The Rebirth of Yost

While Waiting for his Friends, the Armours, to come and bear him to his tomb, the Reverend Mr. Yost watched himself on Merv Griffin. He was the last guest. The producer had brought him on with less than five minutes to go; and now, as Yost watched in his apartment with Magdalena, his pregnant cat, it was three minutes to one. Aliza Kashi was seated to his right and Marty Allen shared the desk with Merv Griffin.

"Well, Merv," Yost himself was saying, "there are different ways to think about it. For instance, this new CBS show of yours. Well, that's sort of a rebirth, in a way. You're doing the same number, if you know what I mean, for a different network. That's all reincarnation is, really. Same number, new network."

"But aren't you supposed to improve or something?" Merv Griffin was looking around at Marty Allen, who (continued on page 90)rebirth of yost(continued from page 87) was deadpanning at the studio audience. "Isn't your soul supposed to get better each time?"

"I'm coming back as Raquel Welch," Marty Allen said.

"Well, yes," Yost watched himself say, "hopefully, each time around, you polish the number."

"And have you?"

"Not as much as I hope to. The thing is, you lose a lot when you let death and rebirth just happen to you. You forget everything. You get these flashes now and then--déjà vus. But mostly, you forget. Your act doesn't really improve. That's why, this time, I'm making a conscious decision to die. Tonight," he added.

"I'm getting out of here," Marty Allen said. The camera showed him pantomiming a fast exit.

"Not on your show, of course, Merv," Yost heard himself say. The camera returned to his face. "I wouldn't do that to you. You'd get too much lweehem keluhtak."

Yost, seated on his bed, stroking Magdalena, nodded. The show's editors had scrambled the tape. He had actually said "Catholic mail."

"Tonight, later. At the home of my friends, the Armours."

"Joseph Armour? Like in the society columns, the Armours?"

"He and his wife are old friends. They've prepared a place for me in their house."

"But how will we know you when you come back? Who will you be?"

Yost watched himself hesitate.

"Well, if I knew exactly who I was going to be, I could skip that reincarnation and go on to the next, couldn't I? So--"

"But how will we know it's not a gag?"

"Oh, it's not a gag--"

"But how will we know?" Merv Griffin was leaning toward him, intensely imperturbable.

"I'll come back on your show," Yost said. "The new me."

Merv Griffin displayed boyish confusion. "What about all these kids who follow you? All your disciples?" He gestured toward the balcony. There was a burst of applause. "What will they do without you?"

Yost shuddered. "Oh, they'll be fine," he watched himself say. "They know I'm coming back."

"They know everything about you, don't they?"

"I've had no secrets from my friends."

"But whose baby will you be?" Aliza Kashi asked.

"Johnson and Johnson's," Marty Allen said. Merv Griffin grinned. The band struck up the show's theme. Yost, hearing his front doorbell, let Magdalena off his lap. "Good night, Marty. Aliza, good night. Phil Ford, Mimi Hines, Genevieve. Good night, Rocky. Thank you, Dr. Yost. I hope you were putting us on. Aliza hopes you weren't. Good night--"

He turned off the TV and walked to his front door, followed by Magdalena. It was quiet outside in the hall, but nevertheless, he lifted the disk of the peephole. For several days now, the kids had been sitting watch outside his building, coming and going in shifts, and occasionally they got past the doorman and came up and pounded on his door. It had been a torturous week and Yost was glad he had waited until the last night to go on Merv Griffin. Otherwise, there would have been even more kids. Checking the hall now, he saw, through the fisheye lens, not kids, thank God, not disciples, but the Armours, Joseph and Thea, come to fetch him. He opened the door.

"The place is swarming with kids," Joseph Armour said, scowling.

"We can take the service elevator," Yost said. "It goes straight to the basement. There's a side exit. The kids have been here all week."

"How awful."

"On the Griffin show, I mentioned I was going to your house tonight. There were kids in the studio audience. They're apt to spread the word."

"I dare say," Joseph Armour said. Thea looked about to cry.

"Let's go," Yost said, picking up Magdalena and nuzzling her face. She jumped heavily to the floor and padded into the kitchen. Yost watched her go behind the sink to her nest; then, smiling to himself, he went out into the hall and locked the door. He waited while the Armours summoned the service elevator and then ran down the hall. In the other shafts, he could hear the voices of kids on their way up to his floor. Well, they had missed him. He got into the service elevator with the Armours and it sank to the basement. He waited with Thea while her husband went to tell his chauffeur to drive around to the side exit.

"How do you feel?" Thea asked in a quiet voice.

"Sad." He smiled at her.

"I'm sad, too." She stared straight ahead. "Joseph still doesn't believe it. Oh, he believes it, I guess, but he's so frightened of it."

"That makes two of us, at least," Yost said pleasantly. He could hear the kids milling around the front entrance of the building. A shout had just gone up. The kids had seen the limousine and were in pursuit. Yost ground his teeth together. Running from the kids marred the performance, but there was no alternative. The thing itself could only work in private. Perhaps it was unwise to have gone on Merv Griffin, he thought, looking at Thea. She was fighting back tears.

"There's no way to know who you'll be?" she said, shaking her head. "Whose baby? Where?"

"No," Yost lied. His mother's pangs would already be under way; his were about to start. He looked up the alley at the limousine coming toward them. The mouth of the alley was clogged with disorderly young men and women, running. The limousine swooped close and Joseph Armour opened the door and Yost and Thea got in. Yost turned in his seat to look at the wretched crowd receding in the rear window. Then, feeling a precise pain over his heart, he faced front.

"Those kids," Thea said. "Those awful kids."

"Yes," Yost nodded.

"Did you see that one girl?" Joseph Armour shook his head. "Fifteen years old, if that. With a baby in her arms, running. And there were others. Pregnant girls!"

"They know too much about you," Thea said to Yost. "They know everything you've ever been or done."

"Reason enough to get reborn," Yost said with a smile.

"But what if they claim their kids are you? What then?"

"Don't worry about the kids," Yost said. The limousine shot into the park. Rain had started and the large drops exploded into petals on the windows. Yost sat back, savoring the deep, moody heat of the interior, letting his body merge with the upholstery. The pain over his heart, referred from his bowels, leaped to his shoulder. It had started in earnest. He could feel his skull pressing against his flesh and the blood throbbing across the bridge of his nose. He let his mind go to his chest, where his heartbeats were merging. It was different from when the heart stood still, a thing that came unexpectedly. This was a matter of fear and concentration. He had rehearsed many hours for this night.

"My God, my God," Joseph Armour said. They were out of the park and turning up the street to the Armours' town house. Through a thick haze, Yost saw the kids. The word had spread. There were more here than at his place, hundreds, and cop cars were going slowly along the street, lights turning in the rain. A police line had been set up and Yost saw two members of a TV camera crew. The cops were clearing a passage for the limousine. Yost looked past Thea at the kids pressing toward the car, which did not slow down but proceeded directly into the Armours' garage, the door dropping behind them. Yost could hear the kids starting to chant in the street: They wanted to see him, to be (concluded on page 198)rebirth of yost(continued from page 90) part of this moment, to watch, and Yost felt both a familiar pride and, as the garage doors locked, relief. He got out of the limousine and followed the Armours into a waiting elevator, which rose rapidly and opened. He was on the top floor of the Armours' town house and his head was bulging with fuzzy pressure. He could hear the awful chanting of the kids, now four stories below.

"Come," Thea said. Following, Yost felt his body's compactness, as if he were standing on his own shoulders. Thea, her eyes distinctly moist, was showing him into a small, unlit bedroom. There was an uncovered bed in the middle of the room and a TV set in one corner. The other furniture had been cleared. Yost poured himself onto the bed, feeling the mattress become a mold for his body. His shoulder swelled with pain.

"Now?" said Thea. "So quickly?" She and Joseph were standing at the door.

Yost nodded.

"I'll tell the cops to chase the kids," Joseph said.

"Don't bother," Yost said hoarsely, smiling.

"Goodbye!" Thea flung herself next to the bed and was kissing his face. Yost could feel the tears sinking into his pores. Joseph had Yost's hand between his and was pressing it tightly. He shook his head again and the Armours were gone. He heard the click of the door catch. It was now dark in the room, except for blue refractions from the cop lights. The shouts of the faithful collided in his skull. They would never know. Smiling, he could not tell if his eyes were open or closed, whether he was lying across the bed or head to foot; and for a moment, he thought he was outside in the living room with the Armours, and then he felt his head pressing into the pillow and his feet on the floor, and he was both places, trembling with delight. He lay as still as possible, letting the blood throb a last time in his hands and feet, and his heart was a tiny sphere of flesh hanging in the cave of his chest. Pain burst from his shoulder and down his arm, real beyond fear. Now was when others grabbed at pills, the phone, madness.

"Yost!"

Looking up through failing eyes, he saw the faces of the Armours. The door was open behind them and they were leaning over the bed, calling desperately to him, gesturing toward the window, the street below, and toward the TV set in the corner. He could barely make out the Armours but saw the TV flicker and the sweep of cop lights across the wall, broken by blinds. His heart hung in his chest and laughter was wedged in his throat.

"They're doing it!"

"Down there. Mothers! Pregnant kids! Saying their babies are you!"

"How will we ever know?"

"It'll look like a hoax!"

"Yost!"

On the TV screen, he saw the late news, the cops around the Armours' town house, lights in the rain, reporters, and young girls clutching their bellies or thrusting their infants at the cameras and screaming. He saw the bellies, the babies. So many former Yosts. He grinned. His soul sprang, his lungs were scalded, the laughter in his throat escaped and became a desperate meow. Hot bubbles filled his furry nose. He saw his apartment door open, his kitchen, Magdalena, kids. One of them had him by the scruff of the neck and was drowning him in the sink.