepe, is it you? Ed? Dolores? I pushed myself free, ran back into the bedroom and shut the door: it was no use: the doorknob began to turn, and suddenly everything was crazy plain: Dolores had at last caught me in her dreams.
"So I found a gun I kept wrapped in an old sock. The rain had stopped. The windows were open, and the room was cool and sweet with lilac. Downstairs the radio was singing, and in my ears there was the roar a seashell makes. The door opened; I fired once, and again, and Jesus dissolved, became nothing but Ed in a dirty linen suit; doubled over, he stumbled toward the stairs, and rolled down the steps loose like a ragdoll.
"For two days he lay crumpled on the couch, bleeding all over himself, moaning and shouting and ru
"To be brief: Ed and Amy were married in New Orleans. It was, you see, her fantasy come true; she was at last what she'd always wanted to be, a nurse… with a more or less permanent position. Then we all came back to the Landing; Amy's idea, and the only solution, for he would never be well again. I suppose we shall go on together until the house sinks, until the garden grows up and weeds hide us in their depth."
Randolph, pushing aside his drawing board, slumped over on the desk; dusk had come while he talked, and swept the room bluely; outside, sparrows were calling to roost, their nightfall chatter punctuated by a solemn frog. Pretty soon Zoo would be ringing the supper bell. None of this was apparent to Joel; he was not even aware of any stiffness from having sat so long in one position: it was as though Randolph's voice continued saying in his head things that were real enough, but not necessary to believe. He was confused because the story had been like a movie with neither plot nor motive: had Randolph really shot his father? And, most important of all, where was the ending? What had happened to Dolores and old awful Pepe Alvarez? That is what he wanted to know, and that is what he asked.
"If I knew…" said Randolph, pausing, holding a match to a candle; the sudden light flattered his face, made the pink hairless skin more impeccably young. "But, my dear, so few things are fulfilled: what are most lives but a series of incompleted episodes?'We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task… It is wanting to know the end that makes us believe in God, or witchcraft, believe, at least, in something."
Joel still wanted to know: "Didn't you ever even try to find out where they got off to?"
"Over there," said Randolph with a tired smile, "is a five-pound volume listing every town and hamlet on the globe; it is what I believe in, this almanac: day by day I've gone through it writing Pepe always in care of the postmaster; just notes, nothing but my name and what we will for convenience call address. Oh, I know that I shall never have an answer. But it gives me something to believe in. And that is peace."
Downstairs the supper bell sounded. Randolph did not move. His face seemed to contract with a look of sad guilt. "I've been very weak this afternoon, very wicked," he said, rising for Joel to accept an invitation of open arms. "Do forgive me, darling Joel." Then, in a voice as urgent as the bell, he added: "And please, tell me what I want to hear."
Joel remembered. "Everything," he said gently, "everything is going to be all right."