Glyph

by Percival Everett

  The helicopter landed and Colonel Bill held his hat in place until he was well clear of the blades. He was met by a server with a tray of glasses of champagne and a slight man in a suit. Colonel Bill sipped a glass of champagne.

  “The President is very glad you could make it, Colonel,” the suited man said as they walked toward the house.

  “The President can’t wipe his own ass,” Colonel Bill said.

  “The President would like a quick briefing on the baby situation.”

  “The President can go put his tongue on an ice tray for all I care. Are you reading me, mister?”

  The suited man stopped. “Mr. President,” he said.

  Colonel Bill snapped to attention and slapped his forehead with a salute. “Mr. President, sir!” he barked.

  The President stepped down the steps toward them, tripping on the way and being caught by Colonel Bill. “Thank you, Colonel. I’m going to have to get that step fixed. Glad you could make it.”

  “You wanted to talk about the baby matter, sir?”

  “Oh, yeah. Is the baby still lost?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay. Now, let’s go have sex with young, simple-minded women we’ll never see again after tonight.”

  supernumber

  Laura stands in the kitchen of her apartment. Douglas looks older to her now than he did the first time she kissed him. She looks at how his stomach pushes at his belt. She folds her arms and leans back against the refrigerator.

  Douglas feels Laura staring at him. He says, “Austin is a great town. They tell me there’s a lot of great music there. Is there anything you’d like me to find out about the program?” When she just looks away, he says, “I leave for the interview tomorrow.” “It’s Texas,” she says.

  “So?”

  “Why would I leave California for Texas?”

  Douglas sits in one of the ladder-back chairs and holds his face in his hands.

  Clyde is stunned by Eve’s new paintings. “I can’t believe it,” he says. He walks around the room and then steps back from a four-by-five-foot canvas rich in blues and greens. “I have no idea how you did this. The composition, the color, the texture. It’s all here.” Clyde sits on Eve’s stool, rubs his eyes. He is moved by the work. “I was expecting the work to be, you know, sad or something. But it’s not. It’s full of pain, but it’s so alive. I’m sounding really corny.”

  Eve walks over to Clyde and kisses him on the mouth.

  seme

  Rin instead of run. The verb “to run” seems to run into itself. On the one hand, it indicates movement as in foot before foot, speed; on the other, it expresses interposition of waiting, the interval of spacing and temporalizing that exists between the beginning of the verb and the end of it. So, the word is stationary and moving, at once. Run and ruin are very close, the only difference being “I” and therefore, it is the “I” present that ruins the run. And so, run becomes rin, and rin is neither a word nor a concept. In the one case run requires a subject, but does not signify identity and so must signify nonidentity, but rin, by the very presence of the “I” not only signifies identity, but also nonidentity, as it requires no subject. So, we give the name rin to the movement that is no movement, a response to requirement of subject in the sense of run, which by the addition of “I” becomes ruin. But, of course, all this works only if I exclude “U.”3

  Vexierbild

  Seven men

  can be obliterated,

  burned or hanged

  or drowned in a lake

  and forgotten.

  Men gone, but

  not seven.

  Seven men lost,

  but not seven.

  Seven is, will be.

  All men will die

  but not seven.

  Night fell while we were in the restaurant. A chill came with the darkness and Rosenda bundled me up in her acrylic sweater for warmth as we walked to the car. She sat in the backseat with me and sang softly while Mauricio drove.

  “I hope Father Chacón is there,” Rosenda said softly, thinking that I was asleep. I was feigning sleep to make her shut up. “We haven’t seen Father Chacón since he left Monterey. Why did he leave there?”

  Mauricio grunted an acknowledgment of her confusion. “Asleep?”

  “Yes, our li’l Pepe is sleeping.”

  Steimmel and Davis hand- and ankle-cuffed the driver of the yellow van to the unconscious guard in the woods by the side of the road, the chains of the shackles passed around a small but sturdy tree.

  “I don’t believe it,” Davis said, nearly jumping up and down. “We’ve done it. We’ve escaped.”

  “You might as well kill us,” the driver said. “You’re in that much trouble.”

  Steimmel lowered herself to a knee and looked the man in the face. “Why in the world would you say something that stupid? What if I believed you? Then, I’d shoot you. You don’t really want me to shoot you, do you?”

  The man was frightened by Steimmel’s eyes and the evenness of her voice. “No,” he said.

  “So,” Steimmel said, “you said that just to hurt me in some way. To hurt my feelings or to ruin this escape for me. Is that right?” She waved the barrel of the pistol in his face.

  The terrified man nodded.

  “That hardly seems nice. Does it seem nice to you, Davis?”

  “Come on, let’s go,” Davis said.

  “Please don’t shoot me,” the driver said.

  “Oh, now, you don’t want me to shoot you.” Steimmel stood and looked down at the man. “You little prick,” she said. “You cowardly piece of crap.” She pointed the barrel of the pistol at him.

  “Come on,” Davis said, again. She was looking at the road. “Before somebody comes.”

  The doctors climbed into the van and drove away.

  Colonel Bill’s penis was inside the vagina of a woman whose name escaped him. He was about to ejaculate when the woman said, “You feel good for not having a big one.” This caused the Colonel to stop all maneuvers and sit up.

  “What is it, sugar?” the woman asked.

  “He’s out there. My baby’s out there and I’ve got to find him.”

  There were three children and they were standing around discussing how they attributed credit for their achievements to their parents.

  The first said, “I draw a circle and throw my achievements up in the air. All that land outside the circle are my parents’.”

  The second said, “I draw a circle and throw my achievements into the air. All that land inside the circle are my parents’.”

  The third smiled, said, “I draw no circle. I throw my achievements into the air. And that’s where they stay.”

  Father Chacón was a plump man. He met us at the door of the mission, his collar tight about his red neck. He was bald on top with hair above and behind his small ears. His hands were thick and short fingered and he kept wetting his lips as he spoke. He referred to himself in the third-person and never stopped smiling.

  “Come in, my children, come in. Father Chacón always has time for you. Why are you so agitated? Tell Father Chacón.”

  “We have a baby,” Rosenda said, sitting with me in her lap. “A new baby boy.”

  “Father Chacón sees. What a beautiful little child.”

  “The child is not ours,” Mauricio put in.

  Father Chacón looked at him.

  Rosenda reached up and took her husband’s hand. “Mauricio freed him from prison. We call him Pepe.”

  Chacón stepped to the window and looked across the yard to the road.

  donne lieu

  figura

  facultas signatrix

  frequency

  fable

  fuzzy

  I may in my own analysis of my work here, if a thing can indeed be an analysis of itself, divide the signifier, which in this case is not me, but the text itself and follow the analysis as I follow the text, the material text being comprised of units and sub-units, lexia and s
ub-lexia, my sections designated by capital letters and sub-sections by headings and even whatever numbered units therein, down to sentences, to words, to letters, what one might call reading units (when one has nothing better to do). Is the division arbitrary and if so, is any of the meaning likewise and so without purposeful implications beyond those specified by the undivided signifier that poses only conspicuous problems?

  If I may, I say that I am a complete reading system. My meaning is exactly mine and I mean only those things I seek to mean, all other possible meanings having been considered and sifted from the material whole. I assert that no other reading than the one I intend is possible and I defy any interpretation beyond my mission. To seek that meaning is to serve and work with my system. This is my language and only mine, my units, my pieces, my game. However…

  degrees

  The kiss hadn’t gone well, Laura’s mouth not quite softening and her lips failing to part. She remained leaning against the refrigerator in her kitchen and Inflato pulled away from her, looking out the window as he backed up until he bumped into the stove.

  “I’ll bring you something back from Austin,” he said.

  “That’ll be nice,” Laura said. She tugged at her short skirt.

  “I was just thinking. What if you came with me? You could look around and maybe have a little vacation.”

  “I don’t think so, Douglas. I’ve got to finish that paper for Thiebald and plus I’ve got student work to grade.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I hope it goes well for you,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  Inflato turned and stepped toward the door. “Maybe I’ll give you a call when I get back.”

  Laura came to the kitchen door and watched him.

  He opened the door and left the apartment. He stepped down the hallway and started down the stairs, moving to the side to allow another man room.

  “Hello, Townsend.”

  “Hi, Roland.”

  ennuyeux

  I sat on the potty while Rosenda watched. A sad scene, but I had grown accustomed to such indignities. As I sat there, ignoring the woman, I closed my eyes and considered my mother. Actually, I considered Lacan, as was my wont when doing what I was then doing. At that moment, I contemplated his restatement of the Freudian Oedipus Complex. That I as a male child should identify undividedly with my mother and her desires in an attempt to complete that which was lacking in her was, at least, a rankling notion, but to proceed from there to my identification with the phallus as the object of my mother’s desire and in so doing present myself as a mere erasure, why that served to make my insides flip about. And so the exercise of considering Lacan facilitated my defecatory mission.

  “Very good,” Rosenda said. “You made a nice big poopy in the potty. A big-boy poopy. I’m very proud of you.”

  Rosenda carried me back out to where Mauricio was telling Father Chacón the rest of the story. The priest looked at me with a big smile when I returned. He looked to Rosenda and said, “We can’t very well let anyone put a child in prison now, can we?”

  “So, you’ll help us?” Rosenda asked.

  “Of course, Father Chacón will.” He reached over and put his fleshy palm over my head. “Why don’t you take little Pepe into Father Chacón’s room and put him down for a rest,” he said. “Father Chacón will get us some food.”

  In the bedroom, I looked at the walls, wondering what they might tell me about the fat priest. There was a crucifix, which was no surprise. There was a larger calendar that had above the days of the month a photograph of lavender bearded irises. And there were two sketches of young boys in uniforms that I recognized from my reading of my father’s back issues of Boys’ Life as Cub Scouts.

  pharmakon

  “Give me another one,” Douglas said to the bartender. “Do you understand women, Charlie?”

  “Name’s Phil.”

  “Right. Women.” Douglas shook his head. “You ever been to Texas?”

  The barkeep wiped down the bar, then put the rag away. “I was in Houston once.”

  “What about Austin?”

  “Never been there. I hear it’s a nice place. I’ll bet it’s hotter than the devil down there.”

  “I’m going there for an interview. Might be moving there. My wife, however, isn’t going.” Douglas ate a handful of popcorn and looked over at the door, saw the daylight outside as someone left.

  “Sometimes it works out that way.”

  “Right. You got kids?” Douglas asked.

  “No.”

  “I had a kid. He got kidnapped.”

  “No shit.” The bartender leaned forward and rested on his elbows.

  “Yep. A fucking shrink stole him and then somebody stole him from her. Pretty wild, eh? I didn’t like him very much.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “My wife is a painter. Set me up again.”

  “Why don’t you go home?” the bartender said.

  “Haven’t you been listening?”

  Father Chacón came into the room. I was lying on the bed wide awake and he was talking to me as he approached. “Little Pepe, poor little Pepe. You’re very lucky that good Catholics like Mauricio and Rosenda found and saved you from the devils outside. To put a baby into a prison is evil.” The fat man sat on the edge of the bed. “But you’re safe here in this sanctuary. This is a house of God and you’re safe here.” He put his hand on my leg and I could feel the heat of it through the material of my trousers. “You’ll stay here for a while. Perhaps, Father Chacón will even suggest to Mauricio and Rosenda that they leave you here with Father Chacón where you will be safe from the forces outside, the forces beyond the walls of this sanctuary.” He nodded and patted my leg. “Father Chacón will be your protector. And when Mauricio and Rosenda have found a place, then they will come back and get you. You are a pretty boy, Pepe. Father Chacón likes Pepe very much.” The priest stood up and walked over to the far wall where he straightened one of the Cub Scout pictures. “Get some sleep, Pepe.”

  Rosenda came into the room. “Oh, Father Chacón, you’re in here.”

  “Yes, Rosenda. Father Chacón was admiring your miracle.”

  “Isn’t he beautiful?”

  “He is that, my child. Beautiful.”

  Father Chacon’s virtues have been excommunicated by the outside world; the most vital drives obscured by his depressive emotions, suspicion, fright, shame. The equation of moral decay. The equation for psychological devolution. Father Chacón does furtively what he does best, loves and needs to do, with sustained anxiety that makes his heart weaken; and because of the danger, the threat of discovery and persecution, Father Chacón harvests a crop of animal instincts that cannot be tamed by the society that does not understand him. A gelded society, impotent spiritually, not comprehending the place of the body in God’s perfect scheme, God’s flawless method, the touch of a man of God, the touch of Father Chacón, the touch of Holiness, sweet Holiness. Father Chacón is no criminal. The boys…the boys…

  supplement

  Steimmel and Davis were on the run, enemies of the government, but they were not public fugitives. There were no news flashes of their images on television, no bulletins circulated through the ranks of local police agencies. Their arrest was supposed to have been the last anyone heard or thought of them. They were to be sneaked out of the nation’s memory and consciousness by lack of coverage. Everyone had agreed. There was no baby to produce in evidence and to produce the baby in concept would have been to jeopardize national security. No one could know about Ralph and what Ralph could do or the fact there could even be a Ralph. Why, the mere possibility of a Ralph would terrify the nation. What if the commies had a Ralph or an Omar or a Vladi? And worse, what if some nuts out in the hinterlands took it upon themselves to challenge the morality of abusing a baby in the manner prescribed by good military thinking?

  Somehow Steimmel and Davis understood all this and felt safe at least to the extent that the local cop on
the beat was not after them, realizing all the while that the government agents could look like anyone on the street. The doctors panhandled enough money to buy food and some garments from a vintage-clothing store, then made their way south by hitchhiking. In Santa Monica, they appeared at the door of a screenwriter friend of Davis, an old boyfriend who had ended the relationship because of Ronald. In fact, when he let the women in, he said to Davis, “So, where’s what his name?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” Davis said.

  “The two of you had a falling out? Did he walk out on you because you decided to descend another rung down the evolutionary ladder?”

  Steimmel frowned, trying to catch up. “Hey, wait a second, you little pipsqueak.”

  Davis sought to calm Steimmel. “Don’t listen to him. He’s just trying to compensate for his little thingie and get to me through you.”

  “I am not standing in his way!” Steimmel pointed a finger at the man. “If you want to get to her, do it!”

  “Steimmel, this is Melvin. Melvin, Steimmel.” Davis walked across the room and looked out the window at the street. “We need a place to rest for a couple of days. And some money.”

  “Oh, of course,” Melvin said. “I’ll just go to sleep on the street, but first I’ll go empty my bank account for you.”

  “You slept with him?” Steimmel asked Davis.

  “Just twice.”

  “Get out,” Melvin said.