by Youers, Rio
I couldn’t speak. My eyes was seeing something my brain couldn’t begin to grasp. Gran’ma…she was standing up, rocking to the left, then to the right, but on her feet, yes m’am. She was looking at me and smiling with none of her teeth left, but smiling just the same. Her granny pants was still down at her ankles and there was some grey mold all over her butt where she’d been sitting these past few weeks. More sticky green and yellow gunk was oozing from her to the floor, but Mom didn’t seem to mind any of that. She didn’t even seem to notice none of them bugs still crawling all over Gram’s face and arms, sucking out the last of her juices.
“Ma…oh, Jesus, Ma… It ain’t so…it can’t be so…”
“It is so, Gilbert. Your Gram seems a little unsteady on her feet. Will you run and get her walker for me?”
I’d heard somewhere that when you’re dead your muscles harden. Sometimes, with all that stuff drying up inside, a dead person will seem to move, and there have even been cases of bodies popping out of their coffins. It seemed a stretch, but it was also an explanation.
“This ain’t right, Ma. I mean, it just ain’t––it ain’t natural!”
Gram did seem a little wobbly on her feet. She always was unsteady standing in one place for too long. But I wasn’t feeling very steady myself.
“Maybe we better get your Gram cleaned up first, don’t you think, Gilbert? Will you help me get her into the tub so’s we can wash some of this gunk off her?”
I didn’t know what else to do. I reached under Gram’s arms with Ma. She weren’t heavy, as if whatever had been inside her had got all chewed out and nothing remained ’cept her shriveled flesh. Lifting her was like hauling someone made of straw, and I feared she might even fall apart in my hands, but getting her into the tub weren’t hard at all. Ma pulled the plastic curtain and turned on the shower. She looked at me and smiled, every tooth in her mouth on display.
“Isn’t it wonderful, Gilbert? Jesus, he went and answered my prayers!”
Well, maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. But one thing was certain.
What I’d experienced in our bathroom seemed considerably less than wonderful.
Next day––wouldn’t you know it?––that old bat Mrs. Winfried knocked at our back door while we was having dinner. And just like I suspected she had maybe three or four neighbors right behind her when Ma went and greeted her. For a moment Mrs. Winfried just looked at Ma kind of quizzical, studied her face really hard as if trying to read something concealed in it. But Ma, she was good at hiding stuff behind her smile.
“You feeling better, Hattie? Your son yesterday told me you weren’t exactly up to par.” She craned her neck to see what she could inside, but Ma stood firm at the doorway. Mrs. Winfried sniffed the air again like some rodent.
“I’m feeling fine today, thanks. Something I can do for you, Mrs. Winfried?”
The old bat sniffed again, this time harder.
“Smells different in here. Like Lysol. A whole lot of Lysol. You were aware of that bad smell in here yesterday, weren’t you Hattie? Gilbert said something about your septic tank?”
The women behind Mrs. Winfried jockeyed for a look inside, but Ma didn’t budge. ”It’s been taken care of, Mrs. Winfried. If you’ll pardon me, we was just having our dinner. Is there anything else?”
There probably was, but Ma shut the door before Mrs. Winfried could think of it. Still smiling, Ma carried a steaming bowl of mashed potatoes and set it before me ”Your appetite comin’ back, is it, Gilbert?”
I managed to return her smile. Scooping a whole mess of potatoes into my plate, I had some difficulty with what I had to say next.
“Pass me the salt, please, would you, Gran’ma?”
Gram and me, we won’t be visitin’ the McDonalds any time soon. That’s okay, ’cause she seems to enjoy eating them same bugs she attracts. But it’s like I told you earlier. I love my Gran’ma. Really, I do love that old woman.
Or what’s left of her.
The Old Man and the Dead
MORT CASTLE
I
In our time there was a man who wrote as well and truly as anyone ever did. He wrote about courage and endurance and sadness and war and bullfighting and boxing and men in love and men without women. He wrote about scars and wounds that never heal.
Often, he wrote about death. He had seen much death. He had killed. Often, he wrote well and truly about death. Sometimes. Not always.
Sometimes he could not.
II
May 1961
Mayo Clinic
Rochester, Minnesota
“Are you a Stein? Are you a Berg?” he asked.
“Are you an antiSemite?” the psychiatrist asked.
“No.” He thought. “Maybe. I don’t know. I used to be, I think. It was in fashion. It was all right until that son of a bitch Hitler.”
“Why did you ask that?” the psychiatrist asked.
The old man took off his glasses. He was not really an old man, only 61, but often he thought of himself as an old man and truly, he looked like an old man, although his blood pressure was in control and his diabetes remained borderline. His face had scars. His eyes were sad. He looked like an old man who had been in wars.
He pinched his nose above the bridge. He wondered if he were doing it to look tired and worn. It was hard to know now when he was being himself and when he was being what the world expected him to be. That was how it was when all the world knew you and all the world knows you if you have been in Life and Esquire.
“It’s I don’t think a Jew would understand. Maybe a Jew couldn’t.”
The old man laughed then but it had nothing funny to it. He sounded like he had been socked a good one. “Nu? Is that what a Jew would say? Nu? No, not a Jew. Not a communist. Nor an empiricist. I’ll tell you who else. The existentialists. Those wise guys sons of bitches. Oh, they get ink these days, don’t they? Sit in the cafes and drink the good wine and the good dark coffee and smoke the bad cigarettes and think they’ve discovered it all. Nothingness. That is what they think they’ve discovered. How do you like it now, Gentlemen? “They are wrong. Yes. They are wrong.”
“How so?”
“There is something. It’s not pretty. It’s not nice. You have to be drunk to talk about it, drunk or shellshocked, and then you usually can’t talk about it. But there is something.”
III
The poet Bill Wantling wrote of him: “He explored the pues y nada and the pues y nada.”
So then so. What do you know of it Mr. Poet Wantling? What do you know of it?
F____ you all. I obscenity in the face of the collective wisdom. I obscenity in the face of the collective wisdoms. I obscenity in the mother’s milk that suckled the collective wisdoms. I obscenity in the too-easy mythos of all the collective wisdoms and in the face of my young, ignorant, unknowing self that led me to proclaim my personal mantra of ignorance, the pues y nada y pues y nada y pues y nada pues y nada… In the face of Buddha. In the face of Mohammed. In the face of the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.
In the face of that poor skinny dreamer who died on the cross. Really, when it came down to it, he had some good moves in there. He didn’t go out bad. He was tough. Give him that. Tough like Stan Ketchel, but he had no countermoves. Just this sweet, simple, sad-ass faith. Sad-ass because, what little he understood, no, from what I have seen, he had it bassackwards.
How do you like it now, Gentlemen? How do you like it now? Is it time for a prayer? Very well then, Gentlemen.
Let us pray.
Baabaabaa, listen to the lambs bleat,
Baabaabaa, listen to the lambs bleat.
Truly, world without end.
Truly.
Not
Amen.
I can not will not just cannot no cannot bless nor sanctify nor affirm the obscenity the horror.
Can you, Mr. Poet Bill Wantling? Can you, Gentlemen?
How do you like it now?
In Hell and in a time of hell, a m
an’s got no bloody chance, F____ you as we have been f___ed. All of us. All of us.
There is your prayer.
Amen.
IV
“Ern––”
“No. Don’t call me that. That’s not who I want to be.”
“That is your name.”
“Goddamn it. F___ you. F___ you twice. I’ve won the big one. The goddamn Nobel. I’m the one. The heavyweight champ, no middleweight. I can be who I want to be. I’ve earned that.”
“Who is it you want to be?”
“Mr. Papa. I’m damned good for that. Mr. Papa. That is how I call myself. That is how Mary calls me. They call me ‘Mr. Papa’ in Idaho and Cuba and Paris Review. The little girls whose tight dancer bottoms I pinch, the little girls I call ‘daughter,’ the lovely little girls, and A. E. and Carlos and Coop and Marlene, Papa or Mr. Papa, that’s how they call me.
“Even Fidel. I’m Mr. Papa to Fidel. I call him Sen~or Beisbol. Do you know, he’s got a hell of a slider, Fidel. How do you like it now, Mr. Doctor? Mr. Papa.”
“Mr. Papa? No, I don’t like it. I don’t like the word games you play with me, nor do I think your ‘Mr. Papa’ role belongs in this office. You’re here so we can help you.”
“Help me? That is nice. That is just so goddamn pretty.”
“We need the truth.”
“That’s all Pilate wanted. Not so much. And wasn’t he one swell guy?”
“Who are you?” persisted the psychiatrist.
“Who’s on first?”
“What?”
“What’s on second! Who’s on first. I like them, you know. Abbott and Costello. They could teach that sissy Capote a thing or two about word dance. Who’s on first? How do you like it now, Gentlemen? Oh, yes, they could teach Mr. James Jones a little. Thinks he’s Captain Steel Balls now. Thinks he’s ready to go against the champ. Mailer, the loudmouth Hebe. Uris, even Uris, for God’s sake, the original Hollywood pissant. Before they take me on, any of them, let them do a prelim with Abbott and Costello. Who’s on first? That is good.”
“What’s not good is that you’re avoiding. Simple question.”
The psychiatrist was silent, then he said, sternly, “Who are you?”
The old man said nothing. His mouth worked. He looked frail then. Finally he said, “Who am I truly?”
“Truly.”
“Verdad?”
“Si’. Verdad.”
“Call me Adam…”
“Adam? Oh, Mr. Papa, Mr. Nobel Prize, that is just too pretty. How do you like it now, thrown right back at you? You see, I can talk your talk. Let us have a pretension contest. Call me ‘Ishmael.’ Now do we wait for God to call you his beloved son in whom he is well pleased?”
The old man sighed. He looked very sad, as though he wanted to kill himself. He had put himself on his honor to his personal physician and his wife that he would not kill himself, and honor was very important to him, but he looked like he wanted to kill himself.
The old man said, “No. Adam. Adam Nichols. That was the one who was truly me in the stories.”
“I thought it was Nick Adams in…”
“Those were the stories I let them publish. There were other stories I wrote about me when I used to be Adam Nichols. Some of those stories no one would have published. Believe me. Maybe Weird Tales. Some magazine for boys who don’t yet know about f___ing.
“Those stories, they were the real stories.”
V
A DANCE WITH A NUN
Adam Nichols had the bed next to his friend Rinelli in the attic of the villa that had been taken over for a hospital and with the war so far off they usually could not even hear it it was not too bad. It was a small room, the only one for patients all the way up there, and so just the two of them had the room. When you opened the window, there was usually a pleasant breeze that cleared away the smell of dead flesh.
Adam would have been hurting plenty but every time the pain came they gave him morphine and so it wasn’t so bad. He had been shot in the calf and the hip and near to the spine and the doctor had to do a lot of cutting. The doctor told him he would be fine. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to telemark when he skied, but he would be all right, without even a limp.
The doctor told him about a concert violinist who’d lost his left hand. He told him about a gallery painter who’d been blinded in both eyes. He told him about an ordinary fellow who’d lost both testicles. The doctor said Adam had reason to count his blessings. He was trying to cheer Adam up. Hell, the doctor said, trying to show he was a regular guy who would swear, there were lots had it worse, plenty worse.
Rinelli had it worse. You didn’t have to be a doctor to know that. A machine gun got Rinelli in the stomach and in the legs and in between. The machine-gun really hemstitched him. They changed his bandages every hour or so but there was always a thick wetness coming right through the blanket.
Adam Nichols thought Rinelli was going to die because Rinelli said he didn’t feel badly at all and they weren’t giving him morphine or anything much else really. Another thing was Rinelli laughed and joked a great deal. Frequently, Rinelli said he was feeling “swell”; that was an American word Adam had taught him and Rinelli liked it a lot.
Rinelli joked plenty with Sister Katherine, one of the nurses. He teased the hell out of her. She was an American nun and very young and very pretty with sweet blue eyes that made Adam think of the girls with Dutch bobs and round collars who wore silly hats who you saw in the CocaCola advertisements. When he first saw her, Rinelli said to Adam Nichols in Italian, “What a waste. What a shame. Isn’t she a great girl? Just swell.”
There was also a much older nun there called Sister Anne. She was a chief nurse and this was not her first war. Nobody joked with her even if he was going to die. What Rinelli said about her was that when she was a child she decided to be a bitch and because she wasn’t British, the only thing left was for her to be a nun. Sister Anne had a profile as flat as the blade of a shovel. Adam told Rinelli he’d put his money on Sister Anne in a twentyrounder with Jack Johnson. She had to have a harder coconut than any nigger.
Frequently, it was Sister Katherine who gave Adam his morphine shot. With her help, he had to roll onto his side so she could jab the hypodermic into his buttock. That was usually when Rinelli would start teasing.
“Sister Katherine,” Rinelli might say, “when you are finished looking at Corporal Nichols’s backside, would you be interested in seeing mine?”
“No, no thank you,” Sister Katherine would say.
“It needs your attention, Sister. It is broken, I am afraid. It is cracked right down the middle.”
“Please, Sergeant Rinelli––”
“Then if you don’t want to see my backside, could I perhaps interest you in my front side?”
Sister Katherine would blush very nicely then and do something so young and sweet with her mouth that it was all you could do not to just squeeze her. But then Rinelli would get to laughing and you’d see the bubbles in the puddle on the blanket over his belly, and that wasn’t any too nice.
One afternoon, Rinelli casually asked Sister Katherine, “Am I going to live?” Adam Nichols knew Rinelli was not joking then.
Sister Katherine nodded. “Yes,” she said. “You are going to get well and then you will go back home.”
“No,” Rinelli said, still sounding casual, “Pardon me, I really don’t want to contradict, but no, I do not think so.”
Adam Nichols did not think so, either, and he had been watching Sister Katherine’s face so he thought she did not think so as well.
Sister Katherine said rather loudly, “Oh, yes, Sergeant Rinelli. I have talked with the doctors. Yes, I have. Soon you will begin to be better. It will be a gradual thing, you will see. Your strength will come back. Then you can be invalided home.”
With his head turned, Adam Nichols saw Rinelli smile.
“Good,” Rinelli said. “That is very fine. So, Sister Katherine, as soon as I am better and m
y strength comes back to me, but before I am sent home, I have a favor to ask of you.”
“What is that, Sergeant Rinelli?”
“I want you to dance with me.”
Sister Katherine looked youngest when she was trying to be deeply serious. “No, no,” she said, emphatically. “No, it is not permitted. Nuns cannot dance.”
“It will be a secret dance. I will not tell Sister Anne, have no fear. But I do so want to dance with you.”
“Rest now, Sergeant Rinelli. Rest, Corporal Nichols. Soon everything will be fine.”
“Oh, yes,” Rinelli said, “soon everything will be just swell.”
* * *
What Adam Nichols liked about morphine was that it was better than getting drunk because you could slip from what was real to what was not real and not know and not care one way or the other. Right now in his mind, he was up in Michigan. He was walking through the woods, following the trail. Ahead, it came into sight, the trout pool, and his eyes took it all in, and he was seeking the words so he could write this moment truly.
Beyond this trail
a stream lies
faintly marked by rising mist.
Twisting and tumbling
around barriers,
it flows
into a shimmering pool,
black with beauty
and
full of fighting trout.
Adam Nichols had not told many people about this writing thing, how he believed he would discover a way to make words present reality so it was not just reality but more real than reality. He wanted writing to jump into what he called the fifth dimension. But until he learned to do it, and for now, writing was a secret for him.