Presently I heard soft footsteps in the hallway and then my door opened, and in walked a pair of dark feet in lady’s house-slippers. The slippers paced the floor of my room for a while and then the owner of the slippers got down on her knees and looked under the bed, her face a few inches from mine. She smiled.
“I see you,” she said.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Looking for something?” she asked.
“Dropped a cuff link,” I explained.
“How you feel this morning?” she asked.
“Awful. I wish I were dead. My God, what have I done?”
“Hush,” she said. “Let’s just play like we never even met before. Just forget it.”
“But what did I do? Did I—?”
“You were bad drunk, that’s all. Don’t even think about it any more.”
“What’s Margaret doing down there with Naps?”
“Well, Naps just brought her over here because she doesn’t feel too good.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“A good friend of hers just died.”
“Who?”
“Fellow name of James Slater.”
I crawled out from under the bed, and stood up to face her. “They shot him?” I asked.
“No, he drowned himself. In Lake Maumelle.”
“Does Naps know I’m up here?”
“Not yet.”
“What if I sneaked out the back way, and then came around to the front and rang the doorbell and pretended I was just arriving?”
“Just fine, just fine.” She turned to go, but I stopped her. She stared at me.
“About last night…” I said. “You have to tell me—”
“No,” she said. “You were lonely and blue. And very drunk. Just put it out of your mind. I won’t say anything.”
“But—”
She smiled and touched my mouth with her fingertips and then she left the room. I hurriedly dressed and tiptoed down the hall to the back stairway, and down it and out of the house. It had stopped raining. I walked around to the front and pushed the doorbell button. Tatrice answered. “Why, hello, Nub!” she greeted me cordially, then she called over her shoulder, “It’s Nub!”
Naps came up out of the living room as I entered the foyer. His face was grave. Was he suspicious? Or was it just the news he would have to give me? I shook hands with him, and then I nodded at Margaret, who was sitting in the living room. “What’s up?” I said to Naps.
He took me into the living room and we sat down. Margaret’s face was pale and vacant. She had a glass of straight un-iced whiskey in her hand. We all sat in silence for a moment, not looking at each other.
Then Naps cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Slater tried to ride his horse across Lake Maumelle. They didn’t make it.”
“No!” I said.
Margaret looked at me and said, “But he wasn’t trying to get to the other side. He didn’t want to.”
Naps said to her, “You want to let Nub read it?”
“Why not?” she said, and she reached into her purse and took out some sheets of paper and unfolded them and handed them tome.
Naps said, “Slater gave that to my friend Feemy and told him to see to it that Sergeant Hawkins got it. So I told Feemy I’d take it to him. I took it to him, and after he’d read it, he told me to go and find Miss Margaret and let her read it too.”
Chapter forty-seven
For whatever salivary sensation it may give to the people of this town, to Margaret and to that half-pint Boston Casanova who took her away from me, for whatever fiendish satisfaction my death may provide for them or for any other vindictive person or persons concerned, I hereby oblige them, willingly but joylessly. I hope that my act is sufficiently histrionic and spectacular to indulge their most urgent need for requited pleasure: I hope they will consider it an acceptable substitute for doing the job themselves: I hope they are gratified abundantly. To you I shall address these parting remarks, these last words, this valedictory: not that you should bear any guilt yourself, nor that one drop of my blood fall upon your hands, but only that one sympathetic human creature might be exposed to the final outcry of my oppressed brain. (Of course I am making two carbons: one for Ethel, the other for the sheriff, but I do not presume to expect a careful reading from either of them; it is only a formality.) Into my watery grave I carry your clever poetic tribute: “You who art due din and ear pop aye, yet got not one nod but hue and
cry…” the most elating words I have ever received, and I am very grateful to you for them. You are a gifted and sensitive poet, Hawkins, and you must take care not to let your art stagnate. I am very sorry if differences grew up between us, I am very regretful that we parted company at such a violent and painful moment, and I would like to set my house in order and make good my unwavering respect for you and wipe off old scores…and sores. Therefore, Hawkins, I am proud to have this opportunity to appoint you executor and sole beneficiary of my estate, such as it is. No posthumous thanks, please. Who else is so worthy? Dispose of my humble effects however you like, they are all yours. More of this later. First, hearken to my farewell. I am not altogether certain I can finish this. I am up again in my study, for the last time, sitting at my desk. The hour is late. The cloudburst drones on and on outside my window. I see a crack of light under Ethel’s door; perhaps she is reading, perhaps she has parked her wheelchair at the window and is watching the rain…or watching for me. Coming upstairs a moment ago, I ran into one of the sheriff’s deputies. Fortunately he seemed un-vigilant from lack of sleep. “Have they found the guy yet?” I asked him. “No, sir,” he replied, hardly troubling to give me more than a glance. I came on up into my study, closed the door, and laughed for a while. But perhaps my time is short. This old Hermes portable is quiet, almost noiseless, but somebody might come to check on this room and when they find the door barred from the inside they will knock it down. I must hurry. Forgive me my rambling. The heavy raindrops plunge into the lake relentlessly, and with desperation; soon Houyhnhnm and I must join them. What peace then! The whole world obliterated! I hate to do this to you, and if there were any possible way I might spare your life and let all others perish, I would not hesitate, but this is the only way: I must wipe out the whole universe, wreak death on all! All! Every living thing, every beast of the field, and flower, and all that God has created, I must destroy, with a great flood more terrible than that last flood which Noah survived. No one will survive this one. I am sorry, for you, but not for the rest of mankind, which deserves this destruction, which has brought it on itself. All human life and
conduct are a disguise, a permanent play-like, a constant procrastination from reality, a shameless sham, an everlasting pretense in which we are all fools fooling each other and ourselves. We call ourselves “civilized”! We have lifted ourselves up out of our animal origins.” Thrice-damned poppycock! In my book, civilized means artificialized. Man is a pose. During the “Dark” Ages, after the destruction of the pretentious and mannered Roman Empire, there was some hope that man could save himself from further affectation. But, as ill luck would have it, things got worse instead of better. Today, particularly in this country, life has been romanticized and fabricated and camouflaged out of all reasonable proportion. Everything contributes: our way of speech, our institutions, our government, books, movies, advertisements, television, all! We are living a dream wherein the awful chasm between our true inward natures and our outward behavior is so wide and irreconcilable that life is a perpetual hell of frustration and disillusionment and heartache. Out with it! This show cannot go on! Ring down the last curtain! Destroy this fake world and build a new one! As the Great Playwright, I will wipe out this farce and write a fresh drama in which man is genuine and true. I will banish: television and radio. All advertisements, particularly cigarette advertisements. Suburbs. Trading stamps. Motels. Politics. Clothes. Plastic Christmas trees. Bread without holes. Wood-grained plastic. All plastic, period. TV dinners. John Bir
chers. Pop art. Pop-top beer cans. Psychosomatic illnesses. Bridge. All other card games, including solitaire (except perhaps poker). Lawrence Welk. Confession magazines. Highway junk yards. Superman comic books. Calvert “Soft” Whiskey. Jerry Lewis. Tourist traps. Houses made of artificially aged brick. Edward Teller. Polyunsaturates. Built-in obsolescence. “LBJ” stamped on everything. All Texans, period. Elizabeth Taylor. Folksongs which are not real folksongs. Dick Tracy, Nancy, and Donald Duck. Innocuous Broadway comedies. Adam Clayton Powell. The togetherness and the mindless conformity of organized religion. Barry Goldwater and all other rabid extremists. Metrecal. Insurance. Messrs. Presley, Nelson, Clark, the Beatles, et al. The Christian Anti-Communist Crusade and Billy James Hargis.
Presidential primaries and conventions. Telephones. California. Jack Paar. Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, the whole stinking lot of them. Catholics and Jews too. Orville Freeman. Orval Faubus. Orville Prescott. Billboards, or, for that matter, all outdoor signs. Taylor Caldwell. Garage mechanics. ZIP Code. Richard Nixon. Daytime soap operas, particularly “Love of life” in which everybody hates life. Leander H. Perez. News leaks. Kahlil Gibran. Credit cards. Anti-intellectualism. George Wallace and his nasty sneer. All nasty sneerers. Sex manuals. The nine-to-five working day. Bosley Crowther. Paper plates. Mobile homes, and trailer camps. Low minds in high places. Mouths and teeth of models, beauty queens, stars, and starlets. Other-directed people. All! Everything! Out! Out! I am constipated, literally and figuratively. Old age encroaches, and my worn body will not function any more. I worry ceaselessly about it. Does my constipation affect my emotions? Does my gout determine the particular state of my mind at any given moment? Will my migraine warp my perspectives? Can I do creative work on those days when my liver is out of kilter? Should I propitiate the gods of nature with burnt offerings on the mornings when my postnasal drip clogs my throat? What exercise can help my lumbago? What miracle of geriatrics could ease my palsied bulk down into slumber each night? Must I give up food to avoid halitosis? My one cure, my one good remedy, has been withheld from me now for nearly two weeks: Ethel has inexplicably cut off my whiskey ration, without which I am not strong enough to face the sheriff and these other pests hanging around here. With only two or three strong jiggers in me I could go down there and run them all off. They want to kill me. I do not want to die: I tremble at the merest thought of it. But something will get me, the sheriff or old age. Here is what I would really like to do: I’d really like to get out of this place and go to some lost and peaceful hollow up in the hills, free from all distractions and interruptions and annoyances, and have some place with a good bed in it, and somebody like Feemy to wait on me and me alone, to bring me all my meals and make me just as comfortable as I could possibly want to be, and I’d just loaf around and read and listen to music and recoup my energies and my
brains, and be born again. Born again! If I could just sleep for a week. But without money what can I do? The really horrible thing about our civilization is that it costs money just to sleep. Even the sleep of death is frightfully expensive: somebody (not you, I hope) is going to have to shell out a tidy sum just to give my remains a decent disposal. But I want that sleep. I must have it. You are a poet, Hawkins, do you know what is the favorite subject of all poets of all time? Not love, alas. Love is not quite popular enough, although it runs a close second. Not war, not nature, not death, not even life itself. But sleep. Sleep is. Search your anthologies, your collections, your miscellanies, and see for yourself how often all poets have eulogized sleep, almost to the point of being obsessed with it, that thing which knits the raveled sleeve of care, that great gift, that sleep which gives what life denies, nature’s soft nurse, perchance to dream, the universal vanquisher. Good night. The babe is at peace within the womb, the corpse is at rest within the tomb, we begin in what we end. I am going soon. Forbear a few more words. You must accept my apologies regarding Margaret. And I am indeed sorry that my careless equestrianship caused you personal bodily injury. I hope you are much better now. I was, as you said, obsessed: Margaret was the only answer. Without her I could have had no future. She alone might have restored to me the precious power of potency, had time and fate and her own inclination allowed. As it turns out, I had already lost her to another man. Do you know this Stone fellow? Margaret said he was a friend of yours. I hope not. But if so, make him miserable for me, will you? If you cannot kill him, do something to him, castrate him, bludgeon him senseless, make him prematurely old: what a fine favor it would be for me if somehow my afflictions could be transferred to him. Do what you can. I am leaving you everything. Such as it is. This Hermes portable typewriter, eight dollars and thirty-six cents in cash, my books, all of them, including the Complete Variorum Shakespeare, the Complete Wilde, the Complete Shaw, the Compleat Angler, everything; also my tape recorder, two good metal filing cabinets along with contents: memorabilia, letters, souvenirs, the original manuscripts of my plays, my collection of
phonograph records, which includes, as you know, the entire recorded oeuvres of Tschaikovsky, Sibelius and Ravel; also assorted miscellaneous objects: personal jewelry, fountain pen, pencils, erasers, paper clips, etc., etc. I have three cartons of Pall Malls which I will not have time to finish; they are yours, too. In the third drawer from the top on the right side of my desk you will find an envelope which contains three pawn tickets, and should you wish to redeem them, you may take them to Moorhead’s Pawn Shop and receive a fine wristwatch, a Leica camera, and an Argus slide projector. That’s all I can think of at the moment; undoubtedly you will discover other things which may be of some interest or value to you. I wish I could give you the house, but it isn’t mine. Even my horses are owned outright by Ethel. The stable, however, I built with my own hands, so if you want it, take it. I guess Ethel will stay here in this house forever, she will stay in that room forever, in that wheelchair forever. Why don’t they hurry up and legalize euthanasia? Put the poor bitch out of her misery. Well, good night, I guess that’s about it. No, wait, there’s one other little item. I have just one request to make of you. As my executor you are empowered to determine method of burial. I would like to ask that if my body be found, it is to be taken to some convenient hilltop and there placed upon a pyre of pine boughs and branches, and burned, and the ashes afterward not collected in an urn or anything but scattered to the winds, freely broadcast on the breeze out across the fields and valleys. This is the way everybody should be interred, that they might find final union with nature. I heartily recommend it to you. As for me, please ask them to do it, or do it yourself as soon as you get out of the hospital if there are objections from others. Now I must go. Fiat justitia, ruat caelum. I hate to leave my desk. I have said so little, I have left so much unsaid. Ah, there is one more thing I meant to mention. You know my workin-progress, my Ozarks morality play? Well, it is yours too now, and I dearly wish you could find somebody to finish it for me. I think it has some merit. The folklore of your country people, the old superstitions: amulets, talismans, the phases of the moon, philters and charms…That might be some solution, you know? As for now, is this the end? Yes, I’m afraid it is. Do not shed tears for me. If you must weep, weep for this world I have destroyed.
In death as in life, with admiration, your friend
James Royal Slater.
Chapter forty-eight
“I never met him,” I reflected aloud. “I never saw him, I never even saw a picture of him or anything.” The four of us were sitting now at the kitchen table, having breakfast. The children had finished theirs and had been sent out to play; the sun was out of the clouds again. Tatrice was serving French toast and Canadian bacon.
“It’s like Feemy said,” Naps offered. “Mr. Slater was a fine man once, but he’s been goin downhill a long time. A long time.”
“He was still a fine man,” I said, touched by his death and his final words.
“Naw, now, man,” Naps objected. “Anybody writes sump’m like that, you just know th
ey not entirely rational.”
“Ethel’s fault,” I suggested.
“That’s right,” Naps said.
“I hope she’s satisfied,” Margaret said.
“But why did he have to go and kill himself?” Tatrice asked. “Surely, if they’d caught him, the most he would have got would have been a few years in jail…or the state asylum.”
“He couldn’t afford those few years,” Margaret said.
“He was unhappy,” Naps said.
“He hated everybody,” I said.
“I wish they could have left him alone,” Margaret said.
“He might’ve gone on and killed himself anyway, even if they had,” Naps said.
“A world like this,” I said. Then I said, “I guess I would have done the same thing if I’d been in his place.”
“You’re like him in several ways,” Margaret said. “You really are. I never thought of it before, but you and he had the same opinions about a lot of things. Of course,” she added hastily, “I don’t mean you’re the same kind of eccentric he was, no.”
I nodded. “I might almost have written that document myself.”
She and Naps nodded, and Tatrice said, “Well,” and then we lapsed into silence as we finished our breakfast.
Over the second cup of coffee Naps remarked, “Well, it’s something not to have to worry about any more. It’s all over.”
“It’s all over,” I said.
“Now you and Margaret can have a good time, without worryin about—”
“Naps,” I said, “my train leaves tomorrow night.”
Naps laughed uproariously, but then he hushed and glanced at Margaret for confirmation, and she nodded her head. “Aw naw, now, man!” he protested. “You doan wanta do that. Y’all stay here awhile and us’ll all have a lot of fun.”
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3 Page 183