Margaret grew up to be a very pretty young woman and we went steady together. Margaret came over to my shack one day.
I could tell it was her even before she was there because I heard her step on that board she always steps on, and it pleased me and made my stomach tingle like a bell set ajar.
She knocked on the door.
“Come in, Margaret,” I said.
She came in and kissed me. “What are you doing today?” she said.
“I have to go down to iDEATH and work on my statue.”
“Are you still working on that bell?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s coming along rather slowly. It’s taking too long. I’ll be glad when it’s done. I’m tired of the thing.”
“What are you going to do afterwards?” she said.
“I don’t know. Is there anything you want to do, honey?”
“Yes,” she said. “I want to go down to the Forgotten Works and poke around.”
“Again?” I said. “You certainly like to spend a lot of time down there.”
“It’s a curious place,” she said.
“You’re about the only woman who likes that place. inBOIL and that gang of his put the other women off.”
“I like it down there. inBOIL is harmless. All he wants to do is stay drunk.”
“All right,” I said. “It’s nothing, honey. Meet me down at iDEATH later on. I’ll be with you as soon as I put in a few more hours on that bell.”
“Are you going down now?” she said.
“No, I have a few things I want to do here first.”
“Can I help?” she said.
“No, they’re just a few things I have to do alone.”
“OK, then. I’ll see you.”
“Give me a kiss first,” I said.
She came over and I held her in my arms very close and kissed Margaret upon the mouth, and then she went off laughing.
The Bell
AFTER WHILE I went down to iDEATH and worked on that bell. It was not coming at all and finally I was just sitting there on a chair, staring at it.
My chisel was hanging limply in my hand, and then I put it down on the table and absentmindedly covered it up with a rag.
Fred came in and saw me sitting there staring at the bell. He left without saying anything. It hardly even looked like a bell.
Finally Margaret came and rescued me. She was wearing a blue dress and had a ribbon in her hair and carried a basket to put things in that she found at the Forgotten Works.
“How’s it coming?” she said.
“It’s finished,” I said.
“It doesn’t look finished,” she said.
“It’s finished,” I said.
Pauline
WE SAW Charley as we were leaving iDEATH. He was sitting on his favorite couch by the river, feeding little pieces of bread to some trout that had gathered there.
“Where you kids going?” he said.
“Oh, just out for a walk,” Margaret said, before I could say anything.
“Well, have a good walk,” he said. “Lovely day, isn’t it? Great big beautiful blue sun shining away.”
“It sure is,” I said.
Pauline came into the room and walked over and joined us. “Hello, there,” she said.
“Hi.”
“What do you want for dinner, Charley?” she said.
“Roast beef,” Charley said, joking.
“Well, that’s what you’ll have then.”
“What a nice surprise,” Charley said. “Is it my birthday?”
“No. How are you people?”
“We’re fine,” I said.
“We’re going for a walk,” Margaret said.
“That sounds like fun. See you later.”
The Forgotten Works
NOBODY KNOWS how old the Forgotten Works are, reaching as they do into distances that we cannot travel nor want to.
Nobody has been very far into the Forgotten Works, except that guy Charley said who wrote a book about them, and I wonder what his trouble was, to spend weeks in there.
The Forgotten Works just go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. You get the picture. It’s a big place, much bigger than we are.
Margaret and I went down there, holding hands for we were going steady, through the sun of a blue day and white luminous clouds drifting overhead.
We crossed over many rivers and walked by many things, and then we could see the sun reflecting off the roofs at inBOIL’s bunch of leaky shacks which were at the entrance to the Forgotten Works.
There is a gate right there. Beside the gate is the statue of a forgotten thing. There is a sign above the gate that says:
THIS IS THE ENTRANCE TO THE FORGOTTEN WORKS
BE CAREFUL
YOU MIGHT GET LOST
A Conversation with Trash
InBOIL came out to greet us. His clothes were all wrinkled and dirty and so was he. He looked like a mess and he was drunk.
“Hello,” he said. “Down here again, huh?” he said, more to Margaret than to me, though he looked at me when he said it. That’s the kind of person inBOIL is.
“Just visiting,” I said.
He laughed at that. A couple of other guys came out of shacks and stared at us. They all looked like inBOIL. They had made the same mess out of themselves by being evil and drinking that whiskey made from forgotten things.
One of them, a yellow-haired one, sat down on a pile of disgusting objects and just stared at us like he was an animal.
“Good afternoon, inBOIL,” Margaret said.
“Same to you, pretty.”
Some of inBOIL’s trash laughed at that and I looked at them hard and they shut up. One of them wiped his hand across his mouth and went inside his shack.
“Just being social,” inBOIL said. “Don’t take no offense.”
“We’re just down here to look at the Forgotten Works,” I said.
“Well, she’s all yours,” inBOIL said, pointing at the Forgotten Works that gradually towered above us until the big piles of forgotten things were mountains that went on for at least a million miles.
In There
YOU MIGHT GET LOST
and we walked through the gate into the Forgotten Works. Margaret started poking around for things that she might like.
There were no plants growing and no animals living in the Forgotten Works. There was not even so much as a blade of grass in there, and the birds refused to fly over the place.
I sat down on something that looked like a wheel and watched Margaret take a forgotten sticklike thing and poke around a small pile of stuffed things.
I saw something lying at my feet. It was a piece of ice frozen into the shape of a thumb, but the thumb had a hump on it.
It was a hunchback thumb and very cold but started to melt in my hand.
The fingernail melted away and then I dropped the thing and it lay at my feet, not melting any more, though the air was not cold and the sun was hot and blue in the sky.
“Have you found anything you like?” I said.
The Master of the Forgotten Works
InBOIL came in and joined us. It did not overly please me to see him. He had a bottle of whiskey with him. His nose was red.
“Find anything you like?” inBOIL said.
“Not yet,” Margaret said.
I gave inBOIL a dirty look but it rolled off him like water off a duck’s back.
“I found some real good interesting things today,” inBOIL said. “Just before I went to have lunch.”
Lunch!
“They’re about a quarter-of-a-mile in. I can show you the place,” inBOIL said.
Before I could say no, Margaret said yes, and I was not happy about it, but she had already committed herself and I did not want to make a scene with her in front of inBOIL, so he would have something to tell his gang and they would all laugh.
That wouldn’t make me feel good at all.
So we followed that drunken bum in
what he said was only a quarter-of-a-mile, but it seemed like a mile to me, weaving in and out, climbing higher and higher into the Piles.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” inBOIL said, stopping to catch his breath by a large pile of what looked like cans, maybe.
“Yes, it is,” Margaret said, smiling at inBOIL and pointing out a cloud that she particularly liked.
That really disgusted me: a decent woman smiling at inBOIL. I could not help but wonder, what next?
Finally we arrived at that pile of stuff inBOIL, thought was so great and had taken us so far into the Forgotten Works to see.
“Why, they’re beautiful,” Margaret said, smiling and went over and began putting them into her basket, the basket she had brought for such things.
I looked at them but they didn’t show me anything. They were kind of ugly, if you want the truth, inBOIL leaned up against a forgotten thing that was just his size.
The Way Back
MARGARET AND I had a very long and quiet walk back to iDEATH. I did not volunteer to carry her basket for her.
It was heavy and she was hot and sweaty and we had to stop many times for her to rest.
We were sitting on a bridge. The bridge was made from stones gathered at a distance and placed in their proper order.
“What’s wrong?” she said. “What have I done?”
“Nothing’s wrong. You’ve done nothing.”
“Then why are you mad at me?”
“I’m not mad at you.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
Something Is Going to Happen
THE NEXT MONTH it happened and no one knew what was coming. How could we imagine such a thing was going on in inBOIL’s mind?
It had taken years to get over the tigers and the terrible things they had done to us. Why would anyone want to do something else? I don’t know.
During the weeks before it happened everything went on as normal at iDEATH. I started working on another statue and Margaret kept going down to the Forgotten Works.
The statue did not go well and pretty soon I was only going down to iDEATH and staring at the statue. It just wasn’t coming along which was nothing new for me. I had never had much luck at statues. I was thinking about getting a job down at the Watermelon Works.
Sometimes Margaret went down to the Forgotten Works by herself. It worried me. She was so pretty and inBOIL and that gang of his were so ugly. They might get ideas.
Why did she want to go down there all the time?
Rumors
TOWARD THE END of the month strange rumors began coming up from the Forgotten Works, rumors of violent denouncements of iDEATH by inBOIL.
There were rumors about him ranting and raving that iDEATH was all wrong the way we did it, and he knew how it should be done and then he said we handled the trout hatchery all wrong. It was a disgrace.
Imagine inBOIL saying anything about us, and there was a rumor about us being sissies and then something about the tigers that no one could understand.
Something about the tigers being a good deal.
I went down to the Forgotten Works with Margaret one afternoon. I didn’t want to go down there, but I didn’t want her to go down there alone either.
She wanted to get more things for her forgotten collection. She already had more things than were necessary.
She had filled her shack up and her room at iDEATH with these things. She even wanted to store some of them in my shack. I said NO.
I asked inBOIL what was up. He was drunk as usual, and his gang of bums was gathered around.
“You guys don’t know anything about iDEATH. I’m going to show you something about it soon. What real iDEATH is like,” inBOIL said.
“You guys are a bunch of sissies. Only the tigers had any guts. I’m going to show you. We’re going to show you all.” He addressed this last thing to his gang.They cheered and held their bottles of whiskey up high, reaching toward the red sun.
The Way Back Again
“WHY DO YOU go down there?” I said.
“I just like forgotten things. I’m collecting them. I want a collection of them. I think they’re cute. What’s wrong with that?”
“What do you mean, what’s wrong with that? Didn’t you hear what that drunken bum said about us?”
“What does that have to do with forgotten things?” she said.
“They drink the stuff,” I said.
Dinner That Night
DINNER THAT NIGHT was troubled at iDEATH. Everybody played with their food. Al had cooked up a mess of carrots. They were good, mixed with honey and spices, but nobody cared.
Everybody was worried about inBOIL. Pauline didn’t touch her food. Neither did Charley. Strange thing, though: Margaret ate like a horse.
There had been a longish period of silence when Charley finally said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen. It looks serious. I’ve been afraid something like this was going to happen for a long time, ever since inBOIL got involved with the Forgotten Works, and took to making that whiskey of his, and getting men to go down there and live his kind of life.
“I’ve known something was going to happen. It’s been due for a long time, and now it looks like it’s here or will be shortly. Perhaps tomorrow. Who knows?”
“What are we going to do?” Pauline said. “What can we do?”
“Just wait,” Charley said. “That’s about all. We can’t threaten them or defend ourselves until they’ve done something, and who knows what they are going to do. They won’t tell us.
“I went down there myself yesterday morning, and I asked inBOIL what was up and he said, we’d see soon enough. They’d show us what iDEATH really was, none of the false stuff we have. What do you know about this, Margaret? You’ve spent a lot of time down there lately.”
Everybody looked at her.
“I don’t know anything. I just get forgotten things down there. They don’t tell me anything. They’re always very nice to me.”
Everybody tried hard not to look away from Margaret, but they couldn’t help themselves, and looked away.
“We can take care of anything that happens,” Fred said, breaking the silence. “Those drunken bums can’t do anything we can’t handle.”
“You bet,” Old Chuck said, though he was very old.
“You’re right,” Pauline said. “We can handle them. We live at iDEATH.”
Margaret went right back to eating her carrots as if nothing had happened.
Pauline Again
I WAS VERY ANGRY with Margaret. She wanted to sleep with me at iDEATH, but I said, “NO, I want to go up to my shack and be alone.”
She was very hurt by this and went off to the trout hatchery. I didn’t care. Her performance at dinner had really disgusted me.
On my way out of iDEATH, I met Pauline in the living room. She was carrying a painting that she was going to put up on the wall.
“Hello,” I said. “That’s a lovely painting you have there. Did you paint that yourself?”
“Yes, I did.”
“It looks very good.”
The painting was of iDEATH a long time ago during one of its many changes. The painting looked like iDEATH used to look.
“I didn’t know you painted,” I said.
“Just in my spare time.”
“It’s really a nice painting.”
“Thank you.”
Pauline kind of blushed. I had never seen her blush before or perhaps I had not remembered so. It became her.
“You think everything is going to be all right, don’t you?” she said, changing the subject.
“Yes,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
Faces
I LEFT iDEATH and started up the road to my shack. It was suddenly a very cold night and the stars shone like ice. I wished I had brought my Mackinaw. I walked up the road until I saw the lanterns on the bridges.
They were the lanterns of a beautiful child and a trout on the real bridge, and the tiger lanterns o
n the abandoned bridge.
I could barely see the statue of somebody who had been killed by the tigers, but nobody knows who it was. So many were killed by the tigers until we killed the last tiger and burned its body at iDEATH and built the trout hatchery right over the spot.
The statue was standing in the river by the bridges. It looked sad as if it did not want to be a statue of somebody killed by the tigers a long time ago.
I stopped and stared at a distance. A little while passed and then I went to the bridge. I crossed through the dark tunnel of the covered real bridge, past the glowing faces, and up into the piney woods toward my shack.
Shack
I STOPPED ON THE BRIDGE to my shack. It felt good under my feet, made from all the things that I like, the things that suit me. I stared at my mother. She was only another shadow now against the night, but once she had been a good woman.
I went inside the shack and lit my lantern with a six-inch match. The watermelontrout oil burned with a beautiful light. It is a fine oil.
We mix watermelon sugar and trout juice and special herbs all together and in their proper time to make this fine oil that we use to light our world.
I was very sleepy but I didn’t feel like sleeping. The sleepier I got, the less I felt like sleeping. I lay on my bed for a long time without taking off my clothes, and I left the lantern on and stared at the shadows in the room.
They were rather nice shadows for a time that was so ominous, that drew so near and all enclosing. I was so sleepy now that my eyes refused to close. The lids would not budge down. They were statues of eyes.
The Girl with the Lantern
AT LAST I couldn’t stand lying there in bed any longer without sleeping. I went for one of my walks at night. I put on my red Mackinaw, so I wouldn’t be cold. I guess it is this trouble that I have with sleeping that causes me to walk.
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