Illusions (14 page)

  
         
Once in a while somebody who hadn't really been much sick said they felt better for the talking, and the people next day

would look at me strangely, move closer, curious. More than once I flew away early.

  
         
No miracles happened, although the Fleet was running better than ever she had, and on less gas. She had stopped throwing oil, stopped killing bugs on her propeller and windscreen. The colder air, no doubt, or the little fellas getting smart enough to dodge.

  
         
Still, one river of time had stopped for me that summer
noon
when Shimoda had been shot. It was an ending I could neither believe nor understand; it was stalled there and I lived it a thousand times again, hoping it might somehow change. It never did. What was I supposed to learn that day?

  
         
One night late in October, after I got scared and left a crowd in
Mississippi
, I came down in a little empty place just big enough to land the Fleet.

  
         
Once again before I slept, I thought back to that last moment-why did he die ? There was no reason for it. If what he said was true ....

  
         
There was no one now to talk with as we had talked, no one to learn from, no one to stalk and attack with my words, to sharpen my new bright mind against. Myself? Yes, but I wasn't half the fun that Shimoda had been, who taught by keeping me always off-balance with his spiritual karate.

  
         
Thinking this I slept, and sleeping, dreamed.

 
* * * * * * *

            
He was kneeling on the grass of a meadow his back to me, patching the hole in the side of the Travel Air where the shotgun blast had been. There was a roll of Grade-A aircraft fabric and a can of butyrate dope by his knee.

  
         
I knew that I was dreaming, and I knew also that this was real. "DON!"

  
         
He stood slowly and turned to face me, smiling at my sorrow and my joy.

  
         
"Hi, fella," he said.

  
         
I couldn't see for tears. There is no dying, there is no dying at all, and this man was my friend.

  
         
"Donald! . . . You're alive! What are you trying to do ?" I ran and threw my arms around him and he was real. I could feel the leather of his flying jacket, crush his arms inside it.

  
         
"Hi," he said. "Do you mind ? What I am trying to do is to patch this hole, here."

  
         
I was so glad to see him, nothing was impossible.

  
         
"With the dope and fabric ?" I said. "With dope and fabric you're trying to fix. .. ? You don't do it that way, you see it perfect, already done . . ." and as I said the words I passed my hand like a screen in front of the ragged bloody hole and when my hand moved by, the hole was gone. There was just pure mirror-painted airplane left, seamless fabric from nose to tail.

  
         
"So that's how you do it!" he said, his dark eyes proud of the slow learner who made good at last as a mental mechanic.

  
         
I didn't find it strange; in the dream that was the way to do the job.

  
         
There was a morning fire by the wing, and a frying pan balanced over it. "You're cooking something, Don! You know, I've never seen you cook anything. What you got ?"

  
         
"Pan-bread," he said matter-of-factly. "The one last thing I want to do in your life is show you how this is done."

  
         
He cut two pieces with his pocket knife and handed me one. The flavor is still with me as I write . . . the flavor of sawdust and old library paste, warmed in lard.

  
         
"What do you think ?" he said.

  
         
"Don ..."

  
         
"The Phantom's Revenge," he grinned at me. "I made it with plaster." He put his part back in the pan. "To remind you, if ever you want to move somebody to learn, do it with your knowing and not with your pan-bread, OK?"

  
         
"NO! Love me, love my pan-bread! It's the staff of life, Don!"

  
         
"Very well. But I guarantee--your first supper with anybody is going to be your last if you feed them that stuff."

  
         
We laughed and were quiet, and I looked at him in the silence.

  
         
"Don, you're all right, aren't you ?"

  
         
"You expect me to be dead ? Come now, Richard. " '

  
         
"And this is not a dream ? I won't forget seeing you now ?"

  
         
"No. This is a dream. It's a different space-time and any different space-time is a dream for a good sane earthling, which you are going to be for a while yet. But you will remember, and that will change your thinking and your life."

  
         
"Will I see you again ? Are you coming back ?"

  
         
"I don't think so. I want to get beyond times and spaces . . . I already am, as a matter of fact. But there is this link between us, between you and me and the others of our family. You get stopped by some problem, hold it in your head and go to sleep and we'll meet here by the airplane and talk about it, if you want."

 
          
"Don . . ."

 
          
"What ?"

 
          
"Why the shotgun ? Why did that happen ? I don't see any power and glory in getting your heart blown out by a shotgun."

  
         
He sat down in the grass by the wing. "Since I was not a front-page Messiah, Richard, I didn't have to prove anything to anybody. And since you need the practice in being unflustered by appearances, and unsaddened by them," he added heavily, "you could use some gory appearances for your training. And fun for me too. Dying is like diving into a deep lake on a hot day. There's the shock of that sharp cold change, the pain of it for a second, and then accepting is a swim in reality. But after so many times, even the shock wears off."

  
         
After a long moment he stood. "Only a few people are interested in what you have to say, but that's all right. You don't tell the quality of a master by the size of his crowds, remember."

  
         
"Don, I'll try it, I promise. But I'll run away forever as soon as I stop having fun with the job. "

  
         
Nobody touched the Travel Air, but its propeller turned, its engine pouted cold blue smoke, and the rich sound of it filled the meadow. "Promise accepted, but . . . " and he looked at me and smiled as if he didn't understand me.

  
         
"Accepted but what ? Speak. Words. Tell me. What's wrong ?"

  
         
"You don't like crowds," he said.

  
         
"Not pulling at me, no. I like talk and ideas back and forth, but the worship thing you went through, and the dependence . . . I trust you're not asking me . . . I've already run away. . ."

  
         
"Maybe I'm just dumb, Richard, and maybe I don't see something obvious that you see very well, and if I don't see it will you please tell me, but what is wrong with writing it down on paper? Is there a rule that a messiah can't write what he thinks is true, the things that have been fun for him, that work for him ? And then maybe if people don't like what he says, instead of shooting him they can burn his words, hit the ashes with a stick? And if they do like it, they can read the words another time, or write them on a refrigerator door, or play with whatever ideas make sense to them? Is there something wrong with writing?
 
But maybe I'm just dumb."

  
         
"In a book?"

  
         
"Why not ?"

  
         
"Do you know how much work... ? I promised never to write another word again in my life!"

  
         
"Oh Sorry " he said "There you have it. I didn't know that." He stepped on the lower wing of the airplane, and then into the cockpit "Well. See you around. Hang in there and all that. Don't let the crowds get to you. You don't want to write it, you're sure?"

  
         
"Never," I said. "Never another word."

  
         
He shrugged and pulled on his flying gloves pressed the throttle forward, and the sound of the engine burst and swirled around me until I woke under the wing of the Fleet with the echoes of the dream still in my ears.

 
          
I was alone, the field was as silent as green-autumn snow soft over the dawn and the world.

and then for the fun of it, before I was fully awake, I reached for my journal and began to write, one messiah in a world of others, about my friend:

             
 
 
1. THERE WAS A MASTER COME UNTO THE EARTH,

          
  
BORN IN THE
HOLY
LAND
OF
INDIANA
,