Woke up ditto! Monday 9/1: Labor, St. Giles’, and Confrontation Day! Went to Claim my Wife, plenty Fed Up sir! Running a touch late, Charged down to the P & A Room to Have It Out Quickly for good and all. Collect Marsha; Try to Make Things Up. Suggest to Tombo X we Oust Morgan and Run the Show Together upon my Return From Honeymoon: me Keep the books, him book the creeps, ha ha.
Remobilized!
Joe was dressed, smoking but not reading; apparently waiting for me, though I was by now a touch early. Desk clear except for Colt.45. Cut (I Cleared my Throat and Rebegan) Cut the Comedy, Joe. Put that thing away. Where’s Marsha? Etc.
Joe replied calmly, hands behind head: Your Wife is a lousy lay, Horner.
Undeterred, I Showed him with a Determined Sneer the Hornbook entry: my Name in the same column as, five letters later, his, and in Column Four (Remarks): All scores settled.
Hmp, said Joe (approximately). I then Ripped Up the book, several pages at a time when I Found myself Unable to Rip them all at once. This session is canceled, I Declared. Put that gun away. No more reenactments. Your wife is dead, Joe. Partly my Fault, partly hers, partly yours. Etc. You’ve humped mine; she’s pissed at me; I’m Pissed at you. Genug! Basta! Gun away!
MORGAN (VERBATIM): The score is not settled, Jake. You never Knew the score.
I (IN EFFECT): How so? Because Rennie’s dead and Marsha’s alive? I Didn’t Kill Rennie! [Sudden panic; you understand.] Where’s my Wife?
But as I Made to Leave, Joe picked up and aimed the pistol at me, saying: Dead asleep when I left her. Sit, Horner.
Well. He had explained already, Joe said when I Sat, at least remarked, that his grievance against me was not — at least had for many years not been — that I had Done A and B and C with Rennie, which led to D, which led to E and F and G. It was not even that, for all his efforts to the contrary, his own life, as much as Rennie’s and mine, had been arrested in 1953 by what transpired on 8/31, 9/2, et seq. of that fell year. No. It was (his final, unremitting, unappeasable grievance) that I had Written It All Down.
Wrote It All Down, Horner! he now repeated in a Cold Fury. Just as you’ve been Writing All This Down, since March! That [verbatim, sir] I don’t forgive you, Horner. Even when I contemplate your miserable, your creepy Life; even when I consider, with pleasure, what surely lies ahead for you [I Paraphrase: Condemnation to Life, i.e., to Personality & Responsibility, which in fact, in my View as in his, I had never successfully Quite Abdicated. Petty career as 45-year-old Failure: dull bumbling teacher of remedial English, say, at bottom of pay scale, in 5th-rate community college, to dyslexic dolts. Pussy-Whipped Cuckold Husband of Termagant WASP already pregnant by God knows whom, & who will surely in future either polish & repolish my Antlers or divorce me with punitive alimony. Etc.], [he went on] I do not consider that score settled. I am not reconciled. I do not forgive you. I want you dead. I will now shoot you in the heart. [End of quote.]
But aha, I was Remobilized, and though I Could Not Deny the likelihood of his prophecy, with more spontaneity than I Have on any prior occasion Mustered I here Sprang across the Doctor’s desk and Clutched Joe’s pistol hand with such force (and momentum) that he, it, & I Went Tumbling with his swivel chair to the floor, where, despite his relatively good condition and my Years of Diminished Physical Activity, I Wrestled him to an impasse. Our faces were inches apart. Joe closed his eyes, almost smiled; it was a swoonish moment; I Rallied my Last Strength not to Drift off into Weatherlessness. Then he said, in effect: You are Behaving Like Me, Jacob. I see what the [late] Doctor meant. Look: you’re Mobilized. Your Therapy is done. Your Wife is okay, and she understands about last night. There are no bullets in this gun: only one blank, get it, to scare you with. Our session is finished. Also Der Wiedertraum. Also your Stay at the Farm. Mine too. It’s all finished. Let go now.
He did (I Mean end his resistance), whereat my Grip on his arm (I Meant to Commandeer that pistol, sir, no matter what he said, till I was Up and Out of there) happened to bring the gun barrel to his temple. At the touch of it he opened his eyes — calm and lucid and blue as when I’d First Seen them in Wicomico, but focused somewhere past me — and pulled the trigger.
The gun went off with an astounding bang, and (literally, sir) blew Joe’s brains out. People came running. The mess was dreadful; there was retching. My Head rang. Tombo X was furious; declared this was it. Marsha came in, Cross as a Bear, but then said Wow and after that mainly stared at me. I am Proud to Report that she supported my Subsequent Testimony to the Ontario Provincial Police, a briefer version of the foregoing. I was by them Detained, Interrogated, and Released on my Own Recognizance pending (possible) further inquest — until when, at least, Joe’s death has been ruled Accidental. I myself Engaged our regular undertaker (many of our patients are old) and Set About to Send Word to Morgan’s sons, of whose whereabouts we had no clear record. Burial was planned for today, in the Fort Erie Cemetery, until your fortuitous arrival this morning changed, welcomely, that plan. We are Grateful that the Tidewater Foundation sees fit to arrange and cover the expenses of the funeral of the first president of Marshyhope State University. May I Add my Hope that your client and our former patient Ms. Golden will turn up unharmed. Our files are open for your inspection.
Tombo X has played the Ace Up His Sleeve. Using Morgan’s death as his pretext, he has cashiered all white staff members of the Remobilization Farm and is evicting all white patients therefrom without regard to age or degree of mobility. It is his announced intention to turn the place into some other, unspecified, sort of operation. I Disapprove, but Have No Authority to Countermand him. My Wife and I will therefore Take the hearse for Wicomico tomorrow morning, in company with Morgan’s casket. Joe’s statement, that Marsha Understood About Last Night, was, unfortunately, of a character with that about the other blank (ha ha), if you follow me. But I Have Cause to Imagine that he was perhaps correct about my Remobilization, though experience tempers my Optimism. In any case, such things are relative.
I Have some Modest Savings. I Mean to Inquire of Dr. John Schott, whom I Have the Pleasure to Know Personally from 1953, concerning openings in Remedial English at Marshyhope State. My Wife can type many words per minute, when she is Together. I am Urging her to have her baby. It is my Understanding that no one’s permission is required for us to name it Rennie Morgan Blank, or Joseph Morgan Horner, as the case may be. The names Marsha herself proposes for it I Believe to be of a jesting character. On the other hand, I Defend her right to abort the fetus if she so chooses. I Wish she would decide. But when I Bring Up this, or any, subject, she tells me: Bugger off.
I Do Not Expect the road of our New Life to be free of detours, forks, impasses, potholes, rocks. God alone knows where, past Wicomico and (maybe) Marshyhope, it will lead; nor is it my Intention to Record (ever again) our Passage down it. But with tomorrow’s (admittedly tremulous) first step, it will begin.
I Am, sir,
Jacob Horner
JH/jh (7 encl)
~ ~ ~
A: A. B. Cook VI to his son. A summons to Fort McHenry and to the Second 7-Year Plan.