Джойс Оутс - Zombie

Dad was at a podium to the right. A microphone around his neck. Two or three hundred students in the amphitheater taking notes & if Dad saw his son he gave no sign. But he could not see me I am sure in the darkness.

Quantifiable & unquantifiable material. Research into the early Universe suggests . On an illuminated screen at the front of the auditorium was a computer simulation as Professor P__ identified it of a section of the Universe two hundred million years ago. Demonstrating how the Universe evolved from its early smoothness & equitable distribution of matter to the present condition of superclusters & dark matter. As much as ninety percent of the Universe’s mass is in unquantifiable “black holes.” Most of the Universe is therefore undetectable by our instruments & does not “obey” the laws of physics as we know them .

There was a hum & a drone & vibrating in the room. That sense you have that the floor is tilting or the Earth shifting & settling beneath your feet. Professor R__ P__’s students were busy taking notes & I observed their bent heads & shoulders & it came to me that almost any one of them would be a suitable specimen for a ZOMBIE.

Except: you would want a healthy young person, male. Of a certain height, weight & body build etc. You would want somebody with “fight” & “vigor” in him. & well hung.

But the University students have been forbidden to me. After that ignorant incident that, lucky for Q__ P__, turned out O.K. It was dark behind the dorm & the kid was drunk & stooped over vomiting & gagging & when he looked up hearing me the tire iron slammed down over his ear crashing him to the ground before he could register seeing me so it was O.K. I was wearing my hooded canvas jacket & there were no witnesses, still I panicked & ran as I would never do now with more experience. But it was O.K. A lesson was learned.

& in Ypsilanti a long time ago so long I can’t remember really I came to the same conclusion I think. For the fact is: any University student (with the exception of the foreign students who are so far from home) would be immediately missed. Their families care about them. & they have families.

A safer specimen for a ZOMBIE would be somebody from out of town. A hitch-hiker or a drifter or a junkie (if in good condition not skinny & strung out or sick with AIDS). Or from the black projects downtown. Somebody nobody gives a shit for. Somebody should never have been born.

Walked out of the amphitheater in the midst of the voice droning & went to the psych library to look up LOBOTOMY.

This is why: seeing the Universe like that (& that a replica of something billions of years extinct!) you see how fucking futile it is to believe that any galaxy matters let alone any star of any galaxy or any planet the size of not even a grain of sand in all that inky void. Let alone any continent or any nation or any state or any county or any city or any individual.

The idea came to me at that time too because I was having trouble keeping my dick hard with guys’ AWAKE EYES observing me at intimate quarters.

I was living in a two-room place on Twelfth Street at Reardon, back in Mt. Vernon after spending some time in Detroit & this address was known to Dad & Mom & I was working at Ace Quality Box Co. (Dad thought as a clerk, in fact it was loading & unloading trucks) or maybe I’d just quit or been fired that time Dad dropped by. A few days after the lecture in the amphitheater I think. It was mixed up in my mind that Dad had seen me there in the dark HIS EYES PENETRATING THE DARK but maybe that was not so.

Aged twenty-seven & time to be ON MY OWN I told them. & I meant it.

(Except: Mom gave me $$$ when I was in need, not checks but cash. So Dad wouldn’t know.)

The week following Thanksgiving 1988. BUNNYGLOVES had been missing twelve days but there was never anything in the Mt. Vernon Inquirer or on local TV, why would there be? Set out from Detroit to Montana & not a trace.

How many hundreds, thousands in a single year. Like sparrows of the air they rise on their wings & soar & falter & fall & disappear & not a trace. & God is himself the DARK MATTER swallows them up.

Dale Springs pop. 8,000 is where the P__’s live & where their son Q__ grew up. A suburb of Mt. Vernon beside Lake Michigan & many tall trees & a meridian of green planted in geraniums in summer when you drive in crossing the (invisible) border from the City of Mt. Vernon. Six miles west & north of the University now a big sprawling campus. Downtown Mt. Vernon, this shitty neighborhood where I was renting my place is five miles to the south so go figure. Dad said he’d DROPPED BY to visit me.

The rapping at the door. My eyes flew open breaking the sticky lashes apart & my heart beat in a cold panic because NOW WAS NOT THE TIME.

Called out stammering & was up from the bed stumbling pulling on my trousers. Zipping up. Dragging the khaki blanket up over the mattress. The stained sheets, the sweet-stale smell. I was used to it by now & should have tried to open the window but didn’t.

“O.K.,” I said, “—I’m cool. O.K.”

And it was Dad. My Dad. DROPPED BY to see how I was!

The chain latch was on the door. There was Professor R__ P__ smiling wearing his sand-colored corduroy face & his tweed asshole for his mouth & his black plastic-professor glasses riding the bridge of his nose. I fumbled opening the door. I tried to say the door wouldn’t open any further, the latch was stuck. But DAD’S EYES a few inches away through the crack.

Out of a horny dream of BUNNYGLOVES, & fondling. His voice so clear in my head like it was before the change in it. & his eyes muddy-brown as KNOWING deepened in it & the pupils shrank to pinpricks.

“Quentin, hello! It’s just me! Am I disturbing you?”

My hand moved & the chain latch was off. & Dad filled the doorway staring & breathless from the stairs. When R__ P__’s professor-goatee went from glossy brown to gray filings he shaved it off out of pride but there is the shadow of the goatee on his face still. That edge in his voice. “Son?”

The two of us the same height if I stood up straight which is hard & lifted my head to confront him. Asked how I was like always, & I said. & how was he, & things at home? & Mom & Grandma send their love. Yes & Junie. All wondering why I didn’t call & didn’t drop by & worrying (you know how women are!) maybe I’m sick. & DAD’S EYES darting as I had known they would fixing on the one thing. A pause & then asking, “That locker, that’s new isn’t it?” & a pause. &, “What’s in that that requires a lock, son?”

I turned to see the five-foot metal locker leaning in the corner. Between the bed & the bathroom. Like I had not seen it before & was myself surprised.

“Just some gym things, Dad,” I said. I said at once. “Jogging shoes, socks. Towels & stuff like that.”

Dad asked, so reasonable, “But why does it require a lock?”

It was a combination lock like for a high school locker. I had memorized the combination & thrown the slip of paper away.

I was saying, “A lock came with it, Dad. From the Salvation Army. It was a real bargain at $12. It’s a part of it. It’s a way of getting the full use of the locker, I suppose.”

“You wouldn’t need to use it, though. Why would you?”

Distinguished Professor, Mt. Vernon State University. Dual appointments in Physics & Philosophy. Senior fellow of the Michigan State Institute for Advanced Research.