Where Three Roads Meet

by John Barth

  Now I'm in for it, one imagines Phil Blank supposing as he sits there conjuring scenarios of interrogation by the state Highway Patrol: questions to which he can no more anticipate his response, if any, than he could say just who the "I" is who's "in for it": the creature named by the name on his Commonwealth of Pennsylvania driver's license and the Toyota's registration card, who already now needs to pee, but can't decide whether to exit his car and discreetly wet the ground on its passenger side or simply to stay put and, sooner or later, wet himself. In short, to do nothing—not unlock the car doors or lower its driver-side window or speak or even turn his head when the patrol person or whoever eventually appears. To take no action beyond Taking No Action, and let whatever might happen, happen.

  PART THREE: THE THIRD PERSON

  Fred "I've Been Told" Story: Question, please?

  "Self-Appointed Sidekick"Izzy-the-Teller: Yes?

  F. "I.B.T."S.: So what happened next?

  "S.-A.S.K."I.-t.-T.: Next? Nothing.

  Fred: Whatcha mean, nothing? Something has to happen next! Something always happens next!

  Izzy: Nope.

  Hitherto Unmentioned Female Third Person [speaking from rear seat of Herocycle: a mid-fortyish, probably once-slender woman, she, bespectacled and bright-serious of expression, clothed in gray sweatshirt, blue jeans, and once-white walking shoes, straight black hair cut short in helmet style]: May I clarify? In Real Life, as it's called, something always happens next: the unlikely pants-wetting, the Highway Patrol car, the sister alarmed that her brother's gone missing, various embarrassing and troublesome consequences for poor-fuck Phil—whatever. In Fiction, on the other hand, that's not the case: Phil's story ends when it's finished, and its ending isn't necessarily conterminous in either direction with his imaginable lifespan.

  I.: You got that right, ma'am: Next page would be blank, if there were one. Which there isn't.

  F.: Much obliged for the fill-in. And who might you be, by the way?

  H. U.F.T.P.: Third wheel on this Mythmobile, maybe? Go figure. Question for Teller?

  I. : Be my guest—though I've a hunch it's we who're yours.

  T.P. [waving off that consideration and tapping sheaf of manuscript pages in left hand]: Two questions, come to think of it. First off, in the lead-in to "———'s Story" you declared, and I quote [finds relevant page in aforementioned sheaf]: "A story that'll serve as Fred's and mine here in Part Two of 'A Story's Story' happens to be that of———..." But I, for one, don't see the connection. Your Phil Blank was never capital-A Anybody: His life and career were just a series of halfhearted attempts to address the teasing imperative of his name, if I may so put it. Pathetic, maybe, but hardly heroic. Fred here, on the contrary—if I may call you that, sir?

  E: Shrug.

  T.P.: Fred's career has been an unparalleled success worldwide for going on three millennia...

  F.: So I've been told.

  T.P.: No culture in sight without some version of you! And your sidekick Izzy-the-Teller here's no Phil Blank either. Granted [brandishes paper-sheaf], he and/or his capital-A Author have filled blank pages by the ream with the words and sentences of made-up stories, some of which've been more successful than others, shall we say, with critics and reviewers and us Mere Readers—

  I.: Why, thankee there, ma'm'selle. And welcome aboard, as always.

  F. [to T.P.]: So that's who you are! Okay, I get your "third wheel" thing.

  T.P. [to both]: What I don't get is how "———'s Story" is you-guys' story. That's my First Question.

  F. [to Isidore]: Hey, I don't get that either, Iz, come to think of it.

  I.: First Question perpended. Be it noted, by the way, that Feckless Phil there didn't decide to do nothing: His story ends with his inability to decide. You had another question, I believe you said?

  T.P.: Did and do. We Mere Readers had expected that once your so-called Ground Situation was established and this so-called Dramatic Vehicle got under way, plot complications would promptly follow, in the form of capital-O Obstacles and capital-A Adversaries, you know? But simply barreling westward like this down a straight flat narrative road is mere Action; it gets us nowhere, capital-P Plotwise. I'm reminded of the distinction in classical physics between Effort and Work: We're chugging along, but nothing's getting done. So my Second Question is, What gives?

  It seemed to Fred that he'd heard of those distinctions—Action versus Plot, Effort versus Work—somewhere or other a long while back. They struck him as reasonable, and having no reply to their passenger-or-host's objection, he considered pulling off the road and parking the Herocycle/Myth-mobile while the three of them discussed the matter. Maybe imperturbable Izzy had another six-pack stashed somewhere, to lubricate the discussion? Just then, however—as if their vehicle itself were given pause by Ms. Mere Reader's observation—its engine balked and quit, as had Phil Blank's Corolla's, and like that identity-challenged fellow, they coasted to a halt.

  But Izzy the Teller, far from sharing Fred's concern and Reader's puzzlement, seemed merely amused. With a left-handed palm-up gesture at their situation, "Voilá," he said to the pair of them. "Any further questions?"

  "Not till I've thought through these ones," said Fred with a frown. "Seems to me we're as out of gas as poor-fart Phil there."

  Beaming, Izzy nodded and voilá'd his left hand again.

  "What I suppose," then supposed Mere Reader from the seat behind them, "is that Izzy told us the Phil Blank story while we rattled westward just to fill the blank till the Next Thing happens—and to get another story told, in the same spirit as Fred's racking up the DV mileage just for the satisfaction of being on the move again."

  Fred: That about says it, for me anyhow.

  Izzy: Smiles knowingly while waiting for Third Person to continue.

  F.: That's a line of dialogue?

  I.: Why not? If Miz Fellow Traveler here can speak the words "———'s Story," as she managed to do twice or thrice a few pages back, then I reckon I can speak third-person stage directions. [To F.T.P. Mere Reader (speaking the words "To F.T.P. Mere Reader"):] You were saying?

  In narrative format again, "Asking, actually," that personage replied. "Your left-handed response to my First Question, I take it, is that the Herocycle's running out of gas like Phil Blank's Corolla just as I posed my Second Question effectively answers my First, namely: In what sense does his story serve as Fred's-and-yours?"

  Applauded Izzy, "A two-handed voilà encore!"

  But "Now just wait a mothering minute," objected Fred. "Maybe he and we both eventually ran dry, but up till then (as has been noted) our stories are different tales for sure. Phil's fate might resemble Izzy's, in his role as my tuckered-out Teller du jour; if so, tough titty for him, and better luck next time out. But it sure as shootin's not my story. Am I right, Miz Mere?"

  Declared Izzy before that entity could reply, "You're right as far as you go, chum—but as far as you go is right here. Point being that unless we fall by the wayside earlier on, right here's where we all end up: by the wayside. What's more—"

  Eagerly interrupted here Mere Reader, "What's more, Fred dear, as I'm just now beginning to appreciate, our ambidextrous Izzy might be getting more work done with those left-handed voilàs of his than we've been giving him credit for."

  F.: Yeah? How's that?

  "Fred's Self-Appointed Sidekick beams," here beamed that very fellow, "and with his right hand"—which now held, instead of the Swiss Army knife, a capped fountain pen—"bids our keen-eyed, not-so-Mere Reader to say on."

  Adjusting with one forefinger a lick of her helmeted hair, "Yes, well: Speaking of herself in third person like Maestro Izzy, what she's just now remembering is that this buggy—which, by the way, since I'm its Wheel Three, I presume you guys to be Wheels One and Two of, in whatever order?—that this buggy, I was saying, isn't just the so-called Hero-cycle: It's also Fred I've-Been-Told's story's Dramatic Vehicle, right? As was established back in what we're calling retrospective
ly Part One, and unlike Phil Blank's Corolla in Part Two, which was just a lowercase vehicle."

  F. & I. [more or less in unison]: Ergo?

  "Ergo, guys, when ours ran out of gas just as I happened to be complaining in my Second Question that this I.B.T. tale is overdue for a capital-C Complication to turn the screws on its capital-C Conflict and advance its ditto-P Plot, what that Arresting Vehicular Coincidence amounts to—what we have on our narrative/dramaturgical hands right here right now—is nothing less than dot dot dot..."

  "By George!" cried Fred. "A bona fide, gen-you-wine Complication!"

  "Georgina," corrected now-demure-but-not-displeased-with-herself Ms. Reader, this time adjusting her rimless specs. "Just doing my job, fellows."

  "And doing it well indeed," commended wire-rimmed Izzy.

  Heartily agreed old Fred, "Good show!" And to his frontseat-mate then, "So?"

  "So let Mademoiselle Lectrice read on," smoothly suggested that personage. "Next paragraph of this story, please, my dear? Followed by the next after that?"

  "Uh, excuse me?" Looking around her rear seat, then the forward one, and the itemless landscape round about. "What next paragraph?"

  "The one you just recited to us'll do, I suppose, that went Uh, excuse me, et cet? Followed by this one that I'm speaking and you're just now reading. On with our story, s.v.p.?"

  Unless his head-nodding was a senior moment, Protagonist Fred seemed to find this proposal agreeable. Ms. Reader Georgina, on the contrary—having retrieved that earlier-flourished script-sheaf from under her butt, where she'd secured it back when their vehicle was speeding along, and fumbling now through its latter pages—protested, "What story? What next paragraph? Last time I looked, this thing here ended with the end of '———'s Story.'"

  Maybe look again, suggested Izzy. She having so done, "Okay," Ms. puzzled G. acknowledged, "so now it ends with my asking you what in fact I was just about to ask you: How can I read what hasn't been written down yet? What's going on here?"

  "Seems to Fred and me you're doing just fine." But he offered her the capped fountain pen. "Care to give this gizmo a try?"

  His idea of a joke? she challenged him—her speech, for a change, paraphrased instead of quoted directly. In the first place, "Izzy," not she, was the self-declared Teller of this so-called tale; let the cobbler stick to his last! And in the second place, even if she were inclined to take over his job, which she most decidedly was not, these manuscript pages (although they now extended as if magically to the parenthesis in progress) were written on both sides of each sheet, leaving not a blank scrap for her to write on—or, come to think of it, for him or anybody else to write on! "Hey, now...?"

  "Complications left and right!" Fred marveled. "Seems to me the lady has a point there, Iz. And that this out-of-gas story of ours is moving right along, even though we-all aren't. Who's driving?"

  Acknowledged unruffled Isidore, "A point she'd have, friend, were't not that the pair of you seem to've forgotten our little Narrative-Point-of-View review back in Part Two. Wherein, be ye twain reminded, 'twas pointed out that while this 'I've Been Told' story both is Fred and is about Fred, its Teller this time around is Yours Truly—most explicitly so in Part Two, but at least arguably so in Parts One and Three as well, Teller having merely shifted narrative POVs between acts like a quick-change artist."

  "Excuse me?" here objected bright-eyed but still mystified Georgina-the-Reader, who'd been listening attentively to this spiel, her chin resting on the back of her hands, which rested in turn on the inexorably lengthening script, itself resting now atop the front seatback. "It seems to this Mere Reader—"

  "And right she is again," affirmed Izzy. What perhaps (with her indulgence) wanted clarification, he went on, was the term Teller, which comprises more than one aspect. For just as a Story is not its Teller ("Fred's not Izzy, is he?"), so also its Teller—in the sense of its Narrator, anyhow—is not its Author, their job descriptions being quite different even when, as here and there happens, Author and Narrator are two functions of the same functionary, or pretend so to be. Teller-in-the-sense-of-Author invents and renders into language either the story itself—its characters, setting, action, plot, and theme—or (as in present instance) some new version of a pre-existing story. Teller-in-the-sense-of-Narrator then delivers Author's invention—renders his rendition, so to speak—whether as a story character himself, like Present Speaker, or as a more or less disembodied narrative voice. Or, for that matter, as an embodied narrative voice, back in oral-tradition days when tales were literally told or sung, passed along from bard to bard instead of printed for silent perusal by individual Georginas.

  "Sigh," sighed Fred. "Those were the days."

  "Not for us quote individual Georginas they weren't," objected she. "You can 'Sigh,'sighed Fred all you want, but for us Mere Readers these are the days: Go at our own pace! Reread any passage we particularly enjoy or maybe don't quite understand. Skip ahead or check back; start or stop or hit Pause anywhere and anywhen we damn please—couldn't do that back there with Homer and Company! But we're off the subject, guys, which is, and I quote [reads aloud from current last lines of script]: 'Reads aloud from current last lines of script: Is Izzy our Author, or isn't he?' Who's writing this pedantical crapola? Is there a fourth wheel on this wagon?"

  "Plus, How do we get the sumbitch rolling, Perfessor? adds Old-Fart Fred," adds Etc., tapping his bony chest. "How do we get me rolling?"

  Instead of replying directly to those questions, imperturbable Izzy brandished again that afore-flourished fountain pen. "Notice it's capped, chaps: That's its point, one could say. Here fished forth to make the point that I myself am no more than Fred's willy-nilly teller du jour, not his author nor yours nor my own. Who our Author is, who knoweth? Not we Mere Fictional Characters! All we know is that while quote real people in the quote real world may do things out of their more-or-less-free will, all we MFCs have is the semblance thereof, while in fact we do precisely what Mister/Miz Author seeth fit to write that we do. Even Ms. Reader, once she entered this tale as its Georgina-the-Mere-Reader character, checked her own volition at the door: She may think she can exit our script anytime she wishes, but if she does, it's because Author decided to send her packing. End of speech, it says here."

  She should be so lucky, commented the referred-to MFC—who, however (she went on to say), like the story she'd made the mistake of getting involved in, was going nowhere, at least not until she had an Isidorean answer to Fred's question: How do we get this out-of-gas jalopy up and running? If, as appeared to be the case, their real magical weapon/tool/whatever was not Izzy's Swiss Army knife but Author's uncapped pen, and if (as would appear to follow) the Mythmobile's ultimate fuel was the Ink of Inspiration, so to speak, then how do we get that pen filled and flowing—or, to change metaphoric implements, how put some fresh lead in the old pencil? Are we not back where we started in Part One, at the Place Where Three Roads Diverge, awaiting some refueled Dramatic Vehicle?

  With the smile of one who knows something his questioners don't (or who would be seen as such), Izzy set down the manuscript, pocketed that pen, and turned up his palms. The sun, which would have long since set had Author not apparently lost track of time, resumed its setting. O.-F. Fred turned his What Now? visage from one to the other of his cycle-mates—of whom only determined and resourceful Georgina, it would appear, had the presence of mind to reach over the front seatback at this point, fetch up the script, move its top page (the most recently read, which at the time had ended with her saying, "End of speech, it says here," but now extended through the present paragraph) to the bottom, as she and Izzy in turn had done with the pages they'd read before it, and thereby expose to view the "new" page beneath, subheaded "4. The Fourth Wheel." From which, she being after all our Reader, in the belated sunset's long last light, she read aloud what follows this colon:

  4. THE FOURTH WHEEL

  Author speaking, more-than-patient Reader, in order to declare—at the risk
of seeming uncooperative or coy—that it matters not a whit to "Fred" 's story who its author is, as long as the job gets done. Which is (as "Izzy" pointed out a while back at some length indeed) to "craft" the thing, as they say nowadays: to put it through its dramaturgical paces, goose it along through serial/incremental complications to its climax and denouement, possibly enlightening but at least entertaining you: "holding [your] attention," says the dictionary, between your presumably more mattersome affairs. Whether I've so done and am so doing isn't for me to judge—except when I role-shift from Author to Reader-of-what-I've-authored,* about which I confess my feelings to be mixed. Who wouldn't rather read a straight-on story-story, involving colorful characters doing interesting things in a "dramatic" situation, instead of yet another peekaboo story-about-storying? Why not one in which "Fred," for example—whether or not he may be said to represent the timeless, ubiquitous Myth of the Wandering Hero—is first and foremost a palpable presence on the page? A prevailingly likable, though curmudgeonish, once-upon-a-time super-achiever, say, now on his next-to-last legs: an ex-hard-driving CEO, maybe, or even—why not?—an ex-president of the USA (quite a few of those around nowadays), who did world-altering things while in office and is chafing so at the relative impotency of retirement (especially as he abhors and fears his incumbent successor) that he concocts a last-hurrah scheme, crazy-sounding but just possibly bring-offable, to (etc.)? This with the aid of "Izzy," as his career-long adviser and former White House chief of staff likes to be called: a now-also-geriatric master manipulator who, in their joint prime, virtually told "Fred" what to say and do (or, rather, how most effectively to say and do it, Fred himself being nobody's puppet), and who not only, like his boss/colleague/advisee, much misses his role in the wings and prompter's booth of power, but finds Fred's proposed spin on what was actually Izzy's last-hurrah plan so almost certainly disastrous that he resolves for the nation's and the world's sake to quietly derail while appearing to copilot it, excuse the split infinitive and mixed metaphor?