The Secret of Life

Conrad took a tract and let Taffy drag him into the theater. He’d brought along his unopened half-pint of Gordon’s. Once he’d gotten popcorn and settled down with Taffy, he excused himself to go to the bathroom.I can fly. He sat down in a stall and sucked down a third of the bottle. Just like at the Bo Diddley concert. The buzzing started. He drew the wild man’s tract out of his pocket and studied it. It was dull bullshit—a straight pitch for getting saved by Jesus—with none of the weird resonances that the actual preacher had.

Conrad took another slug and squinted to see who’d printed the pamphlet. “Gospel Tract Society, Shoals, Indiana.” No good. After the movie, Conrad stopped to talk to the preacher. “What do you mean, ‘the words fall away’? How do you make it happen?”

“You hide it to find it,” said the man, smiling. He was glad to answer questions. That’s what he was here for. “Conrad, comeon ,” urged Taffy. This evening wasn’t working out properly.

“How can you hand out crap lies like this?” demanded Conrad, gesturing at the tracts. “Who pays you?”

“I tell you,” said the preacher, putting his hand on Conrad’s shoulder and drawing him close. “The world take care of the world. Andyou a fallen angel.” All at once, Conrad felt dizzy from the red-and-yellow Gordon’s and the preacher’s red-and-yellow signs. His head was roaring and it was as if everything were bathed in flames. Flame-people. Flying wing.

In the car, Taffy was really angry. “Just take me home, Conrad. I don’t want to go to our make-out spot tonight. You can kiss me in the driveway.”

“Thank you, Taffy. I’m sorry I’m acting crazy. I love you. I can fly.”

“You can what?”

“Fly. On the way to pick you up, I flew out over the Ohio River. I think maybe I’m not human.”

“My father’s right, Conrad. You really are crazy.” Her voice was cold as ice.

On the drive back to his house from Taffy’s, Conrad opened all the windows, hoping the air would wash the gin fumes away. The bottle was on the seat next to him, not quite empty. He felt really strange.

Just then a car full of hoods pulled around him as if to pass. Little greasers, all worked up. Instead of passing, they locked speed and began yelling curses and giving him the finger. Two cars speeding along side by side, the kids on the left yelling at Conrad.

Conrad zipped up the Bungers’ long dark driveway, loaded the little derringer, and went partway back up the driveway on foot. The other kids had stopped at the end, scared of an ambush. They were yelling things. It was too dark to see. Conrad leveled the pistol at the sound and paused.

He was just drunk enough to consider shooting.That would show them. And if the cops came—well, he could just fly away and ...

As Conrad deliberated, the whole dark world began to flame and shudder. A voice was ru

Slowly he lowered the gun to his side. The car full of hoods was driving off.

“Why I’m here,” murmured Conrad. “To find the secret of life.”

He unloaded the gun and went to bed. It was time to go to college.

Part II

That’s living. But everything changes when you tell about life; it’s a change no one notices: The proof is that people talk about true stories. As if there could possibly be true stories; things happen one way and we tell about them in the opposite sense.

—Jean-Paul Sartre,Nausea

Chapter 8:

Tuesday, October 1, 1963 “For one thing,” said the political science teacher, “I’m sure that all of us here agree on the basics.

We’re all liberal Democrats. Is there anyone here who isn’t?”

Conrad and the only other Southern boy raised their hands. The other boy had red hair and came from Mississippi. The teacher called on him first.

“Liberalism has just about ruined America,” the red-haired boy drawled. “The conservative philosophy is not only for fools and bigots. It represents the only truly progressive response to the realities of the late twentieth century.”

The other students tittered, and the teacher smiled. He was extremely tall and ski

This was the first time that Conrad had spoken up in any of his college classes. His heart was beating so hard he could hardly speak. He wanted the teacher to like him.

Conrad and then raised his hand.

“Yes, Pe

“Anarchy is theabsence of a political system, sir. There’s no point in discussing it here.”

“Very good.”

Conrad’s face burned. After class a very short, dark-ski

“Where are you from?”

“Louisville.”

“In Kentucky?” The boy blinked and adjusted his glasses. “I’m from Long Island. Chuckie Golem. You going to have lunch?”

“Sure.”

Over lunch, Golem told Conrad about his roommate, a wild character called Izzy Tuskman. The boys discussed the few girls whose names they knew. It turned out that Chuckie lived in the same dorm as Conrad.

“You want to play some Frisbee?” Chuckie asked as they ambled back from lunch. He seemed so kind and gentle. “What’s Frisbee?”

“It’s a plastic flying saucer. You throw it back and forth.”

“OK. Though I do have a lot of homework ...”

“Just a half hour, it’ll do us good.”

It was a brilliant October day, hot as summer. Chuckie patiently demonstrated the Frisbee until Conrad was able to throw it a little.

“The Frisbee looks neat when it hovers against the sky,” observed Conrad presently. “It’d be perfect for a UFO movie. Did you seeEarth versus the Flying Saucers ? It came out in 1957, the same year as Sputnik.”

“I didn’t go to those movies,” said Chuckie. “I listened to folk-music instead. I guess they have a lot of UFO sightings in Kentucky?” The precise, hesitant way he said, “Kentucky,” made it sound wild and unpredictable ... if not actually crude and benighted.

“Waal, shore,” said Conrad, putting on a hick accent. “There’s a gentleman down the road from where we lived—old Cornelius Skelton—he always tells as how one night he seed a flying saucer make off with one of his hawgs. He fired on it, but twarnt no use. Only good come out of it was next day Cornelius found him a big mineral crystal spang where the space vehicle had landed! Still hot, it was. Mr. Skelton keeps that crystal on his mantel, for to show folks. I’ve seed and touched it myself, I have.” The story was more-or-less true, but Chuckie didn’t seem to understand that it was supposed to be fu

If anything, he looked a little sorry for Conrad. Conrad wished he hadn’t told the story. The fact of the matter was that, for whatever reason, he thought of Mr. Skelton’s crystal quite often.

“It’s amezuzah .” Chuckie laughed happily at Conrad’s confusion. “A religious thing, against the Angel of Death. I’m Jewish.”

“Oh, are you?” In his embarrassment, Conrad dropped the Frisbee. He’d never met any Jews before, though he’d heard his brother Caldwell talk about the oneshe’d met at college. Caldwell said Jews were untrustworthy.

“You don’tlook Jewish,” Conrad said politely.

“Are you kidding?” Chuckie gave his dry, humming laugh. “That reminds me of a joke. There’s a guy on the train, right, and this old Jewish woman keeps coming up to him and asking, ‘Are you Jewish?’ ‘I’m not Jewish,’ the guy says, ‘so leave me alone.’ ‘Are you sure?’ says the woman. ‘Are you sure you’re not Jewish?’ She keeps doing this for about an hour, right, so finally he gives up and says, ‘All right, lady, I admit it, I’m Jewish!’ Big pause, and then she says, ‘Fu