Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

In Pace Requiescat

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Beth­le­hem to be born?
—W.B. Yeats

To Poe’s so acute, so prophetic med­i­ta­tion of 150 years ago — that the truly extra­or­di­nary mind or spirit would nec­es­sar­ily find itself iso­lated, hated, and mis­un­der­stood by the soci­ety in which it appeared, and, espe­cially, that news of the emi­nently great should not be sought in biogra­phies but in “the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bed­lam, or upon the gallows” — the life of Joseph Clifton Case bears haunt­ing testimony.

In all of recorded his­tory, who but Case so inti­mately sensed the dread dual­ity of all things, and so per­son­ally suf­fered this jar­ring col­li­sion of oppo­sites, with less ran­cor or self-​​pity, less sor­row or hope?

Because he under­stood those emo­tions were barred to him, by him­self from him­self, for our bet­ter good .…

The Geth­se­mane of know­ing in one’s deep­est heart that each moment’s action will bring an unknown, nearly imme­di­ate, and always con­tra­dict­ing reac­tion; that this law is iron-​​clad and inescapable; and that in one’s own per­son one has been cho­sen to endure and by exam­ple bear the truth of this law into the world — such knowl­edge must utterly destroy or trans­fig­ure a mere mortal.

And that his destruc­tion or the mirac­u­lous alter­ation and tri­umph of his spirit would sum­mon its own oppo­site effect Case clearly saw and so with a steely pas­sion scrupu­lously avoided both care­less­ness and the taint of transcendence .…

Qui­etly, before an instant’s deci­sion, to see already its answer­ing nul­li­fi­ca­tion, and not break or scream would require the spir­i­tual con­sti­tu­tion of the great­est saint. Before the most ten­der of love let­ters leaves the pen to not expect but know with cer­tainty that the beloved will soon receive an answer­ing obscene phone call from a stranger. Or worse, that the friendly hand placed on the head of a child incites the death of some inno­cent elder.

Case saw it, lived with it daily, hourly, by the minute. Rec­ol­lec­tively, metic­u­lously, he was exquis­itely alert to the ever-​​threatening dan­ger of set­ting off the Apoc­a­lypse, the hor­ri­ble echo of love’s unfolding.

“Do I dare to eat a peach?” the great poet rhetor­i­cally asks, and in dis­missal I answer yes, in full knowl­edge of an accom­pa­ny­ing sour odor on the air.

But to wish to give affec­tion, to prof­fer aid, to rush for­ward with uncon­di­tional sup­port, though the most empa­thetic nature urged him on, Case could not do, and did not do, out of dearer love and vig­i­lance for the world at large, for that haughty shib­bo­leth the well-​​being of all human­ity.

What greater love hath a man, that he lay down his life for his brother?

At what age did he first know that he was the One? What were the awful and dim self-​​awakenings and naugh­t­ings, what child­ish appeals to mod­esty and self-​​effacement?

The daily, atten­dant temp­ta­tions dwarf the mind. To throt­tle the downy chick to save the dying pup? To trip the lame boy to cure the paraplegic?

For­ever unable to com­mu­ni­cate this direct line of rela­tion, yet know­ing him­self respon­si­ble and guilty .… How did he endure, with­out going mad or becom­ing the play­thing of Evil, of the sleep­less Other?

And so he made the great renun­ci­a­tion. What strength of nerve in so frail a vessel .…

Because any act would engen­der its per­fect, antag­o­nis­tic corol­lary, to laugh or shout or breathe too deeply would be a curse and cause us to weep or go mute or sti­fle in our beds, Case did noth­ing—

Or nearly noth­ing, as lit­tle of noth­ing as one could do and not die. No, he must live, not for him­self, but for us!

Like some insane, bewil­dered adept, the most sane and aware of men labored end­lessly at com­plete anonymity and insignif­i­cance of both spirit and intel­lect, in bore­dom and medi­oc­rity. If he must yearn, he would yearn micro­scop­i­cally, to con­tain the world’s wounds. How often whole evenings he spent read­ing long lists of ran­dom num­bers I copied from the phone book.

At first think­ing him a gifted child, his fam­ily had soon resigned them­selves to Case’s feeblemindedness.

The day of his birth the Chi­nese crossed the Yalu into Korea. He saw his child­hood friend struck down by a car before his eyes — Case had lin­gered by a white fence, smelling a yel­low climb­ing rose. His first and only roman­tic tryst was the Novem­ber day John Kennedy died. Though con­ceiv­ably he might have pre­vented the Viet Nam and Yom Kip­pur wars by com­mit­ting equiv­a­lent bar­bar­i­ties, he did not cause them .…

Case worked as a sea­sonal field hand, rent­ing a small shack at the out­skirts of Lemas, Cal­i­for­nia, a fruit-​​growing area in the cen­tral San Joaquin Val­ley. The cold, foggy after­noon of Decem­ber 7, 1996 — the day my world changed sud­denly for­ever — I saw him limp­ing along Moun­tain View Avenue and stopped my aunt’s new Lin­coln to offer him assis­tance, not real­iz­ing the nar­row strip of coun­try asphalt was my dis­guised Road to Damascus.

His gray eyes were intel­li­gent and sad, he smiled, then instantly assumed a look of utter impas­sive­ness as I felt a shoot­ing pain race down my right leg and just as quickly dis­ap­pear. Then I saw that in his cal­lused hands he held a wounded orange kit­ten. We intro­duced our­selves and I offered to drive him to the veterinarian.

With mod­est dig­nity, in a soft, flat voice, he explained he had only a few cents and I assured him I would pay the doctor’s cost. In his patched but immac­u­late work clothes he gin­gerly eased him­self down onto my aunt’s leather pas­sen­ger seat. So began my too brief friend­ship with surely the most extra­or­di­nary unknown man in human history .…

Chil­dren mocked him and broke bot­tles in his yard, scored the fend­ers of his aged Dodge with epi­thets. Case was let go from his job, or cheated on his check. He embraced the low­est rung of the low­est lad­der, where, finally, all seas find a level above the heads of the name­less poor. Indeed, who but I was there to reg­is­ter and report back to the world that the Elberta peach tree beyond Case’s win­dow burst into glo­ri­ous red, pre­ma­ture spring bloom as Case lay wracked with flu, then unac­count­ably with­ered overnight, as if frost­bit­ten, as his fever broke?

Surely there must have crossed Case’s rea­son and tempted it a scene of unfath­omable grandeur, that in his sui­cide he might save the world? I have no doubt he would have cho­sen death in a sec­ond, with­out hes­i­ta­tion, if his real intel­lect had not always been upper­most, and his nearly preter­nat­ural intu­ition had not revealed that his self-​​immolation might give birth to the Devil.

Case suf­fered the judg­ments of the igno­rant and small, of those who deigned to notice and pass sen­tence upon him, he who alone held up the world by his staunch refusal of action and achievement!

“He prunes vines so damn slow,” one farmer complained.

“Yeah,” said another, “but he never cuts a wire.”

“What do you see in that Case per­son, any­way?” asked my aunt, lift­ing her porce­lain tea cup. “He’s sooo bor­ing, sooo tedious and com­mon­place. I declare, if you con­tinue this prac­tice of adopt­ing stray cats, one day I’ll have you installed at King’s Rest!”

Ironies por­tioned to a giant resolve!

Many evenings before his smok­ing wood stove Case spoke solemnly, in a voice bled of all melody, in a drugged-​​sounding monot­one, of the need for a super­hu­man dis­ci­pline, of a con­stant aware­ness of mind, body, and soul as human­ity dan­gled from a thread less than slender.

Once, smil­ing rue­fully, per­mit­ting him­self the most mea­ger of ges­tures, Case leaned for­ward and with a fin­ger righted a small bee­tle that had crawled from a log and some­how fallen over on its back, its tiny legs help­lessly fan­ning the air. An instant later, from the ceil­ing, a moth flut­tered down, drown­ing in his drink.

Case turned, and in his eyes I saw the agony of the ages. He returned my stare, like a god in pain, hold­ing the heavy beam from the head of his ser­vant. Then he gri­maced, his unlined face seemed to crack like stone, form a web of eter­nal sad­ness, before a group of pass­ing boys jeered wildly from the street and instan­ta­neously the bal­anc­ing veil of blank­ness fell again.

I remem­ber the neatly made, quilt-​​covered mil­i­tary cot where he slept, how it hud­dled against the cin­der block wall. And on the rude night table the dim clock. How it must have tolled the watches of the night! (On my man­tel, I keep its burned rem­nant as a relic, more pre­cious than a saint’s tooth.)

He explained that he slept lit­tle, he was ter­ri­fied to dream, though from child­hood he had taught him­self to close his eyes and see only a large rec­tan­gle, like a domino. One half was white, one black, always, with­out shift or move­ment, in per­fect pro­por­tion. Once, with the men­tal dis­ci­pline of a yogi, Case sought our sal­va­tion in night­mares, but his fatal nature made him prone to the ran­dom vision of splendor—

He was not a god, not per­fect, only a man. Blandly, he men­tioned a dream he had the week before, of a sweet­heart he had admired from a dis­tance and never spo­ken to or approached, indeed never after­ward thought of, of the bliss of unity he felt in her imag­ined embrace.

“Surely,” he said, “you saw Tuesday’s paper.”

No one could have missed the lurid head­lines and the pic­tures splashed across the front pages of the tabloids, the account of the bru­tal attack, appar­ently unpro­voked and at ran­dom, on the well-​​known movie actress—

His unmov­ing, gray eyes acknowl­edged the murder.

But what har­row­ing upheavals had his unstint­ing vig­i­lance pre­vented? Poten­tial Author of All Crimes, of all mer­cies, he sought to be noth­ing, for the good of Everyman.

Joseph Case, 59, Yesterday’s Hero, Dead in Freak Gas Explosion

So announced the paper’s unsearch­ing obit­u­ary of Octo­ber 7 (the anniver­sary of the death of the sad Vir­gin­ian, Edgar Allan Poe), before the Third Day and the final (?) episode in the chain of sin­gu­lar events that has trans­formed the world of jour­nal­ism and All Things so metic­u­lously.

(I con­fess I enjoyed a grim, mirth­less sat­is­fac­tion, a sense of belated, just ret­ri­bu­tion, when the thumb-​​sized mete­orite crashed through my aunt’s pic­ture win­dow into her bowl of tomato bisque. I watched her drip­ping and wail­ing amid sud­den steam and bril­liant shards, the sil­ver spoon still raised toward her lips, before I moved to her aid — )

I had sensed Case’s end with appre­hen­sion, the day before his death, when on the news I saw his fleet­ing, furtive pro­file and heard his mum­bled words of denial, as the intru­sive reporters sur­rounded him, demand­ing a juicy quote:

How had he sensed the predica­ment of the careen­ing bus, sprinted to catch up, jumped aboard, and above the body of the stricken dri­ver guided the chil­dren from the path of the roar­ing train?

“Don’t know. Luck, I guess. Gotta go now .…”

He had known of the impend­ing wreck, because he had inad­ver­tently caused it.

Tow­ers fall and bright pavil­ions rise, lakes retreat under­ground and gey­sers shoot sud­denly into the light. There is weep­ing and wail­ing, a gnash­ing of teeth. And exal­ta­tions, rap­ture. (Iron­i­cally, it is my aunt who has become a res­i­dent of the sud­denly over­flow­ing King’s Rest San­i­tar­ium.) Under­neath the fren­zied out­pour­ings abides the unde­tected, unstated shin­ing rib­bon of truth:  Case Is Dead, Now a New World Is Born!

Let us med­i­tate on its prophet, its sav­ior, its sac­ri­fi­cial lamb .… Its antithe­sis?

What were Case’s thoughts, his mind tee­ter­ing like the Earth itself on its axis, at the moment of anni­hi­la­tion? Even then, surely, as the air flashed and turned to fire, he was think­ing of us. Per­haps, even, he imag­ined the supremely Evil, in the ulti­mate act of service?

At his entomb­ment, in the light of a New Dawn, I was the only mourner.

The End

– by Nels Hanson

_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

 

Nels Han­son grad­u­ated from UC Santa Cruz and received an MFA from the U of Mon­tana. His fic­tion received the San Fran­cisco Foundation’s James D. Phe­lan Award and a cita­tion in its Joseph Henry Jack­son com­pe­ti­tion. Nels Hanson’s sto­ries have appeared in Anti­och Review, Texas Review, Black War­rior Review, South­east Review, Long Story, Short Story, South Dakota Review, Starry Night Review and other lit­er­ary jour­nals. A story, “The Death of Zorro,” is now appear­ing in The Six­ers (www​.six​er​sre​view​.com).

 

Copy­right© 2009, by Nels Han­son. All Rights Reserved.

 

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