What Is All This?

by Stephen Dixon

  I write—of course I write—and of course I write, though maybe not of course for both, because someone else could be writing this, or I could be dictating it, even if I say I’m not. But I am writing and not dictating this, I swear, though I also swear I’m a good liar, but I’m writing this and what I write, which would be the start of the first paragraph I write if I deleted, as I think I should, everything that precedes is:, is: Up you go, there you are, now you help me, and I stick my arm up, she leans over and grabs my wrist and helps me up. I get on top of the wall where she is, say Ready? and she nods, and we both jump down to the other side.

  So what do you think (I say)?

  That we go right back over (she says). I don’t like it.

  You don’t like what?

  It here. This place.

  What about this place, or why?

  We don’t belong here. We’ve heard terrible things about it. We might be trespassing; it could be dangerous. I don’t know, but let’s go back.

  We’ve come to explore, that’s why we’re here. We’ve seen the wall countless times from the other side, said several times we wanted to see what’s on the other side. Now we’re on the other side for the first time and we see what’s on the other side, which looks almost like the side we came from. Let’s go further in to see what’s further in.

  (To me that’s almost writing nothing at all, or worse than nothing, though writing next to nothing could be worse than nothing if I keep it. Maybe I should chuck it all from the start. Or go back over the wall when she first asked us to and continue from there. Or climb over the wall for the first time with or without her but try to forget I’ve been over this wall before. Instead I’ll just go a little farther in from where we are now over that wall and see what I find. For sometimes things just happen, like a wild dog might appear and try to bite off my leg. What I mean is how will I know what I can or can’t find if I don’t look for it and give myself the time? Of course by continuing from here I’ll be stopping myself from finding what I might just find if I started from a place farther back or completely over again, so what it boils down to is my wanting to go on because I normally wouldn’t and because I am here and don’t expect to be here again, even if I realize this can be worse than doing nothing at all. I should delete this entire paragraph, or at least cut or correct certain parts, like the “of course” that starts the previous sentence and “so what it boils down to” and such. But because that’s also what I’ve always done—cutting, correcting, retyping, making better, maybe making worse—when all I want to do is go further in and see what happens and explore, this time I won’t.)

  A dog appears out of the woods. Look, a dog (she says). Here, doggy, doggy, here. It seems like a nice trained dog.

  I don’t think it is (I say).

  The dog growls, barks, Lucinda jumps. (I am not Lucinda. My name’s Hank, in real life and in this what I write. I also see I didn’t have to say who Lucinda wasn’t, because this being a first-person piece, Lucinda—at least in this country—obviously can’t be me. But I now see why I felt I had to say something about who Lucinda wasn’t: Lucinda could have been the dog. But I’ve never seen that dog before or known its name. Instead of saying I wasn’t Lucinda, I should have said the dog wasn’t, since I didn’t want to give the impression it was the dog who jumped. I know there’s some flawed logic in there or whatever it’s called if flawed logic isn’t it, but I’m not going to go over it and delete or correct it or any of the other flawed logic and possible grammatical mistakes that precede and might follow this paragraph, since all I want to do is go further on and not get sidetracked so much.)

  Go home (I say). I think Lucinda thinks I said it to her, because she runs to the wall.

  Help me over (she says).

  I didn’t mean you when I said go home (I say). But I’ll skip sticking the “I say” and “she says” in parentheses. I don’t know why I started it; I’ve never done it before. I’m sure I did it for pedantic literary reasons: that it might come out meaning something more than if I wrote it in a more normal way. I’m frequently trying for something new and most of the times it doesn’t work. But I’ll keep the parenthesized “I say” and “she says” I have in so far, even if I know they didn’t work. But where was I?

  I didn’t mean you, I say, but the dog.

  I’m going home even if you didn’t mean me, as I don’t want to deal with dogs or anything else here. I’ve seen what’s on this side, or seen enough, and now I want to get back over to the other side, not so much to go home, although I just might. Now help me over.

  Wait; let’s go further in.

  Help me over, I said.

  And I said just a little further in.

  Dog barks and snarls and then rushes at me, and I don’t move. I read to do that some place, or rather, I once read to do that and not show any fear. So I stand still and say to the dog without what I think is a sign of fear in my appearance and voice: GO HOME! Or rather: GO HOME, the exclamation point being redundant and unnecessary, I think, just as I think the word redundant or unnecessary is redundant or unnecessary if I use one or the other. And I put the command in caps because I of course yelled it, which is why the exclamation point was redundant or unnecessary: for how loud can I seem to yell on a page without my having to say I yelled very loud or I yelled so loud I must have been heard a city block away? In other words, for I didn’t explain that well, I don’t think an exclamation point adds anything to the capital letters when I’m yelling. And why the “of course” from above, since if it was of course, why say it was? There’s probably a good reason, or just a reason, forget the good, the reason being idiomatical, I think. Anyway, the dog snarls again and snaps at my pointing finger—I’m pointing at it but not too close to its open mouth, and that arm of the pointing finger is the only part of my body that moved—and turns and goes. Dog does: disappears into the woods.

  Come on, Lucinda says. I also don’t see why I don’t use quotation marks for dialogue. I don’t usually like it when others leave them out. You have—I do—the writer does—more flexibility with quotation marks. For instance, if I write a line like:—Come on, Lucinda says (or: Come on, Lucinda says), but with a period after says rather than a comma, it could seem as if I want a character to say aloud “Come on, Lucinda says,” rather than just “Come on,” which is what I intended up there. I think I’ve almost made a case against quotation marks with my example, so let me give a clearer one. I’ve time? Because I usually like a tight piece, and these explanations and examples are dragging this one out. But last one and then I’ll try to go straight through.

  If I write, and I’ll put the example on its own line to make it even clearer:

  —Come on, Lucinda says, giving him his hand, how do we know I’m not having a character say “Come on, Lucinda says, giving him his hand”? It’s possible, and so is her giving him his hand. His hand might have been torn off by the dog and she picked it up and gave it to him to take to the hospital, while she fought off or distracted the dog so he could escape, to get it sewed back on right away. Or else she might have found his hand somewhere, or the dog dug it up and brought it over to her—an artificial hand, perhaps—and given it to him because she knew it was his. Or she might have taken his left hand, we’ll say, and put it in his right hand when he still had both hands attached to his body, artificial or not, or because he had no control of his left hand because it had been permanently maimed during a war. Or the control he didn’t have might have been when he touched her when he knew she didn’t want to be touched, and to show she didn’t want to be touched, she put his touching hand into his other hand, whether the touching hand or the one she put the real hand in was artificial or not. Or both his hands could have been artificial, and she didn’t want to be touched not because they were artificial but because she simply didn’t want to be touched by him, or at least not on the place he touched her.

  It’s obvious I still can’t explain this properly now, or correctly, not properly, or
clearly, which is just another example, or two of them, that I can’t explain this clearly now. Nor do I want to go back to try to correct or delete all or part of what I’ve written since Lucinda said “Come on.” As I said, and if I didn’t, I’m saying it now: I just want to push on.

  Lucinda says (but in the new way) “Come on.” I say “No, you come with me.” She says “Please, help me over the wall. I have to get away from here. It’s too spooky, dangerous. Foreboding—that’s the word. There are signs all around that say do not enter. (Or Do Not Enter.) We’ve heard awful things about this place. There’s a couple supposed to live near here who eat any children who wander over the wall—exaggerated, perhaps, but just that people say something as horrible as that must mean something about what kind of people the couple are. So, help me.”

  No, I say.

  Now that’s the example I should have used before. Not that “Come on, Lucinda says” or “Come on, Lucinda says, giving him his hand.” And I didn’t intentionally leave out the quotation marks around “No” just to make a better example, but now that I did, I think it is. Because by saying “No, I say,” which that No, I say above could have meant, it could have meant I was saying both “No” and “I say”—the “I say” to emphasize how much I was saying “No.”

  That explained it only a little better than my previous examples explained what they were supposed to be explaining, and I said I wouldn’t get sidetracked again from whatever my intention was in doing this piece, which after getting sidetracked so much, I forget. What was it? To let something go? “Going to let my mind go,” I think I said, whatever that means. What does it, if that was it, the intention, for if it was, exact or otherwise, that “Going to let my mind go,” I now don’t know. I read back but can’t find it. I know it’s there, but I read back too quickly, maybe because I just want to push on, not back, which also might have been my intention, or the only one. Sounds familiar. Was it? My intention, sole or one of? I ask Lucinda if she remembers if I mentioned what my intention was in starting out to get here, other than just to climb over the wall and be here, and she says “What?” “Nothing about my wanting to just push on or letting my mind go, or something else?” and she says “Not to me you didn’t.” “Didn’t mention it, you mean?” and she says “Far as I can remember, yes.”

  Hell with it and the woods. I’m not going to push on if I don’t know why I’m pushing on, though I don’t see why I can’t if I don’t, but hell with it as I said. I realize all that could be an alibi of sorts. How so? That I just don’t want to go through these woods yet, out of tiredness, disinterest, lack of courage, etcetera—normal reasons, in other words, so there it stands. What does? The issue, the issue.

  “Let’s go over,” I say, and she says “Where?” and I say The wall, of course,” and she says “Finally, because I thought you still might have meant the woods.” I say “To go over to the woods? What the hell would that mean if I’d said it?” and she says “Don’t get testy again. I thought you might have meant it as another word for through them,” and I say “Why? Have you ever heard me use the word ‘over’ that way before?” and she says “You never made up words that I know of, or used words in any way other than what they were meant for and people could easily understand, but I thought this time might have been the exception. It’s obvious I shouldn’t have thought that.” “You shouldn’t have,” and she says “All right, so I shouldn’t have and won’t anymore, if it’s going to irritate you so much, but let’s go over in the way you said.” We go to the wall. I give her a boost. She makes it to the top, gets on her knees and stretches down and gives me her hand and I clasp it and she says “Ready?” and I nod, and she pulls me to the top.

  We jump to the other side. She takes a deep breath and says “Don’t you like it better over here?” and I say “No, I don’t think so.” Then go back over, but without my help this time,” and I say “You know that anytime I want to, I could, because I don’t need your help.” She says “Catch me,” and runs toward home, and I chase her and she lets me catch her and we roll on the grass and laugh and kiss and make love and then go home. At night, I come back and stare at the wall.

  THE PHONE.

  “Answer it, Warren,” she yelled through the partly opened bathroom door. “Warren, you there? Answer the phone and tell whoever it is I’m busy and I’ll call back.”

  Warren was in his bedroom down the hall. He ran to his parents’ room, picked up the receiver and said hello.

  “Hey, there, fella, how are you?”

  “Daddy, that you?”

  That’s me, sure, who else?”

  “Where are you?”

  “In a hotel. Away. How’s everything home? Your mother?”

  “Fine. Today we went to the park and I fell off the swings, I didn’t get hurt, but Mommy said she won’t let me go on them anymore.”

  “She’s probably right. You’re getting too big and fat for those things. If the clothes don’t fit—I mean the shoes, don’t buy them, which I suppose can be applied to you and your swings in some far-off way. Say, Warren, you want to get your mother on the phone for me?”

  “She’s in the bathroom and says whoever it is she’ll call back.”

  “Tell her if she calls back it’ll cost her two dollars station to station. Tell her that now.”

  Warren dropped the receiver on the bed, ran across the room, stood, pressed up against the full-length bathroom door mirror and breathed heavily on it, leaving several moist clouds on the glass. He knocked on the door, yelled through the opened part of it when he got no response, his voice high above the shower splashing, “Mom. Dad’s on the phone and says to hurry or it’ll cost you dollars to call him back.” He fingered a wavy streak through the runny mirror blotches. “Mom? I said Dad’s on the phone and he wants for you to hurry.”

  She turned the shower off. “Tell him I’ll be there in a minute. I have to dry myself.”

  He took two large hops and made a bellywhop on the bed. The receiver jumped up when he landed and fell to the floor. He walked two fingers across and down the bedspread to grab it, while his father was saying “Hey? What in God’s name is going on there?”

  “I dropped the phone. I’m sorry.”

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “Getting dried. Where you calling from, Dad?”

  “San Francisco.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Where’s San Francisco? What do they teach you in school? In California. In America.”

  “How far’s California?”

  “A long way—too far to walk. About three thousand miles from you, but you’ll learn all about that when you get up to geography.”

  “I’m in geography.”

  Then maybe you haven’t come to it yet or you learned it and forgot. What’s holding up your mother?”

  “She said a minute. When you coming home? Mommy said she didn’t know.”

  “Soon, probably—depends on a lot of things. Look, do me a favor and ask your mother to really hustle.”

  “I think she’s coming.” He ran to the bathroom door, listened, ran back. “Yeah, I can hear her putting on something. How come you didn’t day goodbye when you left? I didn’t see you.”

  “No time. You know me when I have to make one of my flights. Rush-rush. Besides, what are you talking about?—you were sleeping. You’ve been good, though—not giving your mother any backtalk?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” Silence. Warren wanted to end it in some way, to speak of something interesting that had happened to him the last few days, but he couldn’t think of anything that his father wouldn’t get angry at or think too dumb to even be worth talking about. He heard him light a cigarette–that snap-snap-snap of his old silver army regiment lighter he’d said was almost no use to him for all the trouble it gave but which he’d never give up because of the great memories it brought back. Warren felt rescued when his mother came out of the bathroom. She was in a bathrobe and had a towel around her head.r />
  “He’s three thousand miles away,” he said, handing her the receiver.

  “In San Francisco.”

  “Ken?” she said.

  “I’m fine and dandy, thanks, and you?”

  “Oh, just wonderful. Never better. Where are you?”

  “San Francisco. Didn’t Warren just tell you?”

  That where you headed the morning you snuck out, or did you make a stop in Vegas first?”

  “Who snuck out where? And why would I go to Vegas? I put some duds in my bag and sort of stole out of the room so you wouldn’t wake up. Considerate, in my abstract silent way, you can say.”

  “Listen, did you call to be the funnyman or tell me your travel plans, or what?”

  “I called—and notice how serious my voice is now—to find out how you are, and of course Warren too. And then, when I get the true picture of our latest falling-out, and also the business side of my trip out of the way, I thought I could better make up my mind about the whole thing.”

  “What do you mean true picture?” She looked at Warren, who was sprawled on the bed, listening to her part of the conversation and whatever he could pick up from his dad’s.

  “Excuse me, Ken. Warren, could you leave the room?”