Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

by Percival Everett

  Then there was yet another fellow that I knew. He had this theory that there was no such thing as race, refused to acknowledge the subject even. Some low-level academic took him to task about his so-called theory. Like most theories, about most anything, it was all beyond me, leaving me feeling like I was looking at a clock with three hands. The whole idea of coming up with a theory about something that didn’t exist was, however, of great interest to me. But this guy I mentioned, the hack academic, his name was Housetown Pastrychef or Dallas Roaster, something like that, wrote that my friend was essentially full of excrement and that, furthermore, race was not only a valid category but a necessary one. This may or may not have been true. Like I said, I didn’t understand any of the discussion, but my friend dismissed the academic, his name might have been Austin Cooker, by saying that of course he believed such a thing, since he made his living and career out of being the ethnic, you know, cooning it up. They nearly came to blows when they encountered each other in a bar in DC. My friend said, This nigger believes in race as a valid category. The insult made little, if any, sense, but language’s function is not to inform but to provoke.

  You had quite a few friends.

  I did. More or less. In fact, I knew yet another man, still. Well, he was more of an acquaintance than a friend. I encountered him on my walk to campus. He was a nice-enough-looking fellow but had large blue cubes where his arms should have been. I stopped and stared, as you can well imagine. I looked at him and nodded to his blue cubes. He said, Oh, these. Yes, I said. You see, I found this old pewter lamp. When I rubbed it a genie appeared. He was large, muscular, much taller than us. He told me I could have three wishes. Well, I wished first for a beautiful and comfortable home. You can see it behind me here. He gestured with a cube. And indeed behind him, on a short hill, was a beautiful Victorian house, large and clean, colorfully painted. I told him it was a nice house. He nodded. It is, he said. And then I wished for a beautiful wife. There she is on the porch back there. He gestured again with a blue cube. The woman on the porch was in fact quite striking, gorgeous, long dark hair, dark eyes that I could appreciate at even such a distance. And then, I asked. And then, he said, something went horribly wrong when I wished for blue cubes as arms.

  Do you have a point here?

  It’s just a story.

  But it’s clearly not true.

  And?

  Only the Past Is Subject to Change

  I was just coming out of the shower when the phone rang. A woman with a shrill voice barked at me, Are you the trainer?

  I’m a trainer, I said.

  I got this horse.

  Yes?

  He’s nasty. Nobody can ride him. He hurt my husband.

  Yes?

  Can I bring him to you?

  You plan to ride him at my place?

  There was silence on her end.

  Your horse is acting up at your house, so I should see him at your house. At least at first, don’t you think?

  I guess so.

  Where are you?

  I’m up in Simi Valley.

  It was my turn to say nothing.

  Hello?

  I’m out near Joshua Tree. That’s a long way. Can’t you call someone closer to you?

  Buddy Davies gave me your name.

  I don’t know Buddy Davies.

  Well, he knows you.

  It will be expensive for me to come way over there. It’ll cost you four hundred just to get me over there. I said that so she would say no, but she didn’t. Then there’s my time with the horse.

  That’s fine.

  What does the horse do exactly?

  He bucks. Everything will be going along fine and then he’ll freak out, bucking or bolting. He reached around once, tried to bite my husband’s leg. My husband was just sitting in the saddle and he came around like this.

  I’ll be there tomorrow morning at eleven, I said. She gave me the address and I hung up.

  What what what could be at the bottom of this questionable exercise? Stories that matter and stories that don’t, like a life, served up on the lid of a garbage can with exquisite garnish, parsley and radishes cut to be roses. Whatever is at the bottom (and by bottom I don’t mean lowest point but undersurface or undercarriage) of it must have been propagated by an exceptionably significant and fascinating question, mustn’t it have, deeply personal and arresting, engrossing, at the time I wrote it, am writing it, will write it. It is a subtle and delicate last resort against—say—truth? Perhaps veracity is a better word. Reputability. Truth is so, well, worn and perhaps not worn well. There is either a cluster of grave and terrible questions with which this project is burdened or there is none. You could at least come here with the intention of getting me drunk.

  Or you could have a taste waiting for me.

  Touché. Or, as the French say, touchy.

  It’s a circle, isn’t it? I suppose we must follow it, like ants on a pheromone trail. I suppose it is neither makeshift nor defect. The way we follow turns, in turns. But I’ve taken your conversational turn, haven’t I. Caused a flutter. Funny how easily knots get tied. There you are trotting back and counting lines, he said this and then he said that and then he said and what? Wait a minute. He said this and

  You should visit more often.

  I was in a particularly surly mood in that evening. I didn’t want to make the drive to Simi Valley the next morning. The mare that I thought was making progress regressed. And I found a rattler under a hay bale and I had to kill it. I always preferred to relocate them, but this one startled me and I reached out with the machete I used to cut the bale strings and whacked off his head before I knew what was happening. I made myself a boring yet somehow edible dinner and read myself into what passed for sleep for me.

  The daylilies and zinnias and gerbera daisies are blooming, but the blooms are afreud to be anything but themselves, afreud they are mistaken. The author takes such shit. Probably better to be dead. The easy way out, which, by the way, is the same way in, is to privilege trope over meaning, heels over head, ass over teapot. Remember, you need a map even if you intend to misread. I feel no authorial anxiety and no real writer ever has.

  The next morning, Juan came early and was feeding the horses when I got outside. I was glad. I had a bunch of paperwork to attend to before driving to Simi Valley. I watched as he tossed a couple of flakes of hay over the fence to the donkeys. He walked back toward me and said good morning.

  I nodded. You’ll have to use the pickup to haul the manure trailer today. The tractor’s broken.

  I know, he said. I think I can fix it.

  That would be great. I looked at the clear sky. I noticed he was wearing a heavy jacket. Aren’t you hot?

  He opened his coat and showed me a flak vest.

  What’s that all about?

  Protection, he said. They shot your horse, right?

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  I don’t want the last words I hear to be, I got me one.

  I’ll be back this afternoon.

  Juan nodded and left to work on the tractor.

  I went back into the house and wrote checks to nearly everyone and anyone I could think of. I then put on my hat and started the boring and tedious drive to north of Los Angeles.

  Back when we were knee high to knees Point Dume was treeless and wind beaten. It was a good place to throw ashes to the wind. Please remember that.

  I followed the woman’s directions, because I follow directions well, and made my way along her dusty track of a driveway. An Appaloosa stood alone in a pasture of scattered patches of tall weeds. The yard was fairly neat but cluttered with ancient farm implements. A baling rake marked the middle of the circular drive. I parked, got out of my car, and walked up the door, knocked.

  As soon as the door was opened I didn’t li
ke these people. I felt bad not liking them, but the feeling was there immediately. Before they spoke even, the inside of their house, of their world, struck me as loud.

  Loud enough I think at this point to make the point that maybe, though it pains me to say it, a certain Frenchman was correct about the nature of and the mission of the narrative of fiction or perhaps any narrative or, more accurately, the human desire, urge, push, to construct a followable, if not familiar, narrative, a story that has and makes or seems to make sense, a history that can be told and retold, a story that can be understood or thought to be understood, but there is no story after all, is there? is there? Every fool believes that if the coin has come up heads ten times in a row, it will more likely be tails this next time.

  And what is this, you say say say, pull the taffy, play play play, the hounds in the attic, the sheep has a fin, and everyone waits to begin again. Blow snot from your left as you plug up your right, kill bugs with your bullets and turn off the light.

  When First I Saw That Form Endearing

  And all the details. Of rooms. Of meals. Of walks. Of gardens. Two sofas, facing each other, of worn, camel-colored leather, piping around the cushions the same color. Scratches and a small torn place on the side nearest the hearth. The coffee table, cherry wood, was once a dining table, but the legs were sawn off, very evenly, expertly, but the wooden floor was not true, so the pencils rolled off, two circles from sweating glasses, etched forever. All set on the hardwood floor, covered partially by the worn and generic Oriental rug, stressed and frayed to threads in places. Meatloaf made with brown sugar that you never liked but actually requested on occasion. The meat was too sweet and there was more sweetness added by the red sauce, possibly ketchup on top, but baked in, and yet it was still too dry. Mashed potatoes, the skins still on, lumpy and made with heavy cream. Corn bread, cooked in a pan, so it had to be cut into squares, with jalapeño peppers, baked hard on the edges. Green fried rice, almost crispy, with lots of scrambled egg. On white china, paper thin. And poppy-seed cake with a walnut filling, too sweet. With vanilla ice cream from a round tub. The tablecloth was robin’s-egg blue and too big for the table. The turn around the block past the round fountain in the yard at the corner; the gurgling of it dawned on you only when you were right on it, a big urn with a weak stream in the middle, spilling over the edge onto the ghosts of koi. The dark-purple irises that you were sorry you planted, though you loved to look at them, always needing to be divided, always being given away as gifts in paper bags saved from the market, the rhizomes lying there like bodies in a mass grave. The peonies of many colors, that you loved and everyone told you wouldn’t grow, but they did grow, but in a different place altogether. The morning-glory vine on the back fence, blue against the pink dawn sky. The hyacinth. The star jasmine, heady, crazy heady. Around the edges, purge and garlic planted to keep the gophers away, but you swore the gophers enjoyed the garlic. All the details. Everything in the details. Details, details, details. Of rooms, meals, walks, and gardens. Details telling us who we are, where we are, and why. Telling us everything. Telling us nothing. Because we live inside our heads. So much bullshit? In the middle of the middle of middle America. So much bullshit? In the details.

  So Wide a River of Speech

  Deep, well past halfway, into the journey of my so-called life, I found myself in darkness, without you and you and you and you, a whole list of you, and stuck on this crooked trail, the straight one having been lost, and it is difficult to express how in this darkness, rough and stern, every turn presented a new fear, as bitter as death, but what I saw, what I saw there, out of slumber and wide awake in that dark place, was at the termination of some world and the beginning of another, a mountain maybe, a wind pressing against me, issued from some sea I could not see, and so I fled onward, recalling with every step that which none can leave behind, how lucky are the amnesiacs, when a panther addressed my presence and then a lion and then a love long lost, all three heads uplifted, but the last of them, she brought upon me much sadness, the kind that comes with fear, and she wept with me despite her hunger and we were cast back into some light, away from the cats, and while I was rushed back there was a man, whose silence seemed well practiced, and I yelled to him in that barren place to help me and he said that he was a poet and

  Dad.

  Yes?

  Okay, okay.

  You will be my Virgil?

  To Wonder and Conjecture

  Was Unavailing

  If I could only reach the switch. I could either brighten this room or electrocute myself, which comes to about the same thing. I could begin my story here or your story there or you could begin my story, from the beginning or middle or end, depending on how you want it or I need it. These pages that I would have you write, if you wrote, or that you are writing because I wrote, that need to be written but not necessarily read. Pass the barbiturates.

  In the year of your lord 1963, August 27, I was in a hotel room with John Lewis and three other members of SNCC and I was livid. I had provided several lines to John’s speech and they were being removed. I remember the lines. The first was, If the dogs of the South continue unchained, then we will bite back, we will move on those tender parts that bleed so readily, that bleed so profusely. Okay, I said, understanding that there was a lot of blood in the statement—rather, threat—and so I added the word nonviolently. This was not satisfactory. The next line was, The Kennedy administration does not even talk a good game, failing to support voters’ rights while paying mere lip service to civil rights, as if there is a difference. We say fuck the administration that still walks hand in hand with Jim Crow. Well, I could see that the word fuck was a bit strong and so I suggested screw and then 45 screw nonviolently. I was never much of a player in the politics of the day after that evening. The only person I met at the march that remained a close friend was Charlton Heston. I am Nat Turner and I’m sort of pissed off. Just fucking with you, I’m Bill Styron.

  I am my son’s father. I will tell my story or stories as I would have him tell my story or stories. And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you. I’ve always loved that bridge line. When you put words someplace, like on a bridge, they can roll to either side. It never pays to be proprietary about them. I suppose it could pay, but I am not here to argue that point and what you’ll find is that I will not argue any point, or nearly any point. I’m happy to believe all things. I’ll even believe in god for a while if it will get me laid.

  Aliud tamen quam unde sumptumb sit apparet

  Back to Murphy. I’ll be Murphy and I’m waiting outside the fat twins’ house because I’m afraid to knock. But instead of a handyman, I’ll be a doctor. The other brother is sick, but he’s afraid of hospitals and emergency rooms or he’s too fat to get out of his drug den of a house. And I know that this one is Donald, because I’ve inserted the line from his brother in my previous telling: Oh, you can tell us apart because Donald likes to shoot. If you see Donald, duck. Get it, Donald Duck? So I wait by the car with my bag until the door of the house opens. With my doctor’s bag and what is in there? I will tell you: stethoscope, sphygmomanometer, thermometer, reflex hammer, tongue depressors, peak flow meter, auriscope, speculae, alcohol streets, ophthalmoscope, gloves, prescription pad, tape measure, ECG ruler, obstetric calculator, urine bottles and dip sticks, tourniquet, magnifying glass, and a

  map.

  And then some other stuff:

  Antacid

  Analgesic (I like soluble paracetamol.)

  Antibiotic (penicillin and not)

  Antihistamine

  Aspirin (still)

  Salbutamol inhaler

  A butterfly for kids

  A Venflon for adults

  Glucose Diazemuls

  Bumetanide

  Adrenalin

  Glucagon

  Antiemetic injection

  Ch
lorpromazine

  Pethidine

  Diamorphine

  Morphone

  Cyclimorph

  Water and saline

  Hydrocortisone

  Atropine

  A pint of whisky

  So the door opens and there is this young woman. She is a walking cliché and it pains me to write it. She is beautiful, with dark hair and all the other descriptive details that go along with the cliché. She is pretty enough to be boring. Beautiful enough to lust after and then feel sullied by the thought. She may or may not be flirtatious, and I add this because even if she isn’t I will imagine it and if she is you will doubt it. Nonetheless, when she opens her mouth and speaks, I lose all interest because she is obviously stupid or drug riddled or both.

  She speaks slowly, her voice raspy, not a bad voice, but not one you’d choose, Donald’s in here.

  I walk through the trashed, but still somehow neat, front room, giant-screen television blocking the fireplace, sofa with a garish western covered-wagon pattern in the middle of the room, layered with a veneer of celebrity and movie magazines, and into a bedroom where I discover that she is correct. Here is Donald, all twiceas-much-as his-brother-weighs Donald, and I realize I have never seen him before and that is why I could never tell Douglas from Donald; I had only ever seen Douglas. So, what’s the problem? I ask.

  Having trouble breathing.

  Well, let’s take a listen. He is already bare chested. He is lying in bed, covered to the waist by a sheet and a light-blue blanket. I am repulsed by his size, his rolls of meat, his flabby pectorals, and I am ashamed to feel it and yet somehow impressed by my own honesty about my feeling and more, yet I am dismayed by my appreciation of my honesty and decide that I am not honest at all, but vain, and decide I can live with that. I take a listen. You’re alive. We say nothing as I place the cuff of the sphygmomanometer around his arm.