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“How do you like this?” J. C. pulled me the last few yards, reaching out with a grave, sad smile. “The Mount of the Sermon. Want to hear?”
“There’s no time, J. C.”
“How come all those other people two thousand years back listened and were quiet?”
“They didn’t have watches, J. C.”
“No.” He studied the sky. “Only the sun moving slow and all the days in the world to say the needful things.”
I nodded. Clarence’s name was stuck in my throat.
“Sit down, son.” There was a big boulder nearby and J. C. sat and I crouched like a shepherd at his feet. Looking down at me, almost gently, he said, “I haven’t had a drink today.”
“Great!”
“There are days like that. Lord, I been up here most of the day, enjoying the clouds, wanting to live forever, because of last night, the words, and you.”
He must have sensed my swallowing hard for he looked down and touched my head.
“Oh, oh,” he said. “You going to tell me something will make me drink again?”
“I hope not, J. C. It’s about your friend Clarence.”
He snatched his hand away as if burned.
A cloud covered the sun and there was a surprising small spatter of rain, a total shock in the midst of a sunlit day. I let the rain touch me without moving, as did J. C., who lifted his face to get the coolness.
“Clarence,” he murmured. “I’ve known him forever. He was around when we had real Indians. Clarence was out front, a kid no more than nine, ten, with his big four-eyes and his blond hair and his bright face and his big book of drawings or photos to be signed. He was there at dawn the first day I arrived, at midnight when I left. I was one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!”
“Death?”
“Smartass.” J. C. laughed. “Death. High on my bony ass on my skeleton horse.”
J. C. and I both looked at the sky to see if his Death was still galloping there.
The rain stopped. J. C. wiped his face and went on:
“Clarence. Poor stupid, dependent, lonely, lifeless, wifeless son of a bitch. No wife, mistress, boy, man, dog, pig, no girlie pictures, no muscle monthlies. Zero! He doesn’t even wear Jockey shorts! Long johns, all summer! Clarence. God.”
At last I felt my mouth move.
“You heard from Clarence … lately?”
“He telephoned yesterday ….”
“What time?”
“Four-thirty. Why?”
Right after I knocked on his door, I thought.
“He telephoned, out of control. ‘It’s over!’ he said. ‘They’re coming to get me. Don’t lecture me!’ he screamed. It curdled my blood. Sounded like ten thousand extras fired, forty producer suicides, ninety-nine starlets raped, eyes shut, making do. His last words were ‘Help me! save me!’ And there I was, Jesus on the end of a line, Christ at the end of his tether. How could I help when I was the cause, not the cure? I told Clarence to take two aspirins and call in the morning. I should have rushed over. Would you have rushed, if you were me?”
I remembered Clarence lying in that huge wedding cake, layer upon layer of books, cards, photos, and hysterical sweat, glued in stacks.
J. C. saw my head shake.
“He’s gone, isn’t he? You,” he added, “did rush over?”
