A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan

Author:Randall Kenan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2022-04-19T18:22:00+00:00

April 30, 1984

2:40 am

Horace sat dumbfounded in the puke-green Buick. He recognized the great black asphalt parking lot just off the east wing of his high school. Why was he sitting here? He could not remember what had brought him here or even driving here or arriving. Suddenly he opened his eyes and he was here. Though he remembered remembering, the church, the baptism, the school . . . the garden? It was neither clear nor chronological, and the images, the shards of feelings slicing at his heart caused him more confusion.

But he did remember the voice, and its seeming plan for him. Where was it? He derived something like comfort in thinking there was a power at work, no matter how terrifying. The course had been lain. Decisions were out of his hands. He was now a pawn.

Dousing the headlights, he stepped out of the car, turning around, half expecting to see someone there. Who? Song lyrics jingle-jangled in his head, Take this hammer, carry it to the Captain . . . He felt a loss. Why? Baffled, he shrugged, finally turning from the car and walking toward the school.

As he walked across the tarmac trying his best to keep the broken glass, can tops, and pebbles from cutting his bare feet, memories welled up of the mornings in fall, winter, and spring when this parking lot was full of cars. Toyotas. Hondas. Ford Rangers. Old Cadillacs. Those nice Volkswagen Rabbits purchased by eager-to-please parents or Pontiac Firebirds from overly indulgent, well-to-do parents; those pickup trucks given to grandsons by grandfathers who could no longer shift the gears; the Chevrolets, the Mercurys, the Chryslers that doubled as family cars, and those cheap, easy purchases that the thrifty and the hard-working bought with their savings from summer jobs and after-school jobs in the supermarket or the shoe shop or McDonald’s. Those assortments of clinking, honking, grinding, guzzling machines were emblems of pride, an accumulated source of self-importance among Horace’s peers. People who drove to school were a notch above those who rode the bus, whether they drove a Mazda RX7 or a 1954 Dodge truck, for they were independent. They were one step closer to being grown up.

Horace made it across the parking lot with only a cut or two on his feet. He sat down on a squat pylon among a row that separated the lot from the schoolyard, and examined his feet one at a time, picking out pebbles and such. Once again he sat beneath a high nightlamp, and once again he was oblivious to his nakedness. He looked up at the dim monolith, gray and silent, its windows reflecting the crescent moon, its flat top blending in with the sky.

South York County High School belonged to a different era. Its original hull had been built in the late fifties, with a cafeteria added in the early sixties, a gymnasium in the early seventies, a business annex in the late seventies, and most recently a huge auditorium with a music chamber for the band.

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