The End of the Road by John Barth Read Free Book Online

of mine again for at least a week.
    As they were leaving, Rennie happened to say, “Oh, Jake, we forgot to congratulate you about your job.” (This sort of oversight, I later learned, was characteristic of the Morgans.)
    “You’re jumping the gun, aren’t you?”
    “What do you mean?” Joe asked. “Didn’t Dr. Schott ever get hold of you?”
    “Nope.”
    “Well, you got the job. The Committee met this morning and decided. I guess Schott called while you were in Ocean City, or while you were asleep this evening.”
    They both congratulated me, awkwardly—for they were unable to express affection, friendship, or even congratulation easily—and then left. I still felt too fine to sleep, so I read my World Almanac for a while and listened to Mozart’s Ein Musikalischer Spass on the record player. I was beginning to feel at home in my room and in Wicomico; the Morgans pleased me; and I was still in an unusual state of excitement from the afternoon’s sexual adventure and Joe’s keen intelligence. But I must have been thoroughly fatigued by these things, too, and from my day on the beach, for at six-thirty in the morning I woke with a start, having dropped unintentionally into a sound sleep. The World Almanac was still in my lap, open to page 96: “Air Line Distances Between Principal Cities of the World”; Ein Musikalischer Spass was playing for what must have been the fiftieth time; and the sun, just rising between two dark brick houses across the street, shot a blinding beam directly over my lap into Laocoön’s face, contorted noncommittally in bright plaster.

4
    I Got Up, Stiff from Sleeping in the Chair
    I GOT UP, STIFF FROM SLEEPING IN THE CHAIR, showered, changed my clothes, and went out to breakfast. Perhaps because the previous day had been, for me, so unusually eventful, or perhaps because I’d had relatively little sleep (I must say I take no great interest in causes), my mind was empty. All the way to the restaurant, all through the meal, all the way home, it was as though there were no Jacob Horner today. After I’d eaten I returned to my room, sat in my rocker, and rocked, barely sentient, for a long time, thinking of nothing.
    Once I had a dream in which it became a matter of some importance to me to learn the weather prediction for the following day. I searched the newspapers for the weather report, but couldn’t find it in its usual place. I turned the radio on, but the news broadcasters made no mention of tomorrow’s weather. I dialed the Weather number on the telephone (this dream took place in Baltimore), but although the recording described the current weather conditions it told me nothing about the forecast for the next day. Finally, in desperation, I called the Weather Bureau directly, but it was late at night and no one answered. I happened to know the chief meteorologist’s name, and so I called his house. The telephone rang many times before he answered, and then it seemed to me that I detected an uneasiness in his voice.
    “What is it?” he asked.
    “I want to know what weather we’ll be having tomorrow,” I demanded. “It’s terribly important: you see, I—”
    “There’s no use your trying to impress me,” the meteorologist said. “No use at all. What made you suspicious?”
    “Suspicious of what? I assure you, sir, I just want to know what the weather will be tomorrow. I can’t say I see anything suspicious in that question.”
    “There isn’t going to be any weather tomorrow, if you must know.”
    “What?”
    “You heard me. I said there isn’t going to be any weather tomorrow. All our instruments agree. You mustn’t be skeptical. No weather.”
    “But that’s impossible!”
    “I’ve said what I’ve said,” the weatherman grumbled. “Take it or leave it. No weather tomorrow, and that’s that. Leave me alone, now; I have to sleep.”
    That was the end of the dream, and I woke up very much upset. I tell it now to illustrate a difference between moods