Джойс Оутс - Zombie

How is there BLAME in those fireball plumes. If they explode on Jupiter or Earth. If they are fated by the Universe since the beginning of time or manmade. So there is no BLAME in Grandma. I am wrong to be pissed at a woman so old. Who is so good to me.

It was like this. Grandma requested would I drive her to places because she does not drive a car any longer & that was O.K. by me—sometimes. (For Grandma paid me, of course.) Would I drive her to some other old woman’s house, or to visit some pathetic old cripples in some nursing home & wait around for her & drive her back home & that was O.K. If I was free & didn’t have too much caretaker shit to do at the house or homework from Dale Tech. (In fact the semester was over, the courses were ended.) & then Grandma got the idea to hire me for yard work, mow the lawn (which is approximately one half-acre) & trim the hedge & sprinkle fertilizer in the rose beds etc. & that was O.K. in theory. Grandma would pay me $50 to $75 cash for just a few hours’ work & I did not need to be too thorough, she never came out to examine it. An operation for cataracts or something in one or both of her eyes so maybe she couldn’t see too well & I didn’t inquire. Grandma slipped these bills to me saying This is just between you & me, Quentin. Our little secret! meaning not Dad nor the IRS would know.

Maybe Grandma was lonely & that was why. Trying to get me to stay for supper etc. There was another old woman, a widow who was a friend of Grandma’s & sometimes I would drive this other old woman to her home & she would tip me, too. Like a taxi service. In my 1987 Ford van with the American flag decal in the rear window.

Even before SQUIRREL it was a season of many plans!—buzzing my head like ideas from outer space! I would wake in my van not knowing where I was in a parking lot of some tavern in some city unrecognizable to me & it’s morning & fierce pounding sunshine in my eyes like spikes—& in a cold calm check the rear of the van, the neatly folded plastic garbage bags & plastic sheets etc., & discover no evidence. Or I would wake in my caretaker’s quarters but not in bed, on the sofa fully clothed except unzipped & my hard cock poking free, the TV going loud & it’s morning of some day unknown to me, empty bottles or beer cans underfoot, & roaches scurrying over the pizza crusts & bells of such sweetness chiming from the Music College, it was like something MIRACULOUS had happened in my sleep! A voice said If you go down into the cellar, Quentin, he awaits you .

Who? Who awaits me?

You know who .

My ZOMBIE? My ZOMBIE?

But the voice disappeared into the TV ads & footsteps overhead & plumbing. & next-door in the kitchen Big Black Guy (as I called him) from Zaire thumping at roaches with a rolled-up newspaper. As I have requested him not to do.

Knowing then it is just Q__ P__ alone in the Universe. If you want something to happen, you do it.

There was talk of Q__ enrolling for summer session at the tech college but the registration days came & went. I had informed Dad & Mom & Mr. T__ that I had passed both courses & liked the college O.K. but wasn’t decided yet about continuing. & Dad got excited saying What of your future, son?—you are over thirty years old, you can’t be a caretaker all your life can you & the word “caretaker” on his tongue like a turd. & I said. & Dad said. & Mom said the fall was a long way off & no decision had to be made quickly. So that was how the discussion ended that day.

An envelope from Dale College came to Q__ P__ at 118 North Church Street, a transcript of my grades probably. I ripped it up without opening it & tossed the pieces away.

Mowing Grandma’s lawn one Saturday in July & trimming the evergreen hedge & I heard kids shouting & laughing next door in the neighbors’ swimming pool. DON’T LOOK the voice said calmly. But it was a tease. It seemed to know beforehand. Five or six teenaged kids including one boy about fifteen just blew my mind, his swim trunks streaming water when he climbed out of the pool after diving a perfect dive & his young muscle-hard body like something shining I couldn’t take my eyes off. & I made my way along the hedge to get a better look & it went through me like a knife seeing his face. Enough like Barry’s face to be his TWIN! Except Barry was younger in my memory of course & dark-haired, & this boy was older, tall & lean & quick & loud & his hair a fairer brown like streaked from the sun.

Barry, my friend from seventh grade at Dale Springs Junior High which was just a mile or so from Grandma’s house!—the buff-brick building I’d drive by on my way to Grandma’s, only a block or so out of my way.

Barry who’d drowned in a swimming accident at the school, struck his head on the side of the pool & sank & so many kids yelling & wild tossing volleyballs it wasn’t noticed till we were almost all out of the pool. How many months, years later I overheard Mom say to one of her women friends on the telephone Quentin is still mourning that poor child’s death, I don’t think he will ever get over it .

Newspaper clippings I saved for years, photos of Barry alone & with his basketball teammates in the special memorial issue of the school newspaper, & a grimy sock of Barry’s I had taken from his locker, kept in one of my SECRET PLACES between my mattress & bed springs & one night reaching for the sock to fondle I discovered my treasure was gone. & whoever had taken it, Mom, or Dad, never spoke to me of it. Nor did I give any sign.

& NOW BARRY WAS RETURNED TO ME! But golden-shining in the sun & in fact better-looking, sexy that way young teenaged boys are so self-assured & swaggering with their buddies & showing off to girls. “SQUIRREL” was my immediate name for him, that blond-brown-streaked hair & his energy & clowning-around & loud giggle. “SQUIRREL” just came to me & so it was. This could not be just chance. Q__ P__ struck like somebody’d hit me over the head with a hammer. & my cock alert, in wonderment.

For here was my true ZOMBIE. No questions asked.

Q__ P__ calm & collected though returning to the hedge etc. Taking up the clippers & continuing work. All thoughts of dark-haired dark-skinned specimens, Ramid & Akhil & Abdellah & the rest beneath the roof at 118 North Church & even Velvet Tongue flushed away in those quick seconds like shit down a toilet.

This property Q__ P__ is CARETAKER for why can’t I be such for life, if I so wish?

The P__ family house, large & dignified red-brick Victorian, 118 North Church Street, Mt. Vernon, Michigan. None of the P__ family live here now except Q__ P__ CARETAKER.

It is a job that suits me. Like Mr. T__ says, such responsibility is good for a man.

It was after World War II Grandma says University Heights began to change. Coloreds began to move in & whites to move out in a steady irreversible stream to such suburbs as Dale Springs. Oh I will never forgive the Germans for that war ! Grandma says.

The foundation of our house was laid 1892 & it is still firm. The cellar Grandpa P__ had renovated in the 1950s (as I have been told, I was not born yet) is such that there are two sections: the new, & the old. The new has a poured concrete floor & reinforced walls with beaverboard paneling. The gas furnace is here, water heater, fuse box, washer-drier etc. CARETAKER’s work bench & such tools as my electric power drill & newly purchased Cherokee chainsaw.