“‘Water welling up to eternal life,’ Gilbert,” she kept saying as if this was all the explanation she needed. And then an idea occurred to me…
I don’t believe that toilet had been flushed even once since Gran’ma passed. Maybe Ma needed to watch that holy water gone down the bowl to realize it weren’t doing no good for anyone’s soul inside our house. Lately Ma had taken to surrounding Gran’ma with about a hundred candles as if our bathroom had transformed itself into some kind of shrine. I guess to Ma that’s exactly what it was, although I’ve been to outhouses that smelled better.
I didn’t much feel like reliving my experience of several weeks past, but I really had no choice. Ma was in the bathroom talking to Gram when I joined her, and let me tell you what I saw was something I don’t care to remember. Ma, she turns to me all smiles, and says, “I’m so happy you decided to join us, Gilbert. Don’t be afraid…”
That seemed easy for Ma to say, although Gran’ma’s smell now was downright gaseous, and it hung thick in the air as if some huge sick animal had broken wind inside our bathroom. It stank so much I covered my nose, but the insects crawlin’ all over Gran’ma clearly were loving that rotted egg stench. Them carrion flies now was joined by maggots, the kind I seen dining on roadkill near the Dairy Queen. There must have been dozens of the fat suckers, their mouth hooks having their fill of chunks of skin, their slime-drenched bodies all bloated with human flesh like it was fast food. There was beetles too, plus some wasps and other bugs I couldn’t name, and even more was coming up through the toilet’s exposed wall pipe as if someone had rang a damn dinner bell. But the way Gram looked…
In just another week’s time, she had changed, and it weren’t for the better. Parts of Gram seemed to have busted open and it made her look fatter than I’d ever seen her. Whatever foul liquid she’d had inside was leaking out so bad her cheeks seemed torn sacks, and her gums must’ve loosened because the few teeth she claimed as her own now littered the floor. I think a couple of her fingernails was down there too. Them bugs all around her skin, they must’ve laid eggs inside her or something, ’cause about a hundred crawling creatures was all over her, burrowing in and out through split flesh. Them maggots was all bunched together on her chin as if they was enjoying a family feast. Fat as Gran’ma now was, it seemed any moment she might bust open and deflate like some pus-drenched balloon. I could picture an army of about a million bugs crawling through her flesh to say howdy.
“Ma, this is too awful. Too awful…”
I didn’t even ask. Before Ma could protest I just went to the toilet bowl and flushed.
Nothing happened.
I shook the handle. Shook it again.
Still nothing. Ma spoke so calm it scared me worse than if she would have screamed her lungs out at me.
“I removed the chain inside the tank, Gilbert. I had to. You know I had to.”
“Jesus, Ma! Jesus!”
And then the most terrible thing happened. At first I felt certain I didn’t really hear anything, that somehow my mind was playing some nasty trick on me. But no, I heard it. Ma heard it too––this liquid sound of something hitting the water in the bowl under Gram. The sound was familiar and unmistakable. It was also impossible.
Gran’ma . . . she was peeing!
[I got you good this time, didn’t I, boy?]
Ma looked at Gram. Then she looked at me. I looked back at Ma.
“You hearing what I’m hearing?” I asked.
“A miracle, Gilbert! We’re witnessin’ a genuine miracle!”
I couldn’t believe it. Ma was on her knees screaming praises to Jesus because Gran’ma was having a piddle! This weren’t no miracle to me. Gran’ma’s corpse relieving itself was plain craziness. I couldn’t explain what I heard, not in a million years. But I’m certain Jesus played no part in it. No m’am, this seemed the work of something nobody sane would call holy. But when I looked back at Gran’ma the craziness reached a whole new level. Just like the day I found her, a long strip of toilet paper was again in Gran’ma’s hand!
I feared I may woof my dinner like the last time, but then we was interrupted by the sound of our front doorbell. Ma seemed in no condition to talk, so it was up to me to put on my most convincing happy face, and I knew that weren’t going to be easy ’cause I looked like death itself. But the last thing we needed was some pesky neighbor asking questions, so I splashed water on my face and headed to answer the bell that now was ringing like mad.
“Hello, Mrs. Winfried,” I managed to greet our neighbor. Standing in our doorway was only the most nosy old woman on the planet.
“Gilbert, is your mother home?”
“She’s not feelin’ well, Mrs. Winfried. She’s in bed.”
That woman sniffed the air like some forest animal picking up a scent. Then she scrunched her face so she resembled a human prune. “That odor is awful, Gilbert. I can smell it clear across the yard in my kitchen. What is it smells so unpleasant here?”
“Septic tank. I think its busted. Burst open the other night and just stinks to high heaven, like Ma says. We got a man coming to fix it in the morning. Ma was going to apologize to you, but she’s --”
“––not feeling well. Yes, you told me.” Mrs. Winfried’s eyebrow shot up and she looked at me hard. “That’s one powerful stink for a septic tank, Gilbert.” Poking her head through the door she sniffed some more. “That smell is coming from inside your house. ’Less you have your septic tank in your parlor I doubt that’s what’s causing this smell, Gilbert.” She gave me that look again.
I stood firm, not letting her set one foot further. “Ma’s been pretty sick and I think I may have caught something too, Mrs. Winfried. Some kind of flu. I just whoopsed my dinner not ten minutes ago.”
“Your grandmother. She’s sick too?”
“Just awful, both Ma and Gram. But I’ll tell them you was here.” I managed to shut the door, but I didn’t hear Mrs. Winfried’s footsteps on our path for another two minutes. I knew that woman weren’t buying a thing I told her, that when she visited again she would be bringing some friends. I had to tell Ma we hadn’t much time to decide ’bout what to do with Gram. But Ma, she had one more surprise waiting for me when I found her still in our bathroom with Gram’s remains.
“I told you we’d seen a miracle today, Gilbert. And that’s just what’s here.”
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 h
er 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 man’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 Costell
o. 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.
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