According to James Avara (Journal of Linguistic Studies, 1971, 46–52), Wulfila Jutes was the last speaker of the Germanic language Ostrogothic, and it is from Jutes that linguists were able to piece together the small and incomplete list of one hundred vocabulary words that we recognize and can translate today. Wulfila Jutes died sometime in the early nineteen hundreds and was by no means a fluent speaker. The last fully fluent speaker of Ostrogothic is presumed to have died over a century ago. It is now widely assumed that Henry Richard Niles is the only living fluent speaker of Ostrogothic and the first person to speak this dead language in over one hundred years.
Once the root of Niles’s speaking problem had been discovered, his parents placed him with well-respected and renowned linguists in hopes that they could 1) discover the origins of the language that he spoke, and 2) teach Henry Richard how to speak properly and in English, if possible, but at the very least in French. Niles remained with the linguists from his seventh until his eighteenth birthday. Despite intensive lessons in English, Spanish, and French, and although perfectly fluent in each (he is more than able to read and understand technical manuals, financial reports, and newspaper headlines), Niles cannot express himself (poetically) in any language other than Ostrogothic.
Armed with a vocabulary that grows daily, Niles has produced some six hundred poems, ranging in length from a two-word verse to a one thousand–line canto, of which only segments can be translated through the use of the one hundred–word vocabulary list once provided by Wulfila Jutes. Much of his poetry, when translated, looks bullet-ridden, torn, and scooped out, though when heard in their original language, read aloud by the author—there exists but one recording of Niles reading a series of short poems made twenty years ago—these same poems, while unintelligible, have been known to make the listener weep and thereafter dwell on a history of lost opportunities.
Cash to a Killing
We had spent the past hour burying the body and were on our way to grab a hamburger. I had been worried at first that the body would be too difficult to lift. I’d only had Roger with me, and he’d never done this sort of thing before; usually I’ve got two other guys, big guys, for the heavy lifting. I’m not a big guy and neither is Roger, and I’ve heard that deadweight is really heavy. When Roger moved, then, to the midsection of the body, wrapped his arms around the guy’s waist, I told him, No way, man, you’ve got to pick him up from one of the ends, head end or foot end, not the middle, but Roger’s always been good at ignoring whatever he doesn’t want to hear, and so, when he continued with his flawed plan, straddling the body, wrapping his arms around the waist before changing his mind and grabbing the guy by his belt loops, then bending his knees—he had a bad back from when he worked at an ice-cream shop—and heaved, I expected him to topple forward, maybe land inappropriately, but humorously, on top of the guy, in a lover’s embrace, you might say, or at least flip over and land flat on his back on the ground. But either Roger had been working out and was much stronger than he looked, or dead bodies are a lot lighter than everybody says they are, because Roger pulled the guy right between his legs and flipped him up over his shoulder before turning to me and asking, So, where are we going to put this guy?
I wish I could say that killing the guy was an accident, and maybe if you were to take the long view of the situation, take into account the events of his life, those of my life, of Roger’s, the arbitrary successes and failures that befell the three of us, or, even further back, befell our parents and grandparents, great grands, back to our oldest ancestors, and determined that it was some accident of fate that he ended up who he was and I ended up who I am, and Roger ended up as Roger, you might say it was an accident. But taking the short view of things, we killed him deliberately and for a specific purpose. And despite Roger’s argument, just because we killed the wrong guy doesn’t change, for me, the fact of the matter. He was the guy we intended to kill, we killed him, end of story.
What pissed me off more than the wasted time—staking him out, waiting in hiding, killing the guy, and then burying him—was the fact that now I’d not only killed the wrong guy, but that I still had to kill the right guy, as well as the guy who gave me the bogus information about the guy I just killed. That’s three guys, when I’d only planned on one, at most two, depending on how I decided to handle Roger after it was all said and done, effectively tripling my work, which was all I could think about as we walked back to the van, that and how hungry I was, which is why I suggested we grab a burger, maybe a soft serve, too, on the way back home.
It was about the time that Roger pulled into the Whataburger that he realized he’d dropped his wallet. Uh-oh, he said. Uh-oh what? I said. No wallet, he said. Don’t sweat it, I said. I’ll cover you. No, he said. That’s not what I mean.
I’m not sure why the jerk brought his wallet to a killing in the first place, as it seems common sense to me: Bring cash to a killing. No credit cards, no license, no ID, unless it’s fake and it’s got a bogus picture on it. But your entire wallet? Roger’s always been a nice guy, but was never much for common sense. So we drove back to where we buried the body, hunted around for Roger’s wallet for about twenty minutes, until he comes to the conclusion that he must have dropped it into the hole. Into the hole, I said. You’re positive? I’ll go get the shovels, he said, instead of answering my question. After another hour of slow digging, slow because we didn’t want to accidentally dig up and throw back Roger’s wallet with the dirt and muck, we hit the body, only for me to then realize that it was the wrong body, entirely the wrong body, at which point, so we didn’t keep digging pointlessly and so Roger wouldn’t hop into the hole himself, I said, This ain’t him.
What? Are you kidding me? Roger said. How many bodies you think are out here? he said, not really believing me, hopping down into the hole to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake, which I hadn’t, or, rather, I had.
The thing is, the entire field’s on a grid system, the entire plot of land, my great grandfather’s, all laid out on this grid, not written down, of course, but kept in my head, with the locations of all the different guys, each buried in his own logical way—it’s a mathematical system, foolproof—but I must have been flustered, pissed as I was, and hungry, and so I must have transposed a couple of the locations, which, fine, no big deal, just refigure it out, cover this guy up, go find the right guy, and there you have it, right? Sure. But for the monstrously fucked-up fact that the wrong guy we dug up was Roger’s brother, Roger not knowing he was dead and buried in my grandfather’s land, thinking, in fact, that he’d skipped off to Vegas to become a blackjack dealer, due in part to the forged letter I’d left for him that said I’ve skipped off to Vegas to become a blackjack dealer.
It ain’t him, I said again, a bit more urgently. Come on, I said. We have to cover him back up and go find the right guy, not to mention your damn wallet. But it was too late, and I could tell it was too late by the way Roger’s body went stiff, and by the way his throat started churning out this wicked snarl. I brained him with the shovel, right there and then, before things could get out of hand, but my heart must not have been in it, or maybe I just didn’t have good footing on the loose earth, and I only grazed his shoulder, knocked him back a bit. Then he just about jumped straight out of the hole and came rushing at me. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I started babbling on about how it was an accident, a mistake, but I knew I was lying and what was worse, so did Roger, though I like to comfort myself with the thought that he probably didn’t even hear me.
I’d heard that if you hit a man in the nose hard enough, you can kill him instantly, and so I tried that first off because I like Roger and didn’t want him to suffer. I’ll tell you now that it doesn’t work or I wasn’t doing it right, but as fast as he was coming and as much as my hand hurt afterward, I figure I hit him damn hard enough. He hardly flinched, though, mad as he was, and knocked me flat on my back, lunging right after me, as if to jump on to
p of me, maybe to gouge my eyes out or strangle me, but I rolled out of the way, figuring Roger, in his anger, had forgotten the gun in his jacket, figuring, too, that trying to strangle the life out of me would be his next logical move, and when he landed on his face in the dirt, I scrambled to my feet and grabbed the shovel and hit him good this time.
Of course, two weeks later, washing the van, vacuuming the seats and such, I found Roger’s wallet wedged between the driver’s seat and the cup holder. All I can say is, goddamn jerk. Goddamn fucking asshole.
Harold Withy Keith: A Meritorious Life
KEITH, H. W. (1839–1905). Inventor, scientist (botany, zoology, orismology). Place of birth: Asheville, North Carolina. Full name: Harold Withy Keith. One of two brothers, twins. According to hospital records, Harold and Martin Keith were born simultaneously, and, never quite the younger or the elder twin, H. W. Keith was referred to by family members as the Left Twin.
As young children, Harold and Martin spent their days in their father’s cellar working with grains, ground cornmeal and rice flour. As shown by the extensive notes found in Harold’s diary, the brothers made certain progress in their experiments to create a food “that would satisfy hunger without inflaming the passions” in the tradition of Graham and Kellogg. Their experiments, however, came to an abrupt and incomplete end when overshadowed by a young and healthy competition over the affections of the handsome Margaret Lillian Mauve.
Little is known about the courtship of Margaret Lillian Mauve, only that, in the end, Harold won Margaret’s heart, and the two were married in 1860. Harold’s twin, Martin, served as best man, and it was shortly thereafter that the two brothers again began experimenting with grains. On his own, however, unsatisfied with the repetition of grinding grains and baking crackers, Harold Keith began exhaustive scientific and medical research into unknown viruses and bacteria and the possible causes of sudden and painful deaths. It was during this time that H. W. first envisioned the need for the invention and construction of human organ substitutions. “Clearly,” Harold wrote, “if a man’s liver and kidneys and stomach fail, he will die.”
These experiments in organ substitutions, as far as historians can tell, took place in secret and in a separate laboratory. Some have speculated that H. W.’s work was commissioned by the leading generals of either the North or the South, though this theory appears unlikely since Keith’s work continued well past the end of the Civil War. Diagrams copied out of early journal entries show that Keith initially hoped to build organ substitutions using the shells of squash—acorn, snake, spaghetti—scooped out by hand and then internally supported by a collapsible yet sturdy construction of miniature wooden beams. After six months, though, this idea was abandoned, although historians are not sure why, as the subsequent journal pages are missing, presumably removed by Keith.
Intrigued by the newly discovered and recently named vascular system of plants (1861), H. W., following the schematics of various complex plant forms, then constructed a life-sized prototype—colored tubes pinched together with clips and impeccable knots—which he then used to represent the intricate system of translocation, storage, support, and conduction that are the major functions of xylem and phloem. His idea involved the installation of vascular bundles in place of or to help compensate for failed organic functions, “for do not plants perform the same basic functions of life in that they consume, store, and then release energy as food, calories, and waste?” A large mimetic reconstruction of this system—built late at night and early into the morning, each section conceived of and molded in the kitchen of his and Margaret’s one-bedroom house, the sections then pieced together in a nearby and abandoned toolshed—provided a model from which he designed an apparatus suitable for surgical insertion into a test subject. In his mind, a vascular system performed more effectively than the bulky system of organs already in place: If part of an organ was pierced or somehow punctured, the organ required immediate repair or else would possibly cause failure in the functions of the body, whereas with a vascular system, any number of strands could be cut, punctured, or lost and, so long as there remained other strands, the system would continue to function, albeit at a lower rate of efficiency.
During this period of time, Margaret gave birth to two sons and a daughter, Solomon, Jeremiah, and Mary Ann. Harold’s twin brother, Martin, would, in years to come, take their schooling into his own hands. He would, in fact, come to take the entire household into his own hands, and, eventually, the five of them would quietly become a closer family than ever they were with H. W.
Once his prototype was completed, H. W. Keith then outlined a three-step procedure that involved, first, surgically lining the body with the redesigned vascular system, one which would be appropriate for Homo sapiens, in which the bundles of human xylem and phloem would run throughout the body and would, if possible, be attached to the blood vessels already present. Appropriate numbers of bundles would be installed in the esophagus and around the stomach and the intestines, near the kidneys, the liver, and connected to the urethra. The second stage involved the patient’s adjustment through a new and scientifically formulated diet of liquids and soluble nutrients suitable for the human vascular system, in order that the new system learn its functions (in part by mimicking the old system). For this, he strayed from his earlier experiments in grains, concentrating instead on the nightshade family of fruits and vegetables, e.g., tomatoes and eggplants. The diet would be gradually increased to include more solid foods of the kind normally taken in by the traditional organic system. Once a normal diet had been achieved, the third stage could proceed, which involved the systematic removal of the traditional human organs, “not to include the Heart, which was, of course, the storehouse for the soul, and which was that organ which separated, in the end, Man from Plant.” The completion of this project became H. W. Keith’s lifelong obsession, everything else—Margaret, his brother, Martin, experiments in grain, his children—all in turn forgotten. It would be nearly forty-seven years later before the work would be finished, and the Human Vascular Bundle System ready for surgical insertion.
H. W. Keith was the first recipient of his patented Vascular Bundle procedure. Twenty minutes into the procedure, as documented by Keith himself, the young man assisting him in the surgery fainted. Undeterred, and with the help of a large beveled mirror of his own design, Keith made one incision after another, and then, feeling light-headed but “confident and with steady and unhesitating hands,” completed the operation. Yet due to complications unexplained and unforeseen, he passed away shortly thereafter.
The Animal House
Wendy claimed she found the house on her way home. She claimed she could smell it from the sidewalk, and maybe she could. Her nose was better at smelling things than mine was. As it was, I couldn’t smell anything even standing on the small cement porch out front. Only after she opened the door and I stuck my head inside did the smell hit me. It was thick and damp, full of hoof and fur, though when I mentioned this to Wendy, she told me, “None of these animals have hooves.”
The noise was such that I was surprised we couldn’t hear them bawling and cawing and thrushing in our own house, two blocks away. The animals were caged, and I asked Wendy, “Where did those cages come from?”
She shook her head. “Animal shelter?”
“I thought the shelter closed,” I said, but she only shrugged.
Then we walked through the house. There were ducks and grackles, a couple of squirrels, a few feral cats, a litter of rats, and two brown animals I didn’t recognize that Wendy said she thought were nutrias, which didn’t sound like the name of an animal so much as a sinus medicine. In larger cages outside in the backyard, she told me, there were three stray dogs. She showed them to me, all of them, gave me a tour of the house and all its residents, and for a moment she acted as if they were her animals, her responsibility. And then she bent down to one of the cages and I asked her what th
e hell she was doing and she said, “I want to hold one of them.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think you should.”
She gave me a sharp and disapproving look and then shook her head and opened the cage and pulled out one of the nutrias, which climbed into her arms. She petted it on the head and cooed in its ear and lifted it out and held it for me to touch, and when I told her no way, no how, she told it not to listen to the bad man.
When I first met Wendy, I was lying in the middle of the floor of an empty house and it was dark and she was standing over me. A house I should mention I had broken into, thinking it could be a place I could live. She was brandishing what had at first looked like a shotgun, but which was a floor lamp, held not like you’d hold a gun, but like you’d aim a cattle prod or a spear. She was the first person, aside from my parents, I’d had any real interaction with since moving back.
I’d moved in with my parents, and I was short of cash, having used the last of it to work my way back to my hometown, which I came to discover had been all but abandoned for no other reason than that, for most people, it seemed like a good time to move on—to some other small town, or a city, maybe—and then, of course, some of the people didn’t move on, but instead passed away, which more or less had the same effect. In any case, it seemed like as good a time as any to move back to my parents’ house, my parents being some of the few who decided to stick it out, and there get my bearings straightened out, or oiled, or whatever thing you do to bearings to make them work again. After a short while I figured I needed to find my own place, but I still had no money and there was a shortage of jobs, so I found it difficult to scrounge up enough money to move out. But the town was sick with empty houses, old and run-down, and I figured they couldn’t be in such bad shape I couldn’t pull one of them together again and then live in it, and so I began to wander through town and study them with a critical eye.
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