A Death in the Family - James Agee [131]
Andrew stopped and for the first time looked at Rufus. His eyes were desperate. “He stayed there all the way down, Rufus,” he said. “He never stirred, except just to move his wings that way, until it grated against the bottom like a—rowboat. And just when it did the sun came out just dazzling bright and he flew up out of that—hole in the ground, straight up into the sky, so high I couldn’t even see him any more.” He began to climb the hill again, and Rufus worked hard again to stay abreast of him. “Don’t you think that’s wonderful, Rufus?” he said, again looking straight and despairingly before him.
“Yes,” Rufus said, now that his uncle really was asking him. “Yes,” he was sure was not enough, but it was all he could say.
“If there are any such things as miracles,” his uncle said, as if someone were arguing with him, “then that’s surely miraculous.”
Miraculous. Magnificent. He was sure he had better not ask what they were. He saw a giant butterfly clearly, and how he moved his wings so quietly and grandly, and the colors of the wings, and how he sprang straight up into the sky and how the colors all took fire in the sunshine, and he felt that he probably had a fair idea what “magnificent” meant. But “miraculous.” He still saw the butterfly, which was resting there again, waving his great wings. Maybe “miraculous” was the way the colors were streaks and spots in patterns on the wings, or the bright flickering way they worked in the light when he flew fast, straight upwards. Miraculous. Magnificent.
He could see it very clearly, because his uncle saw it so clearly when he told about it, and what he saw made him feel that a special and good thing was happening. He felt that it was good for his father and that lying there in the darkness did not matter so much. He did not know what this good thing was, but because his uncle felt that it was good, and felt so strongly about it, it must be even more of a good thing than he himself could comprehend. His uncle even spoke of believing in God, or anyway, if anything could ever make him believe in God, and he had never before heard his uncle speak of God except as if he disliked Him, or anyway, disliked people who believed in Him. So it must be about as good a thing as a thing could be. And suddenly he began to realize that his uncle told it to him, out of everyone he might have told it to, and he breathed in a deep breath of pride and of love. He would not admit it to those who did believe in God, and he would not tell it to those who didn’t, because he cared so much about it and they might swear at it, but he had to tell somebody, so he told it to him. And it made it much better than it had been, about his father, and about his not being let to be there at just that time he most needed to be there; it was all right now, almost. It was not all right about his father because his father could never come back again, but it was better than it had been, anyway, and it was all right about his not being let be there, because now it was almost as if he had been there and seen it with his own eyes, and seen the butterfly, which showed that even for his father, it was all right. It was all right and he felt as his uncle did. There was nobody else, not even his mother, not even his father if he could, that he even wanted to tell, or talk about it to. Not even his uncle, now that it was told.
“And that son of a bitch!” Andrew said.
He was not quite sure what it meant but he knew it was the worst thing you could call anybody; call anybody that, they had to fight, they had a right to kill you. He felt as if he had been hit in the stomach.
“That Jackson,” Andrew said; and now he looked so really angry that Rufus realized that he had not been at all angry before. “‘Father’ Jackson,” Andrew said, “as he insists on being