Michael Bishop - Ancient of Days

I am not a complete pagan: I joined in.

The attitude of my own townspeople toward RuthClaire during this period was hard to judge. Many had resented the spring’s unruly influx of visitors and the inconvenience of the highway patrol roadblocks and spot identity checks. Still, most did not hold my former wife accountable for these problems, recognizing that she, too, was a victim of the publicity mill generating the crowds and the clumsy security measures finally obviated by the wall. Now the residents of Beulah Fork wondered about the relationship between RuthClaire and Adam. This preoccupation, depending on their ultimate view of the matter, dictated the way they spoke about and dealt with their unorthodox neighbor. Or would have, I’m sure, if RuthClaire had come into town more often.

One sweltering July day, for instance, I went into the Greyhound Depot Laundry to reclaim the tablecloths I had left to be dry-cleaned. Ben Sadler, a courtly man nearly six and a half feet tall, stooped toward me over his garment-strewn counter and in the blast-furnace heat of that tiny establishment trapped me in a perplexing conversation about the present occupants of Paradise Farm. Sweat beaded on his forehead, ran down his ash-blond temples, and gathered in his eyebrows as if they were thin, ragged sponges not quite thirsty enough to handle the unending flow.

“Listen, Paul, what kind of, uh, creature is this Adam fella, anyway?”

I summarized all the most likely, and all the most asinine, speculations. I used the terms Australopithecus zarakalensis, Homo zarakalensis , and Homo habilis . I used the words ape-man, hominid, primate , and dwarf . I confessed that not even the so-called experts agreed on the genus or species to which Adam belonged.

“Do they say he’s human?” Ben wanted to know.

“Some do. That’s what Homo means, although lots of people seem to think it means something else. Anyway, RuthClaire thinks he’s human, Ben.”

“And he’s black, isn’t he? I mean, I’ve read where the whole human race—even the Gabor sisters and the Osmond family—I’ve read where we’re all descended from tiny black people. Originally, that is.”

“He’s as black as Hershey’s syrup,” I conceded.

“Do you think we’re descended from Adam, Paul? RuthClaire’s Adam, I mean.”

“Not Adam personally. Prehistoric hominids like him, maybe. Adam’s a kind of hominid coelacanth.” I explained that a coelacanth was an ancient fish known only in fossil form and presumed extinct until a specimen was taken from waters off South Africa in 1938. That particular fish had been five feet long. Adam, on the other hand, was about six inches shy of five feet. Therefore, I did not think it absolutely impossible for a retiring, intelligent creature of Adam’s general dimensions to elude the scrutiny of Homo sapiens sapiens for the past few thousand years of recorded human history. Of course, I also believed in the Sasquatch and the yeti….

“That’s a funny idea, Paul—all of us comin’ from creatures two thirds our size and black as Hershey’s syrup.”

“Don’t run for office on it.”

Ben wiped his brow with a glistening forearm. “How does RuthClaire, uh, look upon Adam?” He feared that he had violated propriety. “I mean, does she see him as a brother? Some folks say she treats him like a house nigger from plantation days—which I can’t believe of her, not under no circumstances—and others say he’s more like a two-legged poodle gettin’ the favorite-pet treatment from its lady. I ask because I’m not sure how I’d greet the little fella if he was to walk in here tomorrow.”

“I think she treats him like a houseguest, Ben.” (I hope that’s how she treats him, I thought. The ubiquitous spokesman for the Greater Christian Constituency of America, Inc., had planted a nefarious doubt in my mind.)

Ben Sadler grunted conditional agreement, and I toted my clean tablecloths back across the street to the restaurant.

That evening, a Saturday, the West Bank was packed. Molly Kingsbury was hostessing, Livia George and Hazel were on duty in the kitchen, and two college kids from Tocqueville were waiting tables. I roamed from corner to corner giving assistance wherever needed, functioning not only as greeter, maître d’, and wine steward, but also as busboy, cashier, and commander in chef (ha ha).

My regular patrons demand personal attention—from me, not staff members: a squib of gossip, a silly joke, occasionally a free appetizer or dessert. I try to oblige most of these demands. But this Saturday I was having trouble balancing hospitality and hustle. Although grateful for the crowd, by nine o’clock I was growling at my college kids and nodding perfunctorily at even my most stalwart customers. The muggy summer dusk and the heat from my kitchen had pretty much neutralized the efforts of my ceiling fan and my one laboring air conditioner. In my Haggar slacks and lemon-colored Izod shirt, I was sweating just like Ben Sadler in the Greyhound Depot Laundry.

The door opened. Two teenage boys in jeans, T-shirts, and perforated baseball caps strolled in. Even in the evening, the West Bank did not require coats and ties of its male clientele (shoot, I often worked in the kitchen in shorts and sneakers), but something about these two—Craig Puddicombe and E. L. Teavers—made my teeth grind. I could have seen them in their string-tie Sunday best (as I sometimes did) without feeling any more kindly toward them, and tonight their flat blue eyes and sweat-curled sideburns incited only my annoyance. For one thing, they had left the door open. For another, I had no table for them. What were they doing here? They usually ate at the Deep South Truck Stop on the road to Tocqueville.

“Shut the door,” I told Craig Puddicombe, tonging ice into somebody’s water glass. “You’re letting in insects.”

Craig shut the door as if it were a pane of wraparound glass on an antique china cabinet. E. L. took off his hat. They stood on my interior threshold staring at the art on the walls and the open umbrellas suspended from the ceiling as atmosphere-evoking ornament. They either could not or would not look at the people eating. I approached them because Molly Kingsbury clearly did not want to.

“You don’t have reservations,” I told Puddicombe. “It’s going to be another fifteen or twenty minutes before we can seat you.”

Craig looked at me without quite looking. “That’s okay. You got a minute?”

“Only if it lasts about twelve seconds.”

“We just want to talk to you a bit,” E. L. Teavers said, almost ingratiatingly. “We think your rights are being violated.”

Craig Puddicombe added, “More than your rights, maybe.”

“Fellas,” I said, indicating the crowd, “don’t choose a battle zone for a friendly little chat about human rights.”

“It was now, Mr. Loyd, because we happened to be ridin’ by,” Craig said. “For something this important, hey, you can spare a minute.”

Before I could dispute this point, E. L. Teavers, surveying the interior, said, “My mother remembers when this was Dr. Kearby’s office. This was the waitin’ room, out here. Whites sat over here, the others over that way. People came out of the examination room painted with a purple medicine Dr. Kearby liked to daub around.”

“Gentian violet,” I told him, exasperated. “It’s a bactericide. Quick, now, as quickly as you can, tell me how my rights are being violated.”

“Your wife—” Craig Puddicombe began.

“My ex-wife,” I said.

“Okay, your ex-wife. She’s got a hibber livin’ with her on premises that used to belong to you, Mr. Loyd. How do you feel about that?”