The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  These are the first three lines of “our” theme song, the Dying Man’s and mine, which you will hear repeated throughout this movement:

  It doesn’t matter.

  It’s not important.

  There must be more.

  There are two other lines, but we aren’t ready for them yet. I’ll explain the first two. I resumed telling the Dying Man the story of my (First’s) life—we have spent hours and hours talking, but so far I’ve done most of it, because he’s still rather weak, and because I can’t get him to open up; I said I wish he wasn’t named the Dying Man because I would much rather call him the Cherrystone Clam, and, if nobody minds, if you don’t mind, I will occasionally call him that. Anyway, I was telling Cherrystone Clam (not to be confused with our other “C.C.”: Canny Coincidence) a long story about my wretched childhood, about how my father, whenever he did see me, would mercilessly tease me (this was true of both First and Second: our fathers were terrible teases). Midway through the story I had the feeling that Clam Man wasn’t really listening, and I stopped at one point and asked, “Why do you think he did that?” and the Dying Cherrystone said, “Did what?” and I said, “Teased me like that,” and Clammy Death said, “Oh, did he tease you?” and I stopped my story. He tried to get me to go on, but I said, “It doesn’t matter.” I have used that phrase several times since, and it is the first line of our theme song.

  He opened up his shell (and I swear, if there is any such thing as vagina dentata, I’m going to bite him until he screams) just enough to tell me about how his father had tried to smother him to death when he was five. I think he expected me to cry, or hug him, or something. But I just listened to him the way he had been listening to me, and after a while he stopped, and said, “It’s not important.” That’s the second line of our theme song.

  Then one morning at breakfast (when it’s hardest to find anything worth talking about, anything that matters, anything that’s important,) we were discussing

  [Now this must be less. I am having to retype this portion of the letter, for the notes I struck on the dulcimer, in the explanation of how we arrived at the third line of our theme song, “There must be more,” were false notes. You would find them picayune, Linda, or, at best, irksome. Even as I typed them, I thought to myself, “There must be more.”]

  He concluded the discussion by declaring, “Tomorrow, I think I might be fit to go for a walk.”

  And I remarked once more, “There must be more.”

  And there will be, I assure you. Tomorrow I think I’ll go on his walk with him. But just now the Woman stepped into my room to say, “Good night. Thank you ever so much for being willing to take such good care of him.” Now I’m alone with him! Now the horny historian might read to him from First’s diaries! Now we shall see what may transpire!

  I give you as a goodnight gift these two pages from The Book of Kind, the first page in the graceful script of the Forest Ranger, the second page in the youthful scrawl of the Forest Ranger’s seven-year-old son.

  “Unfortunately, ‘It’ tends to depersonalize Kind. We unconsciously refer to infant children as ‘it’ rather than ‘he’ or ‘she’ (‘Did you change its diapers?’).”

  “Why should Kind be personalized, anyway? If Kind has no senses and is more of a spirit than a person, then why should Kind be ‘personalized’? Do you Kind of see what I mean, Dad? The infant child is referred to as ‘it’ rather than ‘he’ or ‘she’ because it is not really noticeably male or female in its actions, etc.—it does not seem to be obviously one sex or another.”

  Remind me, farther along, when this story is finished, to tell you about that remarkable boy.

  But now the Dying Man just hollered, “Liz! Are you coming?” Yes, old Clam, I’m coming.

  Love,

  Liz

  Chapter twenty-nine

  Wednesday

  Dear Linda,

  I had typed only the day and salutation, “Dear Linda,” when his voice over my shoulder asked, “Who’s Linda?”

  “Please have the decency not to enter my room without knocking,” I protested.

  “I heard your keys clattering and wondered what you were doing. That’s no dulcimer, it’s a typewriter. Please have the decency to stop talking like a lady of the nineteenth century when you have a Hermes portable typewriter that is clearly of the twentieth century, and a friend with a name like “Linda” which was scarcely used in the nineteenth century. Who is she?”

  “An instructor of English at the University where I teach. She’s been my best friend for two years. Often we’re mistaken for sisters, and we are sisters in a sense.”

  “Are you writing to her about me?”

  “Of course.”

  “What are you telling her?”

  “Almost everything.”

  “Can I read your letter when you finish it?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Have you told her that I love you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Are you going to tell her what we did last night?”

  “Probably.”

  “In vivid detail?”

  “I don’t write pornography.”

  “Do you think that was pornographic? Any more pornographic than ‘your’ diaries? Whose diaries are they, by the way?”

  “Eliza Cunningham’s.”

  “Then what’s your real name?”

  “Eliza Cunningham.”

  “Come on. You’ve called my ‘bluff.’ Okay, I’m calling yours. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  “I am Eliza Cunningham, sometimes referred to as ‘Second,’ to distinguish me from Eliza Cunningham the ‘First,’ who did indeed live in this room and was the mistress of the ex-governor. I am not her reincarnation. I either am her, or I am not. If I am not her, then I am her clone. Ask me anything about her, as proof, and I can tell you.”

  “Did she make love to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did the ex-governor feel about that?”

  “He did not know about it.”

  “Will she do all of the things with me that she did with the ex-governor?”

  Linda, help! What can I say? What have I got myself into? I should have had the sense to leave my typewriter at home, but how could I write all of this in longhand? All right, smarty, you warned me. With your familiarity of “situations” in Victorian prose, you could so smugly forecast what this would lead up to. But I assure you it wasn’t so precipitous as it sounds, and I haven’t yet tumbled over. Yes, we have “consummated” our relationship, but there was nothing sudden about it. I must say his recuperation has been very rapid, and in fact he no longer has to spend so much time in bed (well, he feels he has to spend a lot of time in bed, but not recuperating, and not his bed, either).

  I went with him, as I said, on his first walk. Not very far, just down to the creek and back. “Do you know there are swans on that creek?” he asked. I could not recall that First had ever seen swans. When we reached the creek, he pointed, saying, “See?” But there weren’t any swans, just a flock of white ducks and a lone white goose.

  “Those aren’t swans,” I declared. “Just ducks and a goose.”

  “Oh,” he said. This is the fourth line of our theme song: There aren’t any swans, only a lone goose.

  Downstream from the lone goose we discovered for the first time the swinging bridge, which had not been there in First’s time: an affair of iron cables suspending a plank walkway. I walked across it and back, but he said he was afraid to. He still had the shakes then.

  Farther along the stream was a meadow filled with pigs and hogs, and a large gray-metal building which is the Grandson’s pork factory. His red pickup truck was parked beside it. “Come,” I said to Cherrystone Clam, “wouldn’t you like to meet the Woman’s Grandson?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m too weak to walk any farther. Let’s turn back.”

  So we turned back. There aren’t any swans, only a lone goose. It doesn’t matter. It’s no
t important. There must be more.

  He held my hand, as we walked, and I didn’t mind. “You know,” he said, “you captivate me in a way that no woman ever has.”

  “I suspect, sir, that you have said that to all the ladies.”

  He raised the other hand to make a solemn oath, “I never have.” Then he stopped walking and turned and tried to kiss me, but I dropped my chin on my chest so that he could only kiss the top of my hair. I heard his voice, whispering, “I love you, Liz.”

  I raised my eyes to meet his, and searched them, one by one, trying to determine the sincerity of his words, and I believe he was sincere. “If that is true,” I said, “then you must do me the honor of revealing to me your entire soul.”

  He unbuttoned his shirt to the navel, a most ungentlemanly thing to do in front of a lady, examined his chest, and then began buttoning himself up again. “I don’t have one,” he said.

  “Then how could I ever hope to return your love?”

  “It’s not important. It doesn’t matter.”

  “There aren’t any swans, only a lone goose.”

  “There must be more.”

  “I want to—”

  “Yes,” he said, “what do you want to—?”

  “I want to—” I said, but I couldn’t quite phrase it properly. So that became the fifth and last and open-ended line of our theme song: I want to—Like the words of the old song, “I gave my love a story that has no end.” You know, Linda, that this story has no end, and that on any given night around here you can still hear the old French horn playing THERE IS NEVER ANY END. That same old song, by the way, begins with the line, “I gave my love a cherry that has no stone,” and only you can appreciate the full significance of those words, but I have to tell you, as of the present moment, he is no longer Cherrystone Clam, and must, I suppose, be the Dying Man from now on, or until we find a “job title” for him. He has shown me much of his entire soul, and he does have one, of course, and there must be more. We have been together almost constantly since he moved into my house. I really can’t say “my” house because, not that the Grandson owns it, but it’s as much the Dying Man’s house now as it is mine. When he was no longer confined to bed, I discreetly suggested that perhaps he should begin thinking about a house for himself, but he said, “I’ll just return to my cave,” and I don’t want him to do that. I want to—I said above “almost constantly” because we have not been together on those occasions I visited the Grandson or the Forest Ranger’s Mistress or those occasions when the Woman or the young ex-moonshiner have visited him.

  When we returned to the house from the place where there aren’t any swans, only a lone goose, Jick was sitting on the porch. He had his two little fingers linked. I left the Dying Man with him and went inside the house, but I could hear them talking. The Dying Man demanded to know what Jick himself was doing for “refreshment” now that he had busted up his still. Or had he stashed away a supply of the eight-year-old stuff? And if so, how much would he want for a jug of it?

  “I tole ye,” Jick said, “I wouldn’t sell it fer any amount of cash money.”

  “But you do have some,” the Dying Man persisted. “What are you going to do when you’ve finished it?”

  “Same thing you’re a-doing. Do without.”

  “Oh ho,” said the Dying Man. “Just like that, eh?” Jick must have snapped his thumb and forefinger.

  “Jist like that.”

  “How many jugs do you have of it?”

  “Aint no tellin.”

  “Out of friendship you couldn’t be persuaded to sell me one?”

  Jick sobbed. “Out of friendship is prezackly the reason I won’t sell ye one.” He sobbed again. “Out of friendship’s the Kind reason I bustid up my still!”

  The Dying Man’s tone softened, became sympathetic. “What are you doing for a living these days?”

  “Nothin. Don’t ye worry yoreself none about thet.”

  But the Dying Man did worry about it, and he confided in me that he would like to give Jick a sizable cash “settlement” but feared that Jick would reject it as “charity”. So what did he do? He asked his cousin the foreman if he could give Jick a job at the pork plant, and the foreman readily did, and has recently reported that Jick with his magic fingers is the best worker they’ve ever had. Are we all going to live happily ever after?

  I can see (and hear) you sighing forbearingly and saying to yourself, “When is she going to stop beating around the bush and tell how she was seduced?” All right, in a little while. You know me well enough to believe that I could never have mustered enough nerve to read to the Dying Man the erotic passages of First’s diaries. That was just a thought, a fantasy. (Although he was permitted to read them to himself, and I did manage to read to him the passage of her first solitary climax.) Her childhood was so similar to mine in almost every respect except the details of domesticity, means of travel, clothing, and so forth. Like me, First was eleven years old when she had her first orgasm, like me, riding upon the arm of a wing chair. Riding upon the wings of an arm. Winging upon an armed chair. There aren’t any swans, only a lone arm. There must be more. I want to—Our experiences were so identical that I could almost have written the passage myself: “The memory of that occurrence, for it did only occur and was not intentional, remains so available to me even now that I can recall precisely what linen dress I wore, what undergarments I had beneath it, the color and nap of the fabric of the chair, the position of the chair in the room, how the sunlight came through the window, the exact time as shown (or passing) on the grandfather clock, the motion of my arms like a ballet dancer pretending to be a swan (or in my case a lone goose), the backward tilt of my head, my hair in ringlets which were my only knowledge of how I was different from the male being, my total ignorance of the intended function of my own form and structure, my oblivion to the possibility that Samantha, my dark nanny, might walk in on me at any moment, my desperate yielding to the wonderful sensations, the tenderness becoming nervous, the nervousness becoming ferment, the fermentation becoming turbulence, the turmoil becoming shuddering, the shudders becoming jolts, the jolts turning me into a bird soaring, the soars gliding ever higher, the high lowering, drifting down to earth again, and I collapsed into the chair then, spread out and gasping, and thinking: There must be more.”

  Curiously, or, no, it’s just another C.C., I was sitting in a wing chair when I read this to the Dying Man, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor at my feet. When I finished he reached out and—now I must take both hammers in one hand and strike the dulcimer with a jarring dissonant note: He gave me a hand job. I suppose he felt that’s as far as he could go at that point, and it probably was, and I behaved as First would have behaved under the circumstances: I violently resisted, trying to snatch his hand away, then yielding ever so slightly, then violently resisting again, until he rose up and tried to kiss me, and then kissed me full on the mouth, which I violently resisted but then yielded to ever so slightly, then yielded to his hand, his fingers, a bit more, then yielded to his kiss a bit more, then kissed him passionately, then violently resisted his hand, then yielded, then violently resisted his kiss, then gave into it again, gave into his hand, gave into his kiss, yielded, resisted only feebly, resisted no more.

  Afterwards, he sat on the arm of the chair, and had the effrontery to ask, “How was that?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s not important.”

  “Well,” he said, and tried to place my hand upon his bulging fly, “turnabout is fair play.”

  I jerked my hand away. “There aren’t any swans, only a lone goose,” I said, and fled to my room, and locked the door.

  Once was bad enough, but it happened twice, again the next day. First and Second, and that was enough. The second time was in my bed. I avoided him most of that day, despite a charming note of “apology” he left under my door that night, in which he implied that he had received so much pleasure merely in “giving me one” that his own “deliverance
” was purely secondary, and that he had never known a woman to “achieve completion” in the way that I had. I avoided him most of that day, as I thought I properly should, and sought out the Grandson and told him a lie, which I think he believed, about how I was still a virgin, and that I had almost lost my virginity to the Dying Man, and the Grandson was clearly disturbed, although equally as clearly still preoccupied with his cancer cure and his pork works. In my circumspect manner, I hinted, without coming right out and saying so, that I would prefer that he have the privilege or right of taking, or being given, my virginity. He invited me to supper. I went at the appointed time, but found that he was busy in his laboratory with the Forest Ranger, and expected me to prepare a “snack” for the two of them, or the three of us, and I didn’t know his kitchen, or his Mistress’s kitchen, didn’t know where to find things in his refrigerator or cabinets, didn’t even know how to operate the controls on his solar-powered electric range. I made some cold roast beef sandwiches for them, and ate mine on the way back home.

  The Dying Man was sprawled out on the sofa in the “lobby,” reading First’s diaries. “Where have you been?” he wanted to know.

  “I went to supper at the Grandson’s,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “I’m not your cook.” I couldn’t help reflecting that I wasn’t the Grandson’s cook either.