George stood on his grand portico in the light from the doorway behind him, as black and featureless as his shadow which zig-zagged down over the stairs; he started a little at Jonathan’s voice, just a little, but just enough for Jonathan to see.
‘Hey, listen at you, boy. Who’d ever think you could sound so fancy? Welcome, Jonathan. Welcome. Watch the step there. Not lit good from where you are, is it?’
George shifted back into the light, which threw shadows over the contours of his face much as the candlelight in the soddy fifty years ago had thrown shadows over him that lengthened and shortened as though the shiny, round eyes were breathing vents into the dungeon of a soul that lay behind them. Jonathan took the steps slowly. Midway up he could see that the cheeks were puffy now, edematous rather than plump. Near the top of the stairs, and the round eyes were dull and lashless behind round spectacles; they peered out above swells of flesh greasy with sweat. There was wariness where the contempt used to be. The lines around the mouth and beyond the smile were lines of serious pain. Jonathan had seen enough of death to know that this was a dying man, and not a man dying easily. How could he have missed something so evident? And only two weeks ago? Christ, he thought (asweat himself now, with relief as well as the suffocating heat), a month more and I’d have been too late.
George laughed. ‘Look at that face: just exactly the same. What are you doing in this part of the country, huh? God, it’s good to see you again.’
Jonathan heard his own voice in response but could not make out the words.
‘Come on in,’ George said. ‘It’s cooler inside – a little, anyhow.’ He clapped an arm around Jonathan’s shoulder and led him through the hallway into the study beyond. There are wounds to be suffered in the first encounter of any battle; that arm, full of memories and portent, lay heavy on Jonathan’s shoulders. He bore stoically the nausea it brought with it – here’s the virtue of well-drilled troops – but the sense of release when George removed his arm as they entered the living room was enough to make him giddy.
‘Take a seat,’ George said, waving him toward the sofa where only ten days before he had sat, talked to the pretty daughter and drunk a glass of water. ‘Sit down. Drink? Or do you reverend guys abstain? Apple juice?’
Jonathan said something. It didn’t matter what.
‘You had a long drive?’ George said. He poured liquid into two glasses. ‘Come to see me special, didn’t you?’
‘Of course.’ Since George made no response to this, Jonathan wasn’t entirely sure he’d managed to get it out: perhaps he’d only thought it. The richness of the room shimmered around him – colors too strong, shapes too highly delineated. Crass, ugly, vulgar, and yet powerful even so – so much money, so much certainty – book-lined walls, marble fireplace, eaglehead candelabra, elegiac painting of the American Revolution. The painting was not quite as big as Jonathan had remembered it: he scanned the soldiers in satin pants, the flags snapping in the wind, the dead man at the center, with a pretty trickle of blood over the lace at his throat. Beads of sweat trembled on the wattles under George’s chin; he had on the frock coat he’d been wearing at the picnic. Why doesn’t he take it off? Jonathan thought. Velvet collar. Why don’t I take off mine? But he’d known all those years ago that if he’d had a frock coat he’d have kept it on for such a fight as this with George. At the edge of his thoughts he caught sight of the town that lay beneath the evening star as he’d first seen it from the roof of the sod hut – a dozen saloons and all the promise of the future.