Table Of ContentFREDERICK BUECHNER
A
LONG DAY'S
DYING
ALFHED A. K\OJ>F: ~EW YORK
1 9 5 0
~~ THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK, ~~
~ PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. K!\"OPF, I:SC. ~
Copyright 1949 by Frederick Buechner. All rights reserved. No
pari of this book may be reproduced in any form without per
mission in writing from lhe publisher, except by a ret·iewer who
may quote brief passages in a rerJiew to be printed in a magazine
or newspaper. Published simultaneously in Canada by McClel
land g Stewart Limited. Manufactured in the United Stales of
America.
Published January 6, 1950
First and &cond Printings before Publication
Third Printing, January 1950
T,O
N A Y A
with love and wonder
But rise, let us no more contend, nor blame
Each other, blamed enough elsewhere, but strive
In offices of love how we may lighten
Each other's burden in our share of woe;
Since this day's death denounc'd, if aught I see,
Will prove no sudden, but a slow-pac'd evil,
A long day's dying to augment our pain,
And to our seed, (0 hapless seed!), deriv'd.
PARADISE LOST
Book X, line 958./J.
c
H A p T E R
I
TnE MIRROR reflected what seemed at first a priest. A white
robe, which fell from his thick shoulders in crescent folds,
circumscribed with diminishing accuracy the ponderous art
of his great head, and gave to his obesity the suggestion of
vulnerability rather than strength as he sat face to face
with the fact of himself. This effect was intensified by the
resignation with which he suffered what might have been
his acolyte, also dressed in white, either to anoint his
flourishing, gray-brown hair os if in preparation for some
imminent solemnity or to give it a tonsure. The precise
nature of the operation was of apparently little concern to
him, however, for he fixed his eyes simply upon the mirror,
whieh reflected with similar discrimination not so much
any c!Ptails of activity as certain implications of priestli
IIPSs. ThP activity, the ritual foiled to attract his attention
hPI'all'l!' IH· rPg-arded instead only the image of himself, of
T:istram Bone, rPmoved from cin·umstance, with a look of
profound i nl ('llsil y 111 which. . I hrre was, nevertheless, no
,)
A Long Day's Dying
curiosity; a look he had seen occasionally pass between
lovers, possible only after a long romance.
The eyes portrayed upon the glass returned his gaze, the
eyebrows rose, the mouth drew firm in tacit response, and
between the image and its incarnation passed the recogni
tion of the intimacies of a lifetime during the course of
which the two had met only occasionally, for the most part
at moments of comparative composure such as this, yet
knew each other's subtlest transfiguration and most ex
travagant potentiality. The mirror was only a ruse, the
literal translation of an ancient relationship, and in it Bone
had seen himself momentarily as a priest. The anticipation
of his meeting with Elizabeth quick within him, he found
this an observation of considerable poignance and closed
his heavy eyes to it.
The interview was further interrupted by the barber,
who drew from a cabinet a hot towel that he wrapped
about Bone's head and face, leaving a small hole through
which he could breathe. For a moment the heat was over
whelming and a shudder just failed to agitate his weight as
he absorbed it. Then it subsided and gave wa'! to a great
enveloping warmth that dungeoned him in recollections of
past and distant heat, of the South, of red clay roads and
clear skies. Wandering once down such a road, past the
press of pines and mountain laurel, the breathless sweet
ness of southern odors, grass and red earth still damp from
a summer rain, clad in white linen, the perspiration pearled
on his forehead, he had been confronted suddenly by a
A Long Day's Dying 5
hound bitch who leaped down a crumbling bank and fell
upon him in an agony of panting heat and rage. His fore
head paled and grew cold as he stumbled backwards under
the swift impetus, while swallows, startled from their holes
in the red clay embankment, sprang fountainwise into the
air and circled wildly above a conspiracy of crippled pines.
Clutching his stick, he swung it back and gave the hound a
savage blow on the side of the neck that sent it sprawling
and dazed to the road's edge. In the distance, across an un
kempt field of cotton, watery blue smoke curled in colos
sal dalliance.
All this in an instant, followed by the appearance over
the same bank of a tall boy in blue-jeans and a torn shirt
through which his supple body glistened. His thin face
flashed handsomely like a blade in the summer light, and he
shouted something unintelligible and threw himself upon
the dog's assailant. Bone fell heavily to the ground, crush
ing his hat beneath him, and struggled with the younger
man in the brilliant sunlight. He fought without art against
an adversary who had every advantage but that of weight,
which he, Bone, knew to be his own and tried instinctively
to employ by rolling to the top and pressing the boy to the
red earth that had already dyed them both. He felt the
young body pumping hot against his own, his face thrust
firmly into the boy's tanned neck in a torrid, jig-saw fit of
flesh, aud it was for an instaut as if they were lovers there.
Then, with a sudden explosion of strength, he managed to
gain the advantage aud pauted heavily as he kucded upon
6 A Long Day's Dying
the boy's chest. He was frightened by the red streaks on
the face beneath him, but forgot his fear when he saw
similar stains on his own hands that clutched the youth:s
shoulders, on their clothing, and on his hat that lay almost
unrecognizable at his side. It was a different red that
saturated the head of the hound where it arched back
awkwardly into the ditch, whimpering in an extravagance
of pain. The noonday sun fell thick upon the pantomime
and scorched its silence. Quickly, and as something quite
new, he felt the ancient obligation of speech. He knew
neither need, desire, nor ability for angry words but spoke
w·ith a dispassion that mocked the subdued violence of his
position. It had been a mistake. The dog had attacked him,
then the boy. He had had no time to explain. He wanted to
be on his way. There was no answer, and he thought it safe
to arise from his painful crouch. The boy sprang to his
feet, went to his dog, and then, looking over his shoulder,
asked Bone if he was hurt. Bone replied that he was not,
picked up his hat, and continued down the road. The heat
was intense and buzzed like many bees. It made him aware
of his weariness. The barber removed the towel.
Wizard blood, lured by heat from the enchantment of his
bowels and heart to cooler surfaces, flushed the otherwise
pale immensity of his face, which was, by the barber's ac
tion, revealed to him once more, and with it his former ap
prehension concerning what lay before him that early
spring afternoon to do. That this afternoon in particular
was to stand out from among his many similar meetings
A Long Day's Dying 7
with Elizabeth Poor as being somehow of special impor
tance was his idea alone, he knew, and in no plausible way
ascribable to her. Nor could he discover any good reason
even for himself to think it so, unless perhaps his sense that
no human affairs, however amorphous, could endure the
directives of spring without clarifying themselves to some
degree, one way or the other. One way or the other, such
clarification might be his that day, and he welcomed or im
patiently brushed aside the time that had to pass before
the hour of their meeting came upon him.
As part of that time, prolongation or anodyne, a mani
curist approached him now, seated herself on a stool at his
side, and arranged her implements on a small shelf at
tached to the arm of his chair. He watched her decorously
in the mirror as she took his hand in hers and immersed it
in a shallow tray of tepid, soapy water. It seemed again to
be Brother Tristram, Father Bone, who felt that her fingers
agile upon his and the soft texture of the water were temp
tation, the reward for temptation overcome, and the for
giveness for temptation unsuccessfully resisted. He heard
her chatter abstracted by the mirror in which he observed
her, h·amed that he was looking well, that his unusually
long absence from the barber shop had not gone unnoticed,
and wow!Pred that the speaker could sit beside him, his
fingers intimate and safe within her hand as though he had
needed a leader ami she now led him, while the voice re
mained the mirror's. lie rctmned her compliment in g<'n
eral words distilled from the complexities of two months in
