The Last Western (70 page)

“For a little while, my well-loved friend, I must leave you. And only for the purpose of never leaving you again.”

“Why speak this way?” said Joto, his own body shaking now. “What is it that I do not know, that has been going on for many days and I have no knowledge of? Why this talk of death?” He had turned to Benjamin.

Benjamin extended his hands in a strange sign of pleading and blessing.

“What is it?” Joto demanded.

Willie embraced him. “It is only the difficulty of the plan, Joto. Another plan is in conflict with it.”

He stepped over to Felder, and they stood looking at one another and their twin dreams spoke to one another.

“Peace, Brother Herman.”

Felder said nothing for a moment. Then, in a whisper, “Peace.”

They embraced and into the scent of roses Willie said, “I want the chance to meet him.” Felder’s body became a block of stone.

“Promise me,” said Willie.

Slowly Felder nodded his head. When he pulled away from Willie, his eyes had opened to the horror of what his actor knew.

Willie lingered, watching him swallow the horror. Felder took a little step backward—only that. Then he was as before, as on the day Willie had first met him—half film, half man, a makeover of a long-dead player.

Willie said to them all, “Do not come for me until after midnight.”

He turned to Benjamin. “Old friend, my father.” The sad, slanted eyes blinked with tears.

Benjamin folded thin wavering arms around Willie.

“There is only one father.”

Willie could not speak.

He turned then to Thatcher Grayson.

“It is the last of the ninth, Mr. Grayson.”

Grayson hugged Willie, holding him until Felder gently broke his grasp.

Now only Truman blocked his way.

“I have nothing to give you, my friend,” said Willie. “I cannot give you belief. What can I give you?”

In the sign tongue Truman said
Stay
.

He gazed at Truman’s unknown face, roughened and scarred like a moon. Then he reached into his tunic and took out the tattered shirt he had worn in Chicago, its red stain glowing in the lamplight like fresh paint.

“This flag is for you,” he said.

Truman took it and held it, inspecting it gravely. Then he put it in his own tunic.

Willie gently embraced him as he stood there, one hand inside the breast of his jacket.

Then without looking back he went into the chill air and the damp falling flakes and the door flap of the tent closed against their immediate cries. But one voice came distinctly to his ears—Felder’s final instruction to the troupe: “Stop! You are not gods. You cannot interfere with the dream of a man!”

Willie, breathing deeply, fixed his gaze on the lights of the lodge, all candled and gleaming like a Christmas tree.

He began the long walk, and each step became the rising-falling expiration of a dream, mortally wounded.

He passed the guards unnoticed. They ate their suppers or prepared to sleep. He did not hear their laughter. The special police guard had gathered behind the tents he had just left and were abstractedly preparing a Eucharist.

He went on like a ghostly athlete.

The helicopters, wheeling about the sky, kept watch for him near the tents. In the lead unit Zack Taylor scanned the tent village with his binoculars.

“Which one is his?”

“No one knows. It’s possible he’s still in the limo. There’s been no procession or anything.”

Taylor himself now saw the solitary figure trudging across the lighted stage but took the figure to be one of the guards or a gamekeeper.

“Radio down to the people at the gate,” said Taylor. “We’ve got air in less than a minute.”

Willie reached the edge of the lighted circle and stepped into the night, and no one saw him as he slipped into the darkness—no one but Patrick Joyce and his two assistants, stationed ahead in a grove of cedars.

On the shortwave a voice spoke something to the three men in code and they cocked their noiseless high-powered rifles and whispered confidently into their lapel mikes.

“All clear,” said one.

Willie came toward them, a tall shadow perfectly silhouetted against the white stage he had left.

“Wait a minute,” said the second man, stationed forward of the others. “There’s somebody coming down from the lodge. Wait! Two men. Joyce!”

Joyce flattened himself on the ground and looked back up the path to the lodge. He saw the two figures moving like bears toward them.

“Okay, it’s okay,” he whispered to the other two. “It’s dark enough. Let them pass if they get there first.”

“Shoot—”

“Shoot only
him
. We’re okay. They can’t possibly see—”

“Roger.”

Joyce tried to see the two men but they were lost in shadow.

He pressed the director contact of his radio.

“I thought you said there would be no one here.”

“There won’t be,” said Felder.

“We’ve got two people coming down from the lodge.”

“For God’s sake, keep clear of them. Head for the fence just as soon as—”

“We’re all right. He’s going to be here in a minute. We’ll get out.”

“Don’t hit
them
.”

“We know what we’re doing.”

“If necessary, let them pass.”

Joyce laughed. “You’re a great planner.”

“Break contact.”

“Roger.” Joyce pushed another button and spoke to his assistants. “You read that?”

“Roger.”

“Roger.”

Clio woke from a troubled sleep and checked his watch. 11:55. The heat was stifling in the bedroom of the farmhouse. He lit a cigarette and went to the window—a cloudless night with the full moonlight on the lush sweet fields.

He could see Lima glowing in the distance. It reminded him of some vague happening in his childhood.

The house was quiet but for the snoring of his soldiers.

He went down the stairway and walked out into the garden where the azaleas bloomed.

The hot night and his loneliness combined to make the hunger in him intense. He had been dreaming of a woman with lush breasts and swollen wet lips. He walked into the sweet sticky fragrance of the garden.

The memory of L-Day came to him confusedly. He sighed. He began to think of other things.

He began to think of how, when he came home after the fight, he would go to her and how when she lay back, she would circle his body with her legs and how the slow pulling back of—

And then the 30.30 bullet tore through his heart and he was jerked backward into a bed of azaleas and his blood gushed over the moist earth, spraying his life among the blossoms.

The general, retiring into the shadows, went down toward a stream and threw the rifle into the water and came back up the road and found the machete that he had put there and the sack that he had put there and, whistling a little, he went into the garden and took Clio’s head and put the head into the sack and then went back down the road, whistling softly in the moonlight and the white moon was the white belly of his mistress and the world breathed sensuously and he was hungry.

Willie passed under the shadow of the first of the cedars, marching toward the candles of the lodge, his dream drumming his fancies until he could imagine that a great feast had been prepared and he and Mr. Regent would make peace and many friends would gather about the fire.

And there was back there on the fields more than one fire, he thought, and yes there were many fires and he walked farther and the clouds were parting a little and the ground was firm and he had only a few steps to go.

But now the ground was not so firm, but now the ground was covered with soft things that were hard to walk upon, and now the fields were not ice fields but now the fields were swamp.

The moon breaking through the trees and the slow drip of rain.

How hard to fly in this strange country with the rain weighing down his wings and the wind so pressing hard and where was she—Carolyn, Carolyn, Carol—

Our Father
—

No, better come down now.

Willie, Willie.

Mr. Regent is that you?

And Mr. Cole and Mr. Ware, rolling down a hillock, cavorting like children, came up firing and Willie’s brown arms reaching for the green bough went funny crazy back and off and fire poured through his hands and feet and side and fire poured through his manhood and he was like a banner someone had hung in the air and still he hung there and there was running, three men running, and his blasted body did fall finally without a sound and the red ooze of life melted on the earth, the cold, the thirsting earth.

The snow fell fast and fine and white, so white.

And when running, they came and found him, he was all white and only white and forever white—arms white, legs white, face white, hair white.

And then they found his heart, torn from the body in that ceremony of fire and blood, and ah, white they found it too. And whiter still—like the white of white angels’ wings, like the white dreams of God.