MJCwriting.htm

A SILENT DELL

Once it smiled, a silent dell

Where the people did not dwell....

They wave: -- from out their fragrant tops

Eternal dews come down in drops.

They weep: -- from off their delicate stems

Perennial tears descend in gems.

"The Valley of Unrest," by Edgar Allen Poe.

TO MY PARENTS

WITH LOVE.

There are no real people in this novel. Both the

characters and their names are fictitious. Any

similarities between the characters in this novel

and people now living in purely coincidental.

I.

Dull-light pierces the room. Early-morning dull-light which forces into the room a spiritual gloom. He lies in it. Utterly conscious, he relives. In the warmth left by his now-bedless matron, he lounges; he reclines, as if awaiting some special reason which might persuade him to move. Mateless, although her fragrance still pervades the room; hateless, he may believe, although there is much is this that he despises. But faithless? Not he.

Pushing himself onto an elbow, he lights a cigarette. His eyes water in the billowing smoke. His head spins uncontrollably.

Dizzy as you please, says he.

Dizzy on my knees.

Dizzy spins the room around

Till Dizzy’s taken on the ground.

Dizzy’s hubby takes his beer with cheese.

Huge gusts of smoke fill his lungs. He coughs them out as he laughs. His wit is priceless. Filling his lungs again, he feels nauseous. He can remember only slightly his vomiting last night. He sees only faintly the lumpy liquid sliding down the side of the garbage can in the alley behind the hotel. Lumpy. And burning his drink-dulled throat as he leans away to miss his clothes. But the last drop on his toe. His black shoe spotted by the almost-white puke. He wipes it on the building, only smearing it. Mrs. Merritt had disappeared. He alone on the lightless side-street. A cat’s eyes being aimed like spears poisoned-on-the-tips. Being aimed at him. He ducks-away from the alley. But looking back: the cat beside the can licking at his dinner. Where is a rock? Never seen anything so disgusting. But there isn’t a rock. There isn’t a rock as he turns-away toward his home.

Drunkenness. He still feels it. He can laugh about it. The suffering hero returning silently from that valiant odyssey. Celebrating that return. Warm sea-dark wine being served by semi-naked girls. Whose husband is working graveyards. Whose husband is working graveyards? Hadn’t she said it? Whispered it into his tender ear, her nipples bulging against his pupils? But his mouth won’t move. His hands are filled with his drink. Will he be tomorrow? Her ass broad, her smile round and quivering: she leaves.

He touches his penis, stiff beneath his shorts. Cocky. Feeling cocky. There once was a man named Michael Finnegan. Old-young Michael Finnegan, with whom alone he had grown old, with whom he had spent his entire life. The two of us: in wealth and deprivation, in health and in infection, in stealth and indiscretion. Watch-out for this erection: you one-eyed slave of passion; you one-eyed smiling fool.

There once was a man named Michael Finnegan

Who was no longer down, than was up and in again,

Who would smile and would grin and would drive in his pin again—

Till his wife was destroyed, but still eager to sin again.

How many sins can be writ on the head of a pin? How many lies can pass through the eye of a camel? How many lies can pass through my head again? How many ayes can slip from my lips again? Can Finnegan pass his head through the eye of a pin? Not hardly. He is no poor man. Something to be proud of.

It’s after seven—so the clock says. Not say, he says. This clock cannot speak. But tells it too much in the drama of its striking? Striking? Good boys: strong union. Our purpose is to perform our tasks with the utmost efficiency and reward. If that entails a strike or two along the way, then so be it! So strikes the world’s largest union: the managers of Time. So it must be. Temporanum extortentum.

Up from bed: he moves gingerly toward his work-clothes. Soft cotton splattered with grease hanging on the first hook in the closet.

He begins to dress slowly. Feeling spry despite the tinge of morning sickness. Stepping awkwardly into his work-pants; pulling on the stained shirt quickly. He fumbles a moment with the tiny buttons. He finally succeeds. All in place now but the boots on the back-porch. And socks. Must wear clean socks as he fingers the old: crusted material. Blue socks from the drawer are fresh to his touch. Funny how the crusted sweat made him think of chicken as a child. Fried chicken. Now simply rot. Make the whole foot rot, itch between the toes. Scratch. Athlete’s foot. Better get something for it after work. Make a mental notation. Something that the wife wanted too. Have to ask her again. Something also for the shoe, lying at his foot, looking up. Toe scratched and pained poorly by the stringy yellowish mixture. Spit on it. Wipe it away. Wretched smell. Wonder if it’s the sock or the moistened vomit? Moistened vomit now clinging to the moistened crusted wretched sock. Dropped to the floor as if diseased. Remember to polish them before tonight. He pushes the shoe deep into the closet, and leaves the room sleepily, wiping his eyes.

Is there time for me to shave? he wonders, standing at the open bathroom-door.

“Honey? Is there time for me to shave?” he calls aloud.

“Oh, good morning, honey,” her voice responds. “Sure, there’s time. Your eggs won’t be ready for a couple of minutes. How do you feel this morning?”

“Not too bad. Could you fix me some orange juice along with the eggs?”

“Sure. How many pieces of toast?”

“Same as always.”

He removes his shirt and begins to lather his face. Why am I shaving now? he wonders. I’ll have to again before tonight. Not wanting to shave now but getting out the razor from the cabinet. Having to kill some time somehow. I know she’s going to ask about last night. When did you get in? she’ll ask, in her always-pleasant voice. Oh, not late. Not late. I wonder if she saw the shoe? He feels like a fool: a grown man hiding his shoe so his wife might not see it. If she wanted to see it she would have by now, he tells himself. There’s nothing I can do now. There’s nothing more I can do.

He feels the heavy razor pull at his whiskers: not cutting the hair, but pulling it out. Pulling at the hair on his chin. Along the rough lines of his throat. He feels the pain. Fuck. I better get some more blades too. There was nothing wrong with it yesterday. She probably used it on her legs. Why does she even bother?

“When did you get in last night?” she calls from the kitchen.

Sly tone, always-pleasant voice. Out drinking again. Out lost in a blur on some darkened side-street. While she bakes a lonesome pie. All-alone last night. Probably knitting little booties.

“Not late,” he answers from the bathroom. “A bit after midnight, I guess. Guess who I ran into down at Whitey’s? Young Joe Boardman. He’s doing some contracting inside the plant. Putting up some new boilers on 780. He said it would take them about four months.”

“I hope you invited him over for dinner.”

“I didn’t think of it. I’ll ask him the next time I see him. I should see him some time today I suppose.”

He wipes his face on the light-pink towel. Damn poor shave. Now I’ll have to shave tonight. Have to remember to get those blades. And what else? Something for the shoe, some polish or something—and something else. I can’t remember. Hell. Looking in the mirror, combing his hair with his left-hand. It’s beginning to thin. Hell, I’ll think of it some time. He puts on the shirt again, spraying his armpits with Right Guard through the open front. He buttons it quickly.

“Are the eggs ready yet?” he calls to the kitchen. “I’ll get the paper.”

“I already got it. Come in and eat. Do you want some milk to drink?”

“No. The orange juice will be enough.”

In the kitchen, the sun is bright through the opened curtains. Wide-open curtains. Like spotlights, the windows. He approaches to kiss her. Her mouth open wide. Soft and wet. Too early in the morning.

“Could you close the curtains a bit?” he asks, pulling away from her. “And how are you feeling today.”

He seats himself before the breakfast table: the two eggs, the juice, and the toast.

“Oh, pretty good,” she replies. She moves awkwardly to close the curtains. She closes-off the light, her butt now big to his face, the calves of her legs still tight and slender.

“Oh, the paper’s on the drainboard. Let me get it for you.” Moving awkwardly for the paper now. Brisk movement, little progress. Her loose dress whipping quickly in her step. Blue with tiny white designs. What are the designs anyway? They’re almost circles. Thanks, honey. He smiles. Feeling guilty as she sits beside him. Thankful it will soon be over. Some of it will soon be over. There is something to be thankful for.

He turns quickly to the obituaries. The most interesting section of the paper. It makes one feel important somehow: to live! But there aren’t any today. Today, there are none. There are none—can that be true. No, here’s one, tucked-in beside the crossword. Ted Robert Standeen, 728 Haven Drive, Rawlins. I heard about it yesterday. At work. Worked on the UP as an engineer, I think. Yeah, that’s what Grauberger said. I think he said he knew him. A wife and two kids left behind. Immediate survivors. Survivors to a heart attack. Those corpuscles acting-up again. Wearing out. Eventually. They’ll get us all some day. It’s a shame about the two kids though.

The eggs are alright: the whites a bit raw as they slide down his throat. Just the way he likes them. Strawberry jam on toast.

“Did you hear about Standeen?” he asks his wife.

A crust of toast rests on her lower-lip: tipping. She tries to catch it with her hand. It falls to the table, then to the floor. It falls beneath the table. Forget it. It won’t hurt anything. She bends down massively to find the little treasure. Searching with her hand, with her whole body: she comes up with it. Blowing off the dirt, she eats the little crust.

“I heard something about it on the radio last night. Did you know him?”

“I’d seen him around. He worked on the UP, I think. Lived up on Haven Street.”

Forking the remainder of the eggs, he shovels it into his mouth. Chewed. Swallowed.

“I think he was an engineer on the UP,” he continues. “It’s too bad about the two kids.”

“Yeah. His wife too.”

“Yeah, his wife too.”

The last piece of toast. Inevitable destruction. Boney teeth crushing the fibers. Strawberry to his taste with each succeeding chew. Seeping out of the bread itself. It soaks in when left to sit. Swallowing again. Here’s something else. Some kind of poem.

IN MEMORIUM

In loving memory of David Sandoval

Who passed away two years ago

Today.

We never though when we spoke that morning

The sorrow that that day would bring;

The blow was sudden, the shock severe,

To part with one we loved so dear.

God, give us strength to bear it,

And courage to fight the blow;

But what it meant to lose him,

No one will ever know.

SADLY MISSED BY WIFE AND CHILDREN.

Another budding poet. Another one-of-many. Be thankful that his father died. Gave him something to write about. Make him famous some day. Nothing like death-in-verse to display one’s artistry. But not much money in poetry. Not while you’re alive, at least. Famous after death one-and-all. Find something to tide-you-over. Use your hands. Build character. A bit of a bankroll. Isn’t that right. Hell, drop out of college if that’s what you want. Marry Wendy: she’s a snug little piece. Listen to your old-man. Hell, I can get you on at the plant. Start you off at five-twenty-five. That’s good money for around here. You can’t beat it for a starting wage. And it’s time you settled down anyway. I was eighteen when I went to work. You’re twenty-one already. It’s getting late, you know. Christ, it’s getting late. Later than you think, always, some say. Just scan the print: Four More Mail Bombs Lack of Funds Hurt Your Birthday Here We GROW Again Late Summer Wedding Gathers For Reunion Margaret Answers Inner Chamber Arab Attacks.

“What’s that?” Oh, late. Yeah. Honey, could you grab my boots on the back-porch?

“Honey, could you grab my boots? They’re on the porch.” I’ll have to get stepping. Lace these bastards up. All the string. When will they make them with buckles? Could snap them to and be gone.

“Wasn’t there something you wanted me to pick up after work?” He rises from the chair. Where’s my lunch? What is it: bologna? Baloney. Balogne? Isn’t that in the mountains somewhere? By the Po River, could it be? Bolo? Nah. Used only to cut the bread. Sandwiches? It has to be.

“No. Carol and I are going to town this afternoon. I can get it all then. Got everything?”

“Could you pick me up some razorblades while you’re at it?” Going toward the door. But not the polish. I’ll get that myself—and something else. I’ll think of it later. Eight-minutes walk to the plant. Short route. Through the alleys. I timed it myself.

“Good-bye, honey,” he says. Another kiss. Short. “The breakfast was good.”

He closes the front-door behind him.

Thick maple door sucking to a close. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Extinguishing the candle-flame. No more oxygen. Someone’s dying in there. Enormous sarcophagus built by Egyptian disciples. The easiest way: suffocation. Roll a stone into the gaping entrance. Keep it closed to the many sight-seers and long-robed lecherers. Gospel-hungry, they claim. Flesh-hungry they are Carrion-eaters. Many carrion-eaters. Everywhere. Keep them all away from here. For she belongs to me.

Down the steps. Skipping down the steps, he begins his journey. Eight minutes to the plant. Not-so-long walk. Know it by heart—that is, by memory. There is a difference there. A subtle difference. Yes, a beautiful summer morning. Nothing quite like it. Birds in the branches in the trees in the ground beside the dark green grass. Chirping above his head. Answering each other in high-pitched pandemonium. Multi-lingual they are. But much too trusting. Have them eating out of my hand in only a matter of minutes. Very trusting. Pecking at the blistered crumbs in my hand. Blistered-beaks pecking at the salty crumbs. Chattering their reward. Now flown-away somewhere. Gone.

I wish she wouldn’t have eaten that crumb from the floor. It made me feel guilty. It made me feel sad.

There’s no wind at all. Never any wind this early in the morning. Quiet world. Peaceful. Leaving it all for something other. Every step takes me further from it. Further-away without delay; with every step I pass from this heaven. Further from her with every step. Seems I’m leaving her home always any more. So much in love at first. So long ago. Weren’t we so much in love? Once? So much is gone. I shouldn’t even think about it. Not now. Such a very beautiful woman. Always has been. Mine. But what lies ahead? The future? What lies ahead? Many-a-man who’d like to be in my shoes. Who’d love to be in her pants. Many-a-man who would, says he. Many-a-man who some day may be. Some man. Some day. Maybe. If I don’t shape-up. Shape-up? What is the derivation of that word? Can see her now with body swollen-big by the little beggar. Stole her body. Stole her health. Stole her appetite. The best of me, she says. My better side. My better half. I wondered where it had gone: the good side of myself. She wants to name him Randall, for her father. It won’t be long now. Give it another try. Try to make it good again. Try to make a change. Maybe.

Along Eighth Street to the turn. Across the front-lawn of the house on the corner. The Spicers’ front-yard. Friends of ours. Friends mostly of my childhood. He keeps the lawn trimmed nicely however. I suppose I should do something with ours. It’s really a sight. More weeds than you can shake an educated spade at. And dandelions. I hear you can make some drug from dandelions. Could harvest the lawn and move to the French Riviera. Retire. Hire some Mexicans to keep-up the crop. Import cheap-labor. Wet-backs from the border smuggled-in at night. Keep them in the old garage. Live like rats while I become a king. Keep them down and they know respect. Have to ok it with the sanitation department: but no worries. Know Clements. Grease on the palm means grease on the job. No, nothing to worry about. Machetes slice the yellow-crowned gem at about mid-stem. Then catch the flow. Sweet-smelling pus to the lips or nose. It’s the rage of the States. All must have it. To dust to spoon to match to needle to vein. From dust-to-dust, they say. There’s no other way. The Wall Street Journal bellows: BOOOOM! New Issue: buy quickly. Stock controlled by D.G. Newman. Cigar-in-left, martini-in-right. Swank office. American virtue: it will hurt you with a demon’s precision. Lighted-telephones blink in silent madness. Yes, money’s rolling in. TELL US, MR. NEWMAN: birds warble beneath their shiny black visors. Many pens and pencils stuck in sagging shirt-pockets. With proverbial whiskey on their collective breath. The best of a generation. The best of a general nation of plebes. Yes, THEY ARE THE PRESS. The Press. Yes. Press-Pull. Pull-Press. Twist. Press. Pull. Twist. Squeeze. Stroke. Suck. His heavy-breasted secretary, Ruthie Merritt, smiling slightly, her legs open slightly, is showing linen.

He turns down Cleveland Street.

Quiet morning still. Very quiet morning. No goddamn dogs yet, thank God. Snapping at my heels with growl and slobber. Growling slobber and slobbering howl. The dogs of hell, let loose on the world. Feeling hair on-end and bristles on my neck. Giving several shudders of fear. Defenseless. I wonder where they are today? Hidden in the shade? Awaiting some sign to strike: the Dogs of Time? I’m away. Lucky-day today. My number must be seven. Escaping unharmed. Unscathed. Today. I wonder who I’m relieving today? It must be Baxter again. Bastard. He always bitches when I’m late—but never to my face. Always creeping about. Finding someone to hear him. Scowling and bitter. Angry. Disillusioned man, with his wife fucking everything in sight. Humiliated creature. What can he do? Surgery coming up on her ovaries. She wants to get all she can before that. She’s taking-on anyone. It must be hell on him. I’ll get there soon enough. I hope something like that never happens to me. There’s still plenty of time.

All the way down Cleveland, then bending onto Fifth. Can see the oil-tanks from here. Natural-gas from the pipeline to 561. What do they keep in 562. Kerosine base? I don’t know. I’ll have to check the slop Tank some time today. They started pumping early last night. It should be fairly full by now.

His feet clackkk like irons on the early morning pavement. Not much stirring anywhere. A silent haze hanging like gauze in the air. You can almost touch it: the silence. The quiet. Like a huge fog it rolls in and settles on the town. All-encompassing. Communications break-down. All citizens are warned to remain quiet. Appeasement. Mollify the shimmering beast. KEEP OFF THE STREETS! Children peeping through basement windows are snatched-away by their mothers. Fathers fly by in a soundless frenzy. Toward the protection of their homes. Never heard-from again. Belching gas at the lips of the smoke-stacks expires. Refinery quietly gives up the ghost. Eternal silence throughout this company town. Front-page news all around the world. BEWARE! BEWARE!

He turns off Fifth Street and takes the alley behind the city garage. Along the refinery fence. Beginning the string of alleys. This is where I make my time. Walking in the thick tufts of weeds. Lifting his boots, his knees high. I used to worry about snakes in here. In the grass. In the summer. When I was a kid. I could feel them bite into the lower-calf. And more than once. Spht. Spht, spht. Scissors jabbed into the unprotected flesh. Then opened with a heave of the mightiest force. Ripping huge bloody gaps in the lower leg proper: tearing and severing both arteries and muscles. I used to worry about rattlesnakes here. But nothing ever happened. Nothing ever happened.

He steps out of the weeds along a path of scattered gravel. Noisily, the pebbles are squashed beneath the force of his man’s-weight.

Past Hendersons’.

Past Chaffens’.

Past Burkes’.

Past Petrosaks’. The back-door is thrown open and the radio is blaring. So much junk in the back-yard. PETROSAK’S JUNK YARD: Specialty, Sheet Metal. A crippled jeep with the hood propped up. Gaping toward the cloudless blue. Rather expensive dental work. Just a bridge, sir. It shouldn’t be too much. Says he’s getting it ready for hunting season. He’s been getting it ready for years. The neighbors, of course, are outraged. It makes them all look cheap. Untidy. Unprincipled. He could at least clean it up for the sake of the community. Couldn’t he? Is that too much to ask? If you are a member of a certain community, then aren’t you responsible to that certain community for things such as cosmetics and law and opprobrium? Doesn’t he have responsibilities to his neighbors? Certain responsibilities? Not as long as it’s his own lawn, your honor. The Rights of Personal Property and All. Your Honor. Afterall, it is the Law. A man’s home is his castle. That’s the principle of our constitution. So there’s nothing they can do about it. The law starts at the end of your fist and continues at the beginning of my nose. Complain and obey is about all they can do. I suppose I should do something about our lawn. Something constructive. Maybe I will tomorrow.

Past Petrosaks’.

Down Third Street, he turns into the alley behind the old grocery store. Sel-Rite Groceries. Rasmusson’s. He’s got his hands in everything. This store. The furniture store. Plus parts in the bar, the bowling alley, and the golf-course. A true American success-story. City Councilman for four terms. Butcher Bob Rasmussen with blood on his hands. He knows it. He can see it. He’s proud of it. The only shop in town. His little finger’s on the scale. Everyone sees it. Everyone knows it. But it’s only the little finger. Everyone is thankful. Afterall, it could be worse. It could be his thumb. Dogs howl like beggars at the back door of Butcher Bob’s beanery. Packs of wild dogs. So this is where they are this morning. Fighting each other for the tiniest of scraps. Butcher Bob looks on, smiling slyly. Some way in this to make money, he’s sure. There must be. Civilize the cock-fight. Set up bleachers and sell cold refreshments. People will pay to see it: the sacrifice of blood. People from everywhere to see it. There’s nothing else to do here. You make it, you spend it, for tomorrow, you die. Robert.

The dogs sniff listlessly as he passes by. Not moving: they squat in the dirt patiently awaiting their tithe.

He moves away from the alley and past the Truck Rack. The gates are still closed. They open at eight. There was a big fire here some several years back. A double-alarm fire. The whole town in danger. The valves are still open: petrol’s stoking the blaze. People five-rows-deep are lining the fence: watching. DANGER! Move back! The whole place may blow! People scattering. Screaming. Rampant confusion. The Loader’s Helper, Art Jaramillo, on his face amid the flames. On his stomach as his wrench-teeth grasp the slipping valve. Closing. Slippppping. Slipping again. Heat everywhere rising. Gasoline still gushing into the pit. Closing. Closing. Finally closed tight with the twisting slipping wrench. His hands baked and blistered through the tattered steaming gloves. He moves to the second valve. Still very active. Spitting fuel to the already billowing blaze. On his stomach, his head pressed flat against the concrete, he shuts the final opening.

Chemicals in to smother the fire. A blanket of foam now cloaking the Rack, extinguishing the final flame.

The Plant Manager enters now with the rest. Bedford. White hard-hat with thick rubber gloves. White shirt with dark attractive tie. Giving orders. Asking: DID YOU SAVE THE TICKETS? YOU SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT TO SAVE THE TICKETS. CAN YOU REMEMBER WHO CAME IN TONIGHT? CAN YOU REMEMBER WHAT THEY OWE US? Running to the charred waiting-station in search of the sales slips. But nothing. All destroyed that night. No proof-of-purchase. Free gas from Sinclair that night. CAN YOU REMEMBER HOW MUCH THEY OWE US?

At least, that’s the way it’s been told. I don’t know whether to believe it or not. I don’t suppose I should. There’s really no reason to believe it.

From the Truck Rack, down a long stretch of sidewalk, is the Clock-House. Cars are parked in front, awaiting some passenger. Men are coming and going. Lunch-boxes in hands are swinging recklessly at the hip. Some are full; others only partly so. Daniel Newman’s is full. He feels the dead-weight in his hand.

He enters the small building. Slightly dejected. Talk is flying all about him, uncontrolled, giddy. Noise. Rustling movement. Exchange greetings. Smile anyway. Make your way to the Time-Clock. The gears roll noisily under the heavy gray shell. Chuk. Chuk. Chuk. Seven-fifty-eight becomes seven-fifty-nine. There is noise all around. Get your card out. DANIEL G. NEWMAN #501. Have to stand in line. Some are waiting to punch-out. Others push toward the heart of the plant. Those leaving are talking loudly, laughing. Slide it into the slot. Better get moving.

Pressed into the clock, the teeth bite his card.

EVERYTHING IS OFFICIAL.

II.

Oh, oh.

Dropped.

The large cold earth.

In time.

Spins from a blankness that folds itself about us like a perennial shield.

Unfolds

Itself above our heads like a circumcision tool.

Nativity is as nativity does....

Panic-stricken is the mother with bare-back laid bare by the fumbling but confident physicians and associates on the cold-marble-slab which is cold for the sake of sterility (a bit ironic) and a bit painful to the mother's nakedness but not nearly as painful as the throbbing and the blooming in her loins which causes her to cry out -- ahh!" -- the groans escape her gaping lips as does her timid bearing. My gift. My sacrifice.

Before her consciousness fades.

Into a smile.

A dagger in his waistband

His face wrapped in swaddling

he carries the whelping piglet

through the huge marble doors

down the aisle to the altar

where he places his offering silently.

Manic victim is the rollicking, close-lidded specimen.

Darkness-only through the sealed flaps. Can't remember a thing. Not a beam of a flash or a flicker or a spark. Or the age-swollen flat-hand that jarred with a clak that which before was untouched never to be so again....

But the light being lit a bit later....

But the litter left by the light-hearted limey

lived, or came to live, the last that is,

the single survivor of the storm, smiling

as he was found frolicking in the featherbed

by the luckless but lovable landlady

who took him to her chest

pressing his pliability

against her ample breast,

which is where he smothered silently,

a very short life.

But the little-light being lit a bit later.

But later, the brittle light being finally lit.

But bright, the brittle sight being finely fit for his little little eeyees....

The pale vents cracked-open like small blinds: no-longer-blind is the swollen-round-ball of newly-batched-flesh....

His lids stretch open like thick slats of yeast....

OPEN.

Light enters the wondering portals as does chaos and confusion....

HE LIVES.

pressed against her breast

new-made acquaintance of mother and child.

nurture

mature

manure on the barely-green-grass on the freshly-filled grave-ground. gives it some life, don't you know. that's what my mother told me. gives it some life. makes everything grow.

"oh, baby, you've still got some on your shoe. come on back here and clean it off. don't get any on the crapet. go out on the back porch. scrape it all off. you don't want your father to see dog doo on the carpet, do you?"

gives it some life, don't you know. the grass. like growing green glass. a shimmering mass of glowing green glass

LIE DOWN ON IT.

scraping it off with a stick, i returned inside

smile at me mother. make your smile tell me i've done what was right

she labors over my father's dinner. steam from the oven from the smoldering meat-loaf. all from the hands of God. her hair is tied behind her head in a bun. she is sweating heavily on the forehead. she wipes it on her forearm, looking down at me with squinting eyes

"did you get it all off? let me see"

and she lifts and twists it toward her face -- to see where it once was (but was now outdoors on a stick)

"good man," she says, rubbing her hand through the brilliantine web of my hair. "now, go was your hand and get ready for dinner."

I can still feel where her hands once had been. close to my head. her hands soft and warm

AHH!

YOUTH!

coming back to me -- i can't escape it.

nor can i remember it.

nor can i remember its being anything-more than a continuous haze of days and exaggerated experience that is glorious in its uncertainty

mythological beast that it is.

TRY TO REMEMBER IT.

ASK SOMEONE ELSE

WHAT IT WAS LIKE.

(you could certainly ask your mother about your life. she'll tell you how good it has been)

HAIL MOTHER FULL OF GRACE

YOUR WORD IS WITH ME

big-boned she is, moving like a turtle on a dime. very fleshy with big breasts and floating bands of flab beneath her sleeveless gown, her white underarms show where the stubble is glistening from perspiration. but she is not unattractive, my mom. black hair beginning to age falling near her shoulders. prominent nose and dark sad eyes. ironic eyes and smile, which proclaim:

"somehow, i was cheated. somehow, i deserve better than this."

no one hearing.

somehow.

i was cheated.

she works about the house, keeping herself busy, waiting for my father to return from work

she might sing softly:

"and i might end up

by being in debt

or leaving myself in sorrow..."

and she might not.

she dusts lightly the coffee-table's glass.

her dress is pulled-up in back, her white shabby girdle poking its latex head out into the light. i cannot look at this. i turn-away, feeling hatred mixed with guilt

why should i feel this way?

ASK SOMEONE ELSE

THEY WILL TELL YOU

HOW GOOD YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN.

why shouldn't i feel this way? i wonder.

"sometimes your are such a panic," she says to me, showing me the whites of her teeth as she smiles. "but you really are a good boy. and i love your so much"

resting red-wet-lips against my forehead. making a sucking sound. she kisses me. i can feel the heat rise from her lips and i see the small hairs stand on-end on the backs of her forearms. heat standing on-end as she hold me in her arms.

"your father would do better to stay at home some times, to be with his little jewel."

she smiles at me lovingly.

"instead he spends his time looking for trouble. and what do you think of that father of yours? how often do you even get to see him...?"

AND WHAT DO I THINK OF THAT FATHER OF MINE

he came home after work, smiling blindly, kissing mother on the lips and shaking my hand

he said to me "and young man, what have you learned about the world today"

he laughed to himself (before i could answer) and raised his nose in the air to savor the smell -- the aroma of broiling beef

he said "ahh, a meal worthy of my family, earned by these very hands" -- and he held-out those very hand for inspection -- mother and i were impressed

he disappeared into the bathroom, flushing the toilet and running the water before he again appeared

he took-up the paper

he opened a beer

he blew his nose, taking care to lean away from the table

he served up his plate

Bless us oh Lord

For these our gifts

Which we are about to receive

From they bounty

Through Christ

Our Lord

Amen.

he chewed noiselessly the meat-loaf, baked potato and beans

he drank noiselessly the beer

he answered in-between-bites: "no, just ordinary, honey" -- "no, i hadn't heard that" -- "oh, really" -- "no kidding" -- "well, some of the guys have planned a little get-together tonight" -- "you know, bowling, maybe some cards" -- "you don't mind, do you" -- DO YOU

he reminded us proudly that tomorrow was payday -- he wiped his mouth on the napkin with a flickering grin

he reminded me to clean-up my plate if i expected to grow up to be as big as he was

he told mother that she had cooked a good meal

he left the room asking mother to call him at eight

he took his nap

he awoke at eight-o-clock

he washed at eight-o--five

he left the house in clean clothes, kissing mother on the lips and shaking my hand

AND WHAT DO I THINK OF THAT FATHER OF MINE

she sips cautiously from the steaming tea-cup

i lay back against the cushions of the sofa, resting my head on her upper-arm

and then she begins her story:

i left home when i was just eighteen, the summer after my graduation from high school. i was making almost four dollars a night at the time working at Hammerstein's Cafe. (i gave half of my check every two weeks to my mother for room and board though that was my idea and not hers.) but i just had to get away. i had the funny feeling that i really wasn't living but just killing time -- so i had to get away. so i quit my job and packed my two bags and caught the train for salt lake. the family was at the depot to see me off and everyone was crying but my father who was trying to wish me good luck and give me advice in-between my sobbing sisters and my mother. i'll never forget his look that day with his gray hat pushed up on the top of his head and with him smiling sadly in all that confusion. he was really a handsome man and a wonderful father to us all. oh, he wasn't crazy about working; and he did like his irish whiskey. but this was the depression afterall. one needs to remember that. and his look almost made me want to cry -- but i wouldn't have in front of all the others. i wanted to rush up to him and throw my arms around him and smell the tobacco that he always carried in the front pocket of his vest. i wanted to lock my arms around him and put my head against his chest and cry until i was tired enough to go home and go to bed and forget all that nonsense about leaving. but i couldn't do that. not after having made such a big deal about leaving to everyone. no, i was resolved to go through with it. so i took hold of my small bag (they had taken the other one to the baggage room) and i mounted the steps in to the car. i turned back to wave a final time to everyone (they were all standing together, with their arms around one another, clutching tightly as though they were afraid of losing someone else dear to them; and they were all holding handkerchiefs, crying into them and waving them). i felt that i couldn't move in to the car as i watched them. i became terrified, standing at the rail. it was as if i finally realized what i was doing, what i was giving up. and my father could see the fright in my face. he turned to my mother and told her to wait there; and then he came forward. the train was just about ready to leave and a colored porter said to my father as he passed "just about departing time, sir. the young lady better take her seat." my father smiled at the porter as he passed by us; but when he came up to me he said "there's still time to call it off if that's what you want." but i shook my head "no," so he said "alright then, go on it and find a seat. the train's ready to leave." and then, almost as a passing comment, he said "when you get out there, if you find it ain't what you thought it might be, don't feel ashamed about coming home again. whatever you decide will be alright. and if you run out of money or something, just send us a wire or a letter. we'll get some to you somehow." and all this time i was looking down into his handsome brown eyes, feeling that i must cry and get it over with. but when he had finished i found the strength to say "thanks, papa. i better go in now. tell everyone how much i love them." and he said "i sure will, baby. look out for yourself now; and don't worry. God will take care of you."

when i went to the passenger car i took a seat on the side opposite the depot. i couldn't bear the idea of them walking away together, getting into the car and driving home. i couldn't watch that from the window. so, instead, i watched the rust-colored cars of a freight train drift by on an adjoining track. i saw clearly the words UNION PACIFIC as they stuttered by; and the open, empty cars for coal that were headed out to hanna. as i watched the other train, i got to thinking that we were moving too -- finally -- or that maybe it was just us that was moving; and the other train, the freight train, was still waiting at the depot. i could almost feel us moving slowly down the tracks. and this made me feel a little better, thinking that we were finally on our way. but as the last car of the freight train passed out of sight -- and all i could see then was the monotonous sight of a section crew working and laughing over a length of track with picks and shovels -- then i became terribly depressed and lonely. i longed for something to happen -- the jarring of the train as it began, the screeching of steel-against-steel as the wheel bit the track and shoved off -- some kind of friction, something to set my mind on, something to occupy my thoughts and attention. i even welcomed conversation; but the car was only half-full and everyone seemed too bored or too tired or too lonely to begin one. i couldn't bear t look out the window, so i leaned my head back and closed my eyes, trying not to think about anything or anyone. of course, it was impossible; but it did help me to relax a bit and begin to start sorting out my thoughts. i told myself that i was over-reacting to the situation, that there would be many more positive results in what i was doing than there would be negative; and that it would certainly be beneficial in the long-run. and i convinced myself that i was right. this had to come sooner or later -- this breaking away from the family binds, breaking from the family sanctuary. it has to be painful, but it would prove to be rewarding and satisfying. it was the only way to accomplish anything with my life. i could feel the muscles of my body begin to relax; i felt rather content then, as though some enormous problem had been finally resolved and now i could finally begin to breathe easier again. i was still very much relieved when i heard the conductor ask someone to take his seat, mentioning cordially that the train was ready to depart and offering a hurried apology for the delay. shortly thereafter i could feel the train begin its creep up the line. now i was truly relieved, so relived in fact that i napped for nearly twenty minutes, before someone jostled me away as he took the seat beside me.

the man sitting beside me was a middle-aged man with a rotund face who had a runny nose. he was dressed in an olive green suit with a thick pea-green tie that had a dried spot that looked like gravy just below the knot. he apologized for having disturbed me; and i said that was quite alright. he hoped i didn't mind him sitting beside me; and i assured him that i didn't. he took a crumpled hanky from his back pocket and blew his nose, leaning in to the aisle so as not to offend me in any way. then he replaced the hanky and apologized again for what he called the 'disagreeable but necessary' exercise. it was the hay-fever, he explained, as he sniffed again and wiped the remains on the back of his hand. i offered my sympathy and asked him courteously if he had had it long.

'quite a bit too long, missy, i should think,' he said, but still very cordially. 'it hits me like a hammer about this time every year without fail. it's been with me some eight years now, i suspect. somewhere around eight years anyway. course, i don't mean to be complaining none. the Lord gives us all our crosses to bear. i wouldn't trade mine straight across for some of the others i've seen. still, it does get a bit annoying some times, though i don't mean to be sounding like i'm pitying myself or anything. you understand what i'm saying, don't you? i know you do'

and, of course i assured him that i did; and i was about to tell him that i'd read somewhere that some allergies appeared and then disappeared without warning, almost over night -- and that maybe he would lose his some day -- but he didn't let me get it out.

'now, i suppose i sound like some baby war spouting off about all my baby ills when we got them boys overseas suffering and sacrificing for you and me and everyone else in this here train and in this great country. don't misunderstand me. i offer up my gratitude and my thanks each and every day that my problems are only as small as they are -- a runny nose really ain't much -- and that we got them boys willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the rest of us. yeah, there certainly ain't no country like this in the whole world over anyway...'

then he took out his hanky and blew his nose again. the edges of his nose were raw from the contact with the rough cloth. i wanted to say something comforting but i couldn't think of anything to say. he looked really miserable sitting there with his nose red like a rash and his eyes watering onto his cheeks.

he told me that he was a traveling salesman for a clothing company somewhere back east -- and that his company controlled the sale to the midwest. he said that he had some samples in his bag if i would like to take a look. i said that i'd love to if it wouldn't put him out at all; and he said that that was a different matter. he had been looking at the same material now for weeks and would go on looking at it for quite a few more, so if i really wasn't interested in seeing them then he'd rather not get them out (if i didn't mind). so that was the end of that.

i also found out that he was married and that he had tow children who lived with their mother in kansas city.

'i rarely get to see them now,' he told me. 'but i ain't complaining none. i hope your realize that. i'm paid well for my labors. if there wasn't no one to pay the bills, then where would those kids be anyway? He is good to them who are good to others. and He takes care of them that take care of themselves. Those kids of mine know where the money comes from. and they love me too. you may not believe it, but they do. they always have and they always will. no matter what their mother might try to tell them. they'll always know better -- they'll always know the truth about me. they're real smart kids -- hell, they'd have to be, being mine."

he laughed sadly at this and then fell into a silence.

a little while later, without saying another word, he picked up his ample bag and moved into another car. he looked so lonely as he walked away that just seeing him made me feel lonely too. it made me want to cry. i never saw him again; but i thought about him almost the entire trip. i remembered his runny nose and the spot on his tie and the far-away look in his eyes as he spoke about his family. his name was arnold alverson

(she pauses as she sips her steaming tea)

AND WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO ARNOLD ALVERSON

ASK YOU MOTHER

about his olive-green suit

and the samples in his bag

and his downcast head that bobbed

tearfully

as he left.

as he was gone.

i want a hero, an uncommon want

when every year and month sends forth a new one

'til, after cloying the gazettes with cant,

the age discovers he is not a true one;

of such as these i should not care to vaunt

i'll therefore take this alverson --

we all have seen him in the pantomime

sent to the devil ere his time....

and then

yes

and then

oh, i wish i had a hero

i could dream on.

THEY say you can find one

in every crook and nanny.

no-so, says she, in her sing-song tone

every nook, every cranny, is a flat as a fanny

and as empty and as lifeless as stone.

she places the tea-cup silently on the table-top; she turns back to me with intent eyes...

was she bleeding over me her own moldering corpse?

was she burying broken bones

like a dog to dig them up

for some future satisfaction?

MEMORIES. MEMORIES. MEMORIES.

what are lonely-life's lonely enemies?

she begins again:

i listen carelessly, ignoring her sporadically....

arrived late that afternoon...up seventeenth street....new haven boarding house....paunchy bald-headed clerk....badly-yellowed teeth....wrinkled and dirty....two dollars a day....quick-lipped fury....sunken dark eyes....almost unbearable....salt lake city....

the wind blows against the house in a gentle hummmm.

tree-branches are swishing

little children are wishing

that the dark would be day

once again.

the drapes are drawn. i can still feel the damp-blackness pressing against me. i feel protected from it all. the bulb is glowing beside my mother's warm skin....

but turn it off...?

all is lost.

my father once hit me for leaving the bed-lamp on all night. a flat-hand in a clakk along the base of my ear. for my quick answer. saying: 'he'll have to learn. that's all there is to it.' telling him: 'something was there.' she said: 'nothing's the matter, dear. nothing's the matter.' nothing but the lump on the side of my head that i blamed on her for letting him do it

'you must try to understand your father. you must try to forgive him,' she pleaded with all.

BUT THERE WAS SOMETHING THERE.

something was there when he left the door ajar. gentle secrets to his hearing in that dark house of night. through the dryness of the wall. sounds converging into one. it was a mystery to him. sounds converge into one

into one.

it must have happened some-time that way.

it is a mystery to him.

hating her for letting him do it.

'you must try to forgive him,' she pleaded with me.

'here. friends again?' she asked, giving me a chocolate.

rustling against me: i could smell her woman's softness. the light burning steadily as her voice droned on..........

ah, the past is to me some misplaced souvenir.

i remember well hiding it well from all.

i think i remember it.

hide it well so no-one can take it.

may steal it from you.

protection.

armor.

what they know is yours no longer.

hide it from them

in a leak-proof barrel. in a padlocked trunk. in the blackened pages of your diary. in the teeming corridors of imagination. in the toe of your christmas stocking. beneath the candy as it hangs swollen from the door. reach in for it. candy. more candy. and still more. but the candy is just as good. keep it hidden until the next year

but this is that; and that is gone for ever.

remembering where i put it is too much a task.

but the candy is always sweet to my senses.

and i still want a hero as she still burrows on.

not alverson -- not at all heroic.

arnold alverson, love in blossom, working for a small firm.

arnold alverson, loving much, and being loved-much in return.

arnold alverson, father.

arnold alverson, preparing to pay many debts.

arnold alverson, growing older, the years, the opportunities, the pleasures slipping by.

arnold alverson, father.

arnold alverson, settled-down in a small house. the kids are getting older. the love is little more than tradition now. habit. how that word revolts him! habit! struggling to make-ends-meet. he feels to burn those ends with acid-laughter. not at all heroic, he realizes. he longs for the fairy-land-of-youth. unkept-promise of beauty and health. ahh, just one more person crying....

but nothing is enough he should try to believe. bitter. become more-bitter. lethal tongues extinguish all that once seemed to be. love and hate being brother and sister: the ability to hate, the ability to sate; the ability to sate, the ability to skate. love's turning blade; and love's turning kitchen. you can't have one without the o-o-other....

he cannot believe that this is all there is. he feels crushed by the sand around his shoulders. time weighing-in: the undeniable opinion. time weighing-in: the surly complication. he reaches. extending his arms high above. for what...?

arnold alverson, seated beside some young lady, riding westward on a train. riding truly. truly westward. truly gone. on a train. with his olive-green-suit and the samples in his bag; and his downcast head that bobs tearfully. as he leaves. as he is gone.

an american night-dream spews from her lips: dry cookie-dust in a twister

nothing is enough

ahh, a lonely suction envelops me. i can't elude it. i won't. to be like the rest, like everyone else, is such a pitiful reward...

little lost-boy

don't struggle with the odds.

disregard them.

little-boy lost.

somewhere they are out there.

some day you might want to be a part of them.

some day.

how could one be sure?

about such a thing?

--ahh,

boyhood is such a treasure once it has been buried.

a thousand worlds for the one i once knew

for the one i once buried.

her voice poured like warm-liquid over my ears, neck and arms. into the porch of my ears. warm, wine-dark sea, sea-dark wine, pouring over me, a memory of penelope and her pining praetornalia...

her words were distant -- her presence soothing.

i pushed myself against soft lower-body; lying against her, i pushed into her surrounding embrace.

why could it not remain thus for ever?

when the seeds were ever buried?

and the memories of the seeds?

why could it not remain thus for ever?

my mother was born in 1923 in a small town in southern wyoming. when she was eighteen, she went to work for an insurance company in salt lake city, utah. a year later she transferred to seattle, washington. six months later she transferred to juneau, alaska. following world war ii she returned to southern wyoming to work for an oil company and to save money to travel to australia. that was where she met my father....

for so many years, so little to show.

that, too, was my biggest worry....

is, though i should never know it now.

why should i know it now?

now that i have become normal somehow.

why?

....as i travel on, toward the age-of-reason somehow.

a bit unreasonable, all the time that's wasted.

isn't it wasted?

if it is spent, if it is lost: isn't it wasted?

she continues to thumb through the pages of her memory,

her voice cracking freshly the ever-growing evening.

pressed against her breast

easily-made acquaintance of mother and child.

soft and full against the side of his head.

his eyes begin to wobble shut/

straining to remain open, nevertheless/

again they slam shut/

he fights-back-sleep/

as though he feels he may miss something/

he finally relinquishes.

She cradles the child in her arms and sways to the arc of the tunes she remembers. Loving the child almost to abstraction. Leaning-over; and kissing his forehead. She is terribly moved by his frailty and innocence. Tears rise in her eyes; but she forces them back. It is late she knows; but she doesn't move. Only to hold him like this; and to never have to move. Never to let this moment disappear.................................. AND THAT WAS WHERE I MET YOUR FATHER.

III.

And, as always, on time, marking the exact beginning of this Friday-August-15-working-day, steam spewing from the long-piped-horn in a long, extremely long blast of authority and a second-guessing, never-challenged wisdom from the roof of the Boiler House that was activated in the Power House by operator Dennis Herschel who, with hands poised tensely on the ragged cord, had watched the hands of the Swiss precisely-made-and-operating-wall-clock lean twitch and fall upon the eight a.m. limit-hour-beginning of this other-working-day, and who had pulled the cord earthward with a concentrated stress and continuousness until the steam escape the lidded-horn in a belching deafening notification to all-working-men (those who either were unaware of the time-element, or, for some reason, were trying to disregard it) that the time of payment for services rendered had immediately begun; and, therefore, the time for leisurely alibiing, goldbricking, family problems, pettiness or petty diatribes against the management, reading smoking or the playing of games, cards included, horse-play in all its forms, sleeping or resting of one's eyes, carelessness in all areas, disrespect or unmannerly conduct toward all visitors, covert displays or overt intimations of drunkenness or of questionable sobriety, lightness in the contemplation of one's assigned duties, lightness of purpose in the performance of one's assigned duties, uncertainty of emotional and/or physical capacity in regard to one's ability to perform with the utmost efficiency not only one's assigned duties but all other tasks as well which might emerge during the course of one's working hours; seditious thought deed or speech concerning either the parent or subsidiary Company (which clothes, houses and feeds, and occupies further the time thoughts deeds and speech of men who would otherwise be lost and helpless in a world so full of wrath and greed, and which asks only that those same men give merely eight-for-eight, eight-hours-work for eight-hours-pay, with a generally good attitude and disposition); shirt-sleeves which expose any portion of the arm, and hard-hats, resting properly (flush) at all times on the crown of one's head -- the time for all this, the time when all this behavior had been permitted, had ended immediately with the plaintive baying of Dennis Herschel's wailing white-smoke whistle....

All throughout the yard pandemonium is evident: wholesale movement of going-hurriedly-in-all-directions-men (like pagans beneath their tousled calf-of-gold in the form of steam from a horn in a roof that had brought them wealth security and sometimes contentment, and was really, they knew, the god that they worshipped, and was really, they knew, the employer they obeyed, and not the manager or foreman who took only their working and not-working; but the blowing of that whistle, the escaping of that steam, again-and-again, time-after-time, year-after-year, took their from-really-living (in which some still believed) to-simply-getting-older-eight-hours-every-day with an impersonal toot which had bought them cheap and sold them dear though they tried not to consider it that way -- they tried not to recognize it -- they tried not to admit it as on-again they went again today, charging through the yard, pandemonium in their shoes, projects and thoughts of something in their hearts, their hearts all burdened, blown shut by the wind, shutting down, shutting down, the wind a common enemy of the living, as everyone understood)....

So lllllllooooooonnnnnnnggggggg and slow to them drags-on nearly-for-ever-dying-day, now eight-oh-three, as they look at their watches for the first of many times, not to see what time it is, for that does not matter now, but to see how slowly it drags-on and with their own knowing it. Many-men fashioned on freedom, so precious to them when they were young, so precious to them they've said, though finding themselves forgetting it, regretting it, regretting saying it and being forced into betraying it -- forced into it by the must-be-something-better-than-this nonproposal of a future without set-goals and limits and regulations and traditions: buying sometime-bondage as the a price of survival: buying something...at least....but perhaps....nothing more. A house; a car; a wife in a lovely frock, her legs showing. Children. First the one boy; and then the others....

Adam's sin. Eve's temptation.

Adam's sin. And Eve's temptation.

Many-men fashioned on freedom scurrying on heels with orders locked in breast-pockets and memories spending time here again. That's the way it is done her, afterall. That's the way the time goes on. Living for weekends. And then living for retirement.

So lonnnnnnng is this day-Friday-workday over at four for Daniel Newman as he begins by removing his watch and placing it is his front-shirt-pocket, left-breast, to keep himself from regarding it for-ever during the length, the span, of these eight-hours which makes it seem, the watch, and the time passing, much slower by many times as you watch the relay-race of watched watch-hands turning 'round the track four-hundred-eighty times (the big-hand, that is) or eight times (too-many-times) (the small fat hand) which Daniel Newman knows better than to do -- taking his work-gloves stained by the sog of grease sometimes boiling from pumps or lines and stuffing them fingers-down into the back-left-rear-pocket of his overalls where he also pockets his ten-inch CRAMER wrench which is standard-equipment for all unit operators along with an EVEREADY safety flashlight (which would presently be inserted into his right-rear-over-all-pocket if he happened to be working the night-shift which he obviously is not so it remains today untouched on the top-shelf of locker number seventeen) -- he then moves to the tight-suspension-safety-helmet which he unhooks carefully from the inner-locker-wall (the lining having somehow wrapped itself around the always-protruding-and-naked-clothes-hook on the left, looking-in, of the inner-locker-wall) and presses flush over his -brown-haired head-top as the regulations insist (on the crown) which signals he is ready to begin this other-working-day, like a king in his dreams, wearing the crown of his nightmares....

He leaves the unit washroom, moving to the hot-pump-room where heated-moisture envelops all with suckkkkkkkking, suffocating constancy, where sucking moisture-heat envelops Newman as he enters trance-like through the widely-opened-vault: SSSUUUCCCKKK. SSSSUUUUCCCCKKKK. Tin to the void. Tin to the coy horror. Tim Tin Milieu -- Tin Tin the Shrew. Rin Tin Tin, the world is lusty. Rin Tin Tin and his compatriot, Rusty.

A rusty world, as teaming bliss. Ignorance is this. Mining crude; and crudely miming....

Sluggish Newman, hot with drinking-blues and ill-begotten-sleep, moves with little conscious effort toward the unit-grill, which is a slab of metal lying on a heating steam-pipe, a steaming heat-pipe, where he begins to prepare the unit's daily pot of coffee. HE DREAMS.

Dull-day with stench and drive of churning pistons greasy-smacking as they slide in-out, rods which slide in-out, of pumps as he watches, unimpressed -- dull-day as COLD GAS OIL gushes through galvanized tubing unheard but known in the clakkking din of years how many Newman seems to forget though not forgetting when somehow remembering the almost-four-years since he had entered the steel-slatted main-gate with the Dino green and white and huge and emblematic of the Company then and he had been handed his first hard-hat (the first of three -- he lost one, and had a second set on fire as a prank) by that ever-smiling foreman over-six-foot-four-but-thin Duke Foster and then given the Company's physical-examination by the young physician from Rawlins (Thomas Mint) smelling of camphor in-from-town-on-Wednesdays to give the new-young-men-their-going-over while pretty-though-not-young-nurse Marie Romero watched and smiled coyly as his shorts fell and he coughed in spasms as Marie watched, her eye a match flaming up, and he stiffened a bit with embarrassment and still-a-young-boy's-fear, never-forgetting that moment, never-forgetting feeling so-young and carnally-spastic before her experienced lover's-eyes but mother's-body, nearly-tearful with indignation and a stiffening guilt, and the pain of loss or at least the pain of humiliating uncertainty which gripped him then fiercely in a kind of clinch because he was doing with his life the very thing he never wished to do, never to be exposed like this, never naked before a round Fate with a love-monkey on her shoulder, a twist of lemon on her lip, seeing him naked like any-other-man, no-better than this, no-better than that, a drop of water with a prick, a flake of cells and a quaking colony of fleeing flamboyances -- and when his father had met him that day between pick-breaking-frozen-pavement-over-broken-sewer-line-thrusts which ached in his back and shoulders (since his latest, many-years of non-labor had been spent in fathering knowledge with dormant muscles very flat-on-ass, and tearing out his eyes which scanning literature and philosophy and history and all down the road at the college in Laramie) -- and his father had met him that day in a very proper, serious, almost condescending but friendly manner as he hit and tore and dug at the frozen, stubborn earth, meeting him in a business-like form, not as Daniel had feared with a "welcome aboard" or "to the fold" with smile gaping or back being slapped by his foreman-father but a pleasant inquiry only, bit-conversation, and nothing more.

Easily he remembers those things as though today but sitting in the clamor of hisssssing-steam and the boiling-perk of coffee's-perk -- noise all about him like a black guardian-soul -- he tries to think now only of immediacy, trying especially to sort-out-details from the last-night-maze of near-consciousness and contact. No, too-much-a-task as well. Not really worth the effort. Only think of Ruth Merritt who he would probably see tonight with her bleached-blind-grasp-at-youth in that short-red-skirt which showed an eternity of flesh (which was certainly not all unattractive) and those massive breasts captured barely by one-hundred-percent-which-aches-of-irony-Virgin-Wool-sweater as she bats her long-lashes in blatant seduction and he recalls her legs parting somewhat with her speaking, with her saying: "Dale's working the graveyard shift tonight. And he will be working it tomorrow night too...."

He knew she was begging for it then. Knowing too that he was in no shape to pull-it-off (he smiles a bit at this) -- too many drinks, the old prick shrinks, and won't stand up at all. And knowing now , sitting with ass uncomfortable on the steel-bench, as the coffee is ready to his right, that he'll be seeing her again tonight: this time being prepared....

He will be ready for anything tonight.

Rising twelve-stories into the vast expanse of often-blue-sky which stretches above the town of Sinclair, Wyoming -- the largest and most important unit in the refinery -- the Catalytic Cracking Unit, 780 -- as men move around beneath over under through he corrugated web of industrial genius which acts somewhat as a focus for the incoming-outgoing mixtures of crude and gas and different-grades of gas-oils....

From his perch on the eighth-floor, Henry Clement watches the animated pointless human-movement-below, watching with a stark indifference though with a subtle humor: a faint chuckle is not heard although he feels it escape as his eyes wander in a patient careless gaze from one item to the next, from one small-site to another, moving continually carelessly, forward, back-again, seeing nothing really as his eyes only scan the canvas, his thought lost not-so-much in any form of meditation, but more in that previously-mentioned stark glaring indifference: a lllloooonnnngggg-drop to the bottom where the pavement has been cracked: cracked by the years and the stress and the weight of the weather of the years -- and the stress: where Clement sees, or feels that he sees, little-designs as the cracks break into patterns which converge at certain points with him seeing, or feeling at different times that he sees, an airplane being destroyed on-impact with a mountain-chain; and a map which looks like europe at times, at times like Asia, at times like something he has never seen before. Like something he has never seen before (a puzzle at his feet) -- he stares off passively, looking up at the monotonous blue sky....

Now, today, yesterday -- he thinks only now about the time he will escape this fate forever, about the time he will be gone-for-good, for-ever, for-better, in sickness and in health: a marriage of craning opposites: a marriage with the devil.

Though it comes to him now only in the form of a dream, this escape: and he clutches like a miser to this only-fortune-freedom....

He does have a dream. Yes, he does have a dream.

But even dreams now make him weary.

Necessity -- that nothing-else-to-do-pain of emptiness and seclusion -- of isolation and of impotence -- has succccccckkkkkked from Henry Clement all visible vitality and left him with little-more-to-show than a seemingly incurable case of listless-hypochondria and testiness and a case of narcolepsy....

Now, too-often, he see things at an end. An end to just what, and just where it might end, he is not sure.

He catches the elevator down to the ground-floor.

As he sinks with every-climbing-second away from the hissssssssing and the belching and the crashing of pumps and the obese presence of the boilers and the re-boilers and the hoppers and the swirl of the Cat-Chute and the staleness and the spilled-grease on the walk-ways (which are a safety-hazard to everyone, and which everyone knows only-too-well, but which no one will act to repair, whether due to defiance or to stupidity or just to general indifference one can never really be certain).... all of which disappears behind the steel above his head as he steps from the elevator as the doors clakk-open and he stands apart from it all, apart from the hissssssing and the belching and all which seconds-earlier had seemed to surround him completely, had seemed to possess him body and soul -- with his fee again solidly on God's-brown-earth, he notices with some concern that the dizziness (the spinning and the ache and the blur in his eyes) which always seems to accompany him now on his journeys up the face of this goliath, this Olympus, has suddenly and mysteriously abated with the suddenness and the mystery of, as he would say, a Godfull-acted-miracle) as he feels too his sinuses begin to clear standing in the more-open-air which he breathes deeply and which makes him almost bleat with contentment which is pleasant as it is inexplicable in that only seconds-earlier he had felt much differently (as a matter of fact)...

He can't explain it himself.

He doesn't understand it either.

And he flashes-in, smiling in an-almost-lecherous-cheerfulness, like a madman-shadow passing across the wall seen only as a flash in the eye's-corner by Newman as he sips from the yellowed coffee cup strong and hot so that it seems to scorch his face-front when he raises it toward his lips and lets it through in a gush which pains his teeth a bit and even threatens to blister his tongue but which soothes as it slides into his chest into the pit of his stomach leaving now a glowing warmth which lets him relax quite nicely enjoying the drumming goodness of caffeine until Clement flashes spryly into the room smiling like a drunken sailor, a perversion in his battered nature, like a sailor too with uncounted episodes of depravity on long-leaves in exotic waystations etched with hard irons into his soul....

Clement chuckles a bit as he sees Newman jump.

"I wondered if you was gonna show up today," Clement says to Newman as he set upon the tool-bench near the door his hard-hat, gloves and wrench. "Not that I mind none when you show up, or if you ever show up for that matter. A young kid like you'd be better off never showing your face in a hole like this as far as I can see. You oughtta take off running, kid, and never look back. That's my advice for you. Take it from an old master..... You got any coffee left...?"

"Sure. There's plenty."

"Shit. It looks pretty damn scummy to me. Is this gravy or what? I don't know whether I should risk it or not..."

"You ain't risking shit, Henry. This coffee couldn't do anything to you that something else hasn't already done..."

"I don't know. Looks pretty damn strong to me. If I drink this I'll probably be up for two weeks. Who made this anyway? Did you make this? Hell, I'll drink it, but I probably won't like it. Looks like it's damn near as thick as stew...."

"You don't have to drink it or like it as far as I'm concerned," Newman replies.

"You shouldda heard that old horn, Baxter, bitching about you getting here late this morning," Clement says. "Son of a bitch. It's bad enough having to work in this hellhole. Then you get someone like Baxter who makes it even worse. I guess you can't blame it all on him though -- you've heard about that wife of his, I'm sure. Ain't much you can say about that kinda thing. Too bad's about all, I guess..."

But Newman doesn't even have that to say as he finishes his coffee and watches Clement rummage through his lunch-box and remove, finally, a long yellow pill which he says is for his hay-fever which seem to hit him always about this time of year. Swallowed, powdered-dust-of-salvation, dissolving in the dust-streams of the blood of the bones and the body of this middle-aged-man -- it seems to make him feel better.

Clement smiles weakly.

From the once-coldness of the bench made body-warm by the cover of his ass, Newman rises and stretches and pulls the levis from the crack of that same ass, checking his pocket for his gloves, one of which he finds missing -- (a contradiction in terms) -- one of which, he realizes, he has misplaced, and which he finds beside the stove (having used it, the right one, as a pot-holding for the seething coffee-pot), which he now stuffs into his back-pocket as he leaves the pump-room saying nothing to Clement who does not acknowledge Newman as he slips out into the morning sunshine which is warm but somehow refreshing like a lazy breeze after the stuffy pump surroundings and the clatter and the seeping and the sweat hanging on the walls and Clement's dreary monotone of catalogued ills and complaints which Newman hasn't let get started of which he is no-little-bit-glad because if he had, if he hadn't left when he did, he would probably now by having to hear about Clement's heart and his arthritis and his sinuses and the dizzy-spells that are caused by his twenty-some-years-exposure to leaking-lethal-gas that is doing its work fine than you and will probably have him in his grave in n-time if he doesn't get away pretty soon which he will certainly do in the next couple of weeks, months at the most, after he reaches that deal for the uranium he owns on Seminoe Mountain and which a potential buyer is surveying this very moment, even as we speak, which will be his passport out of this hole and into wealth and happy-retirement and into the power or the freedom to be able to walk right into Bedford's office with the grease on his boots tracking up Bedford's clean carpet while the Old Man sits dumbfounded behind his big mahogany desk in his suit and dark tie though not being able to say a word while Clement throws his hard-hat onto the mahogany desk with a loud pop as loud as a wrench banging a pipe and says calmly: "I've had enough of you, Bedford! I've had enough of this death-trap. I quit! I don't need it any more...!"

Newman has heard it all so many times before; it too has gotten old. Old enough, thick enough, to be cut by a rusty knife, Newman thinks, finding his metaphor resolutely graphic.

Before taking his readings he is to check all the pumps in his area (he being the COMPRESSOR MAN) to make sure that they all have been oiled properly by the man he has replaced and that they are running with the utmost efficiency and the least amount of mechanical strain damaging to its innards.....

So damn tedious this dull-work which he could do blind and which he had done drunk and which anyone-off-the-street could do with a minimum of instruction with the same degree of efficiency he had attained in his nearly three years on the job -- although he hates to think of it that way: three years on the job.

He fills the oil-cans in the Blower Room (which seems to howl in swirling gusts of air (though he has gotten used to it)) as he pumps thick-gold into the gray-metal-cans which he will feed individually to the real workers in the plant, proletarian that he is....

As he steps back-outside, his ears pop in the abrupt silence.

Oil-cans in-hand, fed-up-with-it-all, he begins his rounds again.

So-many-days-back he finds himself going as he passes his duties in dull-stupor and, once again, in remembrance of better things and ways and other scenes and similar days on which his mind now falls-back in his many moments of extended seclusion, avoiding with calculation (and with reason (as much as is possible)) this eerie disconsolation, this dreary consolation, called the Present -- Now, Today, All-day, Dull-Day, every-day contenting with tomorrow, not stopping there either but beginning anew when that-dull-day becomes this-dull-day with the twisting of the minute's-hand, when the fluttering leaf-of-calendar marks and end to this-today, a beginning to that-other-one: another-today today with many-more-to-come some day. How many more to come some day? Knows he not how many more it possibly could be? How many dull-days, marching along the wall, marching out above the grate, consuming flesh and contaminating fresh foundries, a ghost in a panic of Time, one foot before the next, the unconscious dram, drama contending with nature, the inner striking out the hemisphere's of vision's ability to forecast change. Knows he not how many more days it possibly could be he moving without mind, moving without memory, a pram into the alleyway, thoughtless, hot and annually conquering nothing but his own fear of insolvency...?

A llllong siiiigh slips from his lips from his chest near his heart as he somewhat relaxes thinking to whenever back few years not many more though certainly seems it to be so many much before....

AHH -- he remembers

father hmelovsky with face emaciated and cigarette jutting like a tiny white pipe with a small-head-of-steam from his pruned-lips with hand clutched-together in a kind of death-struggle and a wrenching and pulling of nerves and bones as his age stole upon him in successive blows which destroyed blood guts and mind and eventually pierced even his father -- that fear of death-dissolution -- as he realized he could spend a rotting eternity of no-reward after rotting now already sixty-seven-years with nothing to show for it but uncertainty and regrets like the rest of his earthly inhabitants and the followers of His word. all seemed like waste as he prepared finally to die -- doubt from God's-disciple written bold in the crags upon his shrunken face....

But daniel newman still had been young when first he was sent away: catholicism: st. joseph: father of jesus only, patron-father of jesus, patron of all patrons who watched in gentle obedience as holy apparition rutted-impregnated wife with son of godly-apparition -- who could not admire such a man-saint....?

but daniel newman still had been young when first he was sent away: off to school in Rawlins at the age of seven: st. joseph's school: taken that first day by his father who convinced best with patience (as daniel cried a bit in fear as his silent-mother stayed her opposition, trying to see in it the best, somewhere, though he would be gone from her everyday now, suffering-silently-alone, without a word to be said but "good-bye" to her son and a tear to be lingering like a prayer on her cheek): alone: lord baltimore's in his hand and a handshake from his father -- sending him off, she waved a hanky from the car: they pulled slowly out of view: everyone alone: becoming habituated to: learning: that is necessity: that is all: as they were gone and he alone and they no-where-to-be-seen: becoming habituated to it: an only child: with sister rosemary in the first, with many-more-to-come. and fathers prado, gianola, hmelovsky, the sullivan twins, father meyer with his stiff crew-cut, father sheridan with his rotting teeth: the swing-and-reek of a sweet incense-burn, shake-of-bells, respond with latin-from-memory, responding mutter from an altar-boy's knees: death-service, morning-service, wedding-service, confirmation, first-communion, holy-thursdays with the choir mourning softly out-of-tune; good-fridays wiping lip-wet from christ-feet-on-the-cross as the congregation drones away, half-asleep, the other-half frozen in fantasy: up-by-and-away again to their pews in a suffering silent enactment: a terror to behold: the beauty of their faith -- a terror to behold, especially for a boy -- belief for so often, a tinge of doubt becoming a roar, disbelief in a world of never-say-doubt-or-question-why:

the almighty truth.

and that day with father-sullivan-the-first class of catechism eighty-grade --

daniel had asked:

"what makes you or any other priest closer to God than I am?"

and he had answered with a painful indulgence:

"we are no closer to God, daniel, than anyone else. it is just that we received a calling to act as a type of intermediary, a link between Himself and His people of the world"

"but i don't need a link," daniel had replied. "if He is everywhere, and if everyone is equal in His eyes, then i shouldn't have to go through you to get to him. i shouldn't have to go through the church either"

"you don't have to go through the church to reach God. you can reach Him anywhere, at any time"

"except on sundays"

"you don't go to church on sundays solely to reach God, but to pay Him homage and to receive His body and His blood"

"but can't i pay homage to God at any time and in any place?"

"i don't think it's too much to ask that you attend services once a week"

"but why should i have to? why should i be forced to under the threat of mortal sin and eternal damnation?"

"you should want to, as a way of thanking God for your healthy body and your inquisitive mind"

"maybe i would want to if i wasn't forced into it"

"i don't think God's laws are really too demanding"

"God's laws? these aren't God's laws. these are your laws"

and he had looked at young newman with defeated fatigue -- damned protestant -- his eyes drooping in a sagging apathy because he was too tired now to argue this and that anymore; and the class had watched tensely, waited quietly for father-sullivan-the-first to re-affirm their faith with some all-knowing answer to the doubt expressed which never came (the answer) and somber air swept through the room as father sullivan lowered his head for a few long seconds, raising it again as words-upon-words flew from his lips ringing in ears all as nothing but words, words unrelated to the apostasy uttered by the new-heretic new-man just a boy but a boy now able to wound with the utterance of clear thought and anger. father sullivan finished his planned lecture without interruption and left the room quietly, his head bowed, leaving, defeated:

ahhh, he gave credit to doubt.

like damned Luther before him.

like the existentials beyond grave Lucifer-Luther.

he gave doubt to the masses

and no-one ever forgave him that.

Pour of thick-oil into cylinder mouth of gurgling pumps -- and now the last as Newman finishes finally, finely-sweating beneath his broad hat-band and through his shirt, his chest, from the steam-heat of the airless pumproom but he is finished as he sets the half-filled cans on a shelf of the tool-bench and steps into the open-air again.

Many-young-days-back he goes, this traveler in time: untrammeled, unabashed, youth, sweet memories though not all sweet he trusts, recalling earlier days of his earlier schooling, and father meyer, patron father -- was he not a patron-father too? -- patron of the ever-father-never-father joseph -- who stood guard with hard eyes and a hand that cracked like a dry jagged switch on the back of necks and below ears as his dry jagged voice cracked in gales and his hollow face rolled in stricken horror to think that disciples such as his were perhaps failing in the pleasure of their almighty-father-God

"this will never do!" he had admonished

and the class had cringed, together, a community of eels -- cringing and weeping and begging-together-in-silence for another-chance at lourdly service, another night of catechism-to-memory, when, as night-hood would fall, they too would fall in shame on small knees swollen round and bleed their hearts as tiny-wounds upon the forgiveness of His saving grace

ahh, the tears from all

such tears to learn the lessons well

of catechism and communion....

Surely then not sweet: early anguish and fear that made him wretched and timid (which was what they desired, which was what they demanded) -- having him shut his mouth and mind while pouring like thick-syrup into the porches of his outer-ears the blessings of their longer-lives: the blessings of that final-knowledge -- early anguish and fear like a stamp on his soul, like a scar on his skin slipping slowly out-of-view -- all: for that precious knowledge, the scar now gone by the incident never undone, memory's governing crib being what it is

ahh -- but what was the price truly to be paid?

Let his own purported intelligence, let his own supposed imagination, let his own foolish curiosity be subverted by things now known to be true! Subverted? Superseded? Disciplined? Until he can do no more than accept as being True all that which he has been told is True; and admit as being false all that which he had felt to be true....before...

Such is the power and the beauty of Faith.

That can answer any question

Without a moment's hesitation

Without a second's introspection

Without a world of doubt discovered.

He bowed his head in prayer.

His early years at St. Joseph's are particularly hard for him to recall...particularly hard. Seeing himself always on knees with head bent but eyes erect-with-fear as beside him or above him in the bulk of black-robes too numerous to remember whose face or name possessed them as he prayed with all his fright and faith and hope (for they all were one to him, a kind of black trinity) lying like heavy-bricks-of--burden on his tiny-Christopher-shoulders: for all was penance to him then, and guilt, which he sadly accepted (both penance and guilt) gladly as the assurance of a happier-life-to-come as he had been promised and even more-so for the assurance of escaping an eternity of fire and scalding remorse in a devil's bin...

As they had promised him -- a terror to behold -- and he had sacrificed himself willingly, a child on his own cross, also Pilatte, Barabas and the Roman solider holding the spear.

He had known no difference then. He had known nothing better.

Such is the power and the beauty of faith.

He had believe it then.

Yet the days escaped as flashes -- the years in streaking madness poured from him like waste -- non-stop -- though growing quite he was: growing older: growing wiser (both of which pleased to no-end his fleshly-father though not so much his only-mother who pained to feel him slippppppping, slippppppping, gone-away-from-her for-ever as his/her years rallied-on relentlessly, leaving her at times retching in silent despair as she watched her life-in-time evaporate: so-little-to-show for those so-many-years of motion and effort and prayerful longing and hope -- those pretty-years of youth: those painted-years of loss: those painful-years of now: of now -- having lived those years for nothing now? -- having never-now carved a single-notch-of-meaning in the waistband of immortality?: as her sole fruitful act with back hot on shivering slab like ice and pained by stabs of growing as her groins was blooming LIFE: LIFE: I HAVE GIVEN THEE LIFE, DANIEL NEWMAN: i have given thee life from nothing: i have given thee the most meaningful of gifts: the gift of blind whole love as from flesh-to-flesh he becomes you, and you are him, till time runs-on, till time runs-out and all becomes an aged shadow of a thing once real and dear, now simply PAST: PASSED: her only production, magnificent for a time, had been stolen from her grasp by the trick of early-manhood: as she had watched him grow, as she had watched him grow-away from her, as the years turned life impalpable -- she realized her loss: never-now-again could she touch her only-son having grown as he was now to a man coiled by time....

But more-happy-couldn't-he-be mister father-of-daniel-newman as he received the report of his son's glorious success in the field of maturation and which he (mister newman) (the elder, that is, the father) attributed with no-little-degree-of-satisfaction to the boy's genealogical hardihood and to his own system of discipline which was applied at early-age to that only-son-of-his and which helped young daniel realize his duty/responsibility/task/goal/future at that early-age and which catapulted him far-ahead of his rivals both present and future and which would lead him (mister newman the elder was certain) to a life filled with fame, finance, and possibly satisfaction, something for which daniel newman would never enough be able to thank his proud-smiling happy thankful father.

Dulldddday Newman feels (just beginning) though some of it is gone he knows though this fact erases little of the desolation which grips like wrench-teeth the exposed nerves of his mentality, twisting, gripping, squeezing, draining him of once-plentiful-resistance until apathy and disgust and surrender are all that he feels as he feels another-slow-day of his precious life now running to hide though he does no more than stand and watch, as though standing at a distance, as some sluggish pedestrian might watch his train race out of view, as some crippled lecher might watch young-rump sway by his outstretched seedy fingers and bump-on-down-the-road, leaving him only to lay back and squeeze again from himself that precious life-blood as others breeze-by constantly unconcerned: his interest wanes: he feels himself becoming hard, falling back, accepting, not-caring any more, as he falls into some weariness, he falls into a coldness, sleeping sound; he can do no more: such the same is Daniel Newman, pondering his future, seeing some future ahead -- some amorphous bulky dream where he can lie-back in some sweet hallowed darkness and escape-for-ever this empty-passing-of-time, this sallow sickly PRESENT, encompassing all touches of time from day-the-very-first until day-the-very-last....

As on-again he goes.

Again!

Dreaming-on....

Endlessly....

IV

GRAVITIES. GRAVITAS.

father newton, though beardless and capless, though ageless and black-robed

father newton as marionette from centuries, worlds gone by

father newton, befreckled and betimid, as youthful, rosy figure that strikes at the very core of my memory. recalling. those fruitful days of yore

father newton, ducking again, ducking another question, as the apple falls, a padded guillotine, upon the crown of his soft head

father sullivan, the younger, it's you!

every portion of matter attracts every other portion with a force directly proportional to the product of the two masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them

and perhaps the apple fell, father. perhaps the apple fell at the feet of eve and she felt it a sign from God so she ate it not wanting to insult Him. perhaps she didn't even want to eat the apple, but she felt it her duty

I. Every body persists in a state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless compelled by external forces the change that state

II. The acceleration of a given body is proportional to the force causing it, and is in the direction of that force

or perhaps it was God who sent the subtle serpent to disarm the muddled maiden -- and she felt His divine essence escape the breath of His-subtle-Satan. she ate the apple for she felt it a gift from the Divine Maker. she could not refuse her God

III. With every action or force there is an equal and opposite reaction; or the mutual actions of any two bodies are always equal and oppositely directed

then why did He make the tree of knowledge?

and why did He make it forbidden?

why did He tempt them with it?

if He is omniscient then He knew from the-beginning-of-time that there would come a time when He would create from nothing and adam and from a rib an eve and that He would place them in a garden of paradise beneath a tree of knowledge that they would be forbidden to touch but which He knew they would touch, eve first, and then adam, and that then He would have to drive them from the garden into toil and strife and work and death and that they would be miserable for the rest of existence

and if He knew this, how then could He go through with it?

how could He, father sullivan?

unless He was sadistic?

or unless it was merely a description of destiny?

THE LAW OF GRAVITATION

Qui pridie quam pateretur, accepit panem in sanctas ac venerabiles manus suas, et elevatis oculis in coelum ad te Deum Patrem suum omnipotentem tibi gratias agens, bene dixit, fregit, deditque discipulis suis, dicens: accipite, et manducate ex hoc omnes:

Hoc est enim Corpus meun.xl

when he elevates the Sacred Host, look at It and say:

-- My Lord and My God!

the bells titter thrice-mysteriously at the end of my arm

responding with latin-of-memory

to his white vestments

-- Amen.

as he offers-up his victim

-- (Mindful, therefore, O Lord, not only of the blessed Passion of the same Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, but also of His resurrection from the dead, and finally His glorious ascension into heaven, we, Thy ministers, as also Thy holy people, offer unto Thy supreme majesty, of the gifts bestowed upon us, the pure Victim, the holy Victim, the all-perfect Victim: the holy Bread of life eternal and the Chalice of unending salvation....

-- (Most humbly we implore Thee, Almighty God, bid these offerings to be brought by the hands of Thy holy angel unto Thy altar above; before the face of Thy Divine Majesty; that those of us who, by sharing in the Sacrifice of this altar, shall receive the most sacred Body and Blood of Thy Son, may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing. through the same Christ our Lord.)

AMEN.

-- Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up to heaven? Alleluia. He shall come in the same way as you have seen Him going up to heaven: alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. O, clap your hands, all ye nations: shout to God with the voice of exultation. GLORY BE.

-- It is fitting indeed, and just, right and helpful to salvation, for us always and everywhere to give thanks to Thee, O Holy Lord, Father Almighty, Everlasting God; through Christ, our Lord. Who, after His Resurrection, appeared openly to all His disciples, and, while they looked on, was taken up into heaven, that He might grant unto us to be sharers in His own divinity. And therefore, that He might grant unto us to be sharers in His own divinity. And, therefore, with angels and archangels, with thrones and dominations, and with all the hosts of the heavenly army, we sing the hymn of thy glory, ever more saying:

HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, LORD GOD OF HOSTS. HEAVEN AND EARTH ARE FILLED WITH THY GLORY. HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST. BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD. HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST....

but father newton?

did he ascend into heaven?

because that principle of gravity?

had been cut loose when he died...?

Every portion of matter attracts every other portion with a force directly proportional to the product of the two masses....

but what is the product of His two masses?

of His mass and of His anti-mass?

black and white?

loose and tight?

material and anti-material?

THANKS BE TO GOD.

FOR MY CURIOSITY.

in the sacristy, father sullivan removed the pure vestment -- strikingly white and soft and pure, like angel's dust

the cassock tumbled about my head, blinding-me-in-blackness for an instant. i pushed it on to is hangar in the closet, the dark-closet dark-cluttered with many other cassocks, hundreds of them. every one like mine

i had to tell him then. i had decided. there was no turning back

but could i tell him now?

i must

his back was turned to me; he was washing at the sink. i could see white-piled-suds ascending, gushing-up between fingers and hands scrubbed front and back, cascading over wrist-bones, falling fluffy and soft in the black sink

why was he washing his hands?

"father..."

"yes, daniel...."

pure blue eyes. deep. looking on me sheepishly. father of the flock he is. watching father of me.

how can i say it?

how can i say it to him?

"i'll be going now, if it's alright with you"

"you've put out the candles? alright then. run along"

how was i to tell him then? him so young and pure and nervous, as though the wrong word from me would spoil his entire day. might spoil his entire outlook,: so fragile was his sense of self

i couldn't do it then

when could i do it then?

it had to be done.

i couldn't wait much longer

i couldn't do it any more

-- The force of gravity is least at the equator and gradually increases toward the poles. If weighed on delicate spring balances, a given mass of matter will weigh least at the equator and become increasingly heavier as the latitude increases. This difference in weight is due, first, to the fact that the centrifugal force, owing to the rapid rotation of the earth, is greater at the equator, and, secondly, to the fact that the equator is farther from the earth's center than are the poles, which also diminishes the force of gravity. As a result of both these causes, a body which weighs 196 pounds at the equator will weight about 197 pounds at either pole...

-- If you have any problems understanding any of this I suggest you re-read chapter eleven in your text. For your homework, do the odd-numbered problems on page one-hundred-eleven. I'll probably collect them. I'll see you tomorrow.

then out he went; and i, too, to catch him before he disappeared

but sister agnes claire's bony hand clasped my bony arm -- stopping me cold: she asked me where i was going

i told her to talk with father sullivan. i told her that it was important

with me her favorite student then, she let me go

i caught him by the rectory garage:

"i have to tell you something, father. i have to tell you that i'm not going to be an altar-boy any more"

"what? and why not?"

"it isn't mandatory, is it? i know a lot of boys who don't have to do it"

"no, it isn't mandatory. it's an honor for you. we don't let just any boy do it. i thought you did it because you enjoyed doing it. enjoyed being closer to God. you're closer to God that any of those other boys who aren't altar boys. you know that, don't you?"

"i don't care about that, father. i just don't want to do it any more"

"i think we should talk about this some more..."

"there isn't anything to talk about. except--i suppose you'll tell my father about this?"

"well, he's bound to know, isn't he? he will see that you aren't an altar boy any longer"

"i wish you wouldn't make a point of saying anything to him. it will only disappoint him"

"i don't know, daniel. i think it is pretty important. but i won't say anything to your father if you promise me that you'll give it more thought. really, give it some thought. we'll talk about it again, next week, after you've had a chance to think about it. does that seem like a good plan?'

"ok"

ok

but he had been nervous and uncertain and disappointed. and he told father hmelovsky who told sister agnes claire who told my father....

sister agnes claire

she

long and lean of face and frame. like a swiftly-sliced-countenance of some bohemian saint in colored stone: the untouched magdelaine: suffering silent sufferer: cold as moldless plaster

i feared her as i feared the Lord Himself!

what He had done to her!

had she never lived?

did her heart really beat beneath her sacred breast?

had she even that sacred breast?

or had He taken that sacred heart?

HER SACRED HEART

-- The Sacred Heart of Jesus is always eager to forgive whenever a sinner sincerely repents, and desires to return to God, the source of joy and peace. Why then hesitate?

-- Cast thy care upon the Lord; and He will sustain thee....

-- It is fitting, indeed, and just, right and helpful to salvation, always and everywhere to give thanks to Thee, O Holy Lord, Father Almighty, Everlasting Do, Who didst will that Thy Only-Begotten Son should be pierced by the soldier's lance as He hung upon the Cross; that the Heart thus opened, the sanctuary of divine bounty, should pour out on us an abundance of mercy and grace, and, as it never ceases to burn with love for us, it may be for the devout a haven of rest, and, for the penitent, an ever-open refuge of salvation.

LORD GLORY OF HOSTS

HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST

her azure-eyes crossed upon my lowering head. her shell a bulky-black against her cold sea-shell-skin

petrified

i tremble at her immensity

she destroys me with her stony chill and gaze

i am guilty

i have been -- hear me -- for years

founded on guilt ------------- years

she scolds me above a whisper, above a silent hymn. offering me up -- she comforts me. as long as i change. her bony-hand coddles my bony-arm. i glance into her ancient eyes -- enough to turn a crane to salt -- an ever-open refuge that can urge a smile from the distance -- does urge a smile, in fact. but smiles-not in this insistence. can ever smile-not from this short-distance

she is sure of me

she is sure i am mistaken

she is sure i will repent

(father sullivan told her....)

NO

NO I SHALL NOT

NO I AM NOT

NO.

and she crumbles beneath the blow -- the brutal blow from my mallet -- like loose-gravel gathered high, then driven-down by the torrent: her immaculate-plaster-head scattered in a broken pile by my unskilled artistry:

my ingenuous artistry.

now tell-tale-signs of humanity. her eyes rise-up in anger; her lips tremble in rapid terrors. perhaps he heart pounds, her breasts squirm, beneath her chest-late

anger, because she has been accosted

rapid terrors, because, in allowing herself to be accosted, she has become human, if only for that moment

authority wanes, drains from her like pus from a sore.

I WILL NOT BE YOUR ALTAR-BOY

NOR WILL I BE YOUR SPELLING BEE

empty-threats now warn me of....reprisal. the blush of blood-rage invades her cheeks. she clutches at the air, searing...

where is that best-student now?

` what has become of that prize and joy?

STATE SPELLING CHAMPION, SEVENTH GRADE, IS....DANIEL NEWMAN, ST. JOSEPH'S SCHOOL....

with the ribbon wrinkled and pale-blue and the medal of bronzed scrolls -- which i gave to mother with a kiss as she wept amid the audience of parents, nuns and priests

how proud they were of me

all of them

and i too, proud, cocky, a bit spoiled. handsome too, as the audience watched, applauding. such a fine specimen. like my father, or so he would have it -- though he was truly proud of me

nefarious, i had said. N-E-F-A-R-I-O-U-S. nefarious.

these letters roll through my memory, fall from my lips; the many-hours-of-preparation hasten to my aid; the page-after-many-age of letters-words-definitions-derivations, developed like film for the testing, become nefariously-imprinted on my mind's-eye, and fall to my lips, from my lips, disappearing into harsh light, sounds unschooled custom, loosing themselves upon a world of ears, trumpeting knowledge

I WAS THE CHAMPION.

again

as always.

NOR WILL I BE YOUR SPELLING BE

but he will have to know this, she said. your father will have to be told this

what has become of you --

your ATTITUDE!

fear she would have me -- but laugh i feel i must.

as though the bond had been broken, the chain had snapped for ever with that horrific, nefarious declaration: NO -- NO I WILL NOT -- NO I CANNOT BE FORCED TO.... BELIEVE....

those bricks-of-burden from my shoulders fell like egg-dust -- splintered shells, white and raw -- in a soft pulp beneath my jeering mite's-foot

WHERE IS THE TRUE AUTHORITY NOW?

WHERE DOES IT REALLY SEEM TO BE/

HOW CAN ONE BE SURE?

and my father arrived as they had promised: rushing about, from office to office, speaking of catastrophe

before he spoke to me

before he even acknowledged me

they told him of my many sins.

disappointment, written in fluid description, on his brooding, trepid brow

disbelief and scorn, commingling like hope and resignation, in his dark, pierced, troubled eyes

admonishment, easing itself between tremorous lips: uncertain, pleading, in words scattering like down against his heavy man's-breath, wafting pleasantly in the currents above me, falling gently to my ears

he wants what is best for me

he wants me to make-up my own mind

but to think about what and why.

i can't serve them any longer. i can't bow to them, and pray for them, and be their favorite boy for them. i detest their smiling at my pleasing them, and my smiling back, like some idiot-boy pleasing them with a senseless comment

but there is no anger. there is no terror. he is not sure

no anger because he sees me all-alone, sitting alone, isolated by my disbelief, my refusal, needing a father to talk to, to sit by, to touch in this place where there is no touching

no terror because there is confidence

because he is sure of me.

his lips, peeled-back in nervous relief, expose themselves, for themselves into a scare smile:

affiliation

blood

i am forgiven.

he still is proud of me. he, too, is very proud.

he understands

though from a distance too.

he seems to understand me.

everything is alright.

ok?

but the REVOLUTION has begun

spinning slowly spinning light:

away:

the INQUISITION has begun

as faceless frowns surround me, framed-in-black: bemused, anxious, pitiful but unforgiving. sisters, though not-sisters, never-sisters-now -- certainly not God-Christ's, nor mary's, nor those of joseph, merry joseph, joseph the watcher, saintly joseph, watcher and waiter: our humble patriarch

as nameless-forms confound me with their righteousness and guiltlessness and sobriety, with their petty reproaches, their smileless silences, their staid, hollow gaze which falls upon me now with hopeless regularity

sacrifice is in those eyes where i see myself reflected.

i

their one-time favorite fool

as they reprimand him with coldness;

he, too, watches them, closely, studiously, wondering:

he smiles.

but where is faith today?

faith that begs release?

as on he goes.

as on it goes.

further.

but won't you tell me this?

won't you please be able to answer me this?

rigid, they hover like crows, like black doves, anxious, uncertainty staining their brows.

they don't move.

they'll never be able to answer me this.

it is a career.

nothing more.

a place to get one's bread.

not a sanctified calling.

not a place at the table of God and God's Son.

a house with a roof out of the snow and the rain.

a place for corn and common acceptance of

fatality.

but how could He, father sullivan?

how could He make it forbidden?

could it be bad-in-itself, this knowledge?

how could it be bad-in-itself (father sullivan)?

knowledge?

it is not knowledge that is bad, father sullivan replied.

it is the knowledge of good and evil. alienation. that is what is bad.

could it be that when they ate that fruit of knowledge -- could it be that they did gain some knowledge and that that knowledge was the knowledge that He really did not exist, that there really was no God and they would have to live without Him, they would have to realize their own rewards in life, they would have to bear their own suffering, and that all of these, that everything was of their own making, that they could not rely on Him or blame Him or expect anything ever from Him -- and could it be that when they realized this, when they came to fully understand that this knowledge was correct, that there really was not God -- could it be that their god actually ceased to exist, as did their garden of eden, as did raphael and their valiant-michael, and satan too, their subtle snake -- could it be that they were born-gain, born from the soil, out of the sky, down in the mud, from the rib of the earth, burst from the depths again, like huge wounded breakers, risen from the depths, confused, like the after-haze of a dream, still wanting to believe -- could it be that the God existed only in dreams -- and when the awakened from the dream they had no god now, they only had some kind of daylight and other men and women around...?

could it be?

could it possibly be?

this knowledge?

like the waking from a dream of love -- now no longer whole?

(won't you tell me NO?

(won't you please tell me NO NOW that i might believe it?)

(NO?)

then i must accept these tales you tell?

tales of adam and eve

wiping tears without a sleeve?

tales of noah's flood

creating garnished mud?

and of the good, the so-few-good, as noah's crew?

make them waders; and let them stew.

of the tables on the mount?

of the burnished brains that could not count?

broken at the gold calf's feet?

scoring doubt and man's deceit?

and of the many-breads-of-snow to the starving?

each leaf mannered in a delicate carving?

manna to the chosen man?

bread to brace, to ignite, a clan?

AND WHERE IS THAT CHOSEN MAN TODAY?

where is he today?

yesterday?

where is he tomorrow?

WILL BLACK MANNA FEED MY CURIOSITY TODAY?

sate my swelling doubt

and manifest in strength and stout invention

purpose and not this bleak debate

so secular and native, so alike to Hamlet's mass

as seen within his craving glass.

WILL BLACK MANNA FEED MY CURIOSITY?

or will it only assuage my generosity

to my own failings?

ailing is as ailing believes.

afterall.

and why must the blessed virgin be? immaculate conception's name - it, it spoils of non-necessity. wherefore must she still be whole? boxed not and banged up by a whirlwind in a robe of verbs -- is natural motherhood, for her, so...unnatural then. Is it unwholesome? ungodly? so that his own blood must be bloodlessly born, bloodlessly conceived, a word plaited in a brain; a burdened boy planted in a girl's skirt by a fire-bred comet as she stops to sneeze?

so that his flesh of tender wing-beat

must be.

of his soft-sex made

and conformed by shades?

by his own orders would he impregnate a virgin married with himself?

SO WHY MUST BLESSED VIRGIN BE?

AND WHY HE, A GOD?

jesus christ, a man --

would that not be enough?

would that not too

present a ladder true

that we might climb?

HAVE FAITH!

indeed! but faith: where is he now?

omnipotent! and omni-scient!

so, who should fain to speak for him?

and who should set down rules for him?

-- a man?

-- a particle?

-- a grain of sand blowing in the crowing void? lost? groping in the dark for his MYSTERIOUS hoping hand? his guidance? seeking to be found by him -- but never to be sure...?

and you say you know his rules, his countenance, his home.

and his goodness (although that does not surround me)

groping in the dark

with an alien, hoping heart.

IS THERE BLACK MANNA TO FEED ON HERE, NOSTRADAMUS?

here?

here, in this place of shadow?

as the door closed behind me -- leaving me ahead of the others -- leaving sister agnes claire behind; and the day's schedule ends:

i bounce on to the playground. released. flower-scent about me in a radiant rule of lilac and rouge. rose building a carpet of efflorescence. whirling -- the others yell in merry-panic. hairy-panic. scary rounds about swings and slides. nary a sound not pandemonium's offspring. cry. which makes me smile: relaxing. they bound beside me, up to me, offering friendship, smiling. they are so like me, in their youth: collective mind. yet, somehow, different. somehow totally different. i like them for this difference

raymond fires me the ball. i stop, fake, dribble twice, off-balance shoot

the ball rims in -- and out -- and in

this is a challenge

i like challenges

i shoot again. again i hit

they speak to me. we're friends

many-friends i've always had. many-friends again. always the same.

i hit, again, and again, and again....the hand, the eye, the rim, angelic guidance.

even where there is doubt there is also some compliance.

ruddy-faced is he: raymond. ruddy-faced with thick head of greased hair of off-gold. he uses vaseline to comb it. thick inside his comb. what do i care? and large front-teeth. It seems he is always smiling. raymond. my confidant. we spoke of things illicit. often. soft-warmth. sin.

beneath the oak tree on the grounds near the monkey-bars

and others near us too, younger, timid.

speaking of fuck.

so-strange the word. mysterious. i hid my blush -- my frightened horror of the word -- i hid it with a laugh: feigning confidence

but raymond blushed as he told it. blushed, his eyes crossed (it seemed), and he sang:

"there once was an indian maid

who said she wasn't afraid

to lay on her back in a cowboy shack,

she said she wasn't afraid..."

and we laughed, anxious, fearful -- glancing about, about, above.

as time descended on us. begin to swarm upon us

and innocence began to stray.

those middle-years-of-youth: those difficult years: when eyes become hazed and wild and distant: when breath becomes hot and deep: when pants begin to bulge; groins newly flecked with stubble; hands growing large with impatience. we look with wonder at ourselves, careful not to let it show. and we explore, great caravans that roam, deep in to waters of fear

wondering why?

and feeling it wrong: delight.

being told it was wrong. a sin. one of the greatest sins against God!

father hmelovsky appeared (after class it was) in the seventh-grade classroom. sending the girls away, delicate little queens in a dress. closing the door behind him. serious business. antagonistic. his eyes narrowing -- aimed like barrels at the boys. the smell of rum on his breath -- but we couldn't smell it. smelling, instead, something raw

sex-education, he said. and titter answered titter in the back, near the cloak-rack. but father stopped it with his glare. serious business

father wrote boldy with a shaking hand:

FUCK

SCREW

COCK

CUNT

JACK-OFF

i gasped. felt my insides heave. heat and sweat upon my face like a rash. shame. guilt cloaking my body, whirling about me like a dart of flames. i was discovered. i hated myself at that moment. hated. sitting naked before the throne. despised. my eyes riveted, shaking, near tears, upon the good priest

could he help me now?

WHERE WAS HE NOW?

he spoke the words, each word, carefully, several times:

-- I don't ever want to hear any of you ever say these words again. Any of them. They are cheap. They make you cheap. They are filthy. They are an insult to God!

-- Sexual Intercourse: the sexual union of husband and wife, the sole aim of

which is to continue the species -- to have children.

-- the same.

-- Penis: the male reproductive organ.

-- Vagina: the female reproductive organ.

-- Self-Abuse: the greatest of all bodily sins. abusing the body which God gave

us to achieve high purpose. masturbation. stimulation of the reproductive

organ. bile. never is this behavior permissible. playing with one-self.

given to man as a test of his virtue. a test of his faith. but man must

resist this temptation if he is to be re-united with God after death. mortal

sin. you must ask yourself if several seconds of excruciating pleasure is

worth an eternity of suffering in darkness and isolation. keep yourselves

clean for God. keep yourselves holy in the eyes of the Lord. resist this

temptation for His sake. and avoid the sewers of hell.

i shuddered to think i had been doing such a thing. and so often

i repented, confessed, pleaded, apologized.

"to lay on her back in a cowboy shack,

she said she wasn't afraid..."

dreadful. horrible.

i prayed for saturday to arrive: confession. i could be saved if i confessed all, and truly repented.

i apologized, through the amber of the confessional screen -- his hand massive-moving in a massive unfleshy cross.

oh, my God, i am heartily sorry

for having offended thee....

and i was heartily sorry -- but i was weak.

i am weak

i am a sinner

as it happened. again. in bed that night. and in the lavatory. and even in school, in class, as i watched her cross her legs, stretching her arms behind her head, her little breasts poking out; and she so proud of her ascension

and often, father

i touched them once, father. squeezed them. and she shrieked, father; but not very loudly. and they squished beneath my hand in her bra, all soft and oozing like dough

she turned red.

but still she was smiling.

BUT WHAT CAN I DO?

and i kissed her that afternoon, beside the garage. and felt them again. and felt all of her, against me like a snake. my mouth sucked her soft sucking mouth

i knew it was wrong.

i knew it then.

but what could i do?

what could i do when it felt so good but was wrong (and i knew it)?

father.

amen.

dear patricia --

object of my desire

object of my fantasy

who came to me at night in my dream

in a dream as the world rumpled in their bedsheets

and rolled in the dark

as she came to them too

coming to everyone at once

daughter of delight

seawater of the warm cosmic rod

fashioned to bless extravagant love

with a felicity of cream and curve and contemporary

achievement;

she came to me in the dark; and i sinned again.

AMEN

GO IN PEACE AND MAY GOD BLESS YOU.

thank you, father

SAY AS YOUR PENANCE, SON, ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN OUR FATHER'S AND ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN HAIL MARY'S.

All this will pass. Even this, too, will pass.

BUT IT DID NOT PASS.

i saw her every day. in class. at lunch. on the grounds with the wind blowing her hair as she sat on the swing, she sat swinging on the swing, her head thrown back, laughing, her dress billowing and she clutching it, pressing it between her knees, hiding her pink potencies, blushing, smiling at the other girls, embarrassed a bit, seeming to be embarrassed, but beautiful then -- beautiful -- and knowing it as the other boys watched her, they loving her too

but it wasn't love for me, father

it wasn't love for me when we sat and talked. not even when we kissed -- when we looked in to one another's eyes; and when we talked of love. i held her hand on the grounds as the others watched us. watching them watch me. we walked. we talked. a bout class. about sister mary olive. we laughed, wanting to be alone together so we could touch one another and she could stop me and pull-away as i reached for her, warning me with a smile that i was going too far

but it wasn't love for me, father.

how could it be love for me, father?

when it was an insult to God?

i never really liked here very much.

raymond smiled as we stood anxiously beneath the oak tree -- smiled, grinned, always-grinned, blushing light scarlet, his voice young, braking-out-loudly in feigned surety

"then one day by surprise

Her belly began to rise.

And out of her cunt

Came a cross-eyed runt

With his ass-hole between his eyes."

No, it was not love to me, father.

how could it be love?

when it lent itself so easily to sin?

to stories beneath oak trees sopping with sad filth?

it was revolting:

this constant circle of naked life.

constant. circle.

why does it have to be so?

father newton does not answer

father newton turns his back on me; onward he is pulled, like a weight upon a string, pulled down along the dark hall, ever-onward

ever-onward, ever-pulled: he is merely following nature's law.

and there never is an answer.

ALLHISTORIES.

so may tales to tell --

all --

life-histories.

all so-much-the-same.

all searching.

searching wisemen

searching as a fool searches

(searching for that one bright light

(for that starry light to guide us, ourselves, to an answer.) --

for any answer we might possibly believe,

wise-men that we are,

moving camel-wise on a tar-paper desert,

seeking the birth of a living-star

our own best natures.

but backward we travel in this longing to believe...this search... like water sprawling up a hill, spreading up a hill, toward some unknown summit, some hidden source, but slipping-back, always slipping-back, slipping-back

gathering momentum

for the final assault

to touch that truth

as time passes over (a great cloud).

forward...into the mouth of a tunnel (we travel in time)...from the light into the void...in blind-faith-forward...hoping as we go...yet clutching-back for faith...for reassurance...backward for recognitions...clutching backward in to history....

(in to the certainty of days and threats now gone-for-ever....

(in to resolution...

(in to a certain sense of accomplishment now buttressed by the years....

(which helps us now respond...

(which helps us now continue...

(continuing ever-onward...

(continuing to hope...

(as time passes over....a black-gray storm cloud...

(that is all....

(a significant threat.)

ALLHISTORIES.

what

where

when

why

how

and whodunnit.

(can i find something looking back in the ages?

(something heroic?

(can i touch the author of today?

(the author of me?)

-- as histories write the dialogue

-- of allhistories of tomorrow.

ALLHISTORIES.

of raymond: every-smiling, ever-laughing, ever-lasting picture-of-youth; ever-ending-friendship that died as he showed me my mortality: thrashed on the school grounds by a skinny-ernie mexican whose skinny-hands pounded that ever-smiling-face into a mass of blood and tears and mixed-belief. i left him alone: ever-lasting picture of futility. there is a Life -- there is a Death -- there is an Invincibility...? i left him alone, crying in the dust, groveling and bleeding, no-better than any other human-boy might be: i watched him finally taste defeat -- and i believe i taste it too. that was enough for me. every-ending-friendship which died a quick solemn death and never sought to raise its localhead again, from raymond's side, who became a stone, nor from my own side, who became a silent pond, incapable of moving, frozen by gravity

planets drift apart, you know

sometimes walking in arms like lads

other times wandering a river bank alone

seeking some golden entity bobbing along the shore.

everything changes.

we walk and talk;

but everything changes.

the sun can’t last for ever.

of patricia

of father delancy: tired, wretched, dying: who held my hand as we visited the hospital; who whispered in my ear something about long-life; i could not hear what he said (though I pretended to)

of father sullivan: meek, red-faced, every-young (he seemed), afraid

of father howard: who snapped and broke as i grew older; who snapped like a dry jagged switch; who broke as age crushed his tired hulk (which i saw, as i grew older)

AND ON THROUGH HISTORY --

AS FATHERS ROSE FROM THE INK

FROM THE PAGES BEFORE ME:

of father de smet

of father serra

of father carrol

of father marquette

of father cancer

of father perez

of father washington -- father of this book

of father peter -- father of this time

of father paul -- paul, who made him a god

of father-son -- who could not be a man

of father-of-all -- ever-father of ever-things

AS FATHERS SPIN FROM THE BLANKNESS

A PERENNIAL SHIELD --

IT UNFOLDS MASSIVELY ABOVE OUR HEADS.

of father the father of our daniel newman -- who wanted the best for his son. who felt he could fined it. who searched for it through the years (for me). who helped give me life so he could live-for-ever. whom i truly loved (ever-did, ever-do, ever-shall). who scarified himself for me. who was the author of me, the latest author of me; one of the latest authors of me

YET THE SEARCH MUST GO ON --

EVER-DID

EVER-DOES

EVER-SHALL

EVER WITHOUT END.

amen.

AMEN.

amen, sir.

AMEN.

goodbye, sir.

GOODBYE.

SON.

goodbye.

and he sees himself riding away from st. joseph's school. there never really was a last time. but this is still how he sees it. sitting in the back-seat beside a bag of books. his mother is turned toward him, speaking fast, excited, happy, her eyes choked with telling tears, her voice alive welcoming him home for the night. his father is happy, too, beaming-out a smile through his eyes though his eyes are trained on the road -- he sees them in the rear-view mirror. he laughs at certain times. he nods too, agreeing with the things his wife has been saying. they seem to agree on many things now

he doesn't hear all the things his mother is saying now. he barely sees the words flying through the car

he looks instead through the windshield

sees things flying-by at a panic-pace:

signs

buildings

colors

other cars blurring.

his mother's words too, but not as words -- instead as broken fragments. thoughts never finished

his father's words too, hearty canvases on which he is painting like an engineer paints. straight lines and bold conveniences. making life-time better for the world. being practical

but everything moves too quickly. everything seems so new. it all is unknown as the sun squints maniacally on the pane-darkened glass

and yet necessity.

necessity is something known. like a rose he can crush in his hand. feeling the soft petal. smelling the fragrance as the delicacy gives off a last sorrow

behind him he turns, looking through the back-window, looking-back as st. joseph's memorial remains: unmoved, untouched....the golden-dome, with the cross upon its skull, golgotha beneath its feet, proud like a perennial king....this fatality sketches-itself upon his mind, sketches-itself in to his certainty, like a sculptor might cut away rock to make a likeness, eliminating the elements that don't make it clear, and dogmatically representational. like a sculptor might cut stone, insisting that what is lost does not matter -- because it does not add to our clarity

this remains; it all remains, immovable, timeless, patient...

it remains: even as it begins to fade from his view, as it dissolves in to a dullness, a dizziness, a light fog....

and he is gone.

he is gone

but nothing in him has really left him. in entirety

he is like a tree standing in a soil. he can feel his roots go deeper to find the water. in him is some emergency. reaching in to the earth, thus, makes him feel less exposed

V.

With an air of calm gravity, Newman pencils the gravities in a small, unhurried hand into the log:

HOT GAS OIL -- 25/2

COLD GAS OIL -- 25/2

LCO -- 23/3

HCO -- 10/7

INTER REFLUX -- 19/9

DISTILLATE -- 58/2

-- gravities which he has not taken, which he hasn't taken in weeks, which he only estimates now, judging from the estimations of the earlier shift. No one has taken gravities for weeks, months, perhaps years. No one understands that these readings have any impact on anything -- they are just numbers in a log -- almost like dreams being transcribed shortly after waking -- accuracy doesn't seem vital. Perhaps it is the spirit of the thing that matters. No one cares. It is such a tedious task -- standing above the copper-tubing of sometimes-boiling, sometimes-placid produce -- prodding the glassy-topped-substance with sharp-ended instruments -- it is such a tedious task that now everyone, tacitly of course, refuses to do it any longer. Soon there will be some catastrophe (and everyone, tacitly again, realizes this -- of course no one speaks of it) -- soon something will happen and then everyone will have to resume taking the gravities (volume and temperature of the above connoted liquids), waiting perhaps weeks until the small-catastrophe has been dutifully forgotten, forgotten as all such catastrophes eventually are, before they can again begin to ignore this tedious chore, for which they are being paid, and paid well, as a matter of fact.

Finished with the gravities, Newman moves sluggishly tot he second-board, where he begins to record unit-readings he has gathered only moments before:

NATURAL GAS -- 16,065

FRESH FEED -- 124

SPONGE OIL TOWER -- 87

ABSORB DRY GAS -- 82

FUEL DRUM -- 42

GLAND OIL RETURN -- 36/9

MEDIUM FLUSH OIL -- 125

LOW PRESSURE FLUSH OIL -- 46

LOW PRESSURE GLAND OIL -- 61

SLURRY PUMP -- 89

DISTILLATE ON H2O -- OK

SECONDARY CARRYING AIR -- 22/4

SLOP RATE -- 10

CLARIFIED OIL -- 1/7 @ 185

-- he yawns as he writes; then he stops writing, stops yawning, looks toward the wall-clock over his right shoulder. Without noticing the time, he begins to write again, knowing that it must be some time around ten.

Pea-green walls surround Newman's bent-form, walls which record, moment-by-moment, second-by-second, that which Newman now records in the wrinkled, stained logbook -- for many instruments line the walls which surround Newman's bent-form. Intricate, exact, these instruments record and regulate the vital-signs of this industrial titan (the very things the workers supposedly do, although rarely do they believe it now). This is the Complex -- the Number One Boardroom -- where three men, simply by turning a knob or adjusting a lever, can control all the processes in this refinery which hundreds of workers are hired to do.

No one questions it.

That's the way things are done.

Newman writes lightly with his ARCO pencil: WATER TEMP -- 71º.

While on the wall, largely unnoticed, a thin arm trails a trace of ink, blue and translucent, on graph paper noted with a large stenciled heading WATER TEMP, along a delicate line which reads only a fraction below the light-red axis 73º.

But Newman doesn't care as he finishes his readings, only now becoming conscious of the voices droning, rumbling, at his right -- like men talking under water. Around a table, near the center of the room, sit several workers, some speaking, some listening and drinking coffee as the morning drifts away. There is always a feeling of dust on the men. Although dust is not allowed inside the Complex -- SANITATION IS A FORM OF SECURITY.

"Hey, Newman," a voice sounds off to the left, over Newman's left-shoulder as he turns to find it. Al Morgan fidgets as he studies the board. "Who you working with today?" he asks.

"Terry and Clement."

"Terry on the oil?"

"Who else? Clement wouldn't work it."

"When you see him tell him we're gonna have to raise the temp on the flue gas some time today. This afternoon at the latest."

"Is it in the orders?" Newman asks.

"Yeah, I'm sure it is."

"Well, he'll get it done then," Newman answers, slightly-peeved, turning away from Morgan. Why did he tell me that when he knew it was in the orders? He must know we'll do it if it's in the orders. Doesn't he trust us to do our jobs?

Pulling up a chair, he feels himself relax, growing sleepy again. Feeling lazy. Lazy way to make a living. Looking busy; always trying to look busy. Not much to do really. Don't put your legs up on the table.

"How you feeling today?" Clarke asks, looking at Newman with a lazy concern.

"Not worth a shit," Newman replies, smiling with a trace of embarrassment.

"Little wonder. You tied a donkey on your ass last night. I didn't think you make it to work."

"Pure instinct."

"You were blind when you left Whitey's. Did you have any trouble making it home...?"

"No. None that I can remember anyway." Except there was that cat, he remembers. I was accosted by a cat somewhere. Icy-colored cat, standing near a puddle. A huge-cat with fangs. I was lucky to escape.

"Hear you really tied your shirt in the wind last night, Dan."

Charlie Potts sniggers as he speaks. His teeth, huge against thick, soiled lips, cracked and almost too red for a man his age, push themselves in to the glare -- he slobbers a bit as he laughs. "That's becoming a real habit with you, ain't it? What'd the wife have to say about it...?"

"She didn't say anything," Newman replies. "What would she say?"

"I don't know," Potts recedes a bit. "My wife sure in hell would say a thing or two. How is your wife, anyway? Everything ok?"

"Sure, she's fine," Newman says.

"When's she due, anyway?"

"Soon. Very soon. Any second, in fact."

"You're gonna be Papa Newman any day now," Potts says. A bit kiss-assy now. "You'll never be the same, man. Never the same..."

Newman slips his hard-hat carefully off his head, letting it rest just above the knee, on his upper-thigh. Removing his hand slowly, the helmet slips, falling to the floor with a loud CRACCCCCCCCK and hollowed wobbling echo.

In the corner of his eye, Newman notices Morgan recoil at the sound like a hunted bird. The hard-hat rattles to a silence at his feet. Newman smiles -- enjoying the discord he has brought in to such precision -- the precision of somnambulists. He remembers Picasso's circus performers -- they remind him of the men in the Complex.

Newman picks up his helmet and places it on the table before him, his stenciled name-tag at the back of the hard-hat pointing toward him.

Daniel Newman.

Daniel from the lion's den. An exile in Babylon. Reading dreams and giving out the message of apocalypse.

Newman. New man. Definitely, he needs a new set of clothes. Where do I find a decent tailor in this town?

Namwen. Leinad. Part African; part Russian.

Leonid Namwen. A new name. A new destination.

That damn cat. It must have been a lion. It must have been a damn lion in its den.

Sinclair.

Sin -- the Babylonian god of the Moon. Of Night. Ruler of the Night. Of Hades.

Clair. From the Old French, cler, from the Latin clarus: clear or cloudless. Clear Moonlight. Astral moonlight. The substance of dreams, love, emotion and nightmares. Venus's trajectory. Saturn's grieving sacristy.

Sinclair is the lion's den. Although no one would suspect it, looking at the doughnut-dicks and cheese-heads in this Complex.

Al Frasier is frowning at Newman as he re-emerges from his reverie. Frowning from across the table. His sun-browned hands rubbing anxiously his ancient face, around the nose, below the eyes. A kind of sphinx himself, tortured by the sun into a wise man. He seems troubled to Newman.

"You shouldn't be running around with her getting ready any time now, Dan," he says finally. Finding it hard to speak. Hard to pass a judgment this way. His hands, knotted-together in a single fist, defend his mouth as he speaks. "The baby's due pretty soon, isn't it?"

"Yes," Newman replies. "Next month."

"You oughtta stay at home and be some help to her," Frasier says, a stern intolerance in his face. "It's a tough time for a woman, you know."

"Yeah, I know, Al," Newman replies. "But she told me to go."

Newman lies with a straight face now. His father has taught him how to fashion a poker-face for such moments.

Frasier sips his coffee glumly, lowering his eyes as he shakes his head in disapproval.

"You want some coffee?" Clarke asks Newman, changing the subject deftly.

"Sure."

"Good. Get me some while you're up."

"Me too!" Potts hollers wildly, too wildly in fact, annoying Newman.

Potts is laughing much too hard at Clarke's little scheme -- his skinny body shakes convulsively as he hands Newman his cup, winking awkwardly.

"Did you hear what that buddy of yours did last night?" Potts asks Clarke. Potts is propped-up on the edge of his chair now, poised on the edge like an excited child.

"Who?" Clarke asks, showing little interest.

"Holloman."

"No -- what'd he do?"

"He beat the hell outta some kid at The Flame," Potts says.

"That figures," Clarke replies.

"I guess some kid went in to the Flame," Potts continues, unasked, "and Holloman didn't like the looks of him -- so he told the kid to get out. He told him he didn't wanna drink in the same room as him. And the kid says: 'then why don't you leave?' You can't say that kinda thing to Tommy Holloman. So Tommy grabbed the kid by the coat, and whipped him around, and grabbed by the butt-end of his pants -- getting ready to throw him out. But the kid picked up his drink and hit Tommy right across the mouth with it. Guess it cut the hell outta Tommy's mouth. Well, he just went berserk after that. He just beat the holy hell outta that kid. Damn near killed him from what I hear. They said he was beating his head against the steps out in front until Ronny Martin stopped him. It's a lucky thing he did, too. They said he wouldda killed him for sure. He knocked the kid's teeth right out, banging them against those steps. I tell you, Holloman's one guy I never want to fuck around with..."

"Who was the kid anyway?" Clarke asks. "Was he from Rawlins?"

"Hell now. Some outsider."

"Well, that fucking guy is criminal. I've always like Tommy -- but he's got a couple screws loose. Always trying to prove what a tough guy he is. Jesus, there's gotta be something more to life than that. That's what he lives for: going to the bars at night and beating the shit out of people. What kind of life is that to live...?"

"That's not the way it is," Potts responds. "Hell, what do you know, Clarke? He didn't start that fight. I'll bet that kid started that fight. I'll bet he looked at Tommy with red eyes or something. Tommy don't have nothing to prove. He's already proved it. Everyone around here knows he's one helluva tough bastard. Most people around here respect him for it too."

"Most people are afraid of him," Clarke replies. "Fear isn't respect."

"What is it then?" Potts asks.

"What is what?"

"What is fear then -- if it's not respect?"

"Fear is fear -- what do you think it is," Clarke replies. "When people fear you, they sneak away when you enter the room. When people respect you, then cry at your funeral. Those are two different things, my friend. Two very different things..."

Newman hands Clarke his cup of coffee. He slides a second cup across the table toward Potts.

"You don't know as much as you think you do, Clarke," Potts says. And then under his breath: "You've always thought you were a pretty smart dude..."

"He shouldda stayed at home with his family too," Frasier breaks-in again, in his quiet, tired voice. "He should be spending his nights with his family -- instead of running down to the bar and getting in to trouble. So what if you are tough? It may mean something when you're sixteen. It don't mean much when you're fifty. Your family matters when you're fifty."

"You tell 'em, gramps," Potts says to Frasier, smirking a skittish smirk. Potts is about twenty-eight years old -- thin, not well-groomed. He has a weak sandy mustache up his lip and his hair looks like it needs to be washed.

Frasier doesn't even look over at Potts. He was really talking to Daniel Newman.

"There's only so much you can take of the wife and kids before you have to go out and get a drink," Potts explains to the room. Potts is beaming as he says this, as though he feels he has said something electric, something profound, something illuminating his true nature. Potts thinks of himself as a diamond-in-the-rough. Oh, he knows there is the roughness, the imprecision. But there is something akin to genius in him too. He knows this -- but very few suspect it.

Potts picks his nose with the little-finger of his left-hand.

"You know," he continues, "there aren't many places a guy can go around here entertainment. Especially since they closed down the Ruby Rooms, I mean. Hell, the bars are the one place you can go and do some relaxing after a day of working around here. After a day of being around you ornery cusses all day..."

"When you're older you'll wish you had spent more time with your family," Frasier responds, still ignoring Potts and his bottle-rocket energy.

"I never did tell you fellas, did I?" Johnny Virgil comes in, leaning forward, planting his elbows firmly on the table-top. "Back when I was a kid -- well, a few years ago anyway -- I was considered one of the toughest son-of-a-bitches in southwest Texas..."

"That was a long time ago, Johnny," Potts retorts, punching Virgil playfully in his swollen stomach. "You've slowed down a wee bit since then, old friend..."

"Don't you worry none, Potty Boy," Johnny says. "I can still handle myself. It wouldn't take but one hand to tie you in to a stinky pretzel knot, little boy wonder...."

But Johnny begins to cough as he says this, his round, furrowed face wrinkling-red with every huff and bark he takes as he tries to find equilibrium again. He struggles to control his breathing -- emphysema. He finally stops coughing, breathing in short spaces, his face taking on a glow of light scarlet.

"Yeah, you're a real killer, Johnny," Potts says, still a bit wary. "I'll tell all the women to look up their daughters in the attic until you leave town..."

Virgil smiles a bit too, a bit pathetically, as his spasmodic breathing subsides.

"I was talking to McCain's kid the other day," Virgil begins again. "I was telling him about the old Dodge my kid fixed up. Did I tell you about that, Clarke? Doug -- you know Doug? Well, Doug bought an old Dodge -- a '52, I think it was -- he bought it from Masson. It was a couple months ago -- I don't have any idea where Masson came up with it. Well, Doug paid thirty-five dollars for it. It wasn't worth a dry turd the shape it was in. All hulk. There wasn't no motor to speak of. No tires. but Doug went to work on it and had it running in a few weeks. Rebuilt the engine. A real beaut -- six cylinder. Brand new side-walls. Anyway, everything was working fine once he got it running until he took it out one night on the golf course road and got it up to about seventy or so and then everything went black in front of him. He couldn't believe it. He tried the lights again, only they were already on -- although they didn't seem to be on. Then he happened to look in his rear-view mirror. He noticed there was some kind of headlights shining behind him. But there wasn't no car coming up from behind. It took him quite a while to figure out what was going on. Everything was alright as long as he drove only about 60 or so -- but when he got over 60 everything went out in front of him. Do you know what it was? What was wrong with the thing? He finally figured out what it was. One thing he hadn't changed on the old Dodge was them headlights. The old ones seemed to work fine so he hadn't bothered to change them. But they were only sixty-mile-an-hour headlights. they worked fine so long as the car never go above 60. But when it did, when he got the car up to, say, seventy, the car would leave the headlights behind. That was why he could see the lights running about thirty yards behind him. So when he figured it out, he went out and bought himself some ninety-mile-an-hour headlights -- and now everything is working fine. Don't that beat all!"

Potts struggles to restrain his laughter -- rolling in his chair from side-to-side, pressing both hands against his own sides as his face tightens with a soiled merriment.

Frasier, too, chuckles steadily, his hands still covering his mouth, his eyes glittering in a quiet release.

Morgan also appreciates the story, smiling nervously as he glances from the board to Virgil, then back to the board again.

Harold Petty, boardman for the Reformer, has also heard the story: he tries to hold-back his laughter as he blows his nose into a wadded, off-colored hanky.

Ted Lemoine, distant and silent, stationed at the other end of the room, slides about in his swivel-chair: checking the board carefully, adjusting a meter ever-so-slightly; he is now on the phone to the Alky Plant. He has not heard a word.

"Don't that beat everything!" Johnny Virgil continues. "And you shouldda seen that young McCain. He was dumbfounded. He said: 'I didn't know headlight were made in ranges like that!' And I said: 'Hell yes they are Of course, all the new cars come with at least ninety-mile-an-hour headlights so you don't have to worry about nothing. As long as you don't break ninety while you're driving at night.' He's a gullible little bastard at that..."

"He's just too trusting, Johnny," Clarke says. "And too nice. Hell, he probably saw right through it. He probably was just trying to humor you, Johnny..."

"Bullshit! He is, too, gullible!" Virgil counters.

"Gullible -- and damned stupid, if he believes something like that!" Potts offers, still laughing merrily but now in control of his convulsions.

"Oh, he believed it alright," Virgil continues. "He wasn't trying to humor me."

"Huh," Clarke says, letting it die.

"That's damned funny," Harold Petty chimes in. "Damned funny story."

"Doug really did fix up that old Dodge, didn't he?" Potts asks. "I think I seen him driving it down on south side. Is it baby blue?"

"Hell yes he fixed it up!" Johnny Virgil responds. "You think I'd lie about something like that, Potter? Doug's a helluva sharp kid. There ain't much of anything he can't do with his hands. He's gonna make something out of his life, I can guarantee that."

"He sure can find his way around a machine," Potts agrees.

"Yeah, but that's not all he can do," Johnny counters. "Not by a long shot. He can do a lotta things. He'll do alright. He doesn't drink much. He's got a level head. He won't get stuck in a place like this, you can bet on that. He'll find something better than this -- thought I suppose there're worse things around."

"I hear C.I.G. is expanding," Potts says. "There might be something opening up out there."

"That's not what I had in mind, Potter," Johnny replies. "I mean in Denver or Salt Lake."

"That's like my Dave," Frasier begins, rubbing his raw nose with the knuckle of his right-fore-finger. Long, sunned, muscular hands. "He'll do alright too."

"Where is Dave now?" Clarke asks.

"In the Philippines now," Frasier replies. "He's been there for over a year. I think he'll be there right up until he gets his release. He seems to like it a lot over there -- that's the sense I get from his letters."

"Huh," Clarke says. "What's he gonna do when he gets out?"

""I don't know. He hasn't said much, one way or the other. I don't think he's given it much thought. He did meet a girl when he was in San Diego. I think he might be pretty serious about her. I don't know for sure. She's a real nice girl -- that's what he says."

"Does he want to marry her?" Clarke asks.

"I don't know. It's possible, I suppose."

"That's be a shame," Clarke says, standing and stretching, taking his cup to get a re-fill of coffee. "That's the first step down the road of....enslavement. Pussy-enslavement. Get you tied-down real fast. Make a lifer outta you..."

"Oh, I don't know if it's all that bad, Clarke," Frasier says, turning in his chair toward Clarke who is standing at the coffee pot. "there comes a time when everyone has to settle down. And Dave's had some time on his own. He's see a lot of the world in the last three years."

"Umm," Clarke says, smiling sardonically. "First comes the wife, then it's the house and the second car. The washing machine, and dryer. Then the new tv set. Then the kids with all their expenses. Then you have to send them to college. When you wake up one morning you discover that the banker has you by the balls. You don't own anything really. It's your name on the house; but it's not your house. The bank owns the house; the bank owns the car. The only thing you really own in life is your body and your time. But even that now belongs to someone else. If you don't punch the clock, all your accouterments will simply vanish. All the things that have defined your life, gave you meaning...."

"Accoutre what?" Potts asks. "You trying to make us feel stupid, college boy? Trying to make your big words put us down...?"

"Relax, Potts," Newman responds. "Big words are like big people. Big people use big words. It's a revelation."

"Well, maybe you're right, Clarke," Frasier says. "But everyone does it. Eventually. You know, Dave still writes about the old days in Little League. He still gets a kick outta some of those stories. I think those are some of my best memories too. All you guys, playing for your dad. Kicking the butts of those Rawlins' teams. Did you ever see these guys play, Johnny...?"

"Hell yes I seen them," Johnny Virgil says. "It was hardball heaven in those days."

"It sure as hell was," Frasier agrees. "Potts, you never seen how these two guys and their friends -- my son was one of them -- how they tore up the diamond. Best baseball teams we're ever seen around here. Won the championship five years running...."

"Yeah, I've heard stories," Potts admits. "They don't look like much now. An egg-head college boy and a wino wannabe..."

"Watch yourself, Potts," Newman says. "Or we'll have to eat you for our lunch. Even though you look and smell too bad to eat. Maybe we'll just flush you down the slurry pump instead..."

"You're not so tough, Newman," Potts says. "You're a poet wannabe. I head that about you. What kind of a man writes poetry...?"

"An intelligent one," Frasier counters, looking darts in to Potts. "You're an outsider here, Potts. You're from Rawlins. Don't talk about a Sinclair boy like that. We're not gonna like it..."

"Hey, I was kidding, Frasier -- kidding," Potts explains. "I got nothing against poets. Hell, I know he's smart. You can tell it just by looking at him..."

"Yes," Frasier continues his reveries, dismissing Potts like he might dismiss a fly at a picnic. "They were the pride of Sinclair then. The whole town was behind them. They'd drive in to Rawlins and play those teams and just knock the socks off their teams. They didn't stand a chance. It really upset the Rawlins people too. They really got where they hated Sinclair."

"Yeah, it was a lot of fun," Clarke says.

"They were good students too," Frasier says. "That was the way we raised them: to be good students and good athletes. To respect their parents. And to be good Americans."

"Hell, we're good Americans too," Potts says.

"Well, that's a point of question," Clarke replies.

"What are you, some damned lawyer, Clarke," Potts responds. "You oughtta cut your damn hair. Remember when old Holloman took you down on this here floor and cut your long hippie hair, Clarke? Remember that...?"

"Idiots must have their play," Clarke replies passively.

"You're calling Holloman an idiot, Clarke!" Potts responds, bounding up in his chair. "I'm gonna tell Holloman what you think of him...!"

"He didn't call Holloman an idiot, Potts," Newman comes in. "He called you an idiot. It was clear to me that he was talking about you..."

"You think I'm gong to take that from you, Clarke!" Potts cries, animated, his face turning a big blue.

"Calm down, Potter," Johnny Virgil comes in. "You've gotta learn to relax a bit. You're gonna pop a blood vessel in your brain if you don't learn to just sit quietly some time."

"They don't even have a baseball program here any more," Frasier says to Clarke. "Do you realize that?"

"Yeah. It's a shame," Clarke answers. "Apparently no one will take the time to get one going again."

"A damn shame," Frasier agrees. "It'd do the kids a lotta good to be part of some organized sport around here again. Don't you agree, Dan?"

"What?" Newman hadn't been listening.

"Don't you think a baseball program would be a magic stroke for the kids in town?"

"Yeah. Sure," Newman says. "It wouldn't do any harm. They don't have a program here any more, do they?"

"No one's willing to take the time," Frasier says. "I'm too old to do it."

"Umm," Newman says, pondering some memory. "Yeah, it used to be a lot of fun."

"You still play a little, don't you, Dan?" Potts asks.

"Nope. I haven't picked up a baseball since high school," Newman answers.

"Why not?" Frasier asks.

"It doesn't seem to interest me much these days," Newman says.

"Is drinking and chasing women more interesting to you now?" Frasier says under his breath.

"What was that?" Newman asks.

"Oh, nothing," Frasier says. "You know how I feel about you, Dan. You're like my own son. I just want what's best for you..."

"A man has to make his own mistakes," Clarke philosophizes. "The tragedy of the son is that he has to make the same mistakes his father made."

"No. That's the tragedy of the father," Frasier says. "Not the son."

Frasier rises from the table, grimacing a bit, and disillusioned, growing older by the minute, by the second. He shoves his hard-hat on to the crown of his head, muttering:

"I'd better get back to the beast. We gotta keep this place running somehow. Gives us life and gives us death..."

He leaves by the west door, passing Petty at the west board, muttering something more to Petty as he passes: he is gone.

Petty is smiling at what Frasier has said -- he turns back to the board, studying the readings carefully, as though they were idioms from the Book of Kings. His pudgy left-hand mounted delicately on some meter-knob, turning it slowly clockwise, carefully, he regulates that certain liquid which flows at such-and-such a rate through such-and-such a line into some certain tank or other not seen but know. He moves his chariot to the next gauge.

"Sentimental bastard!" Virgil mutters, cursing Frasier when he is gone. He smiles defensively. "One of the old gray-beard judges. That son-of-a-bitch can really be a pain to be around sometimes."

"He's alright," Clarke defends him casually. "He's just getting old."

"Hell, we're all getting old!" Johnny says. "But that's no reason to get all sobby like that -- all knotted up like a righteous old preacher or something. Hell, we all get old -- but what can we do about it! I ain't complaining. I've lived a full life. You can't ask any more'n that. I don't know what in the hell he expects, anyway. Does he expect to stay young for ever?"

"No, I think he wants us to stay young for ever," Newman replies. "I think his great sorrow is watching his children lose their innocence."

"What innocence?" Johnny asks, smiling a sinful smile.

"He's probably feeling he's wasted his whole life in this sump hole," Clarke says.

"Hell, he's just feeling sorry for himself," Johnny Virgil replies. "If he didn't work here, he'd be working some place else. If he didn't live here, he'd be living some place else. That's a fact of life. What does he want -- not to work at all? To be a lazy good-for-nothing like you, Clarke? You have to find joy in the little things. We're all stuck in a hole in one sense, no matter what we do. It 's what we make of it that matters."

"Stuck in a hole named Maria," Potts sings flatly, mimicking the song 'They Call The Wind Maria'. He smiles broadly, like he has struck gold.

"I didn't know your wife was named Maria, Potts," Clarke responds.

This sets the whole boardroom laughing.

Potts face turns red with distress. He has been upstaged again; just as the moment of what should have been a great triumph of wit. He doesn't like it.

"Least I have a wife, Clarke" Potts retorts. "Your wife is named 'five-fingered Maria'. Least I'm getting some cunny on a regular basis, boy."

"I've seen your wife, Potts," Clarke replies. "I think you're getting 'five-layered Connie' on a suffocatingly regular basis. I'm not sure I'd call it 'cunny' -- I think I might call it 'slash and burn'..."

"It's just like riding a feather-bed, Clarke," Potts replies. "Make your dick turn to butter and your head turn to cream, boy."

"Watch out you don't get lost in that creole pudding Potts," Clarke responds. "Big black salamander hole. Only a skinny white ass-crack sticking out, puckered-up, whistling a pathetic SOS: Slide me Oversized Suspenders, pleasssssssssssse...."

Clarke has again gotten the better of Potts.

But, this time, even Potts has to laugh.

Everyone in the Complex is roaring this time.

"Old 'five-fingered Clarke' is beating a crock pot tune with wooden spoons on someone else's cracked head, it seems" Newman says under his breath, smiling at Potts.

Potts is having fun now, because he's one of the boys. Laughing as one of the boys. It is better to be included as the brunt of a joke than to be excluded. Better to have people stand on you. Because then you're some kind of foundation.

The laughter dies too quickly, like a gust of wind. Then a kind of uneasy silence.

"It ain't so bad working here," Johnny Virgil continues his plaint. "I know everybody complains. It's their job to complain. It's the company line. But it rally ain't that bad. You gotta work someplace. And the money's good. There ain't much to the work. It may not be good enough for a College Boy like you, Clarke; but it'll do for the rest of us..."

"Sure," Clarke responds. "It's a great way to spend your life -- if all you care about is easy money."

""That's not all it's about," Johnny says. "There's more too. Raising a family. Giving life to your kids. That's what it's really all about. But you have to have money to do that."

"Yeah, you need to have some money," Clarke agrees. "But when that becomes all that matters -- don't you ever stop and wonder if there might be something more in life than just picking up a paycheck twice a month...?"

"What this, Clarke?" Morgan asks, approaching the table with a cup of coffee smiling smartly. "You lecturing us again on how we all waste our lives here...?"

Morgan takes the seat vacated by Frasier.

"I'm just saying that I hope there's more to life than just this," Clarke says.

"You'll let us know, I hope, if you find out there's something more," Morgan says, smiling warmly. He doesn't take Clarke's criticism seriously.

"Sure, I'll let you know," Clarke replies warmly, smiling too.

"Don't be too disappointed if you don't find nothing better," Johnny Virgil warns. "I looked around quite a bit before I settled here. I never found anything better than this myself."

Virgil takes a sip of coffee. The steam rises off his ARCO coffee-cup.

"You remember that youngest Gale kid, Al," Virgil continues, talking to Morgan. "Well, he got sick of this work too. got to think there was a big wide world out there to be conquered. So, one day he up and quite and took his family to Seattle. He got a job as a cop there. A couple years after he started he got arrested for burglary. Seems he was robbing certain businesses while he was working on the night shift. He'd just load things up in his car -- and drive them home at night, keep them in his garage. He wanted everything right now. He wasn't willing to work for things -- sacrifice to get what he needed. Whole damn generation wants everything NOW. He thought he'd end up on Easy Street -- and now he's doing graveyards up in a federal penitentiary now..."

"That's not exactly what I have in mind," Clarke replies.

"Yeah, maybe not," Johnny says. "But he was talking a lot like you're talking now. You have to have some modesty too, you know. Modesty actually is one of your best friends -- although you don't really get to know that until you get to be an old man usually. The Gale kid was smart too. And he thought he was too good to work with his hands. I've seen the same thing happen with quite a few guys -- smart guys too. They want a fast buck. They aren't willing to work for it either. That's what life is about for a man: work. A man who won't work isn't worth much, as far as I'm concerned."

"I don't have anything against working," Clarke says. "Or working with my hands for that matter. I just don't want to end up kicking myself every time in punch that damn clock every morning..."

"I can understand that," Morgan says.

"You know," Potts begins. "I knew the same kinda guy once. He did the same kinda thing. You remember Billy Collier. He papered the state with bad checks. We went to school together. Now he's up at the pen. He'll probably sped the rest of his life in and outta there...."

"You still got a couple of weeks vacation coming, don't you, Johnny?" Morgan asks over Potts, finishing his coffee.

"Yeah, two weeks," Johnny Virgil responds.

"What you got planned?"

"I've got to get some surgery out of the way," Johnny replies. "I've been putting it off long enough..."

"Heart?" Morgan asks.

"Yeah. I think they should be working on my lungs, with all the trouble I have breathing now."

"You oughtta stop smoking those damn cigarettes!" Clarke says.

"What?"

"Stop smoking those damn cigarettes!" Clarke repeats. "We've all got enough exposure to chemicals just living in this town. The last thing you need is to keep pumping that poison smoke into your lungs."

"You pump poison in to your lungs, Clarke," Potts responds. "We know all about you and that weed, Mary Jane, that you like to smoke."

"You're not gonna use vacation for surgery, are you?" Morgan asks. "What about sick leave? Just use your sick leave."

"I'm saving that in case there some complications after the surgery," Johnny Virgil replies. "I've already taken most of my sick leave anyway. Remember in the spring? It's a shame though. Me and the wife and Doug were planning on hiking back into Little Dipper and doing some camping for a couple of weeks. That'll just have to wait, I guess."

"Too bad," Morgan says. "How ha