The Secret of Life

“Uh, uuuuuh.”

“Yeah, that’s his house. Park his car, ring the doorbell, and let’s get out of here. Be sure to get that other bottle of wine.”

“Right.”

The dark forms disappeared, the house door opened, and there was Conrad’s father in his bathrobe.

“Shouldn’t wait up for me,” muttered Conrad. “Lea’ me alone, you old bastard.”

There was yelling. His parents put him to bed, he threw up again, lights and more yelling, his mother screaming,“Pig! Pig!”

Finally he was alone. The bed and room began to spin. Conrad fumbled for a way to stop it. There had to be some head-trick, some change of perspective to make the torture stop ... there. He felt himself grow lighter and less real. Dropping off to sleep, he had the feeling he was floating one inch above his bed. And then ... he was in the throes of an old, recurrent dream.

The structure is circular, high in the middle. It could be a circus big top. Conrad is off to one side, watching the thin, bright shapes that move above the center. They are flames, these beings; they are rods of light. The whole enclosed space is filled with moving lights, and they have reached some wonderful, awful conclusion about Conrad’s future... .

Chapter 2:

Tuesday, January 1, 1963 Conrad’s best friend, Hank Larsen, had gone to a different New Year’s Eve dance. New Year’s Day, Conrad walked over to Hank’s house to compare notes.

“No driving,” warned Conrad’s mother. “After last night, you can just stay in the neighborhood.” “OK, Mom.” Conrad’s dog Nina followed him over to Hank’s house. Hank was in his room, reading a science-fiction book and listening to one of his radios. Hank’s big hobby was electronics—over the years he’d assembled four or five different types of radio transmitters and receivers. He even had a ham license from the FCC. “The Magnificent Paunch,” intoned Hank by way of greeting. Friends for years now, the two had a large number of code phrases, many of uncertain meaning. “High guineaus, Si,” responded Conrad. “I don’t feel too peak.” “Got y’self all drunked up, did you, Zeke? Got a touch of that riiind fever?” “It was great,” said Conrad, breaking into normal speech. “Ardmore and I stole wine from the church and got really plastered. I was talking about time and death and some guys drove me home.” “I bet you got caught bigger’n shit.” “Yeah. They were both waiting up. I don’t remember too clearly. I think maybe my old man slugged me.

I was cursing and everything.” “What’d they say today?” “Well, nothing, really. But what about you? What happened on your big date with Lehman? Did you finger her again?” Hank closed his book and stood up. He was tall and blond, and his girlfriend Laura Lehman was crazy about him. Instead of answering Conrad’s question directly, Hank nodded his head warningly toward the hall. “Let’s roll out.” “OK. Let’s walk over to Skelton’s pasture. Nina’s here too.” “Bo-way.” It was a cool, gray day. The frozen grass crunched underfoot. Hank’s family lived in a subdivision which petered out in a series of large cow pastures. The land all belonged to an old Kentucky gentleman named Cornelius Skelton. In the mid-fifties, Skelton had gotten into the papers for claiming he’d seen a UFO

land in his fields. Skelton said it had butchered one of his hogs, and he had a mineral crystal that the saucer was supposed to have left. He wasn’t fanatical about it, or anything—he just insisted that he’d seen a UFO. He was a pleasant, courtly man, and most people ascribed this one eccentricity to his grief over the premature death of his wife. Conrad had been wandering the pastures ever since the Bungers moved to Louisville in 1956. It was his favorite place. Today, Hank and Conrad were walking along a small stream that ran through the pasture bottoms. You could see bubbles moving beneath the clear patches in the ice. “Did youfuck her?” Conrad asked finally. Hank seemed reluctant to discuss it—like a rich man embarrassed to describe his treasures to a hungry beggar. “Did you do it in your car?” demanded Conrad. “No, uh, her mother was out. We used Laura’s room.”

“You pla

“Come on, Hank, I have to know. What does it feel like? Do they like it, too?”

“I felt tingly all over,” said Hank slowly. “It was like pins and needles in all of my skin, and I was dizzy.

The first time was real fast, but the next one took longer. She was crying some of the time, but squeezing me real tight. I would have done it a third time, but I only had two rubbers. Just when I was leaving, her old lady came home. ‘Was it nice at the dance, children?’ ”

“God.”

They walked on in silence for a while, following the stream. Nina ran ahead, sniffing for rabbits. At the crests of the hills on either side you could see houses, new split-levels like the one Hank lived in. A crow flapped slowly to the top of a leafless black locust tree and perched there, cawing. Conrad couldn’t get over the fact that his best friend Hank had actually managed to get laid.

“You really did it, Hank! That’s wonderful. Congratulations.” They paused to shake hands solemnly.

“You know what I was thinking last month—” Conrad continued, “about the only wayI’m likely to ever get any pussy? I was thinking that when we have World War Three, there’ll be a whole lot of dead women around, you know, good-looking dead women with their clothes all ripped, and ...”

“Oh, come on, Conrad. You won’t be a dry stick forever.” Hank poked Conrad and sang an altered bar fromMy Fair Lady : “With a little bit of luck, we’ll all fu-huh-uck!”

“Yeah, I guess so, sooner or later. Today’s the first day of 1963. I can remember when I was about ten, reading an article inPopular Science about all the neat inventions we were supposed to have in 1963.

Personal helicopters, self-driving cars. Time keeps passing, Hank, and before we know it, we’ll be dead.

That’s what I was telling everyone last night. We’re all really going to die.”

“So what, as long as you have some fun first.”

“You don’t understand.”

“You’re just worried you’ll die avirrgin .” Hank had a special, nasal voice he used for unkind cuts like this. “The SacredVirrrgin Mary.”

“Sure, religion’s bullshit,” said Conrad, steering back to his chosen topic. “Heaven and hell are just science fiction. But can there really benothing after death? I mean a corpse is the same matter as the living person was. Where does the life go to? Where did it come from?”

“Ghosts,” said Hank. “The soul.” In the distance, Nina was barking.

“That’s right,” said Conrad, “Iknow I have a soul. I’m alive, I can feel it. But where does itgo ?”

They were near the end of the pastures now, and Nina was ru

“Hubba-hubba, Zeke, I done lost my life-force up Laura’s crack.”

“No, listen, I know where the life-force goes, Hank. I’ve got it figured out. There’s a big pool of life-force ... out there.” Conrad gestured vaguely. “It’s like that big bubble under the ice, you see. And each of us is a little bubble that can merge back in.”

“Like a soul going to heaven.” They were walking now, headed back toward the houses.