Forty Stories (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

by Donald Barthelme

  Hugh was worried about the wording of the invitations. What if one of them fell into the hands of the authorities? Hanging Colby was doubtless against the law, and if the authorities learned in advance what the plan was they would very likely come in and try to mess everything up. I said that although hanging Colby was almost certainly against the law, we had a perfect moral right to do so because he was our friend, belonged to us in various important senses, and he had after all gone too far. We agreed that the invitations would be worded in such a way that the person invited could not know for sure what he was being invited to. We decided to refer to the event as “An Event Involving Mr. Colby Williams.” A handsome script was selected from a catalogue and we picked a cream-colored paper. Magnus said he’d see to having the invitations printed, and wondered whether we should serve drinks. Colby said he thought drinks would be nice but was worried about the expense. We told him kindly that the expense didn’t matter, that we were after all his dear friends and if a group of his dear friends couldn’t get together and do the thing with a little bit of éclat, why, what was the world coming to? Colby asked if he would be able to have drinks, too, before the event. We said, “Certainly.”

  The next item of business was the gibbet. None of us knew too much about gibbet design, but Tomás, who is an architect, said he’d look it up in old books and draw the plans. The important thing, as far as he recollected, was that the trapdoor function perfectly. He said that just roughly, counting labor and materials, it shouldn’t run us more than four hundred dollars. “Good God!” Howard said. He said what was Tomás figuring on, rosewood? No, just a good grade of pine, Tomás said. Victor asked if unpainted pine wouldn’t look kind of “raw,” and Tomás replied that he thought it could be stained a dark walnut without too much trouble.

  I said that although I thought the whole thing ought to be done really well and all, I also thought four hundred dollars for a gibbet, on top of the expense for the drinks, invitations, musicians, and everything, was a bit steep, and why didn’t we just use a tree—a nice-looking oak, or something? I pointed out that since it was going to be a June hanging the trees would be in glorious leaf and that not only would a tree add a kind of “natural” feeling but it was also strictly traditional, especially in the West. Tomás, who had been sketching gibbets on the backs of envelopes, reminded us that an outdoor hanging always had to contend with the threat of rain. Victor said he liked the idea of doing it outdoors, possibly on the bank of a river, but noted that we would have to hold it some distance from the city, which presented the problem of getting the guests, musicians, etc., to the site and then back to town.

  At this point everybody looked at Harry, who runs a car-and-truck-rental business. Harry said he thought he could round up enough limousines to take care of that end but that the drivers would have to be paid. The drivers, he pointed out, wouldn’t be friends of Colby’s and couldn’t be expected to donate their services, any more than the bartender or the musicians. He said that he had about ten limousines, which he used mostly for funerals, and that he could probably obtain another dozen by calling around to friends of his in the trade. He said also that if we did it outside, in the open air, we’d better figure on a tent or awning of some kind to cover at least the principals and the orchestra, because if the hanging was being rained on he thought it would look kind of dismal. As between gibbet and tree, he said, he had no particular preferences and he really thought that the choice ought to be left up to Colby, since it was his hanging. Colby said that everybody went too far, sometimes, and weren’t we being a little Draconian? Howard said rather sharply that all that had already been discussed, and which did he want, gibbet or tree? Colby asked if he could have a firing squad. No, Howard said, he could not. Howard said a firing squad would just be an ego trip for Colby, the blindfold and last-cigarette bit, and that Colby was in enough hot water already without trying to “upstage” everyone with unnecessary theatrics. Colby said he was sorry, he hadn’t meant it that way, he’d take the tree. Tomás crumpled up the gibbet sketches he’d been making, in disgust.

  Then the question of the hangman came up. Pete said did we really need a hangman? Because if we used a tree, the noose could be adjusted to the appropriate level and Colby could just jump off something—a chair or stool or something. Besides, Pete said, he very much doubted if there were any free-lance hangmen wandering around the country, now that capital punishment has been done away with absolutely, temporarily, and that we’d probably have to fly one in from England or Spain or one of the South American countries, and even if we did that how could we know in advance that the man was a professional, a real hangman, and not just some money-hungry amateur who might bungle the job and shame us all, in front of everybody? We all agreed then that Colby should just jump off something and that a chair was not what he should jump off of, because that would look, we felt, extremely tacky— some old kitchen chair sitting out there under our beautiful tree. Tomás, who is quite modern in outlook and not afraid of innovation, proposed that Colby be standing on a large round rubber ball ten feet in diameter. This, he said, would afford a sufficient “drop” and would also roll out of the way if Colby suddenly changed his mind after jumping off. He reminded, us that by not using a regular hangman we were placing an awful lot of the responsibility for the success of the affair on Colby himself, and that although he was sure Colby would perform creditably and not disgrace his friends at the last minute, still, men have been known to get a little irresolute at times like that, and the ten-foot-round rubber ball, which could probably be fabricated rather cheaply, would insure a “bang-up” production right down to the wire.

  At the mention of “wire,” Hank, who had been silent all this time, suddenly spoke up and said he wondered if it wouldn’t be better if we used wire instead of rope—more efficient and in the end kinder to Colby, he suggested. Colby began looking a little green, and I didn’t blame him, because there is something extremely distasteful in thinking about being hanged with wire instead of rope—it gives you a sort of a revulsion, when you think about it. I thought it was really quite unpleasant of Hank to be sitting there talking about wire, just when we had solved the problem of what Colby was going to jump off of so neatly, with Tomás’s idea about the rubber ball, so I hastily said that wire was out of the question, because it would injure the tree—cut into the branch it was tied to when Colby’s full weight hit it—and that in these days of increased respect for the environment, we didn’t want that, did we? Colby gave me a grateful look, and the meeting broke up.

  Everything went off very smoothly on the day of the event (the music Colby finally picked was standard stuff, Elgar, and it was played very well by Howard and his boys). It didn’t rain, the event was well attended, and we didn’t run out of Scotch, or anything. The ten-foot rubber ball had been painted a deep green and blended in well with the bucolic setting. The two things I remember best about the whole episode are the grateful look Colby gave me when I said what I said about the wire, and the fact that nobody has ever gone too far again.

  Lightning

  EDWARD Connors, on assignment for Folks, set out to interview nine people who had been struck by lightning. “Nine?” he said to his editor, Penfield. “Nine, ten,” said Penfield, “doesn’t matter, but it has to be more than eight.” “Why?” asked Connors, and Penfield said that the layout was scheduled for five pages and they wanted at least two people who had been struck by lightning per page plus somebody pretty sensational for the opening page. “Slightly wonderful,” said Penfield, “nice body, I don’t have to tell you, somebody with a special face. Also, struck by lightning.”

  Connors advertised in The Village Voice for people who had been struck by lightning and would be willing to talk for publication about the experience and in no time at all was getting phone calls. A number of the callers, it appeared, had great-grandfathers or grandmothers who had also been struck by lightning, usually knocked from the front seat of a buckboard on a country road in 1910.
Connors took down names and addresses and made appointments for interviews, trying to discern from the voices if any of the women callers might be, in the magazine’s terms, wonderful.

  Connors had been a reporter for ten years and a free-lancer for five, with six years in between as a PR man for Topsy Oil in Midland-Odessa. As a reporter he had been excited, solid, underpaid, in love with his work, a specialist in business news, a scholar of the regulatory agencies and their eternal gavotte with the Seven Sisters, a man who knew what should be done with natural gas, with nuclear power, who knew crown blocks and monkey boards and Austin chalk, who kept his own personal hard hat (“Welltech”) on top of a filing cabinet in his office. When his wife pointed out, eventually, that he wasn’t making enough money (absolutely true!) he had gone with Topsy, whose PR chief had been dropping handkerchiefs in his vicinity for several years. Signing on with Topsy, he had tripled his salary, bought four moderately expensive suits, enjoyed (briefly) the esteem of his wife, and spent his time writing either incredibly dreary releases about corporate doings or speeches in praise of free enterprise for the company’s CEO, E. H. (“Bug”) Ludwig, a round, amiable, commanding man of whom he was very fond. When Connors’s wife left him for a racquetball pro attached to the Big Spring Country Club he decided he could afford to be poor again and departed Topsy, renting a dismal rear apartment on Lafayette Street in New York and patching an income together by writing for a wide variety of publications, classical record reviews for High Fidelity, Time Travel pieces (“Portugal’s Fabulous Beaches”) exposés for Penthouse (“Inside the Trilateral Commission”). To each assignment he brought a good brain, a good eye, a tenacious thoroughness, gusto. He was forty-five, making a thin living, curious about people who had been struck by lightning.

  The first man he interviewed was a thirty-eight-year-old tile setter named Burch who had been struck by lightning in February 1978 and had immediately become a Jehovah’s Witness. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” said Burch, “in a way.” He was a calm, rather handsome man with pale blond hair cut short, military style, and an elegantly spare (deep grays and browns) apartment in the West Twenties which looked, to Connors, as if a decorator had been involved. “I was coming back from a job in New Rochelle,” said Burch, “and I had a flat. It was clouding up pretty good and I wanted to get the tire changed before the rain started. I had the tire off and was just about to put the spare on when there was this just terrific crash and I was flat on my back in the middle of the road. Knocked the tire tool ‘bout a hundred feet, I found it later in a field. Guy in a VW van pulled up right in front of me, jumped out and told me I’d been struck. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, I was deafened, but he made signs. Took me to a hospital and they checked me over, they were amazed—no burns, nothing, just the deafness, which lasted about forty-eight hours. I figured I owed the Lord something, and I became a Witness. And let me tell you my life since that day has been—” He paused, searching for the right word. “Serene. Truly serene.” Burch had had a great-grandfather who had also been struck by lightning, knocked from the front seat of a buckboard on a country road in Pennsylvania in 1910, but no conversion had resulted in that case, as far as he knew. Connors arranged to have a Folks photographer shoot Burch on the following Wednesday and, much impressed—rarely had he encountered serenity on this scale—left the apartment with his pockets full of Witness literature.

  Connors next talked to a woman named MacGregor who had been struck by lightning while sitting on a bench on the Cold Spring, New York, railroad platform and had suffered third-degree burns on her arms and legs—she had been wearing a rubberized raincoat which had, she felt, protected her somewhat, but maybe not, she couldn’t be sure. Her experience, while lacking a religious dimension per se, had made her think very hard about her life, she said, and there had been some important changes (Lightning changes things, Connors wrote in his notebook). She had married the man she had been seeing for two years but had been slightly dubious about, and on the whole, this had been the right thing to do. She and Marty had a house in Garrison, New York, where Marty was in real estate, and she’d quit her job with Estée Lauder because the commute, which she’d been making since 1975, was just too tiring. Connors made a date for the photogra pher. Mrs. MacGregor was pleasant and attractive (fawn-colored suit, black clocked stockings) but, Connors thought, too old to start the layout with.

  The next day he got a call from someone who sounded young. Her name was Edwina Rawson, she said, and she had been struck by lightning on New Year’s Day, 1980, while walking in the woods with her husband, Marty. (Two Martys in the same piece? thought Connors, scowling.) Curiously enough, she said, her great-grandmother had also been struck by lightning, knocked from the front seat of a buggy on a country road outside Iowa City in 1911. “But I don’t want to be in the magazine,” she said. “I mean, with all those rock stars and movie stars. Olivia’ Newton-John I’m not. If you were writing a book or something—”

  Connors was fascinated. He had never come across anyone who did not want to appear in Folks before. He was also slightly irritated. He had seen perfectly decent colleagues turn amazingly ugly when refused a request for an interview. “Well,” he said, “could we at least talk? I promise I won’t take up much of your time, and, you know, this is a pretty important experience, being struck by lightning—not many people have had it. Also you might be interested in how the others felt….” “Okay,” she said, “but off the record unless I decide otherwise.” “Done,” said Connors. My God, she thinks she’s the State Department.

  Edwina was not only slightly wonderful but also mildly superb, worth a double-page spread in anybody’s book, Vogue, Life, Elle, Ms., Town & Country, you name it. Oh Lord, thought Connors, there are ways and ways to be struck by lightning. She was wearing jeans and a parka and she was beautifully, beautifully black—a considerable plus, Connors noted automatically, the magazine conscientiously tried to avoid lily-white stories. She was carrying a copy of Variety (not an actress, he thought, please not an actress) and was not an actress but doing a paper on Variety for a class in media studies at NYU. “God, I love Variety,” she said. The stately march of the grosses through the middle pages.” Connors decided that “Shall we get married?” was an inappropriate second remark to make to one newly met, but it was a very tough decision.

  They were in a bar called Bradley’s on University Place in the Village, a bar Connors sometimes used for interviews because of its warmth, geniality. Edwina was drinking a Beck’s and Connors, struck by lightning, had a feeble paw wrapped around a vodka-tonic. Relax, he told himself, go slow, we have half the afternoon. There was a kid, she said, two-year-old boy, Marty’s, Marty had split for California and a job as a systems analyst with Warner Communications, good riddance to bad rubbish. Connors had no idea what a systems analyst did: go with the flow? The trouble with Marty, she said, was that he was immature, a systems analyst, and white. She conceded that when the lightning hit he had given her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, perhaps saved her life; he had taken a course in CPR at the New School, which was entirely consistent with his cautious, be-prepared, white-folks’ attitude toward life. She had nothing against white folks, Edwina said with a warm smile, or rabbits, as black folks sometimes termed them, but you had to admit that, qua folks, they sucked. Look at the Trilateral Commission, she said, a perfect example. Connors weighed in with some knowledgeable words about the Commission, detritus from his Penthouse piece, managing to hold her interest through a second Beck’s.

  “Did it change your life, being struck?” asked Connors. She frowned, considered. “Yes and no,” she said. “Got rid of Marty, that was an up. Why I married him I’ll never know. Why he married me I’ll never know. A minute of bravery, never to be repeated.” Connors saw that she was much aware of her own beauty, her hauteur about appearing in the magazine was appropriate—who needed it? People would dig slant wells for this woman, go out into a producing field with a tank truck in the dead of ni
ght and take off five thousand gallons of somebody else’s crude, write fanciful checks, establish Pyramid Clubs with tony marble-and-gold headquarters on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse. What did he have to offer?

  “Can you tell me a little bit more about how you felt when it actually hit you?” he asked, trying to keep his mind on business. “Yes,” Edwina said. “We were taking a walk—we were at his mother’s place in Connecticut, near Madison—and Marty was talking about whether or not he should take a SmokeEnders course at the Y, he smoked Kents, miles and miles of Kents. I was saying, yes, yes, do it! and whammo! the lightning. When I came to, I felt like I was burning inside, inside my chest, drank seventeen glasses of water, chug-a-lugged them, thought I was going to bust. Also, my eyebrows were gone. I looked at myself in the mirror and I had zip eyebrows. Looked really funny, maybe improved me.” Regarding her closely Connors saw that her eyebrows were in fact dark dramatic slashes of eyebrow pencil. “Ever been a model?” he asked, suddenly inspired. “That’s how I make it,” Edwina said, “that’s how I keep little Zachary in britches, look in the Sunday Times Magazine, I do Altman’s, Macy’s, you’ll see me and three white chicks, usually, lingerie ads….”

  The soul burns, Connors thought, having been struck by lightning. Without music, Nietzsche said, the world would be a mistake. Do I have that right? Connors, no musician (although a scholar of fiddle music from Pinchas Zukerman to Eddie South, “dark angel of the violin,” 1904-62), agreed wholeheartedly. Lightning an attempt at music on the part of God? Does get your attention, Connors thought, attempt wrong by definition because God is perfect by definition. … Lightning at once a coup de théâtre and career counseling? Connors wondered if he had a song to sing, one that would signify to the burned beautiful creature before him.