A near breach, an insignificant incident. A stranger observing the incident would not have been aware that anything had happened at all, much less that in the space of two seconds there had occurred a three-cornered transaction entailing an assignment of zones, a near infraction of zoning, a calling attention to the infraction, a triple simultaneous perception of the mistake, a correction thereof, and an acknowledgment of that — a minor breach with no consequences other than these: an artery beats for a second in Leroy’s temple, there is a stiffness about Victor’s back as he leaves, and there comes in my throat a metallic taste.
It is not even worth mentioning even though Victor withholds perhaps 2 percent of the acknowledgment that was due and his back is 2 percent stiffer than it might be.
“What’s wrong with you, Tom?”
“I’m all right now. It was hot in the Hollow. I got dizzy.”
He gives me my toddy. I peel an egg.
“Is that your lunch? No wonder you fainted. And you a doctor.”
I look at the mirror. Behind the bar towers a mahogany piece, a miniature cathedral, an altarpiece, an intricate business of shelves for bottles, cupboards, stained-glass windows, and a huge mirror whose silvering is blighted with an advancing pox, clusters of vacuoles, expanding naughts. Most of the customers of the Little Napoleon have long since removed to the lounges of the suburbs, the nifty refrigerated windowless sealed-up Muzaked hideaways, leaving stranded here a small band of regulars and old-timers, some of whom have sat here in the same peaceable gloom open to the same twilight over the same swinging doors that swung their way straight through Prohibition and saw Kingfish Huey P. Long promise to make every man a king on the courthouse lawn across the street. Next door Gone with the Wind had its final run at the old Majestic Theater.
The vines are sprouting here in earnest. A huge wisteria with a tree-size trunk holds the Little Napoleon like a rock in a root. The building strains and creaks in its grip.
The storm is closer, the sun gone, and it is darker than dusk. The martins are skimming in from the swamp, sliding down the dark glassy sky like flecks of soot. Soon the bullbats will be thrumming.
Leroy Ledbetter stands by companionably. Like me he is seventh-generation Anglo-Saxon American, but unlike me he is Protestant, countrified, sweet-natured. He’s the sort of fellow, don’t you know, who if you run in a ditch or have a flat tire shows up to help you.
We were partners and owners of the old Paradise Bowling Lanes until the riot five years ago. In fact, the riot started when Leroy wouldn’t let a bushy-haired Bantu couple from Tougaloo College have an alley. I wasn’t there at the time. When Leroy told me about it later, an artery beat at his temple and the same metallic taste came in my throat. If I had been there…. But on the other hand, was I glad that I had not been there?
“Lucky I had my learner ready,” Leroy told me.
“Your learner?” Then I saw his forearm flex and his big fist clench. “You mean you—”
“The only way to learn them is upside the head.”
“You mean you—?” The taste in my mouth was like brass.
Where did the terror come from? Not from the violence; violence gives release from terror. Not from Leroy’s wrongness, for if he were altogether wrong, an evil man, the matter would be simple and no cause for terror. No, it came from Leroy’s goodness, that he is a decent, sweet-natured man who would help you if you needed help, go out of his way and bind up a stranger’s wounds. No, the terror comes from the goodness and what lies beneath, some fault in the soul’s terrain so deep that all is well on top, evil grins like good, but something shears and tears deep down and the very ground stirs beneath one’s feet.
“Ellen was looking for you,” Leroy is saying, leaning close but not too close, a good drinking friend. He’s fixed himself a toddy. “She’s got some patients.”
“That’s impossible. I don’t see patients Saturday afternoon.”
“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”
Leroy, like Ellen, believes that right is right and in doing right. You’re a doctor, so you do what a doctor is supposed to do. Doctors cure sick people.
The terror comes from piteousness, from good gone wrong and not knowing it, from Southern sweetness and cruelty, God why do I stay here? In Louisiana people still stop and help strangers. Better to live in New York where life is simple, every man’s your enemy, and you walk with your eyes straight ahead.
Leroy believes that doctors do wonders, transplant hearts, that’s the way of it, right? Isn’t that what doctors are supposed to do? He knows about my lapsometer, believes it will do what I say it will do — fathom the deep abscess in the soul of Western man — yes, that’s what doctors do, so what? Then do it. Doctors see patients. Then see patients.
“Looks like it’s going to freshen up,” says Leroy. We drink toddies, eat eggs, and watch the martins come skimming home, sliding down the glassy sky.
In the dark mirror there is a dim hollow-eyed Spanish Christ. The pox is spreading on his face. Vacuoles are opening in his chest. It is the new Christ, the spotted Christ, the maculate Christ, the sinful Christ. The old Christ died for our sins and it didn’t work, we were not reconciled. The new Christ shall reconcile man with his sins. The new Christ lies drunk in a ditch. Victor Charles and Leroy Ledbetter pass by and see him. “Victor, do you love me?” “Sho, Doc.” “Leroy, do you love me?” “Cut it out, Tom, you know better than to ask that.” “Then y’all help me.” “O.K., Doc.” They laugh and pick up the new Christ, making a fireman’s carry, joining four hands. They love the new Christ and so they love each other.
“You all right now?” Leroy asks, watching me eat eggs and drink my toddy.
“I’m fine.”
“You better get on over there.”
“Yes.”
I leave cheerfully, knowing full well that Ellen must be gone, that I shall be free to sit in my doorway, listen to Don Giovanni, sip Early Times, and watch the martins come home.
The back doors of the Little Napoleon and my father’s old office let on to the ox-lot in the center of the block. It is getting dark. The thunderhead is upon us. A sour rain-drop splashes on my nose. It smells of trees. The piles of brickbats scattered in the weeds are still warm. A dusty trumpet vine has taken the loading ramp of Sears and the fire escape of the old Majestic Theater. In the center of the ox-lot atop a fifteen-foot pole sits my father’s only enduring creation: a brass-and-cedar martin hotel with rooms for a hundred couples. Overhead the martins wheel and utter their musical burr and rattle. They are summer residents. Already they are flocking with their young, preparing for their flight to the Amazon basin.