That Glimpse of Truth

by David Miller

  When I finished my Honours I drove south just the once to please my parents. The whaling station was defunct. The harbour stank of choking algae. I saw Boner parked in an F-100 outside a pub the tuna men liked. He blinked when he saw me. He was jowly and smelled nasty. He looked a wreck. His teeth were bad and his gut was bloated.

  Jackie, he said.

  What are you doing? I asked, forgetting myself enough to lay hands on his sleeve along the window sill.

  Quiet life’s the good life, he mumbled, detaching himself from me. Wanna ride? Go fishin?

  Gotta meet my oldies in five minutes, I said. Why don’t I drive out tomorrow?

  I’ll get you.

  No, I’ll drive out.

  He shrugged.

  When I drove out the next day the McPharlin place was even more of a shambles than I remembered. The old man sat on the verandah, frail but still fierce. I waved and went on up to Boner’s shack and found him on his cot with a pipe on his chest and the ropey smell of pot in the air. He was asleep. On the walls were sets of shark jaws. The floor was strewn with oily engine parts. I almost stepped away but he sat up, startled. The little pipe hit the floor.

  Me, I said.

  He looked confused.

  Jackie, I said.

  He got off the bed in stages, like an old man.

  One day I’ll kill him, he said. Take me sticker down there and jam it through his fuckin head.

  It’s Jackie, I said.

  I don’t care. You think I care?

  I went east for postgrad work and then left the country altogether. I did the things I dreamt of, some diplomatic stints, the UN, some teaching, a think-tank. I took a year off and lived in Mexico, tried to write a book but it didn’t work out; it was like trying to fall in love. I was lonely and restless.

  Then my father died and my mother went to pieces. I was almost grateful for the excuse to fly home to escape failure. I came back, sold their house and set my mother up in an apartment in the city. For a while I even lived with her and that’s when I discovered that she was an addict. We didn’t get close. We’d got a little too far along for that but we had our companionable moments. She died in a clinic of pneumonia the first winter I was back.

  For several months I was lost. I didn’t want to return to being a glorified bureaucrat. I had no more interest in the academy. I had an affair with a svelte Irishwoman who imported antiquities and ethnographic material for collectors. As with all my entanglements there was more curiosity from my side of it than passion. Her name was Ethna. She must have sensed that my heart wasn’t in it; it was over in a matter of weeks but we remained friends and, in time, I became her partner in business.

  It was 1991 when I got the call from the police to say that they had Gordon McPharlin in custody. They asked whether I could come down to help them clear up some matters relating to the death of Lawrence McPharlin.

  I flew to Angelus expecting Boner to be up on a murder charge, but when I arrived I found that he was not in the lockup but in the district hospital under heavy sedation. The old man had died in his sleep at least ten days previous and an unnamed person had discovered Boner cowering in a spud crate behind the shed. He was suffering from exposure and completely incoherent.

  There’s no next of kin, said a smooth-looking detective who met me at the hospital. We found you from letters he had. And we know that you went to school with him, that there’d been … well, a longstanding relationship.

  I knew him, yes, I said as evenly as I could.

  He was in quite a state, said the detective. He was naked when he was found. He had a set of shark jaws around his neck and his head and face were badly cut. His shack was full of weapons and ammunition and … well, some disturbing pornography. There was also a cache of drugs.

  What kind of drugs? I asked.

  I’m sorry, I’m not at liberty to say. Ah, there was also some injury to his genitals.

  And is he being charged with an offence?

  No, said the cop. He’s undergone a psychiatric evaluation and he’s being committed for his own good. We need to know if there’s anyone else, family members we don’t know about, who we might contact.

  You needed me to fly here to ask me that?

  I’m sorry, he murmured. I thought you were his friend.

  I am his friend, I said. His oldest friend.

  Good, he said. Good. We thought you could accompany him, travel with him up to the city when he goes. You know, a familiar face to smooth the way.

  Jesus, I muttered, overcome at the misery and the suddenness of it. I was determined not to cry, or be shrill.

  When?

  Ah, tomorrow morning.

  Fine, I said. Can I see him now?

  The cop and a nurse took me in to see Boner. He was in a private room. There were restraints on the bed. He was sleeping. His lungs sounded spongy. His face was a mess of scabs and bruises. I cried.

  That afternoon I hired a car and drove out along the lowlands road to the old McPharlin place. The main house gave off a stink I did not want to investigate. All the old cars were still there, plus a few that had come after my time. The HT van was up on blocks, the engine gone. I looked around the sheds and found broken crates, some bloodstains.

  Boner’s hut looked like a cyclone had been through it. The floor was a tangle of tools and spare parts, of broken plates and thrown food, as though he’d gone on a rampage, emptying drawers and boxes, throwing bottles and yanking tapes from cassette spools. His mattress was hacked open and the shark sticker had been driven into it. They were right, he’d lost his mind. A squarish set of shark jaws lay on the pillow. It took me a moment to register the neat pile of magazines beside it. On impulse I reached down to pick one off the pile but froze when I saw it. This was the porn they’d told me about. The cover featured the body of a woman spread across the bonnet of a big American car, her knees wide. There were little holes burnt in the paper where the woman’s anus and vagina had been, as though someone had touched the glossy paper with a precisely aimed cigarette. On the model’s shoulders, boxed in with stickytape, was my face, my head. A black and white image of me at sixteen. Unaware of the camera, laughing. I felt a rush of nausea and rage. The fucking creep! The miserable, sick bastard.

  I didn’t even touch it. I went outside and sucked in some air. I felt robbed, undone. The ground was unstable underfoot. I had to sit down while something collapsed within me.

  When I left I hadn’t really got myself into good enough shape to drive but I couldn’t stay there any longer. I was halfway down the rutted drive when another car eased in from the highway. At least it was twilight. At least I wasn’t crying. As the car got close I recognized the cop from earlier that day. There was another detective with him, a taller man. They pulled up beside me.

  Everything alright? the cop asked.

  Just wonderful, I said, wanting only for him to get out of my way so I could get the hell off the place and find a stiff drink in town.

  You need to talk about it?

  No, I don’t need any talk. I’ll be there in the morning. Let’s get it over with.

  The cop nodded, satisfied. His mate, the tall redhead, didn’t even look my way. I wound up my window and they crept past.

  Next day I sat beside Boner in the back of an ordinary-looking mini-van with another woman who I could only assume was a nurse. We didn’t speak. What I’d seen in Boner’s cabin made it difficult for me to sit there at all, let alone make conversation. During the five hours, Boner mostly slept. Sometimes he muttered beneath his breath and once, for about half an hour without pause, he sobbed in a way that seemed almost mechanical. The only thing he said all day was a single sentence. Eat though young. Perhaps it was thy young or even their young. I couldn’t make it out. His mouth seemed unable to shape the words. I couldn’t bear to listen. I dug the Walkman from my bag and listened to a lecture on Buddhism.

  Boner was never released. He didn’t recover. Even though I drove past the private hospital almost e
very day I only ever visited at New Year. I went because I conceded that he was sick. He hadn’t been responsible for his actions. I didn’t go any more frequently than that because my disgust overrode everything else. When I went I wheeled him out into the garden where he liked to watch the wattlebirds catch moths. He had an almost vicious fascination for the Moreton Bay fig. He said it looked like a screaming neck.

  Over the years there were visits when he was hostile, when he refused to acknowledge me, and occasions when I thought he was faking mental illness altogether. He had been lame for some time but after years of shunting himself about the ward in a wheelchair he became so disabled by arthritis that he relied on others to push him. His hands were claw-like, his knees horribly distorted. When I realized how bad it had become, I sent along supplies of chondroitin in the hope that it might give him some small relief. I don’t know that it ever helped but he seemed to enjoy the fact that the nasty-tasting powder was made from shark cartilage. It brought on his troll-laugh. He’d launch into a monologue that made no sense at all.

  The visits were always difficult. The place itself was quiet and orderly but Boner was a wild, twisted little man; an ancient child, fat and revolting. And of course I was busy. The import business had become my own when I bought Ethna out. I travelled a lot. I sold my house and the weekender at Eagle Bay and bought a Kharmann Ghia and an old pearling lugger. I lived on the boat in the marina and told myself that I could cast off at a moment’s notice. I would not be cowed by middle age; I was my own woman. And I valued my equilibrium. I didn’t need the turmoil of seeing Boner McPharlin more than once a year.

  This year, on New Year’s Day, I wheeled Boner out among the roses and he slumped in the chair, slit-eyed and watchful, and before we got to the tree that provoked his usual spiel about his mother’s screaming neck, he began to whisper.

  Santa’s helpers came early for Christmas.

  What’s that? I said distractedly. I was hungover and going through the motions.

  Four of the cunts. Same four, same cunts.

  Boner, I said. Don’t be gross.

  Cunts are scared. Came by all scared. Big red, he’s lost his hair. Frightened I’ll dog him. Fuckin cunts, every one of em. Come in here like that. Fuckin think they are?

  Someone visited? I asked.

  Santa’s helpers.

  Did you know them?

  Wouldn’t they like to know? he said with a wheezy giggle.

  I stopped pushing him a moment. The light was blinding. Already his hair hung in sweaty strings on his neck. The sun-light caused him to squint and he licked his cracked lips in a repulsive involuntary cycle. There were scars in his earlobes where he’d torn his earrings out years before. Despite the heat he insisted on a blanket for his legs.

  So, did you? I asked. Know them, I mean.

  You put me here, he said.

  I’m your friend.

  Friend be fucked.

  Your only friend, Boner.

  You see that tree? You see that tree? That tree? That’s my mother’s screamin neck.

  Yes, you’ve told me.

  Screamin neck, not a sound. You can hang me from that tree, I don’t care, you and them can hang me, I don’t care.

  Stop it.

  Let em do it, let em see, the pack a cunts. Never know when I might bite, eh. Even when I’m dead. Shark’ll still go you when you think he’s dead.

  Happy New Year, Boner.

  Get me out, Jack. Let’s piss off.

  You are out. See, we’re in the courtyard.

  Out! Out, you stupid bitch.

  I’m going now.

  You’re old, he said mildly. You used to be pretty.

  That’s enough.

  They said it, not me.

  I have to go.

  See if I fuckin care.

  I really have to leave.

  Well it’s not fuckin right. I never said a word. Never once.

  Boner, I can’t stay.

  Just drivin, that’s all I did. Never touched anythin, anybody, and never said a word – Jesus!

  I’ll turn you around.

  Please, Jackie. Let’s ride, let’s just arc it up and go.

  Both of us were crying when I wheeled him into the darkness of the ward. He slumped in the chair. I left him there.

  ***

  A week later he was dead. The hospital told me it was a massive heart attack. I didn’t press for details. Looking back I see that I never did, not once.

  There were six of us at the cremation – a nurse, four men and me. Nobody spoke but the priest. I didn’t hear a word that was said. I was too busy staring at those men. They were older of course, but I knew they were the cops from back home. There was the neat one in the good suit who’d called me about Boner’s breakdown. Two others whose faces were familiar. And the tall redhead who’d asked to see my arms when I was sixteen years old. His hair was faded, receding, his eyes still watchful.

  I began to weep. I thought of Boner’s fire, his twisted bones, his terrible silence. I got a hold of myself but during the committal, as the coffin sank, the sigh I let out was almost a moan. The sound of recognition, the sound of too late.

  I walked out. The redheaded detective intercepted me on the steps. The others hung back in the shade of the crematorium.

  My condolences, Jackie, he purred. I know you were his only friend.

  He didn’t have any friends, I said, stepping round him. You should know that, you bastard – you made sure of it.

  I’m retired now, he said.

  Congratulations, I said as I pushed away.

  I drove around the river past my office and showrooms and went on down to the harbour. I cruised along the wharf a way and then along the mole to where the river surged out into the sea. I parked. The summer sun drove down but I was shivery.

  The talk on the radio was all about the endless Royal Commission. I snapped it off and laid my cheek against the hot window.

  I didn’t see it whole yet – it was too early for the paranoia and second-guessing to set in – but I could feel things change shape around me. My life, my history, the sense I had of my self, were no longer solid.

  All I knew was this, that I hadn’t been Boner’s friend at all. Hadn’t been for years. A friend paid attention, showed a modicum of curiosity, made a bit of an effort. A friend didn’t believe the worst without checking. A friend didn’t keep her eyes shut and walk away. Just the outline now, but I was beginning to see.

  They’d turned me. They played with me, set me against him to isolate him completely. Boner was their creature. All that driving, the silence, the leeway, it had to be drugs. He was driving their smack. Or something. Whatever it was he was their creature and they broke him.

  I sat in the car beneath the lighthouse and thought of how I’d looked on and seen nothing. I was no different to my parents. Yet I always believed I’d come so far, surpassed so much. At fifteen I would have annihilated myself for love, but over the years something had happened, something I hadn’t bothered to notice, as though in all that leaving, in the rush to outgrow the small-town girl I was, I’d left more of myself behind than the journey required.

  THE WAVEMAKER FALTERS

  George Saunders

  George Saunders (b.1958) was born in Texas, grew up in Chicago and took a degree in geophysical engineering from Colorado School of Mines before being awarded an MA in creative writing from Syracuse. His work includes CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia and Tenth of December, as well as The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip. He has won a number of awards including a MacArthur Fellowship, the 2013 PEN/Malamud Award and the inaugural Folio Prize for Literature in 2014.

  Halfway up the mountain it’s the Center for Wayward Nuns, full of sisters and other religious personnel who’ve become doubtful. Once a few of them came down to our facility in stern suits and swam cautiously. The singing from up there never exactly knocks your socks off. It’s very conditional singing, probably because of all the doubt. A young nun named Sist
er Viv came unglued there last fall and we gave her a free season pass to come down and meditate near our simulated Spanish trout stream whenever she wanted. The head nun said Viv was from Idaho and sure enough the stream seemed to have a calming effect.

  One day she’s sitting cross-legged a few feet away from a Dumpster housed in a granite boulder made of a resilient synthetic material. Ned, Tony, and Gerald as usual are dressed as Basques. In Orientation they learned a limited amount of actual Basque so that they can lapse into it whenever Guests are within earshot. Sister Viv’s a regular so they don’t even bother. I look over to say something supportive and optimistic to her and then I think oh jeez, not another patron death on my hands. She’s going downstream fast and her habit’s ballooning up. The fake Basques are standing there in a row with their mouths open.

  So I dive in and drag her out. It’s not very deep and the bottom’s rubber-matted. None of the Basques are bright enough to switch off the Leaping Trout Subroutine however, so twice I get scraped with little fiberglass fins. Finally I get her out on the pine needles and she comes to and spits in my face and says I couldn’t possibly know the darkness of her heart. Try me, I say. She crawls away and starts bashing her skull against a tree trunk. The trees are synthetic too. But still.

  I pin her arms behind her and drag her to the Main Office, where they chain her weeping to the safe. A week later she runs amok in the nun eating hall and stabs a cafeteria worker to death.

  So the upshot of it all is more guilt for me, Mr. Guilt.

  ***

  Once a night Simone puts on the mermaid tail and lip-synchs on a raft in the wave pool while I play spotlights over her and broadcast “Button Up Your Overcoat.” Tonight as I’m working the lights I watch Leon, Subquadrant Manager, watch Simone. As he watches her his wet mouth keeps moving. Every time I accidentally light up the Chlorine Shed the Guests start yelling at me. Finally I stop watching Leon watch her and try to concentrate on not getting written up for crappy showmanship.