Don DeLillo - Americana

"All that cruelty and superstition," my mother said.

"Life was cheap in those days, Ann."

"Who were all those people?" she said. "Think of them all, living in caves and huts. Back to the dawn of time. Worshipping bears and monkeys. Millions of souls. How insignificant they seem."

"I know what you mean," my father said. "It's almost impossible to conceive of all those people killing each other and praying to the sun. It makes you think that what you do in your life doesn't make a whole lot of difference. Why should we be any more significant than those primitives?"

"But we are, Clinton."

"Those are good notes, Jane," I said.

"I take them down in shorthand and then copy them out later," she said. "It's the best way to do it."

"It's incredible," my father said. "The way they disregarded human life. But still they were men and women. We're sitting here on a Sunday afternoon eating lunch and listening to the ball game. Those people couldn't be more remote. And yet they were men and women. They believed in something."

"The more magical a race is," my mother said, "the less significant the individual is. Magic overwhelms everything. We in the West value human life almost desperately because we have no magic."

"God is magic," Jane said.

"No. God is the opposite of magic. I've talked to William Potter about this. The subject is foreign to him. We all have magic in us, some more than others, but everything we've been taught tends to bury the magic. Consider what we're eating, Clinton. The body of an animal. What could be more primitive?"

"But we don't worship the animal," I said.

"Only because God took human form. What if He had decided to visit earth in the guise of a lion? The primitives seem insignificant to us because they're so remote in time and creed, as your father says, but also because they were so insignificant to each other. That was magic. Magic made them less important than the animals or planets they worshipped. They were not so far from the mark really. I hold with magic. I'm not sure whether it's good or evil. But I know it's there."

"That's good, Ann," my father said. "That's extremely interesting. "

There was nothing to do. All afternoon I sat on the porch, motionless, thinking of the wet bodies of women. It was getting hotter. The stillness was almost absolute. There was a taste of water in the air, warm salt biting the lips. I felt heavy. I wished it would rain. Is this how people die, watching along the street for some sign that will tell them the moment is here, at last, rise up and act, the time is upon us, quickly, into the streets, now, grenades and motorcycles, a warning word, salt on the wet bodies of women. Dr. Weber walked down the street. He was a short man with a mustache. The machete is a most effective weapon, doctor. You are surprised that I speak your language? Harvard. Class of '34. He was carrying his bag. He wore a dark suit. There was a gravy stain on his shirtfront. I waited for him to look toward the porch and give me that yellow smile which doctors and dentists employ so often, a clenched wry smile as the money changes hands, and when he did I turned away and yawned. Practitioner. Oath-taker. I rode out the afternoon on that yawn.

Later, from the window of my room, I watched them arrive for the party. The Old Holly people came mostly on foot. Those from nearby suburbs or from the city, my father's crowd, arrived in cars or took the cab from the station. There was no particular reason for the party but in a way it was something of a debut for me. It was judged that I was old enough now to partake in adult games, presumably on the fringe of things, nursing a tall cool rum collins (or something to that effect) while everyone admired my preppy manners and told me how much I had grown. Between forty and fifty people would be coming. It had been arranged-this I learned from Jane-that a couple named Loomis would be bringing along their daughter Amy, who was my age. Jane herself had invited her current boyfriend, John Retley Tucker, who was Big Bob Davidson's immediate predecessor in virtually every sense of the word. I called him Sweatley Retley. Mary had not been told about the party because nobody knew where she was.

They arrived with the setting of the sun-the Smiths, Bradshaws, Morgans, Hills, Rayburns, Gossages, Peppers, Stevensons, Halidays, Torgesons, Bakers, Hunters, Taylors, Colliers, Barbers and Fishers. Andrew Alexander drove up in his claret-colored Packard, a vintage model which was said to have been owned at one time by Al Capone or F. Scott Fitzgerald, depending on who was telling the story. William Judge and his wife looked up and saw me. I returned their wave and snapped into a midshipman smile, properly wholesome and humble. August Riddle strolled across the lawn. He was the town's crusty old lawyer, reputed to know more about deeds and mortgages than any man in the county. He was a bachelor. His office was suitably cluttered and he was always drinking black coffee and smoking long thin cigars. Mary and I had decided some time ago that Lee J. Cobb or Paul Muni would star in his film biography. He poked his cigar in my direction. The evening was warm and still. I saw a hawk. No sign of rain.

I put on a suit, white shirt and tie. I went downstairs and into the kitchen. The maid, Justina Simpson, who came in four days a week, had been joined for the party by her daughter Mae and her son-in-law Buford Long, who would be serving as bartender. I watched Buford set things up and I decided that tending bar might be a pretty good way to spend one's life. Spanking down big foaming steins of beer to be encircled by the huge skeet-shooting hands of virile novelists. Rattling the cocktail shaker and doing a little samba step for the amusement of the ladies. To be an expert at something. I asked Buford how he liked tending bar and he said the ice made his knuckles cold and sent weird shooting pains up to his head. My mother looked in then and urged me to make an appearance. I stayed for a moment longer and watched Mae carving turkey. She wore a white uniform. She wasn't wearing a slip and I could see the shadow of the inside of her thighs through the sheer white cotton. I went into the living room.

"Why, you're taller than Clyde," Mrs. Hunter said.

The Gossages felt me up, Henry and Lucy, and I spoke with Justin Hill about the Southeast Conference versus the Big Ten. My father had his arm around me for a few minutes. We were talking with Claire Collier, a tall good-looking woman. We were all talking simultaneously. I went over to the Rayburns and Taylors and said all the same things I had just said to Mrs. Collier. My mother usually referred to Mrs. Collier as "the Collier woman." This seemed to imply some distant scandal. I was aware that Amy Loomis and I, who had been at opposite ends of the room, were slowly approaching a confrontation. It was as though all the energies broadcast from the bodies of those forty adults were impelling us toward each other. Amy was tiny. She was talking with Andrew Alexander, who kept patting his own head. My mother had my elbow in her hand and then she was introducing me to Amy, pinching my elbow during the brief silences and letting up as soon as I said something. Amy and I were alone.

"Do you know Jim Gibson?" she said.

"No, I don't think so."

"He's got a green catamaran called Belleweather?"

"What's his name again?"

"Jim Gibson."

"I don't know him."

"That cat really flies."

"I'd like to get one myself. They really go."

"Do you know Marty Hammer?" she said.

"It sounds familiar."

"His father's got a yawl? He gave Marty carte blanche with the yawl for his sixteenth birthday? It's something like fifty-five feet?"

"No, that's not the one I'm thinking of. Does he have a brother named Frank?"

"No."