“I know it. I think that’s why I picked him when he was a colt. Do you know I paid two dollars for him thirty-three years ago? Everything was wrong with him, hoofs like flapjacks, a hock so thick and short and straight there seems no joint at all. He’s hammerheaded and swaybacked. He has a pinched chest and a big behind. He has an iron mouth and he still fights the crupper. With a saddle he feels as though you were riding a sled over a gravel pit. He can’t trot and he stumbles over his feet when he walks. I have never in thirty-three years found one good thing about him. He even has an ugly disposition. He is selfish and quarrelsome and mean and disobedient. To this day I don’t dare walk behind him because he will surely take a kick at me. When I feed him mash he tries to bite my hand. And I love him.”
Lee said, “And you named him ‘Doxology.’ ”
“Surely,” said Samuel, “so ill endowed a creature deserved, I thought, one grand possession. He hasn’t very long now.”
Adam said, “Maybe you should put him out of his misery.”
“What misery?” Samuel demanded. “He’s one of the few happy and consistent beings I’ve ever met.”
“He must have aches and pains.”
“Well, he doesn’t think so. Doxology still thinks he’s one hell of a horse. Would you shoot him, Adam?”
“Yes, I think I would. Yes, I would.”
“You’d take the responsibility?”
“Yes, I think I would. He’s thirty-three. His lifespan is long over.”
Lee had set his lantern on the ground. Samuel squatted beside it and instinctively stretched his hands for warmth to the butterfly of yellow light.
“I’ve been bothered by something, Adam,” he said.
“What is that?”
“You would really shoot my horse because death might be more comfortable?”
“Well, I meant—”
Samuel said quickly, “Do you like your life, Adam?”
“Of course not.”
“If I had a medicine that might cure you and also might kill you, should I give it to you? Inspect yourself, man.”
“What medicine?”
“No,” said Samuel. “If I tell you, believe me when I say it may kill you.”
Lee said, “Be careful, Mr. Hamilton. Be careful.”
“What is this?” Adam demanded. “Tell me what you’re thinking of.”
Samuel said softly, “I think for once I will not be careful. Lee, if I am wrong—listen—if I am mistaken, I accept the responsibility and I will take what blame there is to take.”
“Are you sure you’re right?” Lee asked anxiously.
“Of course I’m not sure. Adam, do you want the medicine?”
“Yes. I don’t know what it is but give it to me.”
“Adam, Cathy is in Salinas. She owns a whorehouse, the most vicious and depraved in this whole end of the country. The evil and ugly, the distorted and slimy, the worst things humans can think up are for sale there. The crippled and crooked come there for satisfaction. But it is worse than that. Cathy, and she is now called Kate, takes the fresh and young and beautiful and so maims them that they can never be whole again. Now, there’s your medicine. Let’s see what it does to you.”
“You’re a liar!” Adam said.
“No, Adam. Many things I am, but a liar I am not.”
Adam whirled on Lee. “Is this true?”
“I’m no antidote,” said Lee. “Yes. It’s true.”
Adam stood swaying in the lantern light and then he turned and ran. They could hear his heavy steps running and tripping. They heard him falling over the brush and scrambling and clawing his way upward on the slope. The sound of him stopped only when he had gone over the brow of the hill.
Lee said, “Your medicine acts like poison.”
“I take responsibility,” said Samuel. “Long ago I learned this: When a dog has eaten strychnine and is going to die, you must get an ax and carry him to a chopping block. Then you must wait for his next convulsion, and in that moment—chop off his tail. Then, if the poison has not gone too far, your dog may recover. The shock of pain can counteract the poison. Without the shock he will surely die.”
“But how do you know this is the same?” Lee asked.
“I don’t. But without it he would surely die.”
“You’re a brave man,” Lee said.
“No, I’m an old man. And if I should have anything on my conscience it won’t be for long.”
Lee asked, “What do you suppose he’ll do?”
“I don’t know,” said Samuel, “but at least he won’t sit around and mope. Here, hold the lantern for me, will you?”
In the yellow light Samuel slipped the bit in Doxology’s mouth, a bit worn so thin that it was a flake of steel. The check rein had been abandoned long ago. The old hammerhead was free to drag his nose if he wished, or to pause and crop grass beside the road. Samuel didn’t care. Tenderly he buckled the crupper, and the horse edged around to try to kick him.
When Dox was between the shafts of the cart Lee asked, “Would you mind if I rode along with you a little? I’ll walk back.”
“Come along,” said Samuel, and he tried not to notice that Lee helped him up into the cart.
The night was very dark, and Dox showed his disgust for night-traveling by stumbling every few steps.
Samuel said, “Get on with it, Lee. What is it you want to say?”
Lee did not appear surprised. “Maybe I’m nosy the way you say you are. I get to thinking. I know probabilities, but tonight you fooled me completely. I would have taken any bet that you of all men would not have told Adam.”
“Did you know about her?”
“Of course,” said Lee,
“Do the boys know?”
“I don’t think so, but that’s only a matter of time. You know how cruel children are. Someday in the schoolyard it will be shouted at them.”
“Maybe he ought to take them away from here,” said Samuel. “Think about that, Lee.”
“My question isn’t answered, Mr. Hamilton. How were you able to do what you did?”
“Do you think I was that wrong?”
“No, I don’t mean that at all. But I’ve never thought of you as taking any strong unchanging stand on anything. This has been my judgment. Are you interested?”
“Show me the man who isn’t interested in discussing himself,” said Samuel. “Go on.”
“You’re a kind man, Mr. Hamilton. And I’ve always thought it was the kindness that comes from not wanting any trouble. And your mind is as facile as a young lamb leaping in a daisy field. You have never to my knowledge taken a bulldog grip on anything. And then tonight you did a thing that tears down my whole picture of you.”
Samuel wrapped the lines around a stick stuck in the whip socket, and Doxology stumbled on down the rutty road. The old man stroked his beard, and it shone very white in the starlight. He took off his black hat and laid it in his lap. “I guess it surprised me as much as it did you,” he said. “But if you want to know why—look into yourself.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“If you had only told me about your studies earlier it might have made a great difference, Lee.”
“I still don’t understand you.”
“Careful, Lee, you’ll get me talking. I told you my Irish came and went. It’s coming now.”
Lee said, “Mr. Hamilton, you’re going away and you’re not coming back. You do not intend to live very much longer.”
“That’s true, Lee. How did you know?”
“There’s death all around you. It shines from you.”
“I didn’t know anyone could see it,” Samuel said. “You know, Lee, I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. And my life has not been a full orchestra for a long time now. A single note only—and that note unchanging sorrow. I’m not alone in my attitude, Lee. It seems to me that too many of us conceive of a life as ending in defeat.”
Lee said, “Maybe everyone is too rich. I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair.”
“It was your two-word retranslation, Lee—”Thou mayest.’ It took me by the throat and shook me. And when the dizziness was over, a path was open, new and bright. And my life which is ending seems to be going on to an ending wonderful. And my music has a new last melody like a bird song in the night.”
Lee was peering at him’ through the darkness. “That’s what it did to those old men of my family.”
“ ‘Thou mayest rule over sin,’ Lee. That’s it. I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name you a dozen who were not, and they are the ones the world lives by. It is true of the spirit as it is true of battles—only the winners are remembered. Surely most men are destroyed, but there are others who like pillars of fire guide frightened men through the darkness. ‘Thou mayest, Thou mayest!’ What glory! It is true that we are weak and sick and quarrelsome, but if that is all we ever were, we would, millenniums ago, have disappeared from the face of the earth. A few remnants of fossilized jawbone, some broken teeth in strata of limestone, would be the only mark man would have left of his existence in the world. But the choice, Lee, the choice of winning! I had never understood it or accepted it before. Do you see now why I told Adam tonight? I exercised the choice. Maybe I was wrong, but by telling him I also forced him to live or get off the pot. What is that word, Lee?”