Henderson the Rain King

“Why,” he said, “everything about you, Henderson-Sungo, cries out, ‘Salvation, salvation! What shall I do? What must I do? At once! What will become of me?’ And so on. That is bad.”

This was not the moment to tell lies.

“Do you mean would I change

Next, slavery has never really been abolished. More people are enslaved to different things than you can shake a stick at. But it’s no use trying to give you a résumé of my thinking. It’s true I’m often confused but at the same time I am a fighter. Oh, I am a fighter. I fight very hard.”

“What do you fight for, Dad?” said Edward.

“Why,” I said, “what do I fight for? Hell, for the truth. Yes, that’s it, the truth. Against falsehood. But most of the fighting is against myself.”

And I thought, “Oh, shame, shame! Oh, crying shame! How can we? Why do we allow ourselves? What are we doing? The last little room of dirt is waiting. Without windows. So for God’s sake make a move, Henderson, put forth effort. You, too, will die of this pestilence. Death will annihilate you and nothing will remain, and there will be nothing left but junk. Because nothing will have been and so nothing will be left. While something still is—now! For the sake of all, get out.”

This was what made me behave as I did. By three o’clock I was in despair. Only toward sunset the voice would let up. And sometimes I thought maybe this was my occupation because it would knock off at five o’clock of itself. America is so big, and everybody is working, making, digging, bulldozing, trucking, loading, and so on, and I guess the sufferers suffer at the same rate. Everybody wanting to pull together. I tried every cure you can think of. Of course, in an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too.

That’s how it is with my ideas; they seem to get strong while I weaken.

And therefore I thought, this will be one of those mutual-aid deals; where the Arnewi are irrational I’ll help them, and where I’m irrational they’ll help me.

The world may be strange to a child, but he does not fear it the way a man fears. He marvels at it. But the grown man mainly dreads it. And why? Because of death. So he arranges to have himself abducted like a child.

Good nature emanated from her; it seemed to puff out on her breath as she sat smiling with many small tremors of benevolence and congratulation and welcome

the skin of a maned lion