When Ulysses slumped to the ground and Pastor John stepped into the light, the boy, complicit with the Negro at every step, stretched out his hands in the silent horror of the damned.
—May I join you by your fire? asked the pastor with a loud and hearty laugh.
His staff truncated, Pastor John was forced to limp toward the boy, but this didn’t worry him. For he knew the boy would go nowhere and say nothing. Rather, he would withdraw into himself like a snail into its shell. Sure enough, when Pastor John pulled him up by the collar of his shirt, he could see that the boy had clenched his eyes closed and begun his incantation.
—There is no Emmett here, said the pastor. No one is coming to your aid, William Watson.
Then with the boy’s collar fast in his grip, Pastor John raised the broken staff and prepared to deliver that lesson which Ulysses had interrupted two days before. To deliver it with interest!
But just when the staff was poised to fall, the boy opened his eyes.
—I am truly forsaken, he said with a mysterious gusto.
Then he kicked the pastor in his injured knee.
With an animal howl, Pastor John let loose the boy’s shirt and dropped his staff. Hopping in place with tears of pain falling from his one good eye, Pastor John became more committed in his intent to teach the boy a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget. But even as he thrust his hands outward, he could see through his tears that the boy was gone.
Eager to pursue, Pastor John looked frantically about for something to replace his broken staff.
—Aha! he shouted.
For there on the ground was a shovel. Picking it up, Pastor John stuck the blade into the dirt, leaned on the handle, and began moving slowly toward the darkness into which the boy had disappeared.
After a few steps, he could just make out the silhouettes of an encampment: a small pile of firewood covered with a tarp, a makeshift washstand, a line of three empty bedrolls, and a tent.
—William, he called softly. Where are you, William?
—What’s going on out there, came a voice from inside the tent.
Holding his breath, Pastor John took a step to the side and waited as a stocky Negro emerged. Not seeing the pastor, he walked a few feet forward and stopped.
—Ulysses? he asked.
When Pastor John hit him with the flat of the shovel, he fell to the ground with a groan.
Off to his left Pastor John could hear other voices now. The voices of two men who may have heard the commotion.
—Forget the boy, he said to himself.
Using the shovel as his crutch, he hobbled as quickly as he could back to the campfire and made his way to where the boy had been sitting. There on the ground were the book and flashlight. But where was that damnable rucksack?
Pastor John looked back in the direction from which he had just come. Could it have been by the bedrolls? No. Where the book and the flashlight were, the rucksack was sure to be. Leaning over carefully, Pastor John dropped the shovel, picked up the flashlight, and switched it on. With a hop, he trained the beam onto the back side of the railroad ties and began moving from right to left.
There it is!
Sitting down on a tie with his injured leg stretched before him, Pastor John retrieved the rucksack and set it in his lap. Even as he did so, he could hear the music within.
With growing excitement, he undid the straps and began withdrawing items and tossing them aside. Two shirts. A pair of pants. A washcloth. At the very bottom he found the tin. Liberating it from the bag, he gave it a celebratory shake.
Tomorrow morning, he would pay a visit to the Jews on Forty-Seventh Street. In the afternoon, he would go to a department store for a new set of clothes. And tomorrow night, he would check into a fine hotel, where he would take a long, hot bath and send out for oysters, a bottle of wine, perhaps even some female companionship. But now, it was time to leave. Returning the flashlight and tin to the rucksack, he cinched its straps and hooked it over his shoulder. Ready at last to be on his way, Pastor John leaned to his left in order to pick up the shovel, only to find that it was no longer where he had—
Ulysses
First there was darkness without recognition. Then slowly, an awareness of it. An awareness that it wasn’t the darkness of space—cold, vast, and remote. It was a darkness that was close and warm, a darkness that was covering him, embracing him in the manner of a velvet shroud.
Creeping from the corners of his memory came the realization that he was still in the fat man’s coffin. He could feel along his shoulders the smooth, pleated silk of the lining and, behind that, the sturdiness of the mahogany frame.
He wanted to raise the lid, but how much time had passed? Was the tornado gone? Holding his breath, he listened. He listened through the pleated silk and polished mahogany and heard nothing. Not the sound of the wind whistling, or of hail falling on the coffin lid, or of the church bell swinging on its hook unattended. In order to be certain, he decided to open the coffin a crack. Turning his palms upward, he pressed at the lid, but the lid wouldn’t budge.