Lee and Adam walked out to the shed with Samuel to see him off. Lee carried a tin lantern to
light the way, for it was one of those clear early winter nights when the sky riots with stars and
the earth seems doubly dark because of them. A silence lay on the hills. No animal moved about,
neither grass-eater nor predator, and the air was so still that the dark limbs and leaves of the live
oaks stood unmoving against the Milky Way. The three men were silent. The bail of the tin
lantern squeaked a little as the light swung in Lee’s hand.
Adam asked, “When do you think you’ll be back from your trip?”
Samuel did not answer.
Doxology stood patiently in the stall, head down, his milky eyes staring at the straw under his
feet.
“You’ve had that horse forever,” Adam said.
“He’s thirty-three,” said Samuel. “His teeth are worn off. I have to feed him warm mash with my
fingers. And he has bad dreams. He shivers and cries some-times in his sleep.”
“He’s about as ugly a crow bait as I ever saw,” Adam said.
“I know it. I think that’s why I picked him when he was a colt. Do you know I paid two dollars
for him thirty-three years ago? Everything was wrong with him, hoofs like flapjacks, a hock so
thick and short and straight there seems no joint at all. He’s hammerheaded and swaybacked. He
has a pinched chest and a big behind. He has an iron mouth and he still fights the crupper. With a
saddle he feels as though you were riding a sled over a gravel pit. He can’t trot and he stumbles
over his feet when he walks. I have never in thirty-three years found one good thing about him.
He even has an ugly disposition. He is selfish and quarrel-some and mean and disobedient. To
this day I don’t dare walk behind him because he will surely take a kick at me. When I feed him
mash he tries to bite my hand. And I love him.”
Lee said, “And you named him ‘Doxology.’ ”
“Surely,” said Samuel, “so ill endowed a creature deserved, I thought, one grand possession. He
hasn’t very long now.”
Adam said, “Maybe you should put him out of his misery.”
“What misery?” Samuel demanded. “He’s one of the few happy and consistent beings I’ve ever
met.”
“He must have aches and pains.”
“Well, he doesn’t think so. Doxology still thinks he’s one hell of a horse. Would you shoot him,
Adam?”
“Yes, I think I would. Yes, I would.”
“You’d take the responsibility?”
“Yes, I think I would. He’s thirty-three. His lifespan is long over.”
Lee had set his lantern on the ground. Samuel squatted beside it and instinctively stretched his
hands for warmth to the butterfly of yellow light.
“I’ve been bothered by something, Adam,” he said.
“What is that?”
“You would really shoot my horse because death might be more comfortable?”
“Well, I meant—”
Samuel said quickly, “Do you like your life, Adam?”
“Of course not.”
“If I had a medicine that might cure you and also might kill you, should I give it to you? Inspect
your-self, man.”
“What medicine?”
“No,” said Samuel. “If I tell you, believe me when I say it may kill you.”
Lee said, “Be careful, Mr. Hamilton. Be careful.”
“What is this?” Adam demanded. “Tell me what you’re thinking of.”
Samuel said softly, “I think for once I will not be careful. Lee, if I am wrong—listen—if I am
mistaken, I accept the responsibility and I will take what blame there is to take.”
“Are you sure you’re right?” Lee asked anxiously.
“Of course I’m not sure. Adam, do you want the medicine?”
“Yes. I don’t know what it is but give it to me.”
“Adam, Cathy is in Salinas. She owns a whorehouse, the most vicious and depraved in this whole
end of the country. The evil and ugly, the distorted and slimy, the worst things humans can think
up are for sale there. The crippled and crooked come there for satisfaction. But it is worse than
that. Cathy, and she is now called Kate, takes the fresh and young and beautiful and so maims
them that they can never be whole again. Now, there’s your medicine. Let’s see what it does to
you.”
“You’re a liar!” Adam said.
“No, Adam. Many things I am, but a liar I am not.”
Adam whirled on Lee. “Is this true?”
“I’m no antidote,” said Lee. “Yes. It’s true.”
Adam stood swaying in the lantern light and then he turned and ran. They could hear his heavy
steps run-ning and tripping. They heard him falling over the brush and scrambling and clawing
his way upward on the slope. The sound of him stopped only when he had gone over the brow of
the hill.
Lee said, “Your medicine acts like poison.”
“I take responsibility,” said Samuel. “Long ago I learned this: When a dog has eaten strychnine
and is going to die, you must get an ax and carry him to a chopping block. Then you must wait
for his next con-vulsion, and in that moment—chop off his tail. Then, if the poison has not gone
too far, your dog may recover. The shock of pain can counteract the poison. Without the shock he
will surely die.”
“But how do you know this is the same?” Lee asked.
“I don’t. But without it he would surely die.”
“You’re a brave man,” Lee said.
“No, I’m an old man. And if I should have anything on my conscience it won’t be for long.”
Lee asked, “What do you suppose he’ll do?”
“I don’t know,” said Samuel, “but at least he won’t sit around and mope. Here, hold the lantern
for me, will you?”
In the yellow light Samuel slipped the bit in Doxology’s mouth, a bit worn so thin that it was a
flake of steel. The check rein had been abandoned long ago. The old hammerhead was free to
drag his nose if he wished, or to pause and crop grass beside the road. Samuel didn’t care.
Tenderly he buckled the crupper, and the horse edged around to try to kick him.
When Dox was between the shafts of the cart Lee asked, “Would you mind if I rode along with
you a little? I’ll walk back.”
“Come along,” said Samuel, and he tried not to notice that Lee helped him up into the cart.
The night was very dark, and Dox showed his dis-gust for night-traveling by stumbling every few
steps.
Samuel said, “Get on with it, Lee. What is it you want to say?”
Lee did not appear surprised. “Maybe I’m nosy the way you say you are. I get to thinking. I know
proba-bilities, but tonight you fooled me completely. I would have taken any bet that you of all
men would not have told Adam.”
“Did you know about her?”
“Of course,” said Lee,
“Do the boys know?”
“I don’t think so, but that’s only a matter of time. You know how cruel children are. Someday in
the schoolyard it will be shouted at them.”
“Maybe he ought to take them away from here,” said Samuel. “Think about that, Lee.”
“My question isn’t answered, Mr. Hamilton. How were you able to do what you did?”
“Do you think I was that wrong?”
“No, I don’t mean that at all. But I’ve never thought of you as taking any strong unchanging
stand on any-thing. This has been my judgment. Are you inter-ested?”
“Show me the man who isn’t interested in discussing himself,” said Samuel. “Go on.”
“You’re a kind man, Mr. Hamilton. And I’ve always thought it was the kindness that comes from
not want-ing any trouble. And your mind is as facile as a young lamb leaping in a daisy field.
You have never to my knowledge taken a bulldog grip on anything. And then tonight you did a
thing that tears down my whole picture of you.”
Samuel wrapped the lines around a stick stuck in the whip socket, and Doxology stumbled on
down the rutty road. The old man stroked his beard, and it shone very white in the starlight. He
took off his black hat and laid it in his lap. “I guess it surprised me as much as it did you,” he
said. “But if you want to know why—look into yourself.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“If you had only told me about your studies earlier it might have made a great difference, Lee.”
“I still don’t understand you.”
“Careful, Lee, you’ll get me talking. I told you my Irish came and went. It’s coming now.”
Lee said, “Mr. Hamilton, you’re going away and you’re not coming back. You do not intend to
live very much longer.”
“That’s true, Lee. How did you know?”
“There’s death all around you. It shines from you.”
“I didn’t know anyone could see it,” Samuel said. “You know, Lee, I think of my life as a kind of
music, not always good music but still having form and melo-dy. And my life has not been a full
orchestra for a long time now. A single note only—and that note unchang-ing sorrow. I’m not
alone in my attitude, Lee. It seems to me that too many of us conceive of a life as ending in
defeat.”
Lee said, “Maybe everyone is too rich. I have no-ticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of
the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair.”
“It was your two-word retranslation, Lee—”Thou mayest.’ It took me by the throat and shook
me. And when the dizziness was over, a path was open, new and bright. And my life which is
ending seems to be going on to an ending wonderful. And my music has a new last melody like a
bird song in the night.”
Lee was peering at him’ through the darkness. “That’s what it did to those old men of my family.”
“ ‘Thou mayest rule over sin,’ Lee. That’s it. I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name
you a dozen who were not, and they are the ones the world lives by. It is true of the spirit as it is
true of battles—only the winners are remembered. Surely most men are destroyed, but there are
others who like pillars of fire guide frightened men through the darkness. ‘Thou mayest, Thou
mayest!’ What glory! It is true that we are weak and sick and quarrelsome, but if that is all we
ever were, we would, millenniums ago, have disap-peared from the face of the earth. A few
remnants of fossilized jawbone, some broken teeth in strata of lime-stone, would be the only
mark man would have left of his existence in the world. But the choice, Lee, the choice of
winning! I had never understood it or ac-cepted it before. Do you see now why I told Adam to-
night? I exercised the choice. Maybe I was wrong, but by telling him I also forced him to live or
get off the pot. What is that word, Lee?”
“Timshel,” said Lee. “Will you stop the cart?”
“You’ll have a long walk back.”
Lee climbed down. “Samuel!” he said.
“Here am I.” The old man chuckled. “Liza hates for me to say that.”
“Samuel, you’ve gone beyond me.”
“It’s time, Lee.”
“Good-by, Samuel,” Lee said, and he walked hur-riedly back along the road. He heard the iron
tires of the cart grinding on the road. He turned and looked after it, and on the slope he saw old
Samuel against the sky, his white hair shining with starlight.