by William Walsh
Keyhole Press
an imprint of Dzanc Books
www.keyholepress.com
Pathologies © 2010 by William Walsh. Smashwords Edition. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Portions of Pathologies previously appeared in Crescent Review, Decameron, Interrobang, Kill Author, Lamination Colony, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, No Colony, Rosebud, Sir, Suss, Sweet Fancy Moses, and This Zine Will Change Your Life.
Cover design by Peter Cole.
ISBN: 978-1-4524-5859-5
PATHOLOGIES
Footboy
The Wrong Barthelme
You Can Live on Lemons
Revision
This Laptop Kills Fascists
The Terms of My Parole
Untitled
So Much Love In The Room
Governor Ghandi, Gourmand and Ex-Con
The Margaret Atwoods
A Courtship Ballad
Beggars Can’t
Diagnosis: Mustache
Markson Mails It In
Switch
Bunny
Snowman on the Moon
FOOTBOY
First Memory
The ball came at him harder each time. He let it bounce off his chest. When it landed on the ground at his feet, he kicked it to the boy nearest him.
“Catch it,” one of them said.
But, again, he let the ball hit off his chest and fall to the ground. He dribbled it with his feet, toeing it carefully to keep it in front of him, until one of the other boys took the ball from him and set it down a few feet away. “Pick it up with your hands,” he said.
“No,” said Footboy. “I won’t use my hands.”
New Doctor
“From day one he hasn’t used his hands,” his mother told his new doctor. “The nurse brought him to me, put him to my breast, and his feet came up and took hold of me. It was funny. All the other mothers crowded around my bed at feeding time, just to watch. We all laughed.”
The doctor looked at him through his glasses, which were dusty. The look on his face said, “Let’s make friends.”
“He’s getting older,” his mother said. “What kind of life is it to do everything with your feet when God gave you two good hands? Look at his skinny arms, just hanging down. They’re like rope.”
He worked his right foot out of its shoe and brought it to his face, rubbing under his nose. The doctor’s eyes followed the foot back into the shoe.
“Can you believe it,” his mother asked?
Trying to Sleep
The weights the doctor fastened to his wrists came off easily. He placed them on the small table beside his bed and lay down to take a nap. He told himself there are no bones in his arms and hands, but he has seen the X-rays and now knows otherwise.
He closed his eyes. There’s a dream he had been having lately where he doesn’t have any arms: the sleeves of his shirt are rolled neatly to the shoulder and pinned. He tried to put himself back into that happy dream, but the voice of the new doctor kept him awake.
“You’re really missing out on a lot,” he’d said. “There’s no medical reason why you should not use your hands. You’re only limiting yourself.”
But he was sure he could do with his feet all the things the rest of the world did with their hands: he could peel an orange, sharpen a pencil, put a cassette in his tape deck, open a can of soda, use a telephone—both touchtone and rotary. He could ride a bike, kill flies, and even tie his own shoes, though he always had to tie them before putting them on. His penmanship was legible, he kept his room picked up, he made good grades. Though he’d yet to play his first meaningful game of footsie, he was sure that when the opportunity presented itself he would be able to unsnap the clasp of a bra. Just a pinching of his index and big toe should do the trick.
Love
In the school cafeteria, the new girl sat down directly across from him. She had on a white sweater, a plaid skirt and glasses. Her name, he knew, was Beth. Smiling at him, she asked, “Is this seat taken?”
He looked up from the book he was reading. “No.”
Beth sat.
As he read, he brought his right foot to the side of his head, tugged at his ear, licked his big toe, and turned the page of his book. He continued reading for a short time, then looked up to see that Beth was having trouble opening her milk.
“Let me get that for you,” he said, reaching his right foot across the table to take the milk from her hands. He opened the carton and set it back down on the table in front of her.
Beth thanked him, and he said, “You’re welcome.”
After a moment his reading was interrupted by a tap on his right foot. Without looking up, he returned the tap and let his foot linger beside Beth’s then move a few inches up the inside of her calf. He gave her a little toe pinch. She bounced in her seat and laughed. “How’d you do that?” she asked.
“What?” he said. He gave her another small pinch, “That?”
She laughed again, then slipped her feet out of their shoes and gave him a toe pinch.
“I didn’t even feel that,” he said. He told her there’s a trick to it. “You have to give it a little twist when you squeeze.”
He watched her face squint in concentration as her toes took hold of the flesh just above his ankle. She gave him a squeeze and then a twist.
“Ouch,” he said. He bounced in his seat and laughed.
“I owe you one,” she said and gave him one more.
“Truce,” he said, pulling his feet away from hers.
She nodded her head and said, “I will if you will.”
Their feet met again under the table. Their toes interlaced and locked. Their soles pressed together, her heels fitting snugly into his arches.
He thought he could do that all day.
THE WRONG BARTHELME
Don B. and Frederick and the other one. Today there’s a little scuffle between the brothers Barthelme in the basement playroom of their childhood home in a Houston suburb. The boys are all the same age, twelve. But Don B. is a much older twelve-year-old? He has his Lincoln beard and he's got a pipe in his mouth, unlit, stuffed with tea leaves from a sliced open bag of Lipton. They're dressed alike: cardigans, skinny jeans, loafers. Wet combed hair. Big eyes. Big ears. They're fighting over a set of model trains. Garden Gauge Lionels. Quite a set up, really. Half a mile of track spread out on multiple levels, through a string of tiny burgs—whistle-stops, Don B. calls them—and a small-but-swinging skiing community at the top of a snow-capped mountain. But a length of broken rail and a toppled bridge will require some explaining. The caboose is tossed across the basement and hits the wall with a crash. Mrs. B comes down the basement stairs carrying three manual typewriters, a sealed ream of stationery tucked under her chin. There's a war on, she says. The boys take the typewriters from their mother, each in turn kissing her cheek, and making for the ping-pong table. They take their stations at a row of leather swivel chairs. One of the boys will have to be punished. That train set wasn't cheap. And there's a war on. Mrs. B doesn't care who gets punished. This time, as on many previous occasions, she picks the wrong Barthelme. Frederick. He wants to cry, but he's lost the ability since his clarinet made him cross-eyed three years prior. Mrs. B meters out the punishment. Fifteen minutes, she says. Frederick must sit on his hands in front of his paper-loaded typewriter while Don B. and the other one tap away, light on the keys but heavy on the spacebar. They slap their returns in a jazzy way the instant they hear the sound of that ringing bell.
YOU CAN LIVE ON LEMONS
Arturo was so much happier before the revolution. And th
is is how he should be remembered, performing every night of the week at La Huchina, two shows, some nights three. Old regime, new regime. It didn’t matter to Arturo. His politics ran only as deep as the acne scars on Generalissimo’s brutal face. Arturo poked fun, mimicked, took potshots from the low stage. Then he would retreat and mock himself for three quarters of an hour. His lack of height. His wide ass. His crooked teeth. Arturo flopped onto the stage and pulled hard at the fine hair on his temples, wiped the glossy sweat from his bald pate.
We don’t need another revolution, he’d say. The old one still smarts.
Draw it mild, his agent counsels without disagreeing. You want to be a captive performer in buggerer’s bay?
Fascism can be funny. But you have to tiptoe. Arturo makes a joke about the waterboarding—pretending to confuse the term with wakeboarding. Tiptoe. Tiptoe.
After the late show, Arturo gets a note from the Minister of Public Affairs and International Relations: Topical, thought-provoking jokes are welcome by the new regime. But take care not to compromise the island’s re-blooming tourism. Don’t you want to be the face on all of the colorful brochures, Arturo?
But what wit can keep his mouth shut with parody the ruling power? Arturo wants to paint a wordless still life of the puppets and seize the island with laughter.
Arturo labels the Generalissimo’s anti-gay campaign as the fight of the fairies. His twelve-piece band plays a leaping tune. Arturo tiptoes girlishly across the stage, then implies in so many words that this battle originated internally for the Generalissimo. Tiptoe. Tiptoe.
Americanos. Canadians. Germans. The happy-go-lucky Dutch. And lately the Irish, who tend to empathize, perhaps, too much. All can generally be described as old but mobile. Men too old to veer from their vacation habits, they come to the little lemon-shaped island with half a million mature lemon trees and half a million carefree women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. They love to laugh at Arturo each spring. They love to see his perfecto impression of the Generalissimo. Without it, their vacations would be incomplete.
Arturo: Lemons are the chief export. Next come round asses and pretty tits.
Arturo is a good son to his aging mother. Forget about the early woes, the beatings that she attended to. All the new foreign coins go to his Madre. Arturo calls her his banko securo. She’d chase away any daring robber with her pistola breath.
Dig a hole, Arturo, she advises. Do it before I die, she says, crossing herself quickly. Dig it deep. And in her prayers Arturo’s mother says, Lord, I will forgive these women of today who have a higher tolerance for filth, but I better know that they wash between their legs to make a clean place for my Arturo.
Arturo to the cute touristas: Come with me. Arturo will teach you the native tongue.
The Generalissimo shares with Arturo the same taste in wristwatches, sunglasses, and young chicas. But when Arturo scores first with one of the imported showgirls, the Generalissimo must not know. Still, as the Generalissimo sits at his table with the leggy blond dancer from Texas, Arturo lets his audience in on the secret of his seduction with a nearly undetectable wink right in front of the Generalissimo. Arturo can wink with both eyes at the same time.
Arturo, so sly, smooth: I only taught her to dance the lemon merengue.
Arturo prepares for Ms. Texas a double-rum-lemonita, unsweetened. She sips from a thin straw and her face craters with a painful looking pucker, involving not just her mouth but her eyes. Two days later, she is gone, gone, gone. The Generalissimo has no comment for the press.
The right friends for the island and the right enemies, too. Good rum. A Coca-Cola bottling plant running three shifts a day. The blessed lemons. It’s like they tell the little league ballers: You can’t walk off this island, slugger. Arturo swings away, no matter the count. Ball four is not an option. Always the big swing. Always thinking homerun.
A good tux but ill-fitting, comically snug. Arturo’s passable singing voice:
If you lose the coup, the joke will be on you.
And all your pretty sisters, and their sisters’ sisters, too.
And, singing under his breath, with the microphone behind his back, Arturo croons:
All your cousins’ uncles, and the man who sells you bread.
Everyone you ever hugged, a bullet in the head.
Tiptoe. Tiptoe.
At the end of his act, Arturo bites hard into lemon after lemon, showing his sour face to the audience. This is my country, he says. This is my flag.
REVISION
I thought it was a lake, but it was not a lake. It was two rivers. Hence the name: Twin Rivers State Park. I waded in slowly. Felt a current that I thought was just my imagination. That current took me, and very soon I was in a swirl at the point where the two rivers meet, wide and flat looking from the land, but roiling and tugging below the surface. I decided not to cry for help because I thought I was alone. A solitary novice hiker who had chosen a bad place to revise one of his recent poems. My only fear had been for ticks. The swirl pulled me down. Two deep rivers, aggressive, claiming me. I felt a giant arm go around my neck. Drowning is like a headlock, I thought. Nobody ever told me that. That would have been an effective warning against swimming alone. Drowning is like an eternal, bullying headlock. The swirl changed direction. I was certain that I was going up, not down anymore. I thought, this is me out of my body. This is my soul going up out of the water against the swirl. On the shore—I guess I should say on the riverbank, since rivers have banks, not shores—I was flopped onto my back. It was the opposite riverbank, not the side from which I had entered. I felt a quick push on my chest and water shooting from my mouth and nose (and did I imagine it or did water shoot from the corners of my eyes, from beneath my fluttering eyelids). Then I saw him. My rescuer. The ranger who had asked me for my cigarette lighter at the park entrance. The ranger who told me to stay out of the water—if he'd only said stay out of the river—rivers. I thanked him. I looked closely at him, still on my back on the ground. His appearance was vivid to me. His hair coniferous. His nose a pine cone. His legs wide and hairy and his trunk thick. His arms like giant limbs. Treelike, I should say. But I wasn't thinking clearly. Then I was looking at the ground and the ground was moving. I knew that I had been saved by the ranger, but the sensation of the ground moving below me made me think briefly that I was dead and still floating—in a waterlogged state—out of the swirling rivers. He said two words, Stupid fuck. I was on his shoulders. He was carrying me the way a rancher would carry a calf away from the herd. He said it again, Stupid fuck. That was me, my new name. We approached a cabin. I would call it quaint from the outside. I would call it rustic on the inside. I would call the woman inside his sister. I would call her his twin. They began stripping me of my wet clothes in front of a small fire burning in their large fireplace. They did not speak but made eager sounds as they unwrapped me. I belonged to them now.
THIS LAPTOP KILLS FASCISTS
This is my laptop. There are many laptops like this one, but this laptop is mine. My laptop is my best friend. My laptop is my life. I must master my laptop as I must master my life. Without me, my laptop is useless. Without my laptop, I am useless. I must write on my laptop true. I must write straighter than all editors who are trying to edit me. I must edit myself before the editors edit me. I will.
My laptop is human, even as I am human, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn my laptop as a brother. I will learn my laptop’s weaknesses, its strengths, its parts, its accessories, its sighs, and its battery life. I will keep my laptop clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other.
Before God I swear this creed: my laptop and I are defenders of my ideas; we are masters of all editors; we are the saviors of my life. So be it until there are no editors.
Amen.
THE TERMS OF MY PAROLE
The terms of my parole are intended to make my parole successful. The terms of my parole were signed by five members of the state’s board of
parole. The terms of my parole contain one typo and two mistakes of grammar. The terms of my parole forbid new tattoos above the collar. The terms of my parole disallow my patronage at any and all Pep Boys and AutoZones. The terms of my parole stipulate that I pay the Commonwealth a $90 per month parolee fee plus a service charge of $275 per month for my GPS ankle bracelet. The terms of my parole state that I may not patronize divebars, stripclubs, and poolhalls. The terms of my parole require me to sell my motorcycle because it is a magnet for trouble. The terms of my parole give me three months to get my IROC-Z off the blocks and on the road. The terms of my parole tell me to plan to be home and in bed every night before the eleven o’clock news comes on. The terms of my parole disallow me from dragging anything down into my mother’s basement that I cannot drag up out of the basement myself. The terms of my parole, it is clear to me, were written in part by my mother. The terms of my parole implore me to stop shaving my head because I have a wonderful head of hair, especially when I keep it cut above my ears. The terms of my parole suggest that I should begin dating a woman who has some self-respect, like Marie Lent down the street. The terms of my parole remind me to breathe through my nose, not my mouth. The terms of my parole prohibit my use of a glue gun. The terms of my parole bear evidence of my sister’s sense of humor. The terms of my parole state that I should stop smelling like a character out of William Faulkner’s Sanctuary. The terms of my parole suggest that I refrain from reading any more true crime books. The terms of my parole strongly suggest that I visualize my personal narrative of rehabilitation as the stuff of an animated Disney feature film.
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