Love slays fear, said Robinson.
She was surprised by all the maritime terms they used. Then Carlos took her to the center of it. She thought it was a museum in the center of the ship here. She couldn’t figure why they’d put the thing in here, taking up so much room.
You little silly, said Carlos. Here’s where we’re all going to live.
Everybody on board was naked by then.
Say, he said, could you get a lick job in before vespers?
My ears hurt, she said. When do we get to outer space?
What outer space? Nobody has that much fuel left, Carlos said.
They hit down on a swamp near Newark.
It was a short ride, like all the last ones.
Pete Resists the Man of His Old Room
“Who is that?” hissed the woman at the corner. Pete and Tardy were necking. They could never quit. They hardly ever heard. The porch where their bench was was purple and smelly with creeping pot plants. Their child, who was thirty, rode a giant trike specially made, he being, you know, simple, back and forth on the walk, singing: Awwwww. Ernnnnnn. Oobbbbbbb.
The man, remarked only by the hissing woman at the corner, who was Tardy’s mother, walked, or rather verged, here and there, undecided, froth running down his chin and a dagger in his hand. He had an address printed on some length of cardboard. His fingernails were black.
“Out! Out of here, you mange!” shouted Tardy’s mother.
“In, in, in!” the hairy man in the street shouted back.
Pete looked up. “It’s my old college roommate. Lay off, Mama,” Pete expressed, rising.
The fellow in the street straightaway made for Pete but got caught in the immense rose hedge. “I knew I’d find you! Peace! Joy! Communion at last!” the filthy fellow shouted as he writhed, disabled.
“Son of a gun!” roared Pete. “Look here, Tardy. It’s old Room Man!”
“Jumping Jesus, do these thorns hurt!” shouted the filthy hairy fellow. He’d lost his dagger in the leaf mold. That hedge really had him.
“What say?” shouted Pete.
“I got no more discretion, Pete boy! I’m just a walking reminiscence! Here I am! I remember you when you were skinny and cried about a Longfellow poem! Your rash! Everything! Edna, Nannie, Fran! Puking at the drive-in!”
“I thought so,” said Pete to Tardy, low, his smile dropped aside. “Would you get me my piece, my charm?”
“Your spiritual phase!” the filthy hairy fellow was screaming. “Your Albert Schweitzer dreams! Signing on the dorm wall with your own blood!” shouted the awful man who was clogged in the hedge.
“Yes,” Pete said, lifting the weary corners of his lips.
Tardy lugged out the heavy piece.
Pete took it and jammed home the two big ones.
“Remember Juanita and her neat one? Played the cornet with her thing and you did the fingering?” screamed the wretched fellow all fouled in the hedge.
Yes.
He cut half his hedge away when he fired the double through it. The dagger blew out in the street along with the creep that held it. All the while Tardy’s mother stood with crossed arms.
The son stopped his giant trike. He said, “Ernnnnn,” to his dad on the porch.
“Albert,” said Pete. “Take care of the stuff in the street,” and within minutes the son was back with the wagon attached and the scoop.
“It makes me not hardly want to kiss anymore,” Tardy said.
Behold the Husband in His Perfect Agony
In the alleys there were sighs and derisions and the slide of dice in the brick dust. His vision was impaired. One of his eyes had been destroyed in the field near Atlanta as he stood there with his binoculars.
Now he was in Richmond.
His remaining eye saw clearly but itched him incessantly, and his head turned, in necessity, this way and that. A clod of dirt struck him, thrown by scrambling children in the mouth of the alley he had just passed. False Corn turned around.
He thanked God it wasn’t a bullet.
In the next street there was a group of shoulders in butternut and gray jabbering about the Richmond defenses. He strolled in and listened. A lieutenant in his cups told False Corn what he wanted to hear. He took a cup of acorn coffee from a vendor.
A lovely woman hurried into a house, clicking her heels as she took the steps. He thought of his wife and infant son. They lived in a house in Baltimore. His wife was lively and charming. His son was half Indian, because he, False Corn, was an Indian himself, of the old Huron tribe, though he looked mostly Caucasian.
Now he wore a maroon overcoat that hit him at mid-knee. In his right pocket were the notes that would have got him killed if discovered by the law or the soldiers.
He turned and went uptown, climbing the hill from the railroad.
False Corn’s contact was a Negro who pretended, days, to be mad on the streets. At nights he poisoned the bourbon in the remaining officers’ saloons, where colonels and majors drank from the few remaining barrels. Then he loped into a spastic dance — the black forgettable fool — while home-front leaders gasped and collapsed. Apparently the Negro never slept, unless sleep came to him in the day and was overlooked as a phase of his lunacy by passers-by, who would rather not have looked at all.
Isaacs False Corn, the Indian, the spy, saw Edison, the Negro, the contact, on the column of an inn. His coat was made of stitched newspapers. Near his bare feet, two dogs failed earnestly at mating. Pigeons snatched at the pieces of things in the rushing gutter. The rains had been hard.
False Corn leaned on the column. He lifted from his pocket, from amongst the notes, a half-smoked and frayed cheroot. He began chewing on the butt. He did not care for a match at this time. His cheroot was a small joy, cool and tasteless.
“Can you read?” False Corn asked Edison.
“Naw,” said Edison.
“Can you remember?”
“Not too good, Captain.”
“I’m going to have to give you the notes, then. God damn it.”
“I can run fast. I can hide. I can get through.”
“Why didn’t you run out of Virginia a long time ago?”
“I seen I could do more good at home.”
“I want you to stop using the arsenic. That’s unmanly and entirely heinous. That’s not what we want at all.”
“I thought what you did in war was kill, Captain.”
“Not during a man’s pleasure. These crimes will land you in a place beyond hell.”
“Where’s that? Ain’t I already been there?”
“The disapproval of President Lincoln. He freed you. Quit acting like an Italian.”
“I do anything for Abe,” Edison said.
“All you have to do is filter the lines. I mean, get through.”
“That ain’t no trouble. I been getting through long time. Get through to who?”
“General Phil Sheridan, or Custer. Here’s the news: Jeb Stuart is dead. If you can’t remember anything else, just tell them Stuart is dead. In the grave. Finished. Can you remember?”
“Who Jeb Stuart be?” asked Edison, who slobbered, pretending or real.