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 have you been feeling anyway? Any better?"

"Not much," Johnny responds. "I still don't have the strength or stamina I used to have. I probably couldn't hike back into Little Dipper anyway, even if I had the time. But I don't like to complain. I'm getting older too. I hope this surgery will help a bit though, at least for my stamina. I'm taking a lot of naps now. I never took a nap in my life. Now I'm taking them all the time..."

"Yeah, well I hope it does you some good," Morgan says.

"Did I tell you what Hatch said to Polombo this morning?" Potts asks generally, hoping someone will be listening. "What a tickler! Polombo tried to get Hatch to switch a pump-main over on the crude -- it was about eight-thirty or so. And Hatch told him that he was busy -- but that he'd do it in a while. Polombo said: 'Well, it's pretty important. If you won't do it, then I'll just have to do it myself.' Hatch told him that if he so much as touched a vale he's report it to the union. I guess Polombo just about blew a fuse. He ordered Hatch to do it. And ole Hatch just looked him straight in the eye and said: 'Fuck off! I'll do it when I have the time!' Polombo stormed off like a gored bull moose I guess. He said he's was going to have a word with Bedford. Hatch just laughed it off. He isn't worried. Bedford won't do anything. That punk college bastard's gonna have to learn the way things are done around here."

"You still got a couple weeks left, don't you, Al?" Virgil asks.

"Yeah, in about a month in fact. The middle of September," Morgan says.

"Got anything planned?"

"Oh, yeah. It's that time again to make the trip to the big city."

"Detroit?" Johnny Virgil asks.

"Yep."

"You got family in Detroit?" Clarke asks.

"Nope," Morgan replies. "Gonna buy a new car. Every three years of so, the wife and I take the old car back and trade it in on a new one -- right off the line. We don't have to pay shipping charges; and we get to spend a week in the big town. It's worked out real well for us in the past. It gives us a chance to get away from here for awhile...."

"And check out some broadway plays," Clarke says, sarcastically.

Morgan does hear him. "It's the only way to buy a car, as far as I'm concerned. Save money every which way. l We've always got a real fair trade-in too."

"What kind you gonna get?" Potts asks.

"Oh, we really haven't decided yet. We'll just have to wait until we get there. See which one looks like the best deal."

"Umm," Potts says. "I decided that I'm gonna get myself a new motorcycle -- well, it ain't new. It's a used one; but it's in real good shape."

"You ain't gonna buy that Triumph of Martin's, are you?" Virgin asks.

"The 650?" Potts asks.

"That's the one."

"Yeah, I'm thinking about buying it," Potts says. "What's wrong with it?"

"He's been trying to sell that damn thing for better'n a year," Virgil says. "What's he got you paying for it?"

"I haven't bought it yet," Potts explains. "I'm considering it. He wants seven hundred for it. I've checked it out and it's worth at least that much. I'd be getting a pretty good deal on it really. If I wasn't getting such a good deal on it I might be a little leery -- but it's a real good machine.

"How old is it?" Virgil asks.

"Little over two years," Potts says.

"Umm."

"And it's still in real good shape," Potts says.

"Like I said," Clarke begins again. "It's the luxuries that tie you down. You start buying this and that -- the boat, the motorcycle, the trailer -- and, before you know it, you're knee-deep in debt. And then you can't get out."

"That's the American way," Potts replies. "What are you, Clarke -- a damn communist!"

"What makes you think I want to get out?" Johnny Virgil asks. "I told you: I'm satisfied with my way of life. But I could get out if I needed to. If I wanted to. All this crap -- it don't hold no power over me. It makes my life easier and more fun -- but I'm not attached to it."

"Clarke's just feeling superior to us," Morgan says, "because he thinks he's free to o whatever he wants."

Morgan smiles at Clarke as if to suggest that Morgan knows better.

Clarke smiles back confidently as he drinks his coffee.

"Well, that just shows how much he knows," Potts says. "Not too damn much. Hippie communist."

"You heard anything more about Merritt, Al?" Virgil asks. "His wife still in heat? Running around like a tramp?"

"I haven't heard anything," Morgan replies. ""I don't suppose much has changed though. She's a desperate lady."

"I wouldn't call her a lady," Potts says.

"Be careful what you say, Potter boy," Virgil says. "That might be your wife some day instead of his."

"My wife would never do that," Potts says. "She gets more dick at home than she knows what to do with."

"I guess that's why your dog seems so happy lately," Clarke replies.

Potts is smiling at Clarke again, unable to enunciate a come-back.

"This things is tearing Ted apart," Johnny Virgil responds. "There's no way to talk with him about it, though. What can you say to him? I steer clear of the whole subject when I'm with him. I don't even mention it. Can you image that kind of thing happening to your wife?"

"Not my wife," Morgan says. "My wife hates it."

"Yeah, that's what Ted used to tell me about his wife," Johnny Virgil says. "Said she used to refuse him for weeks at a time. One day he said he got off working a graveyard shift and felt so horny -- but he knew she'd be damned before she gave him any. He went to bed that day with a plan to get her over there in bed with him. He told me he hollered to her in the kitchen to bring him a glass of orange juice; and when she brought it in to give it to him, he just grabbed her around the waist and hauled her in to bed with him. He said she spilled the juice all over his head, trying to get him to let go. It was damn near like rape, Ted said. She fought him like a wildcat. He got what he wanted; but the next time he asked her to get him a glass of orange juice, she brought it in to the room, put the glass on a magazine on the floor, and pushed the magazine across the floor with a broom. She wouldn't even let him get near her. They even had separate bedrooms then. I can't figure out what happened -- how she became such a fuck-monster like that, almost over night. I wonder what made her change like that...?"

"It's hard to figure alright," Morgan agrees. "It sounds to me like she probably liked it all along. But maybe she never really liked Ted doing it to her. Maybe she didn't want to admit to herself that she liked it. Make her feel like a whore or something. And maybe she just liked to play games with it. There are a lotta women like that -- like to use the smell of their pussy to get what they want. If they give it away too easy like, they lose their power over you. They like to use their pussies to lead you around in circles."

"You ain't kidding," Johnny Virgil agrees. "I've known more'n a few like that myself."

"One thing's for sure," Potts adds. "She's making more'n a few men in this town pretty happy now, slapping it on 'em on a regular basis, from what I hear."

"Fucking slut," Johnny Virgil says, shaking his head. "It's driving Ted crazy. I'd leave her if I was him -- he doesn't have to put up with shit like that..."

"I don't know what I'd do," Morgan says. "It'd be a helluva painful thing to be faced with, especially at his age. Who wants to be alone at that age?"

Morgan pushes himself up from the table, letting both hands pass face-down across the breast of his shirt nervously. He fingers the butt-end of a pencil hooked in his pocket -- he is always nervous. Looking blankly at the blank faces at the table. He says nothing as he moves back to work, back to his station by the board -- back to looking at the readings. Getting back to business.

Someone moves for another cup of coffee -- Harold Petty.

"I'd better get going too," Potts says, replacing the hard-hat on his skinny pointed head. "Better make sure Hatch is staying out of trouble."

"So long, Pottsdam," Clarke says, beaming a bit, playing with Potts. "And don't forget to keep that dog of yours tied up outside when you come to work."

"Take a flying leap up a monkey's ass, Clarke," Potts replies. He grabs his crotch and pretends to toss cooties in Clarke's direction.

"You know," Clarke whispers to Newman as Potts moves away. "Old Potter really eats shit. I really can't stand that guy."

"Who? Potts? Oh, yeah," Newman agrees. "He's a worthless little jerk."

"Um, yeah, worthless," Clarke agrees.

Harold Pilgrim sits across from Clarke, his sleek stony face gazing intently into the empty expanse above and beyond Clarke -- daydreaming.

"Hey, Harold," Virgil begins again. "Were you working here when old Johnny Runyon was still around? Do you remember that old fart? Old slow-motion Johnny? Lemoine just told me..."

"What?" Pilgrim asks, swinging around toward Virgil.

"You remember Johnny Runyon, don't you?" Virgil asks again.

"Oh, sure. He's in Arizona now."

"He used to be," Johnny Virgil continues. "Lemoine told me this morning that Runyon died last night. It guess it was a hemorrhage of some kind. He wasn't that old really. Only a few years more'n me. I hadn't heard a thing about him in years."

"He was a real strange bird," Harold Pilgrim concludes.

"Yeah, he was that, alright," Johnny Virgil agrees. "But he was a harmless bastard. He never bothered no one in his whole life, I'll bet. I remember when I was working over on seven-eighty. It was quite a few years ago now. And old slow motion Johnny used to work the same shift that I did. He was a helluva strange fella to work with. He wouldn't say but about five words the whole damn sift -- talking in a kind of slow-motion style, like each word had to be shaped carefully before he let it come out in to air -- and most of the time he'd talk so damn low you couldn't hear what he was saying anyway. He was a funny guy. He used to tell me about flying saucers and alien beings from outer space coming to the Earth and assuming personalities of Earthlings preparing to take over the world after the year 2000. He said most of them were incorporating in the Middle East, taking Arab identities. He brought me pictures in one day to show me that they really did exist. Said he had a trunk full of books and magazines telling about all the positive sitings that had been made around the world. He believed in all kinds of strange things like that."

"A strange one alright," Petty agrees.

"And I don't know anyone who hated this place more'n old Johnny Runyon," Virgil continues. "He was always talking about that little nest egg he was putting away so he could get away from here and really start living his life some day. We all talk like that. But he really meant it. One day we were sitting up in the old boardroom on seven-eighty and he just sort-of casually mentioned that he'd given them his notice. I couldn't believe it. Said he walked right up to Woodhouse -- Bedford was in Houston, I think -- he went up to Woodhouse and told him to process him out. He was going down to Arizona and live the rest of his life in the sun. And he did too. Sun City, Arizona. A city full of old farts. Can't be much fun: a city full of old farts. It's probably quiet though. One less old fart than there today than there was yesterday, I guess."

"I remember the day he left," Petty says. "How'd he come up with all that dough anyway? I remember a rumor going around that he was a millionaire, in fact, and that he worked at the refinery to pay his taxes. Hell, with what he made here, that wouldn't even scratch the surface of taxes he'd pay on a million. But some people suggested he had robbed a bank somewhere, and hid the money away -- and worked at the refinery to let all the smoke blow away. Finally, he dug the money up out of an old tree stump and took off to Arizona."

"I think he made some money playing stocks or commodities," Johnny Virgil says. "I heard that rumor. I know he read strange magazines about charting the markets, that kind of thing. He was a good reader. I'll bet he read ten books a week. He was hungry for knowledge, that one. I sort of miss him now. I haven't thought of him for a few years at least. Now all of the sudden I see him again, standing in front of me. I see his ghost here, moving up in the Slurry Pump Room. Hanging out on the second floor with one of his Louie Lamour western adventure books -- or an explanation of Egyptian astrology. Yes, an interesting guy.."

"He wasn't no millionaire," Morgan comes in. "He was just real frugal. Remember how he drove that old Ford for ever. Never saw him buy a new car. That ugly gold Ford. He wasn't married, you know. Didn't have no responsibilities, except for himself. The place he lived in Rawlins -- he lived with Lemoine for damned near twenty years -- anyway, they didn't have to pay no rent, the way I heard it. The old lady who owned the property -- Esther Clause, remember her? She made a tone of money in uranium and jade -- her family owned the Jade Lodge. Anyway, she let Runyon and Lemoine live there for free. She had a thing for old Johnny, I think. So, all he had to do was to buy his food and his entertainment. Which, for Johnny, meant mostly books and magazines. He didn't have any vices from what I heard. He was raised as a Mormon and lived mostly like one, although he didn't go to temple.

"That don't sound much like living to me," Johnny Virgil interjects.

"No, me neither," Morgan agrees. "But old Johnny was a strange bird. He had some falling out with Lemoine, didn't he?"

"Yeah, some disagreement about politics, I think," Johnny Virgil says. "He never would talk about it though. They stopped talked to each other for about a year. But then, after a while, they got over it again."

"I've got a story for you," Morgan begins. "You've probably heard this Johnny. I doubt if you two guys have heard it. Petty probably knows it by heart. A few years ago, I was working on seven-eighty, on the Compressor Side, and I kept finding these little turds all over the place. For a while I thought some big rabbit was running loose in the unit. I didn't really know where they were coming from. No one did. Everyone found them over there -- but no one could figure out who or what was responsible for them. One day I went in to the locker room over there and I heard someone taking a shit in one of the stalls. But I could see under the stall from the angle where I was sitting. And the guy in the stall was shitting standing up. I couldn't believe it. I pretended I hadn't noticed anything..."

Virgil and Petty are both laughing out loud.

"I'd forgotten about that," Johnny Virgil says.

"I pretended I hadn't noticed anything when old Johnny Runyan came out, buttoning up his pants. But I could barely hold a straight face. I damn near laughed right in front of him. I don't know how I could hold it, in fact. Anyway, two days later, I was up on the seventh floor on the unit and I came up on that bastard Runyon taking a shit over the edge. I couldn't' help laughing. I laughed for about a week. He told me it was because he didn't want to catch any germs off the toilet seats. There he was with his pants down around his ankles, his greasy boots showing just the tips under his trousers, his ass hanging over the railing, grunting to beat the band. Can you imagine that! What a nut-job! I made him promise to stop dropping them over the edge anyway -- I told him I'd tell everyone if he didn't stop. I told him that if he kept hanging ten over the side, that some day Les Stevens was going to be walking under his holy perch some day and take a bb in the eye -- and then the shit was really going to hit the fan. I don't know what he did with them after that -- but they stopped showing up on the ground. He hid them real good after that. Some of us figured he started burning them after that. Picking them up in a plastic bag; and burning everything in one of the burners..."

"And you told everyone about it," Johnny Virgil accuses.

"Hell, yeah. I told everyone about it," Morgan says. "It didn't change the way anyone reacted to Johnny Runyon because everyone knew what a basket-case the old bugger was."

"That's funny," Newman says.

"And now he's dead," Johnny Virgil responds. "All of that -- and now the man's dead."

"Happens to us all eventually," Newman says. "Can't do much about it."

"Live well," Johnny Virgil replies. "I guess that's our only revenge."

"Yeah, whatever that means," Clarke says.

"Lemoine told me he wasn't very happy down there," Johnny Virgil continues. "Al said he really missed this place after he left."

"Ain't that the way it works," Morgan replies. "You spend your whole life hating something or someone -- then, when you lose it, you realize it was really the only thing you really loved."

"Well, he got bored easy down there -- that's what Lemoine said. You can only read so much. After that there wasn't much to do. Work at least keeps you busy. He even got a job as a janitor down there -- just to keep himself busy. That didn't seem to do much good. He didn't have many friends. Loneliness kills you, you know. Loneliness tears out your heart. And plants all kinds of tumors in your body. You gotta laugh. You gotta laugh the tumors right out of your system. Spit Death right in the eye. That's what you gotta do. Only, sometimes, it ain't easy."

"You got that right," Petty nods in agreement.

"Johnny used to write Lemoine a letter about four times a week," Johnny Virgil says. "He didn't have nothing else to do down there. Sort of sad. Makes you think a little different about retirement. May it wasn't such a bad thing that he died."

"Uhh, death's not good for anyone," Petty comes in. "Death is not good for small animals or children." He is paraphrasing a slogan about 'war'. He doubts if anyone will notice.

"I was talking to Ford earlier this morning," Petty continues. "I guess the union's position is that it's almost a certainty that we'll be going out later this year, probably in the autumn -- maybe late September. Negotiations aren't getting anywhere yet, I guess."

"What are you asking for this year?" Clarke asks.

"Same as always," Johnny Virgil replies. "More money, more benefits, more vacation...."

"You haven't seen the plan have you, Johnny?" Petty asks.

Virgil doesn't answer Petty.

"I think we're asking for improvements on the pension and hospitalization plans," Petty says. "And better dental too. I'm not really sure what the amounts are."

"They oughtta give us more time off with sick pay," Johnny Virgil says. "You know, I'm gonna have to use my vacation to have this surgery on my heart. Hardly seems fair..."

"Why don't you talk to Ford about it," Petty replies. "Maybe he can do something for you."

"Shit -- that cracker!" Johnny Virgil responds. "He's management's little boy-wonder!"

"No, I think you're wrong on that, Johnny," Petty argues.

"He's in Bedford's back pocket, as close as a turd to Johnny Runyon's pocket. He doesn't care about us."

"You're wrong, Johnny," Petty counters. "He does care about us."

"Hell, he's a golfing buddy with Bedford," Johnny Virgil says. "And his wife is one of Bedford's secretaries. That's a pretty nice arrangement for Hugh. Ford steps on Bedford's toes, and Bedford fires his old lady. Ford's not going to do anything to compromise his wife's job..."

"I think he's done a pretty conscientious job," Petty continues.

"Shit."

"The problem is," Petty says, "he doesn't have any real support among the workers. Everyone bitches; but no one's willing to get involved with the union. It's like the baseball program here in town. No one wants to get involved. We're becoming a nation of non-committal bastards. Cowards toward commitment. Remember two years ago when we let them cross the line every night to go home and see their lives? If we'd have offered some resistance then, roughed a few people up, and locked them in, they would have thought twice before they tried to cross our lines again."

"Sounds good, Harold," Morgan comes in. "But that wouldn'ta done no good. Beating up our friends would'a got us a better settlement? Is that what you're saying? Hell, most of those guys are our friends, Harold. How you gonna beat up your friends...?"

"You guys just don't take this serious enough," Petty responds. "When they start making money by doing our work -- then they're stealing bread off our tables. They're taking our livelihoods away from us. That's not the kinda thing a friend would do to you, mister."

"It ain't there idea, Harold," Morgan continues. "They don't have no choice in it. If they refuse to work, they just fire them -- that's all. They have to work too, don't they?"

"Yeah, well I say the only way to gain their respect is to forget that they're our friends," Petty continues. "When January rolls around, I saw we forget that they're our friends. Take something back for the working man...!"

"It seems kinda ridiculous to me, Harold," Clarke comes in. "To beat up your friends for a little more money. So you can buy another snow-mobile or something."

"It's not a little extra money, Clarke!" Petty counters. "It's a matter of principle. We have to show them that we won't stand for this kinda bullshit no more! They play it like it's a big game. They have to learn that it's a helluva lot more than that. We have to let them know that we'll do more than just roll over with our asses in the air every time they snap their fingers. Put the fear of God in them -- and they'll take us a lot more seriously after that. I like you're old man, Clarke. Jake's a damn good man. I wouldn't do anything against him. But I might bury a knuckle or two in that damn Woodhouse. I wouldn't mind putting some blood on that white shirt of his....."

"I didn't realize you were such a killer," Johnny Virgil comes in with an unbelieving smile. "Hot air is good for balloons mostly, Harold. You couldn't fight your way out of a paper bag. I saw you fight that Cummings kid a few years ago. Remember, when you were just outta high school, down at the Elk's Club."

"I was drunk, Johnny" Petty says, blushing. "I slipped on the ice. That kid sucker-punched me -- you know that."

"I don't see how you could justify beating up your neighbors, Harold," Clarke continues.

"I'm sure you don't, Clarke!" Petty snaps. "But you don't do this for a living either, do you? You're a college boy. You'll be back in school when we are busting our asses out here in the freezing snow. We don't do this as a public service, you know. The company is making a killing. We have the right to get what's owed to us. That's all I'm saying."

"I don't see anyone busing their ass in here," Clarke says. "Unless you can bust an ass by sitting on it too long."

Johnny Vigil begins to laugh at this.

Newman is laughing too.

Petty is perturbed. "If it takes a few bloodied noses to get what we deserve, then that's what has to be done. Your old man would understand it, Clarke. If they're willing to take our paychecks right out from under us then they should be prepared to meet some resistance along the way."

"But that's not really the point, is it?" Clarke continues, not giving an inch. "The real point is that no matter how many of your neighbors you beat up, you won't be able to influence the negotiations back in Chicago or New York or wherever they are held."

"No, I'm with Harold here," Charlie Evans says with a grin, pulling a chair up to the table. He sips his hot coffee carefully as he continues to speak. "We oughtta make them pay something for the extra big paychecks they'll be taking home. Maybe it won't do us any good; but at least it might throw a scare into them."

"It won't do any good," Clarke continues the battle.

"The hell it won't!" Evans responds. "It'll make us feel a helluva lot better. We won't be pulling down any wages -- so we'll need to be getting our pleasure in some other way. It's a helluva good feeling knocking the shit outta someone. You've probably never had that experience, Clarke -- you being a pacifist, flower-baby and all."

"I don't know, Charlie," Johnny Virgil gets involved again. "Just build bad blood. I'm too old now to be looking to build bad blood. By the way, did you happen to hear about old Johnny Runyon dying?"

"Yeah, Hatch was telling me about it," Evans says. "Too bad about the old bastard. I didn't know him too well though."

"He wasn't really that old," Johnny Virgil says. "He was only -- well, let's see. He was about sixty-two years old, I guess. Two years older'n me is all. That's not very old, Charlie."

"Shit, man," Evans responds. "You're the oldest bastard I've known since my grandpa. You can't even breathe anymore without a respirator."

"I could still kick your ass," Johnny Virgil responds.

"Yeah, if I was drunk and passed out from fucking your old lady," Evans replies.

"If you fucked my old lady," Johnny Virgil responds, "she'd beat the shit out of you for me. She beats the shit out of me every time I try to fuck her."

"That's because you can't find the right hole any more, Johnny," Morgan comes in.

"I found it on your old lady last night," Johnny Virgil responds.

"Yeah? That explains why she was calling the fumigator this morning," Morgan counters.

Clarke and Newman begin to laugh. Evans too.

Harold Petty is bored with the conversation. He would rather be talking about a manly response to the class struggle.

"Never can be sure when its coming," Johnny Virgil adds, with a sigh.

"What? Cooties?" Evans asks.

"Death."

"Jesus, man!" Evans replies. "What are you trying to do? Put a curse on me? It's too early to talk like that. I haven't had my third cup of coffee yet."

"What do you think about it, Danny?" Petty asks Newman.

"What? Death?" Newman asks. "I think that it's a natural evil."

Morgan laughs at this.

"Not death," Petty responds, impatient. "About the strike? About not letting the white shirts cross our lines come January?'

"Why do we strike in January anyway?" Newman asks. "Why not in June? The weather's a helluva lot better in June."

"Better time for fishing," Johnny Virgil says, chuckling.

"Better time for fumigating too," Morgan says to Virgil.

"Keep it up," Virgil says to Morgan, laughing. "And you'll be need an exterminator to crawl up your lily white ass, Mister Morgan."

"So, it's true what they say about you, huh Johnny?" Morgan asks. "They say you got ants and deer ticks crawling out of your pecker. They say that's why your first marriage didn't work out. Clarice got tired of having to pull out of the bugs when she was in church."

"You bastard!" Johnny Virgil says, slapping Morgan on the shoulder with his pair of gloves.

They are both laughing.

"I'm serious, Danny!" Petty won't give up. "Where are you going to stand on this?"

Newman's face grows serious. "I'm not going to beat up someone just to get a little self-satisfaction, Harold. I'll strike when it's time to strike. But I'm not a bully."

"No one's asking you to be a bully," Petty says.

"There'll be plenty of guys willing to shut them bastards down," Evans comes in. "Get Holloman involved. You guys heard what Holloman did to some hippie punk last night, didn't you?"

"Yeah, Willard was telling me about it," Petty responds. Petty is smirking.

"Who was the kid?" Johnny Virgil asks.

"No one knows. Out-of-towner, I think," Evans replies.

"He's a real killer," Clarke says to Evans. "I'm sure he won't mind joining you in January when you perform your little rites of self-acclamation."

"Big words from the college boy," Evans answers. "You've always got all the answers. It'll be nice when you go back to college."

"It'll be nice to get back to school," Clarke replies. "And get away from this place again."

"When do you go back, anyway?" Newman asks.

"Couple of weeks. Classes start the third of September."

"A little later this year?" Newman asks.

"Yeah. Something to do with the calendar," Clarke responds.

"We'll have to get together before you go back," Newman says. "I'm sure Wendy will want to see you before you go. Maybe we can have a barbecue or something. I'll let you know."

"Sounds good," Clarke replies.

Newman picks up his hard-hat, spinning it carelessly in his hands, props it carefully on his head again.

He is ready to return to work again.

"How's the wife doing anyway, Dan" Evans asks.

"Oh, she's fine."

Newman rises sluggishly from the table, checking his back-pocket for the wrench an gloves. Finding them in place, he walks noiselessly from the men who continue their endless conversation -- it is a dull buzz now as Newman's feet carry him away, a shallow drone which continually fades as he feels himself finally escape the circle. Going back to work again.

"Hey, Newman!" Morgan calls from his desk by the board. "You gonna see Terry right away?"

"I don't know if I will or not."

"Well, I can call his code."

"What do you want me to tell him?"

"Tell him he needs to raise the temp on the flue gas as soon as he can."

"Ok."

But Newman is not concerned with what Moran has just said.

He is not concerned with anything as he moves slowly through the Complex, into the window-sheltered office at the east-end of the building.

On the desk, amid the cluttering of paper, lie (somewhere) his orders for the day. He searches, his hands clumsy, bumping against the extra orders, until he finds the long yellow sheet with the blue ARCO letterhead -- this is meant for him. This alone, among all the other disfigured sheets of yellow paper, is meant for him. For him and Terry and Henry Clement. For them alone this is meant today.

He reads it slowly, struggling to find some power of concentration -- his eyes skim carelessly the carefully-constituted-page.

What does it all mean?

He reads it again, more carefully this time, struggling to comprehend the complicated letter-groupings: carefully constructed:

He understands.

8 -- 15 -- 72

780 UNIT -- WE HAVE BEEN PUMPING SLOP SINCE THE EARLY SHIFT ON 8 -- 13. THE TANK SHOULD BE NEARLY FULL BY NOW. CHECK CAREFULLY. WHEN THE GAUGE READS NEAR CAPACITY, NOTIFY THE BOARDMAN AND HUT THE MAIN TANK VALVE.

---------- IT IS GOING TO BE NECESSARY TO RAISE THE TEMP SEVERAL DEGREES ON THE FLUE GAS BOILER. REGULATE AT THE MAIN BOILER ON THE SECOND FLOOR. DO THIS FIRST THING IN THE MORNING!

---------- LAB IS GOING TO NEED EXTRA SAMPLES OF SLURRY BOTTOMS AND CLARIFIED OIL THIS AFTERNOON.

----------- ALSO, COMPRESSOR MAN -- WE'RE GETTING LOW ON HEAVY COMPRESSOR OIL IN THE COMPRESSOR ROOM. TAKE THE FORKLIFT AND RE-SUPPLY. GET THE REQUISITION FORM FROM THE SHIFT FOREMAN.

------------ REGULAR SCHEDULE.

LES STEVENS

Finishing with the orders, Newman moves from the cubicle, glancing back for an instant, toward the table he has left but moments before. Another form -- a light-brown work-shirt with his hard-hat propped backward -- has taken his place.

Newman thinks nothing of it. He leaves by the north door.

In the calm blue summer air again, beside the unpaved road as a company truck rattles by, Newman shakes himself awake, breathing-deep the calm summer cloudless blue outdoors. He feels his wrench again, sure again that he has not forgotten it.

Alone-again, ready to accomplish any task set before him, ready to contend with any complication which might arise, he steps-quickly, quickly slipping back into the huge waiting labyrinth, 780.

The huge waiting smoking stinking steaming all-pervading labyrinth -- which unfolds all around him.

As he enters once again to play the game.

VI.

............................................................................

Still lllloooonnnngggg and slow to him drags-on nearly-for-ever-dying-day, now eleven-thirty-seven, as he looks at his watch for the first of several times, not to see what time it is but to see how slowly it drags-on with his knowing it as he watches for several split seconds the long skinny hand lurch clockwise in several split spasms until he again returns it to his front-shirt-pocket, left-breast, which he fastens again, his right-hand grappling for an instant with the tiny button, which he finally secures much to his indifference and then proceeds in strides long but weighty across the unpaved-road to his station of work -- through the dust, through the dust, each foot sliding, each following the other's lead, on to the concrete with a thud and a burning in his feet which is slightly but still pleasant as he grimaces (the tiniest bit) and it faces quickly in to the usual comfort (the custom) of dulled-sensation, of no-sensation, which seconds earlier had been a tingling and a burning though only for an instant while fading constantly (it was) -- as the thuds continue above the concrete below the hulking shadow which he feels surround him completely though his head slouches toward his chest in a pose of thoughtfulness or fatigue perhaps and his eyes drop to the concrete in a swift descent, watching his feet sluggishly-in-motion, carrying him on, back to work:

he stops.

He stops and stands.

But neither wishing to stop nor knowing why he should, at this-very-moment, this very moment no different than any-other-moment, which finds him standing motionless with bowed head silent below the clash and hiss and heat of this very-mechanical-creator -- this amazing Olympus, webbed in steel and rust, which opens wide and welcome its dark-clouded many-gates-of-welcome to this only-one-of-many-human-gods Daniel Newman with knitted-brow and hands deep-in-pockets and dragging-feet heavy and slow who plods about these gates uncertain and unsatisfied yet unconcerned above all else with this own dissatisfaction -- he steps onward, returning to work, unconcerned again, as always, about this always-perfect-sacrifice, himself, offering himself again to the god of some incontinence, as time races, as Clotho holds a knife above a well-woven picture of Real Time arching above the world like a cat arching its back. Time arching its back. Time washing itself off in an oceanic stream. Saline and fresh together. Washing itself off; human cells being washed off the back of some animal goddess. Looking very much, a naked bather, like Newman's own wife, Wendy, before she had become large with child.

He thinks nothing of it.

He is back at work.

Dullldddday this last-working-day of the passing-work-week which spins in a silent frenzy like some silent-spinning-wheel, which Newman barely feels escaping as he shifts into the middle-morning-dew that swims always-thick through the main pumprooms and shuffles toward the blackened-coffee-pot which bakes always on the steaming slab above the heating-steam-pipe -- slightly sweating at his forehead's top, just below the hair's front-roots, fragile wet drips merging into drops at which he swipes with his left-hand clumsily, grazing only a few above the right-temple as he jars quite accidentally his hard-hat which teeters backwards only for an instant (until he captures it (quickly) with that same errant left-hand) -- pouring coffee with his steady right, like syrup it is, smacking-thick into the well of his dirty ARCO cup, black amid the wallowing grounds which have sifted casually through the gaping pot (and have dropped casually in to his dirty cup) -- New drops casually on to the now-warm, long and thin steel-bench disturbing only slightly the black liquid in his hand as his thoughts begin to wander, wandering near-to-far and back -- loosely -- like flies on a watermelon -- from chores to times-ago-and-back -- little continuity and almost no concentration as he sips without tasting which must be his fifth cup of August-fifteenth-early-morning-coffee with a slight twisting and a smacking of the lips....

But he seems, as always, to be brooding -- brooding moody-man of twenty-five is tired as he slouches on the bench in that sacred daze without concentration or thought of what might be if not for this -- he watches with vacant-gaze the tiny pecks trapped in the black morass, trapped it seems to him, struggling to be free, struggling to rise above the sucking mass, failing, becoming more-hopelessly entrapped as the struggle endures, and the panic increases; but the struggle ends quickly, with one final gasp, as they are carried senselessly and finally into the pit of this thick blackness, to their final-resting-place at the bottom of this dirty coffee-cup -- with a deft movement, deft and fluid, his upper-body bending like some slight-blown-cape, he reaches long-armed across the corner of the room, reaching with his right-arm, the almost-full coffee-cup in his hand, reaching beneath the hot-plate, reaching above the sludge-drain-in-the-floor when he pours the steady stream of coffee feeling n-little-relief that now, the act being completed, he won't have to drink such a vile disgusting potion which disappears quickly into the black-sucking-hole at his feet....

He relaxes.

He stretches-out his legs, feeling somewhat better now.

There are things to be done, he knows; there are things to be done for the benefit of society (for the benefit of this refinery, he knows) -- important things, he tells himself -- many-important-things to be done by him. He laughs at this -- (he chuckles lightly to himself with a bitterness). He finds himself laughing at the proposition That Anything He might D For Or In This Corporate Machine Might Some Day Be Deemed Important By Somebody Else -- Might Some Day Have Importance For Himself -- Might Some Day Have Importance For Anyone Else At Any Time In Any Place For Any Certain Or Soon To Be Specified Reason Or Eventuality. He laughs at this. He laughs at this realizing the ridiculous, realizing these conditions which he now (now for some four-odd-years) quietly abides, and realizing their inherent unimportance -- (anyone could do what he does now, to which he has dedicated his life) (seemingly) -- and knowing for ever, knowing since he first came to work and never-now-wanting or being-able to believe that some day something in this might change -- knowing that in this there is Nothing: Nothing of importance: Nothing of meaning: Nothing of value to be seen nor possessed: there is in this Nothing for Daniel Newman: nor has there ever been: nor will there ever be -- but he also knows, or at least believes that he knows, that he has known or at least believed that he has known for at least some-several-years-now, for at least some-several-more-than-four-years-anyway-now, that Nothing is All, that Nothing is Everywhere: that Nothing is Enough -- that is has to be Enough: Nothing: to be accepted and forgotten, as one accepts a mole, forgets a mole: as one accepts his birth, forgets his birth and simply passes-time-here patiently on earth: The Condition of Man: and there's nothing to be done about it (he believes): he believes that he knows -- (but what there is in all this, what there is here-and-now, what he felt he had needed so desperately those four-years-before, and what he accepts now quietly (patiently) (though never-now does he believe such a thing) though with much-occasional-discomfort (even repulsion) is a sense of corporate meaning, a feeling for the tactile, a belief that there must be something to life, there must be something which can be touched, which can be molded, which can be felt to have life, something which supplants idea and theory, where self-sacrifice can be attained and is admired as a presentation to those age-old-tangibles of wife, child, and community; the corporation -- the form of the body in which Life moves -- as the old-skin-of-doubt is exchanged for the certainty and security of custom and responsibility: what there is in all this, what there is here-and-now, what had seemed so attractive those several-years-ago, is the opportunity to relax, to forget, to retire for a while from that frantic search for WHY: to retire for-ever if that ever can be done -- what there is in this is the opportunity to establish-oneself-finally in a life to be lived for the benefit of several-certain-people: and several-certain-people other than one's own self)....

He rises anxiously fro the bench.

Through the hot-pumproom, moving at an even-pace, odd-even, even-odd-pace, slipping between the clashing and the sliding and the whistling of the fuming steel many-sweating workers, stopping for a moment at the build's end, a the shelf near the door, where he grabs two small gold-bronze but oil-stained buckets in which he will fill and then tag the two required samples for the lab -- he steps in to the sunlight, squinting a bit though he looks for an instant directly in to the golden bulb, blinking in to the sun, the flash of golds and reds and blues (rainbowing in his brain) until his eyes begin to ache and he moves toward the several tanks to the left of the Compressor Building, north of the hot-pumproom at the back-door where he has seconds before just finished exiting -- (long and round they are, as) he weaves his way through the collection of gray, through the ever-erect-display of tubular containers solid though aged and defaced by touch beneath the surly gaze and heat of the squinting noon-day-sun -- he moves past the concrete tubes where the fluids seem to wait, where they are stored indefinitely, it seems, ready at any moment to come bursting-out) -- he stops beside the largest (at least which seems to be the largest, it being the closest) where he drops to his right-knee and grips two small valves which lie just beneath the tank's bulging belly -- he twists the valves with a certain difficulty; as they resist a bit while being turned while being turned slowly until finally acceding as they open-fully and the fluid begins to ease-itself consistently though with little haste into the bucket at his feet which Newman will label at some time CLARIFIED OIL as the foam rises to the top, rises over the top, as the bucket is filled and Newman strains to close the small resisting squeaking set of valves...

He sets the bucket by the open-door of the pumproom.

Moving-on toward the Slurry Room, a building square and squarely re-bricked, situated just-across from both the pumproom and the Compressor Building, quite a bit closer (several feet) to the latter -- Newman walks beneath myriad pipes and lines and oil and tar as he stays on the boards which lead to the back-door and, just inside this back-door, which is now propped-open-at-the-base by a mud-covered cinderblock, propped-up itself creating a fifteen degree angle with the intent of letting-escape intot he building some of the ninety-degree outdoor-heat in the hope of cooling-off to some degree this sweltering Slurry Pump Room which is nearly unbearable to Newman as he holds his breath and enters the building silently -- and just inside this back-door, to the left as he enters, standing obese and filthy, glistening from the oil and the greast of its own hot breath, like a slobbering grimy giant miling from the recess of this smoldering hell -- there stands the infamous Slurry Pump -- a boiler of sorts though never-named-such, under which Newman stumbles, can-in-hand, squatting in the breathless air as he opens the valve and the steaming Slurry Bottoms trickle with agonizing timidity, as Newman struggles to breathe, into the black sticky steaming breathing bucket....

The heat rises like a flame from the rim of the bucket.

Newman reaches blindly toward the small sludge-crusted-valve, groping in the heat, finding it, closing it quickly, then lurches from the building with the half-full-sample in-hand. He feels the sharp coolness once again of the opaque outdoors where he stands and he breathes and he looks-about breathlessly.

Rising stiffly and slowly, like the serpent to the flute, stretching his back carefully, his shoulders, his arms in a wide-backward-arch, as the joints crack and pop and his neck twists involuntarily, first to the right, then to the left -- Randall Terry watches with little interest the temperature-gauge beneath its blue-glassed-face on the Flue Gas Boiler which he has attempted to regulate in hopes of raising several degrees the temperature reading as he has been ordered but of which he cannot be certain at present since it will take a certain amount of time for the change to be evinced and then be recorded by the sea-faced-dial which he watches now for no-real-reason as he yawns and stretches again and places both-hands nonchalently with fingers interlocked on the peak of his hard-hat and moves aimlessly about the unit's second-floor, retaining this pose as he goes, slipping behind between around this boiler and that, this reboiler and that, looking for nothing really as he passes the time slowly, elbows at his ears, his fingers drumming a ragged tune upon the shell of his ARCO safety-cap....

He stops at the railing, leaving against the barrier which hits him (one bar, that is) at the waist and the other bar) at mid-thigh, letting his arms drop lifelessly to his side, his hands brush carelessly the top-rail -- he wishes for an end to this day of dull-work and time-passing which finds him sleepily nearing thehalf-way-point as he stares through the inter-iron-workings toward the higheway which leads-away toward the mountains-beyond where he will be in several-hours-time with his son and his wife in the cabin by the lake for the weekend with his family for enjoyment he believes....

So much disappointment now after so many hopes and plans for his only-son-Randy who was the spitting-image of his father and who offered so much and promised so much with his youth and to whom the future belonged, at least for a day: who could carry the Terry-banner and accomplish all the things that his old man never had the time or thepatience or the opportunity or the talent or the money or the education to do....but then that night, days-ago it seems though really years, when they called him to the Complex and the stoic foreman with fronzen eyes told him in a dead quiet harlequin voice that something had happened had happened at the Shell station in Rawlins: an accident: he must go quickly....

Below him, directly beneath him, washing his hands at the wall-faucet, taking his time, stands Daniel Newman, hard-hat pushed-back on his head -- Terry slips nosielessly from the railing, through the many-belching carefully-strewn obstacles, and finally in to the second-floor-boardroom which was no-longer-used (now that the Complex was operative) except as a headquarters of sorts for unit-operators on 780 where they can relax when not too busy and talk and rest and even close their eyes when reasonably careful for the foremen usually regard this area as off-limits to all and even all-imagined ranks of authority, a place reserved for laborers-only and their leisurly alibiing, goldbricking, petty diatribes against the management, reading and theplaying of games, and, even, though they would never encourage it, even admit it, the resting of one's eyes (for a few minutes) when fatigue becomes overpowering and can no-longer be avoided, but which is used by Terry now to fill a dirty-cup with water from the tap behind the board, which he does (quickly) and then hurries-back quietly tot he railing behind the voilers above Newman where he ppours with steady aim and hand the cool murky liquid which rushes from the cup in a steady urgent stream and tumbles (head-over-heels) along the preordained path which it splatters in tiny bursts against the green plastic shell on Newman's head as he leaps surprised and bewildered as it struck dead by a jet of liquid congealance....

"Terry, you asshole!" he hazards in an uncertain voice, a smile loosening in his lips, broad yet alert -- as he scans the railing above, expecting at any moment, from almost any angle, the invader Terry to emerge, an indistinct blur, and fire, without warning, a second dangerous-charge from his advantageous position....

But Terry isn't there (can't be seen) -- no-longer at the railing, Terry has hastily retraced his steps back in to the boardroom and taken the stairs down tot he main-floor where he passes innocently several fee fro the craning Newman with a cordial greeting and a straight-face which he finds difficult to maintain as Newman starts, grinning, and retreats several steps as he gropes blindly for the wall-faucent in a frail attempt to defent himself from Terry.

But Terry is now unarmed.

"What the hell's wrong?" Terry asks, still serious, still innocent.

"Some bastar's pissing off the unit again," Newman says with a smile. "And he damn near hit me."

"Clement, huh? That bastard's a menace!"

"Who else could it be? I thought we'd cured him the last time. I guess we'll just have to report him to Bedford again."

"I suppose -- the piss-poor narcolept. It'll be for his own good -- in the long run. You know, he's been doing some pretty crazy things lately..."

But Terry can retain this pose no longer as he begins to snicker and his eyes begin to glow in tiny moisture-pools as his hand rises to his mouth to cover somewhat the signs of his guilt and his delight.

"He must've hit you with some of it though," Terry concluses, laughing. "You still got some on your hard-hat..."

"Pecker."

And Terry turns to leave, laughing-now-aloud as Newman joins him in laughing and turns to the wall-fawcet, turning on the spigot as he grabs and upturned tin coffee cup that is drying on a dirty wet dishrag, filling the cup as quick-as-he-can and tossing the half-a-cup of water toward the receding Randall Terry who is looking back over his shoulder judging without panic the receding range of his own vulnerability to retailiation. The water falls in a tick lump about a foot behind Terry's leisurely boot-fall as Terry waves an untouched wave of the victor -- the two part, Newman back toward the hot-pumproom, still laughing to himself as Terry, moving toward the Slurry Room, toward the shadk beside the Slurry Room where he in all probablility will once again smoke-in-secret, squatting in the corner dark with no light nor window behind the idle bulky pumps, another cigarette though it is forbidden by the safety-rules which nearly everyone who smokes disregards without much fanfare as a rule formulated only-for-those who fail to exercise proper care as to where and when and how-well they disregard this rule -- but Terry stops, still chuckling aloud, and asks Newman casually:

"You eat yet?"

"Uh-uh. That's where I'm going now."

"I'll be with you in a couple of minutes," Terry says. "Why don't you go on up to the boardroom -- my bucket's already up there."

Newman nods as he shuffles out-of-view with hands woven tightly into blue-demin fore-front-pockets where they move-about mysteriousl: large clumps with knucles against the blue, fingers moving-about too, curiously individual above his ample groin, tapping a bit, rubbing a bit, scratching a bit in rhythmical stacattoes though he draws them consecutively from their pouches in smooth consecutive withdrawals in the hot-pumproom where he grabs from the table (in his right-hand) hus lunch-box and (in his left) a piece of newspaper which someone has left near the salt-shaker in apparent absent-mindedness which could be dangerous since no material for reading is allowed through the main-gate with the penalty of possible suspension being reserved for such a heinous transgression. But Newman isn't worried as he carries the newspaper with his lunch-box up the stairs into the boardroom empty now of all human hibitants which he appareciates as he drags-up a stool to the metal desk in the room's center which will act now as a lunch-table and begins flipping through the newspaper.

Darwing the mint-smoke slowly into his lungs, suching strong and steady, savoring the flavor with eyes shut paritally in the shadows behind the silent bulky pumps, Randall Terry relaxes with his fourth cigarette of this half-over working-day, thinking about the mountains and his son and their trip-away-today later through the foothills in to the rockies up to Sand Lake and their cabin and the trees unending behind the wood-pile alone with his son and wife away from this job and town fore-ever for a day (or two) (at least)....

He stirs a bit on the floor, rocking on his ass from cheek-to-cheek, seeking a center-point-of-comfort which he thinks he finds ans nother puff is pulled from the tobacco and he leans-back resting his back against the col wall which he doesnt' see but feels square against his square shoulders as he scoots forward a bit and lets break and fall from the cigarette a section of ash upon his lower-thigh just above his bent-knee which he lets cool and then rubs with his left-hand's palm in to the fabric where it dissolves into a stain, into a dust, into nothing: nothing, not even a slight stain of a stain: not even a memory of a stain: nothing to be used against him as evidence of what once existed -- it is destroyed (this memory) (this physical memory) as Terry destroys it further, the smoke about his head like a crown in the dark, floating in the dark, into the dark anonymous ceiling where it dissolves even further as Terry continues to destroy it, silently, thoughtlessly, remembering many-things-vague though failing now to concentrate, failing now to specialize, failing now to remember things: his thoughts turn once again to his son and the accident and that night at work when he was gold to leave, to go, to the hospital, to energency where his only-son-Randy lay silent within stained bandages while nurses rushed-about calling for doctors-in-white-gowns to perform surgery which he couldn't understand or accept as someone spoke of exploding-gas-lines and the station up in smoke and Randy standing near, then aflame, and someone near (Bob Eaton) rushing the flaming boy (the human torch boy) and covering him with a coat as the station burned, squeezing oxygen from the boy's burning skin and breath, holding tight the live coal who but seconds before had been the laughing boy flesh-from-flesh of Randall Terrry himself, smiling and talking in a voice that was Terry's own voice, smaller surely, but destined for largesse -- and sirens screamed above the bursting glass and the muffled bombs insdie the building but he seeing only his only-son near death with frizzled-hair (no-hair really -- dusted scalp on a spit) and crinkled-skin wet and red with sores and his face running liquid pustules as his wife clutched his elbow, shaking, speaking probably, though uncomprehended as helplessness clutched Randall Terry in a panic, rendering him deaf and mute, rendering him motionless, paralyzed, locked in a hellish world of sound magnified inside a weakened body veering abruptly toward a fainting blackness....

He crushes the butt in a spark against the sole of his boot -- in a hisssss and a scratch and an acending line of smoke that wafts for an instant and then pours upward in a frenzied though graceful flight like an exhaled-breath -- which it is, in a manner of speaking -- disappearing into the darkness above as Terry rubs the remains in to a silent smokeless corpse which he fingers thoughtlessly, slowly spinning it clockwise between his thumb, fore- and middle-fingers, as has over the years become his habit -- uninterested, his eyes unable to focus evenly, like some man who for too long has slept, only now to awaken, his eyes wide though confused, not so much with what they see, but especially confused with how they see it, the content of his conduct, as it now looks very-much-the-same as it probably always has, yet feeling somehow different, in much the same way that a child looks upon his own house at thirteen with a much different eye than he did view the same bricks and mortar and smiling mother and father's long agile discontent when a captive child only six-years-old -- it, too, feels alien now; something has changed; something inside the sap of the tree has been boiled once too often, chafed, bled, ingrained with feeble imaginations, punctured with nails, punctuated by savage thunder and ligtning salvos, bruised, bullied, threatened with extinction, forced to witness executions, near-executions, the stumbling of loved ones, failing once or twice to free itself from soil, mocked by birds, scorned by German Shepherds, inheritor of worms, nothing more, nothing less: yes, it seems to have lost its substance, its boundaries; and all that seems to remain is the loose outer-covering which seems to shimmer and glow and move constantly in barely-perceptible-movment; it is as if he is seeing something for a first time: a wall of light: a skin of something reflecting something but nothing in itself, a merciless void, behind which something demonic or traditionally absurd must be lurking, turning a hand counterclockwise, confusing everyone's vision. But he knows this isn't true. Trance-like, he stares from the shadows into the glowing-light and the colors soft-yellow and rust, though unable to concentrate on anything solid, on anything other-than the glow and the light and the too-rapid-movement which his eyes search to find, search and shift, shift to find, race and flow, through the glow as though enraptured by the site, as though mesmerized, below the bare yellow lightbulb -- until he shuts them forcefully (his eyes), until he bangs them shut like heavy doors, and tries to shake himself awake -- he rubs with his thumb and the first-finger of his left-hand the closed-lids in circular massage, trying to clear his thoughts, trying to focus his thoughts on e one coherent form or idea -- he opens his eyes again to focus, to concentrate, which comes quaite naturally, on the silent green pumps unused beneath the yellow bulb. Could it be that the world is a puppet-show; and our eyes are really mirrors which reflect this light-show endlessly?

He pushes himself, with no-little-effort, up from the floor on to his feet where he stretches stiffly his cramped joints, dropping the smokeless cigarette-butt, using his right-hand, into his left-breast-pocket -- he slips from the building (feeling again very little appetite) and moves toward the stairs toward the boardroom toward lunch as he hears faintly, beginning as a slow moan, the twelve-o'clock-whistle, which bloossoms into a full low groan which seems to match his mood and which seems to swallow-up the entire refinery which he has felt and heard and smelled and tasted, along with the dirt and the gasoline ghosts, for too-many-years now too-many-more than he would like to admit as he moves unimpressed toward his lunch and the old boardroom, toward men he doesn't know but has seen flickering nearly all his life, toward momentums that have all been lost. Dry: like Sugar Creek.

Newman hears again the noon-whistle wobble in the air for several seemingly-endless-second though this does't concern him as he turns from the sports-page to the back of the Daily Times beside the comics to the crossword tucked-in beside the last acknowledgment of Ted Robert Standeen where he folds the paper (along the middle-fold) and takes from his pocket his dull-pointed green-dinosaur-pencil (which is left-over from the Sinclair-Days but which now has been stamped just below the dinosaur in an attempt to deface the stencilled Sinclair Refining Company in letters huge and blue with a shining white border: ARCO, with the ARCO emblem of a SPARK trailing at a short-space the O which also is huge and glistening (it seems) like a diamond of blue which is gaudy and unattractive against the bright-green Sinclair background) -- re-writing history, if you will -- which pencil Newman uses with little precision as he scrawls, in the first-four-boxes-across, having consider the clue "Flower Girl", his answere, which he believes to be "Lily" -- he is busy writing as Terry glashes-in, stumbling a bit, the levels of floors changing, saying something low-in-tone to which Newman, unhearing, catching only a dry syllable (sounding like "omen"), responds with a nod and an "uh-huh" and a bit-smile before returning quite quickly to the crossword puzzle lying before him on the desk-face.....

"A part of a microscope" is a 'lens" he is sure (at one-down) -- and "Press" at two-down is 'iron' -- which he writes-in hurriedly, his confidence growing now, growing quickly now, growing in heaps and mounds (as a dick slick sick might say). Three-down could be anything but "One filled with desire" must be a 'yearner" -- which he pencils-in at four-down.

"What the hell you got there?" Terry asks as he re-appears from behind the pea-green plywood-walls which circle the front-half of the old boardroom and which hold on their steep-face the many instruments once-used to record the many functions of this still-wrking 780-unit -- but now they are defunct and disconnected and idle on the walls (like the men themselves, a philosopher might surmise), as Terry re-appears, having washed his hands, with his gray-black and scraped metal-lunch-box as he pulls-up another stool to the metal-desk beside Newman where he opens with lethargic hands that metal-box and begins to remove the many small-plastic-containers which hold for today this working-man's lunch carefully placed and prepared by this working-man's wife, conscientiously, with care, last-night, late, Terry already sleeping in bed, so that her husband would have pleasure at about mid-day....

"Oh, it's just a crossword puzzle," Newman responds.

"Umm. You any good at those things? I could never do them very well."

"Well, this one's pretty easy so far."

"Huh. Even the easy ones are pretty hard for me."

"You just have to get used to the words they use," Newman says. "They use the same words over and over. That's the trick."

"Umm," Terry says finally (singalling with this one small grunt, this one half-syllable, the discontinuation of this half-debate discussion discourse dissolving here in one fragmentary exclamation) and begins lifting the tupperware-lids frm the light-pink and light-blue containeres (the light-pink being, as systematized by Terry's wife, a system to which Terry assented without debate, reserved for those things other-than-the-main-course, such as, as is true for today, two half-pears (Bartlett, canned) rich and resting lazily on their backs, resting like dead turles on their backs and sloshing about the pink-plastic boundaries in the luxury of their own thick sweet artificial juice (reminding Terry of some people he knows), as they bob and slide and roll about the juice back and forth -- and, in the other container (the second light-pink), resting now on the desk below the container which holds the pears, are several (probably four) home-baked chocolate-chip cookies (with an abundance of chips (but no walnuts: Terry is allergic to walnuts) -- just the way he likes them) which he will almost-certainly save and eat later in the day some time (providing he finds time to take his afternoon break (at the Complex) (usually around two o'clock)) and which he will almost-certainly eat then (slowly, savoring the extravagance of chocolate) with a large cup of piping smooth coffee (black) and the conversation of many-others (many old-timers like himself), each hunched over coffee too, who will talking about many-things-without-interest though the time will be passing and he will be smiling as he tasted the chewy cookie and it crumbles in his mouth as others speak about the weather, about fishing on the Platte, about hunting trips planned on Elk Mountain, about old-friends now dead, about things they've planned with the wife for the weekend as he listens quietly, not sharing his snack, perhaps laughing at times...and then he speaks about his plans, after he has finished the final bite of the final cookie and drained the last mouthful on wonderful Columbian coffee, perhaps laughing, perhaps not -- he's seen it all before; and he'll probably see it all again. And the blue containers, those which hold daily (by mutual consent) (exclusively) the main-course for this working-lunch, today offer Terry two liverwurst sandwiches (on deli rye) with mustard and lettuce and two thinly-sliced dill pickles moist and with a dash of spice which pickles extend nearly crust-to-crust, covering nearly every inch of the humble German faire (though he doesn't seem to care as much for the pickles today, having eaten them so-many for years-upon-years, continuously --he measure out his life in whole pickles hiden inside of the breath of life -- their must be something Freudian in this image, surely -- these too seem to have lost much of their original flavor -- still, he'll continue to eat them, without complaint. It just isn't that important to him, he believes. And in the second blue container lies a large helping of potato-salad (with diced sweet pickles and black olives, but without onions -- the way he likes it) which he almost-always tastes first (usually with some degree of relish) as a sign that h is working-lunch has once again begun today)...

Terry tastes the potato-salad first, without much excitement; and then he withdraws rather clumsily, his fingers breaking the dry rye bread crust away from the sandwich proper, the top-sandwich, which he begins to eat now carefully, holding the odd-collection of densely-packed ingredients delicately in his calloused hands, nibbling at the edge wither the crust has broken free, taking his first large gentle bit, as he goes about this task with an abundance of wariness and care and even outright gentility....

"What did you have for lunch?" Terry asks Newman as he chews. "Did you eat already?"

"Uh-uh. I haven't even looked yet. I imagine its bologna sandwiches. That's what is always is."

Newman's left-hand grasps the two clasps at the fron of the lunch-box -- his right-hand still is busy above the puzzle, holding the pencil which now is moving in short strokes across the page as letters fill each-of-the-six-boxes at eighteen-across, spelling in his scrambled penmanship the word 'snared' which he has seconds-earlier deduced from the clue (given as) 'Trapped' -- he snaps-open forcefully the top-heavy box and lazily looks within, expecting nothing unexpected: first he sees the badly-bruised and lim banana which lies (useless it seems to him) atom the many other treats (and which is not to be used, not to be eaten -- the banana -- but to be left within the box and then to be re-diccovered later that evening by the wife of Daniel Newman (Wendy) with some consternation, who will toss the battered fruit with a gentle heave into the garbage-can beneath the sink where it will continue to rot until the garbage is collected, no longer the property of the Daniel Newmans -- and this shall, in fact, for some reason, be a relief to the mind of Daniel Newman): also, there are two bologna sanwiches, sour flimsy meat in mayonniase between stale white bread. and a small bag of potato-chips which is emblazoned in its upper-right-corner bright before the bright-blue circular back-ground in numbers large, capital, blocked: 15¢ - which chips Newman removes from the lunch-box, and opens with a testy jerk, as he continues to regard the crossword puzzle studiously, as if it really mattered to someone, rather than just being something into which he can retreat, increasing his precious isolation...

"I've got a couple of sandwiches -- do you want one?" Newman asks, not looking up. "Do you want some potato-chips?"

"No thanks. Aren't you gonna eat the sandwiches?"

"No. I'm not very hungry for bologna sandwishes."

"Maybe you should bring something to cook," Terry says. "A cube steak, eggs, potatoes, something like that."

"Ahh, it's too much trouble."

"Huh. It's not like you're so busy you can't take the time. Take you fifteen minutes to cook up a quick meal fit for a king."

Newman laughs lightly, glancing up from his puzzle for a second, seeing Terry finish his first sandwich.

"I'm just too lazy, I guess," Newman admits.

"I've got some pears if you want them," Terry offers.

"No thanks. I really don't feel much like eating."

"Umm. I know what you mean."

Without really hearing (without giving real significance to what Terry has just said) (it being to him little-more than a dull continuation of barely-audible-syllables which have been strung together, woven and fastening by memory, since his distasteful early daily waking, repetitive dull-light ritual that it is, spoken by a whole pantheon of credible pretenders, masks moving, timbers changing, leit-motifs appearing, broadening, vanishing, scents changing, life-stories weaving in-and-out of others, contaminating, liberating, dulling sensations, complicating imagery and sequence), Newman decides, thought with relative uncertainity (he is a modern man, isn't he?), that Trite at twnty-across most-probably is stale (though it isn't entirely accurate, he believes (though not entirely certain even of the accuracy of this belief) -- (what are all the possible meanings of trite?) -- he thinks: he sits and thinks as he scratches his head quizzically: it seems to fit -- he finally overcomes his trepidation, telling himself that it raeally matters to no-one, himself included, whether or not this deduction is entirely correct, as he pencils-in the letters very lightly so as to cover th possibility that the oh so carefully chosen-word might eventually find itself in need of some slight repair, which will now be easily effected with several gentle swipes of the meaty eraser-tip which rests in-wait at this very moment at the ARCO-pencil's end, giving him some sense of calm, leaving him able to wipe away a mistake so deftly and with such little effort...oh, if life was only this way...

He moves-on quickly to the next clue.

Finishing with his first sandwich, pausing a half-second before swallowing the last-bite of number one which is a large ball of bread now and meat which is tasteless and a last leafy-bit of lettuce saturated with mustard sharp to his still-discerning taste-buds, Terry pushes himself away from the containers on the desk, and, leaning back, the rear-legs of the stool teetering perilously beneath his estimable bulk, rocking forward resolutely with a jolt as he comes again to rest on all four supports -- thinking, talking to himself, a queer smile first appearing, then disappearing, stealing across his lips, then wiped-away clean and quickly by an invisible counter-thought, he slides down, his shoulders packed against the back of the stool, and he raises his hands slowly byond his ears, clasping them together, hand on hand, sending a cracking sound as a series of knuckles explode like a thread of silver salutes as both hands collide and inter-mesh behind his head in an act of utter confidence and amusement and a magic disappearance of digits in to a solid ball of manual mass.

"What do you think about college, Dan?" he asks casually.

"What?"

"College. What do you think about it? Do you think it's important?"

"For who? For you?"

"For anybody?"

"Well, I don't know about that. I'm sure it's important for some people."

"What do you think of me sending Randy away to college?"

"What does Randy think about it?"

"He doesn't seem too interested in it. I've mentioned it a couple times, but he doesn't seem to be too enthused. He said if I sent him anywhere he'd just as soon go to mechanic's school."

"Huh."

"Yes, auto mechanic's."

"I guess that's where you should send him then. He's probably going to be more successful doing what he wants to do."

"Yeah, I guess. But you know, I'd like to give him something more than that. I'd like to be able to give him more in life than -- well, a job in a garage somewhere. You know -- a college education."

"Well, if he's happy working in a garage..."

"Yeah, I know. I know he likes fooling around with cars -- but maybe he'd develop a taste for something else if he was exposed to it. Say, maybe business or botany -- maybe even law. Maybe he could become an accountant or something. Work with his brain instead of his hands."

"Nothing wrong with working with your hands."

"I know that. Nothing wrong with working with your brain either. I'd like for him to go a little bit beyond me, you know. Progress. Each member of the family taking another step toward the future."

"Ok. Only it sounds to me like he enjoys working with machines."

"Yeah, he's good at it too. But maybe he'd be just as happy going to school, once he was exposed to it I mean."

"You better be careful though -- about trying to force your dreams on him. My dad tried that with me and it just got us in a lot of trouble."

"Oh, it's not like that really. I'm just trying to decide what might be best for him. I'm just trying to help him decide. I thought you might be able to give me some advice, that's all. I thought you might have some opinion about whether college is worth all that money or not."

"Yeah. Well, for some people I'm sure it is. For people who know what they want to get out of school. What kind of grades did Randy get in high school?"

"Oh, he got B's mostly. He wasn't a great student -- but he wasn't much interested, I think."

"Well, college is a lot tougher than high school. He's probably smart enough to do it. But the interest has to be there or he'll get behind fast and won't ever catch up. School's a lot of hard work at that level. You better have the desire and the skills to keep up, or you'll sink pretty fast."

"Yeah....I suppose you're right."

"Well, don't let me decide anything for you. Talk it over with Randy. See what his thoughts are about it."

"Umm."

Newman glances away quickly (glancing, as the passing verbal vibrations quaver deeply, hollow finally in to an awkward silence): glancing only for an instant, glancing wary and hesitating back toward Terry with eyes that shift and flirt and almost-blush as they slip-away form him, as they slip-away quickly toward the pea-green walls, toward the open exit-door which seems to be (from the perspective of the dark interior) a rectangle of light, a glowing hatch of solid gold delineated by mases of shadow, a view from inside the tomb -- Newman's eyes keep moving, slipping away quickly toward the frozen wall-clock dead now at three-forty-seven with dust thick like a skin of smoke on its glass-face-front which he, Newman, watches for a moment or so with confusion and amazement as he begins to realize (with some astronishment) that he has never before noticed the useless clock though coldly like this many-times he has sat and mused and looked-about at nothing but the deep green walls and the shadows dancing in the air -- now he sees it for the first time, wondering (he can't help but wonder about it) although without concern, as a dancer might wonder about the cause of another dancer's broken slipper, if, indeed, the dead clock is telling Newman something essential about his own life, something archetypal, mythological -- is some omen apparent in this moment, something which he should ingest, a gift from a god or angel or indwelling intelligence about conditions of his manifest existence. He looks at this clock with detachment, distanced even from his own fate, which looks to him, like someone else's appointment with a blind doctor....

Terry muses silently and without motion, still crumpled in round-human-wrinkles against the back of the chair -- completely unaware of Newman's silent reception of dusty messages from the archons....

Newman turns his body slightly in the stool, turns his gaze again to the puzzle on the desk below, feeling a certain relief that the flat conversing with Terry has ended -- being civilized is such a challenge, such a drain on the ever-precious and -precarious life-force: it is not easy being an adult, Newman concludes. He feels a certain challenge, mental and habitual, noting the empty-boxes grid-hammered near his finger-tips to be solved by memory and a certain privation and attention to language's subtle ethic as he turns fully his powers of focus back to the paper, flooding back past the obituary, the baseball scores, the story about the new bridge running over-budget at Fort Steele, land being sold down by Seminoe by the Sinclair Land Trust, the Job's Daughters regular meeting on Wednesday pm, times for the Catholic mass on Saturday and Sunday, engagements, pregnant girls making plans, preparing for disappointment, back to the very end of his daily tabloid, my back pages, running in his mind as though a life cycle of one day's news were somehow microcosmic, as if, in the small component, the largest components, too, are represented, ad infinitem, one day being all days, and one day, too, being the year, the life, the conglomerate of seasons all rolled in to that one miracle second in which everything is perceived and all complex living structure becomes known...his mind rushing through the Daily Times as if it represented, in itself, the conglomeration of history, archaic, anagrammatic, archaeological, angelic, resuscitated, regurgitated, essentially modern, all presented at his finger-tips by some magic of hologrammatic nature. Ahh, yes: getting back finally to the sweet spot, the place which escaped all other places, which brought him some sense of invisibility finally, a pen in his hand, a matrix formed beneath him, the cross inherent in the quest, crossed-words, generators of meaning, paths meeting, carfax appointment, apocalyptic treatise, hidden in plain sight -- he re-begins to study with eyes keen and mind steady the myterious riddle at his hand -- almost-frantically, almost, but not quite frantically, his eyes scan the many rows which lead finally to some answer. Some answer about his brevity, his calamity, his merit, his lift, his destination, his circulocution, his fallacy....he burrows-on, busy like a busy rat toward his conclusion....

Enervate at twenty-down must be sap -- he scribbles the answer intently, carefully, for penmanship is next to good leanness a thinning Sister Theresa Mary always said, each letter being a separate being, as each of us in this room are separate beings, each deserving of respect, each deserving of careful representation, democratic care -- Newman looks to another clues as the pencil-stub struggles blindly with the final letter, P, a chap with a hat facing east, commenting blithely upon the fine weather, ample jowleld and all: feeling a certain challenge now, noting the empty-boxes to be solved, an act which will give him and his life a certain momentary justification, friendly glory even, as he turns fully his concentration back to the newsprint and begins to study with eyes keen and mind still alert as his P scratches to a shaking, slightly off-center end and Newman's hazel eyes hidden beneath spectacles light-upon Leaves at twenty-six-across and he thinks, first, of tress, then of grass, then of Walt Whitman, then of boys thrashing in wild Greek times in high grass along river's winding extensolies, body parts forced into unrecognizable locations, the Father Gianola, then Father Hmelovsky with precious wine distribution, then President Lincoln, the Alan Ginsburg, then Leonard Bernstein, then Auschwitz barbecues, Heinrich Himmler, Field Marshal Goerring -- Newman's mind shortly recovers as departs stutters in separate-single-symbls across the blank-page before him, the reversed image tabula rasa he has decreed inside his mind, the empty movie-house screen, trumpeting up in stochastic impressarios, lotharios, D is the stolid city sin, barrel-chested, mustachioed, shoulders-of-iron, humorless, Germanic in nature, reminding the world of Prussian mass standing on a burned-out battle-ground; E is the good man, the Hero, the Everyman, the Sagittarean energy, an animal when massive and earth-bound, M, a centaur sort, a bull shaking the earth with import. And defeated, when surrendering, a kind of Buddha retreat, lying under stars, reft of lust, dreaming, like Osiris without implements to furrow girls, the sad W. Three aspects of the Trinitarian lord. WEM, a moral stain, a flaw, a bodily scar, an injured knee, a spotted heel, from the Middle English wemmen, not to be confused with woman, the W state, from the Old English wamm, spot, stain; akin to the Old Saxon wam, evil, crime, the Old Nose vamm, blemish, the Gothic wamm, spot, and perhaps even the Old Norse vama, sickness, nausea, VOMIT. Vomit on a shoe. Vomit on a garbage can. A witness to it all, this word -- being followed by words as surely as being followed by the eyes of some invisible force, some guardian sort, a shadow seeing the very thoughts of a man's infidelity, a man's self-annihilation, a man's lust and anger and frustration and impotent self-victimization. Vama. Vama Llama. A man on his knees chanting silly Lhama rhymes, bringing peace to the world, sobriety to a society of sots, a trick of genuflection, vomit on a shoe, wiping it on uneven concrete. I have a hand cure, chief. But not in a public place. We know everyone is watching. Turn this movie off, if you please! It is not time for the Great Uncovering! It is not time to Emancipate the Snake, or even to Inspire the Wounded Messiah, Sire! Who was it who held the thread, leading out of the deadly maze: what was her name? Ariadne? The day begins with a prayer and ends when they hand the hero on the Maltese Falcon. Yes, shapes of shapes. What? Threes of fours. MEW? Common European gull, Larus Canus, Lazarus Caninicus. From the Old English maew, akin to the Old Saxon mew, gull, from the Middle Dutch meeuw and the Old Norse mar, undoubtedly imitative in origin. A cage for hawks while molting. A coop for fattening fowls. Canary coffer. Secret place. Confined contentment. Stables. The court street which the stables of developed: alley, back street,; a row or group of garages. Also, the sound of a cat meowing. Haunting. Mary Ellen Watermaker.

Christ! Right on target. Vomit in the alley. That damned cat licking at the pallid ice cream surfeit. Looking for a rock -- Ike Harris with a stone. Please! Memory can kill! How do I remember nothing, Aunt Lethe? Nothing but the derivation of words? Words which follow me around like tiny invisible animal-pneuma? Insects of tradition? East West. East West, Matter. Nestorius, may I introduce to your the epitomes of Sane Cyril. I'll be turning off the tv now, Madame. I have no real concern for these conditions of Time. The blackened mask of Apollinarus, with its flamboyant lips, will have to wait for the next millennium. I will be sleeping, resting -- thank you. President Carter will watch over this primary hibernation, like a good neighbor, like a man of little needs and little imagination, himself the essence of W. A good modest Sothern Baptist. Yes, we are the walking dead -- Jimmy and I. And silence is good. Roll the rock across the mouth of tomb. SUCCCCK! All air going out. Grim deflation. Silence is good. Silence is next to...giddilessness -- is it not? The stoic standing on one end; the epic curious weeping at the next. Urban gone. Urban gone.

W now, the sleeper; M in revolt against sleep, the hero, animal force, turning in to motion; E the enlightened man of culture, the bureaucrat. Erect. Walking on twos. Yes. I see.

Sister Theresa Mary knows everything. Every letter a lesson. Where was I? D E P, whom we have met. A - Adam hiding inside a tent, anti-particle of Vice. R, who is Mr. P at a later stage, armored with cane, tired, wearied by life, a man about to fall and roll over on his back, surveying clouds, soon to be W. T - man on the cross. The cross itself, verily. S - one half of 8, man on the downhill slide; the image of inversion, involution, the man vowelling out of heaven, falling through nature's underground houses....all the way down to sanctimony. To Silenus. To Sediment. To Silhouette. To Silicon Sulfer Selenium.

Yes, Departs. It seems to fit.

What has that to do with me?

Let's see: Ennervate? Sap. Is this an autobiography? Leaves? Departs -- something ominous? Something rude...?

Newman writes, hand-stutters, in amiable separate-single-symbols across the dry blank-squares dry-and-blank-no-longer as the word appears under his clenched fist, appearing as though by magic act: a mystery: his hand merely passing over, waving air, a cape moving, a wadded hand holding a wand, gyrating with knowing, a green wand above the lead, passing-over like a trick as he steps-closer several steps, several iron steps more across the vast expanding red rock several small steps, baby-striding, leading him vastly toward some answer, finidng his way across Sahara. Digressions being a problem, he knows. And pondereous phrasing. Wet ball-point imprecations against entropy. End of end troping. Atlas, a huge carnival on his back, battling death with every stroke. Knowing he will lose. But also knowing the world desperately needs to despise him. And to cut him in to pieces.

Eye-caressing: setting his sights again. Folk casting.

Stalking-again some final resolution. Ineluctable momentum. Toward something. Some appointment. Hidden in character. As the night hides everything eventually. Shutting down mobility. Hiding the adversary inside. Pulling everything closer. Pulling all recollections and condensations and epiphanies in to knife-wielding closeness. Pulling everything down in amplitude. The flat line. Osiris's masticated phallus. Chaos soup. All the elements reduced to sameness. This is sleep. I am you and you are me. Eternally speaking.

"Why'd you leave school anyway? Terry asks, bending forward, closer to the desk, taking with his right hand the second sandwich from his blue-plastic-dish. "You were a good student, weren't you? Why didn't you finish?"

"I don't know," Newman answers. "I got tired of it, I guess. I reached the point where I didn't think they had anything more to offer me."

"Of course, the war ended too," Terry interjects.

"Yeah, that too."

"You did ok at the university didn't you? You didn't flunk out?" Terry asks.

"No. I did ok."

"Umm. I did ok when I went to school too," Terry continues. "Of course that was high school. I had to go to work right after than. Not many kids go the chance to go to college in those days. It wasn't like it is today."

"Umm."

"You know, I think that's one of the most positive things we've been able to do for our children -- people my age, that is. Now almost anone who really wants to go to college can do so without much trouble. I think that's a realpositive accomplishment..."

"Yeah, I guess."

"You don't agree? In what ways isn't it positive?"

"It sound to me like you want an argument," Newman says, not looking up, looking (instead) at the puzzle which he pushes gently across the desk-surface,watching it slide out of reach, out of reach toward his lunch-box as forward he leans, resting both elbows (comfortably, he expects) on the flat gray metal-desk -op as he reaises his eyes lazily, finally, toward Terry who has just set upon an over-turned container-lid the remnants of the sandwich, now half-eaten as he chews and swallows and scoots forward, as his feet push against tthe floor, his stool edging half-a-foot closer to the desk as he looks at Newman with a question in his eyes and a crumb of dried-mustard cliff-hanging to his bottom lip, near the corner of his mouth, right-side. He too smiles a bit, as he sees Newman's smile. Newman wants to wipe away the dried mustard but controls his urge..

"Well, it's not that I want to argue with you," Terry begins. "It's just that I really think education is a very important thing. Really a vital thing. It really is the promise of the future, as far as I'm concerned. I think everyone should get a college education. Everyone who has the talent to do the work..."

"Well, education's important alright," Newman begins. "I don't argue with that. But you weem to think that the only place to get an education is at a university or college. Right now, most colleges are filled with students who really shouldn't be there. Many don't have the interest, don't have the aptitude -- all they have is the money. Almost anyone can get a college degree now if he's got enough money and enough patience. That's all it takes, really. And this has cheapened the education you get there -- and it's also cheapened the response to education."

"In what way?" Terry asks.

"Well, you want Randy to go to college so he can have a good job when he gets out, and make a lot of money, right? Nothng wrong with that. But a college degree really doesn't mean that much today. Why? Because so many people have them. Randy might still end up working in a graage, after spending thousands of dollars and at least four years of his life becoming 'educated' at some university. Universities are big business today. And just like practically everything else in this country, they've become too big to function properly -- or even effectively. So business and finance take priority over education. The only way most universities can keep theirt doors open at all is to open their doors to as many people as possible. Then standards of admission drop. Standars are lowered to admit anyone who can pay the fees; and education then becomes a system of mass production, where the emphasis isn't on encouraging thestudents to think or grow, but, rather, on trying to satisfy them, pacify them, giving them a big burger to eat, giving them a claim to intelligence and a certificate that they can show to the family and hang on the wall and pretend that it really means something, though I'm sure most now realize differently. College today isn't a privilege, or really even a challenge. It's a matter of fact -- like marriage and families and work..."

"I didn't realize you felt so strongly about it," Terry says.

"I thought you wanted an argument," Newman responds, smiling, reaching lazily for the thermos in his lunch-box, top compartment. "Want some lemonade?"

"Sure."

Terry searches the bottom of his own lunch-box for his University of Wyoming brown-and-gold-cup (mustachioed Cowboy Joe emblem decorating the cylinder) which he finds quickly, passing it over to Newman who is pouring now the cold, light-yellow refreshment in to this own light-brown-cup....

"Is that why you left school?" Terry asks.

"No. I just couldn't see it any more."

"You told me what you studied..." Terry replies.

"English literature."

"Yeah, that's right. You werent planning to teach, though, were you?"

"No," Newman says. "I thought I wanted to write."

"Write what?"

"Novels. Poetry."

"Why didn't you do it?" Terry asks. "What made you change your mind?"

"I don't know," Newman responds. "Not much future in writing poetry! I guess it just wasn't important enough to me...."

"You don't need a degree to write, do you?"

"No. In fact you don't."

"I can't understand why you came back here though," Terry says. "You could have got a better job somewhere else. I mean, you are a smart person. What's here for you?"

"I'm a married man now," Newman responds. "I needed a job. My day helped me get on here. I guess I was looking for some security. Some stability. I guess that' what it really came down tow. I needed a place to settle down for awhile, at least until the baby's born."

"Some types of security can be life-threatening," Terry replies.

"So you say."

"Umm. No regrets now -- about not staying in school?"

"Not really," Newman says. "Things happen for a reason. I guess it was just something that had to happen at the time."

"Things just happen then -- you don't have any say in it?"

"Sometimes you do; sometimes you don't. I don't really want to be working here at this moment, to be honest. But I'm not sure what I'd rather be doing. I know what I don't like more than I know what I like."

"I know what I'd rather be doing," Terry says. "I'd like to be eighteen years older and be ready to retire so I could get away from this place."

"You've got eighteen years to go?"

"Yeah."

"That's a helluva long time," Newman says.

"Yeah. But there's not much else I can do now," Terry reasons. "It's a bit too late to try to start over again somewhere. I've got too many responsibilities to do that, even if there was some way I could."

"Yeah, I know."

Newman finishes with a swig the lemonade which pours bitter-sweet through his throat, his chest, down into his stomach which is empty and a bit queazy from his festivities the night before and which gurgles aloud as he twists with some effort (taking care to make the grooves match) the tan thermos-top back on to the thermos-bottle, which he does finally, after some concentrated effort, as he places the thermos back in to the lid of his lunch box, the metal arm flapping back in to place, which he closes again, fastening with two separate snaps, as he hears coming from somewhere over his left-shoulder a rustling and a scuffling-u--the-stairs, which he doesn't not really appreciate, the sound indicating invasion from an alien force of non-intelligence in the form and smell of Mr. Henry Clement -- a man who in odd moments of misplace confidence refers to himself as 'Esquire' -- Newman captures with stretching finger-tips the errant crossword puzzle, which he creases lightly in the center and places in his right-front-pocket as Terry finishes speaking without real clarity about retirement and his plans for a better life some-days-ahead, enshrined in his mind as precise and as harmonious as only a memory can be -- now someone is standing, a very large shaow on the threshold of the old boardroom, casting a heavy presence on the back wall, which seems to Newman something horrible, vain, self-infatuated, moribund.

Henry Clement, slugging up the staris without a care, feet-adrag, like a top-heavy automaton, his hat pushed-back, chest sucked-in, his almost-grin quickly changing to a surliness as he reaches the top of the stairs and enters the door of the old boardroom: stopping quietly just inside the door of the boardroom: he listens like a spy at the door (maladroit), his form before the sun throwing a huge dark light across the floor and opposite wall of the room. He stands, hands-on-hips, waiting to hear what's being said about him....

Terrry notices Clement's shadow on the wall.

"Hey, Henry," Terry begins (tilting his head, a lightness coming in to his voice). "Newman here's been telling me about you trying to piss on him this morning!"

"What!" Clement asks, astonished.

"I'm trying to convince him not to report you to Bedford!" Terry says.

"What the hell are you babbling about, Terry? I shouldda known you'd be up here cooking something up behind my back!"

"Now don't start ranting at me!" Terry replies. "It's Newman, here, who's going to report you!"

"What the hell's he talking about, Newman?" Clement asks.

"He says he saw you pissing off the eighth floor this morning," Newman answers grudgingly. "I don't know anything about it. He's trying to bribe me to report you to Bedford!"

"You crazy little bastard!" Clement says to Terry, snickering in a confusion, his mouth slanting shut,tight-lipped, crooked -- he moves slowly to the desk where he leans forward on his fore-arms (flat against the metal-desk) (comfortably, he expects) a few feet to the left of Newman, a few feet to the right of Terry....

"He wants to get you fired," Newman continues. "Then he'll move up that seniority ladder a couple of rungs!"

"But I'm doing it for your own good, Henry!" Terry continues. "You know how you hate working in this pig sty! How it affects your health! You asthma, your heart! And it'd give you the time and energy you need to find a buyer for that uranium land you own. It's not personal gain I'm thinking of! It's your health! And your sanity, Henry!"

"That's what you say!" Clement replies.

"He'll be going after Dandrige next," Newman says. "After he gets rid of you, that is. He's got a master plan worked out already. He's going to put some sleeping pills in Dandridge's coffee, and then report him when he falls asleep on the job. I don't think that would work though. Everyone sleeps. I think he should plant some comic books in Dandrdge's locker. They'd suspend him for sure if they found some reading material in his possession...!"

"Yeah, I can't decide which plan to use, Henry," Clement plays along. "What do you think?"

"I think you're both getting a bit dingo, a bit soft-in-the-head," Clement responds. "Been working around that H2S too long. I warned you both about that!"

"I have been getting some pretty deadly headaches lately!" Terry admits. "And I wake up at night with a dick as hard as a stick of rebar! Not that my wife is complaining much about that..!"

"What about you, Newman!" Clement asks.

"Has my dick been hard at night?" Newman responds. "I didn't know you care, Henry!"

"Shit! You know what I mean! You been getting headaches, dizzy spells...?" Clement asks.

"He's been falling asleep when he eats his bologna sandwiches!" Terry interjects. "Nothing so gross to see: a mouth full of half-chewed bologna and lettuce, open in front of you like some open sewer...!"

"Is that the H2S, Henry?" Newman asks. "I just thought I was getting too little sleep these days."

"You bastards can shove it up your asses with both hands!" Clement responds, rumpling with big-freckled-hands (as he searches within) the now-empty sack of potato chips, which he discovers (the sack being empty), withdrawing his hand quickly, a guilty child, pretending nothing has happened...

"I have a couple of half-chewed sandwiches, if you're hungry," Newman says to Clement.

"No, I aint hungry," Clement says, a bit ruffled. "I already had a pretty big lucnh myself!"

"Henry, someone told me you changed the name of your band!" Terry says.

"Oh, yeah -- it was the son's idea," Clement responds. "He figured that Henry Clement and the Drifters was lacking something, some international flavor. Now we're calling our band Henri Clément and the Drifters -- make it sound French. Yeah, it was the son's idea. He took a little French in school."

"That's internatinal alright!" Terry replies. "Our you guys gonna wear berets and drink claret?"

"I like claret," Clement responds. "I'd wear a beret. Anything to cover this chrome dome I'm growing. I'm not too crazy about the name though. I'm not sure how long we'll keep it. I feel a little stupid everytime I have to say it."

"Umm. I can understand that," Newman concludes.

"We played a full house last night at The Flame. SRO only. That's the way we like it. Had some pretty tasty morsels shaking...you know what....all night long. Rita La Dick was there. That pretty Musgrave girl, too."

"They're too young for you, Henry!" Terry admonishes. "They'd leave your dick as limp as a Chinese noodle!"

"I'd sniff some crazy gas myself if that Rita sat on my lap for more than a second!"

"Not much chance of that," Terry says. "Unless you kill her first, and get her stuffed down at Reed's Taxidermy!"

"Oh, I can be a charming man, friend!" Clement responds. "You'd be surprised if I told you which young women in this town have made a friendly acquaintance with old....Mister In-Between...!"

"In-Between paroxysm and complete paralysis?" Newman asks.

"What? What paroxysm?" Clement asks.

"Epileptic seizure," Newman replies.

"I've had epileptic seizures before," Clement admits.

"Why am I not surprised?" Newman responds. "You have everything else."

"Women like having sex with epileptics," Clement says. "Just hold on and let 'em shake – shaking beef -- that's what Edith's sister told me once. Her husband was an epileptic... She said sex made all the worry and public embarrassment worth it. Too bad they don't have a pill to induce an epileptic seizure -- you could mount up the wife, take the pill: it'd be like riding the bull at the old Rocking Rodeo...! Maybe I could invent such a pill! Anything's possible!"

"So, when are you playing in Nashville, Henry?" Terry asks.

"Nashville! I don't know about that, Terry. We have been talking pretty serious about expanding into the State Circuit though, maybe playing down at Meeker, and that bar down at State Line. It'd be a good experience for us; and we'd be able to make some spare change at the same time."

"Hell, I didn't eve know there was a State Circuit!" Terry replies. "What's the State Circuit, Henry?"

"Rock Springs, Riverton, Kemmerer, Green River, Wheatland, Casper, Douglas, Cheyenne, Laramie, Medicine Bow, Hannah."

"That's half a state," Terry responds. "Ever go up to Evanston, Afton, Jackson, Powell, Thermopolis. Gotta bet there's a circuit up there too."

"'Course I been up there," Clement replies. "But not with my band. I know the north of the state like the back of my hand. I used to go up there every year to do some hunting."

"With your band, I mean," Terry says.

"Never with the band," Clement admits. "I met my wife in Yellowstone Park. She was selling ice cream during the vacation season. Did you guys know that?"

"Nope," Newman says.

"I thought you met her at the carnival" Terry says.

"We heard it was the Tunnel of Love," Newman adds. "Who was it told us that?"

"You're thinking of Dandridge, Dan," Terry corrects Newman. "But he told us that she was the Bearded Lady. He said some other pretty dangerous things about her too....comments about..."

"Physiognomy," Newman completes Terry's thought.

"Who?" Clement asks.

"Body parts," Newman says. "Uncovered body parts. Hey, it wasn't us! It was Dandridge!"

"The very guy you two are trying to get rid of!" Clement understands, recognizing some innate conspiracy. "You think I'm going to fall for that. The Bearded Lady indeed! My wife does have a pretty sweet beard, if you know what I mean. Cocoanut and peaches. Quite a cobbler down there. You guys will never know the sweetness of that woman! Don't start fantasizing about here now, Newman! You're too young for her! My wife likes an experienced man...!"

"You've got too much hair for her, Newman!" Terry adds. "And your belly's too small! And your dick's too long and hard, after all that H2S you've been smelling! No middle-aged woman in this town's gonna go for that...!"

"Newman's a choir-boy!" Clement says. "He wouldn't know what to do with a real pussy if it fell in his lap like a Japanese pillow!"

"You ever had a Japanese girl, Henry?" Terry asks.

"Korean. Never a Japanese," Clement says.

"My-o-my! Never seen anything like that!" Terry says. "But you gotta be careful!"

"What? Why careful?" Clement asks.

"Their pussy's horizontal. Stick your dick in -- they spread their legs and they cut it right off. That's why Japanese men have such small dicks. It's genetic!"

"You are so full of shit, Terry! If they had a shit-stacking contest, you'd be the winner!"

"You'd be the wall, I guess!" Terry responds.

"No, you'd be both the wall and the builder of the wall, if that's possible," Clement argues. "You talk more than anyone I know. Your lips are always flapping, like a couple of Gwen’s flapjack pancakes! Too bad nothing intelligent ever comes out!"

"That's funny," Terry responds, "especially coming out of the mouth of a man who calls himself 'Henri Clément'! Did you go to back last night an American, and wake up this morning a Frenchman?"

"That's pretty assinine, aint it?" Clement admits.

"I think you've hit an all-time low there, Henry," Terry continues. "Of course, who's gonna be laughing to the bank when old 'Henry Clément' is playing 'Honky-Tonk Sandwich' down at the Grand Old Oprey?"

"You guys never let up on me," Clement replies. "No wonder I always feel so tired. You guys are wearing me down."

"Better you than us," Newman adds.

"The way you been carousing and drinking," Clement says to Newman, "you won't be lasting very long. Life is a long-distance run, a marathon -- ain't it, Terry? You're sprinting too much, as hard as you can this way, then that way. You'll burn yourself out at both end of the candles, Newman. You'd better slow down."

"What do you know about it?" Newman replies.

"Just what I hear! And from what I hear, man, people are talking!"

There is a momentary silence: uncomfortable.

"We're playing down at Whitey's tonight," Clement says, breaking the void with sound. "You guys oughta come down."

"Can't," Terry says. "We're going to the cabin this weekend."

"Too bad. What about you, Newman?"

"I might come by."

"How'd that miser Whitey ever steal you guys away from The Flame?" Terry asks.

"I'm not too sure about that myself," Clement responds. "That Whitey's a sly fellow, a real white fox..."

"You must have seen the fight last night," Newman interrupts.

"What? Oh, Holloman?" Clement replies. "Yeah. Only it wasn't much of a fight. That kid would have beat the hell out of Holloman, only the others jumped it, Comus and Murray. They wailed on him after that. Someone had to call an ambulance for him..."

"Holloman got his ass kicked!" Newman asks, impressed.

"Well, he would have. Only his friends made sure that didn't happen."

"Huh!" Newman muses. "The Changing of the Guard, I guess. I gotta be going."

"If you aint gonna eat them sandwiches, I'll take them," Clement says.

"You want them?" Newman asks. He snaps-open the lunch-box with his quick-thumb in a quick succession of snaps (SNAP, SNAP) even before Clement has had time to answer, though the answer does come before the lid-flies-open and Newman grips the two treats in a tender grasp, offering both in a single hand without speaking to Clement (Clëment) who has stolen, in the mean-time, to the stool where Newman seconds-earlier had been sitting, and accepts Newman's offering without a smiles as he asks Newman:

"What kind did you say they were?"

"Bologna."

"Hell. I had bologa sandwiches for my lunch."

"Do you want them or not?" Newman asks.

"Sure. I'll take them."

"How about a banana?"

"No banana. I don't think I could keep it down. Bananas give me heartburn, you know...!"

Newman turns without speaking and moves (slowly, at first) as he closes finally for the day his lunch-box (and then more quickly), his strides long, as he tucks under his left-arm the gray plastic box, checking, as he walks, with dangling hand his back-left-pants-pocket, feeling for the wrench, which he feels as he proceeds, feeling with his right the outer-surface of his right-front-shirt-pocket for the imprint of the puzzle (which he finds), touching its long-edge with the tip of his first (right) fore-finger as he approaches and then penetrates the rectangle of light opposite the door through which he entered the room and begins again the day-long-trek which begins agains as he winds down the stairs and, stepping in to the shadows, follows the path below his feet between the walls and other obstacles as he begins to reminisce again, to dream of days-now-gone, of days gone-for-ever, as he reaches blindly following as he remembers...

As he remembers...

Like a dream.

Like a rare dream.

As-again. As-always.

Ever-was. Ever-shall-be.

VII.

(SUCCESSION!)

(SEX SESSION!)------------------------------------------------------------------heavy, like a magic-word, a magic sword, it fluttered from his lips.

"SUCCESS, SON!"

and i, greedily --

I, the Heir --

his Magic Heir --

was patted with gusto on my muscle-growing back --

I, a lad about to bolt --

and welcomed by him smiling.

welcomed home for those succeeding years

of young-life.

domestic creation.

O FATHER O' MINE

O FATHER!

BEFORE THEE I STAND

JOYOUS

LIPPING THINE EXALTATION

THY PRODIGAL COME HOME!

a memory. nothing more. a memory of being gone -- and then a memory of coming home again. for a summer. seven summers. for a moment, beyond the reach of the nuns in their gray colloquy. a changed boy-man, hair on palm, hair on upper lip, hair on nonvirtuous ganglia. stuffing wide cotton briefs with....some kind of pink herring. heron nipper lupa. heron Lank Frank, flank of ecumenical alert. girls in skirts bearing dual electrical outlets disguised as tulips under tow. sniff-sniff: smells like shekinah; butt tastes like fischerite

AHHHHH!

that's what white socks were for. or fur-lined winter gloves with careful stictching on the leather backing, thumb-downward. unless you want to put a mark on the ceiling: I WAS HERE! killroy pretending to be jimmy durante marked his spot with fecal muttering -- bed die mark moins wit Elmer's Glue-All. calm patriot.

shelly, want to see me hit the sky? using one hand only? yes, it is a kind of magic trick -- pretzel digit teaching! slide of hand! you don't have brothers, do you? watch this -- no, this is mighty mouse. pleased to meet you.

did you see me in my motor bored? father hmelovsky had the longest boniest fingers you will ever see and he reached out across an eternity of suffering centuries, across a massive wasteland strewn with empty johnny walker red bottles, and he took me by my bonny stuffed shelters and he said: 'god will be with you in your journey, michael!'

HOME.

which year was it? strat-o-matic baseball stretched out under lights. night game coming on. marichal against koufax. 1962?

sniff-sniff. the year of patsy fitzhugh? of lindy musgrave? which year? a calendar hung somewhere, bearing excess in red ink: may being mary's month, june for juno, july for julius caesar, august for augustus. worlds to conquer; tulips to reckon cider seeders. time standing still for a moment. time unimpressed upon me. standing down. summoner.

a sound of what? freight train passing through night, whistling low, passing the station? or that deadly fog machine spewing ddt through the streets of town. mosquitos shall not kill us! mosquitos shall be victimized!

father gianola peeping not now into darkened shower stalls, boys all soaped and water-larked. blinded by doves and inner sense. a falcon's laugh: gone. little man with sinful ecstasy. trembling mouth. wanting something for nothing. god’s greeker affiliation. wanting congealing, braver by the moment. soaring, alleviating stress, somehow. eyeing the worm: creating stress, creating sin, without movement. amen. amen.

Amen of tope. cross-section being. crossing and cutting. floored erections, poled tutor’s senator. meal for the moyel. archetypes for the architect. ameliorations for amelia. harps for harper. hopes for hope. hoops for edward hopper. happenings, strophes, apus strophes: hid tibiae, brownish kins. buzzy worker wingbeats. yale bewonder wind jure rolled, dear. work till yer dead. work till yer dead. noble enterprise. carving on the cross

careful. lynx-eyed, like a wary pup, i entered once again. this home. this home of mother and father. uncertain as i prowled the rooms and they spoke behind me, watching, with pride, their son passing into monohaploid: manhead: manhunt. har to say the word. 8th grade back there. 9th grade straight ahead. coming up on very public act: mea culpa, mea culpa, domine patrem noster, domine rostrum 'poster.

never again to saint joseph's; never again the green tortoise-shell bus, elias cordova driving, squat mexican with broad body, gray fedora, broguen english. let's pile clark bar wrappers on the brim of his hat while he's watching the road. let's bride july yarosinski with mickey mantle cards to pole dun hair pantries inner buckseat over boss. god lucking fedora cleft. shh! the ultimage state reached int he degradation of the matter and energy of the universe state of inert uniformity of component elements: absence of form, pattern, hierarchy or differentiation; cultural diversity and heterogeneity conteracts the tendency to cultural entropy! death and disorder! the universe grinding its teeth.

now way out here, they have a name for rain and wind and fire. the rain is Tess; the fire is Joe; they call the wind Mariya.

thermal dynamics.

introboy odd altar real deal. spill over. gasoline alley. one state to the next: compounding. add heat to the metal and you make it bend. add heat to me and i soften. subtract heat from me and i become hard, rigid, deathlike, paralyzed and solid.

the rain = Tess; the fire = Saint Elmo, or Joe for short; the wind = Mariya.

mathematical resolution.

i moved through the house, through the rooms: light-pink to green; light-green to mauve. suspended animation. LSMFT. Moving hasteless through the house and back. continually

mother above the stove talking always about the news: north east west and south. the turkey made in the pan above the oily-sauce, excited as she talked to use, basting, laughing, nervous, happy as she stops to work, humming without words

'there aint no shine

like the sunshine's shine...'

working in the kitchen while father reads the paper, the tv flashing uncomprehended before his hulking figure (he turns the sports-page noisily, sending a crack, crack, crack through the house, friendly cracking) -- and i beside him silent

unsure

unsure about things

generally.

and away

quickly past his reading, past her happy humming, down the stairs leaping. thinking about bovey coal or perhaps ab shalom ab shalom (11 times 11 does not equal 111), or raymond berry's famous inside-out move that leaves herb adderly hung out on the line likea pair of vera vasey's undergarments, flapping in the wyoming wind. the spirit of the physical heart and the seat of the will and intentions conceived as proceeding at death to the future where it gives evidence for or against its possessor. ab ab surdio; ab ab ovo; ab ab initio. from the beginning, now and ever shall be. ovum first, Inition Newman, baby boy, held over the baptismal font by an Abbot named Abbott, by a Monseigneur named Mon Signeur. Meyers. flat top not forgotten nor forgiven. the air feels decidedly 1950's. cool, a bit flat, very orderly. the world was...never better. no reason to cry yet.

there is a room dug in the bowels of the earth, sited by a mammoth furnace manufactured in holland, michigan: bellowing aut war mirror, relative to Mariya. ad vitam aut culpam. dark little coroner of the world. my bedroom. my room. did someone roll a stone before the door during my absence. ab seance. ab sinth. drink cup. there is a woman on the other side of that stone, that petrified wood bung-stopper, whose repute is generally prone to entropic demise. no one is dead yet. dad is. a very strong man. in the prime of his health. mom is. whistling while she works. dan is. only son, only the lonely son, seeking, seeking Mariya perhaps. Mariya merry, middler rove God. threading a ship through the shoals, loving hands on rope. ringbolts. deck heads. ahab, ahab, stand aside. your leg's gone....hard. and your heart is a circus set on fire by energetic dwarfs.

touching.....the thing. through my blue jeans. peter paper pocked a pecker puttered pesters. fright wodan. wood. Thingus Mingus. einen stetch off curlie makehimsings hidden in the closet -- false wall. a treasury found at the city dump. walking on glass, tin cans, broken cartons, mud, ash, empty ketchup bottles, whiskey bottles, something burning, sour milk smell, old prescription bottles. looking for playboys, swank, argossy, true romance, sex and violence. a gun in one hand; a gun in the other.

something running down. energy systems? it must be ready -- the gravy's running down your leg. laugh as laugh can laugh. jokes are for jokers. heart worms for heart warmers.

close the door behind you with a click: private sea

with a clikk in sorry melancholy

mine

clikk

all mine.

mine-SANCTUARY.

and easy now.

what makes him happy now? looking through a box of books with a strange eagerness. placing gems on the stand. mine of the stand in this room to relax-in.

uncertain as i piled them. Nancy drew to the left; The History of America, Lord Baltimore's Catechism, English Grammer, Advanced Science and Mathematics all pushed to one side with distaste -- the distaste side -- but at the bottom of the box: hidden treasures, like bars of gold when i touched them. i place them on the top shelf:

The Last of the Mohicans

Huckleberry Finn

Tom Sawyer

The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare

Don Quixote

Robinson Crusoe

Lord Byron to the shelf on the far left; and Whitman in hand near the glowing bed-lamp. beneath mine-eyes-have-seen-the-glory like a trumpeting magic cinema in my hand. flickering imagery in my head. running, word-to-word, composing structures. in a continuum. a flowing dream. aye, aye, copy dan

and i

I -- a free companion

bivouacked by invading watchfires

in the dark room

safe by the glowing watchfire

flow (my favorite walt's)

as i sang soundlessly

my favorite waltz.

i hear heavy shoes clikk on stairs. like thunder on the stairs: click-boom, click, boom, click boom. heavy-shoes of father on the stairs. creaking. dad. creaking wihtout a knock like a swinging gate he's opened.

"so what do you have there?" he asks behind a lighted cigarette. LSMFT.

"Leaves of Grass."

'what?"

"a book of poems by Walt Whitman."

"who?"

"Walt Whitman."

"oh, sure."

"he's really an interesting writer," i said, willing to share. willing to share my private-favorite-waltz. eager to share, in fact

"umm. how'd you like to loosen up your arm before dinner?"

the ball pops loud, loud like a loud-bubble, in his other-hand -- his left or catching hand -- where he wears the mitt to catch the strikes of his pitching son...

to catch strikes which i fire like bullets at the target. fastballs and curves past imaginary swinging batters -- as father keeps the score. he speaks jointly about parental pride, about perfect straight-A grades, about a son's glorious future success -- again, as i fire. i fire again. firing bullets aplenty past succession of imaginary sluggers. firing bullets at my dad. succeeding again, in dream-time

his multi-talented son, as i wind and fire: strike two. ready again: another summer of victory lying somewhere before me...

i kick, extend, and throw: a curve which baffles kaline, tying him up in knots. strike three?

friends gather in the yard. summer friends for me. gathering quietly in the yard, watching dad and i dismantle the tigers.

...though concerned about my attitude they said (he said). a little bit. though he's not concerned. he flips me the ball again. norm cash on deck. using pine-tar on his back. willly horton after cash.

finally

now a spectator in the stands, father, offering cheers of support

and they behind me now, friends, summer friends, in green-and-whte oiler jerseys. friends and friends alike, surrounding me like a chord of eight-pins. a masked-man before me. fingers flashing ones, twos and threes, between the security of his thighs. i am on the hill, peering in. the crowd in a rowdy whirl behind the lurking, towering screen. cheering YES as i spot a breaking ball on the outside corner. baffling adversaries with mind and body. steaming toward a championship. another championship. how-many-in-a-row? i can't remember

as the last one swings,

the CHEERS erupt.

the game had ended.

another challenge had been met.

father met me, hoarse with congratulations.

shaking my hand.

smiling

as he patted my back with gusto, speaking of class and confidence and character. the 3 Cs. LSMFT.

his pride to me as pride streaked his eyes

and quavering: his voice choked a bit, as he warned mother (in her excitement) to treat me like a man, not like a young boy, because i was old enough now to be treated like a man

which she did -- treat me like a man --

saying, excited and happy, though trying to control it:

"you pitched a real fine game out there, son."

yes!

yes, i did!

SUCCESS SON

SUCCESS MEANS RESPECT

SUCCESS MEANS SELF-RESPECT

SUCCESS SON

which i felt. feeling the bitter-sweet reward of success as i climbed in to the car. silently cock: no one can hit the high hard one. undefeated again.

large success in a small town

undefeated as always as friends pass by again, happy, cheering, cocky too

moving off toward celebration

somewhere.

is the mind a twig floating on the river? summertimes through storms, summontimes in placid summer days built for river-real? leaves of grass pitched out on the platte? carried where the water dares, where the water sees fit?

are our perceptions, then, the river's perceptions? seeing only what the river allows us to see? and what of the things that the river cannot see? what of the air? what of the earth? what of the sun? what of the sun's sun?

and what does it matter?

we are driving homeward, slowly. slowly.

silent for a time until mother again begins, speaking of other-mother’s pride, other-mother’s joy

and father – not listening, smiling through the windshield glass; i witness it either in reflection on the glass or in the rear-view mirror. that is not clear to me now

i sit alone. back-seat boy, sitting on the seat-cover in the waning orange sun-glow. on the highway back home, back to sinclair, six miles by candlelight, by littlelight, by orange-light, supper-lit, can’t tell height, words passed around like horus’s d-d-d-oophors, gentle tide-butts soft thought for everyone to sample once. ono mono me Christos! honor main hour when resting, a door slams at midnight

(if osiris is horus’s father and isis east osiris’s wife, then what is horus doing straking his horn in ice asses' oikos house meandering violently? oil-drilling? nonmaneuvering?)

that’s a philosophical question, laddy.

all meatloaf and no pissbanter makes of orange julius a very dull (healthy) boite. not clobber, nyet cleverclover, billy sunday holiday.

fried chicken on Sundays, gravy, gravy boat, gravy ladle, green beans, butterflake rolls, lawrence welck in a background television context, white light and sound waves playing ghostly on a westward wall; very heady sounds coming out of the kitchen as mom has a glass of wine, hummmming some sedation shillyshally, and dad with his nightly highball, coors beer chaser, evoking images of robin roberts to his obedient lad sitting quietly at the table, poking through an archie comic book, his championship baseball pants still on, baseball socks with the high arch pulled up, very cool

nappy kins, then? nappy kins?

is what we remember the past to be any different than how we imagine the future to be?

what and how? what is a baker; and how does a candlestick maker

there is a helluva lotta difference between a man who bakes bread and a man who earns it

dad singing low: no way out until they have a name for rain and wind and fire

(SOCK SESSION?)

what? something wrong with success, son?

how should i know? i'm just a kid

(are you starting to get hair on your peepee, then?)

tom's dick is harry. shh! don't want your mom to hear what you are saying

nothing wrong with a little, you know what

dad singing along with mitch: tea for two, and two for tea, and me for you, and you for me

feeling a little cocky tonight, son? after pitching that shutout

didn't you ever want to have other kids, dad

oh, yeah. it was your mom's idea to stop. then she had some health problems, you know, women's problems. then she couldn't have any more kids

i am alone

in a glowing bitter-sweet of doubt

about what’s coming next

and what’s next expected.

tell me about real value, father.

real value as though it were something inside of which i could sleep and find contentment, a secret name inside of which to hide.

real value is in the basement, in the room under the stairs. father has a nazi helmet he captured as he swept up with patton’s army liberating bergun-belsun. ahh. real value

snapshots of naked dead jewish women and men, children, gypsies, cripples, slavs, bohemians, crammed in to railroad cars. taken by dad himself. sticks of men standing at wire fences looking like ghosts smoking cigarettes, dreaming of chocolate and lives lost about a time ago, children, dreams, wives, lives, emaciated by the big anti-magician, Setan. manage a tra. trabants locally. germans retreating north to the oder, blackfaced beyond the danube. music playing. bach is dead; beethoven wounded; wagner guards the sanitarium, redoubling him mumbling, pointing out traitors to herr hauptmann the oberstermfuhrer for regional extinctions

father raises his rifle, taking aim at....some fat-assed prussian general. don't fire until you see the wide sophist’s sighs! arse moist be art echo lading Heresey’s sur-endered node-host

don’t fire till you see the…..moon for the misbegotten.

real value is saving the world from nazi killers

you don’t want to pull the trigger, son, squeeze it gently, like you were squeezing a girl gently. no point in making her scared. now point and make her scar your target in its heart. gently. the trigger is your girl-friend. don’t forget to make you love her

were you a sniper, dad?

no

were you a colon hell, daud?

no

were you an artillery corporal?

no

a sea-creaming aigler? a sapper? a parrot troper? ein gunnery sergeant? un filing lather-knocker? a bazooka-wielding battalion leader? wall king pint tong petrol sloth off Veer Dung? a war hero with distinguished cross? einen papal hearter? sniper, sniper, sniper? made dick hole slaved isle laughs raise king lie half fear wrothers...?

were you a war hero dad?

no. i just did my duty!

did you kill a man, dad?

no. i don’t know. i don’t believe Ii did. i just did my duty!

when i raise my rifle is it ok for me to imagine adolph hitler as my target? yes. shall i shoot his balls off, dad? shoot him in the heart. shall i blow out his brains, dad? a head shot is hard to make, son – shoot for the heart; the torso is much wider

now let’s see if you can kill a deer, son, an antelope, son, an elk, son, something with blood that can run and hide from you?

i killed a bird once, dad, with a bb gun. a robinredbreast which i shot almost by accident and then picked up and felt his warm blood running out on my hand

did you like that?

no, dad. i felt bad. i wanted to cry

there will be no crying with me! learning to shoot is not a sin! we eat the animals we kill! if you waste the meat, that is a sin! god gave man dominion over the animals so that he could eat and live

there is no task more noble than saving the world from a tyrant!

no calling more noble!

was that Gerry Musgrave’s girl i saw you with last night down under wind-blown lights in Lincoln Park?

is that an accusation, dad? am i under arrest, under attack, acting foolishly, fooling around in an unhealthy manner? mannerly fellow seeking feminine contact? cunt acting in a most unsoldierly way? Weighing myself against my intentions i must inform you, sir, that my curiosity was only the most ungentlemanly and the most bordering-on-obscene that i could muster given the time element, the limited opportunity, my own complicated twisted conscientiousness which mitigates my curiosity to one or two unmanly degrees

yes

she’s a cute girl, son

very cute, dad.

cutest girls in town, Gerry Musgrave’s daughters...

what was the name of that netherland boy who stuck his finger in the dyke? hans brinker! wasn't his father a sluicer – wall noon hollow part haarlem fair meeking curls bluish – who senate his son odd-courser coventry-site boring keeks fair blind Thomas Homer ascent octave share-a-day. father always calls them ‘angry waters’ as if he believes the sea is actually angry at him, judging him for some character failing

don’t stick your finger in that thing in public now

pardon me.

are you daydreaming again. who is mary elizabeth mapes dodge anyway

what are silver skates? is that some kind of stingray or something?

so you have fantasies about touching a girl there – there’s nothing wrong with that!

but father hmelovsky says...

don’t listen to that bag-of-bones hmelovsky. girls like being touched down there. that’s what makes the world go round

what about sin, dad?

sin? well, sin is a serious matter, son. but having a little fun with girls isn’t something to worry about. it’s just a part of life, that’s all. stealing is a sin. lying is a sin. but kissing a girl isn’t a sin. if a boy didn’t kiss a girl, you never would have been born

(do children come from kissing, then, dad...?)

(of course they don’t, you idiot!)

ma and pa coital hadal song nemed Elwin P. Coitus Reservitatus.

(sing us a song smiling dan!)

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.

One day by surprise

Her belly began to rise

And out of her cunt came a cross-eyes runt

With his asshole between his eyes.

does it mean he stuck it in mom once since i’m their only child?

(morons and mormons dot the land of southern wyoming. billy spicer’s been banging doty frazier three times a week for more than a year and she ain’t pregnant! You can fuck a girl as many times as you like, only you gotta make sure she doesn’t get... you know what!)

PG!

(act sad dental odd currents!)

ramosia tipuliformis! stamp black: rumrot’s up roaching! un opera tune no good!

(the ramrod rote of a prussian drillmaster!)

where, exactly, is there thing? it looks like there’s nothing there at all! just a small void that somehow gets bigger and smaller depending on the weather

(moon over miami?)

28 stages, divided by 4?

(is the zero a thing or not a thing; or is it both?))

you can add to it and subtract from it. but i don’t think you can divide by it

(good luck trying)

vacant sea? does it represent a scale or a musical note then?

(if you take the male penis and you implode it inward: voila! you have the mayflower that blossoms inside, smiling at the invisible sun inside that.....you know what!)

fountas-majora? yeah!

(which flower?)

tipuliformis. tulipa the formless.

(tulip! you can say it in english! just bend her over and ramrodder like a prussian drillmaster! sheila navel-boy mean to you again!)

rotenone, rotentwo, rotenthree! id hiss bent rotenoid. strega fauster! rottenone, rottentwo, rottenthree: a soul is lost. (glow sire ice, strecker! F nue wand’s leaking, cunt bierer modal scene!)

(SOCK SESSION?)

lights are out, parents are asleep; and i can hear the train whistle sounding as it passes the depot south of town. no one can hear me now

(someone can hear the rustling of leaves, the squeaking of boxcars, the grating sound of steel rubbing steel)

i am only young once

(lucky for that)

this is not really a sin, is it? hans brinker didn’t sin – he actually saved the world from sterility, fallow-hollow nests of famine-nesters by sticking his finger in the sacred fertile grade

(it is abhorrent to God that a man spill his seed on the ground)

it’s a vanilla sin, i know. but it’s not a marital sin, i’m sure

(don’t be too sure of anything. until you’re done)

am i going blind, Homer Thomas – am i growing hair in the palms of my gloves?

(one two three four, open the door, open the door: for the bull is making milk!)

shelley musgrave, lindy musgrave, leslie musgrave, your behind is like a white melon, like a.....dutiful llurid moon! where is the gate that unlocks the kingdom? lunar cream; lunar magenta. Onan-lucked by the key that is given to the fortunate one. I have the key to the city!

(oh, oh! the goose is out! is that really how God created the planets and stars?)

are you really my own devil, hiding in my skin, dictating rules of cults and misdemeanors?

(who do you really want to be when you grow up?)

willie mays; sandy koufax; raymond berry; jack london; or maybe audie murphy!

(well, to be audie murphy you’re going to have to have a war to fight in)

i see

(a war of your own)

i see

me and my shadow, me and my shadow, no one knows me but me and my shadow

final word of advice: when you get your hister in the crosshairs, touch the trigger gently and watch his chest explode – light your were touching a gentlesexler’s genital szekler, Cunt Drug-You Jugular

there is no greater calling that to save your country from a tyrant invader

there is no greater calling

and there is nothing girls like better than a successful man who knows what he wants

(you want to be a success, don’t you? daniel, are you praying attention?)

stiffened? dead at last! (introibo ad altare dei.)

(dead atlas? you were never atlas! you are just a boy! a romantic boy who liked to study mythologies!)

can you still fly?

(there is a great difference between Johnny Peckerwood and Icarus Mickarus, savior of My-Sins-Name-Him)

there is a king, a fisherking perhaps; and there is a hill. the hill is not significant, in itself. it can be made out of anything: leaves and grass, snow, dirt, animal dung, garbage, blown prairie, planks of rotten wood. my friends and i understand that there can be only one king standing at the top of this hill. this is some kind of primordial understanding. ralph vasey; mike grubb; jack herbertson; the clark brothers; gary eaton; joel johnson. we are friends, yes. but there is something else, too – some unified conception we all share equally that it was good to be at the top of the hill; it is bad to be off the hill; that one must fight like hell to stay on top, might have to hurt one’s friends to do so, in fact. but that is ok. it is a game; the game has rules; this year’s ruler is next year’s foot-solider. water circulates: rain falls in the mountain; snow melts; clean creekwater flows down in to the valley rivers that pick up dirt as they enter the towns and cities, losing virtue, losing freshness, losing shape, flowing toward the ocean again. dirty water evaporates skyward, becoming rainagain snowagain. God has built re-birth into Nature’s humor and cochlea

a message imbedded in our genes. we of the round table. we of the cult of romance and greed for adventure: and heroism’s one remaining body of worshippers. taint-agers.

it is an age we pass through, this adolescence – and nothing more. it is an historic age we relive in fast-forward

so, let the wars begin.

it does not matter who is king first. this condition will not last. we attack, scratch, tear shirts, break glasses, occasionally fracture bones. we form momentary alliances. we conspire; we sabotage; we develop attack formations in concert. we are all against one and one against all

we fight over a hill made of jack-cheese, a hill made of blueberries, a hill composed of hamburgers. girls are there too. girls are understood, even at a rare age, even when girls live far away

girls are in dresses and look out from the window at the war. blood is good to shed; tears are never good. we learn to be a man by fighting over a hill of nothing for a promise of something. we learn too – not all perhaps, but some – that the joy is in the fight, not in being the king, the proprietor of the hill. though this is a kind of heresy, so it is rarely acknowledged verbally

the clan is good; the outsider bad. destroying the outsider is a duty we share, even if we all, inevitably, through the power of chance, become the outsider also

perhaps the girl in the window, guinevere herself, is the mountain we are forced to fight for? forced by nature. forced by primitive fatality: the mound, the challenge, the war, the glory, the mud, the blood, the gift, the future life, the heritage, the missionary conquest

womb and tomb

conquer it. possess it. gratify it. for it houses our future

we are driven to this by ancestors too. ancestors peering down from clouds. ancestors screaming in blood-oaths, demanding worldly gain for themselves, for their ghosts

sex is not a tea we drink. sex is an affirmative act of violation, through which land is conquered, children are manufactured, and a future is forced to appear out of the darkness, generally against its will

there once was an indian maid. she said she wasn’t afraid. but she probably was afraid...

i am a good student; yes. i can multiply, divide, do advanced math, prove greek logic as it relates to solids and planes (although not always); i can spell, compose rhymes, explain existentialism to children and comprehend steinbeck’s dialectic of materialism as it applies to the class warfare. i can memorize complex historical tables. i can deduce chemical elements from notes i scawl on my hand and shirt. i can recite civic truths, sing in choirs, articulate biological nativities and compulsions. i know all the W’s and the H’s involved in composing the first paragraph of a feature story for the local newspaper. i can parlez-vous une petite but not so much as to make my friends doubt the normal trajectory of my affections d’amour. i get A’s mostly; but often B’s or even C’s in analytical geometry. i get A plus in algebra. i get A plus in english literature. I like to read chaucer even more than i like to read charles dickins (but don’t tell anyone this)

i am a jock also. i play football, basketball, baseball, even hockey on the frozen platte river

girls like jocks because jocks are popular and girls want to be seen with popular boys. (it helps to have a hot car also, and to have enough money in one’s pocket to be able to take one’s best girl – sara lou potter, perhaps – to jay’s drive-in on friday night for burgers and fries and a chocolate malt, where everyone can see you’re together

i hunt each year south of rawlins with my father; and i have taken a twelve-point buck off of elk mountain, and survived a snow-storm doing it

i have been in fist-fights with older boys, and with mexicans in rawlins. fistfights happen all the time in rawlins. sinclair is more peaceful, more civilized somehow. mexicans and whites don’t get along well in rawlins

no one knows me. people think they know me. i have friends and i love my friends – but they do not know me. i am generally very far away, even very far away from myself. the real me, the true me, does not come around here very often. he is not comfortable with the world i live in. he hides a lot. he likes to read literature in the attic because that’s the place where silence is most friendly – and where no one can really bother him

the real me speaks in his own language. some times i understand him. some times i don’t

some times i think he sleeps and dreams when i’m awake, and he is awake when i am sleeping

when i say ‘yes’ he often says ‘no’ just loud enough so that no one else can hear him

where did we leave off?

i am home from st. joseph’s school. i am in high school. i have just pitched a shut-out in the tournament; and we have all been celebrating. people have been telling me how great i am or something like that. i remember it vaguely. glory is a vague kind of thing anyway, especially when you are living in its amniotic fog. nothing lasts very long. you can never rest, not even for a second, when you are King of the Mountain – remember? when you are the King of the Moutain, everyone wants to kill you; everyone wants to tear you down

time passes

i have been a fearful adolescent but i am becoming less fearful and more annoyed with reality

girls are nearer now

girls like successful men; and i have kissed girls and tried to put hands into mysterious clothing to unbutton new worlds of mesmer and annihilation. i know girls are dangerous. i know that girls are not really aware of this danger they represent to men. they are like a chasm. when you pass through a girl you come out on the other side of a world where you have never been before. girls are a door to an undiscovered kingdom. sometimes girls are a door to heaven; other times they are a door into hell. entering a girl can sometimes be easy; but then escaping such a girl may become nearly impossible. pleasure is a thick-stick substance. pleasure forms addictions; and addicts are easy to wound and kill. Like a wounded prey: one just follows the blood trail

sex is less dangerous than love – but it is still fraught with metaphysical distinctions

i know this through the power of thought: a theoretical disturbance on the calm surface of something very deep and very dark, perhaps unknowable

basketball. ahh, yes. the crowd is alive above the lights, a mirage in the smoke. mad voices without form eliminate all doubt. a pass; a shot; a dancing formula across the floor, moving toward the hoop like dangerdancers on a string

popcorn flying. the crowd pulsing like a pack of wild categories

we scored; and we scored; and they screamed as we scored

perpetual motion; perpetually pleasing.

until the horn sounded finally, ending everything, ending the mercurial trance

if we win we rule the mountain, again, for a day

if we lose, well….we will play again tomorrow

who are these strangers swarming on the court? shake-a-hand people in droves with their chums? are they friends, admirers? masks crafted in some strange darkness inside of which people hid, pretending drunken joy might be a cure? to what? to despair? to incomplete lives?

cheerleaders pert with long legs bare. offering congratulations. it is a shame to be a catholic boy at such pantheistic moments. bodies pulsing young and alive beneath happy-hungry eyes. there is nothing like a pretty teenage girl, especially when she is brushing up against you, offering you salvation through the magic category of heat

VICTORY was everywhere

on every face; and in every pocketbook

pretty girls are the reward you get for being rich and popular and successful. now don’t forget that! if you forget everything else i tell you, do not forget that!

SUCCESS

written large and lank: bright stars in the night

by god-hands of design.

small-stars of design

ever-distant –

specks in the night, held together causally

by Chance and by some Accident.

SUCCESS

we drank together casually – friends -- drinking beer by the case-full. in the country in the dark ark parked in our old chevy near the city-dump. petty tieves admiring the goods. loud – as our eyes blurred, and our words, slurred, bounced around the car like rocks. from one to the other. noisy drunkenness. first-drunkenness in a chaos of fire-freedom and new-sensation. a new-death of our innocence. eager new victims, eager to shine. without control, laughing. laughing often, very many times

then she is with us. jack herbertson called her: would you like to come out with me and my friends and have some fun?

(what do you remember?)

Colleen’s nylons

(what else?)

her light-fire face beneath drooping bangs. To lay on her back in a cowboy shack

‘I’m not afraid’, she said

of course not. (we were the ones who were afraid, you and i)

speak for yourself

blushing-blonde. blushing as we fed her beers. big breasts she let us touch after big gulps. on the outside of her blouse. giggling. our hands like sponge lapping at her buttery flesh – her nether flesh o—hot enfleshing nether tomb o --

but relaxing – trying to relax

she relaxed with beer. lying back, shutting her eyes. boys clustered around her. NEW YEAR’S KISS! she suggested. taking turns to kiss her big wet mouth – making her squirm and moan. you can open my blouse if you want. taking turns to carress hardening wobbling breasts. nipple-hardening hands. taking turns to kiss with tongues shoved in: warm wet hole surrounded by lips. now touch and squeeze between her legs. now clamp and rub as she is sigggggggggghing

she said she wasn’t afraid

as she was sighing ‘ahhhhhhhhh’ we stripped her drunk white hot naked body free from clothes. Full moon body, eager for violation. touching as she begged. ten hands touching, every part attended. writhing whore-body of heat and hair with legs open, fingers gone, swallowed and sucked on

someone else first, jack herbertson first. speaking of love as she sucked and laughed nervously. watching-waiting taking turns. as he pounded through her groans. lying down, jack on top, pounding her groin, pounding in-and-out

he said he wasn’t afraid

wind it up and let it go then. that’s all there is to it. nature takes over. rather simple really. nothing to be afraid of

then me, my turn – as jack finished

uncertain as I watched

climbing on.

watching her swallow with thick thighs, speaking love always, like some saint-whore performing love for humankindness. blonde-saint-whore fucking on her back as we were laughing. king-gods without compassion. sneering at her fucking love. with eyes closed tight, she ignored. fucking on

as insults flew – insults all around

‘careful no one kisses her!’ jack says, as he’s done. mouth fouled width….indecent experience

laughing

DANIEL

is it i?

not-i?

now?

but nothing wrong!

pleasure.

all or nothing.

undressing.

make it hard.

figuring.

pleasure is all.

not a problem. not a catholic problem at least

and her voice harsh for a moment, frenzied, begging for attention as I kneeled naked. naked in the cold dark. naked on naked knees before her soft mouth soft on me. love-kisses on a groin so large. so large, she says – kissing on. sucking-on as they laugh. and i. blind. above her seething. as she begs and I respond. hard against her swallowing form. in the dark as we begin, in earnest. inside her. inside her love muffin…. without feeling, like rutting beasts. rutting beasts. it is ok – because i am a beast too. i am a beast. i do not stop

fucking on

(laughing boys watching, smoking cigarettes like king-clusters. swilling beer)

fucking on. hard-flesh enfleshed. sopping-seething flesh, mysterious beneath wild heaves. it is there and it is not there. tight and loose. deep and shallow. in and out. boy and girl. cock and cunt. pain and pleasure. beast and god. nothingness and somethingness. all for me, all for you, whoever you are. hating and loving. hurting and pleasing. harder. harder. get it done. here it comes

as she gripped and groaned, gripping with sharp nails, the back of my arms. below me in pants and words of love. she loves me yeah, yeah, yeah. love to me whom she called by name, inside a sweet spot of moaning.

lovers without love and without kisses

no flowers in here

loving and hating

seeking to satisfy

striving to satisfy in the stagnant darkness. striving to satisfy in the ever-growing rancid darkness. eyes watching and nothing else. cigarette smoke. someone belching: crude laughter

defenseless, naked here: pile-driving boy

we groaned and we squirmed. we gasped and we sighed. we retched and we retched into last dying wretches, grinding to a halt. grinding, grinding, grinding to a halt. grinding. grinding. and then the explosion. life flowing out. life passing to her. mysterium magnum

it is finished.

breathless

expense of tension

the passion: sweet ache of annihilated being

sucked from the body in the darkest of the dark. one moment of pleasure equals an eternity of what? animus city? fire, flames, scourging, articulation of crimes, arrest, conspicuous absences, addictions, despair, horrible incentive, congratulatory falseness, demonic pre-possession, rags, dirty clothes, heat and humidity, betrayal, judas is scared, a lot. (indeed.)

then lying on her pulsing chest for one tender moment. the soft breath of fatigue. sumptuous gratification

then another one without clothes, pushing me aside

loving her as they laugh. rides taken at the carnival

as they laugh

and they smoke cigarettes

(why am I here?)

wrapped in the darkness with others as they laugh

and they fuck

naked before the world

getting dressed quickly

one lover is as good as any other i guess

(who are they anyway: these friends of mine? in terms of eternity, i mean? shining in the black-light with teeth and smoke and eyes shining like devils. shining glossy friends in the black-light laughing

(who are we anyway? in terms of eternity, I mean?)

he doesn’t know

he is confused

he walks alone at night

walking in the dark, in the shadows, just a shadow. beneath tree-forms like a specter. at times darting – at times floating – under a network of branches. as though suspended by a wire. floating without effort. moving-trees moving gently: and he floats easily as their cargo

moving toward home

past glowing lights, above-the-street beacons. scanning the sea as he floats on a sea of light. Moving past the lighthouse in the dark

am i a boat that is lost at sea?

i am a boat. i am a boat. lost in the waves. unbelieving on the waves

love is just a four-letter word

but that is not the half of it. surely

But Father!

but father o father of mine

Howler Father Whose art is even hollowed be-tide dames…?

father o’ the age o’ mine.

remember that day down at joe vestal’s barber shop, dad? that day when i was thirteen years old? (they did it! they done shot the president!) hoo dead? (talk sins?) tocsins? (toxins?) leaves hardly fall small. (leaf’s larvae’s smell foul.) slum worm man dull house killed him with a head shot. (cult’s seule?) J.F.K. dead from a head shot? dad? Lacket jackie’s bloody pink dress. locket john-john saluting his passing casket there. is the world insane, dad? (it has a habit of being.) what? insane? (insane men do insane things.) why is joe vestal dancing in his barber shop? (insane men do insane things.) who killed J.F.K? (communists probably.) mafia maybe. (he was soft on cuba.) i don’t understand. (i fought the nazis and now you are going to have to fight the communists. they are taking over the world, one country by one country, spreading slavery wherever they go.) communism is like naziism? (the other extreme of the nazis. but just as bad.) kennedy was a catholic too dad. (i know, son.) the nuns will all be crying at the school. sister may olive will be crying. (there’s nothing I can do about, daniel. it has happened. i wish it hadn’t happened, but it has.) is it ok if i cry about this, dad? (yes, it’s ok if you cry about this.) are you crying too, dad? (yes, i’m crying too, son. i’m crying too.)

(have you read all these books? i can’t really see them all from here)

The Last of the Mohicans

Huckleberry Finn

Tom Sawyer

The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare

Don Quixote

The Grapes of Wrath

Robinson Crusoe

The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

Leaves of Grass

The Catcher in the Rye

Plato’s Dialogues

Moby Dick

The Story of Civilization

The Sound and the Fury

Absalom Absalom

The Complete Poems of Dylan Thomas

The Poems of Lord Byron

The Rainbow

Lady Chatterly’s Lover

Tropic of Cancer

Tropic of Capricorn

You Can’t Go Home Again

The History of Vietnam

(vietnam? what is a vietnam?) vietnam is the easternmost country on the indochina peninsula in southeast asia. it is bordered by china to the north, laos to the northwest, and camodia to the southwest. on the country’s east coast lies the south china sea. (i see. and what is vietnam’s political structure?) communist in the north; democratic in the south. democratic, broadly speaking, with long-historical ties to the west through one hundred years of domination by colonial france. (franz muck-up another country, did it?) french administration of vietnam ended in a horrible disgrace, with a military defeat in dien bien phu in spring 1954, and then a military surrender which led to the geneva accords in the same year dividing the country in two. american involvement in vietnam accelerated with the french military defeat

(not much difference between stalin and hitler, mao and hitler, fidel castro and hitler. you’ve seen one form of tyranny, you’ve seen them all. they suffocate all individuality)

what’s that? can-o-piss. (cannabis obligata. makes your mind float and go numb. cycle tropics – delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol. smokie-smoke will make your mind go black. go ahead, light up, suck it in and hold it deep in your lungs as long as you can. it's a kind of ‘small death’ also. Remember huxley’s ‘doors of perception’? this ganga stick unlocks huxley’s ‘doors of perception’. before long you’ll be able to see all the inherent inequalities of the world.) is the world supposed to be equal? that’s a value judgment that can’t be considered a given, but must be considered carefully. there is no equality in nature. the lion is not equal with the titmouse. equality is a concept created by the human mind. and it seems to be in direct contradiction to the human concept of freedom, which seems to require the (theoretical at least) existence of inequality as a possibility. the freedom to improve one’s life through individual effort implies this inequality, does it not? improve over the status quo. improve over others. (don’t be serious. take a hit. hold on to your hat.) i have a colloidal’s cope solemn war. (kaleidoscope?) here it is: kalos eidos copula. greek for ‘magic glasses’. if i look in here long enough i can see my whole life begin to own-float liquor fowler. (pair of annoyers.) fount as majora, yeah. which flower? (tulips. yes, it has to be.) who killed JFK? (CIA! FBI!) smoke this stick and rotate 180*. (i’m a southern hemisphere man now.) sloven homo’s fears seaman? head up your ass and feet in the grass? (you’re ass is grass if your old man finds out.) the shot must have come from the wall to the right of and beyond the grassy knoll. and how did jack ruby get in to the basement of the police station? ruby was well-known as a goon for dallas’s organized crime. (if we are going to be moral, we’ll need to make our bed with the poor and the powerless.) the dead, you mean? the dead, in a mythological sense? (ask holden caulfield about it.) holden caulfield is a phoney! (there you have it. niagara falls. ) niagara falls: slowly i turn, step by step, inch by inch. (shemp was the beginning of the end of american civilization.) no doubt about it. (we have to come to terms with the fact that we held slaves for several centuries and we have mistreated the black race for so long.) yes. that goes without saying. BUT... (if ifs and buts were candies and nuts...) we’d all weight 500 pounds. but we didn’t create slavery. slavery has been a part of every civilization in the history of humanity. in fact, we are the only civilization that ever fought a war to eliminate slavery, to make slavery illegal. that should also be noted. (you’re not smoking fast enough.) slavery existed in africa long before the white man did. slavery still exists in most muslim countries and in parts of asia. what really defeated slavery was technology, in fact. the machine now can do the work that slaves had to do for centuries, in all types of society. (what about our destruction of the native americans?) a war of conquest. sad as it is to say, people migrate across the face of the earth much as the tectonic plates migrate below the oceans, smashing in to each other, creating havoc, shaking the world. human history is the story of human tribal migrations, wars of conquest, re-seedings of human nations by new stock, different races. every war of conquest is tragic. our treatment of the american indians was tragic; but not as tragic as the roman treatment of carthage, a people whom the romans fought in to extinction. (you’re not smoking deep enough. we should let our hair grow until we look more like women – how does that sound?) you’re not a fag, are you? (smoke them if you got them.) who you voting for: kennedy or nixon? (politics, religion and the size of your mother’s breasts!) johny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine; i am on the pavement, thinking about the government. (a man in a trench coat, badge out, laid off, said he’s got a bad cough; he wants to get it paid off.) look out, kid, it’s something you did. (HC told you!) But communism is no different than naziism. (come on, the commies are for the working class and the poor!) the communists are socialists, just like the national socialists in germany under hitler. (we have to support the underdog.) or what? or we’ll never get a you-know-what from sweet polly purebred. (a bloated jap bent over?) something like that. (ever had one?) what was your sister’s name again? And when was she last here? (she really liked you all dressed up in your tennessee tuxedo.) simon says we’ll have to bar sinister-looking bible salesmen with ruffled feathers and all itchy brothers and riff-raff generally-speaking from these premises start-start-sweet-tarting NOW! is that polly norris i see walking down the street, her hair in braids? (life is not a cartoon! there is injustice in the world!) always was, always will be: world without end. omen end. (doesn’t your religion command you to right all wrongs and make of the earth a godly paradise?) in nomine patre, et filii et spiritus sancti. (latin’s a dead language! and catholics are a foreign race, with allegiance to the pope instead of to the president of the united states!) spoken like a true protestant. (it IS polly norris! i’m sure polly norris has pure blood, inside of all that sweetness!) we could watch her undress sometime. or, even better, watch her older sister susan. (now that’s an original thought!) wall-eyed cocks. (speak for yourself!) what’s about four inches long with two nuts? (i give up.) an almond joy. (i hear sarah kelly gave up earl mc culloch’s almond joy in favor of jerry lehti’s big hunk.) if a cock could have an i.q. of 3, jerry lehti’s would have it. that thing’s like a whole cow turned in to hamburger and stuck on a stick. (wall-eyed cocks?) kennedy’s going to beat nixon. (my dad says kennedy’s a dupe for the pope. he’ll sell america out to the italians.) we must stop the communists in vietnam. (kennedy is a friend of the communists! look at cuba!) every man needs a war in which to prove himself. (who said that?) you know who. (daddy warbucks?) who? (praise cedent aleph choir-bound counting drift-boat bart?) not much difference between stalin and hitler, between hister and calm heemraad must-see dong. (look at yourself for a minute or two: genocide of Indians, enslavement of Africans, consumers and capitalists who are destroying the planet and the biosphere; a military-industrial complex that ide warned us about; the atrocity of using atom bombs against the Japanese!) bias sphere? (hate the rich; worship the poor. black is white; white is black.) who are you again? are you my better half? my guardian angel? or are you the demon in the garden? (you should read diet for a small planet and small is beautiful.) how old are you? what year is it? (you can’t support the empire. the empire is immoral.) the empire is civilization. do you wish to destroy civilization. (spengler and nietzsche wrote that civilization is death – the opposite and enemy of true culture.) do you stand with your own family; or do you betray your family, and support the outsider, the enemy? (i support what is right.) right today; or right yesterday; or right tomorrow. if the world moves in circles then what was right yesterday will also be right tomorrow. (but not today.) perhaps yes; perhaps no. (you have been brain-washed by your father. are you going to join the marines, then? go to fight in viet nam? what a waste if you do!) i have learned to raise my rifle here. (you will need a good war, like your father had.) a good war is not always available. (smoke some dope. you'll begin to see things differently.) like a traitor, you mean? (you don’t want to be a red-neck like your father now, dan.) a blue-tailed skink would be better i guess. (he knows there’s no success like failure.) but that failure’s really no success at all. (have you read all of them books then? you should let your hair grow long – it makes you look more….intellectual.) it’s sergeant pepper’s lonely hearts club band, we hope you have enjoyed the show. (timothy leery? ever heard of him?) timothy leery is dead. (lucy in the sky-y with di-i-amonds!) extremism in the defense of democracy is not only justified it is a high virtue. (dropping the Big One even? we dropped the big one on japan TWICE. no one else ever did that.) japan and germany wouldn’t have used that weapon if they had had it? (america is the evil force in the world now. now that the Nazis are gone.) paranoia strikes deep. into your heart it will creep. (that’s my line.) you should be on television then. (does bennett surf? when did dorothy kill the gallon of thunderbird wine – or was that really your mother, dan, sneaking downstairs to the refrigerator in the basement, when she keeps that gallon of wine?) are not we all guilty of human frailty then? (i thought you were a jock. did you really read all those books; or are they just for show, like those weights outside your room. do you really life weights? why?)

The Last of the Mohicans

Huckleberry Finn

Tom Sawyer

The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare

Don Quixote

The Grapes of Wrath

Robinson Crusoe

The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

Leaves of Grass

The Catcher in the Rye

Plato’s Dialogues

Moby Dick

The Story of Civilization

The Sound and the Fury

Absalom Absalom

The Complete Poems of Dylan Thomas

The Poems of Lord Byron

The Rainbow

Lady Chatterly’s Lover

Tropic of Cancer

Tropic of Capricorn

You Can’t Go Home Again

The History of Vietnam

Das Kapital

The Art of War

The Prince

I-Ching

The Confessions of Nat Turner

The Decline of the West

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Beyond Good and Evil

Yeats: Complete Poetry

Nicholas and Alexandra

(your father’s grooming you to die in viet nam. you know that, don’t you? he wants you to be the war hero he never was. he worked in the clerical staff in the army. you know that, don’t you! he wan’t a real soldier! he never shot at any one; and he wasn’t shot at either!) baldur’s dash. (you know it’s true. you only invoke your Germanic mythology when you know you are wrong. is that what love is: you are his performing bear and he rewards you when you hit a homerun or score a touchdown? What’s wrong with that picture? here, have a hit. it won’t hurt you. And it’s non-addictive.)

But Father!

but father o father o’ mine

father of the age once ago

easy in hls easy-chair. relaxed as before me he sat – satisfied in his casual air. casual ln his golden-shirt and long-legged-slacks of b1ue. slippered-feet on the stool: sipping beer. smiling as a savvied-soul. so old savvied soul-of-the-unvanquished. solely unvanquished he prides himself to believe, without worries as he smiles, content. content: these happy offertories…

….

….

he offered rewards for my service. shining rewards as he smiled from a distance from the easy-chair, for my many accomplishments. money in his hand, green-shining like paper trophies for allowance. offering, again, the crisp bills, as payment for a favor…

….

….

he offered, again, in the tone of a plea. as he’d offered before – his old-eyes parched and incredulous. as he’d pleaded before, pleading for me to accept. branc-spanking-new reward of chromium and steel. to be polished. to shine like gold in the afternoon sun. gleaning new formula to be mine as he smiled

as he smiles and he pleads, for me to accept his reward:

HIS AUTUMN MOBILE.

which he’s offered before

to make himself proud

of his generous success

to make me popular

ever more

ever more with my friends. With furry little balls of human-female-flesh who’d be ever-so-proud to sit at my side as I gunned the engine and we experienced real power…then to rumble through town, down the strip and through the notorious rawlins’ air, like king and queen of a wonderful regalia. dad’s dream

with pretty little rewards

decorated at my side.

but why did I say no?

(you aren’t…homosexual….are you? a car, a string of girl-pearls, parties at the newman house. what about irene olson? don’t you want to date irene olson? you’ll need a nice car to date a nice girl like that. think about it. what are you afraid of? are you afraid to take the last step, the last step into…the realm of material power? take her, make her, make her yours – remember, the woman is the key-hole through whom the man takes possession of the world. don’t be shy about it. it’s your birthright. be a man about it. grab your destiny and take it by the throat. you can’t stay pure for ever! you can’t be an altar boy for the rest of your life!) is that what it is? i’m trying to remain an altar-boy for ever? how horrid!

keys on the table.

he stammered and i just said no. he stammered:

‘everyone has a car. so what’s the big problem?’

(your son is not a normal boy. that’s the problem. too much mothering perhaps. too much influence from the nunnery. he wants to be the messiah instead of nero. that’s a major problem. he’ll never fit in. he’ll never make that million and never make the minions of southern wyoming get on their knees to him like they do to ted olson and the other titans you admire so much. too much morality is not a good thing, especially at a tender age. you should turn him over to the marines! they’ll make a man out of him! get a gun in his hands and you’ll see the real daniel newman start to come out! world beware!)

he’s had nightmares of his family dying in a car crash. that’s all there is to it. don’t make too much of it

(what kind of son of yours would rather write poetry that watch a football game on Sunday morning?)

he gets that from his mother. she was shoving books down his throat since the time he could roll over in his crib

But Father!

but father o father o’ mine

i am hardly sorry for having offended thee

(and did he ever offend you then?)

don’t listen to him. he’s not even a real person. just a ghost of imagination

(i beg your pardon. i’m as real as any memory he’s having. all memories are ghosts of something, aren’t they?)

I handed the note coldly – he received it quizzically

Which he read as I remained nearby

Which read (as he read slowly):

DEAR MR. NEWMAN

(written onlight-blue in swirls, in the glowing strokes of some fanciful artist a harsh landscape of letters – of letters attached to letters on the line like careful jabs of frustrated expression. the penmanship of mr. roberts. an artist, to be sure – as he had one-time informed us – with his subtle smile – and pancake-hat with a bulb on top. round-bulb as a crown on the pin of his head. bobbing as he lurks. as he lurches in the still-life like a willow in the breeze…

an artist of the pen, like old schoolmaster crane: stalking the healdes with rite-rules of grammar. as he taught listless youth. always teaching so we’d learn to be responsible and able to cognize effectively the world we were about to enter)

I FEEL IT MY UNFORTUANTE DUTY TO INFORM YOU OF THE CHANCE I HAVE NOTED (AS HAVE SEVERAL OTHER INSTRUCTORS) IN THE ATTITUDE AND PERFORMANCE OF YOUR SON THESE PAST SEVERAL WEEKS. DANIEL ALWAYS HAS BEEN ONE OF THE BRIGHTEST STUDENTS IN MY CLASS, BUT LATELY…

(ahh, but lightly lately. yes, lightly lately he has taken his responsibilities as a student here. like a scape he has acted lately. without apparent interest in the curriculum which is offered at the school…

he had sent for me in the first-note. from the hands of the office-girl pallid-of-skin. sick-lily, as she handed the summons with a smile. thumping-buttocks beneath plaid as she bumped down the hall. i watched her for a time bumping left-and-right, left-and-right. then i was gone:

day-time thorugh the halls as lockers clakkkt and voice, bounding like flat-balls flat against gay-gray-walls, rebounding many-groups of joy and secrets whispered as the last-bell clannnnnnged, clinging to the air like tiny-bells shrill and resounding in ethereal rows of bells, bells-within-bells sounding ad infinitum – i passed down the hall as the bells pass away, the bells moving away. passing them without lolling (as they filed-away). i reached in a hush. i reached in a hush and they were all gone

‘ahh. come in. i was sondering if you’d come.’

‘did i have a choice?’

‘we always have choices,’ he said quietly. he watered with a pink-can blue-flowers on the side. poor heads-of-plants on the window-sill standing. (was he whistling as he worked? as he stopped and he spoke, smiling, can-in-hand:)

‘I’m sure you know why I asked you here. Your work – and more especially your attitude – has been unacceptable these last few weeks’

‘what do you mean: unacceptable?’

‘by ‘unacceptable’ i mean, quite obviously, that i will not accept it. you’re taken no interest in the reading; you’ve finished only half the assignmens; and you refuse to particpate in glass, to share your ideas with the rest of the students. i have to practically pull your teeth to get you to say anything. and i will not accept that kind of effort’

‘ok’

‘ok, what? ok, you’ll change your behavior…?’

‘ok, i won’t expect you to accept my work. i don’t really care if you accept it or not’

‘you don’t care! do you know what that would mean? you won’t be able to be graduated without this class! and i won’t give yu the credit if you don’t participate’

‘do whatever you want’

‘well, i guess i shouldn’t be surprised. this is exactly what i should have expected you to say. it’s in perfect harmony with your over-all attitude these past few weeks. i don’t know…listen. if something is bothering you, you can tell me. maybe you need to talk about what’s bothering you…’

‘nothing is bothering me. you sent for me. i got the impression something was bothering you’

‘you’re damn right something is bothering me. and it’s you. it’s your stinking ‘i-know-everything’ attitude…’

‘i didn’t come here to be insulted..’

‘now you listen to me. i don’t care how goddman important you think you are – you and your friends! when you are in my classroom you do as i say. you’ll sit here all night if i tell you to…’

‘don’t count on it!’

‘i will count on it! or we’ll have a little trip over to the principal’s office!’

‘is that a threat? is that the best you can do to threaten me?’

‘i’m not interested in threatening your…’

‘oh? ok, then what are you interested in?’

‘i just can’t believe how you have changed in the last month of so. i know something is bothering you. i don’t understand it – you used to be the most inquisitive student in my class, the best prepared…’

‘ok. so you want me to explain to you the way i feel! well, fine. i’ll tell you how i feel. i feel stifled in this damn place. i feel stifled sitting in this goddman classroom day after day, listening to you talk about symbolism and metre and simile all day. if you had something interesting to say, then maybe i’d take an interest. as sit is now, you’ve got nothing to teach me. all you are doing is wasting my time…’

‘ok. at least you are talking now…’

‘it’s you who is failing, not me. you’ve learned how to make shakespeare bland and milton taste like pablum…!’

‘ok, that’s enough!’

‘and it’s not just you. everyone here is the same…’

‘you’ve become too smart for us then? is that it? there’s no hope for the rest of us…?’

‘maybe’

‘maybe? is that all you can say?’

‘what the hell do you expect me to do when i’m bored stiff? just go ahead and play the game by your rules and pretend to take an interest, pretend to be entertained, or even stimulated by what you are saying? just to keep you please and confident enough to give me a grade at the end of the semester for my performance? well, i’m tired of this game. maybe i won’t give you the satisfaction…’

‘ok. and maybe i won’t give you the satisfaction of saying you are passing the class…’

‘are you saying my work is weaker than the work of juanita gonzalez or billie batts?’

‘they are doing the best they can. you are not.’

‘so if i’m lazy and get a 95 and they work hard and get a 75, they pass and i don’t? what is that: the dave roberts rule of leveling the world to the point where there are no standards…?’

‘my job is not to reward complacency’

‘no, you’d rather reward deception’

‘deception?’

‘you want me to be your dancing bear so i can get your reward’

‘you don’t have to dance for anyone here’

‘but isn’t that the essence of this ‘little talk’ we’re having? i tell you i’m bored and you tell me that to graduate i need to pretend i’m not bored…?’

‘some time obedience is a positive value’

‘yes. and sometimes it isn’t’

‘you can’t react to the world like you’re disappointed it isn’t better, it isn’t perfect, it isn’t your little mirror’

‘if i don’t like something, shouldn’t i say so’

‘you can say what you like. what i won’t tolerate is you disrupting my class with your petty rebellions. you should read camus – and see where the rebel goes in his novel. read the old testament – which is a great work of literature, by the way. it shows pretty clearly where rebellion against the world ultimately leads’

‘i’m going to hell? is that what you are saying?’

‘if you don’t amend your behavior, maybe you are’

‘i really don’t think you’re qualified to teach me theology!’

he glares at me – and i respond with silence

then he takes the time to etch the note. his elbow bending like a master-craftsman: shapely letters easing-out his smooth-hand like tiny portraits of discontent

‘give this note to your father,’ he said. ‘and tell him he can contact me at home if he wants. and dn’t read it. i hope i can at least trust you not to read your father’s mail. and don’t even think about throwing it away. i will call your father and make sure you delivered it’

which i read while walking home

alone, along the roadway.

…HE HAS NOT ONLY SHOWN A PAINFULLY OBVIOUS LACK OF INTEREST IN HIS WORK, BUT HE HAS ALSO, MUCH TO OUR SURPRISE AND DISMAY, SEEN FIT, ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS, TO CRITICIZE AND TREAT SEVERAL TEACHERS WITHOUT PROPER RESPECT, EVEN, AT TIMES, WITH OUTRIGHT CONTEMPT. I WAS SURE YOU WOULD APPRECIATE BEING INFORMED OF THIS INEXPLICABLE ABBERATION OF BEHAVIOR. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO DISCUSS THIS FURTHER, I WILL BE ONLY TOO HAPPY TO CONFER WITH YOU. YOURS TRULY, DAVID ROBERTS. YOUR SON’S ENGLISH TEACHER.

(Signet: Lowest Cipher!) you or me?

disappointment, as he finished, holding still the note-in-hand upon his lap, his eyes angled down. long-legged slacks of blue, casual in his golden-shirt. eyes not raised. folding carefully the note and setting it, without watching, on the end-table’s edge

confusion as his eyes rise painfully – settling on me a quizzical gaze

without words he seeks an answer

(failure is for losers! LOSERS! lowest sufferers! you are NOT a loser, fairy hen! don’t bring that LOSER dog-dung into this house, young man!)

he said: ‘it will be alright. i’ll call him and talk to him. sometimes you have to play the game, son. you dn’t always get to make your own rules. but i’ll talk to him everything will be fine’

(you’re a little boy, that’s all. all your mother’s coddling make you soft, weak. you never could live up to your father’s image – so you tried to hide under your mommy’s skirts. you’re not the first. you probably won’t be the last. yeah, go ahead and read your poetry. you’re not much good as a man, now are you?)

he didn’t say that. (but you were afraid he meant it.) fear is a four-letter word. (how profound! so is ‘cock’! so is ‘cunt’! maybe you should have been a priest! ‘abstinence’ is a ten-letter word! be a man, be a father, sink in to the world, all the way up to your throat! be like the rest of us for a change)

does a man have a right to his own destiny?

(as opposed to the dreams of his father or his mother, you mean? what are you, an idealist?)

who killed kennedy? wasn’t oswald a communist? a friend of castro?

(have you read all of those books? maybe that’s your problem. you’ve turned in to a damn bookworm. whatever you do, don’t read joyce! what kind of name is that anyway: a man who is a writer and who has a woman’s name: joyce? maybe you should go to the university and study literature, become a professor. do you think that would make your father proud?)

her ratio’s algerian I believe

(he wants you to be a millionaire? is that it? no wonder you’re reading oedipus rex. a dream is, at its very basic, the fulfillment of a wish. you want your father dead so you can…) you can stop there with your parrot cider, friend.

(what are you going to do when your grow-up then? are you going to be a war-hero in viet nam or are you going to be a literature professor? those are your two choices. you really should not be reading at this level while you are in high school, daniel. no wonder you’re a bit twisted) pretzel logic. (he’s going to be a major literary figure, dad! he’s going to be famous some day as a writer of twisted literature! cut him some slack!)

(now, if you can only resolve somehow this problem you have with your sexuality)

The Last of the Mohicans

Huckleberry Finn

Tom Sawyer

The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare

Don Quixote

The Grapes of Wrath

Robinson Crusoe

The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

Leaves of Grass

The Catcher in the Rye

Plato’s Dialogues

Moby Dick

The Story of Civilization

The Sound and the Fury

Absalom Absalom

The Complete Poems of Dylan Thomas

The Poems of Lord Byron

The Rainbow

Lady Chatterly’s Lover

Tropic of Cancer

Tropic of Capricorn

You Can’t Go Home Again

The History of Vietnam

Das Kapital

The Art of War

The Prince

I-Ching

The Confessions of Nat Turner

The Decline of the West

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Beyond Good and Evil

Yeats: Complete Poetry

Nicholas and Alexandra

L’Étranger

The Rebel

Rush To Judgment

The Interpretation of Dreams

Rememberance of Things Past

Doctor Faustus

Memoirs of An Artist as a Young Man

Dubliners

Ulysses

Finnegans Wake

(a hungry mind is a dangerous thing. no question, your mother spoiled you)

he has the tendency to make everything more difficult than it needs to be. he has trouble letting go. he tends to put too much pressure on himself. he is too judgmental. he is afraid of being rejected. he tends to reject too much because he fears this rejection

(like someone else we know)

i said: ‘forget about that note, dad. everything will work out’

and he said ‘ok’

as together toward dinner in a silence we walked

again.

we arrived

we arrived that night

with mother chattering, cut not for long, about the burnt-skin of the chicken and lumps in the gravy, rushing about like a proud, quiet hen, making sure we were cared for

and father cleared his throat, tasting the food slightly, judging it with a smile

as we waited for grace, for mother be seat herself.

and i listended intently between bits of chicken; and father told his story, steadily, without emotion, his vice calm beneatht he soft-light in the quiet of our dining-room

i listened as mother listened, eating quietly:

things haven’t always been the way they are now, i’m sure you realize. we’re pretty comfortable now; but there was a time when tings were a lot different

when i was your age, i had been working for a least two years trying to help my father make ends meet. my mother had been dead for about five eyars, and dad had been sick for at least that long. i had a job cleaning up in a grocery story after school. i wanted to quit school altogether so i could work all day but my father and older brothers woudn’t hear of it. they said my educatin was too important. but my father did let me work after school at the grocery store. i din’t earn much; but anything helped in those days. things were right. we didn’t have much money

and i didn’t give much thought to giving up my afternoons then. it was just something i did. there were times when the little money i was able to make was the difference between my dad’s keeping up with his payments or going under. and it wasn’t just me; but all the kids in the family did whatever they could. and, somehow, we managed to get along

but the truth was, deep down, i did restnt having to five up so much of my time. i resented having to go down to that store every day, while so many of my friends had so much time for themselves, to do what they wanted

some of my friends were the star athletes in our high school. and that was one of the things i resented most -- that i didn’t have the time to play ball with them. i had to work. so, instead of practicing and being able to play basketball for my school, i had to push a broom every night, and clean windows and clean a dirty bathroom, all for a few measly backs a month.

it may not sound very important today; but, back then, it was important. just like today (an maybe even more than today), it was the athlete in school who everyone admired. everyone wanted to be like the athlete. and i felt that i could have been (and should have been) on our teams when i was growing up. i was a pretty decent ballplayer; but i didn’t have the time to play. and i resented it because i felt like i’d been cheated out of something that could have been important to me

well, one day when i was at work i decided that when i had a family none of my kids would have to work and miss out on any of the important things in their youth. my kids would never have to get used to not having enough money to do the things they really wanted to do. and that’s why we’ve got the things we’ve got today. that’s why we’re comfortable today. we’re not rich – but we’re not poor either. and none of this came cheap: no one gives you anything in this world. you have to work for everything you get

i guess the main thing i’m trying to get at is to try to explain what i think is one of the most important lessons of life. and that is that you need to try to be successful at whatever you decide to do, dan. i started out with nothing; and, now, i’ve gained at least enough to give my son and my wife a comfortable existence. i’ve succeeded in my own way. we’re comfortable now. we’re secure. we have many of the things we want. and i think that’s most of what i set out to accomplish that day in the grocery story, when i was thinking about the future. i think your mother and i have both succeded in our own way. and, then, again: we had you. that might be our greatest accomplishement of all

you should shoot at being the best at whaever you decide to do – to be the strongest, the fastes, the smartest, the richest, whatever it is you want. and i’m sure you will be, son. your mother and ire ally believe you can do anything you set your mind to. we have a lot of confidence in your. we know you will make the right decisions in life. and that you will always make us proud

(he paused as he wiped his mouth with his napkin. i thnk his eyes were moist also. but he was never very comfortable with showing his emotion)

mother nodded, smiling with affection

he finished, saying

‘i think i’ll take a nap on the couch for a while, before i go out’

he rose and told mother that the dinner was very good. he moved slowly in to the living room

i did not tell him many things. (such as?) i was raised to be a nazi-killer; but all this other stuff got in the way

(such as?)

i was not raised to lead this kind of normal life in a small town raising a family with a woman i hardly know, knew

(such as?)

i was not really a traitor to my country. that i did not choose, instead, some idealistic vision of a communal human community through which love and justice and peace and community (a human kingdom of children) was achievable. (smoke pot; smoke pot. if the vision starts to vanish, smoke more pot)

(such as?)

i preferred dante to john milton but i preferred john milton to the romantics, coleridge, wordsworth, shelly, keats and blake

(wasn’t lord byron your favorite romantic? and wasn’t that because you became sexually aroused from the idea of sleeping with your half-sister, and swimming to your death in the seas off the coast of greece?)

what better way for a romantic to die?

(perhaps in an armed revolution against the ruling class?)

we shall overco-o-ome...!

(war is nothing more than the greedy capitalists of two countries setting the working classes of both countries against each other, for material gain!)

yes. more propel-glandular please! spoken like a true coward. i hear canada has an open border. you can run there if that gun starts to get too heavy

(you are not smoking enough marijuana. you need to be reading more herman hesse. and you really should be reading more nietzsche: do you know how much he hated western civilization, and christianity?)

the vanity of the intellectual. the man who invented the toaster had more impact on the world than nietzsche did

(you need to meet Alice D. just a couple time before you go to college)

college? why would i want to go to college?

(to grow your mind?)

to be popul-grand-dazed bile college professors nursing on marx? red opus rocks: das kapital, das kapital, we will be free when killing all the chiefs!

(sowing in the sunshine, sowing in the shadows, fearing neither clouds nor winter’s chilling breeze; by and by the harvest, and the labor ended. we shallow calm read joice sing, bringing in the sheaves)

what is Psalm 126:6: he who goes out weeping?

(is this a game show, then? name that tune – lessen queerfolly!)

eleanor rigby loved in a church and was buried along with her name. Sung abbot feather mackeral’s loose decoction wish oil-avoided hera hora-menial race his stance sand latium polka denter era, timer tool!

(johnnie’s in the basement mixing up the mediciine. i'm on the pavement, thinking about the government)

ron-ron-robert dellum’s noon name-proofed verse on auf revelocean, erdu how to pretend you are rubbing hoods joust far soul lune nash Moon is in the heavens ruling. darkness at noon, darkness at noon, shadows even the silver spoon. egg ellipse ide guest. i really like how the sun god (arkangel michael) keeps the dark lords imprismed in the slotherened wholemost fear under his thumb for many generations. islam, the butcher, came by several times to see if he could get a ride on male fellow’s chippewa, Peek Watt

(i see a red door and i want it painted black. no colors any more, i want them to turn black. maybe i can fade away and not have to face the facts. it's not easy facing up when your whole world is black)

TURN THAT MUSIC DOWN

darkness is not a skin color but a soul color. that is what sister mary olive told us

(white is black and black is white)

darkness is a desire for war, poverty, violence, economic collapse: tragedy in short. scientists can see in the light and artists can see in the dark. therefore, artists are demons who desire a world dressed in darkness

(when can you see God then?)

you see God when it’s dark; and you can be god when you are light

(that’s heresy i do think!)

hera sees; seuss, sadly, does not see – but talks instead

(theodor seuss geisel?)

why complicate things by turning back in to the past? afterall, the artist is dark because he rejects the modern world he’s living in and idealizes the past. he's never far from the mirror. nark kisses hiss sown red fluxion, bonding dung touchée hitched dim age

(thespian in boeotia)

he had his (you know what) buried up his twin sister’s (you know what) that when she fell in the grecian sea and drowned, so did he

(boy ruined)

romaned tocsin schism. oh you masters of war. you who build the big guns

(high home ennervated ate toy yum, hennery-re-eighth i am, i am)

who is the widow next door?

(when myrna zanatelle bends over to pet her puppy, i can see her round breasts fully exposed)

knocker-star nipple-heir

TURN THAT DAMN MUSIC DOWN! (THAT CLARK KID IS A NEGATIVE INFLUENCE, THAT’S WHAT I THINK!)

dark nark-kissos. thummim. thamin donacon reed-bed: horny as hell. boy warry awfuled Diana. act young and you shall surely be treated young. Echo, ekko, eco-protos; echo-brutus. be war aleph thesis talking too much, said he, sad author that he is

(maybe i should be going)

richard corey went home last night, and put a bullet through his head. but i-i-i, i work in his factory

(puff the magic dragon lived by the sea, and frollicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee)

i cried myself to sleep many nights listening to that song

(fear of death)

fear of the death of my parents

(jackie favor or jackie paper?)

this is K-O-M-A, out of Oklahoma City. listen to us long enough, carefully enough, and we’ll be putting you, too, in to a COMA

(putting a whole generation in to a COMA)

of self-hate. guilt is a nasty thing, visited upon a people for seven generations!

(if our parents believe this, then we must believe the opposite thing. here, have another hit)

don’t bogart that joint, my friend, pass it over to me

(who is...?)

hellish metal rune dears

(and what is it in english?)

hey, mister tambourine man, play a song for me. i’m not sleepy and there is no place i’m going to. hey, mister tambourine man, play a song for me. in my jingle-jangle morning i’ll come following you

(birds awful father surely folk all to gather. surely)

kether? what was his last name?

(are you going to college in laramie?)

college? i just started high school. i’ve barely got my dick wet here

(that’s no fault of mine)

PLENTY OF PRETTY GIRLS IN COLLEGE, SON!

i’m leaning in a certain direction

THAT’S WHAT HUMPTY DUMPTY SAID IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY!

a friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself

TOTAL FREEDOM TO BE YOURSELF? I’M NOT YOUR FRIEND! I’M YOUR DAD!

(i like ideas about the breaking away or overthrowing the established order. i am interested in anyting about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that seems to have no meaning. it seems to me to be the road towards freedom – external revolt is a way to bring about internal freedom.)

(THIS KID IS A BAD INFLUENCE, DANIEL! HE WANTS TO PROPOGATE CHAOS? HE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT CHAOS IS! CHAOS IS THE NAZIS KILLING AND ENSLAVING ALL THROUGHOUT EUROPE! THAT’S WHAT CHAOS IS. IF HE’S A FRIEND OF CHAOS, THEN I’M NO FRIEND OF HIS – AND YOU SHOULDN’T BE EITHER!)

(try to set the night on FIRE!)

(NEXT THING YOU KNOW HE’LL BE EXPOSING HIMSELF AND SAYING IT WAS A REVOLUTIONARY ACT!)

do you think he’s really a....peter-foil, dad?

(WHO KNOWS? ANYTHING’S POSSIBLE! HIS HAIR IS LONGER THAN HIS SISTER’S HAIR! HE PROBABLY THINKS HE’S A GIRL!)

the inversion of ‘M’ is ‘W’, is it not?

(Mountain in Water.)

who is lesley west?

(i aint gonna work on Maggie’s Farm no more)

i got a head full of ideas that are driving me insane.

(yes)

beware! didn't old Nicher undip kaisering whore’s ass before he was carted off to Catatonia?

(the serbian who murdered archduke francis ferdinand was spouting quotiations from nietzsche! they say nietzsche started world war one!)

who is mohammed mahmedbasic?

(four black hands)

eight, actually! shh! someone’s shouting!

IF I HAVE TO TELL YOU ONE MORE TIME TO TURN THAT MUSIC DOWN...!

Nietzsche started World War One; and Wagner started World War Two?

(so who are you to say the inventor of the toaster had more influence on the development of the world than artists do?)

yes, well those toaster-inventors construct the world; and artists de-construct the world

(small matter of clarification)

let’s destroy the bird-watch ease for the sake of the poor! Afterall, he is us! end weigher rum, rem, rome!

(small matter for clarification)

doom is in the bud

(who is dylan thomas?)

dome and bud and bloom and boom are one

(what is your momma’s....tuplia clusiana...that you saw that lonely winter night, mister make bath?)

four lips, actually.

(we have the responsibility of saving the world by destroying our fathers – and saving the dark races from the tyranny of the white race!)

is that your campaign platform?

(a small matter for clarification)

have another joint, mister mojo rising. the sun has entered the ark, i’m assuming – leaving the demonic monsters to run rampant on earth. lunar rising. lunar rising. scorpio, sagittarius, capricorn, aquarius, pisces. houses of riot, and indecision, and, clearly, patricide!

TURN OFF THAT MUSIC! AND TURN OUT THE LIGHT! CLARK, IT’S LATE, YOU SHOULD BE GOING HOME! AND STOP FILLING MY SON’S HEAD WITH YOUR ADOLESCENT INSIGHTS!

(when the music’s over, turn out the light, turn out the light, turn out the light)

AHH. NIGHT, DENSENIGHT, SILENTNIGHT: ALONEATNIGHT. AT LAST, ATLAS

a southernpacific freighttrain whistle rattling in the atmosphere

WHITMAN thick-closed on the stand to the right

and

THE IORD at rny slde¡

soft-sunken in the covers on the bed at my side; his angelíc face¡ cherub-thick and handsome-white as he watched from that cover: with hands artistic at his waist¡ like a painting he stood: sensítive a sensitive wonder in his eyes: a fatal puzzlement

to admire.

to be admired.

this LORD

allowed to be a MAN.

like a hero HE--

HE: never meant to walk in spirit. with the souls of other men.

never to look with human-eyes on earths and earthly vanity.

ever-without-thirst for glorious repute

and, for it, ever a stranger

to man.

having sympathy none with human-flesh.

MAN FREED fron human-faith.

from false designs

of ambition and greed.

MAN ABOVE MEN

MAN ABOVE MEN (human, all too-human) with their faiths and their goals and their human weakness.

NEVER-HEROES in their small gIory.

without compassion --

without digniiy in their petty victories.

BUT HE

BUT HE PERHAPS

AND I?

SUPERMAN? AN IMPULSE (A GOD INSIDE, A FRAIL SHELL ON THE OUTSIDE)?

as i wrote too: lines on the page

i wrote too: lines on the page in many rhymes and reeling couplets. with meaning i was certain. with all the meaningless around me. if i am not them, then i am something at least

expressing (in silent incantations)

outrage

demands

desire

and ideal love

poems-for-imaginary-lovers on the page from my pen:

scenes of amped perfection

as we strolled without a blemish.

beneath leaves scented and full.

over paths holding hands speaking secrets

of beauty and truth

and truth’s beauty

and that was all –

all that was needed, known.

my father had laughed whon i told him my plans. without malice—still confused

a writer huh?

well, there’s good money in advertising.

HAVE YOU REALLY READ ALL THOSE BOOKS?

The Last of the Mohicans

Huckleberry Finn

Tom Sawyer

The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare

Don Quixote

The Grapes of Wrath

Robinson Crusoe

The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

Leaves of Grass

The Catcher in the Rye

Plato’s Dialogues

Moby Dick

The Story of Civilization

The Sound and the Fury

Absalom Absalom

The Complete Poems of Dylan Thomas

The Poems of Lord Byron

The Rainbow

Lady Chatterly’s Lover

Tropic of Cancer

Tropic of Capricorn

You Can’t Go Home Again

The History of Vietnam

Das Kapital

The Art of War

The Prince

I-Ching

The Confessions of Nat Turner

The Decline of the West

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Beyond Good and Evil

Yeats: Complete Poetry

Nicholas and Alexandra

L’Étranger

The Rebel

Rush To Judgment

The Interpretation of Dreams

Rememberance of Things Past

Doctor Faustus

Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man

Dubliners

Ulysses

Finnegans Wake

Siddhartha

Steppenwolf

Demian

The Glass Bead Game

The Divine Comedy

Paradise Lost

Ii could see him wondering about his plans...?

perhaps ln law, perhaps in government....

he’d mentioned lt before,..

but now?

to be an artist

the conscience of all.

society’s soul?

did society really need a soul from Sinclair, Wyoming?

perhaps i’ll write under a pun-aim.

prhaps i’ll call myself Emil Sinclair.

i think i really have a right to that nomen-deep-loom...

but, yes, dad?

now, dad?

ahh, father who art

uneven

hallowed be thine aim….

NEVER THOUGHT NO SON OF MINE WOULD BE A BOOK-WORM, BY GOD!

Hour farther

Arden Haven

Helioed beer-time mayhem….

BUT HE PERHAPS

BUT HE

HIS WORD

HIS WORD swam beneath my eyes at night. until late those many nights, lying in bed with enjoyment. relaxing with the maid of athens. and sweet augusta who once -- and now-again -- walks in beauty

ever-lasting-beauty

i read of dreams and prisoners and childe-heralds

in peace as i placed gently the book of poems on the night-stand.

treasure-poems (scent treacher rye land)

as i flipped the switch with a magic ease

and the light-security of my sacred den – Daniel’s sacred den --

faded into an abrupt pleasing DARKNESS.

VIII.

Drawing from his front-pocket, as he rises slowly, like a young man older than his many-several-years (as he twists upright), his wrist-watch which he fingers careflessly, turning over the tiny machine with soiled fingers and a smudge or two on the dull crystal face – though this smudge doesn’t conern him as he stares passt the small streaks into the face of the gadget and notes the position of the two hands, which are more like arms than like hands really, he thinks, yet which rest (at least for the moment) in a posture which prompts Newman to accept the time as being somewhere in the nieighborhood of fifteen-past-two, which, in itself, means very little, bur from which Newman infers that another Friday-workday-workweek has nearly elapsed – and that it will soon be time, again, for him to return to his home for another weekend with his wife, which he dreads a bit (in an odd way) though he’ll be pleased without a thing to be done for two-more-days until next-week begins again and he is – Newman is – once more where he is today, performing similar tasks, thinking similar stale thought, as he will acquiese once again in passing another-week in this similar stale fashion. He returns the watch to his left-breast pocket (which he has also hidden the crushed cigarette-butt which he has seconds earlier finished smoking in the dark behind the quiet pumps in the dark-quiet room) – he steps from the unused shack beside the Slurry Room with a quack curious glance (a glance for which he feels a litt-le-bit foolish once it has been completed: feeling foolish for the guilt that he feels almost aily as he breaks again this rule of his employer; even more, feeling foolish for the little-bit-of-fear he now feels as he realizes the very-real-possibility of some-day being discovered by someone-in-some-position-of-authority andd being forced to face the certain-set-of-consequences reserved for this inexcusable act of treason which he has just commited at which he might have been apprehended though never sure (he is) what they might be (these consequences) thought certainly sure that he can never afford them no-matter-what in his present predicament of responsibility to a wife and a child-to-be and an odd assortment of intangible items and luxuries and inanimate objects of all kinds, none of which have been fully-purchased, and which, should he fail for some reason to continue makiong his payments each odd week, would be stolen away from himself and his wife and possibly his young child without a second’s hesitation and without compassion by a man simply doing his job whose declaration would be offered and (he would hope) be accepted as a necessarily-cruel-testament to the fact (for future consideration) that there are rules to this game, rules which cannot simply be disregarded, rules that can’t simply be contradicted, ignored or challenged no-matter-what one might consider the virtuous or most correct or most generous thing to be done…)

Newman childes himself briefly for deigning to think such thoughts – he gently chides himself for letting his thoughts wander to such ridiculous possibilities that will never happen he is almost certain as he strolls without interest toward the hot-pumproom where he has left his book of readings, weather russet-colored cover, on the table in a small tattered but fairly orderly single-heap of rumpled moisture-stained pages which he now needs again as he is ready to begin his second-tour of this unit to record again certain life-signs for the records kept but seldom noticed on the center-desk in the Complex as he enters the steam-mist and the noise of hissing metal pandemoniums only long enough to apprehend the booklet solitary by the pepper shaker by Clements now-empty lunch-box and to retreat with his slender prize back out into the sunlight, back out of the heat and the clakkk of seething pumps as he steps several quick steps to his left, a graceful side-jump, showing he is still young, still with athletic movements, sliding into the cool through somewhat acrid quiet of the cold-pumproom with a loner’s stalth, like a spay seeking to steal secret quotients from scattered serial dials sleepy-camouflaged on silver walls which he measures intently but efficiently, jotting into his spy-book in arcane-scientific-notation, the vital numbers of the codes, as the dials, lulled by the gleam and silence of their surroundings in to careless disarmament, dismiss the sinister Neman with a curt disinterst as he steals-away, the valuable data tucked like a wadded-glove into the palm of his left hand.

Moving in short chops-of-steps, slowly, one-step-at-a-time, up the stairs at the back-entrance of the old boardroom on 780 – stopping with book-in-hand at mid-stairs, Newman peers in to the maze of pipes that cling like thick-steel-vines to the soot-bricks on the mortar-construction wall – he looks, without much concentration, into the grime gathered for years about the pipes, about the red-black bricks as he looks without concentration for the Fresh Feed Thermomenter, which he locates quickly, having had to locate this same dial amost daily for some three-odd-years now; and he sacribbles next to other scribbles two odd figures which represent in wome way the temperature the dial has offered up silently to his silent peering eyes….

Retracing-steps, loping-down-again to the maln-floor, to the dirt and the concrete which slip always below his feet as he proceeds frcrn memory in a thought-deprived trance toward his next reading at the outside-wall of the cold-room, a1ong the unpaved road to the tank-farm which is where he stops now, sluggishly, below the Sponge Oil Tower, and records several nunbers beside severaÌ obscure-appellations before movíng-on-again beneath overhanging pipes and fumes and smoke which hangs like steam slowly rising into vapors and the mist and the reek of the clatter of machines running-wild and the leak-and-drip of grase on the walk-ways underfoot which Newman doesn’t seem to notice as he moves toward the Slurry Room: which all is custom now, which all is habit, as he continues on the path toward the Slurry Room’s back-door, without a thought or without a sign or even without a glance-about, toward the Slurry Room’s back-door which is where he must gather more readings…but he stops for an instant, hearing a rustling above. He lurches defensively, twisting his head immediately towad the noise, expecting to find Terry again, armed in some manner, preparing to launch another good-nature attack upon the defensless Newman…

MJCwriting.htm