Bullet Park

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"Are you the holy man?" Hammer asked.

"Oh no, no indeed. I've never claimed to be that. You must excuse me. I am very tired tonight."

"You cure the sick?"

"Sometimes, sometimes. I help with prayers but I am so tired tonight that I cannot help myself. I have said a hundred times that I am sitting in a house by the sea at four o'clock and that it is raining but I know that it is half past five and I am sitting in an old chair over a funeral parlor."

"You remember Tony Nailles?"

"Yes."

"I am going to kill him," Hammer said. "I am going to burn him on the altar of Christ's Church."

"Get out of here," the swami said. "Get out of the Temple of Light."

Paint me a small railroad station then, ten minutes before dark. Beyond the platform are the waters of the Wekonsett River, reflecting a somber afterglow. The architecture of the station is oddly informal, gloomy but unserious, and mostly resembles a pergola, cottage or summer house although this is a climate of harsh winters. The lamps along the platform burn with a nearly palpable plaintiveness. The setting seems in some way to be at the heart of the matter. We travel by plane, oftener than not, and yet the spirit of our country seems to have remained a country of railroads. You wake in a pullman bedroom at three a.m. in a city the name of which you do not know and may never discover. A man stands on the platform with a child on his shoulders. They are waving goodbye to some traveler, but what is the child doing up so late and why is the man crying? On a siding beyond the platform there is a lighted dining car where a waiter sits alone at a table, adding up his accounts. Beyond this is a water tower and beyond this a well-lighted and empty street. Then you think happily that this is your country-unique, mysterious and vast.

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