Chapter 1 #5
Somewhat dimly, somewhat partially.
But he saw.
Saw the Pennsylvania girl.
My God, woman! the Frenchman shouted. I gave that to you.
Do you not see? I no longer have it. Here within me.
To give. Nor do you have it within you. Quel désastre!
You have wasted it! Look: he barely felt it.
You have no idea what you have done. Quel imbécile!
What an excellent chance you have tonight forfeited!
Well, let’s see, I said. Let’s at least wait and—
His natty suit was suddenly a dull gray and the hat on his cane was no longer spinning.
It was not easy, he said. Extracting that. Bringing it back here.
I’m sure, I said.
Pennsylvania is far, he said.
Must have been very tiring, I said.
And I did it with such admirable quickness, he added sadly.
Then began to visibly age, while regarding me with a withering look of reproach.
As he aged, he shrank, became bent and thin, rotated in space, was soon lying horizontally and, in that position, passed away.
Then manifested as he actually was, now, back in that former realm: a thin layer of dried bonedust in what remained of a rotted coffin in an obscure quarter of a Parisian graveyard.
I will do my best to return, a voice said from within the layer.
Then the coffin vanished, a ripple ran through the now-floating layer of bonedust, which retracted sharply into a single mote, and then even that much of him was gone.
Adieu, I said, perhaps rather small-mindedly.
—
Did this glimpse of his true state, as he was now, back in that former realm, put me in mind of my own true state?
Of course.
But I was not bothered. I knew very well where “I” was: underground, Stanley, Indiana, “Sacred Heart of Mary Cemetery,” beneath a willow, fifteen feet from a stone bench upon which “Slurpee cup” rested and had been resting now for the better part of a year, and what: a desiccated brownish-green figure of medium height (length), cleaved in half at approximately the hip-line, left arm disconnected at the shoulder, a fuzz-beard of mold on what was left of its cheekbones, wearing, still, the outfit Lloyd had picked out for me (beige skirt, pale pink blouse, black pumps, my favorite in life, a fact Lloyd had sweetly remembered even in his grief), all of it marked by a disappointingly economical stone reading: J Blaine, Wife, 1954–1976, the best Lloyd, an assistant deputy, could afford.
But (joy, joy!) that hideous figure was not me, not anymore; nor was I the woman that figure had been when vital, i.e.
, before her demise, odiously burdened with her stunted diction, her limited view, her nominal ability to comprehend, her constrained love, which she could direct only toward those precious few with whom she had been randomly placed into proximity, i.e. , friends, family, husband.
No: this, this now, was me: vast, unlimited in the range and delicacy of my voice, unrestrained in love, rapid in apprehension, skillful in motion, capable, equally, of traversing, within a few seconds’ time, a mile or ten thousand miles.
The champion of a cause I would never forsake:
To comfort.
To comfort whomever I could, in whatever way I might.
For this was the work our great God in Heaven had given me.
—
Despite the Frenchman’s assertion to the contrary, the mind-sample delivered by my forearm-immersion concerning the lovely girl in Pennsylvania seemed, indeed, to have had some effect on my charge.
He was unhappy and anxious, the fingers on his right hand making rapid infinitesimal typing motions.
Can a fellow get some water around this joint? he said.
Ask, I said.
You again, he said.
Ask aloud, I said. Your wife is just there. You’ll need to be loud enough to wake her.
Water, he said.
But again he did not succeed in actually speaking.
I’ll die of dry, he said. What a sorry pass. For a man of my caliber.
In a Dumas bar long ago a drunk’d been shoved down and couldn’t get up. Just kept calling out from where he lay heaped in a corner, under the punching bag you paid to punch. Man of my caliber, man of my caliber, he’d kept pathetically calling.
What a dope that guy was. He’d quit trying. That was his sin. A person could do anything if he put his mind to it. That drunk’d be lying under that punching bag forever at that rate.
A guy had to fight.
So, you were a fighter, I said.
My charge lay there deciding whether to engage with this figment of his imagination.
Was and am, sister, he said.
Despite his disbelief in my reality his mind reflexively tumbled forth, seeking to demonstrate that he was and always had been a fighter:
At Michigan, freshman year, he’d been taking some guff. About his height. Also, was considered a Wyoming hick. Who, his classmates joked, must play a mean banjo.
He’d felt like packing it in, going home.
Well, here’s how that deal’d worked out:
Summer before college, he’d worked in the oil patch.
Near Gillette. So, when field camp rolled around after junior year, he knew a thing or two.
About the rigs. It could get scary. Some of the fellows got rattled.
By the heat, by the noise. They’d turn to him: K.J.
, am I doing this right? Am I about to get hurt like this?
About to get my arm yanked off by that chain right there? I feel like I maybe am.
So from a short little Wyoming hick nobody he’d become a wiry bantam rooster of an expert moving low and fast among his bigger, less-experienced, citified classmates, snapping out brisk orders, which they (who previously, some of them, used to do that condescending thing he hated of ruffling his hair like he was a little boy) now obeyed unquestioningly.
Some dunce would be joking around, doing a comedy routine off the radio, not paying attention, about to get himself sucked into a gearbox, and he’d grab that bozo by the arm and yank him over somewhere safe and hiss a few harsh words into his ear there and give him a brotherly pop on the hard hat.
Back in town that night the guy whose bacon he’d saved would buy his beers, by way of thanks.
Suddenly he was cock of the walk.
Like that.
Because he hadn’t just flopped down and taken it.
A tank. His wife had once called him that.
He rolled right over whatever life put in front of him.
He’d worked his way up. Step by step. To the top.
Very top. CEO. About as high as a guy could go.
If he did say so himself. Hired and fired, restructured whole divisions, traveled the world, befriended senators, advised presidents.
Did that frog have any idea how much motor fuel it took?
For the U.S. to have one normal year, like we just now had?
One hundred and fifty billion gallons. One.
Hundred. Fifty. Billion. Try to work your head around that, Pierre.
If you can. Get hold of a gas container.
Of the type used to gas up a lawnmower. Get hold of a lot of them.
By the time I’m done, you’ll wish you were in the gas-can business.
Ha ha. Line ’em up side by side. To get to a hundred fifty billion gallons?
That line of cans is going to need to go around the world.
Wait: not just once, not twice: a thousand times.
And somebody has to go out there and find the stuff.
Right? Get it out of the ground, process it, deliver it.
Was that easy? It was not. Take it from someone who’d actually done it.
Otherwise, what? Did the frog want to start rationing?
Was that the notion? Rationing fuel? Who was going to run that deal?
Some vast international bureaucracy? Feel good about that, Jacques?
Think that’s going to be an efficient process?
(Been to the U.N. lately? The post office?) And guess who’d get hurt the most?
If the handwringers get their way, brought the whole deal to a halt.
The poor. That’s who. Those who have the least. What’s the tide that lifts all boats?
Continual growth. Is continual growth a given?
It. Is. Not.
Any idiot knows that.
So: don’t rush off half-cocked. That’s all he was saying, all he’d ever said.
Let’s not leap off a cliff about it. What’s the rush?
Consider the timeline. Cogitate on the complexity of the overall system.
Consider Lao-tzu: “Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish—don’t overdo it.
” Or, next thing you know, some know-nothing from Washington’s in your bedroom, assessing how well you’re putting on your socks.
Let’s keep researching, keep investigating. Even if the Hysteria Brigade’s correct, twenty years isn’t going to make a diddly bit of difference.
Weren’t these the same jackasses who’d predicted a coming ice age?
Put that in your cheese-smelling pipe and smoke it.
Mon frère.
He was a fighter, yes, goddamn it.
When the going got tough, the tough got going.
And the going was getting tough just now. Yessir. He was sick. Maybe I’d heard about that? Maybe I’d gotten that goddamn memo? He was starting to lose it. He’d started seeing things. Crazy things.
Such as? I said and smiled.
It’s hooey, he said.
What is? I said.
That Frenchie is and Walkover Gal is, he said. And you are.
And yet, I said. What color is my blouse?
Pink, he said, wondering at the fact that he knew this.
Pale pink, I said.
Yes, he had to admit.
How odd, he felt: an imaginary woman manifesting so specifically.
What are you then? he said. Ghost?
Oh, dear man, I said. A friend.
A friend, he said.
Of sorts, I said. Here to comfort you. In your hour of need.
Doing a bang-up job so far, he said. You want to comfort me?
Yes, I said.
Keep Frenchie out, he said.
I’ll do my best, I said.
But even as I spoke, the Frenchman fell in through the ceiling, so emaciated as to be nearly unrecognizable, all but lost in the familiar pair of mechanic’s overalls.
He got up, dusted himself off.