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."
"O_kay_, 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."
"O_kay_, 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?