William Gass - Omensetter’s Luck

One Sunday, before the service and against his custom, where the people gathered, he went out to Omensetter, Omuenster's dog, his wife and daughters, and he said, the crowd around him listening on, why don't you come to church, you come to town, why not attend the services instead of throwing stones at the water? and Omensetter smiled and said, why if you like, we will; so presently they did. He'd been a fool, a fool — for he lost his fire. Sin sweetened in his mouth. The climate of the pit grew temperate and the great damnation day drew further off. Consequently Furber was convinced that evil dwelled within the pew where Omensetter sat, and he resolved to speak against it. No longer merely a grim phizzed comedian, he saw his arm outstretched to God, his finger pointing like a thorn upon its branch. He saw his open hand before his face, shielding his eyes from horror, his head thrown back and slightly turned away. He heard his voice echo from his mouth as from a well that drew its water from the center of the earth. Behold, oh Lord, your champion here, your fond believer, for Furber felt his body fill with resolution, and he stood in his study to make the gesture. He jerked his head and he arched his back and he raised his arms, and when his eyes lay naked on his face, he shrieked with joy. Yet when he came before the congregation and took his place and book above it, preparing his words for bearing on the subject, shaping his lips for strong sounds, his certainty grew a hesitation, his strength a meekness, and his sounds came down as softly as the gray birds building in the steeple. He listened to himself as to another man. He preached a God, a law, he never knew. He saw the faces of the people widen with surprise and revelation, and he realized that he was already anticipating the moment when he would stand at the church door awaiting Omensetter's laugh, receiving his felicitations as he stood in line — you sure spoke my mind, Reverend Furber, first rate — while his own hand sank in Omensetter's to its wrist, and his heart turned. I am inhabited, I am possessed, he thought. When the opportunity came he broke off and with great effort drew himself into his study where he swore at the walls and damned Flack for a sooty nigger. But the compliment he dreamed he had received from Omensetter, persistent as a fly, pursued him droning, though now the words were mischievously altered so he heard — you sure spoke my mind, Father Furber, first rate — repeated like a chant of such spiritual profundity its significance could not be caught the first time, and this further increased his already intolerable feeling of futility and despair. Yet by god Omensetter was a stupid fellow; he had too large a mouth; he was wrinkled badly about the eyes; fat padded his face; his hair was always flying. His face was just another — the sixth face, that was all — broadly smiling, widely cracked across. The rain had been rebounding when he'd ducked into the shade of Watson's shop and nearly spitted Omensetter on the point of his umbrella. Was the man wet to the skin? No… but that was the feeling he gave. Actually… what? Tan shirt? open throat? button missing? dry certainly… yes, wet to the skin, beaded, draining, flowering in the water like a splash. A curse on the gray light, on the rain that drove him in, on the foolishness that drove him out in it again to run so unbecomingly, so erratically and without heart, while he wrestled with the catch on his umbrella and stumbled through puddles, his dignity drowning in the tub of his trousers, the rain filling his shoes too and crawling down his back like a party of ants so that when he tried to scratch between his shoulders his hat was shaken loose over his forehead and blown beyond a thin wire fence which he at once charged angrily and angrily shook, and it was there, with the wire responding in his fist, that some sense of the impropriety of his performance reached him, its futility struck him, and its folly… for he could be as easily observed, he supposed, as his hat could, caught on a stalk of last year's cabbage (indeed he imagined the signs brushed up, jumbles of bright red and blue letters that announced his appearance locally, from Friday to Sunday-he was the darkie on the yellow ground — in his famous role as a cheap buffoon, the small black helpless clown the others drenched with water, tickled with unrolling paper tubes and deprived of trousers, so they might implant their grotesque cardboard shoes on his flamboyantly checkered behind, then to goose to the accompaniment of piercing whistles and terrify with firecrackers and packs of little yapping dogs tricked out in tissue paper skins to look like tigers)… its folly was of Egyptian proportions, it nearly brought him to his knees with shame; and he halted himself like an army, folded his umbrella with a great show of composure, and proceeded homeward in a suit of the driest unconcern, head erect, hair knotted, lashes heavy, as if the spring sun were his cover, until, on reaching the churchyard at last, he bolted like a rabbit and threw a tantrum in the vestry, spilling his cuffs and denying the Lord.

Looking back he realized he had unwittingly mimicked Omensetter's habitual manner, for how otherwise would Omensetter have gone home through the rain, if he had wished to, but like one in his natural element, gently at ease, calmly collecting his pleasures. If this was a consequence of simply shaking hands, it made him a kind of deadly infection. I am inhabited, Furber said. Ah god, I am possessed. He would sit in his study for hours, searching his mind for some clue to the nature of the creature, the source of what he grimly called "Omensetter's magic," while from his window he would watch the pigeons wheeling to occupy his eyes. Finally he sought out Omensetter himself when Omensetter was strolling in the fields. Why do you inhabit me, he cried, why do you possess my tongue and turn it from the way it wants to go? Leave me, Omensetter, leave us all. He came abruptly on the man, blurting out his speech before his resolution left him and shouting in his excitement, though the words came just as he'd prepared and frequently rehearsed them. Omensetter halted and turned slowly to face Furber, who must have seemed to have lit like a crow behind him. The fellow's eyes were huge, their gaze steady; his whole body was listening, pointing toward Furber like a beast; yes, like a beast, a cow, exactly: wary, stupid, dumb; yes, as he thought back there was nothing in his manner that could be ascribed to an animal higher, and he had never replied; yet Omensetter had not come to church again, he had returned to skipping stones on the river where the people saw his example and said he was a godless man, while Furber preached against frivolity with heat.

It was truly astonishing the way his stones would leap free of the water and disappear into the glare. Omensetter always chose them carefully. He took their weight in his palm and recorded their edges with his fingers, juggling a number as he walked and tossing the failures down before he curled his index finger around their rims and released them as birds. Furber chose his own stones carefully too. In the beginning, when he had failed so miserably and lost his congregation, he had fallen upon the garden like a besieger and torn away its weeds. You've been in mourning long enough, he declared, enjoying his joke sufficiently he repeated it to Flack who nodded without smiling and responded in his rich contralto: yes, he was a gentle man; a remark which enraged Furber so much that like Moses he flung down the rock he was carrying and shouted: let that be noon and midnight — there; following his words with laughter to cover his confusion.

Now he strode briskly from stone to stone, circling the sixty. How differently we give the semblance of life to the stone, he thought. And it did seem a stone until it skipped from the water… effortlessly lifting… then skipped again, and skipped, and skipped. . a marvel of transcending… disappearing like the brief rise of the fish, a spirit even, bent on escape, lifting and lifting, then almost out of sight going under, or rather never lifting from that side of things again but embraced by the watery element skipping there, skipping and skipping until it accomplished the bottom. Pike's nothing but a shadow himself, merely a thin dim swimming something alongside the boat, a momentary tangle, a whistle of light. The hat too — passing around them, turning, wetly bobbing was due, eventually, to absorb too much, to sag, close up and sink. Omensetter threw horseshoes the same way. He sent them aloft and the heart rose with them, wondering if they'd ever come back, they seemed so light. A soft tish… and the shoe might slip beneath the surface of the air like the Chinese sage, or painter was it? who disappeared into his picture, except that Omensetter managed this miracle for things, for stones and horeshoes, while doing nothing to untie or lighten himself — no, he heavily and completely remained. Pike died of his love, his stone said. Omensetter's stones did not skip on forever either, though they seemed to take heart, or did they renew their fear? from their encounter with the water; but despite this urging each span was less, like that shortness of breath which grows the greater, the greater effort is required — and plip…….. plip… plipplippliplish was their hearts' register and all they were.