Lacking Character

by Curtis White

  “But then, my God, the uproar! All of my attacker’s Corrected pals jumped up screaming ‘Act out! Act out!’ and came after me. I ran from the fold of my family as if I were a rude intruder.

  “I’m told that the dogs gave a short chase and then returned to camp, tongues hanging from the sides of their heads in that happy way of theirs. I think for once in their lives they were a little proud of themselves. Unfortunately for them, they did not see what was coming. Alpha Benji was poised at the spear-end of a phalanx of Enforcers and a small army of the fiercest bitches. (And they could be quite fierce, the bitches.) Benji said, simply, ‘He was one of ours.’

  “They were incredulous. ‘What? One of whose? That pastyfaced thing?’

  “‘Yeah, I got a good bite on his leg and that did not taste like no regular human leg. Tasted like the last time I got a slipper to chew on. What is that guy?’

  “‘Yeah, what the fuck? Good riddance.’

  “But my Benji, bless him, was very Greek in such matters and very exacting in the laws of hospitality. Guests were not for running down, mauling, and eating. They had to be informed first that they were not guests, then let the mayhem begin, but I had not been so informed. However peculiar, I was in the pack.

  “To make a long story short, the Corrected got their asses handed to them, once again, and they spent the rest of the day looking wistfully down on their erstwhile dog family from a distant hill.”

  Abruptly, there was a delicate knocking at the door. Fanni peeked in.

  “Is everything all right in here, Percy? I thought I heard a dog bark.”

  The Queen of Spells turned and glared at her.

  “No, darling girl, everything is fine,” said Percy.

  “He’s not telling you any of those terrible stories about when he lived with the dogs, is he? They’re a pack of lies.” She grinned and squinched her face up at her little pun.

  “Fanni, please, I’m talking to Mother.”

  The Queen calmed herself and asked, “There is more than one story?”

  “Oh, my God, he’s got a thousand and one of them. He’ll talk your leg off. You’ll be here all night. Speaking of which, do you have dinner plans, Mom? You’re welcome to join us. Perhaps we could go out to the new farm-to-table restaurant for some grass-fed beef and whatever they happen to be doing with lentils and tiny carrots today. And of course the guest room is yours should you need it.”

  “No, thank you, I’ll be leaving shortly.”

  “Too bad.” She withdrew.

  The Queen fixed Percy with a stare. “Now, are you done?”

  “I’m sorry if the exposition was a little long. But it was full of action, don’t you think? Rising action. Rising and howling action.”

  “Percy, I don’t see the point of this. It seems desperate.”

  A voice from the next room.

  “Percy!”

  He groaned. “Sorry. What?”

  “Can you come here?”

  He looked at his grim mother. “No, I don’t think so. What is it?”

  “Are you going to be able to keep your three-thirty or not? Should I call Mrs., umm, what is that, Mrs. Yeasty?”

  “That’s fine, could you call her please?”

  “Mrs. Yeasty?” asked the Queen.

  “Yes. Some of them like to make up names,” he explained to the Queen. “It’s in part for just-in-case, but they also get a kick out of it. Sort of like they’re undercover, I guess. This is at least the third name for Mrs. Yeasty. The odd thing is that she’s a man.”

  “Honestly, I think this is quite enough. I think we need to make some decisions.”

  “No! You must let me tell this story! I am convinced that it will shed light on my situation.”

  Then Fanni appeared again at the door, holding a cellphone toward Percy.

  “It’s Mrs. Yeasty, Percy. He wants to talk to you. It seems urgent.”

  He took the phone from her, closed the door, and began to talk—and then he turned toward his mother and screamed!

  23.

  “We only want Tragedy if it can clench its side-muscles like hands on its belly, and bring to the surface a laugh like a bomb.”

  —WYNDHAM LEWIS, BLAST #1

  “I’m sorry,” said the Queen of Spells, “I lost my patience with you, and then my temper. I was impulsive. Does it hurt?”

  “Well, you could simply have said, ‘No, I don’t want to hear any more stories,’ instead of doing whatever it was you did to my arm. Is there a reason it just hangs there?”

  “Sorry. I haven’t used the Sword of Finality in a while. It requires a light touch when it is used for something less than Final.”

  “I admit, though, that whatever you did had an odd kind of compassion in it, because I don’t feel any pain.”

  “I am sorry. I regret it now, but it doesn’t make a lot of difference. I’ll fix it when we get home.”

  “Will you let me go on with my story before we go?”

  “Sure. I owe you that much.”

  “Okay, well, there I was then, bitten by my best friends, mauled even, bleeding, clothes torn, penniless, friendless, and isolated outside the walls of the city of humans. I staggered up a road that ran between walls of corn blocking my view in every direction. After some time, I came upon a man. I begged his help.

  “He said, ‘I can see that someone needs to help you, but if I help you I’ll get blood all over my clothes. As you can see, I’m dressed for work, and it’s a very nice suit. And I have no idea what your story is. Perhaps you have done something to bring this upon yourself. You could be a criminal.

  “‘I tell you what, if you’ll just wait here, I’ll run in to town and get more appropriate clothes. My gardening clothes. Oh, but, you know what? I have a ten o’clock meeting that I can’t miss. Can this wait till my lunch break?’”

  “Why didn’t this man just call an ambulance on his cellphone?”

  Percy stared at her in incomprehension.

  “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. You don’t know about cellphones and such, and by tomorrow you’ll have no need to know. But, I have heard that Americans are like this. Fearful and self-absorbed.”

  “Oh, Mother, they’re not as bad as all that. They’re just humans. Besides, it’s not time to moralize yet. I’m just getting started.”

  “Okay. But this is a much better story than I expected.”

  “Thank you…”

  Again, Fanni knocked at the door. This time it was a very loud, frustrated, impatient knock.

  “Percy, it’s Mrs. Yeasty, he called back…my God, what happened to your arm?” She gave Felicité a very suspicious look.

  “It’s okay, Fanni.”

  “But…”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Well, Mrs. Yeasty says that what he has to say cannot wait.”

  “Oh, all right. Give me the phone. Mrs. Yeasty? This is Percy…yes. Yes, I know. I am sorry about that. You’re going to what? That’s a very threatening thing to say, and a bad idea, but as far as my arms are concerned, you’re too late. It’s a long story. Mrs. Yeasty, if you persist in this kind of talk I’m afraid that the bony backtowards will no longer be available to you as a personal asset…I know…I know you’re upset. Okay then. That’s fine. Apology accepted. No, no, don’t come over, I forgive you. Okay, I’m going to give the phone back to Fanni, and she’ll take you through my calendar. Goodbye, Mrs. Yeasty. I love you too.”

  Percy rose, held up a finger as if to say “right back!”, and went out.

  Felicité waited a few minutes…but he didn’t come back!

  24.

  “I shall be like a doctor tried by a jury of little boys on the accusation of a cook.”

  —SOCRATES IN PLATO’S GORGIAS

  There are outtakes from the story of Percy’s life, short scenes that were left on the cutting room floor, so to speak. These excised scenes still turn up now and then, in attics or buried in a library archive. It is the opinion of most critics that the cuts
were made because the scenes were obscene; that is, they exceeded community standards for decency. Nothing wrong with that. Cut them, I say. His story maintains its narrative integrity in spite of all expurgation, so no harm done. At last count, two hundred and twenty-seven scenes have been found. This group of outtakes is often referred to by cognoscenti as “Non-canonical Mayhem,” or, informally, the Mayhem Years.

  Some of these excised scenes were taken out because they were too silly. Given the silliness of what was left in, I can’t quite understand how anything was ever found to be too silly.

  Consider this:

  LOST SCENE A 12358.1, “LACKING CHARACTER” (COPYRIGHT ABSOLUTE OPTICS AND TRANSLATENT CRANIALS, LLC).

  One day the Alpha dog, Benji, took pity on Percy and said, “You know, you don’t have to sleep out here with us. I know the townies said they had moral and legal cause for casting you out, but if you had some money they’d let you back in, trust me.”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “True. But you’re human, so you can get some.”

  “How?”

  “Most of the humans who have had to spend some time out here with us usually say something like, ‘I’ve had it out here with you guys. No offense, but I’ve had it. I’m going to rob a convenience store.’”

  “And that works?”

  “Well, we have never seen one of them again, so we think it must work.”

  “Okay, I’m willing to give it a try. What’s a convenience store?”

  Benji rolled his dog eyes and said, “It’s a kind of store. They sell doughnuts. Let’s leave it at that for now.”

  “’Kay.”

  “One other thing is you’ll need a gun. They always take a gun.”

  “I don’t have a gun.”

  “Not a problem. Here, take this.”

  It was two short chicken bones tied together with twine in the shape of a gun.

  Percy took the gun, stuck it in his pants at the small of his back, and walked back through the city gate. He soon found a Country Panic convenience store. It was about 11 p.m. and there appeared to be only one employee inside, so Percy went in, walked up to the register, and said, “Give me money, please.”

  The clerk’s eyes popped open, but his face expressed not fear but amazement.

  “Oh, shit! Are you serious?”

  “I sure am.”

  “Listen, you can’t rob me tonight. Come on! This is my first night working here. The very first one. How would you feel?”

  “So, this is a robbing. I’m doing it right?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t see what difference it makes if I rob you tonight or come back tomorrow.”

  “Besides, you don’t even have a gun.”

  “Yes, I do.” He pulled the chicken-bone gun from the back of his pants.

  “That’s your gun? Where did you get that? Did a dog give it to you?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, a dog did give it to me. How did you know?”

  “Because that’s a dog-gun, man. It’s not a real gun. Let me see that thing.”

  Handing the gun over, Percy said, “Then why did they give it to me?”

  “Because they’re dogs! They’re stupid! They think these things are real guns, but they’re not.”

  “This is really confusing, but I’m still robbing you. I need money so I can stop sleeping with the dogs.”

  “Are you listening to me? I told you. This is my first night, so you can’t rob me. Why don’t you just shoplift some things and call it good.”

  “I need money.”

  “Don’t press your luck! You can get money another time when you’ve got a real gun.”

  “All right.”

  The clerk handed him a bag and he started putting Jelly Bellies, beef jerky, Ho Ho’s, and whatever else was close by in the bag. As he began to walk out, the clerk signaled him over, took the bag, and started going through it. At just that moment, a man pulled up in a pickup truck and came in. He was a typical midwestern haystack with a dirty Cargill Seed cap on.

  “Hey,” he said to the clerk.

  “Hey.”

  “What’s goin’ on?”

  “This guy tried to rob me with this dog-gun. I confiscated it.”

  He showed it to the man. “A dog-gun! My kids love these things. I have a little collection of them.” Looks it over. “Hey, this is a really good one. Look at the quality of the twine wrap. First rate. You could almost believe it was a real gun if…”

  The two looked at Percy and in unison said, “If you were a dog!”

  They laughed.

  “Well, I can’t fuck around with you two all night. I just need to turn in a propane canister and get a new one.”

  “Here’s the key to the case. Just take one, and bring the key back. I’ve got to keep an eye on this character.”

  Mr. Haystack took the key, went out, and a minute later they heard his truck tires squeal as he took off.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  The clerk ran out, then returned quickly.

  “He stole two tanks and he even took the damned key! Might as well kiss this job goodbye.”

  While all this was going on, Percy was putting his shoplifted items back in the bag.

  “Whoa!” said the clerk. “I’ve had it. I’ve fucking had it. Let me see what you’ve got there. A twelve-count case of Nature’s Harvest Organic Natural Wholesome Grain Nutrition Bars Without Seeds, Sticks, or Stems? I don’t think so. That’s like twenty bucks. Come on. I try to give you a break and you pull this.”

  “What should I take, then?” Percy was crying now. Just a little bit, but he was crying.

  The clerk frowned in disgust, threw a package of Ding Dongs at him, and said, “Now get your sorry ass out of here. I’m calling the cops.”

  25.

  “You’re not really supposed to understand me, but I want very much for you to listen to me.”

  —SCHLEGEL

  Among the many outtakes—whether obscene, silly, or stupefying—there is a dialogue between Percy and the Queen of Spells as they sat in Fanni’s house. I’m going to leave while you read it because, frankly, it’s embarrassing. It’s transcendentally silly or just silly as shit, depending on your philosophical orientation.

  “Mother, there is one thing that has been bothering me since I found a home here with Fanni. It’s something that I think you can best explain.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Well, many of my clients have been disappointed in my cock.”

  “Percy! Do you need to talk like that?”

  “That’s what they call it here, if you know what I’m referring to, and I don’t know why you would. Before I came here, I didn’t call it anything. I’m not even sure that I’d noticed it.”

  She frowned.

  “Yes, I know what it is. I must say that I’m disappointed that you do.”

  “What’s the big deal?” He paused with a startled look on his face. “Did you just feel something? A sort of shaking?”

  “Never mind that. What is your question?”

  “Well, the source of their disappointment has something to do with its size. They say it’s smallish. Actually, it’s been the occasion for some really deep philosophical conversations about the relative merits of…there it is again!”

  “What?”

  “The shaking.”

  “I didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Wow. Okay, the merits of how I was made. The idea is that if I am a being that was made through an act of Will, your Will, and as an expression of freedom on your part, then it is not strictly logical to say that I have a smallish cock.”

  “Could you please say ‘penis.’ I am your mother, after all. Oh! Now I felt it! Is it an earthquake?”

  “In Illinois?” He waits to see if it will happen again. Nothing. “Anyway, there are times when a child must say to his progenitor, ‘Look things in the face!’ This is one of those times.”

  “I am trying, Percy, believe me.”


  “Okay, then please forbear. So, it is not strictly logical to say I have a smallish penis because it is not even clear that the penis is mine since the Will that made the penis is not mine but yours. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “Anyway, Fanni has often said that if I ever had the chance I ought to ask you about it. So, here are the options you had at the moment of my creation, as well as I can understand them.”

  Now a rapid series of booms, and our interlocutors reach out to each other and steady themselves against the table.

  “Goodness!” said the Queen.

  “I think it’s done. I hope it’s done. Anyway, your options: first, and most obvious, you could’ve given me a larger penis. From what I’ve heard, that is the option that most of my clients would have preferred, imagining that they’d had some say in the matter. They say things like, ‘It would be nice to see you with a real wad.’”

  “Oh, my child!”

  “The second option is the one you chose, a very standard-sized, or maybe standard-sized-minus penis. Third, you could have given me a tiny penis, but that would have been cruel, and you are not cruel, so we’ll dismiss that one. Finally, intriguingly, you had the option of giving me no penis at all. You could have made that area as smoothed over as the crotch of a crash test dummy, which is in most ways what I am.”

  “That’s not true. It hurts me to hear you say that. You’re a very special boy!”

  “Out of curiosity, could you just go through your decision-making process?”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Come on! You’re making me, you’re filling in the blanks, this kind of hand, this kind of nose, and you come to that region and you say…what?”

  “My child, there is no answer to the question you’re really asking. Frankly, the answer to the question you think you’re asking is easy: I didn’t give it much thought. You got the standard, default penis that I give my male creatures when I make them. But the question you’re really asking is not ‘Why did you make my penis medium-sized?’ but ‘Why did you make me at all?’ What grieves me is that not even that gets at it. You’re not asking a question, you’re making a statement: ‘I wish you hadn’t made me.’ It’s very painful for me to say, but you’ve convinced me that you are right, I never should have made you. It wasn’t fair to you, whatever that means. I should have stuck with the little clones on horseback. They serve their purpose, deliver their messages, then they’re done, gone, up in greasy smoke like a bucket of chicken wings tossed in a fire pit. Or I can give them to my grandchildren as stocking stuffers at Christmas.”