“Yes—?” he said.
We stood there, riven, for what could not have been more than five seconds. But, O Christ, many things happened in those five swift seconds.
I saw Ralph Underhill.
I saw him clearly.
And I had not seen him since I was twelve.
Then, he had towered over me to pummel and beat and scream.
Now he was a little old man.
I am five foot eleven.
But Ralph Underhill had not grown much from his twelfth year on.
The man who stood before me was no more than five feet two inches tall.
I towered over him.
I gasped. I stared. I saw more.
I was forty-eight years old.
But Ralph Underhill, forty-eight, had lost most of his hair, and what remained was threadbare gray, black and white. He looked sixty or sixty-five.
I was in good health.
Ralph Underhill was waxen pale. There was a knowledge of sickness in his face. He had traveled in some sunless land. He had a ravaged and sunken look. His breath smelled of funeral flowers.
All this, perceived, was like the storm of the night before, gathering all its lightnings and thunders into one bright concussion. We stood in the explosion.
So this is what I came for? I thought. This, then, is the truth. This dreadful instant in time. Not to pull out the weapon. Not to kill. No, no. But simply—
To see Ralph Underhill as he is in this hour.
That’s all.
Just to be here, stand here, and look at him as he has become.
Ralph Underhill lifted one hand in a kind of gesturing wonder. His lips trembled. His eyes flew up and down my body, his mind measured this giant who shadowed his door. At last his voice, so small, so frail, blurted out:
“Doug—?”
I recoiled.
“Doug?” he gasped. “Is that you?”
I hadn’t expected that. People don’t remember! They can’t! Across the years? Why would he know, bother, summon up, recognize, call?
I had a wild thought that what had happened to Ralph Underhill was that after I left town, half of his life had collapsed. I had been the center of his world, someone to attack, beat, pummel, bruise. His whole life had cracked by my simple act of walking away thirty-six years ago.
Nonsense! Yet, some small crazed mouse of wisdom scuttered about my brain and screeched what it knew: You needed Ralph, but, more! he needed you! And you did the only unforgivable, the wounding, thing! You vanished.
“Doug?” he said again, for I was silent there on the porch with my hands at my sides. “Is that you?”
This was the moment I had come for.