Flying to America

by Donald Barthelme

  Nothing misses his porcine eyes and calculating mind. He notices immediately that the 57 on the can of pork and beans is incorrect as far as PORK AND BEANS (16 + 15 + 18 + 11 + 1 + 14 + 4 + 2 + 5 + 1 + 14 + 19) is concerned, it being equal to 120, whereas 57 equals PEACHES (16 + 5 + 1 + 3 + 8 + 5 + 19), AFOOT (1 + 6 + 15 + 15 + 20), DEMIGOD (4 + 5 + 13 + 9 + 7 + 15 + 4), and FUNGI (6 + 21 + 14 + 7 + 9), none of which is in the can.

  Unable to move without aid, a captive in my brother’s room, abused and bemused by morphemes and phonemes, by “Science and Sanity,” Manfred pontificates on general semantics (a trait inherited from his close friend A. Korzybski). He tells me, “We are handicapped in the knowledge of our language by being born into it. . . .” He says, “The meaning of meanings, in a given case, in a given individual, at a given moment represents composite, affective psychological configurations of all relations pertaining to the case, colored by past experiences, state of health, mood of the moment and other contingencies. . . .” He says, “. . . Only in mathematics do we find a language of similar structure . . . the importance of mathematics considered as a language becomes of fundamental significance for the theory of sanity. . . .” Fraternity is not among his talents.

  And so I spent all of February and March and April and ten days in May of this leap year deprived of comfort, companionship, and conversation. For one hundred days and nights hurting and healing. All things being equal 100 equals USELESS (21 + 19 + 5 + 12 + 5 + 19 + 19), and so it was.

  _________________

  * Gematria (n., Heb.): A cabalistic method of interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures based upon the numerical value of the letters in the words.

  A Man

  A fireman woke up one morning to find that his left hand was gone.

  My left hand! he thought.

  Then he thought: This is going to be damned inconvenient.

  The fireman cursed for a while. “God damn it! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! God damn it to Hell! Bloody Hell! Dumb ass! Christ Almighty! Son of a bitch!”

  But the stump is not bad-looking, he reflected. A neat separation. Not offensive to the eye.

  He got out of bed and took a shower. Washing his right side, which he customarily did with his left hand, was difficult. It was also difficult to dry himself with one hand. Usually he took a large brown towel in both hands and zipped it back and forth across his back. But he discovered that one cannot zip a towel with one hand. One can only flop a towel with one hand.

  Putting on socks with one hand is not easy. Shaving, however, presented no particular problems.

  At the firehouse nobody said anything about the hand. Firemen are famously tactful and kind to each other. Harvey read the New York Times until there was an alarm. Then he put on his rubber coat and boots and climbed up on the engine in his regular place, second from left, in the back.

  “No,” the captain said.

  “What do you mean, ‘No’?”

  “You can’t go to the fire,” the captain said. “You don’t have any left hand.”

  “I can cradle the hose in my arms as one would a baby and pull it in the right direction!”

  “Get down off there, Harvey. We’re in a hurry.”

  Harvey stood in the empty firehouse.

  My livelihood is threatened! he thought.

  My livelihood!

  And it wasn’t even an on-the-job injury. It was, rather, a “mysterious occurrence.” No compensation!

  He sat down in a chair. He placed his fireman’s hat on top of the New York Times.

  I must face this problem intelligently. But what is intelligently? Prosthesis? Prosthetic device concealed under black glove? A green glove? A blue glove? The cops wear white gloves on traffic duty. But a man would be a fool to wear a white glove to a fire. A brown suede driving glove from Abercrombie — the Stirling Moss model? Probably there is such a thing in the world.

  He got up and went to the place in the firehouse where the whiskey was hidden and had a shot, neat.

  He thought: Why don’t we buy better whiskey for the firehouse? This stuff tastes like creosote.

  A twelve-year-old girl who hung around the firehouse a lot entered at this moment.

  “Harvey,” she said. “How come you aren’t out on the run with the rest of the men?”

  Harvey waved his stump in the air.

  “What’s with the hand?” the girl asked. “I mean, where is it?”

  “It fell off, or something, last night, while I was sleeping.”

  “What do you mean, fell off? Was it in bed with you when you woke up? Or on the floor? Or under the bed?”

  “It was just . . . missing.”

  “Man, that’s strange,” the girl said. “God, I mean that’s weird. It gives me a funny feeling. Let’s talk about something else.” Then she paused. “Is there anything I can do? I could go out on your runs with you. Function as your extra hand, as it were.” There was a look of childish eagerness in her eyes.

  The fireman thought: This child is childish. But a good kid.

  “Thank you, Elaine,” he said. “But it wouldn’t work. There’d be union problems and stuff.” Delicately he avoided mentioning that she was a twelve-year-old girl.

  “I’ve been studying the Civil Service exam for fire lieutenant,” Elaine said, producing a study guide to the Civil Service examination for fire lieutenant published by Arco Publishing Co. “I know it backwards and forwards. Ask me anything. Just dip in anywhere and ask me anything. At random. I know the answers.”

  “Elaine,” Harvey said, “would you mind letting me alone for a little while? I have to think about something.”

  Silently the little girl withdrew.

  A hook? Harvey wondered.

  The next day at the firehouse Harvey was playing chess with his friend Nick Ceci. He consciously made all his moves with his new artificial hand in its black glove. Every time Harvey moved, a lot of the pieces fell off the board. Nick said nothing. He just picked up the pieces off the floor and put them back in their proper places. The alarm bell rang.

  Harvey climbed up on the back of the engine, second from left.

  “Get down off there, Harvey. For God’s sake,” the captain said. “This is a serious business we’re in, firefighting. Quit screwing around.”

  “But I have this new hand!”

  “Yes, but it’s no good,” the captain replied. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Harvey, but that hand is just a piece of junk.”

  “I paid two hundred and twelve bucks for it!”

  “You got taken,” the captain said. “I cannot risk the safety of my men on a possibly fallible plastic-and-metal hand which looks to me unsound and junky. I must use my best judgment. That is why I am captain, because I have good judgment. Now will you get your ass down from there and let us get out of here?”

  Harvey hung up his rubber coat and went home to Staten Island. He spent some time looking at a picture of his mother, who was dead. In the picture his mother was reading a book.

  I am a finished fireman, he thought. But yet, a human being, I have courage, resiliency — even hope. I will remold myself into something new, by reading a lot of books. I will miss firehouse life, but I know that other lives are possible — useful work in a number of lines, socially desirable activities contributing to the health of the society . . . .

  The fireman told himself a lot more garbage of this nature.

  Then he told himself some true things:

  (1) Women do not like men with one hand as much as they like men with two hands.

  (2) His fake hand was a piece of expensive junk, like a gold jeweled bird that could open its mouth and sing, and also tell the time.

  (3) He had only $213.09 in the bank, after having paid for the hand.

  (4) God had taken his hand away for a reason, because God never does anything mindlessly, appearance notwithstanding.

  (5) God’s action in re the hand could only be regarded as punitive. It could hardly be regarded as a reward or congratulations
.

  (6) Therefore he, Harvey Samaras, either had done something wrong or, more specifically, been something wrong.

  (7) His mother was dead. His father was dead. All his grandmothers and grandfathers were dead, as were his uncles, aunts, and cousins.

  (8) He had never had the guts to marry anybody, although Sheila had wanted to get married.

  (9) No children were his.

  (10) Reading a lot of books would solve nothing.

  (11) As he had grown older he had become less brave. That time at the P.S. 411 fire . . .

  (12) In essence, he had failed to improve. He had failed to become a better man.

  (13) There were mitigating circumstances — his very poor education, for example.

  (14) Having a gold jeweled bird that could open its mouth and sing and also tell the time was in no sense as good as having an ordinary left hand.

  (15) He did not know what he had done wrong. But he knew that a better man would have, somehow, done better.

  (16) But how?

  (17) How does that arise, that condition of being a better man?

  (18) Reading a lot of books?

  (19) But to be honest, he did not want to be a better man. All he wanted to do was drink and listen to music.

  (20) He did not love anybody, really.

  (21) No one loved him, particularly. Nick Ceci was friendly but probably that was just his nature, to be friendly.

  (22) We are all replaceable parts, like a bashed-in fender on a Maverick. His left hand was a replaceable part of an organism that was itself replaceable.

  (23) His death, his own death, would not be noticed by the world, would not make the slightest difference to the world.

  (24) He would live anyhow.

  (25) Poorly.

  Heather

  This it?”

  “That’s it.”

  The twins, Hilda and Heidi, have had a baby.

  Sam is in shock. How did this happen?

  True, he’s been sleeping with them both.

  “Baby’s crying,” says Hilda.

  “’Course it’s crying,” said Heidi. “Got no credit cards, can’t speak French, don’t know where its next meal is comin’ from, I’d cry too.”

  Sam pokes the bundle with a knuckle.

  “Appears to be some kind of foot down here.”

  “A good foot,” says Hilda. “Made it myself.”

  “She did the feet,” Heidi says, “I did the elbows.”

  “C’mon, guys,” says Sam, “ease up, ease up.”

  The baby’s in a clear plastic bin atop a rolling cart placed between their beds. Why do the nurses giggle constantly as they bring trays, offer pills?

  Sam’s been away for months. They did this behind his back, as it were.

  The baby is a handsome article with light brown hair and one ear that folds forward when she turns her head against the pillow. He’s allowed to hold her.

  He’s brought the twins pâte, spinach quiche, beer, and wine.

  “Well,” he says, “what are we going to do now? I mean practically speaking?”

  “When you were in North Dakota for all that time,” Hilda says, “we thought of you.”

  “Yeah,” says Heidi. “Barbecued, mostly.”

  “It was an intolerable situation,” he says. When they nurse the baby, handing her from bed to bed, he notices that both have breasts bursting with milk. “But what are we going to do about this? I mean we got to regularize this thing in some way, is the way I see it.”

  “The wages of sin,” Hilda says, “are doubt, confusion, fear, and paternity suits, plural.”

  “Come off it,” he says. “You guys knew what you were doing.” They’ve named the baby Heather. He was not consulted. He takes a swig of red wine from a Styrofoam cup. “Like where are we going to live, for example?”

  “We and Heather,” Hilda says, “will live t’ home, like always. Where you live will depend entirely on how you act.”

  “How I act? What am I supposed to do?”

  “The right thing,” says Heidi.

  “Which one?”

  “Both.”

  “That’s against the law.”

  “Little late in the day for ethical musings, ain’t it?” says Heidi.

  They’re both musicians, Heidi a violinist, Hilda a flutist.

  “Them that sows wild oats has got to bale the barley,” Hilda says.

  “O.K., you got fast mouths, this we knew already,” Sam says. “The question is, Smart Asses, which of you is the actual producer? Which one did the work?”

  “Us did it,” the twins say together. “We.”

  “I did the ears, footprints, and organs of generation,” says Hilda, “buddy let me tell you it was not easy. Gettin’ all those whorly lines on the footprints just exactly right, took me nine fuckin’ months.”

  “I did the hair, the chin, and the joints,” says Heidi. “You notice she’s got a lot of flex in those joints. We do good work around here. We don’t let nothin’ out of the shop less it’s just ’zackly right.”

  “Whoo boy,” says Hilda, “you bein’ off reconstructing North Dakota and all, you missed a lot. You missed morning sickness, evening sickness, and high-noon sickness. You ain’t been pullin’ your weight, Donor.”

  “I remind you,” says Sam, “that putting old Hilda in old Heidi’s bed was not my idea.”

  “Got to have some fun in the world,” says Heidi, and Hilda says, “Mother always taught us to share.”

  “So you’ve told me.” The baby’s staring at him.

  “She did the medulla and the bad habits, I did the thyroid and the family resemblances,” Hilda says. “Doesn’t she look a bit like Uncle Hamish?”

  “That the one hung for stamp theft?”

  “Now come on,” says Hilda, “don’t be bitter.”

  “We’re just funnin’ you,” Heidi says.

  “Well,” says Sam, “I’ll marry somebody, but I’ll be Goddamned if I’ll marry everybody.”

  “One potato, two potato,” Hilda says, “who do you love best?” She really wants to know the answer. She sits up in bed.

  Heidi reaches for a Tab that’s close to hand.

  “You mean you want to know who I love best,” Sam says. “Like more than the other one.”

  “That’s the question, Daddy,” says Heidi.

  “Well,” he says, “old Heidi is the really good-looking one, of course.”

  “The hell you say,” says Heidi.

  “But on the other hand, old Hilda is the most fun to roll around in bed with. There’s just no doubt about it.”

  “You pig!” says Hilda.

  He’s grinning. They begin to giggle. The truth is, he loves them both, adores them both, that’s why he fled to Fargo.

  “We-all are going to have to leave town, you know that,” he says. “I don’t want any damn scandal.”

  “Prepare the caravan,” says Hilda. “Hitch up the oxen.”

  “You kids think you can get work in Missoula, Montana?”

  “What’s the population?” asks Heidi.

  “Maybe eighty-five thousand.”

  “We need a semi-pro symphony and at least the possibility of chamber music,” Hilda says. “Check it out.”

  He lingers in the door.

  “Tomorrow I wouldn’t mind a little chili,” Heidi says. She looks at her sister. “Can we eat chili?”

  “This ain’t right,” he says. “You know that.”

  “We got the Blue Cross, the Red Cross, and the Star-Spangled Banner,” Heidi says. “What can go wrong?”

  Pandemonium

  The unfortunate thing —

  We learned to our chagrin that the annual games had been scheduled for the dates we had picked, with great care, for our event. Because the stars in the heavens had to dispose themselves in a certain peculiar alignment to assure the success of our project, changing the dates was impossible. We applied for relief to the sponsors of the games, but were met with a stony indiffe
rence. “Go fly a kite,” they told us.

  I wondered about my colleague. Wondered about his wisdom.

  Doubt was not confined to any one person. Doubt was, I may say, general.

  He was, and is, incorrigible. This was not the first time I had lent myself to his schemes.

  I am, I do admit, fertile.

  “The time in Panama —”

  “The time in Paraguay —”

  “But this event, having a religious character, will I submit, redeem the rest.”

  “He was persuaded that this event, having a religious character, would redeem the rest, sorry string of failures, farces, and calamities that had marked our history together.”

  “An event of such glamour and such radiance, just on the secular level even —”

  “Redemption. Within our grasp.”

  “The ecstasy of the crowds.”

  “Fervor extending in every direction like a beneficent effluvium. . . .”

  “Blessed outflow of invisible vapor or imponderable radiation. . . .”

  “It was to be our first event of the year. Much thought had gone into the planning of it.”

  “We hoped not only to entertain, but also to instruct.”

  “But also to entertain. ‘Production values’ were never far from our minds.”

  “The plans were drawn on vellum.”

  “Twelve bloody dollars a sheet.”

  “I have always made my plans on vellum. If one begins to cut corners at the conceptual stage, all that follows is inevitably compromised.”

  “We established a subcommittee to deal with the rubber-glove salesmen who were passionate in their importunities. Sales of rubber gloves nation-wide, they said, were up four hundred percent. Why then did we not buy?”

  “Semaphore and shared memory were to be the second and third principal means of communication between the ‘center’ and the massing hordes. Straight talk was to be the first.”