You Will Never See Any God: Stories by Ervin D. Krause Page B
Authors: Ervin D. Krause
Tags: Fiction
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father sat bolt upright, shrieking and panting, his voice strained and loud. “Goddamn!” His eyes bulged, his face flushed scarlet and became ashen, and his voice choked on his scarlet phlegm. “Goddamn!” His voice weakened, and the door opened and the others came in, the doctors and the minister. “God . . . God . . . God.” Old Schwier choked and he reeled, staring at a place above Diedrich’s head. They caught him then and the needles came out, but it was too late. Old Rudolph Schwier was dead.
“He was crying ‘God, God!’” one of the doctors said, his voice hushed and a little awed.
“It’s as if he had seen Him,” the minister said. “He died seeing the God of his forgiveness.”
“Yes,” Diedrich said quietly, folding his hands when the minister began to pray.
Anniversary
Two years to the day, McDonald thought, two years since he had last come through Lincoln, Nebraska, in the dead of winter, going west to see his relatives during the Christmas let-out. Through the begrimed train window he saw the wood frame houses emerge frigidly from the somnolent snow-blown land, and the trees, like exposed fretful nerves, black against the gray December sky. He vaguely remembered the curve of the railroad track and the landscape from that time two years before, but now everything was very clear to him, chiseled there, as if he saw it all for the first time really, as if perhaps his eyes had altered in those two years. And still he felt an eagerness akin to that rush of the time before. There had been the quivering warmth in his body, the specific need, the hurry to get off the train, the push through the clusters of people to see her there, for they had written regularly and impassionedly that first fall. His face colored a little, the prickles of heat he felt were like a mirror to him, as he remembered those letters, the heart yearnings of a newly lonely man who had imagined that he had drunk deeply of unloneliness. And she, Wanda, replying, matched his passion almost word for word (a part of him thoughtcoolly of her at the time and wondered at that, and he had ascribed her parrotings of feeling to her lack of training in communication). McDonald smiled again, thinking of that misjudgment, he who had once thought he knew all of mankind, he, James R. McDonald, assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri, teacher of literature (Truth, Life, Humanity), and of composition.
Six years before, he had come from the Air Force—two pleasant years as an officer at a base in England—armed with his GI bill and, as he now reflected, an empty-headedness, and made his way to the M.A. in one year in the company of ascetics. He, as those others apparently did not, had that perpetual yearning, that perpetual need of a woman, the impelling desire and want, for he was in his early twenties, in the prime of his life, and those two easy years in England had only confirmed his hunger. He had seen associates wed through the same desperation to have a woman (so confessed to him by the grooms in stolid puzzlement over beer glasses a few months following weddings), while he went sardonically and dilatorily on dates with birdy female graduate students—unsexed bodies like storewindow dummies and faces like parakeet beaks—evenings stiff with conversation and milked-out culture and the heady pronouncements of likes, dislikes, and logic, dredged from a convenient book or lecture, and nothing else, while his producing gonads cried to heaven for aid. In the coffeerooms the younger, married professors, affecting crew-cuts and virility, clucked approvingly over the vibrance of Dylan Thomas’s insanities, and sniggered with admiration at the dynamic sex allusions of the visiting literati; they huddled together in closet-like rooms like frigid children before a fireplace to simper at fleshy jokes told by transient linguists. They giggled over Chaucer, and vibrated over Fielding, and snickered over D. H .
“He was crying ‘God, God!’” one of the doctors said, his voice hushed and a little awed.
“It’s as if he had seen Him,” the minister said. “He died seeing the God of his forgiveness.”
“Yes,” Diedrich said quietly, folding his hands when the minister began to pray.
Anniversary
Two years to the day, McDonald thought, two years since he had last come through Lincoln, Nebraska, in the dead of winter, going west to see his relatives during the Christmas let-out. Through the begrimed train window he saw the wood frame houses emerge frigidly from the somnolent snow-blown land, and the trees, like exposed fretful nerves, black against the gray December sky. He vaguely remembered the curve of the railroad track and the landscape from that time two years before, but now everything was very clear to him, chiseled there, as if he saw it all for the first time really, as if perhaps his eyes had altered in those two years. And still he felt an eagerness akin to that rush of the time before. There had been the quivering warmth in his body, the specific need, the hurry to get off the train, the push through the clusters of people to see her there, for they had written regularly and impassionedly that first fall. His face colored a little, the prickles of heat he felt were like a mirror to him, as he remembered those letters, the heart yearnings of a newly lonely man who had imagined that he had drunk deeply of unloneliness. And she, Wanda, replying, matched his passion almost word for word (a part of him thoughtcoolly of her at the time and wondered at that, and he had ascribed her parrotings of feeling to her lack of training in communication). McDonald smiled again, thinking of that misjudgment, he who had once thought he knew all of mankind, he, James R. McDonald, assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri, teacher of literature (Truth, Life, Humanity), and of composition.
Six years before, he had come from the Air Force—two pleasant years as an officer at a base in England—armed with his GI bill and, as he now reflected, an empty-headedness, and made his way to the M.A. in one year in the company of ascetics. He, as those others apparently did not, had that perpetual yearning, that perpetual need of a woman, the impelling desire and want, for he was in his early twenties, in the prime of his life, and those two easy years in England had only confirmed his hunger. He had seen associates wed through the same desperation to have a woman (so confessed to him by the grooms in stolid puzzlement over beer glasses a few months following weddings), while he went sardonically and dilatorily on dates with birdy female graduate students—unsexed bodies like storewindow dummies and faces like parakeet beaks—evenings stiff with conversation and milked-out culture and the heady pronouncements of likes, dislikes, and logic, dredged from a convenient book or lecture, and nothing else, while his producing gonads cried to heaven for aid. In the coffeerooms the younger, married professors, affecting crew-cuts and virility, clucked approvingly over the vibrance of Dylan Thomas’s insanities, and sniggered with admiration at the dynamic sex allusions of the visiting literati; they huddled together in closet-like rooms like frigid children before a fireplace to simper at fleshy jokes told by transient linguists. They giggled over Chaucer, and vibrated over Fielding, and snickered over D. H .
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