IV
The pavements throbbed with a golden, sometimes iridescent flame, which could not deceive Cecil Warner, for he was not drunk. The time hadn't come and never would when two bourbons on top of an average dinner could make a fool of him. The dancing fire was nothing in the world but the reflection of headlights on sidewalks wet with the return of winter rain.
On his left a separate darkness kept pace with him, blotting out the fire-ballet as he moved. I cast a shadow. It is the nature of a man to cast a shadow. This is done even by a few of the dead.
No. 'Their works do follow after them'; but that's not shadow, except by ill-advised figure of speech. That is what I shall term—(BAR AND GRILL twenty paces ahead)—shall term the immortality of consequences, of continuing events. Shadow's different. Shadow is the occlusion of light rays by an impermeable mass, me for instance. Avoid all ill-advised figures of speech. Go away, my love!
He observed it was Hanlon's Bar and Grill, corner of Main and Willard, damned if it wasn't—interesting, since he'd thought he was three blocks further west. He advanced through the logical absurdity of a revolving door. Quiet here tonight. He read the others at the bar in a practiced glance: four nondescript males and a large platinum wench, all unknown. He fumbled past his damp overcoat, drawing forth and consulting his thin and ancient pocket watch of yellow gold. His inner vision recorded, as always, the florid inscription he would see if his thumbnail opened the hinged back of the case: Ezra Allen Warner, 1880. A gift from his grandfather to his father, on the boy Ezra's graduation from college at twenty-one. For the last thirty-odd years Cecil had not been able to look on this delicate artifact without some dark stirring of the thought: I have no children. The fantastically graceful hands declared the present hour to be ten-thirty; they had been truth-tellers for eighty years. "Evening, Tom. Bourbon and water."
"Sure enough, Mr. Warner. Raining again, isn't it?"
"A sprinkle. A certain piddling effort. Possibly the tears of the gods are running thin in this latter age."
Tom's patient face was acknowledging him as a Character. "You could be right." Tom would have absorbed every word on the Blake case that the evening Courier had to offer; adult, seasoned, sensitive, he wouldn't mention it unless Warner did. He had even spoken Warner's name in a soft tone that would not carry down the bar. He poured the bourbon, gave the mahogany a needless swipe or two for friendship's sake in case the Old Man wanted to talk, and drifted back to his post of command.
Two men, blurred by Warner's preoccupation, were discussing space flight across the intervening blonde. Beyond them two others carried on an argument that rose to audibility only now and then. The Old Man heard and did not hear them; heard and did not hear the deeper counterpoint within him.
Tomorrow, assuming tomorrow came, the attack would follow a different line. Callista's adultery and deception, illustrative details by courtesy of the neighbors and Nathaniel Judd, plus T.J.'s dreary assertions and reassertions that the girl was being tried for nothing but murder—perhaps T.J. could even manage to believe that himself, for the duration. Callista's atheism; yes, almost certainly some one of the State's witnesses would most casually drop in the word "atheist." Protest, uproar, the Old Man scolding, T.J. doing a baritone solo on religious tolerance; then the mockery (Terence himself would hate it) of striking an answer from the record when no means existed to strike it from the jurors' minds.
"It don't push against atmosphere up there, account there isn't any."
"All right, I know that, but how does it push, 's what I don't get?"
"No she didn't! She said, her exact words, 'you never knew what was ordinary for Callista'—exact words."
"Were you there?"
"Hell no, like I told you, I couldn't get off from work, but the Courier's printing every word, so all you got to do is put two and two—"
"—pushes against itself, see? The satellite itself is the God-damn resistance, like you're shooting a pistol, and the recoil—you ever shoot a pistol?"
"Hate 'em. Sure way to get hurt."
Platinum said: "'S like this, Buck, what Sam's try'n'a tell you, you get up 'ere in shpace, you just be'r not fart."
"Now, June," said bartender Tom, "you want to watch the talk."
"I di'n' say single thing."
"Okay, June baby, just watch it is all."
"What I mean is, everybody figures the girl is nuts, that old woman Welsh and everybody. So what you're going to see, you're going to see an insanity defense. It always happens—"
"No sumbishn barkeep's telling me how talk."
"June baby, I keep telling you—"
"Happens every time. She'll be put away a few years, and then let out, do it all over again, like—"
"Only thing I'm try'n'a find out, what does it push against behind?"
"I'm beginning to think it's no use try'n'a explain it to you."
"Tom!"
"Hell, like a poisoner always does! You want to bet? Happened a million times. I read a book—"
"Tom!"
"Yeah? You better not have any more, June."
"Don't want any more—not why I called you. Just wanted say, 'm sorry 'f anything I said gave 'fense. None 'tended. All's I want's everybody be happy."
But the defense—
"Sure, June, that's okay."
"'S my whole life right 'ere, see? Ask anybody knows me."
"Okay, June!"
The defense never rests.
"Okay he says, he keeps saying okay, Jesus Christ, you ought to listen I'm telling you, not just keep saying okay, okay. Ever since I was little girl, honest, all's I ever wanted was everybody be happy."
[4]
... O how can Love's eye be true,
That is so vex'd with watching and with tears?
SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet CXLVIII