End Zone

28

Jim Deering brought a football out to the parade grounds and we played for several hours in the fresh snow. It began as a game of touch, five on a side, no contact except for brush blocks and tagging the ballcarrier. The snow was anklehigh. We let the large men do all the throwing. Some of us cut classes in order to keep playing. It was very cold at first but we didn't notice so much after a while. Nobody cared how many passes were dropped or badly thrown and it didn't matter how slowly we ran or if we fell trying to cut or stop short. The idea was to keep playing, keep moving, get it going again. Some students and teachers, walking to and from classes, stood and watched for a few minutes and then went away. Two more players entered the game, making it six to a side. They left their books on top of the pile of heavy coats in the snow. Most of us wore regular shoes and nothing heavier than a sweater. George Dole, his first chance to play quarterback, wore a checkered cowboy shirt with the sleeves rolled way up. Nobody wore gloves after John Jessup said gloves were outlawed. Toward the end of the first hour it began getting windy. The wind blew loose snow into our faces, making it hard to keep track of.the ball's flight. Between plays I crossed my arms over my chest, keeping my hands wedged in my armpits for warmth. We blocked a little more emphatically now, partly to keep warm, to increase movement, and also to compensate for the wind, the poor playing conditions; more hitting helped us forget the sting of cold snow blowing in our faces. Each team had just one deep back to do all the throwing and running; there were three linemen blocking and two receivers. Defense was a 33 most of the time. It was getting harder to complete a pass or turn the corner on a running play. I noticed that Buddy Shock's nose was bleeding. It started to snow now, lightly at first, then more heavily, and in time it was almost impossible to see beyond the limits of the parade grounds. It was lovely to be hemmed in that way, everything white except for the clothes we wore and the football and the bundle of coats and books in the snow nearby. We were part of the weather, right inside it, isolated from objects on the land, from land, from perspective itself. There were no spectators now; we were totally alone. I was beginning to enjoy skidding and falling. I didn't even try to retain my balance when I felt myself slipping. Certain reflexes were kept slack; it seemed fitting to let the conditions determine how our bodies behaved. We were adrift within this time and place and what I experienced then, speaking just for myself, was some variety of environmental bliss. Jessup outlawed the placing of hands under armpits between plays. I found merit in this regulation; even the smallest warmth compromised immersion in the elements. Then he outlawed huddles and the making of plays in the usual way. Each play, he decreed, would be announced aloud by the team with the ball. There would be no surprise at all, not the slightest deception; the defense would know exactly what was coming. Again I found it easy to agree. We were getting extremely basic, moving into elemental realms, seeking harmony with the weather and the earth. The snowfall was very heavy now, reducing visibility to about fifteen yards. Suddenly Tim Flanders and Larry Nix were standing near the coats. Someone had told them about the game and they had come down hoping to get in. That made it seven men on each team, four blockers, an unbalanced line, a 43 defense. I was playing center now, stooped way over, my body warped and about to buckle, hands positioned on the cold wet ball, eyes on huge George Dole awaiting the snap four yards behind me and upsidedown, calling out the play and number, his face that of an outlandishly large Navaho infant, dull muddy red in color, his feet lost in snow, sniffling now as he shouted out the cadence, white haired in the biting wind, abominable and looming. The blocking became more spirited and since we wore no equipment it was inevitable that tempers would flare. Randall and Nix butted each other a few times, throwing no punches because of the severe cold. Then Jessup outlawed passing plays. It became strictly a ground game. After two plays it was decided, by unanimous consent, to replace tagging with tackling. Naturally the amount of hitting increased. Somebody tore my sweater and left me buried in snow. I got up and kept going. With passing outlawed the game changed completely. Its range was now limited to a very small area and its degree of specialization diminished. There were no receivers and defenders to scatter the action. We were all blockers, all tacklers. Only the ballcarrier, one man, could attempt to use evasion and finesse in avoiding the primal impact. After a clumsy doublereverse I stood alone watching Ron Steeples, way over at the far rim of vision, whirl in a rotary cloud of snow and take a swing at Jim Deering, whose back was turned. Steeples lost his balance as he swung; the punch missed completely and he fell. Deering, unaware of any of this, trotted over to his side of the line. Steeples got up and walked slowly toward the defense, wiping his hands on his stiff wet trousers. At this point Jessup banned reverses of any kind. The ball had to be handled by one man and one man alone. Even fake reverses were outlawed. No offensive player could pass in front of or behind the ballcarrier while the ballcarrier was still behind the line of scrimmage. Jessup shouted these regulations into the wind. I asked about laterals. Absolutely forbidden, Jessup said. My hands were numb. I looked at them. They were purplish red. Snow on my lashes blurred everything. Lines of sight shortened. My shoes weighed me down. We kept playing, we kept hitting, and we were comforted by the noise and brunt of our bodies in contact, by the simple physical warmth generated through violent action, by the sight of each other, the torn clothing, the bruises and scratches, the wildness of all fourteen, numb, purple, coughing, white heads solemn in the healing snow. Jessup banned end runs. It became a straightahead game, tackle to tackle. We handfought and butted. Linemen fired out and the ballcarrier just lowered his head and went pounding into the tense rhythmic mass. Blocking did not necessarily cease when the ballcarrier went down. Private battles continued until one man gave ground or was buried in snow. These individual contests raged on every play, each man grunting and panting, trying to maintain traction, to move the other man, to chop him down, to overwhelm him. Randall grabbed me by the shoulders and tried to toss me off to the side. I slipped out of his grip, getting hit on the back of the neck with a stray elbow, and then I rammed a shoulder into his gut and kept on moving, kept driving, making him give way; but he tightened up, hardening considerably now, too strong for me, coming back with a slap to my left ear which turned me halfaround and then moving straight in with everything, head, shoulders, hands, until he buried me. He dug me out and slapped me on the rump. On the next play I crossblocked, going after Deering, more my size, standing him up with two shoulderblows to the chest, getting shoved from behind and going down with three or four others. The cold was painful now; it hurt more than the blocking and tackling. I got up, one shoe missing. I saw it a few yards away. I went over and picked it up. It felt like a dead animal. I forced it over my foot. The laces were stiff and my hands too frozen to make a knot. I looked up. Oscar Veech was standing directly in front of me, wearing a padded ski jacket and a pair of snow goggles.

"Coach wants to see you," he said.

Everybody stood around watching. I went over and found my coat. I put it over my head and followed Veech into the dimness and silence. We went over to Staley Hall. Veech didn't say anything. We went downstairs and he simply nodded toward the closed door at the end of the isometrics room. I left my coat bundled on a scale. Then I blew my nose, walked to the door and knocked. The room was small and barely furnished, just an army cot, a small folding table, two folding chairs. There were no windows. On the wall was a page torn from a book, a blackandwhite plate of a girl praying in a medieval cell, an upper corner of the page loose and casting a limp shadow. Near the door, at my shoulder, a whistle hung from a string looped over a bent nail. Emmett Creed was in a wheelchair. His legs were covered with a heavy blanket, gray and white, not quite the school colors. Ten or twelve looseleaf binders were stacked neatly on the floor.

"Sit down, Gary."

"Yes sir."

"I'm told it's a near buzzard out there."

"We were going at it," I said. "We were playing. We were ignoring the weather and going right at it."

"So I'm told."

"How are you feeling, Coach? A lot of the guys have tried to get in to see you. I'm sure they'd appreciate it if I brought back word."

"Everything is progressing as anticipated."

"Yes sir. Very good. I know they'd appreciate hearing that."

"A near blizzard is what they tell me."

"It's really snowing," I said. "It's coming down thick and steady. Visibility must be zero feet."

"Maybe that's the kind of weather we needed over at Centrex."

"None of us can forget that game, Coach."

"We learned a lot of humility on that field."

"It was hard to accept. We had worked too hard to lose, going all the way back to last summer, scrimmaging in that heat. We had worked too hard. It was impossible to believe that anybody had worked harder than we had. We had sacrificed. We had put ourselves through a series of really strenuous ordeals. And then to step out on that field and be overwhelmed the way we were."

"It takes character to win," he said. "It's not just the amount of mileage you put in. The insults to the body. The humiliation and fear. It's dedication, it's character, it's pride. We've got a ways to go yet before we develop these qualities on a team basis."

"Yes sir."

"I've never seen a good football player who didn't know the value of selfsacrifice."

"Yes sir."

"I've never seen a good football player who wanted to learn a foreign language."

"Yes."

"I've been married three times but I was never blessed with children. A son. So maybe I don't know as much about young men as I think I do. But I've managed to get some good results through the years. I've tried to extract the maximal effort from every boy I've ever coached. Or near as possible. Football is a complex of systems. It's like no other sport. When the game is played properly, it's an interlocking of a number of systems. The individual. The small cluster he's part of. The larger unit, the eleven. People stress the violence. That's the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there's a calm, a tranquillity. The players accept pain. There's a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies strewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there's a satisfaction to the game that can't be duplicated. There's a harmony."

"Absolutely," I said.

"But I didn't intend getting into that. You know all that. A boy of your intelligence doesn't have to be told what this game is all about."

"Thank you," I said.

"No boy of mine has ever broken the same rule twice."

"Yes sir."

"No boy in all my years of coaching has ever placed his personal welfare above the welfare of the aggregate unit."

"Yes sir."

"Our inner life is falling apart. We're losing control of things. We need more selfsacrifice, more discipline. Our inner life is crumbling. We need to renounce everything that turns us from the knowledge of ourselves. We're getting too far away from our own beginnings. We're roaming all over the landscape. We need to build ourselves up mentally and spiritually. Do that and the body takes care of itself. I learned this as a small boy. I was very sickly, a very sickly child. I had this and that disease. I was badly nourished. My legs were no thicker than the legs of that chair. But I built myself up by determination and sacrifice. The mind first and then the body. It was a lonely life for a boy. I had no friends. I lived in an inner world of determination and silence. Mental resolve. It made me strong; it prepared me. Things return to their beginnings. It's been a long circle from there to here. But all the lessons hold true. The inner life must be disciplined just as the hand or eye. Loneliness is strength. The Sioux purified themselves by fasting and solitude. Four days without food in a sweat lodge. Before you went out to lament for your nation, you had to purify yourself. Fasting and solitude. If you can survive loneliness, you've got an inner strength that can take you anywhere. Four days. You wore just a bison robe. I don't think there's anything makes more sense than selfdenial. It's the only way to attain moral perfection. I've wandered here and there. I've made this and that mistake. But now I'm back and I'm back for good. A brave nation needs discipline. Purify the will. Learn humility. Restrict the sense life. Pain is part of the harmony of the nervous system."

I said nothing.

"What I called you in here for," Creed said.

"Yes sir."

"Do you know the reason?"

"Why I'm here? I assume because I walked off the field."

"I knew that exploit was coming," he said. "In one form or another it had to come. It was just a matter of time. I knew about Penn State and Syracuse. Sooner or later you had to make a gesture. Do something. Upset things. Test yourself-yourself more than me. I've been waiting. Every team I've ever coached had at least one boy who lad to make the gesture. I've been waiting all season. You did it at other schools in one form or another and I knew you'd do it here. It's off your chest now. You can settle down. What I called you in here for. Kimbrough graduates in the spring. You're offensive captain."

"I never expected anything like this," I said. "I'm not a senior. Doesn't it go to seniors?"

"Never mind that."

"Frankly I thought I was here to be disciplined."

"Maybe that's what it all amounts to. I'll be demanding extra. I'll be after you every minute. As team leader you'll be setting an example for the rest of them. You'll have to give it everything you've got and then some."

"I'll be ready," I said.

"I know you will, son. You'll find Oscar Veech in the training room. Send him in here."

"One thing I've been meaning to ask since the minute I walked in. What's that picture taped to the wall? Who is that in the picture? Is it anybody in particular?"

"Somebody sent that picture to me many years ago. Looks like it came from some kind of religious book for kids. People were always sending me things. Good luck things or prayers or all kinds of advice. Not so much now. They've been keeping pretty quiet of late. But that's a Catholic saint. I've kept that picture with me for many years now. Teresa of Ávila. She was a remarkable woman. A saint of the church. Do you know what she used to do in order to remind herself of final things?"

"Something to do with a skull, I think."

"She used to eat food out of a human skull."

"I'll go find Veech," I said.

In my room later I became depressed. No American accepts the deputy's badge without misgivings; centuriesof heroic lawlessness have captured our blood. I felt responsible for a vague betrayal of some local code or lore. I was now part of the apparatus. No longer did I circle and watch, content enough to be outside the center and even sufficiently cunning to plan a minor raid or two. Now I was the law's small tin glitter. Suck in that gut, I thought.

Jimmy Fife came in and sat on Anatole's bed. Fife was a defensive back who had been disabled all year, a ruptured spleen. Someone had accidentally kicked him during a practice session the previous spring. He had been very close to death. Many players still kidded him about it.

"Nix went wild last night and started throwing ash cans through windows. His ass has likely had it."

"Coach made me captain," I said. "As of now, I captain the offense."

"Congrats," Fife said.

"I don't know if it's good or bad. I feel a little bit upset. I guess I just have to get used to it. So Nix went berserk."

"Completely amuck," he said. "I saw the last part of it. It took six people to carry him off. It was a real fistswinging melee. I didn't get anywhere near it. Stupid to expose the spleen to contact at this point."

"But Nix was out in the snow with us a little while ago. I just realized. I'm sure Nix was there. He was in the game we were playing out in the blizzard."

"I don't doubt it," Fife said. "He's an animal. He's an animal's animal. The animals themselves would vote him allanimal. After a night like last night anybody else would be in bed for a week. Animalism aside, I'll tell you what he really is. He's a nihilist. He himself says so. I've had conversations with the guy. He blames it on his name. Nix meaning no, no thanks, nothing."

"I've never talked to the guy," I said.

"I've had conversations with the guy. He's pretty interesting, albeit a little bit stereo."

"What do you mean-stereo?"

"I mean psycho. Did I say stereo? What a funny word to use."

"You said albeit a little bit stereo."

"Did I say albeit? That's incredible, Gary. I'd never use a word like that. A word like that is way out of my province."

"But you used it, Jimmy. I'm certain."

"I must have been speaking in tongues," Fife said.

He bounced on the bed a few times, his mouth wide open, and I thought he might be trying to cast out a minor playful worddemon.

"Anyway," I said, "Nix has probably had it."

"Sure, they'll get him for the windows. It's my guess he'll be gone for good. Have you heard about Conway's insects?"

"Offensive captain," I said. "That means I go out for the coin toss. If Coach doesn't object I think I'll go out with my helmet off. I'll carry it rather than wear it. I think it looks better. It sort of humanizes the coin toss. Then I can put it on again as I come running off."

"Who's the new defensive captain?" Fife said.

"I don't know. Coach didn't say and I didn't ask."

"How is he? I hear he's the same."

"He's in a wheelchair," I said.

"A wheelchair."

"Don't ask me why. Something to do with his legs, I guess. At least that's what he seemed to intimate. Maybe not."

"Where's Bloomers?"

"I don't know."

"John Butler tells me he's been hearing strange noises at night. These noises come from the other side of Butler's wall. The other side of Butler's wall is right here. It goes on for hours, Butler says it goes teek teek teek teek."

"I don't know anything about it."

"Conway," he said. "I started to tell you about Conway's insects. He's got this tremendous assortment of insects in his room. A few days ago he went out In the desert and dug them out of hibernation and brought them back to his room. Everybody's been going in there to look at them. I think he wants to put them in some kind of cage or giant bowl. Arrange it like their natural surroundings. Some dirt, some small plants, some rocks. And then see what happens."

"It sounds horrible."

"I think it might be interesting, Gary. We'll get a chance to see what happens."

"What could happen?"

"They could reproduce. They could fight among themselves. I don't know. But it might be interesting. Conway knows all about insects. They're his field. He was telling us all about it. It's pretty interesting from a number of viewpoints."

"Has he built this thing he's going to build yet?"

"Work on that starts tomorrow. For the time being he's keeping them in a number of jars."

"What kind of number? How many insects are there?"

"Maybe forty all told. All different kinds. Beetles, spiders, scorpions-mostly beetles. The spider incidentally is not an insect. The spider is an arachnid. Let's go take a look."

"I'd just as soon stay here, I think, Jimmy."

"A quick look," he said.

"How quick?"

"In and out, Gary."

"I've got things to do. We'd have to make it a very quick look."

"We'll just stick our heads in the door. Wap. In and out."

We went down the hall. I saw two people come out of Conway's room. Four others were there when we walked in. Conway escorted us around the room. There were ten or eleven large jars. Most of the insects seemed to be asleep.

"Tell Gary about the tiger beetle," Fife said.

"The tiger beetle is a very interesting creature. The tiger beetle hunts by night. It moves swiftly over the ground or it climbs trees. It goes after caterpillars mostly."

"What's so interesting about that?" I said.

"Tell him about the radioactivity."

"Insects are highly resistant to radioactivity," Conway said. "In case of an allout somethingorother, they'll probably end up taking over the planet. All the birds will be killed off by the fallout. But the insect resists fallout. He won't have birds feeding off him. He'll be able to reproduce freely."

"Most people are aware of that," I said.

"But I'll tell you a mistake almost everybody makes. It concerns the spider. The spider is not an insect. The spider is an arachnid."

"I know that. Almost everybody knows that."

"He doesn't know about the wolf spider," Fife said. "Tell him about the wolf spider and the little spiderlings. How they ride on her back."

"The wolf spider has eight eyes. It spins no web. When the female's eggs hatch, the little spiderlings ride on her back for about a week."

"The scavenger beetle," Fife said. "Tell him about the scavenger. I like the part where it lays the eggs."

"The scavenger beetle is equipped with a set of digging claws. It can bury a dead mouse or a dead bird in two or three hours. Something many times its own size. The beetle then lays eggs on the dead carcass. These eggs hatch very quickly and the larvae come out and start eating the meat of the dead bird. The scarab beetle is of the scavenger type. It lives on dung. The scarab had been a symbol of immortality since the ancient Egyptians."

Dennis Smee walked in.

"Somebody told me to ask you about radioactivity."

"Insects are highly resistant to radioactivity," Conway said. "Man dies if he's exposed to six hundred units. Mr. Insect can survive one hundred thousand units and more. And he won't have birds feeding off him. He'll be able to reproduce freely. There won't be any balance in the sense we know it."

"Balance," Fife said. "The equality of effective values with respect to the applied number of reduced symbolic quantities on each side of an equation, excluding combined derivatives."

Terry Madden came in and congratulated me on my cocaptaincy. Everybody shook my hand and wished me well. Then Lee Roy Tyler and Ron Steeples came in to look at the insects. Steeples was wearing a red golf glove on his right hand.

"Where you going, Gary?" he said.

"Things to do."

In my room I wrote a long hysterical letter on the subject of spacetime. Even though I knew nothing about spacetime, the letter was fairly easy to write. It practically wrote itself. When I was finished I tried to decide to whom it had been written. This itself seemed the most important thing about the letter. To whom was it going? Whose name would sail, unsuspecting, on that extended text? (Whichever name, it would be minus the word Dear and followed by a dour colon-overly formal perhaps but more unfeigned than the mockcasual comma.) I thought of a dozen, people and concluded that none was worthy. I left the six pieces of paper on the old brown saddle blanket atop Anatole's bed. Bing Jackmin walked in and took a chair.

"Did you hear?" he said.

"What?"

"He's wearing those sunglasses again. Shaved skull and dark glasses. What the hell does it mean?"

"I don't know," I said. "It probably doesn't mean anything. He's a remote individual. The dark glasses conceal him. Or conceal whatever's around him. I don't know."

"What about the skull, Gary?"

"I don't know why he shaved. I have no idea."

"Don't you care to speculate?"

"I leave that to the joint chiefs. I'm just a lowly captain."

"I heard, Gary. Nice going. Although you'll probably regret it as soon as Coach starts in with the tonguelashings. He saves that stuff for the quarterback and the two captains."

"I know," I said. "He told me to expect trouble."

"Verbal tonguelashings. Public humiliation."

"I know, Bing."

"First time it happens you'll wish you never even saw a football. You'll experience total personality destructuring."

"We're wasting spacetime," I said. "I have a lot to do."

"I'll tell you why I came in here in the first place. I want to grow a beard. I want hair. It's a question of increasing my personal reality. I'm serious about this, Gary."

"What color beard?"

"Gary, I'm serious now."

"Because if you want it the same color as the hair on your head, you'll have a lot easier time growing it."

"I'd like you to talk to Coach. You're one of the captains now. You've got a power base. There's no word out on excess hair. I want you to find out what the word is."

"It's very curious," I said. "All these juxtapositions of hair and nonhair. I half expect Anatole to come walking in with a long white mane down over his shoulders."

"Talk to Coach. Talk to him. It's just an ounce of hair but it'll mean a whole lot to me. I'm becoming too psychomythical in my orientation. I need a reality increment. Find out what the word is."

"He'll ignore me, Bing. He'll just look away in disgust."

"Keep after him. Hound the son of a bitch. I want some excess hair. I'm serious about this. Tell him I'm willing to shave it off when spring practice begins. But I need a beard now. Try to explain personalized reality to him."

"These are subglacial matters," I said. "I can't just snap my fingers and decide. Besides I have no real power. He'll just look away in disgust. All I can do for the moment is think about it. I'll think about it."

"Think about it," Bing said. "I'll be in Conway's room looking at the insects."

I went for a walk. It had stopped snowing. The lamps were lit along the straight white paths. It was dinnertime and everyone was inside. I inhaled deeply, feeling the air enter and bite. My right shoulder ached from the game in the snow. I rotated my arm slowly. Then I saw Alan Zapalac coming down the library steps, an enormous yellow scarf circling his neck two or three times and terminating at his kneecap. He made his way carefully, using the heel of his right shoe to probe each step for ice beneath the stacked snow. I waited for him at the foot of the stairs. He wore an armband on which was printed the word trees, green on light blue.

"Escort me to the administration building," he said. "If I fall down and break my leg, I'll need somebody to tell the others not to move me. If you weren't here and if it happened, breaking my leg, they'd come along and move me, broken bone and all. If you yourself slip, which I doubt will happen with your athletic prowess and tremendous genetic advantages, make sure you don't reach out and grab for me. I know that's everybody's natural instinct but I want you to fight off the urge because if you take me with you with my delicate bone structure I'm as good as dead. They'd probably use me in one of their experiments with hogs or chickens. None of my organs would be safe. Tomorrow you'd go behind that white building that looks like somebody pinned a surgical gown over it and in that pen they've got out back for the inoculated animals you'd see a hog walking along with my kidneys inside it, urinating the last dregs of my life into the alfalfa."

"I'm going that way anyway," I said. "Good, good, good. How's the lady friend?" "Myna," I said. "Myna's fine as far as I know." "I'm no good at names. My students are catching on. In one of my classes there's an allout hoax being perpetrated, supposedly at my expense. They've invented a student. His name is Robert Reynolds. After class somebody always comes up to my desk to ask a question. Whoever it is, he makes it a point to identify himself by name. It's a different boy every day but the name is always Robert Reynolds. I get test papers from Robert Reynolds. Yesterday there was a new attendance card in my bunch, very authentic looking, full of IBM holes. It was Robert Reynolds' card. So I called out his name when I took the attendance. Naturally somebody answered. Everybody else said here. But the Robert Reynolds person, said present. You could sense the laughter being contained, the greatness of their mission, how they had banded together to perpetrate this thing at my expense, the teacher, the socalled font of wisdom. For the moment I'm playing dumb. I'm letting them get away with it. They think I don't know what's going on. But there are ploys and there are counterploys. Getting back for a second. Your lady friend. Why is she so fat?"

"The responsibilities of beauty," I said. "She thinks they'd be too much for her. They'd cause her to change. I think I tend to agree."

"My wifetobe is a white Protestant fencepost. A very onedimensional bodyshape. She's rough and tough, a classic Midwest bitch. When we argue she squeezes the flesh on the back of my hand. She really twists it hard, pinching it simultaneously. Her face becomes very Protestant if you know what I mean. A Zurich theologian lives inside her."

"I don't understand why you'd want to marry somebody like that. If somebody like that twisted my flesh, to be perfectly frank with you I think I'd hit her. I'd hate to have my flesh pinched and squeezed on any kind of recurring basis."

"I've never punched or slapped a woman," he said. "I like to bodycheck them instead, like a hockey player. I smash them into the boards. It surprises them. A bodycheck is something they can't interpret with their normal uncanniness of knowing exactly how to retaliate, with whatever exact giveandtake, the way only women can do, giving back tenfold but with a genius that makes it seem even steven."

"But why would you marry somebody like that?"

"She loves me. I'm the only person she's ever loved. Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the whole world she's capable of loving. She calls me longdistance every other day. I jump with joy every time the telephone rings. She's three inches taller than I am but why quibble over inches when you're involved in matters of eternal import. Speaking of tall and short, notice the length of my scarf. Little men like to wear long scarfs. The reason for this is lost in the mists of time. But to return to love. Love is a way of salvation. It makes us less imperfect and draws us closer to immortality. I want to stir up ecstasy in my soul. I want to ascend to the world of forms. Love basically is the suspension of gravity. It's an ascent to higher places. The very existence of her love will stir me to deep ecstasy. I'll begin to climb. Notice the selfish element in my scheme."

"You mentioned salvation," I said. "What kind of salvation?"

"I believe in the remission of sins," Zapalac said. "The world's, the nation's, the individual's sins. Do penance and they shall be forgiven. Salvation consists in the remission of sins. Whatever penances can be performed. Whatever denials or offerings up."

"Are you serious?"

"The nation's sins," he said.

"That was the administration bunding."

"I'm going in the back way. It's part of my overall schemata. I like to turn up behind people's backs. Suddenly there I am, at their shoulder blades, ready to be a friend to the enemies of injustice."

I walked back to Staley Hall. In the dining room I saw Bloomberg sitting with Spurgeon Cole. I put some corn flakes on a tray and joined them.

"How's Coach?" Spurgeon said.

"He's progressing as anticipated."

"I have a feeling," Bloomberg said, "that's he's about ready to shuffle off these mortal coils, as they say in show business."

"How does it feel being captain, Gary?"

"I get to go out for the coin toss. I've always wanted to be part of that. It's tremendously ceremonial without being too pompous."

"He's wearing the dark glasses again," Spurgeon said. "He hasn't worn them in months. Now he's wearing them."

"I know all about it. I have no comment."

"It must mean something, Gary. Dark glasses indoors in the dead of winter."

"It doesn't mean anything. Look at Steeples. Steeples is going around with a gold glove on his hand. What the hell does that mean?"

"Steeples has some kind of infection. It's ugly as hell apparently. He was exposed to something. It's a sort of burn plus a sort of infection. He just wants to keep it hidden."

"Is that all you're eating?" Bloomberg said to me.

"It contains vitamin B, iron and niacin."

"I'm up to threeosix," he said. "The new mind expands with the old body. I feel more alert every day. I feel revitalized."

Bing Jackmin came over and sat down. His tray held baked ham, mashed potatoes, salad and pound cake. He was looking at me intensely.

"Did you talk to Coach?"

"Give me time," I said.

"There is no time."

"Can't you start growing it and then either keep it going or terminate it when I find out what the word is?"

"Terminate what?" Spurgeon said.

"His excess hair. He wants a beard. Does anybody know what the prevailing attitude is on excess hair?"

"Excess hair is acceptable if it doesn't exceed accepted standards," Spurgeon said.

"There's your answer, Bing."

"I am interested in certain aspects of global violence," Bloomberg said.

"Pass the salt," Bing said.

"This meat," Spurgeon said. "There's something wrong with this meat."

Bloomberg cleared his throat.

"I am an anguished physicist. I take long walks in the country. From time to time I have second thoughts about the supermegaroach aerosol bomb which can kill anything that moves on the whole earth in a fraction of a microsecond and which I alone invented and marketed. As I walk the peaceful country lanes of the Institute for Abstract Speculation and Sneak Attacks way out there in an unmarked site somewhere in the Pacific Northeast, a television crew films my every step. The director asks me to gaze up over the treetops and to squint slightly into the late afternoon sun. At such moments I think of my roachbomb and I am filled with a sense of deep humility and also with a feeling of fantastic bloodsucking power. And I am reminded of the comforting words of the famed celestial song of the Hindus. What is this crime I am planning, O Krishna? So you see, my friends, I am not without a sense of history nor of personal responsibility. I have a human side and I love the classics. As I smoke my pipe and play a quiet game of chess with my lovely wife, the mother of three fine boys by a previous marriage, I like to ruminate on the nature of man. What brought us forth from the primordial slime? Whither are we headed? What is the grand design? And pondering these vast questions over cheese and port, I come to the realization that one terminal bomb more or less makes small difference in this everexpanding universe of ours."

"Would somebody please pass the salt," Bing said.

"I am interested in the violent man and the ascetic. I am on the verge of concluding that an individual's capacity for violence is closely linked with his ascetic tendencies. We are about to rediscover that austerity is our true mode. In our future meditations we may decide to seek the devil's death. In our silence and terror we may steer our technology toward the metaphysical, toward the creation of some unimaginable weapon able to pierce spiritual barriers, to maim or kill whatever dark presence envelops the world. You will say this seems an unlikely matter to engage the talents of superrational man. But it is precisely this kind of man who has been confronting the unreal, the paradoxical, the ironic, the satanic. After all, the ultimate genius of modern weapons, from the purely theoretical standpoint, is that they destroy the living. We can go on from there to frame any number of provocative remarks but we will resist the temptation. We all know that life, happiness, fulfillment come surging out of particular forms of destructiveness. The moral system is enriched by violence put to positive use. But as the capacity for violence grows in the world, the regenerative effects of specific violent episodes become less significant. The capacity overwhelms everything. The mere potential of one form of violence eclipses the actuality of other forms. I am interested in these things. I am also interested in the discontinuation of contractions. Medial letters are as valid as any others. I have already begun to revise my speech patterns accordingly."

We were all laughing, not knowing exactly why. Maybe we thought Bloomberg was crazy. Or maybe we laughed because it was the only reaction we could trust, the only one that could keep us at a safe distance. Anatole, replying to the laughter, tapped his spoon against the plastic tray to his right. I finished my corn flakes and proceeded, as arranged, to the library.

Myna was sitting alone in one of the rooms downstairs. Her table was covered with books, all abandoned there, many left open (a breach in their solemnity), massive volumes in tiny lines of print. Beyond the table were long high stacks, reeking a bit of perspiration (presumably human), the 900 series, history in its smelliest caparisons, each dark aisle boobytrapped with a metal stool or two. It was fairly pleasant to be there, the library as womb, fluorescent refuge from chaos or rain. Myna was reading Zap Comix. I sat next to her, then reached across the table and pulled a book toward me. It was a dictionary, opened to facing pages that began with Kaaba and ended with kef. Myna looked different somehow. I hadn't seen her in about a week and it took me a couple of seconds to realize that her face was much more clear, almost completely blotchless. She leaned toward the dictionary. We read the definitions to each other for a while. Some of them were extremely funny. Then we selected certain words to read aloud. We read them slowly, syllable by syllable, taking turns, using at times foreign or regional accents, then replaying the sounds, perhaps backward, perhaps starting with a middle syllable, and finally reading the word as word, overpronouncing slightly, noses to the page as if in search of protomorphic spoor. Some of the words put Myna into a state of mild delirium; she thought their beauty almost excessive. We kept reading for half an hour. The words were ways of touching and made us want to speak with hands. We went into a far corner of the high stacks. There I started taking off her dress. The great cumulus breasts came rolling out of handbeaded blue Victorian velvet. We laughed loudly, then tried to quiet each other with soft punches to the arm. A button fell to the floor, rolling unsteadily into a distant corner. I made bubbling noises, rubbing my face in her breasts, scratching an itch just under my eye with her left nipple. Together we got the dress down over her hips, hitting each other lightly to warn the laughter off, and in time it was at her feet. I made strange noises of anticipation (gwa, gwa) and this made her hit me with both hands, but weakly because of the laughter rocking inside her. We heard something at the doorway and made faces at each other, exaggerated frightmasks, and I looked past her and through the slightly tilted rows of books, tilts and countertilts, angles commenting on other angles, centuries misplaced by slumbering hands, the entire selfcontradictory mass looming humorously over my darling's epic breasts. There was no one in the doorway. I plucked a chord or two on the tense elastic of her iridescent panties. Sign of tiny pink ridges, waveshaped, about her buoyant waist. We kissed and bit. She tickled certain vulnerable areas below my ribs. We touched, patted and licked. It may be impossible to explain why it seemed so very important to get her completely naked. Our hands rolled the pants past her hips and thighs. To mark the event I brought new noises to the room, vowel sounds predominating. Myna stepped away from the clothes, aware of the moment's dynamics, positing herself as the knowable word, the fleshmade sigh and syllable. She was beautiful, broad as a manysectioned cubistic bather, conceptually new, cloudbosomed, ultimate. To be forever loved in ways unworthy. In seconds we would be ingathered, amassment of hair and limbs, unbrokenly focused, hunting each other in the melting cave. Some one or thing at the doorway's edge. No: closer. A woman lurking in the stacks. I could see her, four rows away, shoulder to nose between the shelves. I gestured to Myna of the danger nearby. Then I tried to help her get into her clothes, accidentally bumping her once with my knee so that she fell forward over a stool. We looked at each other, not knowing whether to be alarmed by the approaching footsteps, or amused, or merely indifferent. I directed her toward a small alcove in which was placed a bust of some unnamed immortal. Then I opened a book and began to read in a soft voice a number of reflections on an ancient war I had never even heard of until that moment. The woman was Mrs. Berry Trout, an administrator of some kind. She gave me an unloving look.

"What's your name, young man?"

"Robert Reynolds," I said, slipping into my southern accent.