CHAPTER 6

Bliss, boy?

Leaning forward, mountainous in the dwarfed easy chair, the old man watched the Senator’s face now, observing the expressions flickering swiftly over the restless features of the man tossing beneath the sheet. He called again, softly, Bliss? Then heaved with a great sigh. I guess he’s gone again, he thought.

Hickman searched his lower vest pockets with a long finger, extracting a roll of Life Savers and placing one of the hard circles of minty whiteness upon his tongue as he rested back again. Before him the Senator breathed more quietly now, the face still fluid with potential expressions, like a rubber mask washed by swift water. He looks like he’s trying to smile, Hickman thought. Every now and then he really looks as though he would, if he had a little help. Maybe that’s the way. When he wakes up I’ll see what I can do. Anyway, he looks a little better. If only I could do something besides talk. Those doctors are the best though; the Government and his Party saw to that. He’ll have the best of everything, so there’s nothing to do but wait and hope. The fact that they let me in here when he asked them is proof of something—I hope that they mean to save him.… There’s such a lot I have to ask him. Why didn’t I hop a plane and go and find out just what Janey Mason was telling me in her letter? I knew she didn’t know how to say very much in a letter. Why? And who was that young fellow who did the shooting? Was it really that boy who Janey mentioned? It’ll all come out, they’ll find it out even if they have to bring him back from the dead—Ha! Bliss lost all sense of reason; he should have known that he couldn’t do what he did to us without making somebody else angry or afraid. This here is a crazy country in which politicians have been known to be shot; even presidents. Pride. Let it balloon up and some sharpshooter’s going to try to bring you down. What did Janey mean? Who? I remember back about twenty-five years ago when Janey sent word that a preacher showed up out there. That may have been Bliss. That’s when he started whatever she was trying to tell me. One thing is sure, I heard that young fellow speak to the guard, he wasn’t from Oklahoma and he wasn’t one of us. A Northern boy, sounded like to me …

Suddenly he was leaning forward, staring intently into the Senator’s face. The eyes, blue beneath the purplish lids, were open, regarding him as from a deep cave.

“Are you still here?” the Senator whispered.

“Yes, Bliss, I’m still here. How do you feel?”

“Let’s not waste the time. I can see it on your face, so go ahead and ask me. What is it?”

Hickman smiled, moving the Life Saver to the side of his mouth with his tongue. “You feel better?” he said.

“I still feel,” the Senator said. “Why don’t you leave? Go back where you came from, you don’t owe me anything and there’s nothing I can do to help your people.…”

“My people?” Hickman said. “That’s interesting; so now it’s my people—But don’t you realize we came to help you, Bliss? Remember? You should’ve seen us when we first arrived; things might have been different. But never mind all that. Bliss, was it you who went out there to McAlester and fainted on the steps of Greater Calvary one Sunday morning? That would be about twenty-five years ago. Was that you, Bliss?”

“Calvary?” The Senator’s weak voice was wary. “How can I remember? I was flying above all that by then. I was working my way to where I could work my way to …” He sank to a safer depth. It was hot there but he could still hear Daddy Hickman.

“Think about it now, Bliss. Didn’t you light there for a while and didn’t you land on the Bible? In fact, Bliss, haven’t you landed on a church each and every time you had to come down?”

Twenty-five years? He thought, Maybe he’s right. “Perhaps the necessities, as they say, of bread brought me to earth. But remember, they always found me and took me in. It was in their minds. They saw what they wanted to see. It was their own desire.… It takes two as with the con game and the tango—ha!”

“Maybe so, Bliss,” Hickman said, “but you allowed them to find you. Nobody went to get you and put you up there in the pulpit. Look here, can you see me? This is Daddy Hickman, I raised you from a little fellow. Was it you? Don’t play with me.”

“So much has happened since then. I was at McAlester, yes; but they were white. Or were they? Was it Me? Are you still here?”

“You mean you preached in a white church? That early?”

I think it’s all mixed up. He closed his eyes, his voice receding. Is it my voice?

“Yes, High Style,” the Senator said. “Huge granite columns and red carpets. Great space. Everyone rich and looking hungry; full of self-denial for Sunday. Ladies in white with lacy folding fans. Full bosoms, sailor straws. White shoes and long drawers in July. Men in shiny black alpaca, white ties. Stern Puritan faces, dry concentrate of pious Calvinist dilution distilled and displayed for Sunday. Yes, I was there. Why not? They sang and I preached. The singing was all nasal, as though God was evoked only by and through the nose; as though He lived, was made manifest in that long pinched vessel narrowly. That was a long time ago.…”

“So what happened?”

“I’ve told you, I preached.”

“So what did you preach them, Bliss? Can you remember?”

Where can I hide? Nowhere to run here. It’s a joke.

Yes, but what kind of joke?

“I preached them one of the famous sermons of the Right Reverend John P. Eatmore. In my, our, condition, what else?”

“Ha, Bliss, so you remembered Eatmore, Old Poor John. Now that there was a great preacher. We did our circuit back there. Revivals and all. Don’t laugh at fools. Some are His. Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty. Which of Eatmore’s did you preach ’em, Bliss? Which text?”

Dreamily the Senator smiled. “They needed special food for special spirits, I preached them one of the most subtle and spirit-filling—one in which the Right Reverend Poor John Eatmore was most full of his ministerial eloquence: Give a Man Wood and He Will Learn to Make Fire … Eatmore’s most Promethean vision …” Hot here.

No, Reverend Hickman seemed to say, his eyes twinkling, that’s one that I’ve forgotten. I reckon I’m getting old. But Eatmore was the kind of man who was always true to his name and reputation. He put himself into everything he did. Preach me a little of it, Bliss; I’ll lean close so you won’t have to use up your voice. Let’s hear you, it’ll probably do us both some good. Go on, son.

But how? the Senator thought. Where are the old ones to inspire me? Where are the amen corner and old exhorters, the enviable shouting sister with the nervous foot tapping out the agitation on which my voice could ride?…

I don’t think I can, he said. But his throat was silent and yet Hickman seemed to get it, to understand.

I taught you how, Bliss. You start it, you draw your strength and inspiration out of the folks. If they’re cold, you heat them up; when they get hot, you guide the flame. It’s still the same. You did it in the Senate when you told them about those Nazi fellows and swung the vote.…

What? the Senator said. You knew even then?

Eatmore, Bliss. Never mind the rest; let’s talk about you preaching Eatmore in a white church. Do I have to start you off like I used to do when you were a baby? Didn’t Eatmore begin something like this: He’d be walking back and forth with his head looking up at the ceiling and his hands touching prayer-like together? Then stop suddenly and face them, still looking out over their heads, saying:

Brothers and sisters, I want to take you on a trip this morning. I want to take you back to the dawn of Time. I want to let you move at God’s rate of speed. Yes, let’s go way back to the time of that twilight that had settled down upon the earth after Eden. Ah, yes! I want you to see those times because Time is like a merry-go-round within a merry-go-round, it moves but it is somehow the same even if you’re riding on an iron tiger. Eden’s fruit had done gone bad with worms and flies. Yes! The flowers that had been the dazzling glory of Eden had run wild and lost their God-given bloom. Everything was in shambles. It was a mess. Things were hardly better than jimson and stinkweeds. The water was all muddy and full of sulfur. The air back there stunk skunk-sharp with evil. And the beasts, the beasts of the jungle had turned against Man who had named them, and they no longer recognized him as the head of the animal kingdom. In fact, they considered him the lesser of the animals instead. Oh, Man had come down so low that he was eating snakes. Brothers and sisters, it was an unhappy time—Yes, but even then, even in his uncouth condition, Man somehow remembered that he was conceived in the image of Almighty God. He had forgotten how to take a bath and John the Baptist was yet unborn, but still he was conceived in the image of the Almighty and even though he had sinned and strayed, he still knew he was Man. He was like that old crazy king I once heard about, who had messed up his own life and that of everyone else because he demanded more of everybody than they were able to give him and was living off of roots and berries in the woods but who knew deep down in his crazy mind that he was still a king, and knew it even though the idea made him sick at the stomach. Kingship was so hard and manship was so disgusting! He wanted to have it both ways. He wanted folks to love him like he wasn’t king when he was carrying around all that power. Yes, Man had sinned and he had strayed; he was just doing the best he could, and that wasn’t much.

Now that’s enough for me, Bliss; you take it from there. Let’s hear the old Eatmore, boy.

It’s been a long time.

Bliss, all time is the same. Preach. Time is just like Eatmore used to say, a merry-go-round within a merry-go-round; only people fall off or out of time. Men forget or go blind like I’m going. But time turns, Bliss, and remembering helps us to save ourselves. Somewhere through all the falseness and the forgetting there is something solid and good. So preach me some Eatmore.…

You won’t like it, the Senator said, closing his eyes.

I’ll be the judge, Hickman said.

Amen. Yes, Man had sinned, brothers and sisters, and he had strayed. But he was still the handiwork of a merciful God. He carried within him two fatal weaknesses—he was of little faith and he had been contaminated by the great gust of stardust that swept over the earth when Proud Lucifer fell like a blazing comet from the skies. For Man had breathed the dust of pride, and it wheezed in his lungs like a hellish asthma. Thus even though he mingled with the beasts of the forest and Eden had become a forgotten condition rankling with weeds and tares, a lost continent, a time out of his brutish mind, still he retained his pride and his knowledge that he was conceived in the image of God. Two legs God gave him to walk around, two hands to build up God’s world, and his two eyes had seen the glory of the Lord. His voice and tongue had praised the firmament and named the things of the earth.

Thus it was, brothers and sisters, that remembering his past grace Man called upon the Lord to give him fire. Fire now! Just think about it. In those times—fire! Even God in his total omniscience must have been surprised. Man crying for fire when he couldn’t even deal with water. Remember, Old Noah was long since forgot. Man drank dregs standing unpurified in the muddy tracks of the tigers and the rhinoceroses! Fire! Why my Lord, what did he want with fire?

He ate raw roots and the raw, still-quick flesh of beasts.

He drank the living blood jetting from the severed jugular veins of cattle—and yet he cried for fire. Ah yes, today, long past we now know it! Give a man wood and he will learn to make fire. But back there in those days Man knew nothing about wood. Oh yes, oh sure—he slept in trees, he swung from vines. He dug in the earth for tender roots—but wood? What in the world was wood? He used clubs of hickory and oak and even ebony … but wood—what was wood? Did old Nero know about steel? Man knew no more about wood than a hill of butter beans!

Ha! Now that was a true Eatmore line, Bliss. Preach it.

Suddenly Hickman turned. The door had opened and he saw a severe-looking, well-scrubbed young nurse, her blond hair drawn back severely beneath her starched cap, looking in.

“Don’t you think you should leave and get some rest?” she said.

The Senator opened his eyes. “Leave us, nurse. I’ll ring when I want you.”

She hesitated.

“It’s all right, daughter,” Hickman said. “You go on like he said.”

She studied the two men silently, then reluctantly closed the door.

Don’t lose it, Bliss, Hickman said. Where did Eatmore go from there?

 … knew no more about wood than a hill of butter beans … And still, this ignorant beast, this dusty-butted clown, this cabbagehead without a kindergarten baby’s knowledge of God’s world—brothers and sisters, this lowest creature of creatures was asking God for fire! I imagine that the Holy Creator didn’t know whether to roar with anger or blast Man from the face of the earth with holy laughter. Fire! Man cried, Give me fire! I tell you it was unbelievable. But then time and circumstance caught up with him. Give me fire! he cried. Give me fire! Man became so demanding that finally God did rage in righteous outrage at Man’s mannish pride. Oh yes!

For Man was beseeching the Lord for warmth when it was the Sun itself he coveted. And God knew it. For he knoweth all things. Not fire, oh no, that wasn’t what Man was yelling about, he wanted the Sun!

Oh, give a man wood and he will learn—to make fire!

Amen!

So God erupted Hell in answer to Man’s cries of pride. For Man had told himself he no longer wished to wear the skins of beasts for warmth. He wanted to rise up on his two hind legs and be somebody.

That’s what he did! He had seen the sun and now coveted the warmth of the blue vault of heaven!

Ah Man, ah Man, thou art ever a child. One named Hadrian, a Roman heathen, he built him a tomb as big as a town. Well, brothers and sisters, it’s a jailhouse now!

One named Morgan built the great Titanic and tried to out-fathom one of God’s own icebergs. Even though they should have known God’s icebergs were still God’s and not to be played with. Where are they now, Lord?

Full fathom five thy father lies, that’s where. Down in the deep six with eyes frozen till Judgment Day. There they lie, encased in ice beneath the seas like statues of stone awaiting the Day of Judgment to blast them free.

Ho, ho they forgot to sing as the poet was yet to sing:

Bliss, that’s not Eatmore but it’s glorious.

No, it’s Crane, but Eatmore would have liked it, he would have sung it, lined it out for the congregation and they would have all joined in.

Yes, he would. Go on, boy.…

Thus did God send the lava streaming and scorching, searing and destroying, floating warmth and goodness within the concentric circles of evil which Man had evoked through his thunderous fall, his embrace of pride, though he had his chance. And now was time for God to laugh, because you see, sisters and brothers, just as today Man was blind to the mysterious ways of God, and thus Man ran screaming among the mastodons and dinosaurs. Ran footraces with the flying dragons, the hairy birds and saber-toothed tigers—tigers, Ha! Imagine it, with tusks as sharp, as long, as cruel as the swords of the Saracens who did attempt by bloodshed and fire to keep the Lord’s message from the Promised Land, the land of Bathsheba’s bright morning, of Solomon’s enraptured song …

Preach it, Bliss. Now you’re preaching Genesis out of Eatmore.…

Yes, ran screaming among the hellish beasts and his beastly fellowmen, all wrapped in the furs of beasts, with his hair streaming and his voice screaming. Running empty-handed, his crude tools and weapons, his stone axes and bows and arrows and knives of bone abandoned in his beastly flight before the fire of God! Ho, he stampeded in a beastly panic. Ha! He scrambled in terror under his own locomotion—for Ezekiel was not yet and Man knew not the wheel. Ho yes!

you love?

Man ran crying, Fire! And running as fast as Man can away from the true gift of God, crying Fire! and flinging himself in wild-eyed and beastly terror away from the fire that was his salvation had he but the eyes of faith to see. Running! Leaping!—Slipping and sliding!—Leaving in his wake even those lesser gifts, those side products of God’s Holy Mercy and His righteous chastisement of Man’s misguided pride. Man missed, brothers and sisters, missed in this flight the lesser good things: the huge wild boars, those great, great, great granddaddies of our greatest pigs, that in the fury of the eruption were now succulent and toasted to a turn by the unleashed volcanic fire. Ran past these most recent wonders, yes; and past whole sizzling carcasses of roasted beeves, and great birds covered with hair instead of feathers, for in those days nothing could look like angels’ wings. Yes, and moose that stood some forty hands high, with noble countenance, a true and nobly cooked creature of God. But on Man ran, past rare cooked bears; those truly rare bears that made their lesser descendants of the far north, the Grizzlies, the great Kodiaks, the great Brown bears—yes, and the white Polar bears, even the Cinnamon bears, made all them bears seem like the pygmies of darkest Africa … Ah yes! Yes, yes-es-yes! Do-you-love? Doyoulove!

(Preach, Bliss. That’s the true Eatmore now. Go get it!)

I say that Man ran! Ran in his headlong plunge, in hectic heathen flight, stumbling over acres of roasted swans and barbecued turkeys and great geese—yes, Lawd!—Great geese that fed on wild butternuts and barley grain—imagine, ignored and lost for centuries now but then there they were, cooked in that uncurbed fire. Yes, and God laughing at the godly joke of prideful, ignorant, limited Man.

For, Dearly Beloved, Man in his ignorant pride had called for that for which in his God-like ambition he was unwilling to suffer. So, having asked and received that for which he asked, he fled with ears that heard not and eyes that saw not, ran screaming away from this second Eden of fire, headlong to the highest hill he fled. He leaped out of there like popcorn roasting on a red-hot stove and with his nose dead to all that scrumptious feast God had spread for his enjoyment.

Now what should he have done? What was Man’s mistake?

HE SHOULD have asked for WOOD! That’s what he should have asked! Because give a man wood, and he will learn to make his own fire! But, Man-like, he asked for a gift too hot to handle. Yes indeed! So he bolted. He ran. He fled headlong to the highest hill. Yelling, Fire! Fire! Fire, Lawd! Then gradually he realized what had happened and Man yelled Ho! This hot stuff that’s nipping me on the heels, this is fire!

This wind that’s scorched my shoulder is fire!

This heat that’s singeing my head bald is fire!

Yes! He yelled it so strong that God remembered in his infinite and mysterious mercy that now was not His time to destroy the world by fire and sent down the water from the rocks.

Yes, brothers and sisters, He sent down the cooling water. He unleashed the soothing spring within the heart of stones that lay where the wild red roses grew. Up there, up yonder, where the bees labored to bright humming music as they stored their golden grub. And He, God the Father, did give Man another chance. Ah, yes.

For although in his pride, Man had sacrificed whole generations of forests and beasts and birds, and though in the terror of his pride he had raised himself up a few inches higher than the animals, he was moved, despite himself he was moved a bit closer, I say, to the image of what God intended him to be. Yes. And though no savior in heathen form had yet come to redeem him, God in His infinite mercy looked down upon His handiwork, looked down at the clouds of smoke, looked down upon the charred vegetation, looked down at the fire-shrunk seas with all that broiled fish, looked down at the bleached bones piled past where Man had fled, looked down upon all that sizzling meat and natural gravy, parched barley, boiled roasting-ears and mustard greens … Yes, He looked down and said, Even so, My work is good; Man knows now that he can’t handle unleashed hell without suffering self-destruction! The time will come to pass when he shall forget it, but now I will give him a few billion years to grow, to shape his hand with toil and to discover a use of his marvelous thumb for other than pushing out the eyes of his fellow-man. After all, I put a heap of work into that thumb of Man. And he’ll learn that his index and second fingers are meant for something other than playing the game of stink-finger and pulling his bow. I’ll give him time, time to surrender the ways of the beasts to the beasts, time to raise himself upright and arch his back and swing his legs. I shall give him time to learn to look straight forward and unblinking out of his eyes and to study the movement of the constellations without disrespecting My essential mystery, My prerogatives, My decisions. Yes, it will take him a few billion years before he’ll discover pork chops and perhaps two more for fried chicken. It will take him time and much effort to learn the taste of roast beef and baked yams and those apples he shall name Mack and Tosh.

Until then he will only know charred flesh and a little accidental beer. And if he ever learns to take the stings along with the sweets, I’ll let him have some of that honey those bees he’s busy slapping at down there are storing up right beside him. He’ll come to love it even as much as the burly bears and long before he learns about bear steaks and kidneys, and he’ll take it from the hollow trees and learn to take his stings and like it. Yes, and I’ll give him a little maize and breadfruit and maybe a squash or two. And it won’t be long before he’ll live in caves and then he’ll start to worshipping me in magic and conjuration and a lot of other ignorant foolishness and confusion. But in time Man will learn to eat like a man and he’ll rule his herds and he’ll move slowly toward the birth of Time.

Oh yes, but now Man is but a babe, hardly more than a cub like the children of the bear or the wolf. And like these he soils himself. It will take him a few million years of a few seconds of My time. I shall watch and suffer with him as he goes his arduous way, and meanwhile I shall give him wood and I shall send him down a ray of light, send him a bright prismatic refraction of a drop of crystal dew and then onto a piece of dry wood and Man will in time see the divine spark and have his fire.

Give a man wood, and he will learn—to make fire. Give him a new land and he will learn to live My way.

Yes, and it took all that time, brothers and sisters. Man went on starving amid plenty; thirsting in the midst of all that knowledge being spelled out for him by the birds, the beasts, the lilies of the field. But in time the smoke cleared away and it all came to pass.…

The Senator’s voice was silent now, his eyes closed.

Hickman shook his head and smiled. Amen, Bliss. You haven’t forgot your Eatmore and you haven’t forgot the holy laughter. I like that about the gift of roast pork, though I think Eatmo’ used to throw in some pigs’ feet and lamb chops. Yes, and those luscious chitterlings. And when he did he could make them cry over the sad fact of Man’s missing such good grub out of his proud ignorance. He was a joke to some but a smart wordman just the same. He knew the fundamental fact, that you must speak to the gut as well as to the heart and brain. Then they’ve got to hear you one way or the other. Eatmore did all that, sure, but it’s been a long time and you smoothed up his style a bit. Ole Eatmore had mush in his mouth too, till he worked up to the hollering stage, then it didn’t really matter what he said because by then he was shaking them like the Southern Pacific doing a highball. By the way, you were signifying about that new state, weren’t you?

Yes, but they were so surprised by the sermon that they forgot they were in a new state.

Bliss, the old man laughed, that was a pretty mean thing you did, springing Eatmore on those folks. But the last part was true. Even here in this aggravating land God gave Man a new chance. In fact, He gave him forty-eight new chances. And He’s even left enough land for a few more—though I think by now the Lord’s disgusted.… Well, don’t let me get started on that; but how about Greater Calvary, Bliss, was that you too?

Ay, it was I, the Senator said. Yes, I was doing what I had to do at that time in that place. I stood there grown tall, but they didn’t recognize me. My elbows rested where my hand couldn’t reach in the old days, and I looked above their heads and into their hopes. They’d managed a stained-glass window divided into four equal parts and the strawberry light caressed their heads. They’d sweated and saved themselves an organ too, and it rose with its pipes behind me. In the floor at my feet, showing between the circular cut in the red carpet, I could see the zinc edge of the baptismal pool. Looking out at them from behind my face I had the sensation of standing on a hangman’s trap, with only the rope missing. And later, I thought of it as the head of a drum because it throbbed beneath me. I made them make it throb—So yes, it was me; do I have to go on?

I know what you mean by the throbbing, Reverend Hickman said, because I’ve been there myself. I’ve made that whole church throb. The Word is a powerful force. Go on, Bliss, tell me.

So I knelt down like I’d seen you do when you were about to take over another man’s pulpit, and when he came close to touch me with his hands he was chewing cinnamon to cover the fragrance of his morning’s glass of corn.…

Suddenly the Senator struggled upward, his eyes wild as Hickman rose quickly to restrain him. “Bliss, Bliss!”

“Corn! Corn whiskey and the collection and the pick of the women! And you wouldn’t even allow me ice cream.… In all that darkness, undergoing those countless deaths and resurrections and not even ice cream at the end …”

Hickman restrained him gently, a look of compassionate surprise shaping his dark face as the Senator repeated as from the depths of a forgotten dream, “Not even ice cream,” then settled back.

“Steady, Bliss, boy,” Hickman said, studying the face before him. The little boy is still under there, he thought. He never ran way from him. “I guess that must have been my first mistake with you. It wasn’t my teaching you the art of saving souls before you were able to see that it wasn’t just a bag of tricks, or even failing to make you understand that I wasn’t simply teaching you to be another trickster or jackleg conman. No, it was that I refused to let you have a payment. You wanted to be paid. That was probably the first mistake I made. You coulda saved more souls than Peter, but you got it in your mind that you had a right to be paid—which was exactly what you weren’t supposed to have. Even if you were going down into the whale’s belly like Jonah every night. It wasn’t that I begrudged you the ice cream, Bliss. It was just that you wanted it as payment. But that was my first mistake and yours too. Now you take that preacher, he probably took that drink of corn to help him reach up to the glory of the Word, but he took it before he preached, Bliss. And that made it a tool, an aid. It was like the box, or my trombone. But you now, you wanted the ice cream afterwards. Everytime you preached you wanted some. If you said ‘Amen,’ you wanted a pint. Which meant that you were trying to go into business with the Lord …

“I should have explained it to you better, and I sure tried. But, Bliss, you were stubborn. Stubborn as a rusted iron tap, boy. Well, I’m a man and like a man I made my mistakes. I guess you looked at the collection plates and got confused. But, Bliss, that money wasn’t ours. After all these years I’m a poor man. That money went to the church, for the widows and orphans. It went to help support a school down there in Georgia, and for other things. So you went off for ice cream? Is that it? Is that why you left us? Come on now, we might as well talk this out right here because it’s important. Anything you hold in your heart after so long a time is important and this is not the time for shame.”

The Senator was silent for a moment; then he sighed.

“Meaning grows with the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains. Yes, in those days it was the ice cream, but there was something else.…”

“It had to be, but what?”

“Maybe it was the weight of the darkness, the tomb in such close juxtaposition with the womb. I was so small that after preaching the sermons you taught me and feeling the yawning of that internal and mysterious power which I could release with my treble pantomime … Oh you were a wonder, if only in quantitative terms. All the thousands that you touched. Truly a wonder, yes. I guess it was just too much for me. I could set off all that wild exaltation, the rending of veils, the grown women thrown into trances; screaming, tearing their clothing. All that great inarticulate moaning and struggle against what they called the flesh as they walked the floor; up and down those aisles of straining bodies; flinging themselves upon the mourners’ bench, or rolling on the floor calling to their God—didn’t you realize that afterwards when they surrounded and lifted me up, the heat was still in them? That I could smell the sweat of male and female mystery?”

“But Bliss—all small children and animals do that.…”

“Yes, but I had produced it. At least, I thought I had. Didn’t you think of what might be happening to me? I was bewitched and repelled by my own effects. I couldn’t understand my creation. Didn’t you realize that you’d trapped me in the dead-center between flesh and spirit, and that at my age they were both ridiculous …?”

“You were born in that trap, Bliss, just like everyone was born in it. We all breathe the air at the level that we find it, Bliss.”

“Yes, but I couldn’t put the two things together. Not even when you explained about the Word. What could I do with such power? I could bring a big man to tears. I could topple him to his knees, make him shout, crack him up with the ease with which shrill whistles split icebergs. Then when they gathered shouting around me, filling the air with the odor of their passion and exertion, the other mystery began.…”

“What was it, Bliss? Was it that you wanted the spirit without the sweat of the flesh? The spirit is the flesh, Bliss, just as the flesh is the spirit under the right conditions. They are bound together. At least nobody has yet been able to get at one without the other. Eatmore was right.…”

“Yes, but back there between my sense of power and the puzzling of my nose there were all those unripe years. I was too young to contain it all.”

“Not your power, Bliss; it was the Master’s. All you had to do was live right and go along with your God-given gift. Besides, it was in the folks as well as in you.”

“Well, I was in the middle and I was bringing forth results which I couldn’t understand. And those women, their sweat …”

Hickman was silent, his gaze suddenly turned inward, musing.

“Bliss, come to think about it, it just dawned on me where you might be heading—didn’t you misbehave once on the road somewhere?”

Suddenly the Senator’s expression was that of a small boy caught in some mischief.

“So you knew all along? Did she tell you?”

“She told me some, but now I’m asking you.”

“So she did after all. How old was she, Daddy Hickman?”

“Well sir, Bliss, I thought you’d forgot you used to call me Daddy.” Hickman’s eyes were suddenly moist.

“Everyone did,” the Senator said.

“Yes, but you gave me the pleasure, Bliss. You made me feel I wasn’t a fraud. Let’s see, she must’ve been thirty or so. But maybe only twenty. One thing is sure, she was a full-grown woman, Bliss. As grown as she’d ever get to be. She was ripe-young, as they used to say.”

“So. I’ve always wondered. Or at least I did whenever I let myself remember. It was one of your swings around the circuit and she’d taken me to her house afterwards. A tent meeting on that old meeting ground in Alabama …”

“That’s right.”

“… that they had been using since slavery days. Thinking about it now, I wonder why they hadn’t taken it away from them and planted it in cotton. I remember it as rich black land.”

“It wasn’t taken because it was ours, Bliss. It used to be a swamp. The Choctaws had it before that but the swamp took it back. So then we filled it in and packed it down with our bare feet—at least our folks did—long before we had any shoes. Sure, back in slavery times we buried our dead out around there, and the white folks recognized it as a sacred place. Or maybe just an unpleasant place because of the black dead that was in it. You’ve been on the outside, Bliss, so you ought to know better’n me that they respect some things of ours. Or at least they leave them alone. Maybe not our women or our right to good food and education, but they respect our burying grounds.”

“Maybe,” the Senator said. “It’s a game of power.”

“Yes, and maybe they’re scared of black ghosts. But you ought to know after all this time, Bliss, and I hope you’ll tell me sometimes.… Anyway, boy, it was out there. You remember what it was, don’t you?”

“The occasion? It was another revival, wasn’t it?”

“Course, it was a revival, Bliss—but it was Juneteenth too. We were celebrating Emancipation and thanking God. Remember, it went on for seven days.”

“Juneteenth,” the Senator said, “I had forgotten the word.”

“You’ve forgotten lots of important things from those days, Bliss.”

“I suppose so, but to learn some of the things I’ve learned I had to forget some others. Do you still call it ‘Juneteenth,’ Revern’ Hickman? Is it still celebrated?”

Hickman looked at him with widened eyes, leaning forward as he grasped the arms of the chair.

“Do we still? Why, I should say we do. You don’t think that because you left … Both, Bliss. Because we haven’t forgot what it means. Even if sometimes folks try to make us believe it never happened or that it was a mistake that it ever did …”

“Juneteenth,” the Senator said, closing his eyes, his bandaged head resting beneath his hands. Words of Emancipation didn’t arrive until the middle of June so they called it Juneteenth. So that was it, the night of Juneteenth celebration, his mind went on. The celebration of a gaudy illusion.