A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND (BOOK CLUB SHORT STORY)

A Good Man Is Hard To Find

The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennes- see and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. "Now look here, Bailey," she said, "see here, read this," and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did."

Bailey didn't look up from his reading so she wheeled around then and faced the children's mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like rabbit's ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feeding the baby his apricots out of a jar. "The children have been to Florida before," the old lady said. "You all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad. They never have been to east Tennessee."

The children's mother didn't seem to hear her but the eight-year-old boy, John Wesley, a stocky child with glasses, said, "If you don't want to go to Florida, why dontcha stay at home?" He and the little girl, June Star, were reading the funny papers on the floor.

"She wouldn't stay at home to be queen for a day," June Star said without raising her yellow head.

"Yes and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, caught you?" the grandmother asked.

"I'd smack his face," John Wesley said.

"She wouldn't stay at home for a million bucks," June Star said. "Afraid she'd miss something. She has to go everywhere we go."

"All right, Miss," the grandmother said. "Just re- member that the next time you want me to curl your hair."

June Star said her hair was naturally curly.

The next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go. She had her big black valise that looked like the head of a hippopotamus in one corner, and underneath it she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat, in it. She didn't intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days because he would miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush against one of her gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself. Her son, Bailey, didn't like to arrive at a motel with a cat.

She sat in the middle of the back seat with John Wesley and June Star on either side of her. Bailey and the children's mother and the baby sat in front and they left Atlanta at eight forty-five with the mileage on the car at 55890. The grandmother wrote this down because she thought it would be interesting to say how many miles they had been when they got back. It took them twenty minutes to reach the outskirts of the city.

The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The children's mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.

She said she thought it was going to be a good day for driving, neither too hot nor too cold, and she cautioned Bailey that the speed limit was fifty-five miles an hour and that the patrolmen hid themselves behind billboards and small clumps of trees and sped out after you before you had a chance to slow down. She pointed out interesting details of the scenery: Stone Mountain; the blue granite that in some places came up to both sides of the highway; the brilliant red clay banks slightly streaked with purple; and the various crops that made rows of green lace-work on the ground. The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled. The children were reading comic magazines and their mother and gone back to sleep.

"Let's go through Georgia fast so we won't have to look at it much," John Wesley said.

"If I were a little boy," said the grandmother, "I wouldn't talk about my native state that way. Tennessee has the mountains and Georgia has the hills."

"Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground," John Wesley said, "and Georgia is a lousy state too."

"You said it," June Star said.

"In my time," said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, "children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't that make a picture, now?" she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window. He waved

"He didn't have any britches on," June Star said.

"He probably didn't have any," the grandmother explained. "Little riggers in the country don't have things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture," she said.

The children exchanged comic books.

The grandmother offered to hold the baby and the children's mother passed him over the front seat to her. She set him on her knee and bounced him and told him about the things they were passing. She rolled her eyes and screwed up her mouth and stuck her leathery thin face into his smooth bland one. Occasionally he gave her a faraway smile. They passed a large cotton field with five or fix graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island. "Look at the graveyard!" the grandmother said, pointing it out. "That was the old family burying ground. That belonged to the plantation."

"Where's the plantation?" John Wesley asked.

"Gone With the Wind" said the grandmother. "Ha. Ha."

When the children finished all the comic books they had brought, they opened the lunch and ate it. The grandmother ate a peanut butter sandwich and an olive and would not let the children throw the box and the paper napkins out the window. When there was nothing else to do they played a game by choosing a cloud and making the other two guess what shape it suggested. John Wesley took one the shape of a cow and June Star guessed a cow and John Wesley said, no, an automobile, and June Star said he didn't play fair, and they began to slap each other over the grandmother.

The grandmother said she would tell them a story if they would keep quiet. When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very dramatic. She said once when she was a maiden lady she had been courted by a Mr. Edgar Atkins Teagarden from Jasper, Georgia. She said he was a very good-looking man and a gentleman and that he brought her a watermelon every Saturday afternoon with his initials cut in it, E. A. T. Well, one Saturday, she said, Mr. Teagarden brought the watermelon and there was nobody at home and he left it on the front porch and returned in his buggy to Jasper, but she never got the watermelon, she said, because a nigger boy ate it when he saw the initials, E. A. T. ! This story tickled John Wesley's funny bone and he giggled and giggled but June Star didn't think it was any good. She said she wouldn't marry a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The grandmother said she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentle man and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy man.

They stopped at The Tower for barbecued sand- wiches. The Tower was a part stucco and part wood filling station and dance hall set in a clearing outside of Timothy. A fat man named Red Sammy Butts ran it and there were signs stuck here and there on the building and for miles up and down the highway saying, TRY RED SAMMY'S FAMOUS BARBECUE. NONE LIKE FAMOUS RED SAMMY'S! RED SAM! THE FAT BOY WITH THE HAPPY LAUGH. A VETERAN! RED SAMMY'S YOUR MAN!

Red Sammy was lying on the bare ground outside The Tower with his head under a truck while a gray monkey about a foot high, chained to a small chinaberry tree, chattered nearby. The monkey sprang back into the tree and got on the highest limb as soon as he saw the children jump out of the car and run toward him.

Inside, The Tower was a long dark room with a counter at one end and tables at the other and dancing space in the middle. They all sat down at a board table next to the nickelodeon and Red Sam's wife, a tall burnt-brown woman with hair and eyes lighter than her skin, came and took their order. The children's mother put a dime in the machine and played "The Tennessee Waltz," and the grandmother said that tune always made her want to dance. She asked Bailey if he would like to dance but he only glared at her. He didn't have a naturally sunny disposition like she did and trips made him nervous. The grandmother's brown eyes were very bright. She swayed her head from side to side and pretended she was dancing in her chair. June Star said play something she could tap to so the children's mother put in another dime and played a fast number and June Star stepped out onto the dance floor and did her tap routine.

"Ain't she cute?" Red Sam's wife said, leaning over the counter. "Would you like to come be my little girl?"

"No I certainly wouldn't," June Star said. "I wouldn't live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks!" and she ran back to the table.

"Ain't she cute?" the woman repeated, stretching her mouth politely.

"Arn't you ashamed?" hissed the grandmother.

Red Sam came in and told his wife to quit lounging on the counter and hurry up with these people's order. His khaki trousers reached just to his hip bones and his stomach hung over them like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt. He came over and sat down at a table nearby and let out a combination sigh and yodel. "You can't win," he said. "You can't win," and he wiped his sweating red face off with a gray handkerchief. "These days you don't know who to trust," he said. "Ain't that the truth?"

"People are certainly not nice like they used to be," said the grandmother.

"Two fellers come in here last week," Red Sammy said, "driving a Chrysler. It was a old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that?"

"Because you're a good man!" the grandmother said at once.

"Yes'm, I suppose so," Red Sam said as if he were struck with this answer.

His wife brought the orders, carrying the five plates all at once without a tray, two in each hand and one balanced on her arm. "It isn't a soul in this green world of God's that you can trust," she said. "And I don't count nobody out of that, not nobody," she repeated, looking at Red Sammy.

"Did you read about that criminal, The Misfit, that's escaped?" asked the grandmother.

"I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he didn't attack this place right here," said the woman. "If he hears about it being here, I wouldn't be none surprised to see him. If he hears it's two cent in the cash register, I wouldn't be a tall surprised if he . . ."

"That'll do," Red Sam said. "Go bring these people their Co'-Colas," and the woman went off to get the rest of the order.

"A good man is hard to find," Red Sammy said. "Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more."

He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said it was no use talking about it, she was exactly right. The children ran outside into the white sunlight and looked at the monkey in the lacy chinaberry tree. He was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his teeth as if it were a delicacy.

They drove off again into the hot afternoon. The grandmother took cat naps and woke up every few minutes with her own snoring. Outside of Toombsboro she woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady. She said the house had six white columns across the front and that there was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and two little wooden trellis arbors on either side in front where you sat down with your suitor after a stroll in the garden. She recalled exactly which road to turn off to get to it. She knew that Bailey would not be willing to lose any time looking at an old house, but the more she talked about it, the more she wanted to see it once again and find out if the little twin arbors were still standing. "There was a secret:-panel in this house," she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were, "and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found . . ."

"Hey!" John Wesley said. "Let's go see it! We'll find it! We'll poke all the woodwork and find it! Who lives there? Where do you turn off at? Hey Pop, can't we turn off there?"

"We never have seen a house with a secret panel!" June Star shrieked. "Let's go to the house with the secret panel! Hey Pop, can't we go see the house with the secret panel!"

"It's not far from here, I know," the grandmother said. "It wouldn't take over twenty minutes."

Bailey was looking straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horseshoe. "No," he said.

The children began to yell and scream that they wanted to see the house with the secret panel. John Wesley kicked the back of the front seat and June Star hung over her mother's shoulder and whined desperately into her ear that they never had any fun even on their vacation, that they could never do what THEY wanted to do. The baby began to scream and John Wesley kicked the back of the seat so hard that his father could feel the blows in his kidney.

"All right!" he shouted and drew the car to a stop at the side of the road. "Will you all shut up? Will you all just shut up for one second? If you don't shut up, we won't go anywhere."

"It would be very educational for them," the grandmother murmured.

"All right," Bailey said, "but get this: this is the only time we're going to stop for anything like this. This is the one and only time."

"The dirt road that you have to turn down is about a mile back," the grandmother directed. "I marked it when we passed."

"A dirt road," Bailey groaned.

After they had turned around and were headed toward the dirt road, the grandmother recalled other points about the house, the beautiful glass over the front doorway and the candle-lamp in the hall. John Wesley said that the secret panel was probably in the fireplace.

"You can't go inside this house," Bailey said. "You don't know who lives there."

"While you all talk to the people in front, I'll run around behind and get in a window," John Wesley suggested.

"We'll all stay in the car," his mother said.

They turned onto the dirt road and the car raced roughly along in a swirl of pink dust. The grandmother recalled the times when there were no paved roads and thirty miles was a day's journey. The dirt road was hilly and there were sudden washes in it and sharp curves on dangerous embankments. All at once they would be on a hill, looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, then the next minute, they would be in a red depression with the dust-coated trees looking down on them.

"This place had better turn up in a minute," Bailey said, "or I'm going to turn around."

The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months.

"It's not much farther," the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder.

The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey remained in the driver's seat with the cat gray-striped with a broad white face and an orange nose clinging to his neck like a caterpillar.

As soon as the children saw they could move their arms and legs, they scrambled out of the car, shouting, "We've had an ACCIDENT!" The grandmother was curled up under the dashboard, hoping she was injured so that Bailey's wrath would not come down on her all at once. The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee.

Bailey removed the cat from his neck with both hands and flung it out the window against the side of a pine tree. Then he got out of the car and started looking for the children's mother. She was sitting against the side of the red gutted ditch, holding the screaming baby, but she only had a cut down her face and a broken shoulder. "We've had an ACCIDENT!" the children screamed in a frenzy of delight.

"But nobody's killed," June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother limped out of the car, her hat still pinned to her head but the broken front brim standing up at a jaunty angle and the violet spray hanging off the side. They all sat down in the ditch, except the children, to recover from the shock. They were all shaking.

"Maybe a car will come along," said the children's mother hoarsely.

"I believe I have injured an organ," said the grandmother, pressing her side, but no one answered her. Bailey's teeth were clattering. He had on a yellow sport shirt with bright blue parrots designed in it and his face was as yellow as the shirt. The grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was in Tennessee.

The road was about ten feet above and they could see only the tops of the trees on the other side of it. Behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more woods, tall and dark and deep. In a few minutes they saw a car some distance away on top of a hill, coming slowly as if the occupants were watching them. The grandmother stood up and waved both arms dramatically to attract their attention. The car continued to come on slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared again, moving even slower, on top of the hill they had gone over. It was a big black battered hearselike automobile. There were three men in it.

It came to a stop just over them and for some minutes, the driver looked down with a steady expressionless gaze to where they were sitting, and didn't speak. Then he turned his head and muttered something to the other two and they got out. One was a fat boy in black trousers and a red sweat shirt with a silver stallion embossed on the front of it. He moved around on the right side of them and stood staring, his mouth partly open in a kind of loose grin. The other had on khaki pants and a blue striped coat and a gray hat pulled down very low, hiding most of his face. He came around slowly on the left side. Neither spoke.

The driver got out of the car and stood by the side of it, looking down at them. He was an older man than the other two. His hair was just beginning to gray and he wore silver-rimmed spectacles that gave him a scholarly look. He had a long creased face and didn't have on any shirt or undershirt. He had on blue jeans that were too tight for him and was holding a black hat and a gun. The two boys also had guns.

"We've had an ACCIDENT!" the children screamed.

The grandmother had the peculiar feeling that the bespectacled man was someone she knew. His face was as familiar to her as if she had known him all her life but she could not recall who he was. He moved away from the car and began to come down the embankment, placing his feet carefully so that he wouldn't slip. He had on tan and white shoes and no socks, and his ankles were red and thin. "Good afternoon," he said. "I see you all had you a little spill."

"We turned over twice!" said the grandmother.

"Once", he corrected. "We seen it happen. Try their car and see will it run, Hiram," he said quietly to the boy with the gray hat.

"What you got that gun for?" John Wesley asked. "Whatcha gonna do with that gun?"

"Lady," the man said to the children's mother, "would you mind calling them children to sit down by you? Children make me nervous. I want all you all to sit down right together there where you're at."

"What are you telling US what to do for?" June Star asked.

Behind them the line of woods gaped like a dark open mouth. "Come here," said their mother.

"Look here now," Bailey began suddenly, "we're in a predicament! We're in . . ."

The grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring. "You're The Misfit!" she said. "I recognized you at once!"

"Yes'm," the man said, smiling slightly as if he were pleased in spite of himself to be known, "but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't of reckernized me."

Bailey turned his head sharply and said something to his mother that shocked even the children. The old lady began to cry and The Misfit reddened.

"Lady," he said, "don't you get upset. Sometimes a man says things he don't mean. I don't reckon he meant to talk to you thataway."

"You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?" the grandmother said and removed a clean handkerchief from her cuff and began to slap at her eyes with it.

The Misfit pointed the toe of his shoe into the ground and made a little hole and then covered it up again. "I would hate to have to," he said.

"Listen," the grandmother almost screamed, "I know you're a good man. You don't look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!"

"Yes mam," he said, "finest people in the world." When he smiled he showed a row of strong white teeth. "God never made a finer woman than my mother and my daddy's heart was pure gold," he said. The boy with the red sweat shirt had come around behind them and was standing with his gun at his hip. The Misfit squatted down on the ground. "Watch them children, Bobby Lee," he said. "You know they make me nervous." He looked at the six of them huddled together in front of him and he seemed to be embarrassed as if he couldn't think of anything to say. "Ain't a cloud in the sky," he remarked, looking up at it. "Don't see no sun but don't see no cloud neither."

"Yes, it's a beautiful day," said the grandmother. "Listen," she said, "you shouldn't call yourself The Misfit because I know you're a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell."

"Hush!" Bailey yelled. "Hush! Everybody shut up and let me handle this!" He was squatting in the position of a runner about to sprint forward but he didn't move.

"I pre-chate that, lady," The Misfit said and drew a little circle in the ground with the butt of his gun.

"It'll take a half a hour to fix this here car," Hiram called, looking over the raised hood of it.

"Well, first you and Bobby Lee get him and that little boy to step over yonder with you," The Misfit said, pointing to Bailey and John Wesley. "The boys want to ast you something," he said to Bailey. "Would you mind stepping back in them woods there with them?"

"Listen," Bailey began, "we're in a terrible predicament! Nobody realizes what this is," and his voice cracked. His eyes were as blue and intense as the parrots in his shirt and he remained perfectly still.

The grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim as if she were going to the woods with him but it came off in her hand. She stood staring at it and after a second she let it fall on the ground. Hiram pulled Bailey up by the arm as if he were assisting an old man. John Wesley caught hold of his father's hand and Bobby I,ee followed. They went off toward the woods and just as they reached the dark edge, Bailey turned and supporting himself against a gray naked pine trunk, he shouted, "I'll be back in a minute, Mamma, wait on me!"

"Come back this instant!" his mother shrilled but they all disappeared into the woods.

"Bailey Boy!" the grandmother called in a tragic voice but she found she was looking at The Misfit squatting on the ground in front of her. "I just know you're a good man," she said desperately. "You're not a bit common!"

"Nome, I ain't a good man," The Misfit said after a second ah if he had considered her statement carefully, "but I ain't the worst in the world neither. My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. 'You know,' Daddy said, 'it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything!"' He put on his black hat and looked up suddenly and then away deep into the woods as if he were embarrassed again. "I'm sorry I don't have on a shirt before you ladies," he said, hunching his shoulders slightly. "We buried our clothes that we had on when we escaped and we're just making do until we can get better. We borrowed these from some folks we met," he explained.

"That's perfectly all right," the grandmother said. "Maybe Bailey has an extra shirt in his suitcase."

"I'll look and see terrectly," The Misfit said.

"Where are they taking him?" the children's mother screamed.

"Daddy was a card himself," The Misfit said. "You couldn't put anything over on him. He never got in trouble with the Authorities though. Just had the knack of handling them."

"You could be honest too if you'd only try," said the grandmother. "Think how wonderful it would be to settle down and live a comfortable life and not have to think about somebody chasing you all the time."

The Misfit kept scratching in the ground with the butt of his gun as if he were thinking about it. "Yestm, somebody is always after you," he murmured.

The grandmother noticed how thin his shoulder blades were just behind his hat because she was standing up looking down on him. "Do you every pray?" she asked.

He shook his head. All she saw was the black hat wiggle between his shoulder blades. "Nome," he said.

There was a pistol shot from the woods, followed closely by another. Then silence. The old lady's head jerked around. She could hear the wind move through the tree tops like a long satisfied insuck of breath. "Bailey Boy!" she called.

"I was a gospel singer for a while," The Misfit said. "I been most everything. Been in the arm service both land and sea, at home and abroad, been twict married, been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed Mother Earth, been in a tornado, seen a man burnt alive oncet," and he looked up at the children's mother and the little girl who were sitting close together, their faces white and their eyes glassy; "I even seen a woman flogged," he said.

"Pray, pray," the grandmother began, "pray, pray . . ."

I never was a bad boy that I remember of," The Misfit said in an almost dreamy voice, "but somewheres along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the penitentiary. I was buried alive," and he looked up and held her attention to him by a steady stare.

"That's when you should have started to pray," she said. "What did you do to get sent to the penitentiary that first time?"

"Turn to the right, it was a wall," The Misfit said, looking up again at the cloudless sky. "Turn to the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling, look down it was a floor. I forget what I done, lady. I set there and set there, trying to remember what it was I done and I ain't recalled it to this day. Oncet in a while, I would think it was coming to me, but it never come."

"Maybe they put you in by mistake," the old lady said vaguely.

"Nome," he said. "It wasn't no mistake. They had the papers on me."

"You must have stolen something," she said.

The Misfit sneered slightly. "Nobody had nothing I wanted," he said. "It was a head-doctor at the penitentiary said what I had done was kill my daddy but I known that for a lie. My daddy died in nineteen ought nineteen of the epidemic flu and I never had a thing to do with it. He was buried in the Mount Hopewell Baptist churchyard and you can go there and see for yourself."

"If you would pray," the old lady said, "Jesus would help you."

"That's right," The Misfit said.

"Well then, why don't you pray?" she asked trembling with delight suddenly.

"I don't want no hep," he said. "I'm doing all right by myself."

Bobby Lee and Hiram came ambling back from the woods. Bobby Lee was dragging a yellow shirt with bright blue parrots in it.

"Thow me that shirt, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. The shirt came flying at him and landed on his shoulder and he put it on. The grandmother couldn't name what the shirt reminded her of. "No, lady," The Misfit said while he was buttoning it up, "I found out the crime don't matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you're going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it."

The children's mother had begun to make heaving noises as if she couldn't get her breath. "Lady," he asked, "would you and that little girl like to step off yonder with Bobby Lee and Hiram and join your husband?"

"Yes, thank you," the mother said faintly. Her left arm dangled helplessly and she was holding the baby, who had gone to sleep, in the other. "Hep that lady up, Hiram," The Misfit said as she struggled to climb out of the ditch, "and Bobby Lee, you hold onto that little girl's hand."

"I don't want to hold hands with him," June Star said. "He reminds me of a pig."

The fat boy blushed and laughed and caught her by the arm and pulled her off into the woods after Hiram and her mother.

Alone with The Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice. There was not a cloud in the sky nor any sun. There was nothing around her but woods. She wanted to tell him that he must pray. She opened and closed her mouth several times before anything came out. Finally she found herself saying, "Jesus. Jesus," meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sounded as if she might be cursing.

"Yes'm, The Misfit said as if he agreed. "Jesus shown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn't committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of course," he said, "they never shown me my papers. That's why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you'll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you'll have something to prove you ain't been treated right. I call myself The Misfit," he said, "because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment."

There was a piercing scream from the woods, followed closely by a pistol report. "Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain't punished at all?"

"Jesus!" the old lady cried. "You've got good blood! I know you wouldn't shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I'll give you all the money I've got!"

"Lady," The Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, "there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip."

There were two more pistol reports and the grandmother raised her head like a parched old turkey hen crying for water and called, "Bailey Boy, Bailey Boy!" as if her heart would break.

"Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.

"Maybe He didn't raise the dead," the old lady mumbled, not knowing what she was saying and feeling so dizzy that she sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted under her.

"I wasn't there so I can't say He didn't," The Misfit said. "I wisht I had of been there," he said, hitting the ground with his fist. "It ain't right I wasn't there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now." His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for an instant. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children !" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them.

Hiram and Bobby Lee returned from the woods and stood over the ditch, looking down at the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child's and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky.

Without his glasses, The Misfit's eyes were red-rimmed and pale and defenseless-looking. "Take her off and thow her where you thown the others," he said, picking up the cat that was rubbing itself against his leg.

"She was a talker, wasn't she?" Bobby Lee said, sliding down the ditch with a yodel.

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

"Some fun!" Bobby Lee said.

"Shut up, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. "It's no real pleasure in life."

The Continuing Adventures of Chazz Fredricks, (really) early draft

Scene II

Curtain (or, um, camera) rises on an austere, ornate study. It looks as though the room is usually very orderly, but it currently appears as though it has recently been (slightly) trashed. Piles of books are strewn around the room. In the back left corner, a poorly constructed suit of Bigfoot stands, nearly 6 feet in height. The head appears to be robotic, and the rest of the suit has been stuffed. One could mistake the suit for an anamotronic robot in the style of the Old Time-y Country Bears attraction at Disneyland. In the right corner, a towering shrine rests in the shadows. It is barely visible to the audience. Between the two, a large, Mohogany desk. Above the desk, on the wall, sit a handful of framed documents. Near the Bigfoot, two sturdy-looking doors. They open outward, towards offstage. This side represents the hallway. On the side with the altar, there is one small door. In the front of the study, near the audience, CHAZZ and FELICITY stand, staring intensely at one another.

There is a 5-10 second pause. Little movement. Then:

FELICITY: Why did you do that?

CHAZZ: boldlyI WANTED TO!
CHAZZ begins to dart, like a viper, towards FELICITY.

FELICITY: Don't even! Don't fucking even! I can't believe this.

CHAZZ: What's so hard to believe, Felicity? I SAW him. I almost had him. I almost had him in my grasps, you know.

FELICITY: What, you almost had a freakish, anamotronic Bigfoot carcass? Well -- you do have it, now! And don't change the subject!

CHAZZ: It was no robot! I saw the evil glare in his eyes!

FELICITY: You realize that kid with Down Syndrome was lying to you, right?

CHAZZ: Actually, robots would have evil glares in their eyes, too.

FELICITY: Are you listening to me?

CHAZZ (sharply): Why would I be?

FELICITY (ignoring the last comment): Just tell me, Dad, why are you still obsessed with this Bigfoot? I mean, spending time in jail for firing that shotgun on a federal wildlife preserve didn't set you straight?

CHAZZ is silent. He stares at FELICITY. Three heartbeats worth of stillness

FELICITY: You should still be in jail, too! I can't believe how light your sentence was! You hired those smelly rednecks, and you nearly killed a park ranger. Not to mention that kid with Down Syndrome we'd never met before you punched him in the face. On the steps of the courthouse, no less!

Another beat. CHAZZ turns and looks at his Bigfoot replica.

FELICITY: I'm hungry, Dad.

Another beat. Bigfoot moves very slightly. CHAZZ does not obviously react.

FELICITY (sotto voce): What a cretin.

CHAZZ (quietly, but with much enthusiasm): Did you see that?

FELICITY: See what, you jackass?

CHAZZ (assuredly): Bigfoot. He - he moved. I saw it.

FELICITY: How could that damn thing move? I mean, just tell me how that robot you knifed at Knott's Berry Farm could move.

CHAZZ: It wasn't a robot, actually. It was a suit. Some punk kid was inside it.

FELICITY: Wait - you stabbed a kid?

CHAZZ: No - no. No, it was magic.

FELICITY: Wait - you STABBED some kid?

CHAZZ: Listen. It wasn't a kid. When I stabbed it, I saw it change. That... that beast shrank back inhumanly. He moved so quickly, so gracefully... it was beautiful, FELICITY, it was moving poetry! No human could move like that. Also -- those howls, those shrieks were like nothing I had ever heard. They were... they were scary. Scary noises. (pause). Bigfoot noises, the lore reports, are scary. I stabbed Bigfoot! He must have... have shaved himself. And stapled -

FELICITY: Bigfoot doesn't know how to staple things. In none of the lore does Bigfoot carry a stapler.

CHAZZ: THE LORE IS WRONG! It must be! (Emphatically) He must have stapled his hide to that kid.

FELICITY: How many times did you stab, uh, "Bigfoot"?

CHAZZ: I don't know, baby. I'm too cool for numbers.

FELICITY: So - you can't count?

CHAZZ: If I could count, would I have offered those rednecks billions of dollars to help me kill Bigfoot?

FELICITY: Good point.

CHAZZ: But I didn't stab that kid - the one they found in the hog pen the next day. No way.

FELICITY: How did you get away from the Knott's security team?

CHAZZ: Oh, that wasn't too hard. Snoopy is easy to bribe.

FELICITY: But Charlie Brown is so honest.

CHAZZ: Charlie Brown is a believer. He is. Just look -- look at that kite eating tree. It must have gotten a meal of Bigfoot at some point in it's existence.

FELICITY: I thought it only eats kites.

CHAZZ: Well - it only eats kites because it's so full of Bigfoot. It --

FELICITY: Touche - one more --

CHAZZ: But - yeah. I did smuggle the carcass out of there.

FELICITY: That wasn't what I was going to ask - anyway, the entertainers aren’t the --

CHAZZ: You should have. It's a good story.

FELICITY: Really?

CHAZZ: No.

pause.

Also, that kid - the one with Down Syndrome - well. He doesn't have it.

FELICITY: Have what?

CHAZZ: Down Syndrome.

FELICITY: God, really? He’s so ugly, though!

CHAZZ: He’s crafty, is what he is.

FELICITY: I mean, look at this altar you built. His pictures are all over it. I think there’s one where he’s in a swimsuit.

CHAZZ: I built an altar?

FELICITY: Yeah, Dad. I helped you build it.

CHAZZ: Why would you do that?

FELICITY: You promised to buy me an airplane if I helped you. I haven't gotten it yet, by the way.

CHAZZ: Deal’s off! Anyway, is it legal for women to fly airplanes?

FELICITY: Uh - yeah, Dad. Don't you remember sending me to piloting school?

CHAZZ: I only did that because I thought you were a boy until earlier today. (pause)
When I broke into your bathroom.

FELICITY: When I was taking a shower.

CHAZZ: Yeah. When you were taking a shower.

FELICITY: Anyway - wait, you're lying about that. I know it. You framed my birth certificate - it's hanging, right on your wall. You look right at it when you're sitting at your desk!

CHAZZ saunters over to his wall and gently picks FELICITY's birth certificate off the wall. He examines it closely, squinting at it. Soon, a frustrated look consumes his face. Slightly grudgingly, he reaches into the left drawer of his desk and pulls out a magnifying glass. He examines the certificate again. The frustration drains from his face.

CHAZZ (triumpantly): It says right here - you're a boy!

FELICITY (leaning over CHAZZ to examine the document): Mom wrote that.

CHAZZ: Hogwash! I did no such thing.

FELICITY: I didn't say you wrote it. Mom wrote it. In purple crayon.

CHAZZ: Hospitals have crayons in them. Doctors have crayons.

FELICITY: Dad - Mom wrote it.

CHAZZ: She was a doctor.

FELICITY: No - she was a stripper. At a Bigfoot-themed strip club. You met her during one of your Bigfoot hunts.

CHAZZ: There weren't any Bigfoots there - I demanded that your Mom - you know, her maiden name was Bozangas - I ordered that woman: "give me a refund, foul wench..." - well, you know the story... but... I remember so clearly how your Mom always called herself Dr. Bozongas!

FELICITY: (calmly, but with malice) No, you called her Dr. Bazongas no matter how many times she told you otherwise. I remember family dinners back then. She used to pick at her food, smoking her cigarettes. You told your business partners all sorts of things about her. She'd always say - very gently, too - "Honey, sweetie, CHAZZ: stop telling your friends those silly things! I was just dressed as a nurse when you met me!" Her name was Nancy West, not Sunrise Bazongas.

CHAZZ: Sunrise Bozongas! That was her name - that's how you got your name, even, Mrs. FELICITY Fredrik-Bazongas!

FELICITY: I’m married now, Dad. You never listen to me. Didn't you ever listen to her? Her medical degree was obviously fake (glances at the document-papered wall) - wait, is that it? You framed it?

CHAZZ: You have to stop telling me there isn't a doctorate program at Hardfistamee University - I won't believe it.

FELICITY: (exhausted, quick, desperate incredulity) There’s a doctorate program there - (with emphasis) there's not a THERE, there, Dad. It isn't a real university. Or a word, for that matter.

CHAZZ: Native Amercans think it's a word. And Native Americans believe in Bigfoot.

FELICITY: Native Americans don't think it's a word.

CHAZZ: I am sure Native Americans think it's a word. I employ one who thinks it's a word.

FELICITY: Yeah, I remember meeting him. You called Sisters of the Woeful Countenance during my senior year and told them my mother had died.

CHAZZ: Well, that wasn't a lie at all!

FELICITY: Yeah, but she died when I was, like, 8.

CHAZZ: She died doing what she loved. She died doctoring the sick.

FELICITY: No - I don't want to talk about this right --

CHAZZ: Doctoring my cock!

FELICITY: Let's not talk about it.

CHAZZ: Taking samples of my semen!

FELICITY: You're proud of killing Mom, aren’t you?

CHAZZ: I know the viscosity of my juice - I still am glad to know it! It was a shame that your mother died of it - I cry about it every time I think of her - but I am not going to pretend that I am not proud of the semen that killed her. It is wonderful, glorious stuff. Still - maybe the thickness is why I still only have one child. Which is you, my sweet, wonderful son.

FELICITY: "My sweet, wonderful daughter," you mean.

CHAZZ: Whatever.

FELICITY: You took me out of school so you could take me to see a "shaman," back then.

CHAZZ: Yes - the enigmatic Harry The Big Chief Running Creek Von Baron. His aide in my quest for Bigfoot has been indispensable!

FELICITY: You throw bottles of wine at him all the time.

CHAZZ: To start the Fire Dance! To start the Fire Dance! The Fire Dance is Bigfoot's favorite dance!

FELICITY: After you left to give that scientific lecture, he told me you paid him $70 bucks to tell me "Bazongas" was an authentic Native American name - but he couldn't do it.

pause.

CHAZZ (absentmindedly): So when is that gay lover of yours coming over?

FELICITY: My husband should be here soon.

CHAZZ: Oh. Right - you're a girl. Wait - Harry The Big Chief Running Creek Von Baron told you I paid him to say that?

FELICITY: Uh - yeah.

CHAZZ: That... that Judas! That Irish Catholic bastard! I -- I don't believe it. (presses the intercom on his desk). Julie? Julie? Could you draft a letter to the Pope for me? Yes - I want the text to read "Your Excellent Pope-ery: For many years, I have supported your Church with my vast fortune - but until you ex-communicate Harry The Big Chief Running Creek Von Baron, I regretfully must suspend my donations. Faithfully Yours, CHAZZ. And Julie? Make sure to dot all the i's with hearts this time! (lifts his fingers from the intercom).

Julie (just her voice): Yes, sir. Also - Jake's car has just pulled up to the security fence. Do you want me to send DiCarlo to throw talc on it again?

CHAZZ presses the button, but before he can speak, FELICITY starts.

FELICITY: Hey, Julie - no, don't bother doing that. He just got the car waxed after his last visit.

CHAZZ starts, but Julie shoots him a look. He steps back, with the look and manner of a wounded puppy. As he steps back, his finger rises from the intercom. FELICITY expresses boastful triumph. Silence for 3 seconds. CHAZZ steps towards FELICITY slowly and cautiously. FELICITY's triumphant manner quickly dissolves into weary affection for CHAZZ. Despite all his eccentricities, despite his singular, Ahab-esque monomania regarding Bigfoot, CHAZZ has been fundamentally good to her for her entire life. Neither person moves for half a second.

FELICITY steps towards her father with her arms extended, cautiously. CHAZZ’s face contorts with joy. They hug.

FELICITY (still hugging CHAZZ): Oh, Dad. You’re a good person - you’re a good person. You were so happy at my wedding!

CHAZZ (while ending the hug): I was so proud of you, baby. I can’t believe you sweet-talked that judge into that day-release, even after he learned that I had been sending threatening letters and gay porn to that Bigfoot kid.

FELICITY: I wish you hadn’t invited those rednecks, though.

CHAZZ: But they’re my friends!

FELICITY: I know - I know. The cops didn’t like it much when you offered to pay them $500,000 to beat up the Bigfoot kid, though.

CHAZZ: Those cops had to have been Cambodians. They couldn’t understand my harsh Northeastern accent.

FELICITY: Um - I went to school with one of them, remember? Her name was Rachel - she was going to inherit the Buddenbrook fortune until her dad disowned her.

CHAZZ: Oh - I remember her, now. She’s rad.

FELICITY: She is rad. And you don't have a Northeastern accent.

FELICITY hugs her father again. While they embrace, Jake enters the room from the hallway.

Jake: Sweetie!

FELICITY (quickly releasing CHAZZ to rush over to Jake. FELICITY jumps into his arms; Jake cradles her in his arms): Jakey-Boy! How did you get into the study so easily?

CHAZZ (his features hard, his manner obviously upset): That is something I would like to know. (he presses the intercom) Julie? Did you forget to release the dogs again?

Jake (genuinely - he must be disregarding CHAZZ's previous comment): Mr. Fredrick, always a pleasure to be in your company.

He bows, putting down FELICITY while honoring CHAZZ in one elegant motion.

CHAZZ (no longer upset): Why, I had forgotten! It really is such a pleasure to be near me, isn’t it? I am still fabulously wealthy, still monstrously handsome, and I’m so close to achieving my boyhood dream of capturing my own Bigfoot, aren’t I?

FELICITY: So - where do you want to go to dinner, Dad?

CHAZZ: Oh, I don’t know - (knowingly) Knott’s Berry Farm?

Jake: Sounds good to me. They got fried chicken.

FELICITY: But - oh, hell. Okay, Dad.

The three leave the study. Mumbling heard - CHAZZ and Jake are talking. Then, louder:

Jake (Offstage): FELICITY, you never told me your mom was a doctor!

Curtain (or - again - Camera).

The following is most of a non-fiction fiction I wrote on the Amtrak last night. It is rather long because our train was delayed nearly 140 minutes. Everything after I get off the train is made up, but there really was a holy roller talking to a German woman about the lie that is evolution. I have not edited it or read over it. I imagine it is not very good. I am throwing it up for now. I will likely delete it later. So enjoy if you must.


1
Life is motion and death is motion.

I write this on an Amtrak train. I look out the window and see a green, grey world pass by. I decide to plug my headphones into my laptop, and I play Frog Eye's "Caravan Breakers" It gels. Everything is forward momentum in the train and the music. It is ceaseless and dumb.

Now the song and the train slow in tandem. We begin to stop. As Carey Mercer sings:

and I, I, I, I prey on the weak and old
Caravan Breakers
they fucking pray for the weak and the old

the train stops.

One person gets off the train. She looks young. The two brothers sitting behind me, or rather the two boys I assume to be brothers, kick my seat for a few moments before returning to their fantasy card game. I can faintly hear an elderly Southern gentleman and a German woman converse. It is a banal conversation, all Dolly Parton and Falco. I was hoping for something more... Hank Williams and Klaus Kinski. They seem lonely.

I remember how unwise conversation with strangers on a train can be. On one of these trips between Portland and Eugene - I can't remember when, or which direction I was headed - I entangled myself in conversation with a very blunt individual. I could not break the conversation off - although I do not think I tried very hard. I don't remember his name. He told his interpretation of the final chapter in the New Testament - Revelations.

No matter if I never give another piece of good advice; trust me on this. As soon as you hear anyone mention "Revelations" get off the train at the next stop. You will have to buy another ticket, but it will be worth it.

I talked to this blunt man for an hour, or more. I was worried he would hurt me if I stopped. He was a muscular, compact sort of guy, with military-short hair and wide eyes. I let him borrow my cell phone and he called his girlfriend. They talked for 17 minutes or so. Overhearing the crazy man's cell phone conversation with his girlfriend grated on my nerves even worse than the earlier conversation.

I got my phone back, at least.

History is repeating itself as I type.

The German and the Southern gentleman begin to talk about the book of Revelations. "I believe we are in the middle of the New Testament," the Southerner says.

"I don't think you and I have destroyed Him... but I do think I will destroy Him."

I turn my music back on. It is "Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings." Much better.

The train moves at a constant speed. I look out the window again. I wonder for a moment if this is nothing more than an elaborate parlor trick. The train could still be in the same location while the world morphs around it. Stage hands come to remove the facade of Portland, tearing down the unoccupied buildings, filling in the shallow river. Then, quickly, the stage hands rebuild. By the time I disembark the train, everything will be complete. The illusion will be seamless. The joke will be on me.

I remember how I used to pretend this when I was a young child. I must have really thought I was the center of the universe. The joke was on me.

We pass a town, maybe Oregon City, and my senses are overwhelmed. The paper mill assaults my nose and the chemicals give me a small headache, and my head aches and the smell is awful, but the attack ends as suddenly as it came and I am relieved.

"So, eighteen years ago I had that metal taken out of my head and replaced with fiberglass" says the Southerner. I wish I was making him up.

Earlier, he mentioned to the German that he had known John Denver, and that John Denver introduced him to his deceased wife. I must admit this seems an unlikely scenario. The Southerner is wearing sweatpants with holes in the front and his beard is long and unwashed. He may have a home, but he doesn't use a shower often if he does.

The train has stopped, and I cannot understand why. There must be another train on the same tracks, further up the line, I think. My luck could be worse. We could have stopped back near the chemical smell.

A train comes hurling past us, northbound. It shakes the coach. It is a commercial train carrying dozens of commercial containers on dozens of beds. Some of the containers have Chinese lettering on them. I try to make them out, but they move very quickly. Everything is a blur, red on white. I don't know any Chinese characters, anyway.

The train is gone, and we are still stationary on the tracks. I become more agitated as we wait. The agitation gets worse as the train begins to move backwards. We stop again. I guess we've retreated a quarter mile or more.

Finally, we move forward again. I used to believe the key to happiness is to find agreement between action and intention, but now I am not sure. I intend to arrive in Eugene, and the train moves towards Eugene, and I am not happy. Perhaps this is just a start.

I intend for myself to be an attractive, desirable, intelligent person with enough personal capital to attend college without taking out any loans. I intend to write with skill, creativity, and accuracy. I intend to be responsible and charitable and just.

It isn't working. Oh well.

Things rarely go according to plan.

And that is fucking awful.

Our train stops again and I hear some of the Southerner's argument against evolutionary theory. He believes evolution is an entirely malevolent, conspiratorial falsehood, perpetrated by free market economists and Satan. Both go to this tremendous effort so the commoners will concern themselves with earthly concerns, rather than spiritual ones. You see, the Southerner is saying, how this benefits the corporations?

A good Christian will focus so much money refuting all this evolutionary hogwash the corporations will become rich? says the German.

No, says the Southerner. It is because the corporations can only make money selling earthly goods and concerns.

I am not sure he is correct.

A college-age girl returns to her seat directly in front of me. I had not noticed how attractive I find her until now. I realize I had not yet gotten a good look at her until now. She has short brown hair and glasses. She is wearing old, beat-up jeans and a ratty black t-shirt. She is rather tall; I might be a few inches taller than her, but not much more than that. She is reading Umberto Eco's In the Name of the Rose.

How perfect is that?

The train stops again. A dispatcher comes over the PA and tells us he is just as confused as we are. He doesn't say those words, but the message is unmistakable. I am desperate to get away from the Southerner and the German. We are nearly an hour late.

I do not have the courage to interrupt the college-age girl, if only to complement her for reading a good book. I am blushing a little, ashamed that I am writing about her and thinking about her. I am even a little ashamed on account of the Southerner and the German. I do not intend to make fun of them (the road to hell is paved with good intentions and that is fucking awful ). Those two have been dialoguing intensely for nearly an. The Southerner in particular has been dead serious, and it is far too easy to target serious people. It is easier to laugh than it is to understand. In his own way, the Southerner is the best he is possible of being.

I feel a little sorry for him, and I am sure he feels a little sorry for me.

and I doubt the LTD will still be running by the time I get to Eugene.

Now the college-age girl yawns and lays her head on the windowsill. She adjusts and decides to use In the Name of the Rose as a pillow. She lies there for a few minutes and I think I want to talk to her. Forget about the sex for half a moment and just see if she's got a car and see if she lives near you. I say nothing and she props herself back up and she says nothing.

The German says to the Southerner: "You are a man of remarkable intelligence." She might really believe it.

I can't forget about the sex for half a moment. Celibacy, like grief, can be understood in six stages:
1. unhappiness
2. discomfort
3. boastful self-effacement
4. quiet self-effacement
5. acceptance/trancendence
6. madness

I am nearing the 6th stage. It is less a need to have sex with someone as it is a need to be touched by someone willing to have sex with me. I would feel overwhelmed with relief by a kiss. Even a hug would be nice.

But I don't know anyone willing to have sex with me. And I am scared of trying to meet new people, and I am scared of risking myself.

I don't have the courage to risk it. I don't have the charm to risk it. I don't have the creativity to risk it. And I know I could have everything, everything I would ever need, and that I could risk it, that I could become a witty, energetic, entertaining person again with stupefying ease, and that I could handle it this time, that it isn't even a risk, and all I'd have to do is nothing, is stop, is accept up will be accompanied by down.

But I can't handle it this time. I don't think it, but I know it.

Que serra, serra.

The train is moving again.


2

I will get off.

The train is nearly two hours late. It is ten thirty in the evening and I am tired. The Southerner fell asleep nearly forty five minutes ago, but he is awake now. I do not look at him because I do not like him and I do not feel comfortable around him. He does not cut an imposing figure, all short slight and pale, but his movements and speech are erratic enough to frighten me. I have spent time hanging around the mentally ill, and I know what an unbalanced person looks like, and the Southerner looks unbalanced.

The train has stopped and all the passengers grab their bags and begin lackadaisically queueing up in front of the exits. I am directly behind the college-aged girl. She is stunning. Beautiful. I dare not look at her for too long. I believe staring is impolite.

She gets off the train and I get off the train and she runs into the arms of a man. The way they embrace leads me to believe the man is not her brother. He is young and gaunt and he has brown hair and she looks so happy to see him. They kiss and I am glad.

They deserve to be happy. I deserve to be fat.

I see my reflection in the window of the station. I am not fat, exactly, but I am not underfed. My face is round and undistinguished, and it looks more and more like my father's face every year. Usually, I have some sort of ornamentation to offset how plain my face is. Now is no exception. My sideburns threaten to overwhelm everything. I decide to grow a full beard. I decide to get my hair cut. I look at my reflection and take out a cigarette.



Sometimes I pretend I do not know much about cigarettes.

I know I like them and I know they will increase my risk of contracting lung cancer as long as I like them. I know I like them because they are packed with nicotine. I know my cigarette of choice has dozens or hundreds of other things, "additives," inside it, so I will think my cigarette is consistent and of high quality.

I know a cigarette is made out of cured and finely cut tobacco leaves, which are stuffed into paper cylinders usually less than 120 mm in length and 10mm in diameter, and I know I have the Crimean War to thank, or blame, for their introduction to the English-speaking world, and I know British soldiers picked up the habit from the Ottomans.

I know the British soldiers used to roll their own cigarettes with old newspaper.

I know trillions of cigarette butts become litter, and that these butts are not biodegradable, and birds and other small animals sometimes eat these butts thinking they are food and that cigarette butts are not food and that eating cigarette butts will make birds and other small animals malnourished and sick.

I know cigarettes can be glamorous, and I know I am not glamorous, and I know I am more likely to seem glamorous if I smoke, and I know no one has ever looked glamorous running a marathon or preparing a macrobiotic wheat shake for dinner.

I know Frank Sinatra is buried with a pack of Camels in his pocket and a lighter in his right hand, and I think I admire that.

But I don't really know very much about cigarettes because I dont' really know very much about the people behind them. People who farm tobacco in the Carolinas. Who get my 20 Marlboro's from Durham to a little red-and-white cardboard package in my jeans. Who depend on me, my addiction, for their livelihood, who need me to continue risking my future good health so they may presently enjoy their own good health. Who need my business to make their business.

But I don't know much about these people and I don't care much for these people.

Everything always comes back to people you don't know doing things you don't care to know about. People are doing wonderful, delirious, empyreal things every second everywhere, from the slaughterhouses where they butcher your pigs to the chapels where they wed your daughters, and people are doing awful, purulent, iniquitous things even more often, in even more places.

These people are just like you. They're struggling to balance their duties with their desires, and they're struggling right now just as you are. They make choices and sometimes they are good choices and sometimes they are not, and sometimes good choices lead nowhere and sometimes bad choices lead everywhere, and they don't know what they want any more than you know what you want.

These people always, always, always believe in the virtue of labor. These people always, always, always believe idleness is sin. These people are virtuous hardworking people and they always, always, always see I am a slothful, gluttonous smoker.

As complex and vibrant a species as ours rarely is in such accord. Even other smokers, even junkies, can see how vile a person I am. They have the good sense to repent their vices after engaging in them, while I've intermingled everything. Sinning as a path to salvation.

Once I believed I was born without a conscience. The doctors would come to take me away and diagnose me with a psychopathic personality disorder and that would be that. No more would I gummy up the works. When I found myself a teenager I realized how mistaken I had been in those salad days, and I believed I was the only human left with any moral sense.

Now, I find myself at adulthood, cigarette in hand, struggling to balance my duties with my desires. I plan to die the moment I am both responsible and happy.

Thefore: I will live forever.

I will fight forever. I will be happy and I will be responsible but never will I be responsibly happy.

So I will smoke forever. Starting now.

3

There is nothing short of wisdom.

I walk away from the Amtrak station and towards the Hult Center. I scan the surroundings for landmarks. I have lived in Eugene for nearly a year and I still have no sense of it. The city and I share poor spacial intuition. It sprawls out without sense, and I walk about without logic. It is too early to go home and too late to catch a bus. I will explore.

I explore. I am parched. Luckily my explorations have proved valuable, as I spot a 7-11 that I have never seen before. I am near the industrial district, away from MLK Boulevard, where my apartment is. I walk inside the 7-11 and I am greeted by a black man. He is wary of me because I have luggage, I think. I do not blame him. I would be uncomfortable if I was in his shoes. I would also have a job.

I carry my bags with me to the back wall. It is lined with refrigerators and the refrigerators are lined with potable liquids. I decide on a 20 oz. Coke, and I take the Coke up to the register while holding both it and one of my luggage bags in my right hand. I put the Coke on the counter and as the black clerk rings up the sale I slip the luggage onto my shoulder. I had already put my laptop bag on the opposite shoulder, and now the straps cross my chest directly over my sternum. Carrying the bags will feel better now, I think. I take my change and thank the clerk. He thanks me but he doesn't mean it. He is glad the white kid with the luggage is leaving is store.

I walk away from the 7-11 and I light up a cigarette and now I walk with the cigarette and the Coke in my left hand. I walk across a street I never walk across and I get lost. I see a park with a basketball court illuminated by florescent light. Four people are goofing around. They are all black and this is surprising to me. I am not accustomed to black people but I am aware how unaware I feel right now. I am not scared; I do not touch my back pocket to protect my wallet. This is not racial profiling. This is not much of anything. They don't notice me and I notice them but soon I am crossing over railroad tracks on a footbridge and they are out of sight.

Race is unimportant. That is my intention. Race is nothing. I could befriend those ballers as easy as I could befriend anyone. I realize this is true and I feel lonely because I will befriend no one. As a matter of principle. I am the captain of my ship. I will be celibate and opaque and then I will love myself.

I am the captain of my pain and the captain's alright but the crew is wiggling free of the skull and danger and the image of Christ is nailed to the anchor.

I orient myself. I have walked further from the apartment than I wanted but now I am on the right path. A man and a dog run about twenty or thirty meters in front of me. The man has a ball catcher and he hurls a tennis ball the length of a football field into the street. The dog instinctually chases. The ball rolls forward further and further away from the mutt. That mutt is really working. It is enthusiastic in its manner as it enacts the hallowed ritual. A car comes down the street and the master puts two of his fingers into his mouth and blows and a loud whistling emanates. The car honks. The dog looks at the car and his master. He choses his master over the siren calls of the car.

I see now it is not a car. It is a truck. A Ford or a Chevy. Flatbed 4x4. There is a dog in the flatbed of the truck and now there is not. The dog has jumped. The car is going 35 miles an hour I estimate. The driver does not see his dog leap out and the dog hits the concrete very hard. I see the legs buckle a second before I hear them snap. The other dog rushes towards the cripple and growls with more enthusiasm than it displayed chasing the ball.

The truck does a U-Turn and I slip behind a fence. I don't want to talk to the ball-catcher or the driver or the dogs. I am not as smart as I pretend but I am smart enough to realize I want no part in any altercation between dog owners. Now I am back at the Amtrak station and it only took 4o minutes and it only took one dog's legs. I tell myself that I didn't want to see a dog cripple itself. I am not sure I am telling myself the truth.

I scuttle across the tracks. The fence was not just for show, I imagine. I am back in the parking lot in front of the station. I don't know where I want to go yet.

I can't see or hear the dogs or the owners any longer. I put them out of my mind. I worry myself with how easily I forget about the crippled dog but there is nothing I can do about it. The dog or my reaction. Nothing I can do with either.

I remember back when I was 18 or 19 and I lived in Ashland. I lived in Ashland to attend university. I lived in a dormitory on a floor designed for intelligent and sensitive people. "Honors College."

On my dormitory floor lived a veterinary assistant named Nate. One time someone called him "Skittles." As in: Eminem only fruiter. It was a bad joke and nothing came of the nickname but I remember it. Nate was not gay but he did love animals and he knew how to care for them. I haven't talked to him in years. He might love animals today just as he did back then.

Nate was a vet assistant. Sometimes he would be on call in the middle of the week. If this had been Ashland, the cripple would most likely have ended up in Nate's care.

I wish I could remember more about my time in Ashland but everything is fuzzy and indistinct. Some months come in crystal clear. Others are blurry like the Chinese lettering on the containers that passed by earlier tonight.

I didn't know any black kids in Ashland, either.

GAMES OF THE RIVAL CLANS
A NOVEL
by CHRISTOPHER ERVIN

CHAPTER ONE: Cluster of rainbows, for the Angel who announces the end of Time

My ex-girlfriend loved Dorothy Parker. She was just obsessed with her - in a cute way, I used to think. We shared a bed for years, and every morning she would wake me up and tell me all her nocturnal fantasies with feverish glee, dreams of the Algonquin Round Table, of Herculean binge drinking, of a phantasmagorically blurry New York unlike anything I could have imagined myself.

She used to recite this one Parker verse, sometimes, after we'd both exhausted ourselves, fucking each other. I think it was called the General Review of the Sex Situation -- but I may be wrong about that. I don't remember waking up, most days. My memory is not that strong.

The verse itself, however, I know by heart. It goes like this:

Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman's moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun.

Woman lives but in her lord;
Count to then, and man is bored.
With this the gist and sum of it,
What early good can come of it?

It always made me laugh to hear that coming from her. I had devoted myself entirely to love -- to being in love with her and her alone, delighted by the monogamy - no, the monopoly - I had on her flesh, her soul, her spirt. She knew this. She recited the verse because it was such a lie to us. At least, that is what I used to think.

She's only been gone -- I don't know.

I still make too much coffee every morning, thinking she'll be there to drink it. I still leave two towels out in the bathroom, his and hers, thinking she'll be there to need it. I can't even remember how long it has been -- two months? Three? And I still set our (my) little apartment up like for two physical bodies. I do not think I am happy or sad or angry or lonely yet. I am just confused.

Routines are hard to break. Every morning I wake up and make too much coffee so I can catch a bus. Destination is work. Work I agreed to do to support the dreams of a woman I no longer know.

I can't even tell you what my job is. Not because it is some sort of top-secret government hush-hush program, not because I work in R&D at some groundbreaking company, nothing like that. I cannot tell you what my job is because I honestly have no clue what it is I do at that warehouse every day.

There is a single computer on the warehouse floor, cubicle walls encircling it like ramparts. I sit in front of this computer and I input numbers that mean something to it, although they mean nothing to me. It is a terrible, ancient machine, the computer; it creaks and whirls constantly, freezes up unexpectedly. If it were a classical postmodernist concert piece, I imagine some critics would find it innovative and explain to their audience of attentive readers - all twelve of them - how "Warehouse Basement Computer Concerto for Bassoon" perfectly captured the frustration and exhilaration of the modern compositional atmosphere. The computer is not a classical postmodernist concert piece, and it does not play a bassoon. No matter how perfectly it captures the modern atmosphere in the art world, it captures none of utility it was actually designed for.

Like everybody else, I tend to personify mechanical tools. When my guitar is out of tune, I always think that it has a little head-cold. When the car doesn't work, I'll think it is just being belligerent. It is human nature, I suppose, to take these cold, dead tools we rely upon and stuff them full of motivations they cannot actually express.

I have not personified the warehouse basement computer like that. It is neither good nor evil, friendly nor temperamental, submissive nor rambunctious. It just... is. It is.

It is terrible performing it's primary computer-ly functions, yes. But I cannot bring myself to loathe the machine, because it is merely a tool.

Loathe the management, loathe the weapons-makers and the pharmaceutical companies and the cabal of diamond dealers in Antwerp; loathe not the goods these jackasses pedal.

That sounds like something my ex would think.

I have a lunch break every day, which I spend with the union boys who do all the actual work in our warehouse. We all pile into Frank's car and he drives us to this little pub called Quibbles'. I sit and laugh, eat a terrible BLT sandwich, smoke a couple Pall Mall's, and join in as my co-workers engage in their lunchtime rituals.

It looks like a pagan rite.

First, Frank and Iggy shout "Cans and Knives! Bring 'em here!" The staff at Quibbles' will bring over something like a dozen 16 oz. cans of Natural Ice and as many steak knives to our table.

"Up with People!" our group of 13 shouts once - like a gunshot, or a fanfare. Afterwards, this mantra is repeated, "up with people, up with people, up wiTH PEOPLE, UP WITH PEOPLE!" in crescendo. Then a number of us shotgun the beers -- some days, we all do it, and some days, only Frank and Iggy do it.

Frank will then shout something completely out of place -- "Fernadomania!" or "SUN DON'T BURN WITH COPPERTONE!" -- and begin telling us a variation of the same basic monologue, which goes something like this:

"Fuck you if you think you're life is bullshit, you fags. Fuck you if you think this job is bullshit or if you think your wife and kids are bullshit. Fuck you if you even for a moment doubt how much I love all of you, how much I love being here. Oh, and fuck you faggots for thinking I want to fuck you just 'cuz I'm man enough to admit that I love your dumb asses. Grow up.

"This is what we got and this is who we are. And it is great, so fucking great I want to break down and cry like a pussy sometimes. Now let's get back to fucking work!"

So back into Frank's van we go, reeking of beer and cheap cigarettes. Some of them operate heavy machinery after lunch, but so far, no disasters.

I suppose I am some sort of manager at the warehouse. Laborers labor; managers enter meaningless numbers into ancient computers. No one treats me like a supervisor or manager because I have no skill supervising or managing, ever, in any facet of life. All I have to do is look around our (my) apartment: dozens of unwashed coffee cups, mismatched pairs of shoes, overflowing ashtrays. At this time, they are all, more or less, interchangeable.

I get off work around 5:30 every evening and ride the bus back to our (my) apartment. It is a 30 minute trip, I'd guess. I usually just plug those iPod earbuds into my head; I am starting to realize that my cubicle at work and my iPod at travel are all, more or less, interchangeable.

This is my unbreakable routine. As much as I used to hate it, spending so much of my time and energy away from my ex, is as much as I cherish it, now. You can invest so much of their physic energy in a single place that suddenly losing that place will ruin you.

On May 16th, my unbreakable routine broke.

INTERLUDE: May 16th, 1906, Graz, Vienna.

Gustav Mahler wasn't sure about Richard Strauss on the sixteenth of May in the year of our Lord 1906.

Strauss wanted to spend the day in the hills above the city, picnicking and relaxing in the company of his friend. Mahler, who was in no mood to picnic but certain Strauss would somehow manage to screw even so elementary a task as this one up, agreed to join him.

"I would like Alma to come along, too." Richard said quietly (in German).

"Then she will come." Malher said. (also in German.)

The three of them, Gustav Malher, Richard Strauss, and Alma Malher, met up in front of Court Opera House; Malher was the Director of the Court Opera, one of the most prestigious and coveted titles available for any conductor in the day and age. He had hoped to begin this expedition earlier in the day, but the rainy weather in the morning prevented an early departure.

Malher noticed a photographer lurking in the shadows of his great hall and shouted out to him (again, in German).

"Excuse me!"

The photographer jumped, startled. "Oh -- yes?" he said.

"Take our photograph. This will be a historic day, and history will appreciate some evidence of it."

"Um - okay," the photographer said. The three celebrities posed, and the photographer took their picture.

Then Malher, Strauss, and Alma climbed into Malher's opulent coach and started up, climbing the gentle hills that surrounded Graz. Malher could not deny the beauty of his current home: the morning's rain had cleared, and the clouds were gone; Mahler halfway believed the weather cowered to his will for just this one day. It shall not rain tonight.

Richard had grabbed a copy of the morning's Grazer Tagespost, which he was idly flipping though as the coach traveled.

"Here, Gustav -- look at this. The English minister of war is saying that he "knows Germany and loves Germany's literature and philosophy." He can recite passages of Faust by heart! Is that not a peculiar thing to say?"

Mahler leaned over to look at the paper. Sure enough, the Lord Haldane was blathering on about his love of Germany -- but Mahler was more interested in the other leads: Croatia's Serbo-Croat alliance was gathering force, and in Russia the Tsar had just dissolved the Duma. Not that much more interested, perhaps, but at least the other stories had some weight behind them.

Of course, the only item in the paper that interested either men was Ernst Decsey's preview of the Graz Court premiere of Strauss' Salome.

"Strauss' tone-color world, his polyrhythms and polyphony, his bursting out of the narrowness of the old tonality -- Salome is nothing less than his fetish ideal of an Omni-Tonality. No serious lover of music will miss this performace tonight." wrote Decesy.

"Yes -- very interesting, Richard," Mahler said at last. Alma scribbled away in her notebook. The coach stopped in front of an old inn and the three headed inside and sat down on a dilapidated wooden bench.

Mahler looked at Strauss, sitting carefree and quiet across him at the table. He judged his rival's appearence. Richard was a tall, lanky man. His chin was weak, his balding forehead protuberant, but his eyes -- sunken deep in his face -- those eyes could pierce though metal, Mahler thought. He thought of how silly the two of them must look, sitting next to each other: he himself was a full head shorter, but nothing less than a muscular hawk of a man, a Semitic archetype of genius in flesh.

The two men talked while Alma scribbled away in her notebook; Mahler appreciated his wife's reluctance to speak on this day. She was not known for her rectitude.

The conversation was banal, halting, and - frankly - asinine. Mahler skirted around the topics he most wanted to discuss with Strauss - the terrible cacophony and beauty of the opera, how hard Mahler himself had fought the Court to premiere Salome in their - no, his! - House, how he had threatened to leave Vienna altogether if Salome was to be banned from performance, how sad that Dresden, a backwards nowhere regarding music, rather than Vienna had been the location of Salome's premiere, how feverish his impatience and how boundless his excitement had been when he came to Dresden to hear Salome, how greatly he admired Strauss and how greatly he despised him.

Richard was not going to talk about Salome, certainly not today. Mahler knew Strauss was a pure kind of German, without poses, without long-winded speeches, little gossip and no inclination to talk about himself or his work; an indecipherable little genius piece of shit.

The sun began to go down. Mahler grew nervous - Strauss, of course, heightened his appearance of nonchalance. Alma continued to scribble.

The tension became unbearable. With as much caution and reserve as he could muster, Mahler spoke:

"Richard, I do think we should be getting back to the Hotel Elefant. We - you need to get ready for the performance."

"Let 'em wait. They can't start without me, you know." Strauss said.

Mahler leapt up from his seat; a peculiar mixture of megalomania, paranoia, rage, and delight coursed though his body until it saturated him and began to seethe though his pores.

"If you won't go, then I will - and conduct in your place," he said.

Strauss laughed heartily, and his cheer infected Mahler, who then realized the grandiosity of his pronouncement was perhaps a little bit over the top.

As dusk fell upon Vienna, the three rushed back to the Court Opera -- in a chaffered car, no less.

The atmosphere inside was electric and eclectic. The newly rich mingled with the aristocratic, and the poor music-lovers of Vienna shoved their way into every crevice of the great House. Arnold Schoenberg, having seen the Dresden premiere with only a few of his students, had this time brought his entire entourage. Johann Strauss's widow, bitter that this provocateur shared her beloved, deceased husband's surname, came for reasons so complicated that Mahler didn't bother worrying himself with them. (Also in attendance was a teenager who later became rather infamous. His name was Adolf Hitler.) Richard and Gustav hurried backstage without creating much commotion - only a handful of patrons had space enough to see anything other than the limbs and heads of their neighbors -- and Strauss changed into his formal conducting clothing much faster than Mahler had anticipated such a lanky man could manage to.

"I am ready," Strauss said to Mahler.

"Then go. Go. Change the world tonight." Mahler said.

atolls

chapter one: The Manner By Which Porfiry Nekrasov Passes Into Death

Dawn threw it's harshest face onto Porfiry Nekrasov, piercing though the apartment window with a malevolent countenance. Porfiry turned his eyes away from the bright dawn light and struggled for a moment against the mechanics of nature, the tyranny of the waking world, but he did this with a desultoriness that conceded victory to nature before the fight began. Porfiry accepted that he was awake with all the apathy he could muster. He stayed in his chair.

He was pleased to discover that he had woken up in the chair. When he was a younger man, new in the States, he was terrified of nonconformity. He slept in waterbeds when his neighbors slept in waterbeds; he surrounded himself with pillows and matching sheets sold together in a bundled package; he bought linen constantly, because it was the American style. God, he must have spent a third of his life in outlet malls, looking for a cheaper down comforter.


Those were halcyon days. He was older now. When he found his way into the leather chair more often than he found his way onto the floor, that was good enough for him. Porfiry felt more comfortable in the chair than he ever had in a bed, anyway. Porfiy's nightmares had ceased since he migrated to the chair, and the notable aches and spasms that plagued his middle age were barely worth noting now. There was no room but his room in the chair, no empty space he felt obligated to occupy. He was a key and the chair was a lock. There was only the Chair, and Porfiry. He much preferred the cohesion of the Chair to the Bed, and... Well. And - the Other, yes. Porfiry, the Bed, and the Other.

Porfiry loved the comfort and safety of that chair, loved to feel his body perfectly settled. He believed he loved the chair, maybe. Turnabout is fair play: If a chair could feel love, then his chair would loved him. Yes, but... if a chair could love then... it would have to have a reason to love. It would have to think about its' relationship with the bottoms that occupy it. It does not do that, because:

Chairs cannot think.

Porfiry continued to out-think his chair with his drowsy mind. He discovered, after a few minutes, he was glad the chair was incapable of love. He decided he could not accept the love of anyone now, let alone the love of anything. It was fundamental truth, and he thought about it, all of it, with the full weight of his intellect. He was unsure if he could give love if he could not accept it, but...

But yes, Porfiry loved his chair, certainly more than he loved his son.

Once, he had a wife. Well - more than once. Thrice, he had a wife. The first two wives were sweetly exuberant, joyful and passionate. By his third marriage, exuberance, joy, and passion could all go to hell, as far as Porfiry was concerned. Porfiry wanted a chance to be comfortable, and he got it in his third marriage: Dozens of comfortable years, comfortable years of mutual contempt and understanding. Each had glided by so easily. Porfiry could barely remember what she looked like. Sitting alone in his stripped, naked, barren apartment now, Porfiry thought of his chair. It was the best part of that second marriage, getting the chair on his third wedding anniversary.

Porfiry tried to remember his gift to his second wife in their third year of marriage. Oh, yes - he bought her radial tires and a few cans of pork and beans.

Porfiry began to stir in his resting place. He was fully awake now, but he still held some slight hope that this sunlight was nothing more than a terrible nightmare. He prayed he was asleep, recumbent in the recliner. He prayed he wouldn't wake up once on this day. He thought of his last wife, and of his chair, and a few moments passed in this manner, Chair, Wife, Wife, Chair. Wife-Chair. Chair-Wife. Chairwife.

On the floor next to his chair a formidable stack of loose paper stood, etched with ink from Porfiy's clean shorthand. It was his magnum opus, completed.


Porfiry, alas, had to move. The day is going to lap me again, he thought. He raised himself up and out of his chair with considerable effort. Every joint creaked; every tendon ripped; every orifice flared open. He felt his heart stop.

It took no more than a second for Porfiry to gather himself and his bearings - each small heart attack he endured trained him to suffer the next one in silence. He barely noticed the chest pains any more.

With something resembling haste, he began ambling over to the window blinding him with daylight. The black velvet sheath taped to the windowpane had come unglued sometime during the night. Porfiry fixed it with denture adhesive and started towards the washroom.

He had to climb over the chair to get there. The apartment had been designed to accommodate his lifestyle. It was a simple lifestyle. 80% of his day was spent doing one of two activities:
1. sitting in his chair
2. shitting someplace other than his chair.
The other 20% was less scheduled.

Porfiry crawled into the creased outline of his decrepit body, perminantly indented into the chair after so much use, with huge ambitions. His ambitions dissipated after he remembered what chair he was sitting in. With extraordinary precision he cranked the wooden handle on the side of his chair and began to recline in earnest.

The movable foot rest extended the entire width of the bathroom door. Porfiry leaned back, until the chair was fully reclined. His upper torso was in his living room; his legs were in the washroom.

He had been forced by circumstances outside his control to break the washroom door off its' jam, weeks prior. That day, a white envelope addressed to him came in the post. The return address

Inside the envelope, however, was a typed letter from his youngest son.

He read many extensive passages written by his boy, his rage growing exponentially. It grew so great the old crippled man kicked his door. Hard. That is when he discovered his chair could recline into the washroom, and also when he discovered he could live a full life without taking more than a dozen steps in any direction with his chair in the doorjamb. But he never could bring himself to throw that door away, and now it lay on his bed. The door had a lock, and Porfiry remembered how he sometimes lock himself in washrooms for hours, back when he was married. He had loved locking himself in the washroom while everyone else was out shopping, or meeting others, or having affairs. The door seemed a physical manifestation of willful ignorance. Willful ignorance was, to Profiry, a panacea for all problems.

The door, the chair -- chairwife, he thought --, the washroom. The Trinity. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Or the Son is Wallace and The Holy Ghost, Tina.

Porfiry shuttered, and for a moment a terrible white noise drowned out all other thoughts . He wanted to give up this unpleasant and circuitous line of thought, so he did.

He turned his attention to the basin of the sink and to some leftover, stale shaving lather stuck to his straight razor. It had been a few days since he had last shaved. His beard did not grow with fullness or vigor, as it had when he was a young man; it was the feral beard of youth, thick with circular tufts of black stubble the consistency of steel wool. Now there was nothing but a bushel of stringy, thin whiskers above his mouth, and a shock of runny, discolored grey on his chin.

It didn't matter. Porfiry had spent many years tenderly maintaining his whiskers. It was a matter of pride. He could not bring himself to leave his apartment without taking a few moments to clean up his face. As he shaved, he thought to himself, the funniest man I ever saw and the saddest man I ever knew.

For some time, he gazed into his reflection and emptied his mind of all other thoughts. A few other stillborn ideas crowded into Porfiry's conscious; he wanted to suppressed them, and was happy to find them suppressed. The funniest man I ever saw and the saddest man I ever knew.

He knew W.C. Fields said those words, but he couldn't remember who the man had been talking about. Most likely he was talking about himself.

He finished up at the basin, then took off his underwear and glanced downward at his torso and dangling penis, catching sight of cotton on the floor underneath the basin. He pulled the relatively clean pair of underwear from behind the sink, and slipped them on.

He sighed. The sound of white noise filled his mind. It enraged him. The drone sounded like the sounds guilt and shame and loss would make, were guilt and loss and shame sounds. For the past two decades, Porfiry had been vexed by this inarticulate whine, but lately the drone came to him far more often, and more violently. A sound of a horrible laughing God; a sound of irrevocable things; a klaxon blast.

He looked at his washroom, turning his head slowly. Clothing, ledger papers, mousetraps, and purple highlighters were all piled haphazardly around the chair. Porfiry hadn't opened the shower door in years. an avalanche of moth-eaten clothing

Porfiry glanced at his watch and realized he was running very late. His pace quickened and he started dressing himself urgently, picking articles of clothing from the flotsam lying on his bathroom floor: undershirt, slacks, black socks, black shoes, Oxford dress-shirt, belt, rumpled tie, jacket. He took one more glance in the mirror - forgot about the hair, but there's no time for that now - and then sped past his chair. He focused all his attention forward, hoping to squeeze as much momentum from his scrawny body's inertia as possible. He hurried to the mezzanine and he snatched up his travel suitcase, still overflowing with the finest suits available in the old U.S.S.R.

ozens of volumes of Profiry's poems and stage plays, most of which he had published himself, He swooped down to the bag with a natural elegance, like was a bird of prey. He remembered how, when he was with his second wife, he thought of hawks digging their claws into field mice whenever she came. Or pretended to come.

He looked out his from door into the commons of his apartment complex. Although he did not feel much like working, Porfiry walked towards the farmer's market across the street from his building, straight towards a gargantuan white tent in the center of the square. It was Porfiry's tent in the farmer's market. Although an old man, Porfiry was a hard worker, and his stand always turned a small profit, even though he couldn't sell any vegetable or fruits. Porfiry delighted in this fact during his walk: not once had he sold anything, edible or otherwise, in that gargantuan tent.

He had acquired a small plot of land from the local farmers co-opt lot when he was still with his third wife.

Porfiry swelled. He jutted his chest, and the brittle body inside his filthy clothes puffed up like a ballon. Porfiry was little more than a forgotten old man, but he still thought of himself as being an infamous Russian revolutionary artist, the only true Knight of God. His clothing was his coat of arms; his suitcase his kingly sword, and he wanted the other tenants to see he was not crippled by his fate or his poverty, but rather that he was an inspiration. The only person looking at him, however, was Ming, the super of the complex, who was trimming the overgrown hedges in the commons, and all Ming saw was his friend, the silly old Russian, a man still enraptured with himself.

Ming waved at Porfiry, who acknowledged Ming's gesture by pretending he didn't see it. Ming put down the gardening clippers and walked over, intercepting Porfiry from his rear flank. Profiry, who continued towards his intended destination, stared into the sky.

"Hello there!" Ming shouted.

Profiry, who still did not see Ming, hesitated and turned. "Excuse me - the hearing is not so good as it was --" he said.

"Salutations to you!" Ming said, loudly.

"Oh, you must forgive, Ming! I would never have expected for you to walk over to greet me like this. Greetings to you as well."

"It is not a problem, not at all. I hadn't seen you for days, but I knew you'd hate being bothered when you stayed locked up like that. But, oh, you've missed the commotion staying in that room of yours. Terrible events! It was almost a disaster to your tent!"

"Oh, Hera! What was it?"

"The farmers started talking of tearing your canvas palace down, seeing as they think it's an eyesore and you hadn't been by in nearly a week. They were gonna put it to a vote, even! I had to go over to tell them, and I told them 'he's not dead yet, and you don't want him angry at you no matter what, dead or alive.'"

"I see it stands now -- my friend, my comrade, thank you kindly for standing up for my interests -- for I was so busy, much too busy finishing my latest work to prostitute myself on that corner these last few days."

"Did you finish another pamphlet? I haven't gotten around to the last one, I confess."

"Oh, nothing so silly as that. You could say it is my magnum opus."

Ming recoiled in astonishment at hearing the news.

"I can't even believe it, you picked it back up again?" he said.

"It shocks even me, but I did. Oh, thank you, thank you for making me promise not to destroy it, when I was lost in my grief and rage! I cannot bear that I ever held the intention any longer; it would have been as good as taking my own life to have destroyed the manuscript."

"And a good thing I did, too, because now I just know this will get you on undergraduate syllabuses in all the colleges, where it'll stay, 'till long after your death. I just got a feeling. You won't be forgotten much longer."

"One has to be remembered to be forgotten," said Porfiry.

"The tastes always come back around to the great ones."

"Perhaps you are right. God forgive my pride - I rather like the idea my name will live on."

"Oh, it will, it will, and mine will be a footnote in history, which is all I would want anyway. I'll be the man who helped to save your masterpiece... even back then, when I thought for sure the manuscript had already been destroyed, I couldn't bear to think my building would be the sight the great Profiry Nekrasov burned his greatest work. Could you imagine all those slack-jawed tourists that'd attract? They'd have sullied up this whole damn place, right down to the clocks!"

"Perhaps you could have charged for it, if just to cover all my debts to you."

"Oh, tosh. I don't think I've even sent you a bill but the first month of your residence, just to make sure I knew you weren't pulling my chain or stealing a name you saw in the history books."

Profiry excused himself, invigorated and beaming with pride. He continued slowly across the commons, dreaming: of a youth in Russia; of being for a time a Someone - a minor Someone, to be sure, but enough of a Someone to feel as though his minor works guided the fates of nations; of the flight out of Russia and his exile after his first wife's murder; of his second wife and her parents; of the fire that razed the theater he co-founded with his second wife; of... of a wordless humming drone, blotching out all other thought, blinding Profiry's eyes with rage, the thought of his son, the pain at the thought of his son....

Profiry, distracted, did not see that he had traveled to the middle of the road outside his apartment complex, and he did not see the apple-red Ford round the corner of the street, and he did not see the driver of the truck, who was Ming's pudgy wife, who did not see the tiny Russian standing in the road. Ming, still trimming the hedges, did see: he saw the Russian, and then he saw his car, and then the collision between the two. He saw his wife continue to drive off, and it looked to him like she was too busy fumbling around the cabin, almost certainly searching for some lipstick, to notice something as insignificant as vehicular manslaughter. Ming took a few moments to finish cleaning up the hedges before he called the paramedics. No point rushing now, Ming thought.

chapter two: Wherein Wallace Nekrasov First Rejects His God

"Is he dead?" Wallace Nekrasov said. He had laid the telephone receiver on the floor of the chapel's dormitory, and he lay prostrate next to it. He had to do it like this. His hands had been shaking badly enough to interfere with the conversation.

"Yep, dude. Squished. He's tomato juice," the voice, belonging to Joel Thomas, Wallace's best friend, replied. "The fucker's gone, man."

"Please...he's my dad, Joel."

"Oh, fuckin' a, man! That dude is much better now that he's a chalky outline on the ground. Jackoff hadn't even talked to you in, what, a couple years?"

"Yeah, three years to the day."

"And now everyone's better off."

"I can't really argue with that part of it, you know, but I just always sorta assumed I'd see him and we'd make up and some day he'd come over to my house to see my grandkids and he'd get to harangue them about his 'Great Truths,'"

"Your grandkids?"

"Right -- right, I'm gonna have to be celibate."

"So wait, you aren't celibate yet? You've been there three months, and still no vow of chastity?"

"You only take the vow when you're ordained, but certainly I'd imagine the clergy frowns upon it's prospective priests engaging in the carnal pleasures. Plus, you know, I'm not Catholic."

"You didn't answer my question entirely there, and you know it."

Wallace paused, embarrassed and shocked. His father was dead. He hadn't seen him since the entire mess, their falling out, when he was 19. His Dad picked up and left that night, packed his stuff and left in just a few hours, and Wallace would never be able to replace the memory of their final meeting with a happier one now, and his Dad had kept the promise he made that night to disappear from Wallace's life, and Profiry never spoke to his son again. The finality of his death hit Wallace, and it sounded like cymbal crashes.

The estrangement from Porfiry had become immortal. That thought briefly blotted out all of Wallace's other concerns. But Joel knew. He had only talked to him once before that day, and only for a few minutes. But Joel knew, somehow he figured it all out, that Wallace was still fucking and still too weak to avoid fucking anyone at any opportunity.

There was only one girl he'd met since he moved into the seminary, the Spanish/Columbian grocery clerk who always took the night shift at the 7-11 right off the highway, about three miles from the seminary. Her name was Mary. Wallace assumed her parents named her after the Virgin, rather than Magdalene. But no one names their children after the Mary Magdalene, except hookers.

He met her the night he drove into town; he had arrived 10 hours before he was scheduled to enter the compound and devote himself entirely to God, and he was nervous and sick on account of finally grasping the enormity of this decision. He bought a box of Marlboros in the store around 1:00 in the morning, and smoked one right outside the store, so eager to get something other than Jesus inside him he didn't even wait until he got in his car. After he had taken a few drags, Mary left her post at the register, grabbed some Pall Malls, and joined him in front.

"Hey there," she sung, mocking a doorbell. HEY-thereeee. It struck Wallace as the cutest thing any girl had ever done. She stopped, standing on the same plane as he, close to his right shoulder.

"Hello again," said Wallce. Without asking, Mary reached across his body to his left hand and grabbed the lighter he was fiddling with. The motion was surprising, and Wallace flinched like he just heard a nearby car backfire. Mary moved her hand away in helter-skelter, but Wallace quickly regained his composure and handed the lighter off to her, smoothly, lightly brushing her fingers with his as their hands met.

"Look at you - no one has ever been this nervous." she said, lighting her cigarette.

"I don't think I'm nervous. I think I'm frightened out of my mind." Wallace whispered so quietly it seemed to him as though he hadn't spoken at all.

"What's up?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing much," said Wallace, in a manner that told Mary that yes, in fact, many things were up, indeed. They both took a drag on their cigarettes.

"So... I'm Mary, by the way."

"Wally. Pleasure to meet."

"I don't know how to approach this, really. I never give advice, and working night shift at 7-11 is a great way to meet some people who need it. I mean - I don't know you at all and we haven't talked thought even one cigarette yet, but, what I want to say --You don't have to say anything -- but I think you need to talk, and I'm just here to listen. Not to judge or to give advice, like everyone else you know - I'm just guessing everyone tells you what to do, because it's just in your body language. Nothing but just hearing you out." she said, as though she was the same Mary with the HEY-thereeee greeting, but a few years older and a little bit wiser. Her cadence betrayed a compassionate, active mind, just the opposite of all the dumb teenagers in Wallace knew back in Anover, and as he stood next to her, he was dumbstruck and infatuated and terrified and nervous and horny and a bit sick to his stomach.

"I'm going into the seminary. Episcopalian." he said.

"Now that is something else! Congratulations, I guess... that's not something that comes up often so I don't really know the proper response."

"I think the correct response is 'what the fuck are you thinking?' but that's just anecdotal evidence on my experience, telling people so far."

"So -- can I ask you a question?"

"Is it 'why are you doing it?'"

"That's sorta it."

"I get that a lot, so I've thought this though a bit. The answer is that I don't know. Or I can't explain. It's... beyond language."

She laughed a litte. "I sorta guessed that -- the part about not knowing, at least, not about the answer being beyond language -- but there was more I was gonna ask. Something more like 'why are you doing it Episcopalian?' Don't answer that if you don't want to, no pressure. I'm just curious because I'm a lapsed Catholic girl myself, but I never really saw the appeal of the other denominations because most of 'em are so easy-going it wouldn't mean shit to lapse from 'em -" hearing this, Wallace laughed and began to ease up.

Mary smiled, too, and continued: -"That's overstating the case, of course, but still, it's like, no Methodist minister must promise, right to Him, right in his vows, that he will love and serve in His name and because his love and duty to Him are so great he doesn't need anything else. The bishops and the priests, they've all promised God their poverty, and that's pretty fucking epic right there, but then they've also taken it to a whole fucking new level and promised Him their chastity. And that's something that just awes me: To give up an opportunity like sex - but more than sex, I mean. The right to meet someone and fall in love with them and share yourself like that... that's the largest sacrifice anyone can make, I think."

"Larger than death?"

"Death could be the ultimate sacrifice, but it's kind of a cop-out if you've got enough faith. To sacrifice your life for Him, assuming He needed you to that (Wallace tried to interrupt and began raising his hand as if to object, but Mary pushed it gently back down, as though to say "I'm almost done, don't stop my train of thought") and then you're pretty much going to be with Him forever, unless it wasn't Him asking you to die in the first place."

"And I don't think He would; God is kind and loving and reasonable in his demands, from what I been taught. And if someone is tricked into believing they're doing something so genuine and extraordinary, either tricked by Satan or by feeblemindedness, and in his heart he feels - no, completely knows, in every sinew of muscle and fiber of bone - he's acting with His blessing, wouldn't He be sympathetic enough to see their faith from their actions?" said Wallace.

"Oh, fuck me, you believe all the bullshit about Satan?"

"Well -- jeez, this is a stupid fucking pun -- I was playing a bit of a Devil's Advocate there."

"No, it's cute, it really is. Go on."

"Can I say this to you? You are fucking impressive. No one talks about their fucking faith, really, like it's somehow an affront against God to think about Him too deeply, but you sorta have. Oh - why I'm Episcopalian. I bet you could guess why..."

"You're parents were Episcopalians."

"Close. Grandparents. My Grandmother's father was a priest - an infamous one, actually: Father Robespirre was not only related to the famous Frenchman of the same name, but he also embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from a senile old Andrew Carnage - and therefore her son was fated to the priesthood. Symmetrical, see? But first she needed a kid, right? And everyone thought my Grandmother was barren or my Grandfather was sterile, but really they just hated each other. Almost from the moment they married, really. I bet they only had sex once, on their 10th wedding anniversary or something. It must have been pretty awful stuff, and I'm amazed they got all the parts in the right place, frankly. Then came my Mother, 9 months later. She was a huge disappointment to Grandmother, having gone above and beyond Original Sin by committing this unpardonable Secondary Sin of femininity, or something, but soon after Mom got married and I was born, and Grandmother went to work on me."

"So.. you were guilt-tripped into hearing the calling of faith?"

"Yes. Guilt, and her money."

"Those are pretty impure reasons for committing your life to God."

"Let me rephrase a bit: I initially wanted to become a priest because the guilt and the money, and then because it became a necessity for my survival. And some of it was faith, some of it was faith. Grandmother said a million times, she said she promised me that she would give all of it away to charity, every dime to causes I didn't support, unless I was on a path to the parish. I wish I could've laughed it off, but Mom married this Russian poet just to spite Grandmother..." Wallace thought of his Dad and his head throbbed in pain and sorrow, the pain of loving someone so much and knowing the love would never be reciprocated, the guilt and regret of one act that was never going to be forgiven, one act that never could be taken back...

"So she married a Russian poet." said Mary, after Wallace had drifted into his personal agonies.

"Oh, sorry, yes -- my Dad, the sort of guy who'd brag about his poverty to passersby.And he was just the worst thing on this earth to Grandmother: a Jew."

"So, a poor Russian Jew poet married your WASP mother."

"They eloped just a few months after they met. Everyone remembers it as just this pure fucking passion, just this white hot infatuation. They would stay up for weeks, because they gave each other so much energy, and they ran all over the country and fucked in every inconceivable place we can't conceive of here, and Dad wrote this epic verse poem with my Mom - he wrote it on her body so that his greatest work would become a part of his greatest love and inspiration. They both memorized it before it faded away, but neither one has ever spoken it to anyone, save to each other. I mean, they were just wild kids."

"Can I borrow your lighter again, Wally?"

"Yeah, of course, let me get it for ya."

"But your dad was just this poor vagabond?"

"Here ya go. Yeah, when my parents met he was a happily destitute 'starving artist,' sort... sort of political, I guess. But it was complex - he wouldn't have had it any other way - he always loved to have obscure motivations behind his behavior. But he ate out of dumpsters and slept under bridges -- and not because he couldn't afford a meal or a place to sleep. He could, especially after he married Mom. He loved the American Communist Party and sometimes he helped organize open shops, and he wrote a lot about equality and brotherhood. But he also idolized people like J.P. Morgan and William Randolph Hearst - well, he idolized everything except the money. Being poor made him so happy, he nearly choked."

"He liked being poor?"

"Well -- it was like a religious thing, the starving ascetic thing."

"Wait -- I don't get it. So was he a Buddist? A Marxist?"

"God, he hated Marxists. And Cambodians, for some reason. But no, no, he wasn't a Marxist or a Buddist. He was more... trying to live his life like a Dada collage."

"A what? Dada?"

"Yeah, Dada. It was this art movement right after the first world war, mostly in Germany and Denmark. Michael Duchcamp - the guy who put a urinal up in some prestigious art gallery and named it Fountain and caused a big stir way before we were born- he was part of it."

"I've never heard the name before."

"It isn't really a big deal if you know what Dada is or who Duchamp was... I think I was just dropping names, trying to impress you."

"That's kinda sweet of you, actually -- but back to 'Dada'."

"Oh, yes. The best thing is to let them describe it: a lot of people associated with the Dada movement called it an 'anti-art.' Everything art stood for, Dada was against."

"So they devoted themselves to what, making senseless drawings and ugly paintings?"

"That was part of it -- but it really was a whole way of life. Just a total rejection of reason. It was, like - Europe had just finished reasoning it's way into a gigantic fucking bloody war, wasted nearly an entire generation during it. So what were the scientists and doctors going to do next to their countries?" Wally reached into his pocket and pulled out another cigarette.

"But they were nearly right! It was a bit like the scientists and doctors lead the Jews into the gas chambers, with all that talk of eugenics, of naturally stronger people. And maybe some biologists and surgeons thought it wonderful to experiment on the Jews, operating without any fear of reprisal or imprisonment." Mary said, excited to have something to interject after upholding her promise to Wallace. Her promise to listen to his story.

"That is part of it -- no, that is really most of it. I mean, Dada isn't a complete way to live, but it has some intrinsic value."

"Yeah, but having a Dada Dad like that... must not have been too much intrinsic value in that."

"That was why I was mostly raised by my grandparents -- my mom died before I ever got to know her. I think I was about six months old when it happened."

"I... I'm sorry. I really am, and I really wish I had something to say other than pithy statements of empathy, but all I promised to do was listen to you, right? Jesus, I didn't think you'd be so forthcoming when I saw you smoking and twitching alone out here."

"I'm making you work."

"Just like all the rich white folks. You all just love making the Latino do the work."

"Well, I could stop talking to you now, and just drive off and worship God forever. I'll know how it will feel to be bathed in Divine Love and feel orgasmic joy all the time - hopefully I'll learn in a couple of days, and I'll come back to tell you how you can do it too."

"If you stop now I might hate you forever. I will never meet another person with a Dad like yours, and if you don't tell me about him tonight I might never hear about it again."

"But you'll at least still have a good chance to hear it -- I'm moving into that seminary over the hill, right over there. Starting tomorrow, I'll be living right near here."

"But starting tomorrow, you'll be another fucking mouthbreather living in that fucking awful place, sneaking over hear at midnight, getting cum all over the tittie mags while ogling my tits."

"So I'm not just another fucking mouthbreather tonight?"

"No, you're a fucking mouthbreather with a good story to tell."

"And beautiful eyes, don't forget." said Wally.

"Shut the fuck up -- you've got a name like 'Wally,' so don't pretend like your some sort of cool dude with charm and confidence. In fact, this whole thing with the grandmother is kinda fucked up; you don't even have a grandmother, most likely. In fact, I bet that kids threw rocks at you for having a name like 'Wally,' and that's why you're retarded enough to go into this parrish.'" Mary said.

"I want to see you tomorrow. If I have more to tell, you won't ditch me."

"Well, I'll be here -- or rather, I'll be in the store. Doing my job."

They said goodbye to each other, and Wallace came by the next evening, and the evening after that, and eventually he picked her up at her house and he drove her to work and they had sex in his back seat before her shift.

Fuckin' A, Wally.

Wallace had permission to enter town freely, but he snuck out of the complex anyway, climbing from his window and rappelling down the large Oak that sat adjacent and quietly sneaking over the shoulder-tall brick and mortar walls that encircled the compound. He was certainly drawing more suspicion from the headmaster than if he simply just did it, just nonchalantly walked though the front gate and got in his car and picked up his date and came back and fucked right in front of the building, but Wallace needed to sneak around, he needed to feel guilty, because he was doing weak, immoral things.

Wallace realized he was still lying on the floor, telephone next to his ear, and that he'd been staring off into space for a rather long time. Joel was coughing over the line.

"Are the funeral arrangements complete?" Wallace finally said, interrupting the uncomfortable silence.

"Yeah, your grandparents have practically been tripping over themselves to see him off to the next world. The sooner he's set, the sooner he's in hell, I guess."

"Please don't say things like that, Joel, and I'm not kidding about it. Whatever his sins, he was too good as... an artist to deserve eternal damnation. Anyway, he's my father, and God forces me to love him. I would imagine He'd use all the violence at his omnipotent disposal , if He felt like he had to. And if, you know, he reneged on the 'free will' thing."

"I thought you were in seminary to learn stuff like 'Pride is the worst sin of all,' padre."

"I'm not a Father yet."

"Doesn't sound like you're ever gonna be one, with an attitude like that. You know I talked to Terri for the first time since you guys spilt up? She can't believe you'd give up fucking, not for anything. You know what she said to me, she said 'no God I'd worship would take someone that eager to give oral sex off the market.'"

"Please..."

"Alright, I'll back off. All I do is get high and eat Funyons, anyway. You got yourself a calling in life and shit, so who am I to say you've made a huge fucking mistake and deserve all the misery you'll encounter the rest of your life? Who am I to judge?"

"You're my friend, and that's what gives you the right to judge (of course, only God has the right to judge, I know, I know, shut up, I'm making a point). And trust me when I tell you that I need to hear your objections. I need to hear everyone's objections, because I do forget how fucking serious taking a step like this is. Maybe it hasn't sunken in, yet. But -- well, if Terri couldn't convince me, you're not going to convince me. I mean, no offense to you but -- she had breasts."

"And I don't?"

"Yours aren't symmetrical. Also, they're flabby as hell."

"Oh, you're a saint, Wallace."

"Only Catholics are saints, Joel. While I got you on the phone, and before I forget to ask, when's the service?"

"Two days from now -- I'm surprised your grandparents didn't call to break the news, especially since they're going though all this trouble with the funeral and everything and since you're pretty much the only connection between them and our dearly departed now."

"It's weird. I don't think they ever talked to him after Mom died. And they never liked him much before then, either."

"I think that might be a wee bit of an understatement, Father, considering everything. Like the trail, and all."

"Yeah - at least everyone was acquitted and the none of the lawyer's bills was unreasonably large. And stop calling me 'father.' You're gonna jinx it."

"Good."

"I don't think it's good."

"You will."

"Shush."

"So when you getting back in town?"

"I'm not sure if I can. On such short notice, especially."

"Uh - yeah, you can. As you said, he was your father."

"But..."

"Man, what kind of Church would withhold permission to go attend someone's own father's funeral? It's not like it'll be the only one the dead guy's gonna get - oh, wait, yes it is."

"The Episcopalian Church, apparently."

"Nuts to that action."

"But I'm gonna try to make it out, and hell -- I'll leave, even if admission isn't granted. What, is the Church going to damn my eternal soul for attending my father's funeral?"

"No, but they'll kick you out."

"They might, they might. Shouldn't be the end of the world. The lamb will still have a lot more seals to break after that."

"That is a pretty flippant response, considering this is your life's calling or whatever."

"The real truth about it is - this seminary needs me right now. I'm the only priest they're training right now."

"Fuck you, no way. In this holy-as-fuck country?"

"Everyone else dropped out."

"How many enrolled with you?"

"I don't know -- 17?"

"So only been three months, and these 16 other well-meaning, pious young souls have gotten the fuck outta Dodge?"

"Maybe it was 18. I never did a head count, actually."

"Okay, how about this: you've only been gone three months, and already I've been getting all Sylvia Plath here. Like, I'm alone all the time."

"Oh, you're totally different - Sylvia had her kids to keep her company."

"Whatever, man -- the point is, I need your company to keep me away from the oven."

"Oh, you still can't bake?"

"I don't care if you ever do become a priest -- you're going straight to hell, man."

"Please don't say that."

"Whatever, man. I gotta go, but I will -- let me repeat this as if I was making it an ethical duty -- I will see you on Friday. This is not a question, it's a universal human rule of law. You will be here, Friday. You will attend your father's funeral, with me. Then - I don't know, you can watch me eat Doritos or something?"

"It would be the priestly thing to do."

"What?"

"Genesis says, "And on the sixth day, He enjoyed his Doritois and said, 'If I did not enjoy these, then why make them so plentiful?"

"Yeah, whatever. I gotta go."

"Take care, Joel." Wallace picked up the receiver, pushed himself up, and hung up.